The Super Ladies

by Petrone, Susan

  The day she felt the snap wasn’t terrifically harried. Joan was being disproportionately dramatic over a lack of oatmeal in the house; however, at 5:00 a.m., Margie could almost forgive the histrionics. She took Joan, Joan’s backpack, and a lunch bag containing approximately twenty-five hundred calories to the high school and came back home to walk Juno before Start of the Day, Part II began.

  Some days she tried to experience the world as the dog did, with excitement and curiosity and wonder at all the subtle differences that demarcated one day from the next, one tree or blade of grass from another. Most days she just wished she could keep walking.

  Juno sniffed everything. Margie just sniffed the air. There was the faintest hint of dying leaves. The scent of fall. It was soon apparent Juno was doing more than just sniffing, and Margie untied one of the plastic bags from the leash to clean up the dog’s calling card. She cleaned it up, tied the bag, and resumed their walk. The early-morning sky was cloudless, giving every outward appearance of a clear, beautiful day, a day when one could find no fault with the world. Even having to do poop patrol was a fair price to pay to get out of the house for a while. When they were almost home, she heard the familiar rumble of the guy in the black SUV coming down the block. Not only was he speeding, but he was blaring the chorus to The Eagles’ “Hotel California” at 6:15 a.m.

  “It’s too early for this,” she muttered. The SUV was barreling down the street toward her and Juno and showing no signs of slowing to anywhere near the posted limit.

  That’s when she felt the snap, as though the gate that had made her behave herself for the past forty-seven years swung wide open, letting her saunter on through it to see what was on the other side. Not giving a damn—that’s what was on the other side. Not caring about being nice or what other people think.

  Margie stopped walking and stared at the oncoming SUV. Calling upon the internal generator that seemed located somewhere in her lower abdomen, she felt a surge of heat rush through her body, concentrating in her hand. She felt the plastic bag of dog poop heating up as she twirled it twice over her head, like David taking aim for Goliath. As the bag left her hand, Margie saw small flames trailing behind as it sailed through the air. This was the first time she had made flames. She hoped the plastic wouldn’t melt before it hit the black SUV’s rear window.

  It didn’t.

  The SUV was going so fast it was almost to the stop sign at the end of the block before the driver realized the back window had been hit. As she watched the SUV jerk to a stop then drive wildly in reverse back to where she and Juno were standing, Margie was amazed to feel…nothing. Calm. No nerves. No worry that the puffy, pasty-faced SUV driver with a receding hairline and wide moustache would somehow hurt her. No worry about what this stranger might say or do. No guilt that she had done something deliberately vindictive. She could match him, could hurt him more than he could ever hurt her. Hell, she could Make Fire. What did he have? Nothing, except an extraordinarily large cursing vocabulary, which he was using liberally.

  To her credit, Juno only barked twice while the guy was yelling. He didn’t get out of the car, which could mean 1) he wasn’t that angry, 2) he didn’t realize just how disgusting his rear window was, or 3) he was a little scared. When he finally stopped yelling about his window, Margie calmly said, “Slow down on my street, or I’ll do it again.”

  “Are you threatening me, lady?” the guy asked. “Because if you are, I’ll have the cops on you so fast it’ll make your head spin.”

  “I was going to give them a call myself and ask if they’d put a speed trap on our street again. Except that only stops you temporarily. However, I walk this dog every morning. And she takes a big crap every morning, which I’ll be sure to save for you every morning. Or you can just stop going fifty in a twenty-five zone.” With that, she calmly resumed her walk.

  The driver turned on the rear windshield wiper but only succeeded in smearing warm dog poop and ripped plastic bag all over the window. He started driving slowly alongside her, yelling the entire time about how she was going to pay if there was any damage to his car and how he knew half the Lyndhurst police force and would get her arrested. He threw in a few choice insults, but she didn’t even look at him.

  When the guy finally drove away, she noticed that he went a little more slowly than usual and came to a complete stop at the corner. Juno gave a punctuating woof as the SUV turned onto Mayfield Road. “You tell him, Juno. Good dog.” Juno looked over her shoulder with an expression that Margie always equated with the dog having told a joke and waiting for the human to get it. “Oh, you’re right,” Margie said. “You can get a whole lot more done when you aren’t worried about being nice.”

  IC_SuperLadies posted: Did David of David and Goliath fame have a dog? Asking for a friend.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Woman Who Can’t Be Hurt had settled into a comfortable routine. Every weekday morning, she’d do her Very Early Superhero Patrol Run, so named because the “VESPR” acronym amused her, even if vespers were actually the evening prayer. She’d pick a neighborhood to run in, keeping an eye on empty houses or parked cars. And just about every run included a visit to the bus stop at Euclid and East 125th to check on Estelle, typically waiting until her elderly charge had gotten on the downtown bus safely. Getting up at three or four in the morning and running for a few hours had quickly become her normal. Treating Hal like a roommate had become normal too. He didn’t seem to care. It would be easy to say he had pulled away first.

  There were times when she missed the camaraderie of running with Abra, the give-and-take that comes with a relationship that is equal parts friendly competition and support. But she didn’t need anyone to push her now. And she doubted whether anyone could keep up with her, even an invisible Abra.

  School had started, so she’d rearranged and curtailed her runs a little bit in the interest of time. She was teaching the same courses as the year before, so the lesson plans were essentially the same. Still, lesson plans always need to be tweaked, her classroom organized, and supplies ordered. And always there were meetings. That was the teacher’s annual drill. If the last thing she did was wait for the bus with Estelle, she could still get home around the same time she always had. Hal left for work on time, and she waited with Anna for the school bus and neither of them had any clue that her running schedule was any different than it had ever been.

  Her newly minted fourth grader was going through a musicals phase. The Saturday after school started, it was The Sound of Music, which she had already seen twice. In the past six months, they had watched Singing in the Rain, Guys and Dolls, My Fair Lady, Annie (four times), and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. “It’s gotta be from your side of the family,” Hal said in the kitchen. He was getting another slice of pizza, and Katherine followed him into the kitchen to put her plate in the sink. “You have the music genes. Nobody in my family can even carry a tune.”

  “You say that as though liking musicals is a bad thing,” Katherine said.

  “I’m glad she’s expanding her tastes. I just wish she’d expand them a little more. I’m sick of The Sound of Music,” Hal said.

  Anna’s voice chimed in from the living room. “Can I stay up and watch the whole thing?”

  “I thought she was supposed to be getting back on her school schedule even on the weekends?” he said to Katherine. He always seemed to refer to Anna in the third person whenever he thought Katherine was falling down on the parenting job. Sort of like how their old dog had always been “Katherine’s dog” whenever it chewed up a book or a shoe.

  “Mom said I could stay up until the next song was over.”

  “And it’s over,” Katherine said to Anna. In response to Anna’s protest about having to go to bed early, Katherine picked her up, gave her a belly kiss, and started doing arm curls, using Anna’s compact nine-year-old body as a weight bar. As usual, this cracked Anna up. Katherine s
ent her up to her room before she got out-of-control silly because that would mean another twenty minutes before the kid settled down. Anna must have been more tired than she let on, because Katherine managed to get her to bed and quiet without too much trouble. The start of the school year always seemed to wear kids out. When she rejoined Hal in the living room, he was flipping through channels on the television. He was in the easy chair, so she sat down on the sofa to watch a bit of whatever action movie he was watching.

  “Do you want to watch something together?” he asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  They sat in silence. Hal had never been talkative, but his silence bordered on aloofness. They could talk about something simple, like Anna’s school supplies or the grocery list, but Katherine couldn’t remember the last time they had had a conversation about anything meaningful. More and more, she felt like things were coming to an end. There was a mental and emotional moving on. They were still in the same house, still co-parenting the same small wonderful person, but the attraction, the intimacy, the glue of the two of them seemed gone.

  “Um, could we talk for a minute?” she asked.

  Hal gave a small but audible sigh and shut off the television. “What?” he asked, although he looked more tired than interested.

  Now that she was face-to-face with her husband, Katherine wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. She wanted to tell him everything and nothing. For all she knew, Hal was feeling the same way, just going along each day pretending that he was still in love with his wife. If nothing else, she owed him her honesty. “I need to tell you something but…” She suddenly thought of Eli’s comic. “Maybe it’s better to show it to you. Hold on.”

  “Can I turn the TV back on while I wait?”

  “Sure, I just need to find the iPad.”

  “It’s in our room.”

  “Be right back.”

  As she ran upstairs to get the iPad, Katherine felt a bit better. The comic was the perfect segue. When she handed the iPad to Hal saying, “Read this,” she first saw a slight look of surprise, then a little grin slide across his face. He quickly scrolled through a few of the comics Eli had posted on the blog then looked up.

  “That’s cute,” he said with a smile. “Eli turned you three into superheroes. Pretty clever comic.”

  Katherine had been pacing around the living room while Hal read, occasionally peeking over his shoulder. She took a deep breath. Here goes nothing. “It isn’t just a comic. It’s true.”

  Hal put the iPad on the end table next to the chair. “What’s true?”

  “We’ve turned into superheroes.”

  Hal looked at her for a moment, as though trying to decide whether his wife was joking or simply losing her mind. Apparently he decided on joking because he blurted out a “Sure, dear” that was mostly a guffaw. When Katherine didn’t burst out laughing with him, he composed himself a bit. “Sorry, I don’t mean to laugh. I love that you talk to Anna about all that girl power stuff. And I know you were into the whole the Riot Grrrl scene back in the day, but…come on. You expect me to believe that you and Abra and Margie have superpowers?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very funny, Katherine.”

  “Do you want me to prove it?” she asked.

  Hal made an exasperated pffft noise, like a blown tire. “Dear, unless ‘superpower’ is a new euphemism for something kinky, no, I don’t want you to try and prove something that’s impossible.” He stood up, took four steps over to where Katherine was sitting on the sofa, and kissed her on top of the head. “Thank you for showing me the comic. I’ll see you in bed. Good night.” He left the room and went up to bed, leaving Katherine frustrated and fuming. Somehow it seemed like more than just the end of a conversation. Still, she didn’t say that to Margie and Abra the next time they got together. She merely said, “That was that. I told him, but I didn’t tell him.”

  They had switched their normal Thursday night to Tuesday because Billy was now playing at the old Academy Tavern over in Shaker Heights on Tuesdays. It was one of those working-class bar/taverns that had been in the same location for eighty years. The menu veered toward comfort food and old stand-bys—burgers, sandwiches, and lots and lots of french fries.

  “You made the effort,” Margie said to Katherine. “Now he can never say you didn’t tell him.”

  “I guess.” For a moment Katherine wanted to say more. She wanted to say that there were moments when she truly didn’t care if Hal knew, when she wasn’t even sure if she cared what he thought anymore. But why worry her friends until she was sure? It seemed safer to change the subject. “Karl knows everything, right?” she asked Margie.

  Margie gave a sheepish smile. “Yeah. He kind of thinks it’s sexy.”

  “But we all know Karl’s freaky,” said Abra, giving Margie’s shoulder a nudge with her own as she said the word “freaky.”

  “Takes one to know one.” Margie took a sip of her beer as a small salute to herself.

  Katherine felt the tiniest pang of envy but let it pass. Why begrudge her friend having an active sex life? At least somebody she knew was. She settled back to listen to the music. In a venue like this, Billy could let loose and play straight-ahead jazz instead of toning it down like at the Metro. People at the Academy occasionally sang a song with him too, usually an old standard. There’s always somebody who wants to get up and sing, Katherine thought as a pudgy, older white guy got up and started to sing “All I Do Is Dream of You.” It took her a moment to recognize the song—she’d only ever heard Debbie Reynolds sing it pert and perky in Singin’ in the Rain. This guy did a more-than-respectable melancholy rendition that made most of the tavern stop and listen.

  “Is it my imagination or did that guy suddenly get like five times more attractive the moment he began to sing?” Abra said.

  “I wouldn’t say five times more attractive,” Katherine said. “Maybe a doubling in his attractiveness quotient.”

  “Would that was all I had to do.”

  “You’re gorgeous,” Katherine and Margie said at the same time.

  “Seriously gorgeous,” Margie added. “I’m not saying it to be nice the way you guys say it to me. You are.”

  “It clearly isn’t enough.” Abra let her words drift off into the music.

  “Don’t even start about Evil Richard,” Katherine asked. “He’s an asshole.”

  “You forgot the word ‘gaping’ in front of that,” Margie added.

  “Gaping asshole.”

  Abra sighed. “You know, I went on a date the other night…”

  “What!” Katherine said at the same time Margie exclaimed, “Oh my gosh, how was it?”

  “It was with a guy I messaged on Leap.com, this dating site. He owns a small construction firm. He seemed nice enough, and he was really cute.”

  This was getting good. Once you’ve been married more than ten years, you occasionally need to live vicariously through your single friends. “That sounds promising,” Katherine encouraged. “What happened?”

  “He was as good-looking as his picture and also really full of himself. There was no spark, no connection, you know? It just started to seem like a waste of my time, so midway through the meal, I excused myself to the bathroom, turned invisible, and left.” In the noise of the tavern, it was difficult to tell whether Katherine or Margie guffawed more loudly. “It isn’t funny!” Abra protested.

  Katherine couldn’t even respond, but Margie managed to stammer, “Yes, it is.”

  “It was a spur of the moment decision, but now I feel guilty. I should have at least paid the check before I left, except I’m broke.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re using your powers for good and not for evil,” Margie said.

  “Did he ask you to dinner, or did you ask him?” Katherine asked.

  “We messaged back and forth a few times, then he asked me. He pick
ed the restaurant too.”

  “If he asked you, then you were under no obligation to pay the check. Or put out.”

  This at least elicited a small smile from Abra. “We don’t need to talk about me. I thought we were here to commiserate with the empty nester.”

  “The nest is emptier but not empty. I miss Eli like crazy, but I hear from him a lot. Granted, it’s mainly to get updates for the comic, but it’s a good excuse to talk to him.” She paused, as though she was going to say something else.

  “What?” Abra asked.

  “Nothing. I’m fine. What else is going on with you? Did you get the quitclaim deed signed?”

  “Yes. Thank you for your help with that.”

  “Great!” Katherine said. “You severed the last tie with him. Congratulations.” She raised her glass, and Margie did the same. Abra didn’t.

  “Yes, now it’s solely my house. And now I’m solely responsible for a mortgage that is so deep underwater Jacques Cousteau couldn’t find it.”

  “Can you pay it?” Margie asked.

  “Barely, but it will be years before I’m actually getting ahead. To save money I stopped buying a transit pass and just turn invisible to ride the train.” Katherine couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. “Don’t judge, it saves me a hundred bucks a month.”

  “I’m not judging. I actually find it rather clever.”

  “I would probably do the same thing in your situation,” Margie added. “Short of buying your next drink, is there anything concrete we could do for you?” She paused, then said in a voice so quiet Katherine had to strain to hear it above the noise of the piano and conversation, “Is there a way you could help yourself the same way you helped your next-door neighbors?”