The Super Ladies

by Petrone, Susan

  “And Katherine and Hal host it,” Karl said. “So we don’t have to clean.”

  “That’s just another added bonus.” There were children to round up and salads to bring over to the Krenzlers for a picnic and then out to watch fireworks. Margie pressed down in the center of a Tupperware container of potato salad and heard the little pfft that locked the lid on. “Darling, do you realize that I am a middle-aged suburban housewife with a Tupperware container of potato salad on July Fourth? How many kinds of cliché is that?”

  “Four. Maybe six,” Karl replied. “Grant! Joan! Let’s go.”

  Eli wandered into the kitchen. “Have fun. Tell them all I said hi.”

  Margie swallowed back a wave of nostalgia. This was the first time any of their kids had opted out of the Fourth of July—or any holiday—with the family. “We will. Have fun with Jamis.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come for part of the time?” Karl asked.

  “No, thanks,” Eli said with a stupid little grin on his face. His crush on Jamis was perhaps a little more intense than Margie had realized.

  “Where are you all going to watch fireworks?” Karl asked.

  “Jamis’s aunt lives in Willoughby, so we’re going to park in her driveway and walk over to some park where they do fireworks. I can’t remember what it’s called.”

  Karl gave a little sigh at this typical lack of teenage detail, while Margie asked, “Do I need to go over the whole don’t-get-into-a-car-with-someone-who’s-been-drinking-we’ll-pick-you-up-if-necessary routine?”

  “No, you don’t, Mom.”

  Grant came bounding into the kitchen. “I thought we were leaving,” he said. “Where’s Joan?”

  “Somewhere,” Margie said. “Please go find her. And make sure you both bring a hoodie or a jacket or something.”

  “I’ll meet you all in the car,” Karl said as he picked up the potato salad and walked out to the garage.

  “Please take Juno out before you leave, and close the windows so she doesn’t get freaked out by all the noise.”

  “Juno gets freaked out by flies buzzing, but I’ll close the windows. Should I turn on the air conditioner?”

  “It’s supposed to be kind of cold tonight. We don’t need the air.”

  Grant came back to the kitchen, followed by Joan. “Found her!” he announced.

  “Thank you. Go out to the car. I’ll be right there.” Margie almost followed the younger kids outside, but something kept her back for a moment. Eli was leaning against the kitchen table, waiting for her to leave and, she figured, probably rejoicing in having the house to himself for a couple of hours before he met his friends. Before he met his boyfriend.

  It was only in the last year or so that Eli had really come into his own. He stopped cutting at the beginning of his sophomore year but had still isolated himself. During the winter of his junior year, he’d spent a lot of time alone drawing and reading. One day when she was making dinner, he’d come into the kitchen carrying a copy of Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. Margie noticed he’d been reading a lot of Baldwin and nonchalantly noted that he was one of her favorite writers.

  Margie could hear the trepidation in Eli’s voice as he said cautiously, “You know that Baldwin was gay, right?”

  She’d been chopping up vegetables for soup and absent-mindedly replied, “Yeah, so?”

  “That doesn’t change your opinion of him? You still like him?”

  Then it struck her that perhaps Eli wasn’t actually talking about James Baldwin. She looked up from the cutting board to find Eli staring at her. She had infrequently wondered if her eldest might be gay but had never spoken to him about it. There were times back then when Eli still seemed so fragile that she hadn’t wanted to do anything to upset the precarious stability he’d achieved. She had hoped that, if he was gay, he’d eventually feel comfortable enough to come out to her. Here he was doing just that, and she was chopping carrots. She put down the knife and gave Eli her undivided attention.

  “It doesn’t matter to me whether someone is gay,” she had said deliberately. “It doesn’t matter who you love, just that you can love and care for someone else.” She saw Eli’s eyes start to fill with tears. “What matters is being kind and decent and just and”—she felt her own voice crack—“and that you’re nice to little kids and animals, and that you remember to recycle and…” Margie had walked around the kitchen island to where Eli was standing by the table and hugged him, held him as long as he needed.

  Eli was again standing in that exact same spot as she hugged him goodbye. She wanted to be cool and laid back about the whole thing, but Eli didn’t have much experience in romantic relationships with either gender. She hoped the fabulous Jamis Barberton wouldn’t break his heart.

  “Have fun,” she said.

  “I will,” Eli replied.

  The glint in his eye made her add, “Not too much fun.” And then she finally got herself out the door.

  At Katherine and Hal’s house, it was the typical jumble of children and food for a couple of hours. There was finally a lull after they’d eaten but before they would need to head out to watch fireworks. Their group tradition was to go to Shaker Middle School, two suburbs over, because it was the closest city with fireworks.

  Margie had jokingly said that the women would acquiesce to traditional gender roles and put the leftovers away and do the dishes, but it was more a handy excuse for her, Katherine, and Abra to talk in private in Katherine’s square, muted-yellow kitchen.

  Once the dishwasher was loaded, Katherine put the last of the leftovers into the refrigerator and grabbed three bottles of Burning River Pale Ale. “Here, our reward,” she said.

  Margie dried her hands on the towel hanging next to the kitchen sink and took the beer Katherine offered. “In the words of patriot Benjamin Franklin, beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” she said.

  Katherine handed her a bottle opener. “Church key?”

  “Amen,” she replied. They stood silently in the kitchen for a moment, just drinking their beer and enjoying each other’s company. In lieu of a decorative border, Katherine had stenciled a quote from Marie Curie along the top of her kitchen wall. Every time Margie visited, she read: “Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less.” She wondered if she could get Eli to stencil something along the top of their kitchen wall.

  “I’ve been doing some thinking,” Abra said, jolting Margie out of her thoughts. “There’s a wrong I want to right.”

  “That sounds rather superhero-ish,” Katherine said.

  “It is.” Abra’s tone had the same jaunty flair as their telephone conversation.

  “Is this what you wanted help with?” Margie asked.

  “Yes. My neighbors are being foreclosed on. I want to fix that.”

  Even several years after the mortgage loan crisis and the recession, tons of people were still getting foreclosed on or, like Abra, were underwater on their mortgages. There didn’t seem to be a whole lot an ordinary person could do. A month ago, Margie might have looked at Abra’s statement as hopeless, or might have asked if she was going to connect her neighbor with a consumer advocacy group. Things seemed different now. She merely asked, “What can we do to help?”

  “All I want to do is move a decimal point.”

  Katherine looked a bit dejected. “I’m going to assume there’s something slightly more exciting going on here than punctuation.”

  “Yes, there is. In order to move the decimal point, I need Margie to help me get into the offices of NorthCoast Home Mortgage.”

  “Why her?”

  “She comes off as more innocent than you do.”

  Margie glanced over at Katherine and shrugged, unsure which of them ought to feel bad. Katherine shrugged back and kind of nodded. �
�Fair enough,” she said.

  “Why do you need to move a decimal point?”

  “They sold my neighbors an adjustable rate mortgage that’s ballooning to thirteen point four nine percent.”

  “That’s highway robbery,” Katherine said with disgust. “Plus they have the gall to call themselves ‘north coast’ when Cleveland isn’t on the north coast of anything. We’re on the southern shore of Lake Erie.”

  Moments like these were why Margie loved Katherine. “We ought to change your superhero name to Pedantic.”

  “Pedanta. Or maybe Pedantula.”

  Abra sighed. “Can we please get back to the subject at hand?”

  “Right,” Margie said. “You were telling us how you’re going to break into the misnamed offices of NorthCoast Home Mortgage and fix your neighbors’ mortgage.”

  “I think I can do it without actually breaking and entering,” Abra replied, “but I need help.”

  “It sounds dangerous.”

  “I assume all the risk. I just need you to walk in the door and walk out.”

  Before Abra could say much more, Anna, Grant, and Joan burst into the kitchen.

  “We would like to leave now,” Anna said. She looked rather proud to be the spokesperson for the trio. “We’ll end up in the middle of some trees or something and won’t be able to see any fireworks if we get there too late.”

  “Give us five more minutes, sweetie,” Katherine said. “We’re in the middle of an important conversation.”

  “We’re gonna get a lousy spot,” Grant said in a borderline whine.

  “Can we please just go?” Joan added. For a moment Margie wondered if all annoyed fourteen-year-old girls sounded like Bette Davis. She didn’t have time to ponder the question because there was a general maneuvering of three adults, three children, and two blankets into one minivan. Hal didn’t feel like going to see the fireworks, because he hated crowds, and Karl decided to stay and keep him company. For some reason, Margie didn’t miss Karl as much as she missed Eli. She knew he was only out for the evening, that this was nothing compared to how it was going to be in the fall, when she’d wake up and know her eldest would be waking up in a dorm room miles away. She didn’t like the idea of practicing for that.

  They found a spot about three blocks from the middle school and joined the hordes of east-siders walking the streets of Shaker Heights in search of the perfect spot to watch the fireworks. They managed to find a nice spot along the light-rail tracks that ran down the middle of a wide grassy swath bordered by a two-lane, one-way boulevard on either side. Anna seemed oddly intrigued to learn that this was the same rail line Aunt Abra took to work most mornings.

  Margie and Katherine sacrificed their phones to Grant and Anna, and all three kids sat in what Hal always called a Zombie Circle, playing games and texting each other from two feet away. At least it gave Margie time to talk with Katherine and Abra while they shared the other blanket.

  Margie leaned back and basked in the night air for a moment. She looked over at the Zombie Circle. The kids were still staring at their respective screens, but there was none of the in-game noises of “Ugh, Googlies” or “Darn it” that typically punctuated a trio of kids playing games on phones. She got the impression they were all looking at the same thing, something they didn’t want the adults to see.

  “What’s going on, guys?” she asked casually.

  “Nothing,” Joan replied, a little too quickly.

  Margie tried to keep her voice neutral. “What are you looking at?”

  “Nothing.”

  There was an uneasy silence. She couldn’t imagine Joan or Grant showing Anna anything egregiously inappropriate online, especially when Grant was using her phone. Just to be sure, Margie asked Grant for her phone. “And don’t close the browser window,” she added.

  Grant exchanged a guilty look with Joan and extended his arm just enough so that Margie could reach the phone. “Can you show Anna that thing you did with the mac and cheese?” he asked over Joan’s hissed “Shhh!”

  “Please?” Anna added.

  “What? Now?” She glanced down at the phone and saw that Grant had been reading the Super Ladies comic. She should have known it was only a matter of time before the kids started comparing notes.

  “So what do you all think of Eli’s comic strip?” Katherine asked.

  “It’s great!” Grant said.

  “Pretty funny,” Joan admitted.

  “And it’s all true!” Anna said. “I saw Aunt Abra and so did Eli, and Joan and Grant told me about the macaroni and cheese—”

  Katherine interrupted her: “Anna, sweetie, stop. Remember how we talked about keeping this a secret?”

  “Eli didn’t.”

  “But he used different names for a reason,” Abra put in. “The comic strip isn’t supposed to be us. It’s just stories.”

  Even in the darkening light, Margie could see Joan’s annoyed tilt of the head. “It’s based on the three of you. That isn’t a secret.”

  “It is to the rest of the world,” Margie said quickly.

  “And we intend to keep it that way,” Abra said. “Please.”

  The three kids were quiet for a moment.

  “Can we still read the comic strip?” Anna asked softly.

  “Of course,” Margie and Katherine said at the same time. She let Katherine finish the thought. “We just think it’s better if the rest of the world only looks at it as a comic strip from Eli’s imagination, not real life.”

  They received assent in varying degrees from the three kids. Then Grant proclaimed that he was cold.

  “Where are your hoodies?” Margie asked, even though she already knew what the answer would be.

  “I forgot it,” Grant said.

  “I didn’t bring one.” Somehow Joan managed to make this admission sound as though her forgetfulness was her mother’s fault.

  Grant crawled over to Margie’s blanket and sat next to her. He leaned against her, and she snuggled right back. At eleven and more traditionally boyish than Eli ever was, snuggling with mom hadn’t been on Grant’s agenda for a while. She would take the cuddly moments with her kids when she could get them.

  “When are the fireworks gonna start?” Anna asked.

  “I’m sure it’ll be soon,” Katherine replied. “It’s pretty dark.”

  “Mom?” Grant asked. “I really am cold.”

  “You already said that, sweetie. I told you to bring a sweatshirt, and you didn’t. What do you want me to do?” Margie looked down into her youngest child’s face. Grant still had chubby moon cheeks. Sometimes it was a struggle not to pinch them.

  Grant looked up at her with an I-can’t-believe-my-mother-is-this-clueless expression. “That thing you did with the macaroni and cheese.”

  “You’re serious?” she replied.

  Anna’s curiosity had clearly been piqued by the comic. “I want to see too!”

  Joan moved over to Margie’s other side. “It was pretty cool,” she admitted.

  “Pretty hot you mean!” Grant said.

  “Aunt Abra?” Anna began.

  “Oh God, here we go,” said Abra.

  “Could you do that thing you did when you hurt your ankle?”

  “Everybody stop,” Margie commanded. “I’ll do my…”

  “Trick?” Grant offered.

  “It isn’t a trick, you moron,” Joan said. “Tricks are fake. This is better.”

  “Thank you, Joan, and don’t call your brother a moron.” She’d managed a little bit of heat to heal the baseball grandpa’s knee, but generating enough heat to warm up three kids was going to take something bigger. She rooted around in her bag and managed to come up with a piece of candy to boost the hot flash. “Okay, everybody who’s cold, stay next to me. I will do this one thing and then we will table the entire superpow
er discussion for the rest of the night.”

  Grant and Joan snuggled closer. Anna crawled onto her lap. “I’m not cold, but I want to see this.”

  “This is less of a ‘see’ and more of a ‘feel,’” Margie said and adjusted Anna on her lap so the child’s weight wouldn’t cut off the circulation in her leg. She looked over at Katherine and Abra, who were sitting on the other blanket and staring at her as though they were watching a sitcom. They were definitely getting a kick out of this.

  “Thanks for all the help, ladies,” Margie deadpanned.

  “You’re doing fine on your own,” Katherine replied.

  “And it takes some of the heat off me. No pun intended,” Abra added.

  “This is so cool, Anna,” Grant said. “Just wait.”

  Margie thought warm thoughts, thought about the three children huddled around her for warmth and pretended she was the mother black bear she had seen on Animal Planet, hunkered down in the snow with her cubs. They needed her. Slowly she started feeling warmer and warmer, then downright hot. She could almost feel the heat pouring off of her body. When she heard a collective “Wow” from the kids, she knew they were all heating up too.

  “While you’re at it, can you warm up my coffee?” Katherine said.

  Margie spurted out a laugh, breaking her concentration. Anna, Joan, and Grant started babbling away to one another, Joan and Grant talking about macaroni and cheese and Anna insisting they had to see what Aunt Abra could do.

  “Are you guys feeling a little warmer now?” Margie asked.

  “Yeah, now I want to see what Aunt Abra can do,” Grant said.

  “Let’s save that for another day,” Abra said. She looked a little self-conscious about the whole thing.

  Katherine changed the subject for her: “Hey, I think they’re finally going to start the fireworks!” There was a low buzz of anticipation as more and more people stopped talking and settled in to watch the night sky.

  Anna scooted off Margie’s lap and snuggled in between her mom and Abra. Grant and Joan stayed right where they were, leaning against her, heads raised to the sky. That was a nice surprise. As the fireworks began, Margie let herself sink into the moment, just enjoying the nearness of her kids, having them sprawled on her like overgrown puppies, like they were still little. The showers of colored lights against the dark sky, the boom-boom-boom slowly echoing over the trees, the little bundles of people scattered on the ground watching—it all felt very basic and primitive and pure. There were so many things that Margie wanted to give her children, not just the tangibles like food and clothing and shelter and books and toys, but the big things, intangibles like values and education and peace. She couldn’t give them everything, but right now, when they were cold, she could give them warmth. Maybe it wasn’t being a superhero, but it still felt like some sort of victory.