She Effin' Hates Me

by Scarlett Savage

  He was a handsome boy, or at least, he seemed to be, from what Suzanne could see under all the accessories. His thick hair was in the process of growing out a bleach job, and he’d taken no care to soften its dark roots. He had five piercings in each ear—one way up in his cartilage, she shuddered to note—then there was one in his lip and one in his nose, like Molly’s (try as she might, she could never look at a nose ring without thinking of all the boogers that must be encrusted on the inside).

  His black silk shirt was painted with huge flames, and his pants were baggy black chinos. She took mild comfort in the fact that they were slung around his waist, not hanging off his rear showing off his boxers, which seemed to be the style of the day.

  But . . . then there were the tattoos. His arms were gangly and long, giving him plenty of room to defile the body the good Lord had given him. There was one on his left arm, near the bicep. A dragon took up the same forearm, ending in snakes that curled themselves around his left wrist. His right arm was covered with several bands fashioned from Celtic knots, which wrapped around his bicep, near his elbow, and by his wrist. There was a date, May 15, on the inside of his right wrist, just below his palm.

  His birthday, most likely, Suzanne thought. Or the day he’d knocked over his first liquor store.

  In short, he looked like every mother’s worst nightmare.

  Suzanne instantly felt a pang of sympathy for her parents, way back when Steve had come roaring up the driveway on his Harley. During the intros, her dad hadn’t budged from his recliner. Jimmy Applebaum, like his wife, was also a firm believer in good manners, so this was a wordless shout out to his family. His eyes didn’t leave Steve, from the moment he came in the door.

  Her throat closed a little, just at the memory. Her sweet, workaholic daddy . . . James went by “Jimmy” to most of his friends, even though he was well past the age when most men had graduated to just Jim. But as Ava lovingly pointed out, he was man enough to pull it off.

  That night so long ago, Ava had made polite small talk, even going so far as to comment admiringly on Steve’s mullet and the pink streak in his hair, but Suzanne was sure that had been reverse psychology: if the mommy don’t hate him, the daughter don’t date him. It had been an interesting meal, mostly consisting of Steve describing the rock-and-roll career he was going to have, but how he’d never forget “your girl here.”

  “You gotta know,” Steve had said proudly (smugly, Jimmy later claimed), “girls dig musicians, so I, you know, I got my pick. But the minute I saw Suzanne,” he stopped, reaching over dramatically to caress Suzanne’s face, which, at the time, had made Suzanne’s stomach roll over with passion, but now it made her stomach roll over for an entirely different reason, “I knew she was the one for me. I mean that.”

  Steve finished by leaning over to kiss her right at the table; even then, Suzanne knew he’d gone too far with that move. Daddy had abruptly stood up, thrown his napkin, and, casting a look of disgust, stalked away from the table. Her daddy hadn’t even come out of his room to bid Steve good night; in fact, she couldn’t remember her father directly addressing Steve any time after that either.

  Jesus, what goes around really does come around. God had such a cruel sense of humor.

  “So,” she said at last, shattering the tension that lay thick in the air, “now I get to play girlfriend’s scary mom to this guy, right? Mothers live for these moments, you know—all mothers, you’ll soon find out.”

  Her attempt at a joke didn’t do a thing to make the air any less choking.

  “Well,” Brandon began, but Molly was faster.

  “You can grill him in a minute, Mom,” she said diffidently, examining her nails. “But only after you hear that I just got another call from the admissions office at Vassar.”

  Suzanne stood up straight. Vassar had called again? Were they revoking the scholarship because she was pregnant?

  No, they can’t do that, that’s discrimination, she told herself reasonably, but her stomach plummeted just the same.

  “When you hear that in addition to my full tuition scholarship,” she added, “they’re offering me partial room and board . . . well, you might just want to hug me twice.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s wonderful!” Ava pulled both the kids to her full grandma bosom, swinging them around in her exuberance. Suzanne wasn’t sure what Brandon had done to contribute, but he patted her shoulder genially enough in return.

  “Oh, my God!” Suzanne gasped. “Nearly a full scholarship? This is like winning the Parent Lottery!” A thought struck her then. A wonderful thought—no, a miraculous thought. “Hey, wait a minute. Was that your big news?” She suddenly felt light enough to fly, lighter than she had in days. In her delirium, she grabbed Brandon’s large hand and squeezed it happily. “It is, isn’t it?”

  “Well . . .” Molly began, but Suzanne, given a ray of hope, was clinging to it for dear life.

  “Did you hear that? Our girl has almost a full scholarship to Vassar! Vassar!” She gushed. “That’s so much better than I ever did. Which, of course, means that I was a much better mother than you were, Mom.”

  Ava raised her eyebrow. “A potter’s only as good as the clay, dear.” Ava informed her, squeezing her daughter’s shoulders; Suzanne tried to groan, but it was far too happy a sound to truly qualify.

  “Watch it, old lady,” Suzanne reminded her gaily, giddy from her conclusion. “Just because I’m supposed to change your diapers in a few years, doesn’t mean I actually will.”

  “That’s it? That’s your best shot? What a disappointment you turned out to be.” Ava turned to Brandon. “She thinks she’s funny. Isn’t that sad? Just do the polite silent laugh and head-toss thing to make her feel better.”

  Brandon did as he was instructed, which earned him a throaty laugh. Ava looked at the boy she’d just squeezed to her bosom appreciatively, and then her eyes narrowed. “Excuse me,” she asked, “but who the hell are you?”

  “Mother!” Although her tone was harsh, Suzanne was secretly relieved that Ava had asked the question of the hour. Who was this young man? Boyfriend? Fiancé? Fuck buddy? Or, what did they call them now—friends with benefits? None of the above?

  Molly had always been rabidly private about her romantic life, what few dates she’d made time for during her avid pursuit of snagging the valedictorian slot. After years of arguing ’round and ’round the living room, Suzanne finally had to agree that, by age eighteen, there were certain privacy boundaries she would respect, like it or not.

  And she didn’t like it, but it didn’t change the rules.

  “Actually, he just followed me home from the bus station,” Molly informed them. “He said he wanted to tell me all about his family—the Mansons, I think he said their name was?”

  “Suzie,” Ava was already on her feet, “you grab him and hold him here, and I’ll get my stun gun.”

  “Mother, she’s kidding.” Suzanne caught Ava’s elbow. “I’m assuming that this young man is probably Molly’s . . . well, her boyfriend.”

  Oh, please let him be at least a boyfriend, she prayed, and not one of those friends-with-benefits deals . . . I know it’s a new millennium, but I can’t be that modern.

  “Umm, I’m . . .” Brandon shifted uncomfortably, and Molly took over.

  “His name is Brandon Ellis, and he’s going to be a psych major. He’s a fabulous student,” Molly enthused, taking Brandon’s hand. He smiled awkwardly at the women, offering a little wave. “He’s going for his master’s, and he might even go to med school.”

  “Actually, I just said it would be cool to be called Dr. Ellis,” he acknowledged. “But I’m not sure I want to be a student till my late twenties.”

  Suzanne noticed not one, not two, but three bags at Brandon’s feet. “So maybe your visit is Molly’s big announcement, then?” Suzanne couldn’t help the slight disappointment that crept into her voice. “You’re the announcement—you, and all those tattoos?”

  Molly glared at her, bu
t Brandon at least had the good grace to look flustered. “Well, it’s not exactly . . . I mean, I . . .” he started to say, and fumbled, looking at Molly for help.

  “Oh!” Molly sighed, exasperated. “Mother, it’s just that, well, you . . .”

  “Don’t you give these kids any trouble,” Ava cut in. “The summer before your senior year, you went off camping with Steve three times with no adult chaperone, and you had your hair matted down in one of those baby barrettes like that Courtney Loud.”

  Brandon and Molly both tried not to laugh, but it was no use. Their laughter rang throughout the yard.

  “Love!” Suzanne stamped her foot, even as she realized she’d laughed at her soon-to-be-ex-husband-Thank-God for doing the same thing just a few months ago. “Courtney Love!” Turning to Ava, she added, "You should just be grateful I didn't come home in one of those little Kinderwhore slip dresses or use my actual slips for outerwear. With combat boots.”

  “Oh, Mommy, I’m so embarrassed for you,” gasped Molly, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

  “Me too,” “This Brandon” agreed.

  “That was just one of the looks she tried,” Ava shook her head. “For a solid year, she was trying to get two different boys to notice her. One was that fireman’s son, Scott, or no, Sean? That was it, Sean Bradley. And the other was the author from Kittery. Jacob Winter. She used to write ‘Suzanne Bradley’ and ‘Suzanne Winter’ on her notebooks and then scribble it out.”

  “Jacob Winter, the writer?” Brandon gasped, putting his hand on his chest. “You know Jacob Winter? The guy who wrote Bridge? And Berth? And Firewater Pond?”

  “Jacob Winter, in case you hadn’t grasped,” Molly told her family, “is his total hero.”

  “Oh, she was in all his English classes,” Ava remembered.

  “Look at me, Mother, because you obviously haven’t noticed, I’m shooting you the shut-the-hell-up-old-woman glare of death,” Suzanne chirped, through clenched teeth.

  “Yes, dear, I see it, and as always, I’m ignoring it. Where was I? Oh, yes. Before she settled on your dad, let me tell you, she had such a crush on Jacob I thought for sure she’d have a heart attack if he ever did ask her out.” Ava pointed to the seaman’s trunk up on the deck. “You see the steamer trunk? He made that for Suzanne’s dad and me. Our fortieth anniversary. Can’t remember what we paid for it, but whatever it was, it was a steal. Take a look at the craftsmanship.”

  “Jacob was the shy, artistic type,” Suzanne remembered, a warm feeling settling over her. “And Sean was, well, he was everybody’s type. Everyone’s buddy, easygoing. The guy who puts on a pair of new jeans, and they immediately relax.”

  “Jacob Winter could have been your father?” Brandon asked Molly in dismay. He shook his head sorrowfully. “Oh, Ms. Applebaum, it’s not my place to judge your romantic choices, but what on earth is wrong with you?”

  “I suppose you think you’re the first person to ask me that,” replied Suzanne. “Jacob was exactly my type, right up until Molly’s dad. You don’t know how often I wished it was Jacob instead of Steve I went to that pit party with. I spent all afternoon tracking down someone who’d buy three bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill.”

  “Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill? Oh, Jesus, Mom, do you have to make it worse than it was?” Molly wailed.

  “Yet somehow it never occurred to me to buy the condoms.” Suzanne shook her head woefully. She thought she caught Molly and Brandon exchanging a look, and hastily, she changed the subject; she realized they were right; no point in getting this intimate. Time to lighten up. “Anyway, if you’d had your way,” she challenged Ava, “I’d have been wearing the Dorothy Hamill chin-length bob till I was thirty.”

  “It made you look adorable!” Ava squeezed Suzanne’s face with one hand till her lips pooched out like a fish. “Take a look at this mug. I don’t care if you’re pushing forty. You’re still just as cute as a button.”

  “Yeah,” Molly interjected brightly, “but who the hell wants to fuck a button?”

  “Molly!”

  Then they were all laughing, huge great big bellows of laughter, and the tension was entirely broken. Molly had been blessed with classic timing.

  “Oh, my goodness, we’re low on cookies.” Ava surveyed the picnic scape. “Who here needs some ice?”

  “I do, Grandma.”

  “Great.” Ava said, stepping out of her way. “It’s in the ice box. You know the way.”

  “Mother,” Suzanne protested, “she just got here. I’m sure she’s still tired.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I was just kidding, I was going to get it all along.” She tapped Brandon’s shoulder on the way by. “Never could take a joke, that one. You’re lucky you got the daughter.”

  The three of them stood around the weathered picnic table, slightly uncomfortable without Ava’s comedic input (intentionally funny or otherwise) to serve as conversational referee. Suzanne smiled so hard she thought she felt her face crack.

  Then they heard Ava’s voice, cutting through the silence like a chainsaw through butter.

  “Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.”

  Molly and Suzanne looked at each other and erupted into giggles, while Brandon found himself on the outside of a family joke.

  “What’s she doing?”

  “Counting the seconds,” they said in unison.

  “Thereby proving to us what a simple and short task getting the ice was.” Suzanne lit up a cigarette; she’d held off as long as she could, but the need for nicotine momentarily outweighed her need for daughter approval.

  “And since it was so simple,” Molly chimed in, giving her mother a sidelong glance, “we shouldn’t have made a frail old lady do it.”

  “Frail? Her?” Aghast, he jerked his thumb in the direction Ava had disappeared. “She’s about as frail as Mike Tyson.”

  “It’s not that we’re not glad to meet you, Brandon. Of course we are,” Suzanne said quickly, adding just as much sincerity to her voice as she was able. “It’s just that . . . Well, I’m assuming you’re going to need a place to stay for a few days, and as ‘hip’ and ‘with-it’ as my mother pretends to be, don’t let her fool you. She’s very Victorian about certain things.” That’s it, blame the old lady when she’s not here to defend herself. She patted herself on the back for quick thinking.

  “Ava is only Victorian,” Buddy called from the door of his house, “when it comes to children or grandchildren of hers getting naked and sweaty and knocked up. Hi, Suzie.”

  “Hey, Buddy!” She gave him a bright smile. She saw a basket and length of hemp rope in his hand. “Whatcha got there? Arts and crafts?”

  “I’m exploring my feminine side.” He settled himself on his bench and held up the basket. “Macramé ropes. When I’m done with it, you can hang some of the mums and those ragweed stems inside. It’ll look really festive for your party. Don’t tell Ava I made them, though. God knows what she’d do with them.”

  “Yeah, that will look great.” Suzanne gave him a smooch on the cheek. “You’re a wonder.”

  “Me?” He looked at her quizzically. “How the heck do you consider an old bag of bones like me a wonder?”

  “Well, my mother is plotting your death, and here you are trying to find ways to help her, even if you have to sneak around to do it. I think that’s just amazing.” She bent to whisper in his ear. “But please watch the talk about getting sweaty and getting knocked up in front of you-know-who,” she pleaded, tilting her head toward Molly.

  “Gee, I don’t even have superpowers, but I can still hear what you’re whispering from ten feet away,” Molly marveled.

  “I was just telling Molly,” Suzanne smiled to show them she was cool, she was with it, she was all those things, but regretfully, she didn’t own the house in which the kids planned to crash, “that springing a boyfriend as an overnight visitor on us is just the sort of thing that will rattle my mother. Really. Completely.”

  “She hasn’t said any .
. .” Molly started to say.

  “Which is not to say she won’t allow it, mind you,” Suzanne interrupted. “She probably would. Probably. But, it’s just . . . She’ll be up all night listening for the slightest creak. She’ll go into your bedrooms, opening the windows and insisting that the doors stay open because she needs to get a cross draft going through the house—and she has central air.” She was happy to note the kids were really starting to look uncomfortable, so she pressed the advantage firmly. “In fact, she’ll probably play the PTL club on every TV and radio station, all day, all night . . .”

  “Look, you two,” Buddy struggled to tie off the first knot. “Why don’t you spare yourselves the pain and go to a hotel where you’re actually going to enjoy yourselves?”

  Suzanne fought off a sudden urge to slap the back of the old man’s head.

  “Ms. Applebaum,” Brandon said politely, “really, the last thing I want is to be a burden, or to put anybody out.”

  “No way!” Molly said indignantly. “Do you have any idea how much hotels cost?”

  “No, I don’t, offhand, but why don’t you tell us, honey?” Suzanne asked sweetly. “You sound like you’re something of an expert.”

  “Actually, I really wouldn’t know.” Molly patted Brandon’s arm. “My pimp here smacks me around if I ask too many questions about money.”

  “She’s just kidding,” Brandon faltered. Out of the corner of his mouth, he hissed, “Are you trying to get me killed?”

  “So you’re saying,” Buddy’s eyes gleamed impishly, “that it would drive Ava crazy if he stayed here? If I were a better man, I’d pass up that opportunity. Thank goodness, I’m not.”

  “Oh, geez,” Suzanne groaned. The days ahead began to play themselves out in front of her eyes. Between finalizing her divorce, Molly’s impending morning sickness, and playing ref between Buddy and her mother, it didn’t look pretty at all.

  “Just kidding, Suzie. Listen, Broderick . . .”

  “Brandon,” Molly corrected.

  “Brandon, that’s right. My apologies.” He stopped macraméing long enough to tip an imaginary hat. “Listen, I’ve got a daybed in my computer room. It’s not much, but it’s cheaper than a hotel room, it’s right next to the downstairs bathroom, and you still get to see your sweetie day and night all during your vacation. How does that sound?”