Fly With Me

Ring. Ring. Ring.

My nails tap nervously against the phone as I sit on my window seat, looking outside to the street. I shift my weight onto another pillow, listening attentively.

“Hello?” She never did get caller I.D.

“Hi, mother.”

She falls silent for a minute. “Dear! Oh, I’ve missed you so much!” She squeals at last, but it’s completely delayed and false and I just want to puke. I close my eyes, leaning back against the wall as she continues speaking. “How are you? Are you all right? I think you’ve been eating junk food. That’s what it is, whenever you faint, I’m sure of it.”

Is she then, still in denial with herself? She’s a human I really don’t understand, though I’ve spent my entire life with her. “No, mother. It’s when I don’t enough- that’s when I faint. That’s what happens now.”

She tuts. “Absolute nonsense, dear. Look at yourself. I’ve kept an eye on the tour and you’re really gained some weight.”

I wrap my arms around my stomach, hurt. “Mother, I… I’m still not a healthy weight. The press are still calling me anorexic.”

My mother snorts and I can imagine her playing with her pearl necklace with those long fake pink nails. “Well, of course they are. You are a model, dear, and you’re thin. What do you expect? But next thing you know, they’ll be calling you obese. I swear, it’s like you’re just off eating donuts and drinking soda all the time now, am I right?”

“No, mother,” I close my eyes and sigh, shaking my head. It’s as if nothing has changed; I should have known. Why would she stop acting like this now? “I don’t eat donuts and I’m not drinking soda. I’m just keeping a small steady diet of nutrional food. But this isn’t what I want to talk about,” I add, trying to swerve us away from this annoying topic.

“Oh?” She asks in surprise, if false. “And what’s that, doll?”

“You’re taking the Jonases to court, mother.”

“I know,” she sighs. “It’s such a horrible thing.”

“Then call it off,” I plead. “Please. Don’t do this for them. It’s- it’s not going to go well, and it’s bad press for everyone.”

“Not if I win,” she puts in.

I bite my lip and glance out the window. Across the street, a little girl is skipping on the sidewalk with her mother and her puppy, happy as if nothing can go wrong. For them, it won’t. Why couldn’t we have been like them? I can’t help but wonder, and yearn for a time that never was…

“What if I came back?” I offer finally. “If… If I came back, would you… you know, stop this? Only you can pull it off.”

She hums absently, pretending to think about it. “Hmm… well, I could consider it, I suppose. But after all that has happened? I swear, ever since we met, the family didn’t like me,” she whines as if she’s the one under attack and not insinuating everything. “I don’t know what it is, and I thought I was being a good mother. But then you up and leave me?”

“Mother, I don’t want the life you want me to have,” I try to explain to her. “I don’t want to be a model. I don’t want to have to starve myself and exercise like that. It was killing me, and I’m not being dramatic about it. The doctors said if I’d gone another week, I’d have gotten extremely sick. Is that what you’re trying to do to me?”

“Of course not,” she sniffs. “I was just taking care of you.”

“Mothers are supposed think their children are beautiful, no matter what,” I insert. “You’re supposed to let me live my life. Do what I want, not what you want.”

“And what do you want?” She snaps. “Be a movie star? Be a singer? Dear, that’s a frivolous life.”

“But I’m happy right now! And I was never happy modeling, okay? I don’t like being touched like that. I don’t like people working all over me. I like just being around people who like me as I am. Why don’t you get that?”

“No, dear,” she speaks slowly and calmly, not hearing me. “You’re not understanding. You don’t understand that all I’ve done, was for you. The modeling, the clothes, everything. I’ve lived longer, and I know the business better than you do. And remember, if we hadn’t done this, then you never would have met the Jonas family. If something so great has come from me and you, what if something greater comes along?”

I swallow hard, closing my eyes. “Nick’s the greatest thing that’s ever happened,” I whisper. “He’s all I need. I don’t care what you say, mother, because you’re wrong.” Slowly I pull the phone from my ear, and hang up.

Time passes, and all I do is sit there and wait. I’m not sure what for, or anything. But I feel like there’s nothing else I can do now. I tried. But I can’t… I can’t do this. I’m tearing everyone apart with this, no matter how they try to hide it. And again, I’m stuck hiding things, too. Everything’s become a catastrophe again.