Authors: Joyce Maynard
To Die For
Joyce Maynard
For the voice at the other end of the telephone, my agent and friend—and an irreplaceably astute reader—Robert Cornfield. With love.
Well she grew up hard and she grew up fast
In the age of television
And she made a vow to have it all
It became her new religion
Oh, down in her soul, it was an act of treason
Oh, down they go for all the wrong reasons
—from the song “All the Wrong Reasons”
CAROL STONE
J
UST TO GIVE YOU
an idea of Susie. What a go-getter she was, right from the start. I can remember back when we lived on Sunrise Lane, her standing in front of the mirror, giving weather reports. She couldn’t have been more than three years old at the time. I mean, this girl had a goal in life, and the determination to pursue it. You know how some little girls say they want to be fairy princesses or ballerinas when they grow up? That wasn’t Susie. Right from the start, she had her feet on the ground and she knew what she wanted. I remember one time, we were watching the “Today” show. This was way back, when they still had Barbara Walters, for goodness sake, and my Susie’s pointing to her on the screen telling me, “That’s what I want to be someday, Mommy. I’m going to be on TV.”
And now of course, she is. Every night. It’s just not the way we pictured it. God, look at me. They said this mascara was waterproof. I’m writing a letter to the company.
And she was good at it too. Earl and I can show you her tapes. We got one of the first home video cameras they made—back when you still had to carry around a battery pack—just so we could tape Susie’s broadcasts. She had this news show— “Suzanne’s World.” You’ve never seen anything so cute. She’d report on what was going on in the neighborhood—so-and-so got a puppy, so-and-so’s grandparents came to visit. But the way she did it, it was just like a real TV newscaster. “Now back to you, Faye,” she’d say, at the end of her report. Faye was the anchorwoman. Earl ran the camera. But Susie was the star.
Back in those days, she was always self-conscious about her nose. Which I always thought was fine just the way it was. But it was typical of Suzanne that she started planning for the plastic surgery from—what?—fifth grade? Sixth at the most. We finally got it taken care of when she was twelve, but in the meantime, she worked out all these little tricks for deemphasizing her nose with contour brushes and so forth. Every time we’d take her picture, she had this certain angle she liked to tilt her head. I’d show you, but after the operation she up and threw away every one of those old portraits, if you can believe it.
If you want to know the truth—and we never told Suzanne this, naturally—Earl and I were sort of upset after the swelling came down from her surgery. Maybe her nose was a tad bigger than average in the first place, but the new one was awfully small, and kind of tilted up. Earl said we should sue, but how would that have made Suzanne feel? The main thing was, she was happy.
And popular? I’m telling you, by the time that girl was thirteen, Earl had to have another phone line put in for Susie’s calls. We had boys knocking on the door just to get a look at her. Older boys, too—seventeen, eighteen—asking her out when she was still in junior high. Of course Earl and I said no. We always ran a tight ship. Not that Susie would have done anything, anyway. This was a young lady with a head on her shoulders. “You know, Mom,” she used to tell me, “I just don’t have time for a lot of dating. I’ve got to think about my future.”
Not that she was antisocial. We’re not talking about some sort of hermit. I’m telling you, this girl had activities every day of the week. Monday, cheering practice. Tuesday, yearbook. Modeling class, Wednesday nights. Church youth group—if you want to know how ridiculous all this is, let me tell you: she was real active in that. Susie even started a chapter of Students Who Just Say No at the high school. Got right up there in assembly in front of the whole school and made a speech. Cool as a cucumber, like she’d been doing it all her life. Well, of course, she had.
Earl and I never missed watching her cheer. Lancaster High didn’t have that good of a team, but I’m telling you, you never saw better cheerleading. Suzanne was the captain. They had these little maroon skirts—maroon and yellow, those were the colors. Suzanne hated them, but what can you do?—and yellow sweaters with a big L on the front. I remember the day they got the uniforms. Suzanne didn’t think the hem on hers was quite right, so she redid the whole thing. That was Suzanne for you. Always a perfectionist. Always the highest standards. You couldn’t say gymnastics was her specialty, but you’ve never seen a person work so hard on the splits. Every night, when she was on the phone, she’d be sitting there, on the floor, working on that full split of hers. I don’t need to tell you she got it, now do I?
It was always hard for Faye. We knew that. Here’s Susie with that cute little figure of hers, a natural blonde, boys coming round at all hours of the day and night. And there’s Faye starving to death on some new liquid diet. Life isn’t always fair, what can you say? There was our Suzanne getting straight As, and Faye struggling to keep a C average. Suzanne making the ski team. Faye breaking her leg on day one. And then there was Faye’s skin problem. The money we spent on dermatologists.
But Faye was always proud of Susie. I can still see the two of them, Faye pushing Susie down the street in that little stroller of hers down Sunrise Lane, barely out of diapers herself. Telling everyone, “That’s my baby sister.” She just adored Suzanne. Well, who wouldn’t?
So it was no surprise when Larry Maretto started calling her up. I can’t tell you he seemed any more determined than some of the others. But maybe because he wasn’t in school—he was working at his folks’ restaurant—and Suzanne had graduated from college with a degree in media communications and landed a part-time job modeling at the Simpson’s over at the mall while she pursued a position in the media field. They were both ready to start thinking about settling down, I guess you could say. Not that she fell all over him or anything. But she didn’t turn him down, point-blank, like she always used to before.
You couldn’t say she was head over heels. Suzanne never got that way. She was always practical. But she let him keep calling and coming around. And things just slowly developed. I can’t even say when it happened, but before you know it, Larry’s coming by the house every night after work, to take her out, sending flowers, the whole bit. Next thing we know, she’s telling me, “Mom, we need to go shopping for a wedding dress.”
Earl and I had always pictured Suzanne settling down with more of a college type. So I have to admit that at first we had our doubts about Larry, and we told Suzanne as much. But for the first time in her life, it didn’t seem to bother her, making a choice that didn’t exactly please us. It was almost like she was finally having her own little adolescent rebellion or whatever, with this long-haired rock-and-roll drummer of hers. “All my life I’ve been doing what you and Dad wanted, Mom,” Susie said to me. “This time I’m making my own choice.”
And in the end of course, Larry won us over too. Anyone could see he was nuts about her—sending her flowers, writing her poems, songs even, that he played for her on his guitar. Delivering this pizza to the house one night, with her name spelled out in olives. Then giving her that puppy of course. A Lhasa apso. You could tell he was a hard worker. He’d been working in the family business since he was twelve or thirteen, and Earl and I both felt confident that he was done sowing his wild oats and now he was ready to make something of himself.
It was a beautiful wedding. Susie wore this cream-colored silk gown with little seed pearls down the back. She copied her veil from this picture we had of Maria Shriver. Suzanne kept a scrapbook of all the big network newswomen. She could tell you anything you wanted to know about those women—where they got their first news anchor job, what their shoe size was, I’m telling you. So anyway, she had a Maria Shriver wedding veil.
When Larry first started coming around, he had this long hair. Don’t get the wrong idea—he was always clean, but they were just kids, you know. They liked listening to rock music and going dancing at clubs and so forth. Larry had a motorcycle. Although I have to say he always wore a helmet, and he made sure Susie did too.
But by the wedding, they had all that behind them. Larry had sold his motorcycle and cut his hair. His dad made him weekend manager down at the restaurant. I mean, you’ve never seen such a change in a person in such a short time. Suzanne was sending out job applications to TV stations, and finally, right after the honeymoon, the cable station here in town took her on, which was a real breakthrough. She wasn’t in front of a camera yet on a regular basis, but it was a beginning, something for her resume. And you knew it was only a matter of time before she’d move on to something bigger. Larry was behind her a thousand percent.