Savanah's Swan Song (Part 18)

Angelina waddled past Savanah and opened heavy curtains on a large window adjacent to the double doors. This allowed in more light and expanded the already impressive vista. “How was your trip? Did you like my little puddle-jumper?”

“It’s beautiful.” Savanah finally got around to answering the actress’s first question.  The one about the view.  The next two still hadn’t registered.  It took her brain longer to process things with the sensory overload in front of her.

“Isn’t she a peach?” The actress smiled.  It was a smile Savanah had seen onscreen hundreds of times but was somehow even more beautiful in person.  Even though the smiler was more than twice the size as the last time Savanah had seen her. 

Nine hours ago.  On live television. 

The corpulent actress eased open a drawer set into a built-in bookcase and removed a photograph.  Her smile turned wistful as she handed it to Savanah.  “The last time I flew her I couldn’t even buckle my seatbelt.”

Savanah was still processing the photo as Angelina removed it from her frozen fingers. 

“I’ve lost a fair bit of weight since then,” the actress said, returning it to the drawer. “It’s good motivation.”

The woman currently blocking the sunlight pouring through the ocean-view window was certainly smaller than the woman blocking the plane’s aisle in the photograph, but reconciling either as Angelina Jolie was nearly impossible.  The woman in the picture was quite possibly the fattest woman Savanah had ever seen, and the singer had seen her share…especially growing up in rural Georgia. 

She was bigger than Marge Baxter, a middle-aged black woman who Savanah would occasionally get stuck behind at the Piggly Wiggly as she crept down the aisles on an underpowered electric cart that was even wheezier than she was.  She was bigger than Mr. Billings, her fifth-grade teacher, whose giant belly frequently wiped away notes from the blackboard before Savanah could transcribe them.  She was even bigger than her mother, who had given up all pretense of keeping her figure after Savanah’s father had died.  During Savanah’s visit to the family farm last Spring, her mother’s weight waffled around 400 pounds...and a few extra waffles were probably all it would take to swell her beyond that morbidly obese border permanently.

And yet, Savanah felt her mother would still be able to make it down the aisle of a plane. How did it ever reach a point that Angelina Jolie, the sylphlike star of stage and screen, couldn’t?

“You have questions,” Angelina said, breaking the silent stare-off between two of the biggest stars on the planet.  In her case, both literally and figuratively.

Savanah nodded slowly.  “I do.”

The one-time sex symbol turned her wistful gaze to the ocean.  It looked as if she were pondering the same question Savanah was—

“Where did it all go wrong?”

With her eyes still locked on the sea, Angelina suddenly proposed something Savanah wasn’t prepared for in any way, shape or—considering the paltry contents of her duffel—fashion.

“Why don’t we take a swim?”