Twenty-Nine. We’re Not in Sweetville Anymore
Twenty-Nine
WE’RE NOT IN SWEETVILLE ANYMORE
A few hours of sulking in the guest room later, I realize I have to go down for dinner. I’m starving. Plus, the last thing I want is for my absence to invite new probing questions.
I take the steps slowly, feeling a little woozy. No doubt my blood sugar is low, even if I think I can still taste all the hot cocoa I drank in Sweetville.
I’m nearing the bottom when Alfredo lunges at me with a yowl. “Reeewoooh,” he squeals as I dodge him and he gets his claws stuck in the stair runner. “There’s no place like home,” I mutter.
Dad is snoring in his armchair. With his head lolling to the side and a small trail of drool on his chin, it’s impossible to picture him executing tricks on a Vespa or dancing Mom around the room. Mom is in the kitchen. I can hear her putting away dishes.
“You’re awake,” Mom says. She’s already taking one of the dishes out of its stack and opening the fridge.
“We had chicken. A little boring; I threw it together because we have Henry’s show tonight, and I got caught up at Kohl’s.
There was a woman trying to use Kohl’s Cash from 2017.
The whole store came to a standstill while she threw a massive fit. What nerve!”
Mom peeks back at me. “Sorry—I’m boring you with my Kohl’s story,” she says. “Let me fix you a plate.”
I slip by her and extract the platter of chicken and vegetables from the fridge. “I can do it,” I say. My mom is dressed up in a red silk blouse with a neck bow and flattering black trousers. “You shouldn’t mess yourself up. And your story’s not boring at all. Kohl’s Cash, the root of all evil.”
“To be honest, I wish I had gotten a video.” Mom’s eyes dance at the memory.
As I assemble a meager plate of leftovers—I’m suddenly not very hungry—I can feel Mom’s eyes on my back. She’s dying to say something or ask something, and she’s biting her tongue.
“What time should I be ready for Henry’s show?” The only way out of my situation is through, and that means I have to endure every Christmas activity my mom would like me to partake in without a fuss. Then I’ll get back to my old life, even if it’s not much to get back to.
“We’re going to leave in forty-five minutes or so. I have to rouse your father,” she says.
I eat faster than I want to. A full mouth is a mouth that can’t answer questions. When I’m done, I load my plate into the dishwasher. “I just need to fix my makeup, and then I’m ready to go.” I slip past my mom and vault over Alfredo on my way upstairs.
An hour later, we drive together to Henry’s show. The Powell Park Community Center is nothing like the fancy theater in Sweetville. The stage is set up at the far end of what’s also used as a basketball gym. The musty room is heavy with the scents of stale sweat and dust.
Still, I search the room wondering if Grant is here, like he was in Sweetville.
And why is it Grant I’m thinking about? The last thing I did in Sweetville was have an utterly perfect date with Corey, but Grant is the person I want to bump into again. I wrote my own ending, and it’s only left me more confused.
I close my eyes and, one last time, replay the moment with Corey before the snowball concussed me.
The music, Corey’s tender approach to the kiss. The way he grew more urgent. The whole thing was perfect. Perfect… if I were watching it in a Heartfelt movie. Not perfect for me. But I’m back in my real life. That has to be enough.
Henry does a good job of playing Tiny Tim, except that the auditorium/gym is hot, and every time he exits one scene and reappears in a later one, he’s taken off one article of clothing.
So while he started the play with a suit jacket, shirt, tie, and short britches, by the time he says, “God bless us, every one,” he’s wearing the Pokemon T-shirt he insisted on wearing underneath the itchy button-down and has shed his shoes and tall knee socks.
As the cast takes its final bows, Alice wakes from her short winter’s nap and exclaims loudly, “It smells weird. Did someone in here make a pants poop?”
“I think you’re right,” I tell her. “Want to go outside?”
She nods, and we make our way out of the building, waiting on a bench with chipped green paint.
After the show, Rachel emerges from the building, looking back for Henry.
A few seconds later, he runs out the doors, waving his crutch victoriously.
Brian, who went to the car to fetch a surprise balloon bouquet for him, gets a terrified look in his eyes as his son barrels at him full speed.
Henry pushes off one foot and leaps at least two feet in the air.
Brian runs with the balloons to catch Henry, whose landing arc would have had his little chin make hard contact with a heavy stone planter.
But as my brother rescues his son, he lets go of the balloons, and they’re whipped by a sudden gust of wind directly into a power line.
“Make it the new year already,” Rachel sighs.
“You’re telling me,” I say. We fist-bump.
“Jill, can you help me wrap a few gifts for the kids?” Mom asks me the next afternoon. “I forgot about some things I bought back in August.”
Gifts. The ones I bought still need wrapping, too. In Sweetville, I’d probably be someone who cuts the exact right amount of paper for each package. Here, I’m well aware I will inevitably have to patch my handiwork with scraps of gift wrap.
I follow Mom to the basement and then to her little nook.
When I was a kid, I always wondered what she was doing down here so long around Christmas and why I was forbidden from this section of the basement.
By the time I finally figured out Santa wasn’t real, I also determined that Mom hid everything behind the water heater and an old tool chest.
Now she’s extracting some presents from that same hiding spot. Gift giving is my mom’s joy and her stressor, and she really does start shopping while it’s still hot out so that she can wow everyone with an honestly shameful number of presents.
She hands me a huge plush donut. “That’s for Alice.”
I cut a square of paper that seems about right, but it’s not. As I try to force the squishy toy into a small shape, Mom—who’s neatly wrapping a radio control car for Henry—says, “So, who was this friend you met last night?”
“Just a group. Remember? Some people from Powell Park High School.”
“Did you really have a group in high school?” Mom asks. “You had Allie and those girls from the newspaper, but…”
“Thanks, Mom,” I say.
“I just mean I didn’t know you kept in touch with anyone from around here.
Unless… have you spoken to Allie lately?
” She finishes wrapping the car, puts it aside, and pulls a Lego set onto her lap.
After eyeballing its size, she cuts another panel of paper in a neat line.
It makes a ripping sound like she’s tearing wide open my grab bag of lies.
“No, not lately,” I say. Okay. Allie. My Sweetville reunion with her made me realize how many mistakes I had made in our friendship. I should call her or go see her. But maybe I should wait until after Christmas?
Mom squinches her lips and flips the Lego set on its side. “You went to Grant’s, didn’t you?”
Yes, Mom. I went to Grant’s because I wanted to avoid watching a Heartfelt movie with you during which you’d inevitably question my own love life and remind me how I could have a healthy, wholesome, sweet, Christmas-picture-perfect family just like in one of those movies, but the truth is I magically—or drunkenly; what’s the difference?
—spent more than a week in one of those movies and lived my very own Jill-led version of it, and even in a town where blissful couples are as much a part of the scenery as boughs of holly, and where the course of true love runs so smooth I imagine everyone’s genitals and brains are as shiny and problem-free as Barbie’s, I managed to be the one person who could not make a happily ever after happen for me.
“Yeah, I stopped by,” I say. “But it wasn’t a big deal. We’re just friends.”
Mom tapes down her neatly folded wrapping paper. Seeing my struggle, she takes the squishy toy from me and expertly trims a fresh piece of wrap that fits, holding the paper where the two edges meet and indicating I should tape it.
I snap off a piece of Scotch tape and secure the package. Mom didn’t need my help. This is an interrogation.
Mom doesn’t continue wrapping; instead, she’s begun to fret a dry cuticle at the corner of her thumb.
She looks tired, like several years have caught up to her all at once.
I forget sometimes that, as much en ergy and spirit as she has, she’s getting older.
And as much as she loves Christmas, I’m sure it still takes a lot out of her.
Being a Christmas person doesn’t mean all the to-dos of the holiday are easy.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Mom says carefully.
“You didn’t get me one of these giant donut toys, too?”
“No.” Mom’s serious. She doesn’t even crack a smile at my joke. Which is fine because I still don’t feel like smiling, either. And it wasn’t a very good joke.
Mom expels a long, slow breath and pushes the packages to the side. She scoots closer to me on the rug—tired or not, she’s pretty spry for her age, but then she did recently get into doing old exercise videos from the ’80s—and puts a hand on my knee.
“Do you think maybe you’re all wrong about you and Grant?” she says, her words emerging in a single swoop.
Before I can say, “What?” she continues.
“I’m always on your side, Jilly,” she says. “But I wonder, maybe, if you’re too quick to give up on things.”
“I don’t give up,” I say.
“That was the wrong choice of words. But I know you’ve not come home for Christmas because you’re scared to see him. And I don’t understand why. You haven’t given up in Los Angeles, even though that’s not perfect.”
“I’m…” I’m about to craft a lie, but no words emerge.