“I get it. You’re in love,” Mom interrupts.
I stare up at the white swirly ceiling and realize that she’s right; I am in love with Rand. What if he never wants to be with me? The very thought makes me want to hurl all my breadsticks. I roll onto my side and face Mom. “What am I going to do?”
“I know he’s crazy about you. It was obvious that night at the hospital, and you don’t just get over feelings that strong in a few days. The way I see it, he’s testing you.”
“Do you know where I can get a study guide because I’m fresh out of ideas to win him over?” I laugh.
“Put yourself in his shoes for a minute. He’s had a crush on you almost his whole life. Suddenly you drop right into his lap. He probably never thought he was good enough for you to begin with. Now he’s scared that you might get sick of him and then he’ll lose you forever.”
“Nah, that doesn’t make any sense. If he’s wanted me for so long, shouldn’t he be dying to be with me instead of pushing me away?”
“Okay, let me put this another way. Do you remember your first Dooney bag?”
Just the mention of my first Dooney practically gives me goose bumps. “Of course, I do. It was a white buckle satchel It bag covered with the rainbow-colored Dooney insignia. I lusted after that bag for months.” I’m not getting what this has to do with Rand, but purse talk is never a bad thing.
“Right. So, what did you do when Dad and I bought it for you?”
“I nearly broke my ankle jumping for joy.”
“Right, but what did you do with the purse?” she says with the slightest hint of irritation.
“I took really good care of it, and resold it on eBay for more money a year later?”
“Exactly. You were so enamored by that purse that you wouldn’t even use it. You just sat it on your dresser and stared at it. We begged you to enjoy it, but you were so afraid that it would get dirty or someone would steal it that you never even enjoyed it.”
“I’m Rand’s first Dooney?” I ask, hoping I’m finally getting her brilliant analogy.
“Yes,” she says, relieved. “Well, kind of. He’s loved you for so long that he’s put you on a pedestal. Now that he can have you he’s afraid he’ll screw it up or worse, he’ll lose you to someone else.”
“So am I supposed to sell myself on eBay?” I giggle.
“Hmm … I wonder how much we could get?” she cracks up.
“I want to prove to Rand that I’m here for good,” I say, getting serious again.
“Then we need to come up with something drastic.”
“Speaking of drastic,” I say, creating a segue into the intervention portion of the evening. I so don’t want to have this conversation, but Mom’s mental health might be at stake. I’m crazy about Rand but he’s going to have to wait.
“What?” She drops her eyes back to her catalog.
“I was in your closet earlier,” I say, softly.
She doesn’t look up from her catalog but her eyes get glassy with tears. As the tears spill over onto her cheeks, she drops the catalog and buries her face in her hands, sobbing.
“Aspen, I’m sick.” I can barely make out what she said through her sobbing. But I did make it out and I wish I wouldn’t have. Mom, sick? Breast cancer? Leukemia? Brain tumor?
“I’m a shopaholic.” Mom sobs.
A huge sigh escapes me. “Is that all? I thought you were dying.” I laugh.
* * * *
It turns out that being a shopaholic is pretty serious business. Especially when you’ve charged $11,000 to your credit card like Mom has. I agreed not to tell Dad for now just for the fact that he would have a stroke and my parents can’t afford the hospital bill.
The next morning Mom and I sort everything into piles broken down by store. By the time everything is returned to its appropriate pile we have twenty different stores to visit. Agh! I never thought I would actually dread a shopping trip!
Thankfully Mom was with it enough to save her receipts. We carefully load Cookie and drive to Comfort’s two-level shopping center where Mom did most of her damage.
“Why did you buy all this stuff?” I ask her on the drive there.
She contemplates her answer for a moment, then begins, “In the beginning, it felt good, like a rush. I’d just buy something small as a reward to myself. But then it got to the point where small things didn’t work for me anymore. I had to start buying more expensive items and more of them to feed my unquenchable thirst. I think it has something to do with being such an outcast in school most of my life. All I ever wanted to do was fit in,” she says sadly.
It’s weird to hear Mom talk like this. I’ve always sort of had her on a pedestal. Now I realize that she isn’t perfect and she has issues just like everyone else. I’m going to help her beat this no matter what I have to do.
“You do fit in, Mom. You fit perfectly with me and Dad.” I reach over and squeeze her hand and notice that she is trembling. She smiles at me but she almost looks like she’s in pain.
We pull up to Coldwater Creek and approach the cash register with four full shopping bags of returns.
“Hey, Judy. How are you?” a tiny red-haired woman wearing lots of turquoise jewelry asks Mom.
“Hi, Flo,” Mom answers back timidly. I realize as I watch Mom’s eyes dart from rack to rack that I’ve made a terrible mistake. I never should have brought her with me. You wouldn’t take an alcoholic to a kegger or an overeater to Krispy Kreme so what in the world was I thinking dragging her in here?
“We just got these new winter sweaters in that you’re going to fall in love with,” Flo rambles on.
“Mom, go wait in the car,” I say, dangling my keys out to her.
Flo stands frozen with her mouth halfway open. Mom stares me down and just when I think she is going to fight me, she drops the bags she was carrying, grabs my keys, and walks out the door without another word to Flo.
One by one I turn the bags over on the checkout counter and let the contents spill out.
“I just have a few things I need to return, Flo.” I smile.
It takes her fifteen minutes, but the end result is a credit for $876 back on Mom’s credit card. Not a bad start.
Flo doesn’t say one word to me during the entire transaction. I get the distinct feeling that she’s known about Mom’s problem for a while but didn’t want to screw up her commission.
She hands me the receipt and I walk toward the storefront. I abruptly spin around and say, “Oh, Flo? If you ever sell my mom anything again, I’ll tell the whole world that Coldwater Creek is pulling a Kathie Lee. Enough said?”
Her eyes bug out upon hearing my threat and her turquoise drop earrings swing like pendulums as she agrees to ban Mom.
I happily swing the front door open. One down, nineteen to go.
CHAPTER TEN
We spent the rest of the day returning stuff. We were so not popular with the sales clerks. Hauling Mom’s addiction around all day made me realize that she truly does have a problem. I counted seventeen black turtlenecks alone. Even buying one turtleneck is a cry for help, but seventeen? Mom was screaming!
Dad isn’t coming home until tomorrow so we have made the dining-room table our headquarters.
I just finished tallying up all the returns from today. The total, disappointingly, only came to a little over $6,000.
“You said you spent $11,000. We returned everything in your closet. Where’s the rest?” I ask, agitated after such a long day.
“I don’t know,” Mom replies, hugging her knees and rocking back and forth in her chair. I keep forgetting how hard this must be for her. I’m expecting a “junkie” to go cold turkey.
“Why don’t you go take a nap?”
She nods her head in agreement and slowly climbs the steps to her room.
I add the receipts one more time in hopes that I made a mistake, even though I so know that isn’t likely, but they add up exactly the same. I tap the capped end of my ink pen against my temp
le willing myself to think where she could have spent the rest of the money.
I get up from my chair to get a drink. My left leg is asleep from sitting so long and I smash into Mom’s curio cabinet. Luckily, it’s bolted to the wall so it doesn’t move. I try to get my balance, then trip over one of her Longaberger baskets. Why is there so much crap everywhere?
A light goes on as I survey my surroundings with new eyes. Baskets, knickknacks, and pictures cover every free space of the dining room. I hobble into the kitchen and realize that it is also overflows with stuff. I guess Mom is an equal opportunity spender. I just assumed she was buying things only for herself, but she’s overaccessorized the house, too!
A twinge of guilt hits me when I realize how much she’s spent on me. I never questioned her bringing home new Dooneys or handing over Choo boxes. How could I not have realized we couldn’t afford all that stuff? I guess maybe I did, but I just didn’t care. Dad never noticed because he wouldn’t know a Jimmy Choo from a Payless pump.
I need to get Mom’s credit card statement to see how much of this junk can be returned. I remember her hiding it on a shelf in her closet. I tiptoe up the stairs. Even if we can’t return everything, we can still sell it on eBay and get some of the money back. God bless eBay!
I gently turn the knob to Mom’s room when I hear her whispering. I crack the door and peek in. Her back is facing me and she’s holding the cordless phone in one hand and a catalog in the other.
“Yeah, give me one in pink and one in blue,” she whispers.
“What are you doing?” I bust in, causing Mom to jump and drop the phone. She immediately starts crying.
I bend down and pick up the phone. I tell the customer service representative to cancel the order and hang up. I cross the room and wrap my arms around Mom.
“It’s okay. I’m going to help you.” I rub her back. I’m a little scared though. This is a lot more serious than I thought. As much as I hate it, I’m going to have to bring in reinforcements (aka Dad).
* * * *
I finally get Mom calmed down enough to take a nap. How can someone who has a tornado of issues swirling inside them look so peaceful? I confiscate the cordless phone, her stacks of catalogs, and her credit card.
Two hours later and Mom has been removed from every mailing list imaginable. I even cancelled her credit card. I figured she had the number memorized so hiding it wouldn’t do any good.
I’m exhausted. Thank God Mom has never shopped online! So much for spending the day thinking up some fabulous scheme to win Rand back once and for all. My brain is a mush of catalogs and toll-free numbers. I’ll never think of anything good enough to win Rand back before the dance tomorrow.
Mom bounds down the stairs with renewed energy. I’m suspicious of her perky mood, but there is no way she could have bought anything in the last two hours unless Neiman Marcus started taking orders by smoke signals.
“I just had the best dream and it gave me a plan for you to win Rand back,” she says so excitedly that her words run together.
“This isn’t exactly the kind of plan I had in mind.” I say, fingering Mom’s old prom dress.
“Do you want to win his heart or not?”
“Yeah, but … ”
“No butts. Suck it up and quit whining.”
“Jeez, chill out.” I’m teasing because I actually love it that she’s so excited. This is the mom I know, not some shopping addict with self-esteem issues. She is so going to beat this!
Mom’s dream was about the prom she missed. She thinks this is one of her core issues. It was really important to her that the entire school see her and Dad together to validate to her it was real. But then prom got cancelled and Mom felt incomplete. Mom says that she has psychoanalyzed me and figured out my biggest fear. Public humiliation. She thought up a way for me to publicly humiliate myself and get Rand to see that I’m serious about him. If it works, she’s a genius; if it tanks, she promised to pay for at least five years of therapy.
The first part of Mom’s plan is in full swing. The next morning we are destroying my beautiful head of hair. Mom wrapped my precious locks in these pink and purple hot-dog-looking things that she dug out of the junk closet. She said she wants my hair to be “kinky,” whatever than means. I’ve heard all about kinky sex, but kinky hair is a first for me. Apparently it was “killer” in the eighties, her word, not mine. She mentioned something about wanting it to look like Chaka Khan’s hair. I don’t know who that is, and I think it’s best if I don’t Google her. I have a feeling if I knew what she looked like, I’d be running out of the house screaming.
The second part of the plan is to completely surrender my normally wicked fashion sense. The hair I can choke down, but I have a feeling my body may actually reject anything unfashionable draped upon it.
“Can you put this away? It’s giving me a migraine,” I say, holding the dress out while turning my head the other way.
“Do not diss my prom dress,” Mom says, delicately hanging her prized garment back in her nearly empty closet.
“I just refuse to believe that was ever in style.”
“I was devastated when I didn’t get to wear it.” She looks sad. I’m tempted to tell her that I really think it worked out for the best, but at the last second I decide I still need her help so I better behave. Besides, her plan seems to have helped sideline any residual desires she may have had to spend money.
“Why was prom cancelled again?”
“Some jerk called in a bomb threat to the hotel where the dance was supposed to be held. They didn’t have time to move the dance to another location. They never even found a bomb.”
“It was probably somebody who saw your dress and wanted to save everyone’s eyesight.” I say, unable to control myself any longer.
“I can’t wait to see you in it,” she says, giving me an evil little smirk.
“Yeah, about that. Our dance isn’t really formal so maybe … ”
“Zip it. You’re wearing it.”
“Control freak much?”
Mom ignores me and hands me some accessories. One is a huge bowtie necklace made entirely of rhinestones.
“Please tell me you’re kidding?” I say, fingering the heavy necklace. Between this thing and my hair I’ll be lucky to walk upright tonight.
She doesn’t respond, just hands me a pair of satin pumps (gag!) that are dyed the exact hideous hue of hot pink as her dress.
“This is for your hair.” She hands me a strange-looking contraption with plastic teeth.
“What the heck is it?” I hand it back to her.
“It’s called a banana clip and it works like this.” She shakes out her chestnut hair. She breaks the clip apart at the top and splits it open. She puts it under her hair then with one hand on each side of the clip she pulls it to the top of her head and snaps the two ends together. The end result is a Mohawk on the back of her head.
“Hell, no!” I scream in horror.
“Don’t you want to be kissing Rand later tonight?” She laughs, tossing her Mohawk around. “Look, I even hot glued lace to it so it would match my dress. I used to be crazy good with a glue gun.” Her eyes get excited at the memory.
“You’re really starting to scare me. Just for the record, these items will be incinerated the moment they leave my body.”
She looks sad, but recovers quickly, and shakes her head accepting the demise of her eighties couture.
Her cell phone rings. She unsnaps the banana clip in a flash like an old pro and tosses it to me before answering.
“Hello.” Several seconds pass of her just listening. She makes a few weird faces, then says, “Sure, no problem,” and clicks off.
“Dad?”
“No, but he should be home from the airport soon. I’ve got to run to the senior center real quick, then do a few other errands, but I’ll be home in time to help you get ready for the dance.”
“Okay, but do I really have to leave these in all day?” I ask, fingering the
hot dog hair thingies.
“Yes, and don’t forget your makeup.” She tosses me an assortment of Mary Kay compacts. I pop one open to find a color palette that I didn’t even know existed, and for good reason. I slam it shut afraid I might go blind.
“Go practice making yourself look hideous,” she jokes.
“It’s going to take all day, and even then I’m not sure I’ll be able to pull it off.” I’m really scared to let her leave. What if she has a relapse? She looks okay and she hasn’t mentioned shopping all day. I guess I can’t watch her 24/7. I turn to go back to my bedroom.
“Oh, and Aspen?”
“Yeah.” I pop my head back in her door.
“I need to borrow Cookie because Rosie needs help with a new mattress she bought. Apparently she needs a king size now that Ned is back on his Viagra.”
“Gross, Mom. I don’t need to know the details on the sexual habits of senior citizens. The keys are on my vanity; just don’t let those two in my backseat.”
“I love you, sweetie,” I hear her yell on my way down the stairs.
* * * *
It is now five o’clock in the afternoon and Mom still isn’t home. I’m freaking because the dance starts in two hours and I have to be there early to figure out how I’m going to pull off the third stage of our plan. I’ve left six messages on her cell. I can’t believe she left me hanging. She knows how important this is. I swear, if she is out somewhere shopping, I will not be responsible for my actions.
I can’t wait for her any longer. My makeup is already done. I look like a demented circus clown. I’m hoping that I don’t bump into any small children tonight because I can guarantee they would be scarred for life catching a glimpse of me. I coated my lids with lavender eye shadow and used electric blue eyeliner and mascara. My blush and lipstick match my hot-pink dress. One by one, I remove the hot dogs from my hair. Curls spring to life all over my head. I run my fingers through my hair trying to calm the curls a bit, but they just pouf up even more out of control. It really is scary to look at myself in the mirror. I’m pretty sure this is how I would look if I got struck by lightning. I can barely contain the curls inside the banana clip.
Revenge of the Homecoming Queen Page 12