Suzie’s House 191: When She Left

Suzie sat at the kitchen table and flipped through a cookbook. It was one of those put out by the PTA a few years before with the plastic claspy thing holding the pages together and a hodge podge of recipes from a variety of families.

Gene sat across the table from her, turning the mug of hot cocoa she’d made for him around and around in grating circles that brought to mind old time mill stones grinding wheat or what not. He seemed about as interested in what he was doing as she was in her cookbook.

“Have you thought any more about it?”

“About what?” He didn’t even glance up.

“Letting me adopt you.”

Gene shrugged. Suzie was getting a little tired of that shrug because it didn’t really mean he didn’t care. If anything, it meant he cared too much. It was a wall he liked to throw between them, something else she had to surmount, as if simply living without Drew weren’t hard enough.

She put that last thought out of her head as fast as she could. The last thing she needed was to let herself get sucked into the hole Drew had left behind when he stopped calling. Not when she’d tried so hard to reach him, and been unable to do it. He never answered. Ever.

She cleared her throat.

“Is there any reason not to?”

Gene shrugged again.

Well fine. She’d wait him out. Even if it meant reading up on how to cook a raccoon. Was that a serious recipe? She looked a bit closer. All the steps were reasonable and realistic for handling meat, unlike the one for how to cook an elephant.

“It wouldn’t really make a difference, would it?”

“Wouldn’t it?”

“I mean, it would be different if you were a man.”

Suzie closed the cookbook. No way she could let this one slide.

“What do you mean by that?” She kept her voice remarkably level considered how angry she was getting.

“Well, women – mothers – don’t stick, right? I mean look at my mom. She ran off first chance she got and left me behind. She just left me.”

“I thought you said you didn’t remember anything about her.” Suzie was starting to resent the woman.

“I remember enough.”

“What if she didn’t really leave you? What if she got in an accident? What if she died? What if she tried to take you with her, and couldn’t?”

“Dad said he took her to the bus station himself. She was fine. She just didn’t love us anymore.”

“So he says, but do you believe him?”

“There are pictures of the two of them leaving together.” Gene’s expression turned grim.

“That could have been from any time.”

“No. No, I remember taking the picture. I remember they left together.”

Was that guilt on his face? As if taking a picture might have caused him to lose his mother.

“Not everyone is like her. I’m not like her. I won’t ever leave you like that.”

“No.” His eyes flashed. “You’re just like her. Exactly like her.”

“This is ridiculous. You can’t really believe…” Suzie stopped herself, but Gene already looked stricken. She shook her head, eyes closed, and mentally kicked herself for calling Gene’s judgment into question. Of course he would think all women were like his mother. She could probably trot out all the evidence in the world that women were far more responsible than men and he still wouldn’t believe her. After all, he’d seen for himself that the father lasts longer.

Still, Suzie couldn’t help but think Gene needed the stability that adoption would give him. He needed to know that he had a home with her no matter what.

Or maybe it was just her who needed the adoption. Maybe she needed to know it was OK for her to love Gene, because unlike Drew, he wouldn’t simply stubbornly walk off.

Maybe she had a lot to think about.

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