FRESH YARN presents: Saturday... by Meredith Hoffa

FRESH YARN presents:

Saturday
By Meredith Hoffa

Just because it looked like I was having fun doesn't mean I was.

Saturdays were not fun.

Sure, there was no school, but a day off of school didn't in and of itself necessarily constitute "fun." If you were me, anyway. And, say, eight.

Did I appreciate the two hours of Saturday morning cartoons I was allowed to watch? (And did I especially appreciate the commercials because I could memorize them and re-create them in the form of stirring one-acts for the Nobles Day Camp Annual Talent Show?) Yes. (And yes.) But fun? Not exactly. And likewise, while I enjoyed Jazz dance class at the J.C.C. (think: rainbow bandanas, Lionel Ritchie), still, it couldn't qualify as pure fun. Even Saturday afternoons, when I'd play with friends -- friends whose homes had Atari and chewy granola bars -- it was entertaining, but I just wasn't capable of letting go and having real, unadulterated fun.

Because you can't have fun when you're terrified, and frankly, Saturdays terrified me.

See, lurking in the wings all day Saturdays were Saturday Nights. The night my parents went out. Every single week. And yet every single week I'd find myself filled with an acute separation anxiety, a vile Saturday Night Feeling, an aching in my solar plexus that served to define for my little self the very concept of desperation.

I can't pinpoint the reason for the anxiety on Saturday nights specifically as opposed to other times of the week when my parents went out. But I do know there was a conditioning over time, a Pavlovian sort of thing where Saturday's typical sounds and smells and vibe just began to bring on The Feeling as a matter of course.

My fear was that my parents would head out on a Saturday night date and never come back.

Not by choice, of course. I knew they'd never actively run away from home, what withal how much they loved me plus how remarkable I was at singing certain numbers from Annie.

No, my panic arose from the notion that something out of their control would happen to them out in the vast nightness of Saturday. Like a kidnapping -- a crime about which I was quite savvy thanks to a number of made-for-TV movies. I fully got that my parents could be snatched from a parking garage, a restaurant, even somewhere as "innocent" as the coatroom at a bar mitzvah. And then I'd be orphaned. And then what? Would my brother and I have to go live with Aunt Margie in alarmingly meat-filled Chicago? Would we bring our stuff or would we have to buy all new stuff, made in Chicago? And what of my parents? Would they be held captive somewhere terrifying? Like a 14-passenger van? Would they be bound with duct tape in a painful manner?

Or… then again… perhaps it wouldn't be a kidnapping at all. See, unfortunately there were a million different things that could befall them. Take the movie The Earthling in which Ricky Schroder is orphaned when his parents' Winnebago careens off a cliff and explodes. Who's to say the same couldn't happen to my parents' Toyota? Boston didn't seem to have any cliffs but I wasn't stupid enough to think that meant there weren't any.

So every Saturday brought me back to the same routine. By mid-afternoon, a gnawing sense of dread would have engulfed me and I'd have to go find my mom. If it were summer I could usually find her in the yard reading the Boston Globe and drinking a Tab. Winter, somewhere else drinking a Tab.

"So about tonight…would you say your plans are 100% definite?" That's how I'd start.

Much of my interrogation would focus on their estimated time of return. "OK, now, when you say 'midnight at the latest' does that mean that it will not for any reason be one second later than midnight?"

It didn't, by the way. But I was all about semantics, trying to ensnare my mom with technicalities wherever possible. "Aha! You said 'late tonight' but then you said '1:00 a.m.' Hate to break it to you, but 1:00 a.m. is not tonight, it's tomorrow. So…yeah."

Early evening my parents would head upstairs to shower, signaling my anxiety to careen towards its manic peak. Shower-time meant that we were rumbling towards evening as planned, all systems go. The chance of something happening in the external world to change my parents' plans -- hail, say, or a nuclear attack on my neighborhood by the Soviets -- was increasingly slim. While my mom dressed I'd be basically in the fetal position on her bed.

"Mom?" My voice would come out all high and thin. "I didn't tell you this earlier because I didn't want to ruin your day, but… I'm developing a rash."

She'd be busy rummaging through her jewelry box for the perfect dangly earrings. Dangly earrings were expressly a going-out accessory. So I hated them.

"Mom? There's pus."

No reaction! I'd press on.

"And also, I'm nauseous."

It always felt weird to use the word "nauseous" because I wasn't 100% clear on the pronunciation, but it was a four-star word, so I went for it.

My mom would finally press her hand to my forehead. "Hmmmm. Maybe there's a little ice cream in your bangs? I'd really recommend a shampoo, honey."

When she'd spray on her perfume -- Estee Lauder Youth Dew -- I'd become dizzy with terror. The same way every movie trailer has its theme song, Estee Lauder Youth Dew was the theme smell of My Parents Going Out. That smell along with the sound of her high heels clicking away… there was nothing left to do but cry in bitter defeat.

Sometimes if I got tired of hearing my own sobs I'd vaguely experiment with different crying styles, like ones I'd recently seen on TV or in the movies. Like in The Champ Ricky Schroder had a really wet cry, so I might smear my tears over my chin and forehead -- just to try it on.

Eventually I'd mope off to find my younger brother J.O. who could usually be found in the basement with his WWF figures.

J.O. never seemed to detect that I was out of my head. He'd peer at me from under his heavy-lidded brown eyes. "You wanna be Brutus Beefcake?"

Really I just wanted to be by him, to just sit there while he played and breathed. It was soothing, the smacking sound the wrestlers made as they smashed into one another.

Debbie was our top-ranked sitter. Debbie was seventeen. Debbie had a big smile and great barrettes. And the truth was, I couldn't help but like her. She always had something extremely nice to say to me.

For example, there was a long period during which I sported just long t-shirts, underwear, and jellies -- no pants. Some people, including my parents, raised their snobby eyebrows at this, but not Debbie. She'd just be like "Hey, I like your dress!" Same went for my Injury-Envy phase when I'd go around with Band-Aids plastered to my face. My dad thought the look "unintelligent," but Debbie would just say, "great face!" And really mean it. And when I'd straighten out paper clips and fasten them across my top teeth to simulate a retainer, Debbie would comment that my orthodontia was cool. That Debbie. She was very disarming.

Plus, in an odd way, Debbie's arrival provided me some relief because I finally had a target for all my panicky energy. Her presence took my mind off kidnappings and images of Toyotas tumbling into rocky ravines.

My parents would slip out and Night would officially begin once Debbie, J.O. and I were hunkered down in the TV room. Bathed in yellow light and filled with our raucous banter, the TV room on these nights felt less like a TV room and more like one of those cozy, boisterous rooms on an old-timey ship where the guys would to go to smoke cigars and drink whiskey and discuss ladies while having the best time ever.

For hours I'd be madcap, feverishly entertaining my audience of one, not unlike that jazz-dancing frog. During Solid Gold I'd whip my hair around and do knee-slides on the shag, ignoring massive swaths of carpet burn. During commercials I'd dart in and out of the room, bringing in anything that might possibly blow Debbie's mind such as platters of microwaved foods, stickers, high-class pencils, a game I created that was about how many pepperoncinis I could put in my mouth at once; headstands were involved as were the splits, pig latin, and putting the cat in a cabbage patch diaper. There'd be sleights of hand, Rockette kicks, Barbie buzz cuts, and climbing the doorjamb to touch the ceiling. I was fueled by something superhuman. It was pretty awesome.

During the first fifteen minutes of The Love Boat, J.O. would fall asleep on the floor, and Debbie and I would head into my room where we'd engage in my favorite activities such as writing Ricky Schroder letters and taking arresting photographs of me that I could include in my letters to Ricky Schroder.

After Captain Stubing and the gang moved on to bluer waters for the week, I'd help Debbie drag J.O. to bed, but the minutes would pass too quickly and then we were done and then I'd be tucked in bed and left alone. To wait.

From my bed I could see the yellowy light in the TV room and knew that Debbie and her big smile and her great barrettes were in there and Saturday Night Live was on.

The feelings of the afternoon would wash back over me and suddenly again I'd be drowning. If I sat up I could breathe better and if I could breathe better I could think better about where my parents might be that very instant. It was all about my exceptional ears; I'd memorized the exact sound my parents' car made and could ID it from blocks away.

I'd will them to come home so hard that I thought I might pass out and how weird would that be to pass out in bed while Debbie and her great barrettes watched SNL and laughed.

I'd try to remember from The Earthling the exact sound Ricky's parents' Winnebago had made when it tumbled off the cliff but I could never quite conjure it so I'd just listen for anything and everything, so much so that I'd be startled by the sound of my parents inside the house. Downstairs, their shoes tapping, their voices giggling. And then the sound of Debbie scrawling out a note to me on the chalkboard outside my door. In the morning I'd see it -- her perfect, loopy cursive. "See you next Saturday."