The Super Ladies

by Petrone, Susan

  When did Evil Richard get a dog? Margie ran to the side door. Predictably, it was locked. She peered in the door window and saw an old, rotund gray-and-black dog standing on the opposite side. It barked again, two woofs in a row this time, then stopped, as though all that barking had taken a lot out of it. “I hate your dad, but I’ll get you out,” she said, aware that she had just as much chance of getting bitten by a cranky old dog as she did of saving its life. But still, it was an innocent animal. It wasn’t the dog’s fault its owner was a big jerk.

  Clasping it with both hands, she sent a heat wave through the brass doorknob. Within seconds she felt it softening and melting, just enough that she could turn the knob and open the door. The dog shuffled out with a woof, a less defensive one this time, wandered over to the neighbor’s privacy fence, and half raised a rear leg for a pee.

  Margie looked at her hands. She’d never really thought about her body’s relationship to heat. Why was it that she hadn’t wondered until now why heat and even fire could issue forth from her body without injury? All those times she had melted something or lit something on fire, she hadn’t been harmed. Why should she? If the heat was generating from her body, why should it harm her? And if that was the case, why wasn’t she on the deck with Katherine helping to put out the fire?

  Maybe we can put it out ourselves, she thought as she joined Katherine on the deck. They stood side by side patting down the flames on the side of the house while Abra continued hosing down the higher parts they couldn’t reach. They kept getting hit with inadvertent showers from the hose accompanied by a hissed “Sorry!” from Abra.

  They worked quickly, quietly. The stout old dog sat down in the middle of the backyard and stared up at them, as though unsure whether they posed a threat or not. Margie ignored him, focusing on the task of saving the house she had been so eager to destroy half an hour ago. She tried not to think about the fact that this was Evil Richard’s house and concentrated on the idea of it being someone’s house, someone’s home. She grudgingly acknowledged even Evil Richard needed a place to call home, although the thought that he’d have a smoky, stinky wet mess to repair felt a bit like payback. It was unspoken that the moment the fire was gone, so were they. Evil Richard need never know who had lit his house on fire or who had put it out.

  Finally, Margie’s left hand stamped out the last of the fire that she could reach. Above her, the water from the hose sprayed down. Despite Abra’s best efforts, she and Katherine were drenched. But the fire was out.

  She stood panting slightly, looking at the singed and burnt wooden siding. In spots the fire had burned all the way through to the foam board insulation underneath. She and Katherine looked at each other and smiled.

  “You’re all dirty,” Katherine said.

  “You’re all singe-y,” Margie replied.

  “I’m wet!” Abra softly sang from the roof, making the word “wet” sound as though it had two syllables. It was a little trippy to see the hose moving in midair with just the vague outline of Abra’s bodiless jeans and sweater behind it. “You can turn this off,” Abra said.

  “I got it,” Katherine replied. “And then let’s get out of here.”

  ⍟ ⍟ ⍟

  Katherine stepped off the stairs that led from the deck to the driveway, walked to the spigot on the side of the house, and gave it a turn. Suddenly there was a set of headlights in her eyes as a shiny electric-blue Mazda pulled into the driveway. “Oh shit,” Katherine said loudly. She knew the driver could see her, but maybe she could buy Margie and Abra a little time to get out of sight through the neighbor’s backyard.

  The dog gave a somewhat hopeful woof and started waddling toward the car as the driver got out. It was a woman a few years younger than she was, dressed nicely in a skirt and blouse. Office-worker clothes. Dear God, don’t let this be the wrong house, Katherine thought.

  The woman bent down a bit to pat the dog, not taking her eyes off of Katherine. “Hey, Bowser,” the woman said. “Hey person standing in my driveway.” She sounded reasonably wary but not mean. Katherine took a gamble.

  “Hi. I’m Indestructa. There was a fire on your back deck that spread to the house. We put it out.”

  From behind her, she heard Margie’s voice say, “And we got Bowser out of the house to keep him safe.” Margie walked up and stood next to Katherine, two damp and dirty women with singe marks on their clothes and skin and funky reading glasses on their faces. The woman stared at them, her face a mixture of confusion and shock. Then she rushed past them into the backyard and took in the half-burnt deck, the blackened, burned sections of her house.

  “Oh my God…” she murmured. When she said it a third time, Katherine was sure her gamble had paid off. She’d never remember what they looked like. Not really. The woman couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the house and spoke as though in a daze. “Thank you… I stopped to see my boyfriend at his work and had a drink or I would have been home.”

  “Fortunately, we were in the neighborhood,” Katherine said.

  “Poor Richard,” the woman said, almost to herself. “He’s gonna be so disappointed.” She turned to them. “My boyfriend just moved in a couple months ago and built this deck for our six-month anniversary.” She still sounded a bit like she was in shock.

  Katherine fought back the urge to make a smart aleck comment. “That’s too bad,” she managed. She looked sideways over at Margie.

  “He can rebuild it,” Margie added. She sounded sufficiently sympathetic.

  The woman stared again at her partially burnt home in silence for a moment then turned to them. “How in the world did you put this out? Who are you?”

  “We’re the Super Ladies,” Margie said as she took a step backward away from the woman and toward the street.

  Katherine took this as her cue to leave too. “The fire is out,” she said, walking backward down the driveway. “You and your dog are safe.”

  The woman looked relieved and puzzled. When she squatted down to give fat old Bowser a quick hug, Katherine and Margie high-tailed it out to Abra’s car. The driver’s door opened just as they got there. It was so dark by this time they hadn’t even noticed Abra’s bodiless clothes running in front of them.

  Katherine got in the front passenger seat, while Margie climbed into the back. “You gonna turn visible before you start driving?” Katherine asked.

  “Maybe. Margie, where’s your car?”

  “Two blocks over.”

  “Got it.”

  ⍟ ⍟ ⍟

  Abra made a jack rabbit start to get out of sight before the woman or anyone else could come out and see their car. The Woman Who Can’t Be Seen drove two blocks, pulled up behind Margie’s car, and cut the headlights. She tried not to think about the fact that Evil Richard had a girlfriend, was living with someone else, was celebrating a six-month anniversary when he had only been gone eight months. He was no longer her problem. She hated to admit it, but the girlfriend seemed like a good egg, maybe the good egg Evil Richard needed to become not so evil. “She actually seemed…nice,” Abra said.

  “She didn’t seem evil,” Katherine said. “I’ll give her that.”

  “She seemed like a woman who doesn’t mind having a project boyfriend,” Margie added from the backseat. “But you deserve more than that. You’re better than nice.”

  Abra smiled. “You’re right. I do. I am.” They waited. They were together, and the idea of splitting up now seemed wrong. Maybe in an hour or two but not right now. “I think there’s a bar a few blocks from here,” Abra said.

  “I could use a drink right about now,” The Woman Who Burns replied.

  The Woman Who Can’t Be Hurt agreed. “If you’re driving, I’m buying,” she said.

  “I’ll drive on one condition,” Abra said. “Next time I get to say, ‘We’re the Super Ladies.’”

  “Done.”

  They s
tayed together, three women driving slowly through the darkness, bound by friendship and powers they were still discovering. The Woman Who Can’t Be Hurt is not out to hurt you. The Woman Who Burns will not burn what you love. The Woman Who Can’t Be Seen is doing tremendous things behind your back.

  Imagine that.

  About the Author

  Susan Petrone lives with one husband, one child, and two dogs in Cleveland, Ohio. Her superpower has yet to be uncovered.

  The Super Ladies Discussion Guide

  Are you a woman (or man) others don’t see or someone who can’t be seen? Why do you feel this way?

  Which Super Lady do you identify with the most?

  Have you ever put yourself in jeopardy to help someone else, like Margie, Abra, and Katherine did for Janelle? Do you think what they did was wise or foolish? Would you have stopped to help? Have you ever witnessed an injustice and not helped out?

  Was there ever a time in your life when you felt like you had superhuman strength or some other superpower?

  If you could choose a superpower, what would it be and why?

  Why do you think the author chose to parallel what was happening to the Super Ladies in Eli’s comic strip?

  What would you do if you truly had no reason to be afraid of anything or anyone? How would it change the way you experience and travel in the world?

  Do you think it is ever right to break the law to get revenge or teach someone a lesson like Margie did when she set Richard’s house on fire? What are the limits to revenge?

  Do you think that if more women would act on their true feelings and stop being “nice” that the balance of power would shift in our society?

  The Super Ladies seem to help many who are disadvantaged. Who are the people that save disadvantaged people in real life? What heroic or superhuman characteristics do they have? How are these characteristics imbued in the Super Ladies?

  How do you define justice? In what ways are the Super Ladies seeking justice?

  After having read this book, are you considering going out and buying a pair of distinctive reading glasses?

  A Conversation with the Author

  How did you get the idea to write this story?

  I got the idea for The Super Ladies in the middle of the night in late summer. I sometimes have trouble sleeping anyway, and that night I must have had my first full-blown hot flash. I was lying there thinking about all the things we think about when we can’t fall asleep, when I just started sweating. There was an odd recognition of “Oh, this must be what a hot flash feels like. How strange.” I live in Northeast Ohio on the shore of Lake Erie, where we still have real winters. Maybe it’s because I’m an eternal optimist, but the first thing I thought of was “Gee, this will come in handy next January.” After that, it wasn’t a big leap to pondering what it would be like to be able to channel all this heat. Why, it would almost be like a superpower!

  What do you think is meant by the old expression “change of life” when referring to menopause? How did your own change of life inform how you portrayed the three women as becoming stronger and more assertive?

  It’s weird to write or even think about my own change of life because that’s a tacit acknowledgement that I’m a woman of a certain age. Most of us feel the same as adults as we did when we were twelve, you know? We may grow and gain experience and knowledge, but that core of your being, the you who you are when you’re all alone, remains pretty much the same. At the same time, you can’t deny that your body is aging. Everyone’s body goes through huge changes in adolescence that take them from child to adult. Women are in the unique position of having a second big change that takes us from adult to—? That question mark is the exciting part. As far as Abra, Katherine, and Margie becoming stronger and more assertive, it’s a direct result of their powers, a direct result of not having to be afraid of anything.

  Why do you want to explore the physical vulnerability of being female? When do you think women can be physically safe?

  From adolescence, women can’t help being aware of certain physical vulnerabilities. Popular media consistently shows physically strong men and not-quite-as-strong women. There’s a reason why movies that upend that trope, like Wonder Woman in 2017, get so much attention. It isn’t something we get to see very often. When you go to college or the workplace, you’re offered basic self-defense workshops or handy tips on “keeping yourself safe.” After a while, the idea that you could be physically hurt and must take precautions becomes second nature to most women. Even so, an estimated one out of six American women experiences an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. (I just looked this up—it’s on the RAINN Institute website.) It stinks that this is part of being an American woman. Women can be physically safe when we start teaching everybody from a very young age—preschool—that your body is your body, no one else’s, and that you don’t have the right to someone else’s body.

  In some ways, The Super Ladies is a book about buddies. What truths were you teasing out about female friendships?

  I hadn’t thought about The Super Ladies as a buddy novel, but it kind of is. Female friendships are admittedly complex. Sometimes when they’re portrayed in books and certainly in popular films and television, the relationships are portrayed as being all complexity, a messy web of feelings, misunderstanding, and overanalyzing random remarks with some mani-pedis and Chardonnay thrown in for good measure. I’ve never been that sort of person. I suppose the female friendships in my books reflect the kind of friendships I have in real life with the wonderful friends who put up with my bluntness; my short, unpolished nails; and distaste for white wine.

  As a wife and mother, how do you find time to seclude yourself to write?

  I ignore my family. Seriously, sometimes that’s what you need to do in order to find the time to write. Mostly I write after everyone else has gone to bed. I’m fortunate to be married to a very understanding introvert who gives me the space in which to write. My daughter has some solitary activities she really likes—sewing, swimming, reading—so even as a little kid, she came to understand that her mother had a solitary activity she really liked to do too. I think about what I’m writing most of the time—on the treadmill, while I’m driving, while I’m making dinner, etc. Also, I don’t watch much television. It makes me miss some of the cultural conversations around certain shows, but it buys me time. When everyone else at work was talking about Game of Thrones, I was quietly thinking about supercritical fluid extraction.

  Did you write the chapter six conversation between Abra and Althea before or after the spate of workplace sexual harassment accusations in fall 2017?

  I wrote it well before the #MeToo movement. It wasn’t a reaction to what was happening in the news as much a reaction to personal experience and lifelong observations of the interactions between men and women. That kind of stuff happens all the time.

  How did you create the science for the explosion and the hormonal change?

  A very smart friend of mine works for a chemical company. I gave him the parameters—a science project that might trigger superhero-worthy changes (kind of like Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider), and he outlined what became Joan’s science fair project. Then I did some supplementary reading on supercritical fluid extraction and breast cancer-phytoestrogen links. The research I do for my fiction is small-scale. I have friends who write historical fiction or history-based mysteries, and the amount of research they do is daunting.

  Some parts of the novel feel “meta.” How (or in what way) were you playing with the archetype of the superhero, such as the disguising glasses or Eli’s comic strip?

  Once I had the initial idea of three friends who develop superpowers when they go through menopause, it took me two full (bad) drafts of the novel to figure out the story. I kept getting caught up in trying to create some complex plot with an archvillain for the
m to fight. Two good discussions—one with editor Lou Aronica of The Story Plant and one with a friend who has a penchant for superheroes—helped me circle back to the core of the story: how would an ordinary contemporary woman acquire superpowers? What would happen once she did? That plot has meta overtones to begin with, so I just sort of embraced that.

  Throw Like a Woman and Super Ladies are both about extraordinary women who are also very ordinary in other ways—motherhood, gardening, staid marriages. What are you getting at? Are the women thrill-seekers? Are they undercover heroes? Are they aspirational? Does every regular woman believe that she is extraordinary?

  My daughter and I sometimes joke about the weird talents our family and friends have. For instance, my husband can clean the inside of car windows better than anyone I’ve ever met. I make superior grilled cheese sandwiches (based on feedback from numerous friends and small children). I have a friend who can always, always find the perfect avocado. Those aren’t superpowers, but they’re little things that one ordinary person can do better than another. So yeah, every regular woman—hell, every regular person—is extraordinary in some way. One of our purposes as humans is to uncover those weird, extraordinary talents.

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Becky Kyle, Ken Wood, John Aragon, Randy Goodman, Jim Rokakis, Gae Polisner and David Miller, Jon Apacible, and Halle Miroglotta for random technical advice and suggestions on early drafts of this book. Thank you to Tom Cullinan for his insights, support, and Indian buffets during the writing of the first draft. I’m grateful to Miesha Leanne Headen for schooling me on origin stories and to Mary Doria Russell for sharing her wisdom. Thanks again to Miesha and to Nicki Petrone for great reader’s guide questions. A huge shout-out to Tom Repko for turning me on to supercritical fluid extraction—thanks, Stoock. Many thanks to the Hillcrest Family YMCA’s spinning bikes and treadmills on which much of this book was plotted, and Punderson State Park, where a goodly portion was written. I am eternally grateful to Lou Aronica for his insight, patience, and vision; thank you for having faith that the right words would finally come out in the right order. And, as always, much love and gratitude to my weird little family for letting me disappear occasionally so I can write.