Authors: Joyce Maynard
She didn’t have much respect for anyone that didn’t. I mean, that girl was going somewhere.
To think of her sitting in some women’s prison. It’s too much for her mother and me. Especially knowing it’s Susie, who has always been so delicate and sensitive. Susie’s just not used to that type of people. She wouldn’t know how to take care of herself. She’s such a little lady.
I
WAS WORKING AS
a waitress at my folks’ restaurant one afternoon, just waiting on tables. This was a couple years back, before I went on the road. I was living at home, saving up money to go study in Lake Placid. Larry was playing drums in a band and picking up extra hours at our folks’ place between jobs. Which were never that plentiful for him, if you want to know the truth. That afternoon he and a couple of his friends had been hanging out at the mall, I guess. Looking at records and stuff. He comes running in the door and announces to everybody in the whole place, “That’s it. I’m in love.”
Well it turns out she’d been standing in front of some department store, giving out free perfume samples, and they got to talking. This was a woman’s perfume mind you, but Larry went over and said, “Let me have a squirt of that stuff.” Then he pretended he liked it so much he came back a couple minutes later, said, “Let me smell it again.” I guess he was so knocked out, he ends up buying the biggest size bottle she’s got. “Whoever you’re buying this for, you must be really crazy about her,” she says. “You’re right about that,” he says. And then he hands her the bottle. Right there in the middle of the store. That was my brother for you. Hopeless romantic.
“You got to meet this girl,” he tells me. “She’s the most perfect girl you’ve ever seen. And smart too. This job she’s got right now is just temporary, while she finds her niche in the media field. She’s going to be the next Barbara Walters.”
“Right,” I tell him. My brother always had a million girlfriends hanging around. A different one every week. Girls were always falling hard for Larry. It actually bothered him, because he said he hated to hurt their feelings. He liked a lot of people, but there was never anybody serious.
I was curious to see this person, of course. And not particularly impressed, to tell you the truth, when I laid eyes on her. Which I did just a couple days later when he took me over to the mall to meet her for myself.
“The little runt?” I asked him, while we were waiting for her to finish up with some customer. “Suicide Blonde,” I called her. Dyed by her own hand.
“She’s just so delicate,” he said. “So fragile. You look at her and you just want to take care of her. For the rest of your life.”
“Listen, Lar,” I told him. “I’ve known girls like her before. I can spot them a mile away. Under that soft voice and those thin lips of hers she’s hard as nails, trust me. She’s the kind that’s had guys falling all over themselves to get next to her all her life.”
“She looks so pure,” he said. “She looks like a china doll.”
“Right,” I told him. “You ever try making it with a doll? They don’t give a lot back.”
He didn’t pay any attention of course. All I know is, my brother, who was too shy to tell a person if they forgot to pay for their drink, was dialing up some florist shop in the Yellow Pages arranging for them to deliver a dozen long-stemmed roses to her that afternoon. For the message, he wanted it to say, “To my future bride. I’d die for your love.”
L
ARRY AND
I were so very much in love. You know that song about someone being the wind beneath your wings that Bette Midler sings? I had them play that at Larry’s funeral. Because that was Larry and myself.
There was something about him so innocent and vulnerable. He was like a little boy in a way, that always saw people in a good light, always seemed happy. “You’re too much of a worrier, Susie,” he’d say to me. Myself being a more intense kind of individual I guess you could say. Always giving a thousand percent. Always pushing the outside of the envelope, while he was content to go with the flow.
“Just take it easy for once in your life,” he’d tell me. “You don’t need to work so hard all the time.” He was always trying to get me to get an ice cream cone, call in sick for work, skip my aerobics class. I remember the first time we slept together, I got up before him, to make sure I had my makeup on and my teeth brushed, you know. And when he woke up, he said, “You didn’t have to do all that. I like you just the way you are.”
“You don’t know what I’m really like,” I told him. I mean, I’m one of those people that feels like they’re naked until they put on their mascara. “Believe me,” I told him, “if you knew how I really look when I first wake up you’d have nightmares.”
“One of these days I’m going to find out,” he said. “One of these days I’ll get to meet the real you. And I know I’m going to love her just as much. Probably more.” That was Larry for you. A real romantic.
Y
OU DON’T REMEMBER THEM
all, of course. No way a person could do that, as many little girls as I get, clattering up and down these stairs in their tap shoes year in year out. I’ve been doing this going on eighteen years now, and let me tell you, the faces start to blur after a while. Faces of the kids, faces of the mothers. Which year it was you did All-America Salute for the spring show and which year it was Gay Paree. All you can bet on is some kid was sure to get out there the night of the show and freeze. Some kid was bound to start giggling. And somebody had to wave to their mother.
But Suzanne now—I remember her. And would even if all this hadn’t happened. There aren’t a lot like her around.
Not that she was much of a dancer. She had a cute little body all right. She just didn’t have the feel of it. There are some people, they might weigh 300 pounds or they’ve never taken a dance class in their life, but you put on a record, and they just can’t sit still. They’ve got to move. It’s in their blood.
Suzanne was more what you’d call a technician. Every step executed just right. Always knew her combinations. And you never worried about her panicking in front of an audience either, the night of the recital. Far from it. Suzanne loved an audience. From the minute she stepped onstage to the minute she stepped off, it was like the smile was glued on her face.
She took tap from me three, maybe four years, but once they get to be thirteen or so, they lose interest. She switched over to my modeling class in high school. Never could have got too far with it, of course, being as short as she is. But like she told me, no matter what you do in life, it’s important to present yourself well. Besides, we all knew her ambition to be on TV. A competitive field like that, a person’s got to have everything going for them they can, and Suzanne really seemed like she did too. I mean, this was a girl that said she didn’t like to laugh because it gave you wrinkles. This was a girl that wound Saran Wrap around her thighs before she went to bed, to sweat off extra water weight. She told me once she put Vaseline on her teeth to make them shine in the spotlight.
One thing I’ll always remember about Suzanne. You never met a person with a worse sense of rhythm. She could be sitting in a crowd of people, all clapping in time with the beat, you know, and she’d be clapping on the offbeat, without fail. The girl just could not get the feel for music.
Applause now, that was a different story. I remember coming into my studio one time and finding her there before class. She was standing in front of the mirror, smiling that fifty-thousand-watt smile of hers, blowing kisses. She never even noticed I was there.
F
ROM THE MINUTE SHE
started working at the station, Suzanne was cooking up plans to get on the air. She’d ask why didn’t we have a weather girl? Who did the news when Stan went on vacation? What about us doing broadcasts of local high school sports events, with a live host? Only instead of some jock doing it, our gimmick would be, we’d have this cute little former cheerleader standing in the locker room. Viewers would eat it up.
“There’s such a thing as budgets,” I’d tell her. “You have to spend money to make money,” she said. Did we want to make something of this station, or just stay in the same place forever, never changing? Didn’t I have any dreams?
That’s young people for you. Still thinking they’re going to set the world on fire. “To tell you the truth, Sue,” I told her, “staying in the same place sounds good enough for me.”
She always got to work before me. By the time I’d sit down at my desk, there’d be a memo from Suzanne, all typed up on the computer, in duplicate, with a copy for our marketing guy. One day she’d be proposing a weekend roundup spotlighting upcoming entertainment events. With her as the reporter, naturally. Reviewing plays and movies and so forth. Another time she had the idea for doing this kiddie show in the mornings, with a studio audience of preschoolers, and games and songs and stories for the kids at home to follow along with. And guess who as the hostess?
Her being a newlywed, you might figure she’d just as soon coast along for a while, not push too hard. Save her energy for back at home, you know? But not Suzanne. I remember this one weekend she and Larry took off for some little inn in the mountains, heart-shaped tub, the works. Monday morning, she’s sitting at her desk same as always, when I get in to work. Has a whole stack of proposals and memos typed up for me already, ideas that came to her while she was away, she said. Jeez, that’s not the kind of ideas that would come to me in a heart-shaped tub.
Couple months after she came to us, I let her read the weather reports, twice a day, just to get her off my back. But once she got a taste of being on the air, she couldn’t get enough. Instead of easing up on me, after that she just came on stronger than ever.
So by the time Suzanne came to me with her idea about making a documentary about the lives of teenagers—following this one group over a period of a month or two, hearing what was on their minds—it seemed like my best bet was to make sure she stayed occupied. We had a minicam at the station she could use. She said she’d do all the camera work and editing herself. What did I have to lose? I figured it would keep her out of trouble.
A
T FIRST
I
GOT
to admit, I thought Jimmy was a creep. Like Russell. They hung out and everything, so knowing the way Russell is, I figured Jimmy would be the same. But once I got to know him I saw he was a totally different kind of person.
Like for example, Russell was only into Suzanne’s video project to make trouble. You knew that from the word go. Suzanne knew it too, she just didn’t have any choice on account of nobody else but me and Jimmy were signed up. And maybe that’s the way it was for Jimmy at the beginning too. Only with him you could tell it changed. It got to be he really wanted to do a good job. Partly because he was into it. And a lot because you just knew to look at him that he was nuts about her. Who wouldn’t be?
So we got to be friends. I mean, he’d never let Russell know he cared about this, but Russ hardly ever showed up anymore anyway. And once Russ wasn’t around, Jimmy got into the video, thinking up ideas and really thinking about the subjects we talked about, instead of just jerking Suzanne around like Russell used to. He said if he could be anything in the world it would be a veterinarian, I remember that. Before he started spending time with Suzanne he said he just figured he could never really do something like that. He always screwed up. But she made him feel like he was really worth something after all. She had him studying these vocabulary lists, so he could talk better. One time I even saw him reading one of those little books you get at the supermarket,
The World’s Greatest Love Poems
or something like that. He didn’t want you to know it, but he had a sensitive side. You could talk to him. I’m not saying he would ever be my boyfriend or anything, but he was my friend.
Like one time, after we’d been working late on the video, Jimmy asked me if I wanted a ride. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, apart from that time when Russell gave me a ride, no guy ever drove me anyplace. And that time was just because Suzanne made him. And he’s a pig anyways.
But this time it was Jimmy’s idea. I mean I knew he didn’t like me or anything, except as a friend. But still.
He wanted to talk about her. Suzanne I mean. “Mrs. Maretto,” he always called her. He wanted to know all this stuff like what was her husband like, and did she ever mention him, meaning Jimmy. By this time Suzanne and I were real good friends. Just like sisters. She told me her deep thoughts. Like that time when I saw her cry in the hot tub.
And the truth was, she never had mentioned him, but you could tell he was hoping she had, and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so I said yes. I said she liked him, and she told me he had a lot of talent.
“I never saw anybody so pretty,” he says. “It’s like she’s an angel. Everybody else seems like dogshit next to her.”
Of course I knew that included me, but I’m used to that. I was just proud to be her friend. I mean, imagine a person like her, that was going to be a television personality some day, wanting to be with a person like me? The whole thing was like a dream.
Y
OU DRIVE YOURSELF CRAZY
, looking back. You ask yourself, Why didn’t I see something was wrong? You just lay there, going over and over it in your mind when you’re supposed to be sleeping. Angela and me, we both take medication now. It’s not like we fall asleep anymore. We just take this pill to knock us out a few hours, so we can get up again in the morning and go through another day of hell all over again. So I think back to Larry and Suzanne, of course. It’s like I’m switching the channels and I’m trying to find the one that has my son and his wife on it, so I can watch for a while. Knowing what I know now. To see if there were clues.
It was after he’d started managing the bar for us weekends. I took him out to the track with me one night. Father-son thing, just the two of us. That’s what it’s all about, right? We were sitting in the lounge. And he said to me, “She’s the kind of girl a man dreams of, Dad.” He said just knowing she’d be home at the end of the day waiting for him, he felt like he could do anything. Sell Chinese yo-yos. Run for president. Anything. He was going to be a success in life.