Page 88 of The Summer Show
“There has to be a more efficient way to get your ten thousand steps done,” I called out.
He didn’t lighten up. A bit of a bummer because as jokes went, I thought mine was pretty good. At least a four out of ten. “You don’t want to go in there.”
Lina hugged me around the waist with one arm. “What’s going on?” she asked her son.
“They’ve gone too far,” he said. “I told them … I told them this would hurt you. They don’t care. There’s nothing they won’t do for ratings and money.” He spat the words, each one pebble-hard.
The list of things that could hurt me in this world was short, as long as you removed things such as weapons, viruses, flesh-eating bacteria, and books that were advertised as romances but didn’t have a Happily Ever After or a Happy For Now ending. Somehow I didn’t think the production team was sitting around dog-earing books either.
“What is it?”
My survival skills failed me. My instincts threw up their hands and quit. Somewhere deep down inside me, a nugget of boneheadedness and naivety had been stitched into my DNA billions of years ago, and now it was giddily in control and walking its descendent to Hotel Ble’s fancy doors, without waiting for Nick’s answer. My senses were vaguely aware he was right behind me with a worried Lina.
The lobby sprawled out in front of me. Today it was smaller. Claustrophobically tiny. Vanished from my perception were the blown glass ceiling and the welcoming greenery. My brain blocked out irrelevant details: the cheerful reception staff; the eager beaver porters; the smiling doorman who had opened the door for me and welcomed me back. Either the air conditioning had failed or my thermostat was on the fritz, because the space felt soupy and warm. Every inhalation drew more broth into my lungs. Not helping were the klieg lights and the camera operators who weren’t supposed to be here. Nor were the show’s crew members, who were levitating with excitement.
And then there was her.
My mother. Susan Hart. Cutting across the lobby with her arms stretched out, a platinum blonde piranha with a complexion like a leather sofa.
Her destination: me.
Let it be said that my mother embraced her passions. She never once half-assed her obsessions. She full-assed them all the way and made them her entire personality. For her trip to snatch up the mantle of Worst Mother Ever yet again, she was saturated in her influencer and social media celebrity persona. Her face had been filled and pulled and pinned back behind her ears before adopting a wig to conceal the evidence. Waving hello at onlookers from under a skintight tank top with MOMMY scrawled across the flexible fabric were the breasts she had purchased a few years ago as an investment in one career or another. These double Ds definitely were not the same Bs she had passed down to me.
With her talons hooked around her cellphone, she threw her arms around me, crooning, “There’s my baby!”
The cameras were rolling, and she was acting up a storm.
The people responsible for this travesty were making cooing noises. To them this was a happy reunion. In reality, I was Indiana Jones and my mother was all the snakes at the bottom of the Well of Souls.
I stood with my arms limp at my sides, not returning the hug, not leaning into her lying embrace.
She squeezed me until my breakfast complained about the shrinking accommodations in my digestive system. Her breath was sour against my ear. “This is my big break,” she hissed. “Go with it.”
Not a word about me. Not a single encouraging noise out of her mouth. Everything was about her, all the time.
I busted out of her hug. Stepped back. Stepped back some more. My chest was tightening and I needed oxygen. Mom’s arms remained in the air for a moment, then fell to her sides. Boiling rage flashed across her features for a microsecond before being replaced with manufactured sorrow.
Or maybe the sadness was authentic, but it was all for her and not for me. Like she had told me: this was her big break. I was just the horse she expected to ride into glory.
I was no horse. No one was going to ride me to stardom.
“No,” I said.
All that money spent on propping up the aging parts of her face and every last filler failed in the moment I stood up to her. Her features collapsed in bubbling rage.
She gave a mean laugh and surveyed the faces in our small audience. The cameras were still rolling, and you could see the crew trying to decide how to spin this slice of drama.
“You’re a disappointment, Kathleen. Today more than ever,” she said.
“Must run in the family.”
She ignored the barb. “You want to hear the truth? I never wanted kids, and once you and your sister came along, I definitely didn’t want the two of you. Children were just something I felt like I had to do because your father and grandparents—all of them—refused to shut up about it.”
“That’s not my fault, or Brit’s.”
“It’s not fair. You and your sister took my youth, and now you’re stealing my opportunities. I mean, who would want to put you on TV? You’re boring. Look at you. Look at me. I’m star material, and you’re a bad photocopy.”
My airways responded by clenching their muscles. I worked to shove the air out and pull in the next breath. The air was too warm, too dense to move freely.