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“Is your plan to destroy my career so that I have zero income? And I’m forced to accept?” I asked her, crossing my arms.
“That’s overly dramatic.” She laughed at me, tossing popcorn into her mouth.
“You are overly dramatic, so it fits,” I reminded her. “It’s way too soon for you to give up. I know you. But, Mom, let’s not do this now. We’re at the studio—”
“Look at you all tense. I’m not here for that. I wanted to remind you about the Halloween party.”
“Halloween party?”
“The Wyntor Foundation Halloween fundraiser for the Children’s Hospitals of America?”
“Oh, right! I completely forgot today was Halloween!” Crap! I checked my watch. Between the lawyers and work, I hadn’t had time to even buy anything. “I don’t have a costume, and the kids really like it when we dress up.”
“I knew you’d forget, so I got you one.” She nodded to the black bag and a box sitting on the couch, neither of which I’d noticed.
“Really? Thank you,” I said, moving around her to the couch. Unzipping the bag, the first thing I saw was a long, light-blue ball gown covered in sparkles at the bottom. “Mom—”
“The theme this year is Disney. What’s better than Cinderella? I managed to get the actual costume designer from the movie. Check the box. They made you a glass slipper, too. Not actual glass but close enough.” She sounded like a parent at Christmas.
Smirking, I lifted the lid of the box, and sure enough, there was a pair of glass slippers...well, faux-glass pumps. They were beautiful. That wasn’t just it, though. There was also a tiara, and it looked more expensive than everything put together in the room.
“You like it?”
“Yeah.” I smiled. “I do, but I could have gone as Tiana.”
“Ever since you saw Brandy as her, your favorite has always been Cinderella. God, do you know how many times you sang, ‘Impossible; It’s Possible.’ Oh, I can feel the headache coming.”
“I remember.” It was my generation’s Frozen. “I can’t believe you remembered.”
“See, I have my moments. Now, I’ll go and let you go back to your all-important work. I’ll come to get you later,” she said, rising from the chair and taking her popcorn with her. She really did have her moments.
“Mom?”
“I’m going. I’m going—”
“No. I wanted to say thank you.”
She always had my back whenever it came to things like this.
“I know you’re still planning something but—”
“Do you not know me at all by now, Odette? Normally, the moment you stop thinking I’m up to something is when I pounce. But with you, I plan on slowly bringing you around to my side. Even if it takes weeks.”
“Good luck with that. I told you, I’m not budging on this.” It was my life, not some game she was playing.
“We’ll see. Now put some emotion in that voice. I want to hear vibrato, darling.” She shook her hand in front of herself, a new dramatic accent coming up.
“You should have been an actress, Mom.” I shook my head, closing the box. “Or, at the very least, a high school drama teacher.” She would have fit either part perfectly.
“What do you think being a mom is? I play a dozen roles before breakfast.” She winked at me and opened the door, leaning out to yell. “All clear, gentlemen! The singerzilla is all yours.”
She stood outside the door, holding it open for them as they came back, hunched over plates of desserts. They all thanked her one by one as they returned, gleefully. She just winked at them. “I’ll come back to pick you up at eight o’clock. I need to pick up some things for tonight.”
“Okay.”
“Godspeed, gentlemen,” she said and waved to them and left.
I turned back to see them all waving. “I am not a singerzilla, am I?”
