Previously, Mia and her estranged mother crossed paths, resulting in Mia confronting her and her mother vaguely suggesting there’s a mysterious plot contrivance for why she was a shitty mom who abandoned them. Wes likes Christmas.
Calendar Girl (December): Chapter 7
All of these boring minor characters Mia’s extended family has now arrived at Wes’s home in Aspen. Maddy and her fiancée, Max and whatever his wife and children are named, all our favorites.
Matt was entertaining Isabel, who’d already taken to calling him Uncle Matt, which Maddy told me he adored. Matt was an only child so having a niece and nephew was apparently something he really enjoyed. It made him more likable in my opinion. He knew the value of family. However, he’d better not have any ideas about knocking my sister up any time soon.
I can’t put my finger on why this passage is so hilarious to me. Maybe it’s got something to do with how Matt’s such a boring and creepy character that she can barely muster up that bland “it made him more likable” compliment before even that immediately reminds her that he makes her uncomfortable.
Mia tells Max and Maddy about her altercation with their mom in the gallery, admitting to her violence and saying she isn’t proud of it. Mia and Maddy are unsure if they even want to talk to her (Maddy barely even is a character remembers their mom from before she abandoned them), but Max decides that he wants to say his piece because “This isn’t just about her”, so he encourages them to at least join him for emotional support.
Mia also gives us a status update on her father, who is totally, totally a character in this story.
The nurses said he was responding well to treatment, but mentally, he was relapsing into his old woe-is-me pattern. I’d had faith he’d stay strong, break out of his endless spiral of self-loathing
Thankfully, Mia does show that her perspective on this has evolved over the course of the year:
I’d done more than I should over this past year and definitely more than he deserved. That was on him, now.
It’s kind of a shitty non-ending and a little brutal since the message of the story otherwise is – to put it succinctly – FAMILYFAMILYFAMILYYAYFAMILY. But Mia has come a long way from the “it is my responsibility to pay my father’s gambling debts specifically through sex work – I have to do this, Wes, stop giving me money” perspective that we criticized her for at the beginning of the series. There’s that? So I guess that whole thing with Mia’s dad – who is the reason the entire story happened – is gonna end with Mia having faith that now he’ll just… stop being an alcoholic… for reasons…
The gang reaches out and has another meeting with Kent Banks AKA the client who paid for Mia’s show to cover local artists including his wife but also secretly stage a family reunion AKA the guy who’s here to explain a plot twist to us.
“When I met Meryl, she was lost, traveling through the countryside in a vehicle on its last legs. She was filthy, hadn’t showered in days, maybe even weeks. […] I figured she was escaping a violent man, and at the time, she didn’t say otherwise, let me assume the worst.”
I huffed and rolled my eyes. […] Our mother had a warm home to go to. She chose to leave it. There would be no sympathy from me.
Oh boy, my plot twist senses are tingling. Even though it’s grounded in a totally understandable place, Mia’s repeated lack of sympathy for her mother’s struggles is basically the book screaming “TRIGGER WARNING: PROBLEMATIC PORTRAYALS OF MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES”. Incidentally, trigger warning for problematic portrayals of mental health issues, so, uh… hopefully you enjoyed that time I got to write jokes about this chapter. Remember how Wes loves Christmas? Fun times.
“But there was something in her eyes. A spark when she looked at me that enraptured me. One day, I asked her to come home with me, offered to help her out of whatever she was hiding from. […] The days turned into weeks, and I enjoyed having her there.” […]
“Where is this going, Mr. Banks?” [I said.] “This is telling us nothing other than she lied to you the same way she lied to us.” […]
Kent shook his head dramatically. “No, please. Just listen. There are things you don’t know. […] I noticed after a couple months that she started doing strange things. Irrational things. I’d come home, and the entire kitchen floor would be covered in flour, and she’d be dancing like a ballerina in it. Now, normal people don’t do those type of things at all. […] It took a lot of convincing, but finally I got her examined. Did you know your mother is severely bipolar?” Kent asked. The table was so quiet you could hear our breathing.
Me writing this blog in 2012: lol I’m writing jokes about the bad sex writing!
Me writing this blog in 2018: time to do research about media portrayals of bipolar disorder WHY CAN’T I HAVE A JOKES CHAPTER I AM ON VACATION
Ok, well, let’s see what we’ve got to go through from all that.
First, there’s the portrayal of bipolar disorder. Obviously. “She’s unpredictable and irresponsible! But did you know she’s clinically unpredictable and irresponsible? Is this bipolar?”
“I’m not saying that what she did to any of you was right. What I am saying is that […] Mania creates its own logic, its own justification as to why something is necessary. And it can make absolute total sense.”
Second, there’s the use of bipolar disorder primarily as a plot device. This story introduced a character with a mental illness specifically to use that mental illness as an explanation for why someone did shitty things. (Someone who wasn’t even involved in this story until just now, when they showed up for the sake of having this as their explanation for why they weren’t around.) It sure isn’t in here to actually say anything about living with bipolar disorder. Hell, no one throughout the entire rest of the story reflects for a single sentence on the implications of how they just learned that a genetic mental illness runs in their family. It’s just here to offer melodrama.
Third, of course her “salvation” involves a man finding himself enraptured with her and wanting to save her. Sure, Kent talks about how she’s on medication and getting treatment, but fucking of course Calendar Girl would give us a “I watched Silver Linings Playbook once and now I’m an expert on bipolar and also the power of love” ending. No other lady in this book can do it without a man to complete her with his obsessive love.
“I’ve been protecting that woman this long, and I will continue to do so until I take my last breath.”
Kent asserts that if all they want to do is attack their mom, it’d be best to “leave well enough alone and just go our separate ways”, and Team M says they’ll think about it. So. How’s Mia feeling?
So many thoughts, feelings, and emotions clouded my judgment, clawed at my insides. I needed time to think. Time to process.
Makes sense. How’s Maddy feeling?
“Wes, baby, a round of tequila please?” I called out.
“I got you,” he said in return […]
Maddy smirked. “The last time you drank too much tequila you ended up having a sex-fest in the other room with the tatted Samoan hottie, not realizing I was there.”
Maddy. Girl. Were you even at the same table the rest of us were at? Because some stuff happened.
They discuss their feelings. Mia says that this explains “why she was the way she was” but not “why she up and left”. Max points out it also doesn’t explain “why she’d leave me as a toddler, but stay with your dad for ten years”. Mia also refers to her mother’s bipolar as “awfully convenient”, which, uh, is maybe not something you should say about a person’s mental illnesses.
We cut to a scene later where they all agree to meet, and, hey, our buddy “See Concern #3 Above” is back!
I could see the color drain from his fingers as she held him, as though he were the tether to her very sanity. Perhaps he was. Now that I knew her mental status was so fragile.
Except this is also exactly how this story portrayed Wes’s PTSD.
Meryl, their mother, begins explaining her side of the story.
“Why did you leave?” I asked the single question I’d been dying to ask for fifteen years.
She licked her lips and sat up straighter. “At the time, I wasn’t thinking clearly. There were more times that I’d find myself standing in the kitchen and not know what I was doing than not. More calls from the school that I hadn’t picked you up. Missed worked without realizing it. One day, I opened my eyes, and I found myself standing in the center of the freeway, walking barefoot toward the desert. [The] last night [before I left,] I drank the whiskey. I put you two girls in the car, and I got behind the wheel. […] Your father bailed me out, and I was supposed to face charges of child endangerment and possibly do some jail time. Only—”
“You left,” I finished, digging the knife into her heart with malicious intent.
“I didn’t know I was sick then. No one did.”
The chapter ends on that… cliffhanger? ARIEL, I’M SORRY, YOU DO NOT HAVE A FUN CHAPTER THIS WEEK.
If you feel like doing a little something to help out after all that, consider making a donation to the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit dedicated to offering help to those without access to mental healthcare. And if you’d like to support us in the making of BBGT, consider buying us a cup of coffee?