“Sounds very good,” she agreed, as she set down her glass. “What was wrong?” she asked curiously.
“What do you mean?”
“When you came downstairs to the basement, I had the feeling you were about to say something.”
“I was.” Griff sighed, having difficulty trying to dredge up the annoyance he had felt earlier. “Honey, you’re still wearing jeans you had in high school, you suffer over every lightbulb left burning in the house unattended and if I remember correctly, you dragged me to a total of seven stores before you found an acceptable price for the carpeting in the library.”
She remembered that shopping expedition. They’d had a terrific time, testing carpeting in their stockinged feet-obviously a major consideration, how carpeting felt on bare feet-as the salesman had ranted on about the number of fibers per square inch. “Are you tactfully trying to suggest I might be stingy with a dollar?”
“Tight as a fist. And on that basis, I’d normally invite you to overdraw the checking account anytime, Susan. Actually, I was rather pleased to see you splurge…”
Wheels clicked in her head. Last weekend, Tom was supposed to finally make up his postponed weekend alone with them. He hadn’t come-something about a party, although Susan was afraid the real reason Tom had canceled for the third time was more complex than the boy’s unusually busy social schedule. He’d called her specially…but Tiger and Barbara had both come in his stead that weekend. Knowing a few days ahead about the change in plans, Susan had had the brilliant, impromptu idea of trying another time to take on Barbara in a one-on-one situation. “Actually, I spent a little money on Barbara,” Susan admitted quietly, a troubled look in her eyes before she quickly reached for Griff’s glass, to wash it out.
“Barbara?”
“I just forgot to tell you, Griff.”
“Susan. My daughter has three times more clothes than you do, and since that episode with Tiger, you know damn well that each of my children has an adequate clothing allowance.”
“More than adequate,” Susan agreed, setting the clean glasses back in the cupboard. “And I certainly wasn’t trying to buy her, Griff. But she wears such damn tight jeans, along with all the other faddish horrors she feels she needs to be popular with her crowd. And girls do like shopping, so I thought I could kind of subtly show her there were alternatives. You know. Being part of the crowd, but still keeping one’s own sense of style.” Susan hesitated, remembering all too well the shopping spree with Barbara. For a time, the excursion had seemed to go swimmingly…until Barbara saw a spangly T-shirt that seemed perfect…for a hooker. End of rapport. Susan glanced up at her husband, to find Griff’s eyes intensely pinning hers, a frown grooved into his forehead.
“She’s giving you a hard time, isn’t she?” he demanded, very quietly.
“No.”
“She’s turned incredibly sassy since she became a teenager. Don’t protect her, Susan. If she’s giving you trouble-”
“She isn’t,” Susan denied emphatically, and willed sincerity to radiate from her clear gray eyes.
“We were so close when she was little. But after the divorce, she acted as if I had deserted her.” He took a breath. “Her mother doesn’t put any limits on her behavior. She just lets Barbara run free, and I’ve seen her becoming more and more spoiled. But at the same time…”
At the same time, he desperately wanted to give his daughter love, not discipline. Susan understood, so very clearly that she blinked back tears. No, she was not going to add to Griff’s worries about his children by burdening him with her own. The thing to do, she’d decided weeks ago, was simply to try harder herself.
“Barbara will be fine,” she assured him. “She’s smart and pretty, and I haven’t met a happy teenager yet, Griff. It’s absolutely no fun being well adjusted when everyone else is suffering growing pains and has a wealth of trouble to complain about. She’ll turn out fine.”
Susan honestly believed that. The issue only became clouded when she thought of herself in relation to Griff’s daughter. As she headed back to the living room, her upholstering project seemed a lesser priority. When Griff walked in a half hour later, he found her ensconced on the couch with a book. That she was relaxing pleased him, though he was mildly surprised at the refuse of upholstery trimmings still scattered on the floor. Susan was normally a confirmed neatnik.
She murmured a greeting but didn’t look up as Griff opened the flue of the fireplace and started stacking cherry logs on the andirons. He glanced back at her, perhaps unconsciously expecting her to join him. It was past nine. It had been a long day away from her, in which he found himself frequently anticipating her smile, her lazy laughter, those private moments they shared in an evening.
She turned the page, but didn’t look up. He struck a match and stayed crouched by the hearth until the flames were shooting up the chimney, then retreated to the kitchen to heat up a little cider. Mulled cider on a crisp evening with a hot little yellow fire glowing… Griff walked back into the living room with the two mugs; Susan murmured a protest when he set one down next to her, but didn’t move.
Both amused and exasperated, Griff replaced the pillow under her head with his lap, rearranged her just a little so he knew her head and shoulders were comfortable, and watched her turn another page.
She was engrossed in Tough Love, a popular seller in the bookstore among parents of adolescents. The book’s basic message was that a show of discipline was a show of love, that it was perfectly all right for a parent to say no, and that exercising control was probably tougher on the parent than it was on the child… It sounded so right…for a parent. But Susan was a stepparent.
With Tiger, tough love wasn’t the issue. Balls were the issue-as in foot, base and basket. Susan was a hiker and a canoer and a swimmer. Hand her a ball and she was lost. Griff found it very funny that she lacked depth perception; so did she. What difference did it really make? But it had made a difference last weekend when Tiger had totally given up playing with her because she couldn’t catch a single ball.
But how could she say no to Barbara? The philosophy in the book was very appealing, but the writers weren’t dealing with the stereotype of the Wicked Stepmother. Sheila gave Barbara no rules, and now Susan was supposed to jump in and convince Barbara that she was acting out of love? It wasn’t just the spangled T-shirt. It was the sass she handed Susan behind Griff’s back; it was worrying about whom the child was socializing with…
“Susan.”
She tilted her head back, looking up at her husband gravely. “Listen. Do you have some sort of organized philosophy about the discipline of children?”
“God in heaven.”
He confiscated the book, set down his glass of cider for the second time and turned off the lamp over their heads. “We need to have a little talk,” he informed her.
“Griff-”
He hauled her up just that little bit farther so she was sitting on his lap, a captive audience. “I think it’s time I took you away from here.”
“Away from here?”
“Honey, as much as I love them, I do not need to talk about my children every minute of the day. I just might even be interested in hearing what you did every minute of the day. Imagine that?” His mouth teased at her lower lip when she started to protest. “We’re about to put the children on hold. And the house. And our work. And drop back five for a little solid time together. Capisce?”