Trouble in Paradise

by Jennifer Greene

  The girl paused at the threshold to the library. Russet carpet led up to the small fire Susan had laid in the hearth. The bookshelves were filled now, and Griff’s antique maps hung on the walls. The silver sconces above the fireplace had been polished, and they gleamed in the firelight. Nubby cream-colored couches faced each other, their cushions begging to be sunk into. Where Griff had uncovered the treasure, Susan didn’t know, but he’d converted a small semicircular gaming table into a writing desk; its dark patina shone in contrast to the original oak paneling and the rich russet of the new carpet.

  “Mom likes blue,” Barbara remarked.

  “I’m sure she does.”

  Barbara subjected the living room to the same intense scrutiny. “You are going to get some furniture sooner or later, aren’t you? I mean, not just this old stuff?”

  Susan stuffed her hands in her pockets. The living room was rather empty still. The two Oriental rugs were her pride and joy. Her six-legged French desk, an exquisite eighteenth-century corner chair, a Sak sideboard and, yes, a rather dilapidated old couch, because they really hadn’t had the time to shop for what they wanted. Still, Susan loved this room, from its high ceiling to the old-fashioned transoms to the circular, leaded-glass windows with the built-in seats beneath. Obviously, Sheila favored more contemporary styles and had passed her tastes on to her daughter. “Would you like to see your room?” Susan asked helplessly.

  Barbara hesitated momentarily at the foot of the stairs, staring back into the living room and then inscrutably at Susan. “It is kind of an interesting old house,” she admitted.

  “Thank you. We think so, too,” Susan said dryly.

  Barbara flashed her a look. No, Susan told herself, don’t risk any more ironic comments.

  Susan held her breath while Barbara climbed the stairs ahead of her and found the way to her room. She’d worried about that room more than any other. At fourteen, Susan had been miserable or insecure herself…probably no more miserable or insecure than any other adolescent, but she hadn’t found that out until later. Rebellion, anxiety, ambivalence, parents—everything had seemed dreadful at that age. Susan remembered, and had hoped to say so much to Barbara with this room…

  The bed was a Jenny Lind, its graceful lines accented by a pale blue comforter. The corner under the window had begged for a little dressing table; Susan had sewed the skirt herself, light blue with mauve, to match the curtains. The desk was blue with gold trim, the carpeting more expensive per yard than the russet in the library. The closet was ample, but Susan had fallen in love with an old wardrobe and antiqued it in white, with just a hint of blue at the edges.

  This room was pretty enough to make up for having to go through adolescence. Susan had done the best she could…

  Barbara turned to her, suddenly all dark eyes like her father’s. “I never asked you to do anything like this.”

  “I know.”

  “I…” Barbara turned back to the room that had been so lovingly prepared for her. “It’s a pretty special bedroom,” she said grudgingly.

  Susan felt as if she’d just finished a snifter of champagne. Champagne was not served in snifters. Which was completely irrelevant.

  ***

  Twenty-four hours later, the doorbell rang for the umpteenth time. Running a hand distractedly through her dark hair, Susan ran to answer it. She blinked hard at the three grinning boys on the porch steps, her brilliant smile unwavering as she let them in. Finding the president standing on the doorstep would not have surprised her at this point.

  Barbara had talked her into giving an impromptu party. A few friends, though, seemed to have snowballed into a multitude. All girls, Susan had so naively assumed. Clearly not the case, although given the hairstyles and unisex clothing, it was sometimes hard to tell.

  Sheila evidently didn’t allow parties, simply because she was rarely at home to chaperone them. Susan had known damn well that Barbara was testing her, but there didn’t seem to be a valid reason not to let the girl have her way. They’d been doing so well since Barbara had seen her room. How much trouble could a few girl friends be? Griff wasn’t there to be annoyed by the noise or debris. And all day she and Barbara had had a good time together, fixing snacks, going to the store to buy soft drinks and potato chips. Barbara had unpacked Griff’s stereo, looked through the CDs… They had made another trip to buy more suitable music. Griff relaxed to Tchaikovsky; his daughter relaxed to Katy Perry and Rihanna. Or a variation thereof.

  That was fine, but Susan had clearly not anticipated the rest of the evening. At fourteen, Susan had been into pajama parties, potato chips and rereading the love scenes from Gone with the Wind.

  Barbara was doing a wild dance in the living room that made Susan blush. So were a dozen others. Some of them were old enough to drive cars…and had rather sophisticated ideas about entertainment. The music was mind-blowing, a phrase Susan suddenly understood very well. Since there was only one lamp in the living room, the light was rather muted. There was a couple on the couch who hadn’t let up… in an hour.

  After ushering in the three newcomers, Susan hurried back to the kitchen, poured potato chips into yet another bowl, hurriedly whipped up some fresh dip and frantically tried to gather her thoughts. She could hardly have missed the belligerent looks Barbara had flashed at her over the past two hours, looks that said, Go ahead, Susan, come on like the Green Berets. It’s just what I expect from you…

  So there were two youngsters necking on the couch. And the rest were dancing as if it were some primitive mating ritual. So there were three dozen instead of a nice, manageable six…

  At fourteen, even after having been handed all the appropriate books, Susan had really not been absolutely positive that babies didn’t come from belly buttons. She realized that she was now looking into the depths of a massive generation gap. A shy, demure bookworm had no comprehension of “letting it all hang out.”

  She was trying. Maybe not hard enough, though, because the sight of two teenagers petting on the couch shocked her. When she was fourteen, she would never have allowed a boy to touch those very new, very sensitive, very small breasts she’d waited so long for nature to develop. Dammit. To touch like that in front of three dozen other people…

  What exactly was she supposed to do? Not fail Griff, she told herself. He was so worried about Barbara, so convinced she needed a mature yet feminine woman to talk to her…and Barbara was not going to listen to anyone who came on like a police patrol.

  Pushing the kitchen door open with her hip, Susan carried the tray of chips and dip into the dining room, a smile fixed on her face that made the muscles in her cheeks ache. The two boys perched on the window seat looked startled when she came in, then smiled just as brilliantly back at her. Fortunately, her eyes were quicker than the boys’ hands. She saw the brown paper bag they tried to hide, and she smelled the beer. “I have Coke,” she told them brightly.

  “That’s okay. We’re not thirsty, Mrs. Anderson.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you are.” She whipped the tray onto the table and delivered two Cokes from the kitchen. Hastily, she popped the tops and forced the cold cans into the boys’ hands. Susan perched on the seat next to them, prepared to chat. When the two boys fled to join the others, in predictable horror at having to talk to an adult, she claimed the brown-bagged booty and buried it in the trash, almost before her stomach had developed an ulcer.

  The victory was minor; her nose led her to other trouble. Barbara’s eyes were riveted to hers yet again as Susan passed through the living room. Anxious, troubled eyes? But by now Susan doubted her own perceptions where Barbara was concerned. At any rate, there was the strangest smell…

  She paused in the doorway to the library, watching a boy light up a joint and pass it to a girl, who took a drag and then handed it to another boy. Plain cigarettes would have been bad enough; the kind those three kids were smoking knotted another ball of panic in Susan’s stomach. She saw the flicker of ash on her brand-new carpet and had h
ad enough. She would have to win over Griff’s daughter another time. Striding over to the troublemakers with a brilliant smile, she snatched the marijuana cigarette away from the third smoker, watched three mouths drop in shock at her sudden appearance, and tossed the offending reefer into the fire. “Do you have a ride home?” she asked them pleasantly.

  That seemed to start a roller coaster in her brain that refused to slow down. She sped back to the living room, avoiding Barbara’s eyes and swooped down on the boy and girl who were necking. “Would you like some potato chips and dip?” she suggested brightly.

  The girl flushed crimson; the boy just stared at her as if she were out of her mind.

  “You would like some potato chips and dip,” Susan said firmly. “Now.”

  Outside there was a noise. The sprawling old elm was climbable, unfortunately. At least the swinging monkeys more closely resembled what Susan remembered fourteen-year-olds to be. She shooed them down, went back inside to serve one last round of hot dogs and took two aspirin. Then, acting on a sudden hunch, she raced upstairs to find another adolescent couple looking for a place to fool around.

  Over and over during the melee she caught Barbara’s eyes on hers, still belligerent yet somehow pleading and desperately unhappy. Barbara had never left the dance floor; in fact, Griff’s daughter had never been part of the disasters that had been going on. Barbara hadn’t been smoking or necking or drinking…but as for the friends her mother evidently allowed her to socialize with…

  ***

  “Look, Susan,” Barbara said miserably some hours after the party had ended, “I’ll clean everything up.”

  Susan was on her knees, as was Barbara, both of them trying to remove a stain of unknown origin from the expensive Oriental rug. It was past midnight, and the house was suddenly quiet. Her lovely, lovely house, Susan lamented. Soda cans were everywhere, chips were deeply embedded in the carpet, snacks were strewn about haphazardly and water stains marked the newly varnished sideboards. Susan lifted her head and stared at Barbara, then picked up the soaked towels and stood up, snatching up assorted soda cans on her way back to the kitchen.

  Susan was hurt, and close to tears. Barbara trailed silently after her, carrying so many cans that a few tumbled to the floor, making a terrible racket. Barbara’s head jerked up, her eyes still guiltily expecting a tongue-lashing from her new stepmother.

  It didn’t happen. Susan simply picked up the last of the debris and then hauled out the vacuum cleaner. She was certainly not going to let Griff come home to this mess; she didn’t care what time it was. Barbara stayed in the kitchen, having filled the sink with soapy water without even being asked to do so.

  Susan pushed the noisy vacuum cleaner over every inch of the new carpets, ignoring wet spots, not particularly caring if she got electrocuted. Her head ached; her back was feeling the strain of the long day…but it was her heart that felt torn to pieces. The hurt came from knowing that she’d been so naive as to be set up by one fourteen-year-old child. It came from the hours she’d spent painting and furnishing Barbara’s room, anticipating that a slow but sure course of honest affection and gentleness would win the girl over, a naive belief that if she went ninety percent of the way, Barbara would surely come the other ten percent.

  Yes, Barbara was unhappy, guilty and miserable now. Maybe she hadn’t expected things to get quite so out of hand, but Susan was almost certain that Barbara was panicking with fear that Susan would tell Griff about the party. Barbara’s remorse was not really regret for what she’d put Susan through. She couldn’t have gone more out of her way to totally reject her father’s wife…

  Finally, after going over the carpet four times, Susan turned off the vacuum cleaner. As she was winding the cord, she glimpsed Barbara from the corner of her eye, hugging the wall by the door, her face pasty-white and her eyes stricken.

  In spite of herself, and in spite of every rational instinct she’d ever possessed, Susan felt an unwelcome surge of compassion. “Barbara, it’s all right. Just go to bed,” she said quietly. “It’s all over.”

  “Like, I didn’t know some of those guys. They were older. The thing was, the kids I invited needed someone older to drive them to this side of town, but I didn’t—”

  However true that was, Susan knew the party had been planned to convey to her exactly what Barbara thought of her stepmother. Pushing a strand of hair back from her cheek, Susan straightened up from winding the vacuum cord. “The two boys you seemed to spend most of your time dancing with,” Susan said casually. “They looked like nice kids…”

  “Steve is.” Barbara hesitated. “Those guys that pushed their way in were creeps. Crashers. None of the girls I go around with have anything to do with Barry…”

  Barbara was so busy covering her tracks, yet Susan heard the grain of truth. It mattered, because she needed to hear that Barbara didn’t normally associate with certain of those teenagers before she could promise silence, something she knew Barbara was desperate to hear.

  She pushed the vacuum cleaner into the closet and closed the door. “I don’t think we need to tell your father,” she said quietly.

  Barbara’s face promptly took on a little color.

  “It was between you and me, anyway, wasn’t it?” Susan said sadly. “Go to bed, Barbara. It’s late.”

  The girl lost no time racing up the stairs. Susan couldn’t possibly have told her that she had no desire to inform Griff for her own sake; that she couldn’t bear to let him know how badly she had bungled her attempt to establish a relationship with the child he loved so dearly. She almost felt like laughing. She’d thought she had so much to share with his only daughter; she could remember so well how tough it was to be that age, that blend of grace and clumsiness, that special insecure person a fourteen-year-old girl was. Her total lack of experience with children had troubled her, but she had thought that at least with Barbara, despite the tough exterior…

  First, bugs with Tiger, and now rebellion from Barbara … Susan mounted the stairs with a feeling of despair. She’d known before she married Griff that his kids were part of the package; with so much love inside her, she’d welcomed the challenges she’d known were coming.

  It had just never occurred to her before that she could totally fail.

  Chapter 6

  An hour and a half later, the lights were off, the house was silent and Susan was in bed…very definitely not sleeping. Myriad troubled thoughts bounced back and forth in her mind. How could she have made such a swift, foolish promise to Barbara not to tell Griff about the party? He had a right and a need to know what his daughter was up to, and there was something all wrong with a marriage in which the wife kept secrets from her husband.

  At the same time, though, Susan knew there was absolutely no way she could break trust with Barbara, tentative though that trust was. Over and over, she analyzed Barbara’s attitude. One cup teenage insecurity, one cup a dominant mother’s jealous preaching. Mix well. Stir in a loving father who pulled the girl in yet another direction; sift in peer influences and suddenly whip in an unknown woman who could so unfairly add a few more rules and expectations to confuse an already baffled teenager. It was really no surprise that the pie wouldn’t bake.

  Susan desperately wanted to tell Griff that she was afraid she was failing two of his three children. She craved his reassurance that he didn’t expect an instant love affair between she and his offspring, that he understood these were just the first rounds. She still had faith that she could win Barbara over eventually. But it was difficult to take a long-term perspective when the clock was happily ticking toward three o’clock in the morning. Fears and insecurities thrived at that hour.

  She adored Griff. She had no doubts that he loved her, but who was kidding whom? He would never have married a woman who didn’t love his kids. Well, she did love his children. She would love to take the dark-eyed Barbara in her arms and hug all that tension and insecurity away; she would willingly try to become a football star for Tiger. In
stead…

  Shut it off, Susan. Turn the pillow to the cool side. You’ve fretted over everything right down to the crossed T’s; now stop analyzing. She closed her eyes determinedly, only to hear a muffled thud from below. Her eyes opened wide in the darkness yet again, but she didn’t move. She was too good a friend of insomnia not to know that an overtired, anxious brain could invent noises in the night.

  A carpeted step creaked, and her heart promptly went into high gear, pumping a surplus of adrenaline. Pushing back the comforter, she suddenly remembered with brilliant clarity that she hadn’t locked the back door. And that Barbara’s room was even more vulnerable than hers to an intruder.

  As she skimmed barefoot over the icy floor and into the hall, Susan heard another creak at the top of the stairs. It was pitch-black, impossible to see a thing. One hand groped, trying to find the wall…and collided with a different kind of wall entirely. Buttons and flannel. English leather. A low, throaty chuckle sent the anxious ghosts whispering back to the attic, as firm, warm hands steadied her bare shoulders.

  “What on earth are you still doing up?” Griff whispered. “Susan, you’re freezing…”

  Not for long. Before she could begin to scold him for terrifying her, he scooped up her slim body and snuggled her close to himself. She luxuriated in the feel of Griff, his solid strength and warmth, the sheer, sprawling male of him. Surely he’d been away a year?

  “Did I frighten you?” he whispered. “Coming in so late, I was trying to be as quiet as a mouse.” With an arm still around her shoulder, he led her toward the bedroom. “God, I missed you,” he murmured. “I knew it was a mistake not to take you with me, Susan. I couldn’t sleep all last night.”