October 11, 2018 • 43 mins
When Skye was in middle school, her best friends showed up at her home one night and wrote “f*ck you” on her garage door. After that, they never spoke again. Now Skye has a son entering middle school, and he can’t believe his mom never asked her friends why they did it. So, thirty years later, Skye and her son set off to find out.
Credits
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by Jonathan Goldstein.
This episode was also produced by Kalila Holt, Peter Bresnan, and Stevie Lane.
Editing by Jorge Just, with additional editing by Alex Blumberg.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Devon Taylor, Annika Pillsbury and Jackie Cohen.
The show was mixed by Bobby Lord.
Music by Christine Fellows, John K Samson, Bobby Lord, and Edwin, with additional music by Blue Dot Sessions, Michael Hearst, and Hew Time. Our theme song is by The Weakerthans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music is by Haley Shaw.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
High podcast friends. As regular listeners know, I try to
run a family friendlish podcast, but because it's integral to
the plot. In this episode of Heavyweight, we dropped the
F bomb and unprecedented nine times. If they were giving
out peabodies for swearing, maybe i'd get one. Also, as
long as I'm giving advisories, I also pronounced the word
(00:22):
garage as garage. I encourage you to listen anyway. Hello,
did you get a message from me a couple months ago?
A phone message was on your birthday. I was wishing
you a happy birthday. It's possible I didn't hear anything back,
(00:44):
so I was concerned. Yes, when someone leaves your message
on your birthday, you have no obligation to return that message.
But that's it. Oh my gosh, it would have been
nice to get. I'm not saying a thank you card.
But you know, if I.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Was under no obligation, why are you now giving me
rushes as to how I should have responded.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Some things in life aren't obligatory, but we just do them,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Absolutely, like picking up the phone when I just saw that.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You called me exactly like, hey, wait a minute. From
Gimblet Media I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's
episode Sky Sky and her son Clark ever ritual, Well,
(01:40):
I don't know about you. Every night, after his teeth
are brushed and he's all tucked in, right before Clark
goes to sleep, Sky sits down on the edge of
his bed and they talk.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
What was your favorite part of that movie? Probably like
the end was a good end. The helicopter scene was good.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Clark's eleven. Naturally, there's a lot of discussion about comic
books and movies.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I don't think it was a movie. You know, the
original Jumanji was not funny.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
But there's something about the stillness of nighttime that also
frees Clark up to speak in a way that he
doesn't normally. Not only does he tell Sky about what
he's watching and reading, he tells her about his feelings.
He shares stories about what's going on at school, and
Sky shares stories too, stories from her childhood. Some stories
(02:30):
she tells just to entertain Clark, but other stories she
tells to impart a lesson. There's one story in particular
she's told Clark over and over again throughout the years,
and lately it's been coming up a lot recently. Sky
told me the story.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So the story, in a way, the story starts when
I moved.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
When she was eleven years old, Sky was best friends
with a group of four girls. They wore a spree sweatshirts,
and watched love Boat on the weekends. They were the
popular girls.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That was sort of the vibe of that group was like,
we're exclusive and we're kind of the shit. Yeah, you
know how like in high school they have you know,
most beautiful and most popular, and all of those. We
decided to make our own book of you know, awarding
people various prizes. We gave me best Eyes, and I
(03:29):
remember sort of having this pride in that.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
They spent all the fifth grade together. Then summer came
and with it long days filled with lazy bike rides
and trips to the candy shop. But early one summer morning,
Sky woke up to find her yard had been teepeed
covered in toilet paper and there was more.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Someone had written fuck you on our garage door. And
we had a double garage, and so fuck was on
one you was on the other, and they were written
in large white letters on our brown garage.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Sky's mom had seen the vandals make their getaway. The
words fuck you had been written by none other than
Sky's for best friends.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And they had been written in paint.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
I wish they had done it was something that had
come off, because I do remember this feeling of like
being driven home day after day and seeing those words
on the garage door. Teeping someone's house is one thing,
it's sort of a common prank, but the fact that
they wrote fuck you, that felt to me like it
really came from anger. And they had to have brought
(04:45):
the paint, you know. There had to have been some
thought put into this.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Why had they done it? What were they angry about?
Sky had no idea. Did you ever see those girls again?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I saw them again, for sure.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
We all funneled into this junior high school that fall,
and I think that I just avoided them. I never
ever said a word to any of the four girls ever. Again,
I pretended it never happened.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And when Sky tells Clark this story, here's where she
delivers the moral. Awful things do happen, but in the
end everything turns out fine. Sky grew up, got married,
has a job she likes, and a family she loves.
Her story, she tells him, has a happy ending in
the past. When he's heard this story, Clark's taken his
(05:46):
mom's lesson at face value. But Clark is now the
same age Sky was when her friends turned on her.
He's starting to see his own classmates leave old friends
behind for the more popular crowd. For the first time,
He's able to image what it would be like if
his own small group of friends suddenly cast him out,
stopped coming over to his house to play video games,
(06:07):
stop speaking to them altogether. So Sky's moral that everyone
lives happily ever after is starting to feel untrue, and
so Clark has a question for his mother, why didn't
she ever confront her friends about what they did? Why
not then? But also he asks Sky, why not now?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Like did they do it for themselves or because of you?
Or was it because of something you did or something?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Clark brings up Sky's story during their bedtime ritual, asking
for details, weighing the injustice, fantasizing about Sky looking up
her old friends and confronting them with some questions.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
I think you can't be like the person that you
normally are, where you're like tim and little.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Mommy funny that you think of me as timid Mommy,
that's very interesting.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, well, I have like a lot of occasions to
prove that your New Year's resolution was to say no
more often. That was your resolution because you were too
timid to say no.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
To people before that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well, I like to think that it's less about me
being timid and more about me being a can do
kind of person.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
There it is right there. At school functions, Clark watches
his mom try to accommodate the other parents and get
steamrolled in the process. In restaurants, he sees his mom
settled for the wrong meal rather than bother the waiter.
For once, he wants Guy to stop worrying about everyone
else's feelings. He wants her to focus on herself.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
I would really love to know, like why it's important
to you.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It's basically for me, are like my mom avenging. Those
people just wanted you to kind of like get your avenge,
my revenge, avenge yourself. Sorry I'm using the wrong word.
You gotta be like you did this and do you
remember why it happened, and say sorry to me, he said.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
At the end, Mom, You've got to figure this out.
You've got to go for it. You have to have
a chance to find out why this happened.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
It's not just Clark who feels this way. There's someone
else who also wonders why this happened and has always
wished Sky had had the chance to ask. Is this Rachel?
This is Skuy's mom, Rachel, the only eyewitnessed what happened
(08:59):
that night, and the person talking to her while chewing
a hunk of munster cheese and hollow bread because his
boss Alex thinks taking lunch breaks is more of a
BizOps thing, is me?
Speaker 5 (09:12):
I got out of my chair and I stood at
the window and pulled back the drape, and I see
their bikes sort of going off into the night.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
The night the girl showed up around two or three
in the morning, Rachel was reading in an armchair by
the window. She's always up in the middle of the night.
It's a habit that began in childhood. She tells me
that her own mom, Sky's grandmother suffered from schizophrenia. She
was unpredictable, and the middle of the night was the
only time the house was ever quiet and safe. Who
(09:48):
was during those calm nights alone that Rachel began writing poetry?
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And here I am all these years later, and I'm
still doing it. There's something holy about the middle of
the night. Nobody's hassling you, and you can really hear
yourself somehow.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
But on the night the vandals struck, she could also
hear four eleven year old girls making their getaway. When
the sun came up, Rachel saw the fuck you on
the garage and immediately she phoned up one of the
girls and spoke with both her and her mom. Well
neither denied what had happened. Nothing much came of the conversation,
and after that Sky begged Rachel not to make any
(10:35):
more phone calls. The idea of confronting anyone just upset
Sky Moore, so Rachel stopped calling, and after a few
days things seemed to go back to normal.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
We felt it was over, and for her it really wasn't.
It really took her, being I think, grown up, for
her to start saying to me, I think about this
all the time, and it was shocking to me. I
(11:09):
had not understood that, and I felt dopey that I
hadn't understood that, because I thought I was pretty well
attuned to her and her feelings. It broke my heart.
(11:31):
She always understood how to sit in with people, completely
unlike her parents. My husband, you know, was born in
Finland and was a mathematician and had his PhD when
he was nineteen. And I was this strange, you know,
high school dropout poet. I mean, we were really odd
and eccentric birds, and here was this kid who was
(11:53):
just exquisitely normal. And to us, she's always been a wonder,
you know, like, who is this very social being? This
is a kid who whose first word was high and
who when she was small literally sat on the front
step all day and said hi to every person who
(12:15):
passed on the sidewalk, and we loved her for that.
And what happened with the girls, This had the effect
of making her more you know, pulling in her wings.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And this is the person Clark sees today, someone who
keeps her wings tucked in so tight for fear of
them getting in anyone's way, that she's forgotten how to
open them. Rachel knows that Clark has recently begun urging
his mom to be less timid, and she approves.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
There's something authoritative about a child they haven't had. They're
not all hammered by doubts and worries about what they're
saying they're like, well, why didn't you do this?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
You know, Rachel had asked me to call at the
end of her work night. It's now seven thirty AM,
close to her bedtime, so we say our goodbyes, but
just before putting down the phone, she offers a final benediction,
as I was so beautiful.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
The way he wanted her to figure this out. Because
she'll hear that from him in a way that she
probably could never hear that from me, it has more
of a chance to wake her up.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And with that, Rachel heads off to bed, and I
turned back to Sky, who, with a little help from Clark,
is still trying to wake up.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
He does have this sense of but that's an unfinished thing.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, like the good that this good ending hasn't fully
happened yet.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, yeah, the good ending hasn't happened. So it's sort
of turning into a different story, which is that it's
kind of never too late to summon courage and do something.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That scares you.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I guess in a way, I want to live up
to his to who I think he'd like me to be.
You know, I think like I need to show him
that I can stand up for myself.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Thirty five years later, and Sky's finally decided she's ready.
She just needs help reaching the girls and not backing
down when she does. So you want to do this?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think that I want to do this. Yes, I
want to do this. You know now I'll be able
to say I did what I could.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And if you want to be able to say you
did what you could to save scads of cash with
some truly great deals, here's the chance you've been dreaming
of your entire life. Sky and I get to work
(15:25):
reaching out to the four girls, Sam, Nicky, Randy, and Tessa.
We begin with Sam because Sky already has their contact info.
They'd run into each other at their ten year high
school reunion. Sky Sam had said, it's me. It would
have been the perfect opportunity to ask about the fuck
(15:45):
you on the garage door, but Sky just couldn't bring
herself to mention it, so instead they made awkward small talk.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
And then she fronted me on Facebook, which practically made
me laugh.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
But I.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
This sounds ridiculous, but I didn't want to be rude,
and so I accepted her friendship.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I helped Sky write a Facebook message to Sam saying
she has some questions about the end of their friendship,
but with no response, Sky follows up again and again. Eventually,
Sam writes back, we just naturally grew apart as life
events progressed, she says. She concludes by saying that Sky's
(16:29):
attempts to contact her are making her feel quote overwhelmed
and stressed, and that makes Sky feel bad. Second is Nicky,
who says that even though Skuy's mom clearly remembers her
being there that day, she absolutely wasn't. In fact, she says,
(16:52):
she and Sky weren't even that close. Third comes Randy.
Randy's hard to get a hold of so when we
get no answer on her house phone, we try all
the numbers we can find. We leave her repeated messages,
but it seems like she's not even getting them. But
as it turns out, she's gotten all of them, because
she sends Sky an email to say that she's not
(17:15):
happy about it. In fact, she's creeped out. Sky was
at the grocery store when she received the email.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I was in line and I completely was out of
my body as I was reading it. I so forgot
where I was that someone had to say, are you
in line?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And I was like Uh, no, I'm not, and I.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Had to push my cart away from the checkout stand
because I could not focus.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Sky went into damage control mode, writing back to Randy
to say how deeply sorry she was. I asked her
to read me what she'd send.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Randy, I'm so grateful that you wrote me back. It
makes me cringe to think about how so my creepy
and weird it must have seemed to get those messages.
I'm kicking myself for letting that happen. I'm still hoping
to talk to you privately and just explain myself.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Would that be okay?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Like, you know, is there a kind of like do
you feel like your default is to sort of apologize
for having reached out?
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (18:27):
I do.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
That has occurred to me.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Later, Sky shares the email with Clark, and it seems
like it's occurred to him as well.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I think you were over apologetic if you say yourself
as the kind of character was like, oh sorry, sorry, sorry,
I shouldn't have done that. That automatically makes her basically.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Like gives her power. Yeah, puts her in.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
A better spot than you're in, and that's bad.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
At Sky's insistence, Randy finally agrees to a phone call,
but in the end, all she tells Sky is that
she doesn't remember that night, doesn't remember any toilet paper
or grasdoor, She doesn't remember anything at all. Of the
four friends, only one remains, Tessa, the girl Sky's mom
(19:23):
phoned directly after the incident. Over the next couple weeks,
I speak with Tessa several times. She can't decide if
she wants to talk with Sky. For one thing, she
says it was so long ago that she doesn't remember much,
to which I rejoin that she's all we've got. For another,
she adds getting contacted like this through a third party
(19:44):
interlocutionary international podcasting host is pretty weird, to which I
admit that it is slightly unconventional. Finally, Tessa says she
doesn't want to inadvertently drag the other girl's names through
the dirt for something they did as kids, to which
I say, well, let's change those names and draw some
pseudonyms through the dirt. And once I agree to change
(20:07):
the names of the four girls, Tessa, not her real name,
agrees to sit down with Sky, still her real name,
so she can finally have a conversation about the night
in question. Both Sky and Tessa live in California, pretty
close to where they grew up. I figure my presence
at their meeting could be calming, helpful even All Sky
(20:31):
has to do is invite me out there to join her.
I like California, and no I love it. But because
of her cursed timidity, Sky just doesn't have the lima
beans to ask. So I continue to offer her prompt.
I haven't been there in some time.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Well, it's a lovely state.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
After several minutes of this elaborate dance, I get to
the point, for both our sake, So does you do
you think that?
Speaker 7 (21:02):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
You think I should come?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
That would be amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
And so it's off to California A for some long
overdue Q and A.
Speaker 8 (21:18):
Hi.
Speaker 9 (21:20):
Good how about you guys? Hi Clark, nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Sky picks me up at the hotel. Clark's along too,
to make sure his mom doesn't lose her.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Nerve Clark, you can continue to navigate for me.
Speaker 8 (21:33):
WI.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Clark sits in the passenger seat, leafing through a comic book.
All right, let me I'm just going to throw this
in here if that's okay. Yeah, And then I tossed
my bag into the back of the hatchback and we
head off to meet Tessa. It felt great to be
in San Francisco. It's just like the mom and the
(22:00):
Papa saying if one is going to San Francisco, one
should wear flowers in one's hair. As we speed down
the highway, I close my eyes, lean back, and would
that I had hair, enjoy the wind blowing through it.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Wait, is the trunk open?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Oh wow? It seems that in my excitement to hit
the streets of San fran I'd left the hatchback door open,
which it turns out is the source of the San
Franciscan breeze. She whizz, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
God.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Sky finds a place on the shoulder of the highway
to pull over, oh man, and shuts the trunk door
of that, and with that we were back on our way.
Speaker 10 (22:52):
That's why they call me mister excitement. Actually, no one
calls me mister excitement. San Francisco is pretty.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
We're not in San Francisco, you know that, right? I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
As we drive to meet Tessa, I ask Sky how
she's doing.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I feel nervous sighted, which is a word.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
That I am when when I you use the word
nervous sided Clark.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Like before, like baseball games and like stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I mean, I kind of feel nervous sighted.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Nervous.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Sided is a portmanteau word, like the way say romance,
a word denoting an incestuous relationship between brothers. Is or
she lax the act of chilling out with a bar
of family sized x lax.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
How do you feel about meeting do you want to
meet her? I will resist temptations to punder over what
she did.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Clark is eleven years old. In the comic books he reads,
that's how problems are solved with punches, kung fu chops.
Writing the scales is a simpler business. It's one thing
to hear stories about his mom being stepped on. It's
another to be in the same room with one of
the people who did the stepping. Sky tries to tamp
(24:33):
down his need for revenge.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Well, as we were talking about last night before you
went to slay, you won't forgiveness. Giveness forgiveness. We need
to find the forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I wanted a quiet place for Sky and tested to talk,
and it turned out that on the weekends the local
university had an unoccupied studio.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I think we're basically here.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
We pull in the empty campus parking lot.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Clark, you want to look and make sure I'm within
the lines. There was a little lines.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
Okay, let's get set up. So this is where Clark
and I, well, we'll sit.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
The studio is only big enough for Sky and Tessa,
So Clark and I sit in the control booth where
we'll be able to eavesdrop on the conversation. There's a mic,
so should the need arise Clark and offer guidance that
only Sky can hear through her headphones.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I'm mom, Hi, Clark.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Okay, so you turn it on.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
It's good to hear your voice.
Speaker 5 (25:38):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 10 (25:39):
Sky?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Sandy the studio technician helps us get set up and
takes a level on Sky's voice by asking her an easy,
neutral question. Tell me, how's it right in today?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
How is the right end?
Speaker 8 (25:53):
You don't have to shout into it.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
It was easy, except for when we left the hatchback
open on the freeway.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Laugh it up, Sandy the studio technician, Laugh it up.
Tessa's running late, so Sky sits waiting in the studio
by herself. Finally, wait, she's here.
Speaker 8 (26:21):
Ah, okay, okay, Hey, I'm Jonathan, glad you made it
(26:43):
a nice to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Tessa's stylish and like Sky, looks younger than her years,
you could still see a trace of the popular girl.
I show her into the studio where Sky's been waiting.
The two haven't seen each other since they were children.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Who do you do you keeping close touch with anywhere
in high school? Anyone?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
As they settle in, the mood is formal, a little
stilted since the room is only about the size of
a small elevator. Their knees practically touch.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
You guys can start now, okay, thanks Clark. Clark says,
we can start okay. So so I'm just gonna go
backtrack a little bit. Yeah, so my memory is that
we were all in sort of a tight knit group.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
You know, is it too early for me to ask
this discussion?
Speaker 11 (27:37):
Why didn't you do it?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
For both of us?
Speaker 3 (27:45):
But then had also written fuck you on the garage door,
and that then from from that point on, we never
spoke again. And and it's something that has always stuck
with me because I don't know why it happened. And
(28:07):
so I guess I'd love to know what your memories are.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Clark's got this look on his face. Love to know
what your memories are. From his perspective, his mom's doing
what she always does. That is exactly what he told
her not to. She's being overly sensitive to Tessa's feelings.
But even after thirty five years of waiting to ask
the question, Sky just can't help being Sky. Tessa takes
(28:35):
a sip of water.
Speaker 11 (28:37):
Sorry, I'm just my throat is dry.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Sky smiles warmly and gives Tessa a moment to collect herself.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Take your time, so I have a vague recollection.
Speaker 6 (28:56):
It's really really vague. What I what really stands out
is that we were just going teping, like we went
teping a lot, you know, not just on that night,
and we literally just stumbled upon your home. And that's
(29:17):
why I remember.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Clark furrows his brow. He wants his mother to push harder,
be more aggressively.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Mom, ask why you weren't invited to go toilet papering
with them?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
That's a really good question. We watch a. Sky waits
patiently for Testa to finish speaking.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
He wanted me to ask you why didn't come with
you that night teeping?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Why weren't you invited? Not why didn't that come why
I wasn't invited.
Speaker 6 (29:48):
I I in my mind we had drifted apart by then.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Inside the control room, Clark shakes his head.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I think there's more the story, you do, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
What makes you think that? He slumps back in his
seat and crosses his arms. He seems frustrated.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
I remember your mom calling my mom, And for my
mom it wasn't a big deal either. My mom, first
of all, didn't even know what two being was. I
had to explain it to her.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Oh okay.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
I did not realize until maybe now that it was
more of a big deal for you.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
And I feel like you're being very, very honest, and
I really really appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
When Tessa and I last spoke, she mentioned how odd
this whole undertaking seemed to her. A woman she hadn't
heard from in thirty five years, wanted to talk to
her about a random night from their childhood. Oh and
she also wanted to bring along her eleven year old
son and his forty eight year old sidekick, both of
whom would be communicating with Sky through a secret microphone
(31:04):
WA's way so she can talk about wait wait wait.
Inside the control room, I watched Sky perform a delicate
balancing act. She's aware that Clark is watching, so she's
trying not to be too timid, but she also wants
to set a good example for how to behave and
through all that, she can't help seeing it from Tessa's perspective,
how weird and uncomfortable this must be for her. Sky
(31:28):
wants to help Tessa feel safe, and so she treads lightly.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I mean, I think being the parent now of a child,
I understand how quickly things can get confused. And it
really was the words that that's what seemed to communicate
to me, I've done something terrible, like I must have it.
I must be responsible for this in some way, you know,
(31:54):
And so I wondered, did I do something?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You can see the TESSAs weighing her response. She doesn't
quite know what to say, but with Sky being so
gracious and open, it's like she feels the least she
can do is try to meet her halfway, and so
tentatively she offers a thought.
Speaker 11 (32:15):
Ah, maybe you were a little different than them in
what way?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Again? Tessa searches for the right words, all the while
never seeing us or we, but always they.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
They were like they were a little mischievous. You know,
they were a little rebellious and wanting to do something bad,
and I was, and maybe you weren't. Maybe you didn't
(33:02):
want to go along with what they were doing.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Well, you know what's interesting about that is the whole
tepeeing thing.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I remember that being a sing but I remember I
actually remember not wanting to do that. Would you say
that that maybe I was more like a goodie two shoes.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Type compared to them? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
According to Tessa, if Sky had stayed friends with those girls,
it would have meant a summer of drinking alcohol and
pulling off semi illegal pranks after dark, all things Sky
wouldn't have wanted. Even back then, she didn't want to
upset anyone. To her friends, that made her seem like
a goody two shoes, And to a goody two shoes
(33:58):
who thinks they're better than you, what could be more
of a fuck you than a literal fuck you? The
words large and clear emblazoned across her family's grage door.
I turned to Clark to see what he makes of
all this. Is there something that you feel like we're
just kind of missing or we're not getting it?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I remember really not wanting to be.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Clark stairs straight ahead, watching his mom. I can see
he's thinking something through. He makes a move towards the mic,
but then shies away. He's antsy, rising from his seat,
settling back. Eventually I make a suggestion, do you just
want to go in there?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Totally. Clark gets up, leaves the control room and makes
his way to the studio to talk to his mom
in person. Watching him, I have no idea what he's
up to.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Oh Clark is here.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Oh Clark enters the room.
Speaker 8 (34:58):
Was that?
Speaker 1 (35:00):
But it's not as mommy's addressing. It's Tessa. I take
a deep breath as Clark begins to speak.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Uh, did you feel in any way like dragged into it,
like to do like to toilet paper people's houses.
Speaker 6 (35:18):
I don't know if I would say dragged, but I
would say definitely I was a follower.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I'm not exactly surprised by Clark's question. It's the same
one he's been asking since the beginning, essentially, why did
you do this to my mother? But I am surprised
by the way he's asking it, not with anger but
with sympathy. For the first time, Clark's trying to see
it all from Tessa's perspective, he's following his mom's example.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
Sometimes you're with friends because those are the ones you have.
So you'll stick with your friends even though you see
things that you don't like in them. You just don't
want to be alone.
Speaker 11 (36:04):
Yeah, thanks, okay, yeah, thanks Claire.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
And because Tessa didn't want to be alone, she continued
to hang out with the girls for several more years
before eventually finding a new group of friends. Tessa turns
to Sky.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
Honey, you freaking dodged a bullet.
Speaker 12 (36:22):
That's what you did, not being with those girls, I
have to say.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Sky tells Tessa that there's still one thing she's been
wondering about. Why did Tessa agree to talk with her
at all? It would have been easy to say no,
everyone else did.
Speaker 6 (36:44):
Why I said, yeah, truthfully, the call was so out
of the blue, of course, I you know, at the beginning,
I said, yeah, sure, you know, like, and then I
talked to my daughter and she was like, no, like,
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
How old is your daughter?
Speaker 6 (37:03):
My daughter is almost thirteen?
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Okay, yeah, what was she worried about?
Speaker 6 (37:09):
She's she kind of said, like, what's in it for you?
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Mm hm?
Speaker 6 (37:13):
You know, she was kind of worried that, like I
would come out as a bad person or something.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
How is she feeling right now that you're here.
Speaker 11 (37:21):
She's mad?
Speaker 6 (37:22):
She is, Yeah, she's mad, But you know I told her,
like not everything we do in life is for us,
it's for other people as well, So she'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Whereas Guy set out to show her Sun that she
has the courage to stand up for her own needs,
Tessa wants to show her daughter that she has the
courage to stand up for someone else's.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
I'm sorry that I didn't. The thought of you thinking
for thirty five years that you had done something wrong
is like, Oh, I really don't think that you did anything.
I really don't. I'm sorry that you felt like that.
(38:09):
You know, I wish that you hadn't.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I'm so glad. I'm hearing it now.
Speaker 6 (38:14):
I'm glad too. So I'm really glad, And it's really
good to see you. And you literally look exactly the same.
Maybe your hair is a little shorter.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
And.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Michael, go ahead, was that dramatic hug? Oh you want
a dramatic hug.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
That's glad. I think we have to have the dramatic.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Hug because the room's so small. When they stand, they're
already almost touching. They look at each other for a
brief moment, and then Sky opens her wings.
Speaker 6 (38:56):
Oh, it's good to see you.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
So good to see you.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
After the meeting with Tessa, Clark didn't have much to say,
but at night, back in his room, in that space
where he feels free to open up, Clark's eager to
talk about Tessa.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Honestly, I didn't know that person, so I thought they
might like still be the bully, still bullying you. And
I didn't want you to feel like scared or anything
in that situation, so I was kind of anxious. Well,
then I met Tessa and she was like super nice,
she was super hard, And I feel like you'd like
(39:48):
you weren't timid, Mommy, you were brave, Mommy.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Tonight there's no talk of avenging. Through his mom's example,
Clark learning that one can be kind without being timid.
The kindness can carry its own strength.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
If you had if he hadn't had that night where
you had said you have to figure this out, mom,
I really honestly don't think I would have done it.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
There's a lot more coming for Clark. Moments when he'll
have to make difficult decisions. Some of them he'll talk
about with Sky, and some he won't. But for now
they keep talking, neither of them quite ready to go
to sleep just yet.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Remember when you said that there was an international Tomato day,
Jop judging.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Me, it was international.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
Now that the fern entures returning to its goodwill home,
Now that the last month's rent is scheming, with the
damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve. If we
(41:47):
meant it, if we talked, we felt around for far,
tooting from things that accidentally talk.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along
with Khalila Holt, Peter Bresnan, and Stevie Lane. The show
is edited by Jorgeus, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Devin Taylor, Anica Pillsbury and
jud jud Ju Ju Ju jud Ju Ju. Jackie Cohen.
Bobby Lord mixed the episode with music by Christine Fellows,
(42:23):
John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord he himself.
Additional music credits can be found on our website gimltmedia
dot com. Slash Heavyweight our theme song is by The
Weaker Thans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music
is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight
or email us at Heavyweight at gimltmedia dot com. We'll
(42:44):
have a new episode next week
High podcast friends. As regular listeners know, I try to
run a family friendlish podcast, but because it's integral to
the plot. In this episode of Heavyweight, we dropped the
F bomb and unprecedented nine times. If they were giving
out peabodies for swearing, maybe i'd get one. Also, as
long as I'm giving advisories, I also pronounced the word
(00:22):
garage as garage. I encourage you to listen anyway. Hello,
did you get a message from me a couple months ago?
A phone message was on your birthday. I was wishing
you a happy birthday. It's possible I didn't hear anything back,
(00:44):
so I was concerned. Yes, when someone leaves your message
on your birthday, you have no obligation to return that message.
But that's it. Oh my gosh, it would have been
nice to get. I'm not saying a thank you card.
But you know, if I.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Was under no obligation, why are you now giving me
rushes as to how I should have responded.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
Some things in life aren't obligatory, but we just do them,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Absolutely, like picking up the phone when I just saw that.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
You called me exactly like, hey, wait a minute. From
Gimblet Media I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and this is Heavyweight. Today's
episode Sky Sky and her son Clark ever ritual, Well,
(01:40):
I don't know about you. Every night, after his teeth
are brushed and he's all tucked in, right before Clark
goes to sleep, Sky sits down on the edge of
his bed and they talk.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
What was your favorite part of that movie? Probably like
the end was a good end. The helicopter scene was good.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Clark's eleven. Naturally, there's a lot of discussion about comic
books and movies.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
I don't think it was a movie. You know, the
original Jumanji was not funny.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
But there's something about the stillness of nighttime that also
frees Clark up to speak in a way that he
doesn't normally. Not only does he tell Sky about what
he's watching and reading, he tells her about his feelings.
He shares stories about what's going on at school, and
Sky shares stories too, stories from her childhood. Some stories
(02:30):
she tells just to entertain Clark, but other stories she
tells to impart a lesson. There's one story in particular
she's told Clark over and over again throughout the years,
and lately it's been coming up a lot recently. Sky
told me the story.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
So the story, in a way, the story starts when
I moved.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
When she was eleven years old, Sky was best friends
with a group of four girls. They wore a spree sweatshirts,
and watched love Boat on the weekends. They were the
popular girls.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That was sort of the vibe of that group was like,
we're exclusive and we're kind of the shit. Yeah, you
know how like in high school they have you know,
most beautiful and most popular, and all of those. We
decided to make our own book of you know, awarding
people various prizes. We gave me best Eyes, and I
(03:29):
remember sort of having this pride in that.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
They spent all the fifth grade together. Then summer came
and with it long days filled with lazy bike rides
and trips to the candy shop. But early one summer morning,
Sky woke up to find her yard had been teepeed
covered in toilet paper and there was more.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Someone had written fuck you on our garage door. And
we had a double garage, and so fuck was on
one you was on the other, and they were written
in large white letters on our brown garage.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Sky's mom had seen the vandals make their getaway. The
words fuck you had been written by none other than
Sky's for best friends.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
And they had been written in paint.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
I wish they had done it was something that had
come off, because I do remember this feeling of like
being driven home day after day and seeing those words
on the garage door. Teeping someone's house is one thing,
it's sort of a common prank, but the fact that
they wrote fuck you, that felt to me like it
really came from anger. And they had to have brought
(04:45):
the paint, you know. There had to have been some
thought put into this.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Why had they done it? What were they angry about?
Sky had no idea. Did you ever see those girls again?
Speaker 3 (05:03):
Well?
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I saw them again, for sure.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
We all funneled into this junior high school that fall,
and I think that I just avoided them. I never
ever said a word to any of the four girls ever. Again,
I pretended it never happened.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
And when Sky tells Clark this story, here's where she
delivers the moral. Awful things do happen, but in the
end everything turns out fine. Sky grew up, got married,
has a job she likes, and a family she loves.
Her story, she tells him, has a happy ending in
the past. When he's heard this story, Clark's taken his
(05:46):
mom's lesson at face value. But Clark is now the
same age Sky was when her friends turned on her.
He's starting to see his own classmates leave old friends
behind for the more popular crowd. For the first time,
He's able to image what it would be like if
his own small group of friends suddenly cast him out,
stopped coming over to his house to play video games,
(06:07):
stop speaking to them altogether. So Sky's moral that everyone
lives happily ever after is starting to feel untrue, and
so Clark has a question for his mother, why didn't
she ever confront her friends about what they did? Why
not then? But also he asks Sky, why not now?
Speaker 4 (06:33):
Like did they do it for themselves or because of you?
Or was it because of something you did or something?
Speaker 1 (06:41):
Clark brings up Sky's story during their bedtime ritual, asking
for details, weighing the injustice, fantasizing about Sky looking up
her old friends and confronting them with some questions.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
I think you can't be like the person that you
normally are, where you're like tim and little.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Mommy funny that you think of me as timid Mommy,
that's very interesting.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah, well, I have like a lot of occasions to
prove that your New Year's resolution was to say no
more often. That was your resolution because you were too
timid to say no.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
To people before that.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Well, I like to think that it's less about me
being timid and more about me being a can do
kind of person.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
There it is right there. At school functions, Clark watches
his mom try to accommodate the other parents and get
steamrolled in the process. In restaurants, he sees his mom
settled for the wrong meal rather than bother the waiter.
For once, he wants Guy to stop worrying about everyone
else's feelings. He wants her to focus on herself.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
I would really love to know, like why it's important
to you.
Speaker 4 (07:58):
It's basically for me, are like my mom avenging. Those
people just wanted you to kind of like get your avenge,
my revenge, avenge yourself. Sorry I'm using the wrong word.
You gotta be like you did this and do you
remember why it happened, and say sorry to me, he said.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
At the end, Mom, You've got to figure this out.
You've got to go for it. You have to have
a chance to find out why this happened.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
It's not just Clark who feels this way. There's someone
else who also wonders why this happened and has always
wished Sky had had the chance to ask. Is this Rachel?
This is Skuy's mom, Rachel, the only eyewitnessed what happened
(08:59):
that night, and the person talking to her while chewing
a hunk of munster cheese and hollow bread because his
boss Alex thinks taking lunch breaks is more of a
BizOps thing, is me?
Speaker 5 (09:12):
I got out of my chair and I stood at
the window and pulled back the drape, and I see
their bikes sort of going off into the night.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
The night the girl showed up around two or three
in the morning, Rachel was reading in an armchair by
the window. She's always up in the middle of the night.
It's a habit that began in childhood. She tells me
that her own mom, Sky's grandmother suffered from schizophrenia. She
was unpredictable, and the middle of the night was the
only time the house was ever quiet and safe. Who
(09:48):
was during those calm nights alone that Rachel began writing poetry?
Speaker 5 (09:53):
And here I am all these years later, and I'm
still doing it. There's something holy about the middle of
the night. Nobody's hassling you, and you can really hear
yourself somehow.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
But on the night the vandals struck, she could also
hear four eleven year old girls making their getaway. When
the sun came up, Rachel saw the fuck you on
the garage and immediately she phoned up one of the
girls and spoke with both her and her mom. Well
neither denied what had happened. Nothing much came of the conversation,
and after that Sky begged Rachel not to make any
(10:35):
more phone calls. The idea of confronting anyone just upset
Sky Moore, so Rachel stopped calling, and after a few
days things seemed to go back to normal.
Speaker 5 (10:47):
We felt it was over, and for her it really wasn't.
It really took her, being I think, grown up, for
her to start saying to me, I think about this
all the time, and it was shocking to me. I
(11:09):
had not understood that, and I felt dopey that I
hadn't understood that, because I thought I was pretty well
attuned to her and her feelings. It broke my heart.
(11:31):
She always understood how to sit in with people, completely
unlike her parents. My husband, you know, was born in
Finland and was a mathematician and had his PhD when
he was nineteen. And I was this strange, you know,
high school dropout poet. I mean, we were really odd
and eccentric birds, and here was this kid who was
(11:53):
just exquisitely normal. And to us, she's always been a wonder,
you know, like, who is this very social being? This
is a kid who whose first word was high and
who when she was small literally sat on the front
step all day and said hi to every person who
(12:15):
passed on the sidewalk, and we loved her for that.
And what happened with the girls, This had the effect
of making her more you know, pulling in her wings.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
And this is the person Clark sees today, someone who
keeps her wings tucked in so tight for fear of
them getting in anyone's way, that she's forgotten how to
open them. Rachel knows that Clark has recently begun urging
his mom to be less timid, and she approves.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
There's something authoritative about a child they haven't had. They're
not all hammered by doubts and worries about what they're
saying they're like, well, why didn't you do this?
Speaker 1 (13:02):
You know, Rachel had asked me to call at the
end of her work night. It's now seven thirty AM,
close to her bedtime, so we say our goodbyes, but
just before putting down the phone, she offers a final benediction,
as I was so beautiful.
Speaker 5 (13:19):
The way he wanted her to figure this out. Because
she'll hear that from him in a way that she
probably could never hear that from me, it has more
of a chance to wake her up.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
And with that, Rachel heads off to bed, and I
turned back to Sky, who, with a little help from Clark,
is still trying to wake up.
Speaker 3 (13:46):
He does have this sense of but that's an unfinished thing.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Yeah, like the good that this good ending hasn't fully
happened yet.
Speaker 3 (13:55):
Yeah, yeah, the good ending hasn't happened. So it's sort
of turning into a different story, which is that it's
kind of never too late to summon courage and do something.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
That scares you.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
I guess in a way, I want to live up
to his to who I think he'd like me to be.
You know, I think like I need to show him
that I can stand up for myself.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Thirty five years later, and Sky's finally decided she's ready.
She just needs help reaching the girls and not backing
down when she does. So you want to do this?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
I think that I want to do this. Yes, I
want to do this. You know now I'll be able
to say I did what I could.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And if you want to be able to say you
did what you could to save scads of cash with
some truly great deals, here's the chance you've been dreaming
of your entire life. Sky and I get to work
(15:25):
reaching out to the four girls, Sam, Nicky, Randy, and Tessa.
We begin with Sam because Sky already has their contact info.
They'd run into each other at their ten year high
school reunion. Sky Sam had said, it's me. It would
have been the perfect opportunity to ask about the fuck
(15:45):
you on the garage door, but Sky just couldn't bring
herself to mention it, so instead they made awkward small talk.
Speaker 3 (15:53):
And then she fronted me on Facebook, which practically made
me laugh.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
But I.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
This sounds ridiculous, but I didn't want to be rude,
and so I accepted her friendship.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
I helped Sky write a Facebook message to Sam saying
she has some questions about the end of their friendship,
but with no response, Sky follows up again and again. Eventually,
Sam writes back, we just naturally grew apart as life
events progressed, she says. She concludes by saying that Sky's
(16:29):
attempts to contact her are making her feel quote overwhelmed
and stressed, and that makes Sky feel bad. Second is Nicky,
who says that even though Skuy's mom clearly remembers her
being there that day, she absolutely wasn't. In fact, she says,
(16:52):
she and Sky weren't even that close. Third comes Randy.
Randy's hard to get a hold of so when we
get no answer on her house phone, we try all
the numbers we can find. We leave her repeated messages,
but it seems like she's not even getting them. But
as it turns out, she's gotten all of them, because
she sends Sky an email to say that she's not
(17:15):
happy about it. In fact, she's creeped out. Sky was
at the grocery store when she received the email.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I was in line and I completely was out of
my body as I was reading it. I so forgot
where I was that someone had to say, are you
in line?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
And I was like Uh, no, I'm not, and I.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
Had to push my cart away from the checkout stand
because I could not focus.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Sky went into damage control mode, writing back to Randy
to say how deeply sorry she was. I asked her
to read me what she'd send.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Randy, I'm so grateful that you wrote me back. It
makes me cringe to think about how so my creepy
and weird it must have seemed to get those messages.
I'm kicking myself for letting that happen. I'm still hoping
to talk to you privately and just explain myself.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Would that be okay?
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Like, you know, is there a kind of like do
you feel like your default is to sort of apologize
for having reached out?
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (18:27):
I do.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
That has occurred to me.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Later, Sky shares the email with Clark, and it seems
like it's occurred to him as well.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
I think you were over apologetic if you say yourself
as the kind of character was like, oh sorry, sorry, sorry,
I shouldn't have done that. That automatically makes her basically.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Like gives her power. Yeah, puts her in.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
A better spot than you're in, and that's bad.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
At Sky's insistence, Randy finally agrees to a phone call,
but in the end, all she tells Sky is that
she doesn't remember that night, doesn't remember any toilet paper
or grasdoor, She doesn't remember anything at all. Of the
four friends, only one remains, Tessa, the girl Sky's mom
(19:23):
phoned directly after the incident. Over the next couple weeks,
I speak with Tessa several times. She can't decide if
she wants to talk with Sky. For one thing, she
says it was so long ago that she doesn't remember much,
to which I rejoin that she's all we've got. For another,
she adds getting contacted like this through a third party
(19:44):
interlocutionary international podcasting host is pretty weird, to which I
admit that it is slightly unconventional. Finally, Tessa says she
doesn't want to inadvertently drag the other girl's names through
the dirt for something they did as kids, to which
I say, well, let's change those names and draw some
pseudonyms through the dirt. And once I agree to change
(20:07):
the names of the four girls, Tessa, not her real name,
agrees to sit down with Sky, still her real name,
so she can finally have a conversation about the night
in question. Both Sky and Tessa live in California, pretty
close to where they grew up. I figure my presence
at their meeting could be calming, helpful even All Sky
(20:31):
has to do is invite me out there to join her.
I like California, and no I love it. But because
of her cursed timidity, Sky just doesn't have the lima
beans to ask. So I continue to offer her prompt.
I haven't been there in some time.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
Well, it's a lovely state.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
After several minutes of this elaborate dance, I get to
the point, for both our sake, So does you do
you think that?
Speaker 7 (21:02):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (21:04):
You think I should come?
Speaker 2 (21:06):
That would be amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
And so it's off to California A for some long
overdue Q and A.
Speaker 8 (21:18):
Hi.
Speaker 9 (21:20):
Good how about you guys? Hi Clark, nice to meet you.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Sky picks me up at the hotel. Clark's along too,
to make sure his mom doesn't lose her.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Nerve Clark, you can continue to navigate for me.
Speaker 8 (21:33):
WI.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Clark sits in the passenger seat, leafing through a comic book.
All right, let me I'm just going to throw this
in here if that's okay. Yeah, And then I tossed
my bag into the back of the hatchback and we
head off to meet Tessa. It felt great to be
in San Francisco. It's just like the mom and the
(22:00):
Papa saying if one is going to San Francisco, one
should wear flowers in one's hair. As we speed down
the highway, I close my eyes, lean back, and would
that I had hair, enjoy the wind blowing through it.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Wait, is the trunk open?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Oh wow? It seems that in my excitement to hit
the streets of San fran I'd left the hatchback door open,
which it turns out is the source of the San
Franciscan breeze. She whizz, I'm sorry about that.
Speaker 5 (22:36):
God.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Sky finds a place on the shoulder of the highway
to pull over, oh man, and shuts the trunk door
of that, and with that we were back on our way.
Speaker 10 (22:52):
That's why they call me mister excitement. Actually, no one
calls me mister excitement. San Francisco is pretty.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
We're not in San Francisco, you know that, right? I mean?
Speaker 1 (23:23):
As we drive to meet Tessa, I ask Sky how
she's doing.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I feel nervous sighted, which is a word.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
That I am when when I you use the word
nervous sided Clark.
Speaker 4 (23:40):
Like before, like baseball games and like stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
I mean, I kind of feel nervous sighted.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
Nervous.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
Sided is a portmanteau word, like the way say romance,
a word denoting an incestuous relationship between brothers. Is or
she lax the act of chilling out with a bar
of family sized x lax.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
How do you feel about meeting do you want to
meet her? I will resist temptations to punder over what
she did.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
Clark is eleven years old. In the comic books he reads,
that's how problems are solved with punches, kung fu chops.
Writing the scales is a simpler business. It's one thing
to hear stories about his mom being stepped on. It's
another to be in the same room with one of
the people who did the stepping. Sky tries to tamp
(24:33):
down his need for revenge.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Well, as we were talking about last night before you
went to slay, you won't forgiveness. Giveness forgiveness. We need
to find the forgiveness.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
I wanted a quiet place for Sky and tested to talk,
and it turned out that on the weekends the local
university had an unoccupied studio.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
I think we're basically here.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
We pull in the empty campus parking lot.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
Clark, you want to look and make sure I'm within
the lines. There was a little lines.
Speaker 9 (25:05):
Okay, let's get set up. So this is where Clark
and I, well, we'll sit.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
The studio is only big enough for Sky and Tessa,
So Clark and I sit in the control booth where
we'll be able to eavesdrop on the conversation. There's a mic,
so should the need arise Clark and offer guidance that
only Sky can hear through her headphones.
Speaker 2 (25:33):
I'm mom, Hi, Clark.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Okay, so you turn it on.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
It's good to hear your voice.
Speaker 5 (25:38):
Can you hear me?
Speaker 10 (25:39):
Sky?
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Sandy the studio technician helps us get set up and
takes a level on Sky's voice by asking her an easy,
neutral question. Tell me, how's it right in today?
Speaker 2 (25:52):
How is the right end?
Speaker 8 (25:53):
You don't have to shout into it.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
It was easy, except for when we left the hatchback
open on the freeway.
Speaker 1 (26:01):
Laugh it up, Sandy the studio technician, Laugh it up.
Tessa's running late, so Sky sits waiting in the studio
by herself. Finally, wait, she's here.
Speaker 8 (26:21):
Ah, okay, okay, Hey, I'm Jonathan, glad you made it
(26:43):
a nice to meet you too.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Tessa's stylish and like Sky, looks younger than her years,
you could still see a trace of the popular girl.
I show her into the studio where Sky's been waiting.
The two haven't seen each other since they were children.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Who do you do you keeping close touch with anywhere
in high school? Anyone?
Speaker 1 (27:05):
As they settle in, the mood is formal, a little
stilted since the room is only about the size of
a small elevator. Their knees practically touch.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
You guys can start now, okay, thanks Clark. Clark says,
we can start okay. So so I'm just gonna go
backtrack a little bit. Yeah, so my memory is that
we were all in sort of a tight knit group.
Speaker 2 (27:33):
You know, is it too early for me to ask
this discussion?
Speaker 11 (27:37):
Why didn't you do it?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
For both of us?
Speaker 3 (27:45):
But then had also written fuck you on the garage door,
and that then from from that point on, we never
spoke again. And and it's something that has always stuck
with me because I don't know why it happened. And
(28:07):
so I guess I'd love to know what your memories are.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
Clark's got this look on his face. Love to know
what your memories are. From his perspective, his mom's doing
what she always does. That is exactly what he told
her not to. She's being overly sensitive to Tessa's feelings.
But even after thirty five years of waiting to ask
the question, Sky just can't help being Sky. Tessa takes
(28:35):
a sip of water.
Speaker 11 (28:37):
Sorry, I'm just my throat is dry.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Yeah, no problem.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Sky smiles warmly and gives Tessa a moment to collect herself.
Speaker 3 (28:47):
Take your time, so I have a vague recollection.
Speaker 6 (28:56):
It's really really vague. What I what really stands out
is that we were just going teping, like we went
teping a lot, you know, not just on that night,
and we literally just stumbled upon your home. And that's
(29:17):
why I remember.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Clark furrows his brow. He wants his mother to push harder,
be more aggressively.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Mom, ask why you weren't invited to go toilet papering
with them?
Speaker 1 (29:29):
That's a really good question. We watch a. Sky waits
patiently for Testa to finish speaking.
Speaker 3 (29:35):
He wanted me to ask you why didn't come with
you that night teeping?
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Why weren't you invited? Not why didn't that come why
I wasn't invited.
Speaker 6 (29:48):
I I in my mind we had drifted apart by then.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Inside the control room, Clark shakes his head.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
I think there's more the story, you do, Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
What makes you think that? He slumps back in his
seat and crosses his arms. He seems frustrated.
Speaker 6 (30:13):
I remember your mom calling my mom, And for my
mom it wasn't a big deal either. My mom, first
of all, didn't even know what two being was. I
had to explain it to her.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
Oh okay.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
I did not realize until maybe now that it was
more of a big deal for you.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (30:35):
And I feel like you're being very, very honest, and
I really really appreciate that.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
When Tessa and I last spoke, she mentioned how odd
this whole undertaking seemed to her. A woman she hadn't
heard from in thirty five years, wanted to talk to
her about a random night from their childhood. Oh and
she also wanted to bring along her eleven year old
son and his forty eight year old sidekick, both of
whom would be communicating with Sky through a secret microphone
(31:04):
WA's way so she can talk about wait wait wait.
Inside the control room, I watched Sky perform a delicate
balancing act. She's aware that Clark is watching, so she's
trying not to be too timid, but she also wants
to set a good example for how to behave and
through all that, she can't help seeing it from Tessa's perspective,
how weird and uncomfortable this must be for her. Sky
(31:28):
wants to help Tessa feel safe, and so she treads lightly.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
I mean, I think being the parent now of a child,
I understand how quickly things can get confused. And it
really was the words that that's what seemed to communicate
to me, I've done something terrible, like I must have it.
I must be responsible for this in some way, you know,
(31:54):
And so I wondered, did I do something?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
You can see the TESSAs weighing her response. She doesn't
quite know what to say, but with Sky being so
gracious and open, it's like she feels the least she
can do is try to meet her halfway, and so
tentatively she offers a thought.
Speaker 11 (32:15):
Ah, maybe you were a little different than them in
what way?
Speaker 1 (32:32):
Again? Tessa searches for the right words, all the while
never seeing us or we, but always they.
Speaker 6 (32:42):
They were like they were a little mischievous. You know,
they were a little rebellious and wanting to do something bad,
and I was, and maybe you weren't. Maybe you didn't
(33:02):
want to go along with what they were doing.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
Well, you know what's interesting about that is the whole
tepeeing thing.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
I remember that being a sing but I remember I
actually remember not wanting to do that. Would you say
that that maybe I was more like a goodie two shoes.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Type compared to them? Yeah, you know.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
According to Tessa, if Sky had stayed friends with those girls,
it would have meant a summer of drinking alcohol and
pulling off semi illegal pranks after dark, all things Sky
wouldn't have wanted. Even back then, she didn't want to
upset anyone. To her friends, that made her seem like
a goody two shoes, And to a goody two shoes
(33:58):
who thinks they're better than you, what could be more
of a fuck you than a literal fuck you? The
words large and clear emblazoned across her family's grage door.
I turned to Clark to see what he makes of
all this. Is there something that you feel like we're
just kind of missing or we're not getting it?
Speaker 2 (34:19):
I remember really not wanting to be.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Clark stairs straight ahead, watching his mom. I can see
he's thinking something through. He makes a move towards the mic,
but then shies away. He's antsy, rising from his seat,
settling back. Eventually I make a suggestion, do you just
want to go in there?
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Totally. Clark gets up, leaves the control room and makes
his way to the studio to talk to his mom
in person. Watching him, I have no idea what he's
up to.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Oh Clark is here.
Speaker 1 (34:55):
Oh Clark enters the room.
Speaker 8 (34:58):
Was that?
Speaker 1 (35:00):
But it's not as mommy's addressing. It's Tessa. I take
a deep breath as Clark begins to speak.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
Uh, did you feel in any way like dragged into it,
like to do like to toilet paper people's houses.
Speaker 6 (35:18):
I don't know if I would say dragged, but I
would say definitely I was a follower.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
I'm not exactly surprised by Clark's question. It's the same
one he's been asking since the beginning, essentially, why did
you do this to my mother? But I am surprised
by the way he's asking it, not with anger but
with sympathy. For the first time, Clark's trying to see
it all from Tessa's perspective, he's following his mom's example.
Speaker 6 (35:49):
Sometimes you're with friends because those are the ones you have.
So you'll stick with your friends even though you see
things that you don't like in them. You just don't
want to be alone.
Speaker 11 (36:04):
Yeah, thanks, okay, yeah, thanks Claire.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
And because Tessa didn't want to be alone, she continued
to hang out with the girls for several more years
before eventually finding a new group of friends. Tessa turns
to Sky.
Speaker 6 (36:19):
Honey, you freaking dodged a bullet.
Speaker 12 (36:22):
That's what you did, not being with those girls, I
have to say.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
Sky tells Tessa that there's still one thing she's been
wondering about. Why did Tessa agree to talk with her
at all? It would have been easy to say no,
everyone else did.
Speaker 6 (36:44):
Why I said, yeah, truthfully, the call was so out
of the blue, of course, I you know, at the beginning,
I said, yeah, sure, you know, like, and then I
talked to my daughter and she was like, no, like,
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
How old is your daughter?
Speaker 6 (37:03):
My daughter is almost thirteen?
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Okay, yeah, what was she worried about?
Speaker 6 (37:09):
She's she kind of said, like, what's in it for you?
Speaker 2 (37:12):
Mm hm?
Speaker 6 (37:13):
You know, she was kind of worried that, like I
would come out as a bad person or something.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
How is she feeling right now that you're here.
Speaker 11 (37:21):
She's mad?
Speaker 6 (37:22):
She is, Yeah, she's mad, But you know I told her,
like not everything we do in life is for us,
it's for other people as well, So she'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (37:33):
Whereas Guy set out to show her Sun that she
has the courage to stand up for her own needs,
Tessa wants to show her daughter that she has the
courage to stand up for someone else's.
Speaker 6 (37:48):
I'm sorry that I didn't. The thought of you thinking
for thirty five years that you had done something wrong
is like, Oh, I really don't think that you did anything.
I really don't. I'm sorry that you felt like that.
(38:09):
You know, I wish that you hadn't.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
I'm so glad. I'm hearing it now.
Speaker 6 (38:14):
I'm glad too. So I'm really glad, And it's really
good to see you. And you literally look exactly the same.
Maybe your hair is a little shorter.
Speaker 4 (38:24):
And.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
Michael, go ahead, was that dramatic hug? Oh you want
a dramatic hug.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
That's glad. I think we have to have the dramatic.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Hug because the room's so small. When they stand, they're
already almost touching. They look at each other for a
brief moment, and then Sky opens her wings.
Speaker 6 (38:56):
Oh, it's good to see you.
Speaker 2 (38:59):
So good to see you.
Speaker 1 (39:08):
After the meeting with Tessa, Clark didn't have much to say,
but at night, back in his room, in that space
where he feels free to open up, Clark's eager to
talk about Tessa.
Speaker 4 (39:20):
Honestly, I didn't know that person, so I thought they
might like still be the bully, still bullying you. And
I didn't want you to feel like scared or anything
in that situation, so I was kind of anxious. Well,
then I met Tessa and she was like super nice,
she was super hard, And I feel like you'd like
(39:48):
you weren't timid, Mommy, you were brave, Mommy.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Tonight there's no talk of avenging. Through his mom's example,
Clark learning that one can be kind without being timid.
The kindness can carry its own strength.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
If you had if he hadn't had that night where
you had said you have to figure this out, mom,
I really honestly don't think I would have done it.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
So thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
There's a lot more coming for Clark. Moments when he'll
have to make difficult decisions. Some of them he'll talk
about with Sky, and some he won't. But for now
they keep talking, neither of them quite ready to go
to sleep just yet.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Remember when you said that there was an international Tomato day,
Jop judging.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
Me, it was international.
Speaker 7 (41:26):
Now that the fern entures returning to its goodwill home,
Now that the last month's rent is scheming, with the
damage to possible, take this moment to dissolve. If we
(41:47):
meant it, if we talked, we felt around for far,
tooting from things that accidentally talk.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
Heavyweight is hosted and produced by me Jonathan Goldstein, along
with Khalila Holt, Peter Bresnan, and Stevie Lane. The show
is edited by Jorgeus, with additional editing by Alex Bloomberg.
Special thanks to Emily Condon, Devin Taylor, Anica Pillsbury and
jud jud Ju Ju Ju jud Ju Ju. Jackie Cohen.
Bobby Lord mixed the episode with music by Christine Fellows,
(42:23):
John K. Sampson, Blue Dot Sessions, and Bobby Lord he himself.
Additional music credits can be found on our website gimltmedia
dot com. Slash Heavyweight our theme song is by The
Weaker Thans courtesy of Epitaph Records, and our ad music
is by Hailey Shaw. Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight
or email us at Heavyweight at gimltmedia dot com. We'll
(42:44):
have a new episode next week
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