• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Yes, Dad, it’s the most beautiful tree in the whole wide world,” Suzi’s mom said.

Ava smiled at Granddad, ignoring Suzi, so Suzi kept talking, saying whatever came into her head, because it didn’t matter: whatever she said would do the trick. “Elvis loved black people. Even loved geese. I declare, he’s a saint.”

Suzi’s parents, at opposite ends of the long trestle table, glanced up at each other, their faces sagging with tiredness, and Suzi knew she should keep her mouth shut, and probably would have, but her mother said, “You can’t let us have one dinner in peace.”

“What?” Suzi said. “She always talks about Elvis. Why can’t I?”

Ava couldn’t stand it any longer. “You don’t like Elvis because he’s part Native American! And part Jewish. You’re prejudiced.”

“No,” said Suzi, “I don’t like him because he sings like he has a stick up his butt.”

“I like him,” their father said, a little too heartily.

“I don’t dislike him,” Suzi said. “I just think he has a stick up his butt.”

“Eat. Your. Supper.” Mom’s hair was frizzed out around her face from the humidity in the kitchen, and she slumped over the table like she was 110 years old.

“Don’t you just love trees?” Granddad said, and took a sip of his water. “I think that tree has to be the most beautiful one ever.”

“Yes, it is, Granddad,” Ava said. Miss Suck Up.

“I wonder,” Suzi asked, “did Elvis have a syndrome, too? Like Asperger’s? Ass stickers?”

Otis barked out, “Shut up. Freakazoid foundling.” He meant that Suzi must have been adopted because she didn’t have Asperger’s and had kinky, curly hair.

“Don’t say ‘shut up,’ ” Mom told Otis, then threatened Suzi with lack of phone privileges.

For a moment there was only chewing and swallowing. Parson Brown wound between their legs under the table, snuffling for crumbs. Outside, the evening sky was turning a pale yellowish color.

“This is very good,” Dad told Mom, indicating the chicken Alfredo, which was one of the four dishes she cooked because everyone would eat them. Mom didn’t even look up.

“Yes, it is, honey,” said Granddad, and took an actual bite.

Mom said thanks like she didn’t mean it.

“Tropical storm Alfredo’s headed right for the Panhandle,” Dad went on and said, “St. Marks, maybe.”

“Who cares. It’s not a hurricane,” Otis said. Elbows on the table, he went back to his chicken, bent low and shoveling it into his mouth. He chewed with his mouth gaping open. Both he and Ava had terrible table manners, and Suzi was sick and tired of having to watch them eat, but she decided to practice self-control and refrain from imitating them or saying anything about how gross they were.

“It might turn into a hurricane,” Dad said.

“It’s Alberto, not Alfredo,” Ava corrected Dad, who smiled. He’d been testing them.

Suzi felt stupid that she hadn’t caught Dad’s error, so she tried out another angle on Ava, saying something that could, if she had the right attorney, be construed as an innocent remark in a court of law. “Will you tell your roommate at college that you have a syndrome?” she asked Ava.

Ava couldn’t help rising to the bait. “I don’t have it anymore. I’ve outgrown it.”

“Isn’t that just the most beautiful tree ever?”

“Yes, Dad. The most. Beautiful. Ever.”

When Granddad first came to live with them, all three kids had cut back on their fighting, at least in front of Granddad, but after Suzi noticed that Mom and Dad seemed to be fighting more than ever, she went back to her wicked old ways, and so did the other two. “You don’t outgrow Asperger’s,” Suzi announced primly. “You and Otis will have it your entire lives.” Facts were facts, after all.

Ava’s face scrunched up. The moment had come. What would Ava do? Would she throw herself across the table and try to strangle Suzi? Would she pick up her glass of milk and toss it onto Suzi’s head? Would she scream about how much she hated Suzi’s guts?

Suzi tensed up, waiting for Ava to emit the high-pitched yell she usually gave before she attacked, but this time the yell never came.

Ava thrust her chair back and left