Conned By a Mom

by KT Kieltyka

For one weekend every year in May, Albany, New York, hosts the Tulip Fest, where a B-list musical guest serenades state workers and college kids, and some lucky teenage girl is crowned “The Tulip Queen.” Because I spent the second half of my senior year in Albany, and because that year Third Eye Blind was playing, I lured out-of-town friends with the promise of 11 a.m. margaritas and the chance to scream along to “Semi-Charmed Life.” I even invited my younger brother, with the plan of then driving down to Long Island the next day to surprise our mom on Mother’s Day.

The morning of Tulip Fest, my roommate and I drove to the bus station to pick up my brother, Cody. I spotted him easily — he was the only six-foot-two 19-year-old holding a pillow. (The members of my family are pillow snobs, and we travel with them as a rule.) I waved as I arrived, and Cody waved back — as did a middle-aged blonde woman standing next to him. I thought she might be confusing me with her ride until she tapped on the passenger-side window. My roommate gave me the side-eye as I rolled it down.

“Here’s my situation,” the lady said, casually jutting her elbow through the open window to rest on the car and setting her other hand saucily on her hip.

“O … kay,” I said.

“I’m visiting my daughter in Schenectady to take her shopping for Mother’s Day, but you can’t go shopping without money, can ya?” she asked.

“I suppose you can’t,” I said.

“So I was wondering if there was a Bank of America within walking distance,” she said.

“Oh, there’s one on State Street,” I said, relieved she wasn’t going to ask me for money. “It’s about a ten minute walk.”

Looking at her watch, she announced her bus was set to leave at 10:20. It was 10:08. “Oooh, I won’t make that, will I?” she said. Then stared at me.

“Do you … want a ride to the bank?” I said. (She looked like she could maybe get a callback for the part of a boring mom in a Lifetime movie, so I figured she was legit.) She had the door open and was ordering Cody to scoot over before I fully finished the question.

While she was in the bank I asked Cody if he’d sat next to her on the bus. “No, she just came up to me in the parking lot and said ‘Nice pillow,’ and then you pulled up,” he said.

The lady exited the bank and again invaded my roommate’s personal space with her elbow through the open window. “We have a little problem,” she said, biting her lip and sucking air in through gritted teeth in an effort to soften the blow.

“Do we?” I asked, wondering when I became so tethered to this woman that whatever went on inside the bank was now my issue as well as hers.

“The only Bank of America that’s open is the one on Central Ave.,” she said.

That was all the way uptown, through roadwork and Tulip Fest traffic. “You definitely can’t get there and back by 10:20,” I said, happy to just take her back to the bus station and grab some breakfast before the rest of my friends arrived.

“Well, here’s what I’m thinking,” she said. “I can go back to the bus station and grab my bags off the bus, and — ” then she stopped herself, suddenly accounting for time. “Wait, what are you doing for the next 45 minutes?”

I was dumbfounded in that moment, and I’m actually still dumbfounded as to why I proceeded to again let this woman into my car, drive her back to the bus station, wait while she picked up her bags, let her put them in my car, swing by my apartment to pick up another friend who had arrived for Tulip Fest, and spend a full hour stuck in traffic on the way to the other Bank of America. (She had decided to forgo the bus completely and “just figure out something after the bank,” which among basically everything else, should’ve been a warning sign.)

On the drive, we discovered the woman’s name was Debbie, and she thought the form of the traffic light was “the single most beautiful thing in the world.” From the middle seat in the back, she let loose a constant stream of chatter that soared over a steady bass line of “Why did I do this?” in my head.

We got to the bank, and I breathed in a deep sigh of relief; I was ready to say goodbye to Debbie, and I didn’t really care how she would get to her “daughter in Schenectady.” (It is still a hotly contested issue among my friends over whether said daughter truly existed.)

“So I’m just gonna run in, and then we’ll head over to the mall,” she said.

“I … what?” I said. “The mall? What?”

“Yes, the mall! I can’t show up to my daughter’s without a gift, can I?” she asked, as if I was the preposterous one.

“So I’ll just be a sec.”

By the grace of God, Debbie took both her bags with her when she got out of the car. For a fleeting moment, I was struck with a vivid mental image of my own mother, laden down with luggage, hailing a car full of kids in a desperate attempt to be with me on Mother’s Day. Then other images flashed into my head: Debbie dragging us around the mall, Debbie singing along to Third Eye Blind beside me, Debbie in my car again the next morning, telling my brother and me how she had once “won a snow shoveling contest” as we drove down to Long Island to see our mother. Debbie, the lunatic who just literally laughed her way to the bank in my car.

I released my white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, put the car in drive, and drove away without so much as a glance in the rearview.

Previously: The Legend of Pinochle.

KT Kieltyka no longer gives rides to strangers.