SAT Runaway

Part 2 of 2

Her MomMom calls her upstairs. Dylan hopes to lay beside her in bed. Maybe watch a movie. MomMom’s days are simple and relaxing, as they should be down the shore. She doesn’t think MomMom has been on the actual beach in a couple of years. She prefers to view it from her balcony, similar to the way Dylan prefers to view her current self.

She enters her MomMom’s room. Floral. Bright. Spacious. Feminine.

“Can you pass me my lipstick from the on top of my drawers, sweetie.”

Before Dylan even gets to the drawers, MomMom starts explaining the memorial card that hangs in the mirror above it.
“She was younger than me. Cancer… So many funerals in my days, Dylan. It’s horrible”

“That’s sad. I’m sorry, MomMom”

MomMom is at her vanity, which holds the finest makeup and jewelry. In high school, MomMom won two superlatives: best personality and prettiest. She had to choose one. And she went with prettiest. MomMom laughs at herself about it now, but Dylan secretly respects her for it. She has no shame in her values and choices.

“I like that color”

“You can have it if you want”.

Giving was one of many reasons for that best personality.

“No thanks, but can I look in your closet?”

Her MomMom smiles. Her, her sisters, and cousins would sometimes “shop in MomMom’s closet.” Picking out old designer stuff that she no longer wanted. It was a big walk-in. And when Dylan enters she’s hit with a feeling of safety. Although she’s sadly aware that the five oldest grandchildren wouldn’t be able to form a circle in it now.

They used to attempt to contact the dead in here, in the dark. Who would she call upon now? Maybe MomMom’s friend in the mirror. Did you feel too young? Would you laugh at me for feeling too old, even though I’m only seventeen?

“You can look in the Cape May room. Your cousin may have left something you could wear.”

“Wear to what?” 

“The Bat Mitzvah. Linda’s great niece. Sammy. No, it’s Shelly.”

MomMom says this as if Dylan should know exactly what was on her agenda for today. She comes out of the closet, confused.

“It’s Shelby. That’s it. What? It won’t be a problem if you come. Her mother didn’t even RSVP to your Dad’s Bar Mitzvah.” MomMom might not be able to remember a name, but she can remember gossip from 1976.

Her gut tightens and her mouth dries, like the low tide pulling the water further from earth.

“Don’t worry we will get you ready. Do you want to get pedicures? We may have time…”

Dylan eases and remembers why she came here. Because her MomMom thinks Dylan’s biggest worry is getting ready for the event, not the fact Dylan came here to avoid people. Let alone a crowd of old Jewish people who somehow met her as a kid and will inevitably ask a million questions about her schooling. And where she will go next year? And how are her parents? And, oh my gosh, how old she looks!

“We can go to the Greenhouse after the service. I’m not sure I’m up for the after-party.”

The prospect of Greenhouse cheese fries, and the prospect of an excuse to have her phone turned off, makes Dylan nod. MomMom’s excitement squelches Dylan’s fears even more. 

The Pillar of M&M’s

At the synagogue, Dylan was able to dodge questions about her life due to the chaos of choosing seats and her MomMom answering for her. Bragging about her achievements, even if they were told with exaggeration. Her MomMom made Dylan feel accomplished. 

They sit in the pews and Dylan holds her MomMom’s hand. She observes Shelby’s friends- whispering the way thirteen year olds do. She may not be old to her MomMom’s dead friend, but she is definitely old to them. She catches her MomMom viewing them too. 

As she feels the wrinkles of her MomMom’s hand she understands how she looks upon them. Maybe not with a sense of “what was” like Dylan, but a sense of “what is.” Life. Funerals and Bat Mitzvahs. Grandchildren showing up on your doorstep. A bowl of M&M’s waiting for guests.

While Dylan yearns to get out of her hometown, where she’s starting to feel like a trapped guest rather than an inhabitant, she knows a bowl of M&M’s only wait for her in the familiar. Only while living at home, will her mom be waiting by the phone for Dylan to call. That frightens her. 

When she becomes a guest out of her hometown, what if she’s met with those like Lot’s wife?

Thats the story Shelby tells now. Of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot’s wife didn’t offer salt to her neighbors, out of bitterness. The biblical character refused to be hospitable. When the city is being destroyed the angels tell Lot’s family:
“Flee for your lives! Don’t look back, and don’t stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away,” Shelby reads.

Dylan didn’t look back today, at the destruction she left in her spontaneity. But Lot’s wife did. And she became a pillar of salt for it. For not offering salt to her neighbors, and for looking back when the angels told her to look ahead. Dylan still thinks she’d be turned into a pile of salt.

Maybe in her case a pile of M&M’s. Because although she didn’t look back today, it’s all she’s been doing for the last year. And if another test-taker asked her for a Number 2 pencil, she probably wouldn’t have given it up in fear she would need it herself. The road to her “future” has made her agitated and selfish. 

Shelby continues, “There is no room or time to worry about the things we leave behind in our journey forward, Lot’s wife teaches us.” Lot sounded familiar to Dylan but she couldn't figure out why. She also couldn't fully agree with the message. She gets it- a Bat Mitzvah is about forward motion, growing up, embarking on a journey.

But when Dylan wasn’t looking back this year, she was looking forward. And that didn’t help either. The anxiety spiraled, and the need to escape her town felt overwhelming. Not escaping with freedom like the sailboats on the Atlantic. Fleeing with pressure like Lot’s family. Where had she heard of Lot before? 

She’s Taller Now

Dylan changes out of her cousin’s dress in the Cape May room. It’s referred to as the Cape May room because it’s decorated like the neighboring shore town- quaint, seaside victorian bed and breakfast vibes. This is where she would sleep tonight. Where they fought over sleeping as kids.

The rest slept in the “kids room” complete with a three-tiered bunk bed trundle, a chalkboard wall, an N-64. It was a child’s dream room. But even then, part of each of them wanted to grow beyond the splash of primary colors and toys, into the grown up world of Cape May.

Now she found Cape May to be too quiet. Her MomMom was napping. They laughed and talked and indulged at the restaurant. MomMom even agreed to walk some of the beach. 

Her MomMom needed a nap after the long day. It gave her a pang, like the one she has now inspecting the wall in the hallway. The one with all of their heights recorded over the years.

Perhaps running away from growing up, to a place where how much she’s changed slaps her right in the face- wasn’t the right move. Perhaps finally calling her mom to tell her she was here wasn’t the right move either. Because she heard the worry in her voice and there was a permanent lump in her throat since that call. 

Thankfully, it was about to be Dylan’s favorite time here. Sunset. While her sisters and cousins reveled in the time the sun was up, devastated to leave the beach to go home for dinner- Dylan secretly loved to go back to the house. To get a break from the crowd and the sun. After they ate and bathed, they sat on the balcony before they had to go to sleep. The day wasn’t over, but there were no more responsibilities. 

She sits on the deck, her iPod touch plugged into in her ears. Dylan prepares to listen to a song that will make her get lost in the moment of the sunset. To stop. Thinking. And reminiscing. And “what-ifing.” And what “will-ing.” But when she turns on Young Forever by Jay Z, and gazes at the setting sun, she may as well be looking at that high school. She can’t will an emotion. She can’t create a cathartic moment. 

Washing the Backs of her Legs

The lump in her throat cracks. Tears form in her eyes. And through them she thinks she’s dreaming when she see’s a figure on the beach, walking toward her deck. Someone who climbs the ladder and hops over the rope like muscle memory. But not with the confidence of Dylan because she never stopped feeling like a guest here. This was her in-laws.

Dylan can’t look her mother in the eyes.
“I’m not a fucking baby. I told you I was staying here. What are you doing?”

“I don’t think you’re a baby. I wanted to give you the option to come home. I know you don’t like driving highways.”

“I drove myself here! You think I’m not coming home because I’m scared to drive? Jesus Christ, I’m fine. I told you I would handle the SAT stuff tomorrow.”

Just saying SAT makes tears fall down her face. Her mom sits in the lounge chair beside her.

“Can you leave. Seriously. I just needed to get away.”

As a young kid, Dylan cried every time she had to leave the shore house. She felt her mother was the one rushing them out. Her mom wasn’t a fan of the beach- she preferred the mountains. And sometimes she butted heads with her in-laws. Now she was here as the Grim Reaper of vacation yet again.

“You got burnt today.”

Dylan touches her face, which feels hot. She forgot it was still possible to get burnt on a cloudy day in March. And now feels guilty for making her MomMom walk on the beach. 

Her tears begin to dry up as she bites the inside of her cheek. Her mom puts out her hand. Dylan lays hers next to it. They won’t hold hands like her and her MomMom. This was their own version of it. 

She wonders what her mother’s hand would feel like- “what was,” like her? “What is,” like her MomMom? Her mom turns to the sunset and Dylan finally summons the courage to look at her. She doesn’t need to hold her hand to know what she’s thinking.

Her mom is wondering “what has been?” It’s why she came here. It’s why she noticed Dylan was burnt before she did- despite the absurd amount of mirrors in this house. 

What has been going on with her daughter? Her mom has been there, watching Dylan tumble at the end of catching waves, then going back to catch another. But tumbling for longer and longer each time. Her mom wants to remove the ankle strap but Dylan won’t let her near it. 

“Something’s wrong with me.”

Dylan’s mom’s turns to her, and brushes her hand. 

“We’ll figure it out.”

MomMom comes out, onto the balcony. She hugs Dylan’s mother and acts utterly shocked, even though Dylan knows that they probably talked on the phone beforehand.

The three generations watch the sun go down together. 

One voted prettiest (and best personality) in high school, now with the best closet in this row of beach homes, which she finds too silent in the months of winter. 

One who graduated magna cum laude from college, and now has a degree in her children, whom she can read- even in their silence.

One who ran away from her SATs, and has no idea what is off with her mind, which she desperately wishes she could silence. 

Three powerful woman, who’s superlatives and degrees and grades are merely a speck of who they were, who they are, and who they will become. 

That night her mom sleeps in the Cape May room. Dylan sleeps in the kid’s room. It’s the best she’s slept in months. 

The Return

Before Dylan drives home the next day she digs into her backpack full of notes. She searches for the one that mentions Lot and finds it under readings- Slaughter House Five. 

“And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.”

Dylan drives away from the shore house. Daylight by Matt and Kim plays. While looking at the beach house in the review mirror, she loses site of the car that her mom drives ahead of her. But she doesn’t need to follow. She knows her way home.