Trouble in Paradise

Chapter 11

A poltergeist seemed to have gotten into Susan’s files at the store. Her usual fastidiousness had taken a steep nosedive in the past three weeks since the kids had moved in with them. The roller coaster that hurtled from work to housekeeping to kids kept increasing in speed instead of slowing down after that first hectic week. She seemed to be in control of absolutely nothing. Certainly not the alphabet; M didn’t usually follow B. At least it hadn’t yesterday.

She was not absolutely sure of anything today, except that the bills had to go out this morning. A nagging feeling of anxiety had been dogging her since early that morning, distracting her every time she wanted to concentrate. It was just…Barbara, with that constant list of how her mother did things. And Tiger this morning, the little monkey, had tried to make a spoon go down the disposal, though that at least had proved less chaotic than when he had somehow flushed a sock through their plumbing system. He needed some help with his math; at some point today she had to find time to look up a book on that subject. Gifted child or not, why were they teaching him algebra in fifth grade? She had barely passed it in seventh. And where was the Bonner file?

Not in the B’s or the M’s. She was trying so terribly hard to make the transition easier for the kids… Disgusted with herself for coming unglued over nothing, Susan whirled in total frustration to see if the Bonner receipt she needed to match the invoice could conceivably still be in the pile on her desk.

The Monet print on the wall suddenly swirled in exploding violet and green. The old corduroy chair, the fig tree that was valiantly trying to grow without a southern exposure, the stack of books in the far corner…all of it turned in a fast-swirling kaleidoscope.

Her hands on her stomach, Susan bent forward in her office chair, forced her head between her knees and willed the feeling to go away. All she could think of was that she’d never fainted in her life and she certainly had no time to pick up the habit now…

“Where’s Susan?”

There was no missing Julie Anderson’s voice, always sassily brusque and bubbling.

“In the office, I think,” Lanna responded absently.

Susan forced her head back up as she heard the staccato click of heels approaching. Rapidly pinching her cheeks, she swallowed back the desperate feeling of vertigo.

Her smile was all ready when a bottle of wine clattered down on her desktop along with a package of very good, but very strong cheese. Julie’s usual offerings. And just as always, Julie started talking the moment she came even vaguely within hearing range, tossing back her long blond hair and throwing herself onto the old green corduroy chair opposite Susan’s desk. “Business is absolutely terrible. Thank God I got the two of you together; otherwise Griff just might ask me to repay the money he lent me. As it is, what can he do? Without me, you and he would still be sitting on opposite sides of the city. I hope you two are happy, Susan, because I really don’t want to show him this month’s balance sheets- What on earth are you doing under the desk?” she interrupted herself abruptly. “Did you lose an earring? I swear, ever since I got my ears pierced, I’ve lost more earrings than I ever did the whole time-”

“Julie,” Susan said patiently, “would you remove the cheese?”

“Pardon?”

“Remove,” Susan repeated succinctly, “the cheese.”

“I thought you liked sharp cheddar-Susan? For heaven’s sake…” Julie’s chair scraped the linoleum as she vaulted out of it. Susan’s eyes were closed, her lips were whispering over and over, “You will not be sick, you will not be sick…” Julie hastily removed the strong-smelling cheese.

It helped. Susan’s stomach had been flip-flopping down a deep well, but it suddenly began to lose momentum, and she knew that in just one more minute she would be fine.

“Susan…” Julie’s hand touched her shoulder.

Lanna was suddenly standing in the doorway, with a look Susan had seen twice before in the past two weeks. “We’ll get you upstairs to my apartment,” she said firmly.

“There is nothing wrong with me,” Susan grumbled. “I didn’t eat any breakfast. I’ve known ever since I was six years old that I feel sick if I don’t have breakfast.”

“Susan…” Lanna started.

“Should I call a doctor?” Julie asked worriedly.

Susan promptly forced her spine straight, belted her arms tightly around her stomach and glared at both of them. “All I did was move a little too fast on an empty stomach. Let’s not make some kind of federal case out of it.”

“We won’t,” Lanna agreed. “You can just go to lunch with Julie. Immediately.” The two women exchanged glances.

“Exactly why I came here in the first place,” Julie announced.

Susan stood up then. Her knees felt skittery, but otherwise that green sensation had faded. The thing was, she reminded herself of her aunt. On her mother’s side. She’d had frequent exposure to her aunt’s hypochondria as a child, and it had caused her to develop an almost phobic loathing for illness.

“You’re not going to get a raise for the next eleven years,” she told Lanna.

“You gave me two last year. They’ll last for a while.” Lanna had her coat all ready.

Susan snatched it from her. “I’m fine. Please just leave me alone.”

The waspish tone was so out of character for Susan that both women smiled brilliantly at her. Julie didn’t stop the insane kid-gloves treatment until they were seated in a restaurant, eating homemade minestrone and wedges of warm French bread. Susan was keeping up with Julie spoonful for spoonful.

“You really were just hungry, weren’t you?” Julie conceded finally.

“I told you that.”

“You scared the devil out of your assistant.”

“Lanna’s desperate for someone to mother. She’s had the roles all wrong ever since I hired her, but I didn’t seem to realize it until the last few weeks.” Susan smiled with honest affection, feeling like herself again. “I’ve got to get her married off. She goes for the stray lambs every time. It wouldn’t be so bad if she collected children, but her strays are always over six feet tall with big blue eyes.”

Julie chuckled. Lanna’s doings always evoked her indulgent amusement. Her smile hovered a moment longer and then faded, and suddenly all her attention was riveted on the spoon in her hand. “I really did come to have lunch with you. To talk about the kids.”

“The kids?” Susan echoed in surprise.

“Come on, Susan. I’ve known my niece and my two nephews a long time. You think the problem wasn’t obvious to me when the clan came to dinner at my place last Sunday? My brother never used to be stupid.”

Susan, used to Julie’s sisterly concern for her, sighed. “Go ahead,” she said dryly. “But try to remember that I’m a big girl, Julie. The kids and I are doing just fine.”

Julie’s eyes met hers, big, blue and much more shrewd than her wine-and-cheese-shop profits would lead one to suspect. “They’re eating you up, Susan. Why haven’t you told Griff? Surely you know what Sheila’s like. She gave them nothing, so naturally, they saw you coming and held out their hands. It’s called taking advantage, darling.” She said the last two words very clearly, as if to emphasize the message to her sister-in-law.

Susan sighed and leaned back, absently regarding the busy comings and goings of the lunch crowd in the cheerful little restaurant. “Whether you can understand it or not, I happen to have a bad case of attachment to those three. I sometimes have a mad urge to glue little signs on their foreheads-Mine. And they’re not really giving me a hard time, Julie, not nearly as bad as I expected. Oh, Barbara sometimes goes a little too far. That I’ll admit. But then, she’s going through a period when she needs to test me.”

“As in every time Griff’s back is turned,” Julie interjected demurely. “She learned those tricks from a master, you must realize that.”

“Don’t,” Susan scolded bluntly. “Do you think this has been easy for Barbara? She must feel as if she’s turning her back on her mother to come and live with us-and Sheila isn’t an ogre, you know. I’m not her judge, and neither are you.”

“Don’t you forget that the judge didn’t just look into my brother’s winsome eyes and suddenly decide to give him custody. He talked plenty to those kids and to their mother. Don’t waste your time feeling sorry for Sheila, Susan. Maybe this is her chance to get her life together. Finally. At any rate, those kids weren’t forced to live with you-they had their say. They must care for you. And as far as I’m concerned, that means you should have the right to slam them against a wall occasionally when they get really out of line.”

“You’ve always had this terrible problem expressing yourself,” Susan said with mock compassion. “You never speak your own mind, never come out and say what you’re thinking.”

Julie burst out laughing. “You’re the one who got me started-at least on this subject. Telling me about that book.”

“What book?”

“Tough Love. Wasn’t that the title? Something about kids testing you because they want you to set limits on their behavior, because it’s a natural human need to establish rules. Well, if that’s true, then you’ve got the right to say no to them, Susan. That won’t stop them from loving you.”

“So wise,” Susan marveled. “Remind me of this conversation if we ever get you married off and you have your own children, will you?” Susan gathered up her purse and coat and snatched the bill from the table. “I’ve got to get back. I’ve got a thousand things to do this afternoon…”

Julie stood up reluctantly, casting Susan a rueful look as they made their way to the front of the restaurant. “Tell Griff the kids are bugging you,” she murmured as they walked outside.

“You were a perfect darling to invite me to lunch,” Susan said warmly. “Normally, I would have holed up in the back room with peanut butter and stale bread.”

“Tell Griff,” Julie repeated ominously.

“This has been a perfectly delightful conversation,” Susan assured her.

Julie didn’t usually admit that some mountains are just too high to climb, but this time she gave up on her sister-in-law, threw up her arms in defeat and climbed into her car.

Susan found a shop full of customers when she walked in the door, and had no time during the busy afternoon to mull over Julie’s lecture. Griff had been busy as hell the past three weeks; he couldn’t possibly see what was going on between her and the kids. If he did see, he seemed happy with the chaotic transition from honeymooners to a family of five. And essentially, the kids seemed just as happy. None of the arguments and resentments she had worried about had materialized.

She was the only one floundering. Was she the right kind of stepmother for them? She was not usurping Sheila’s role, not coming on too strong, not pushing any closeness before the kids wanted it… Oh, tough love had sounded good in principle. But Barbara seemed to need a full-time chauffeur, demanding that Susan drop whatever she was doing on the instant; yes, Susan could get tough and request a little consideration. She knew Barbara was using every excuse to test her, but that didn’t change Susan’s feeling that Barbara was having the hardest time in the transition and needed love and understanding. She would soon tire of a one-sided battle…wouldn’t she?

Tiger and the football that broke her grandmother’s vase…Susan could have yelled. It would be easy to yell at Tiger as she followed the urchin from room to room, picking up disasters, along with socks, shoes, school bags and crumbled cookies. But his own mother had never forced a single rule on him, and suddenly Susan was supposed to step in and play the heavy? The psychologists said it was all right to yell, as long as you directed your anger at the behavior rather than at the child-but would a divorce-torn ten-year-old really make the distinction? It probably hadn’t been all that long since Sheila had read him Grimm’s fairy tales, with all those wicked stepmothers…

And Tom…she’d made the mistake of telling him that he should feel free to play the stereo. A mature seventeen-year-old would be into jazz, or maybe even classical music, right? Wrong! Try hard rock, at earsplitting volume from the moment she walked in the door until dinnertime…and after dinner until Lord knew when. Of course she could tell him to turn it down. That wasn’t even a minor deal, but it was rather a major one that they were getting along so well. Three strikes and you’re out, remember? At least Tom was her success story. But that wasn’t really the issue. It was all the thousands of things at once, so sudden, so overwhelming…

Tell Griff, Julie had insisted. But tell him what? That she was less and less sure where she stood with her husband, how he expected her to deal with his kids, what he valued in her as a woman? A bedmate? A mother? But the role of wife seemed to be steadily sinking in a morass of confusing adjustments. Griff was becoming the stranger across the crowded room, but the song had a lot less romance when the crowd was made up of children.

On top of everything else, a flu bug seemed to have been chasing her for the past few weeks. No, it hadn’t caught up yet, and Susan had no intention of falling ill. She’d beat the damn thing with vitamin C and sheer willpower, because the thought of even trying to cope with Griff’s kids if she weren’t healthy…

Which you are, she insisted to herself. Healthy as a horse. Strong as a mule.

Vulnerable as a buttercup. Oh, shut up, Susan.

Susan stretched as she got out of the car and shook herself. She’d been on her feet most of the afternoon, and the kinks had settled in the most unreasonable muscles-like where she thought she hadn’t any. She gathered her purse and raincoat and started toward the house, wincing the moment she opened the door.

Pop music was music, wasn’t it? Actually, it might be. It wasn’t the kids’ fault that her father had raised her on Debussy. The album cover for this particular CD showed two half-naked men who shaved their heads and wore pancake makeup, and at this point, she thought she deserved the Medal of Honor for being able to identify the CD cover that went with the raucous sounds coming from the living room.

She glanced into the kitchen and unconsciously winced again at the sight of the dirty dishes scattered around the counters in a long trail that spilled over onto the table. Unbuttoning her coat with one hand, she picked up the milk with the other to return it to the refrigerator before it spoiled. Then she put the little heap of cookies back in the cookie jar and replaced the cover. Filling up the sink with soapy water, she rapidly gathered glasses. Three children. Eleven glasses. That kind of mathematics seemed to come with teenagers. Oh, yes, she understood all about the adolescent herding instinct… At least, come ten o’clock, she’d know where her children were-not to mention an assortment of other people’s children.

When she opened the closet door to hang up her coat, her arms automatically reached out for the avalanche of jackets that cascaded down on her. Hangers were boring. If one shoved one’s jacket in the closet and rapidly closed the door, obviously no one would know. After neatly hanging up the jackets, Susan hurried into the bathroom to run a brush through her hair and wash her hands; then she reached out for a towel.

There wasn’t one, of course. Why did she persist in expecting to find one? Obviously, you used a towel only once, and then you tossed it down the chute. Fastidious personal cleanliness, filthy personal habits-that whole scene seemed to come with teenagers, too. At first, Susan had been rather bewildered by the mound of towels that seemed to mysteriously mate and multiply by the washing machine. She was learning.

Vigorously shaking her hands to dry them, she dared to venture closer to the living room in spite of the music assaulting her eardrums. Four lithe bodies were stretched out on the carpet, with Barbara, center stage, making up the fifth. Susan saw no purpose at all in entering the room, other than to pass through and use the excuse to touch Barbara lightly on the shoulder en route. A hello kiss was not yet appropriate, but every once in a rare while Susan got the impression Barbara was waiting for her to walk in.

Books littered the carpet; so did CDs, shoes, assorted jackets and, of course, more glasses.

Susan assured herself that she would have plenty of time to clean it all up before Griff came home. She had an hour and a half left. Way back when, she didn’t know how much she could accomplish in ninety minutes, but she was becoming a master of fifty-two pick-up. And the point was that Barbara should feel free to have her friends over. The point was not a little extra housekeeping. She’d told Griff she liked homemaking, right?

She poked her head into Griff’s study, to see Tom folded up with a book. He lifted his head long enough to utter, “Hi, Mom-Two,” before lowering his eyes again.

“Everything go okay at school?”

“Par.”

“Where’s Tiger?”

“Upstairs.”

Tom could be very talkative, when he wasn’t concentrating. His boots weren’t going to mar Griff’s desk, because they were rubber-soled, she reminded herself. After throwing a “Home, Tiger!” up the stairs, she rushed back to the kitchen to finish the dishes. She paused in the middle of that task to hurry downstairs and toss a load of towels into the machine.

Before she could take the first step upstairs to change her clothes, she paused, suddenly frantically remembering that she hadn’t taken a thing out of the freezer to thaw for dinner. Dinners for five refused to appear out of nowhere. With just Griff, it had been different. On a rough day, they had simply gone out, or Griff had brought home Chinese delicacies; otherwise, they had simply put their feet up for a while and later fixed something together over wine. Now that she left the shop at three o’clock-usually-she’d made a point of telling Griff he no longer needed to help. Griff liked to cook, but it seemed far more important that he spend his free time with the kids, and he’d been working such long hours lately…

“Susan?”

Tiger’s face appeared at the top of the stairs, and her face relaxed. “Hi, sweetie.”

He was all excited, all big eyes and laughter. “I’ve got the neatest thing to show you.”

She followed him, laughing at his bouncing impatience. Dinner would have to wait. “Come on,” he insisted. “Hurry up!” At times like this, when he was so eager to share, broken cookies-and even broken heirloom-vases were mere bagatelles.

Up the stairs, past Tom’s room-Lord, what a mess-past Barbara’s, which surpassed any destruction a bomb could cause, and finally into Tiger’s. Toys as well as school clothes littered the floor, but Susan reminded herself that there was still plenty of time to get it all back in place before Griff came home.

“You’re just not going to believe this,” Tiger informed her.

She didn’t. The hamster cage had been relocated from the basement to Tiger’s room the day Tiger moved in. The project had not worked out quite as Susan had expected. She was the one who cleaned the cage four times a week and fed the animal that happily bit her each time. She had anticipated shared responsibility…but no, she hadn’t pushed it, because not a single rule had been imposed on Tiger in Sheila’s house. In time, she kept thinking. This extra work, like all the rest, was largely her own doing… Susan understood that, but something inside her refused to admit that in trying to make the kids happy and easy and comfortable she had dragged herself into a pit she couldn’t get out of. Children needed consistency, and she’d consistently indulged them, so… There must be a fallacy there, but who had time to analyze?

Crouched down next to Tiger, she stared in horror at the hamster cage. The one little animal had turned into seven. The six smaller creatures were tiny and hairless and ugly.

“I thought you had to have a boy and a girl to have babies,” Tiger speculated.

“I did, too,” Susan replied dryly.

“Isn’t it neat?”

Susan had loved animals from the day she was born, but all she could think of was the seven bites she would get from now on, every time she put her hand in the cage. “Neat,” she agreed, hoping it sounded convincing.

“I’ve been watching the whole thing. But I still don’t get it. I thought you had to have a father and a mother. How could she have the babies without a father?”

“Hmm.” Not an impressive answer. Susan rallied. “If we’d bought the animal from a pet store, this probably wouldn’t have happened,” she explained. “But I got this hamster from an ex-friend. There must have been a father and mother together at one time.”

Tiger wrinkled his nose. “What do you mean-ex-friend?”

“That’s very involved,” Susan said vaguely. No wonder Beth Smith had been frantic to find a home for the damn hamster! She rocked back on her heels. The smell from the cage threatened to overwhelm her, and she had cleaned it the night before.

“We’ll have to have more cages,” Tiger said in a rare burst of practicality.

More cages to clean. Susan closed her eyes wearily, but then opened them, her eyes suddenly soft on their youngest child. How many women would have killed for such an endearing kid? Suddenly, Susan was overpowered by a sense of blessing. “Pretty special, watching them being born?” she questioned.

Tiger nodded, still speaking in whispers. “I was even scared to breathe.” Those beautiful eyes darkened. “I told Barbie to turn down the stereo because I was afraid the noise would be upsetting to a new mother. Barbie said the whole idea of hamster babies was stupid.”

Susan grabbed his shoulder and drew him close, kissing the top of his head. He had such sweet-smelling hair, her boy, all boy. “It isn’t in any way stupid,” she reassured him, meaning it. For a short moment, she even felt reassured herself, in a completely different way. There were times all the turmoil was completely worth it. She recalled suddenly the Sunday morning all five of them had been at the breakfast table, and Tiger had gotten a fit of the giggles that infected all of them; the time Tom had talked with her until three of the morning, about politics and feelings and perfect worlds; the times Tiger snatched up a hug out of nowhere; the times even Barbara ventured out of her hostility to just girl-talk; the night Griff had taken them to McDonald’s and somehow forgotten his wallet and she and the kids had dredged up every last penny they had, even Tiger… This moment to be cherished was with Tiger, and she wouldn’t have cared if he’d dragged her out of bed at three in the morning to see his hamsters being born.

“I really think we better change her name from Archibald,” Tiger whispered.

“I think we’d better,” Susan agreed.

The music from below suddenly stopped. Susan’s ears felt as if they’d been offered a reprieve from torture. Stretched out in front of the cage, whispering with Tiger, she never heard the footsteps in the hall, only belatedly saw Griff suddenly appear in the doorway-after Tiger whirled and bounded to his feet. “Hey, Dad! Come see this!”

Griff strode in, crouched down between them and peered obediently into the cage, commenting with all the appropriate hushed enthusiasm that was required of him. His manner was calm and easy, as it almost always was with the kids. Only Susan, so sensitive to Griff’s moods, felt the undercurrent of tension emanating from him.

“You’re home early,” she remarked, delighted he had not had another late night of labor negotiations. Perhaps that delight was what had eclipsed all consciousness of what he must have seen on his way from the front door to Tiger’s room, she would speculate later.

“I’m home early,” he agreed. His eyes met hers for the first time, and held. He was furious. She didn’t need it spelled out.

He vaulted to his feet in one lithe movement, snatching Susan’s hand to bring her to a standing position whether she particularly wanted to get up that minute or no. “You’ll watch your charges for a few minutes while I have a word with Susan, won’t you, Tiger?” He asked lazily.

“Sure!” Tiger’s eyes were riveted on the cage; he didn’t even look up.

Five fingers forced their way between hers; Griff’s without question being the stronger and larger. She didn’t mind being hustled into their room. The door closed between them and chaos with a distinct snap.