The Waterpark Mom - August 21 11 am - Shoe Museum

August 21 11 a.m.  Meds – Yes  

Mood –   Happy.  Sad.  Angry.

Beast Sightings – Everywhere

At Marianne’s a week.  Beast and Jeremy are like besties.  We take our time whenever we go out. An ancient Camaro from the 90’s gets us around.  And Marianne takes forever to get anyplace.  When we go out, we make a day of it.   Marianne likes to shop, a lot.  I used to be a shopaholic too, but there are only so many times you gawk at your shadow wearing the latest fashions before you realize you will never be her again.  And no matter how hard you try to be her, it doesn’t matter.  You’re different.  Becoming a teenage widow cures you of buying outfits or shoes or anything, and you wish the cheerleader who looks like you and lives in your room and wears your clothes would go away. 

When your mom acts like she’s still in high school and owns a museum of shoes and throws parties with her boyfriends, you put her and the shadow together.  They’re pals.  And you hate both of them. 

Shoes get Marianne into trouble.  She has a shoe museum.  (More about this later.)  Beast and Jeremy and I watch her cram the pint-sized trunk of the Camaro with shopping bags of new shoes of all different kinds, different sizes too.  We don’t help.

“An elegant toothbrush would fit better,” I say.

“Why do you go and ruin my day.” 

“Some of those look too pretty to wear, are you going to display them, like the other shoes?”

“She’s drunk,” Beast says.

I don’t know how he can smell it being a ghost or why I don’t ask her for the keys when she tells me she’s fine, but when we get home, I’m grateful we made it, grateful for the dust in the living room and how I sneeze every time I walk inside.  It’s where she keeps a collection of shoes, where Belchamp, Marianne’s tiny dog (he looks like one of those hot dogs except Belchamp is furry.  And if this is a Cinderella story, this dog turns into a stretch limo (his fluff into a cute hat – Marianne wears it someplace cold like Antarctica or Hell, Norway, and my ghost boyfriend comes back).  The canine gets the haze in the room and the haze I’m in.  And we go to Marianne’s museum and stare at it.  I don’t know what Belchamp asks for (if he even asks at all). 

“I could steal your boots.”

But she knows I won’t.  I read and write in my journal and try to forget the beer on her breath as she drove us home.  I imagine my friends from last year and think about where they are now away at school on the other side of the world and wonder if they are being good.