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
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,
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.
What exactly was she supposed to do?
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 had 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
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
