Susa in the Morning
It is a
morning in mid-November and Susa is awake before the others. She goes from the
bedroom upstairs, leaving the electric blanket and H’s warm, curved body, and
crosses the upper living room. This room is carpeted in a mossy green, of a fabric that
prickles her bare feet; in a little recess, hidden behind paneled sliding
doors, there is a small sink and bar, things added by H over the years as
they’ve grown older and gained money. Within the walls of the room are shelves, built in; behind these shelves are mirrors, so that the bottles of gin and
whiskey, bourbon and rum, and something called sloe gin that Susa loves a
little too much, are reflected and multiplied over themselves, creating a sense
of wealth that Susa sometimes finds cloying. This closeted space is H’s
proudest household achievement.
Last night,
Susa had two glasses of the sloe gin, giving her the requisite headache and
sending her away from the game of Bridge that she and H had been playing with
their daughter Adelaide and the man she's planning to marry. She’d gone to bed with an aspirin and
cold washcloth at eight o’clock, so on this winter morning she wakes
around six and leaves the bed.
The little
dog who sleeps on a fat cushion by the bed wakes with her and follows at her heels.
He is all excitement and anticipation over the turn towards morning; he
stretches and dances and makes little yawning noises. Together they pad down
the stairs—covered in the same mossy green. In the kitchen Susa makes a strong
pot of coffee and leaves it to warm on the range. From the metal drawer beneath
the stack of phone books and cook books she takes a packet of cigarettes and
removes the cellophane wrappings. Cigarette in hand, she goes to the back door
to let the little dog outside, following him after slipping her feet into a
pair of H’s discarded winter boots.
Even at this early, cold hour, people are
awake and beginning to live: on the side street by the entrance to the college
a car engine labors, its headlights dim, its exhaust breathing white into the
still air. Susa stands in robe and boots, cigarette between slack fingers, and
listens to the crunch of hardened snow under boot heels; two muffled figures
pass the end of the hedgerow that shields the back side of the house, their
shapes black and bundled, their voices low. The little dog, lifting his leg on
the winter-dead raspberry stalks, hears them and barks—a shrill, startling
sound in the frozen dawn. The shorter figure, a woman, looks up at the sound
and sees Susa down the narrow pathway, at the top of the stair. She nods, the
glint of her eyes clearly visible, and is gone. Susa brings the cigarette to
her lips once more before tossing it atop the other butts in the cracked flower
pot on the top step. She ties her robe more tightly, beginning to feel her
numbness, and whistles for the dog—a little white terrier named Maxine, begged
for by the children when they were young; begged for, then slowly forgotten, tired of, and Susa, who'd never understood animals, found that she was the dog's truest companion.
Back in the
kitchen, the coffee has begun to boil, and a half-burned smell is growing.
Outside, the sun has come up; it will linger behind a layer of ashen clouds
until late afternoon. Susa pours herself a cup of coffee. She listens to the
thump of newspaper against doorstep. She scoops kibble into the dog’s dish.
Upstairs, she hears the creak of bed springs as H lifts himself from sleep. From
the children’s bath down the hallway comes the sound of running water. She is
no longer alone, and the day has begun.
