The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [11]
Suzi smiled politely. She pulled Parson across the street from the stop sign and the perv’s house, and stood back underneath the McPhersons’s live oak tree, out of the late afternoon sun. Nance and Buster followed. It was almost dinnertime. She could hear the McPherson kids in their backyard pool, yelling, splashing. It smelled like they were having a cookout. Suzi’s family hadn’t had a cookout in ages.
Suzi hadn’t changed out of her soccer shorts and stinky shirt but was wearing her favorite flip-flops, and her feet felt wonderfully unencumbered. The dogs had already sniffed hello. Parson had plopped down on her stomach in some weeds, and she was gazing up at Suzi like, Can’t we get going already? No, Suzi silently told her, we’re going to take our time. Buster leaned forward on his squat little front legs, soft white belly pouching out, and watched some squirrels racing about in the tree like they were on speed.
“When?” Nance asked her. “When should I stop by to meet your family?”
Didn’t the woman know that Suzi was just being polite? She was about ready to say anytime, but remembering her menopausal mother, she thought better of it. On her mother’s recent birthday she’d stayed in bed all day and could barely get up the energy to blow out her birthday candles—a group of four and a group of eight carefully arranged by Suzi, who’d had to carry the cake—one she’d made herself—to her mother’s bedside. Suzi’d had to pitch in and help her mother blow out the candles, which caused Ava—Miss Letter of the Law—to cry because they weren’t following proper birthday-candle blowing-out procedure. Otis leaped forward as soon as the flames went out and yanked the candles out of the cake so that he could be the one to lick the bottoms. Then he and Ava begin to fight over the candles, dropping a few of them on the bedspread, while her father yelled at them to stop. Happy birthday, dear Mommy! All Suzi’s efforts to please her mother were wasted.
“I’ll check and see when you can come by,” Suzi told Nance. Suddenly she felt deflated, but she didn’t really know why.
“What else interests you, besides soccer?” Nance asked her.
“I used to be in drama,” Suzi said. “I love being in plays, but I don’t have time now. I really want to travel, go to Europe. Italy.” I just want to rest, is what she really felt, but didn’t know how to say it. I don’t want to have to work so hard at being perfect. But nobody would admit that out loud because it would sound like bragging. And there were perks that went with being thought of as perfect. She had to fend off the girls who wanted to be her best friend and boys, too, except Dylan B., who looked right through her.
“Italy,” Nance said, nodding. “I’ve always wanted to go there, too. Rent a villa in Tuscany. Sleep late every morning. Walk into a village for bread and fresh vegetables and gorgeous leather shoes. Tour the little churches. How does that sound?”
It sounded great, even the church part. “I go to Faith Presbyterian. My dad’s an atheist and my mom hates having to be nice to people.”
Nance didn’t respond to this revelation. “You and I should go to Tuscany together,” Nance said. “Have a true vacation. No soccer allowed.”
As if, Suzi thought, but she smiled. “Read all day,” she said. “That’s what I’d really like to do.” It was curious that she and Nance barely knew each other and were already talking about going on an overseas vacation together. Okay, curious didn’t even begin to describe it. But, she realized, she liked the idea of going to Italy, even with an old lady she barely knew. Especially with an old lady she barely knew. Her age and her lack of connection to Suzi might make her the ideal traveling companion. She could suddenly see it, the two of them, herself and Nance, reclining on lounge chairs in a lovely courtyard with flowers and a fountain, Nance wearing her usual white shirt and khakis and her funny hat, reading a book, and herself reading one big fat Scottish romance after another. No cell phones or soccer dads or people with Asperger’s talking about Elvis or nuclear