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Mom rolls her eyes, following me into the foyer, where I grab my bag and head to the family room to work.
‘Come on, Riv. When you were little, you loved helping me choose my dresses. Even at five, I knew you had style. Please help. You can veto just like you used to until you think Hollyn would approve.’
‘At five, that was fun. Now your sense of fashion is way dated. What if I veto everything?’
‘Then we’ll pack it up, you’ll take a day off editing, and we will head to Nordstrom.’
Mom’s a personality. Five foot two, barely a hundred pounds, currently has a chunk of purple in her shoulder-length blonde curly hair and doesn’t look a day over thirty-five thanks to Botox. She’s overly involved in our lives and says what she wants, even when it makes the rest of us cringe.
Reluctantly – because I know she won’t drop it until I say yes – I agree to help with the dress thing, and three cheese sticks later, I’m sitting on her bed, my laptop still downstairs and my phone next to me, so I don’t miss anything. When she finally walks out of her closet, she nearly blinds me. I lift a hand over my eyes to block the glare.
‘Vee-tow.’ I exaggerate each syllable as the neon pink shines back at me so brightly I momentarily fear a pink glow is now just a part of my vision.
‘Riv!’ she says with a stomp of her foot. ‘You have to actually look.’
‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘Not when the color burns my retinas. How about we make you one rule?’
She groans exactly like Hollyn does when frustrated. ‘What?’
‘No neon. It’s no longer the 1900s, and despite what you think, you’re not twenty-two anymore. You can’t go upstaging the bride with obnoxious revealing dresses worn on music videos of your past.’
‘I only wore this once, during a show… that may or may not have been recorded.’ She says that last part quietly, as though the dress affected my hearing and not my vision.
‘I don’t care where you wore it. Veto.’
She marches back into her closet, yanking something from the far back before displaying it to me over her arm. ‘What about this one? It’s never graced anyone’s TV screen.’
‘That’s the same dress,’ I say, the electric blue version of what she’s wearing now assaulting my vision.
‘This one is blue. We could wear blue! It’ll be so adorable. You’re walking me down the aisle; it’s perfect. I’ll even do blue highlights to match. Want me to make you an appointment with my hair girl?’
‘I never want you to do that.’ I shake my head repeatedly. ‘Mom, this isn’t prom. You’re not my date. You’re not going as Penny Candy. You’re the mother of the bride. Find that dress. I’m sure it has more fabric, less spandex and won’t destroy anyone’s vision. These are just – no – double vetoes. Try again. Thank you, next.’ I wave her back to the closet as I scroll through my emails, mostly junk, then peel open another string cheese.
‘You’re not going to be able to poop for a week if you eat an entire bag of cheese,’ Mom warns as she closes herself into her closet once again.
‘You worrying about my poop stopped the day I graduated from diapers. Boundaries, Mom. Jesus.’
Yes, she treats me like I’m her ‘miracle baby’. Mostly because I am. The story I’ve heard a gazillion times and that Hollyn hates goes like this.
When Mom was sixteen weeks pregnant with me, her doctor couldn’t find a heartbeat after hearing one every visit before. They booked her a second ultrasound at the hospital for the next day to be double sure. That night, she was feeling bubbly little motions from within. At first, she thought it was the tacos she and Dad had for dinner. But eventually, she realized the doctor may have been correct, and her worst fear was happening: she was having a miscarriage. Dad claims she was distraught, lying in bed for hours, rubbing her swollen belly. He says he spent the night trying to calm her, hoping maybe the doctor had been wrong the day before, but nothing helped.
At her ultrasound the next day, she got what she still says was the best news of her life. Lo and behold, I’d risen from the dead and kicked around like I was fighting my way out early. It wasn’t the tacos she was feeling. It was me. For some reason, the doctor wasn’t getting a good look the day before and mistakenly put her through the torment of thinking her baby had died.
Because of all this, Hollyn decided decades ago I was the favorite child. Mom isn’t exactly quiet about that, either. If someone were to ask if she had a fave kid, my name would leave her lips without hesitation. It can be embarrassing as fuck. I’m nearly thirty; cut the cord already, right? I don’t dare say that out loud, though. It’d crush her. Her clinginess may stem from believing she’d lost me before birth and Hollyn leaving for college and rarely contacting Mom and Dad for nearly a decade. Mom was afraid to lose another kid, so she now hovers.
She’s even got a tracker in my phone to ensure I don’t go missing. I know it’s there, so I like to check in at random places she won’t approve of because why not? It’s a fun little party trick. ‘My phone will ring in thirty seconds, and it will be my mother; bet ya twenty bucks.’ Every time it happens, and each time she greets me flatly with, ‘River, you’re not really at Chubbies, are you?’ It’s the easiest twenty bucks I could make.
Chubbies is the dirtiest strip club in town. Their parking lot is the place to go if you’re looking to die accidentally by unintentionally getting in the middle of a gang war. I’ve never really been there, mostly because I’d rather not die, but also because when the outside of a building looks like an STD, you don’t chance going in.
Despite me messing with the woman constantly, Mom and I are close. We spend a lot of time together because of the documentary, and I’ve discovered she’s not as insane as child me once thought. She is batty, don’t get me wrong, but I’m very much like her. She’s got a lot going on in her head, and hyperactivity is her middle name. Hollyn and I each inherited it in different ways. Hols struggles at night with insomnia, and I have that; plus, I get distracted easily by things like bagel shops, food trucks, women, shiny objects, and puppies (amongst other things). Because of that, my projects often don’t move as quickly as I’d like.
I run a company called Wilde River Films. I went to art college, which is fantastic if you know what you want to use it for, but at the time, I didn’t. When I enrolled, all I knew was that I didn’t want to work nine to five for some asshole whose comfort was more important than mine.
The Penny Candy documentary I’ve been working on is my back-burner job. I’ve got VH1 interested, but my timeline has been open since Mom isn’t precisely the singing sensation she once was. In the eighties, she was a mall performer. Once she was discovered and hit it big, she powered through the early nineties touring the world until my dad finally convinced her to settle down and reproduce. Settling wasn’t always in her cards, but she finally calmed down for most of mine and Hols’ childhood. She’s been in the slow lane for a long time and now wants to jump back onto the freeway. That’s what we’re attempting with this documentary, and she’s taking for-ever to record an entire album to release simultaneously.
My dad is a workaholic who spends a lot of time with other women. Patients, as he’s an obstetrician/gynecologist, not Hugh Hefner. Mom hates being alone, so when he’s gone, I end up helping her with things. Things that are not the documentary. Filming TikToks, helping her with her social media, cleaning the pool, fixing the laptop she broke, reorganizing closets, hanging photos, picking dresses – it’s always something.
She again walks out of her closet, this time in something black-and-white striped with only one shoulder strap.
