The Super Ladies

by Petrone, Susan

  Abra smiled as though she hadn’t just materialized out of nowhere but had been sitting there all along. “I’m sorry—may I sit here?”

  “Of course you can sit there, honey, but oh my, I did not see you sit down! You startled me out of my skin.”

  Normally Abra wasn’t a fan of chatty strangers, but today she didn’t mind. Whatever adventure she, Katherine, and Margie had embarked upon, kindness had to be part of it just as much as courage or strength.

  That’s essentially what she texted to Katherine later that night when she asked if Katherine could come over the next morning for moral support when The Evil Richard Brewster came to get the lumber and drywall.

  “Can’t. Sorry,” Katherine responded almost immediately. “But will be happy to kick Richard Brewster’s Evil Ass for you later this weekend.”

  Abra was home by this time, hanging out on the living room sofa with a book and Clint purring on her lap. “Not necessary,” she responded. She paused, part of her wanting to tell Katherine what she had done and part of her grooving on having a little secret to herself. They were in this together. “If need be, I will do the ass-kicking. Beat up two guys who were harassing a girl on the Green Line today.”

  “OMG!” Katherine texted back. “I kicked the asses of 2 guys stealing copper from an empty house!”

  There was nothing to type back but “OMG!”

  ⍟ ⍟ ⍟

  By the time Margie arrived at Abra’s house the next morning, she had already heard the full story from both Abra and Katherine. They sat on Abra’s little brick patio, the place, Abra noted, where Richard had always said he was going to build a party deck. In her head, Margie always heard the gentle voice of Jane Bennett in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice saying, “You must understand, Ms. McQuestion, that a party deck is much more grand than a normal deck.” But she had more pressing issues than bad imitations of Jane Austen characters from BBC miniseries. There was The Evil Richard Brewster to deal with. And there was also a fascinating conversation going on over at IcyU.

  Margie took a sip of the orange juice Abra had brought out. “Do you ever look at the Super Ladies’ IcyU account?” she asked.

  “Not really. Should I?”

  “Yeah, you should,” she replied, handing her phone to Abra.

  IcyU had the “IC” feature, which allowed users to tag the location of a friend or people they followed. Margie called it the stalker feature. She supposed it could be helpful if you were trying to track down whether a friend had arrived somewhere or not, although she wondered why the friend wouldn’t just call or text instead. Someone named Darcy27 had “seen” the Super Ladies, writing, “Swear to God IC: Super Ladies on the Green Road rapid. Two guys were bothering some girl and then it looked like they got beat up by Shadow. How else do you explain a purse moving in midair?”

  Abra looked at Margie’s phone then handed it back. “Guess I wasn’t as discreet as I thought,” she said.

  “Well, it isn’t like they saw you.”

  “But I made my presence known. I don’t think I like that.”

  “If someone is being beaten up by an invisible person, I guess it’s kind of noticeable. It’s not like they saw you.” Talking about this as though they were superheroes comparing notes made Margie feel like an imposter. Abra and Katherine were the ones going out and doing big things with their powers. She was warming up leftover macaroni and cheese and breaking up high school parties. They were being proactive; she wasn’t.

  When The Evil Richard Brewster arrived at Abra’s house, he was as overly friendly and jovial as Margie remembered him. Something about his manner had always struck her as false, even before he broke Abra’s heart and left her with a mountain of debt. Richard was cute—although maybe not as cute as he was when Abra met him seven years earlier—and still had the quasi–messed-up look of someone who regarded their restaurant job as a lifestyle rather than a career and lived accordingly. He had soft dark brown eyes and equally brown hair with one thick lock near the front that floated between blond and gray. Richard always insisted that “it just grew like that,” but Margie had long suspected that he dyed it on the sly. The blondish lock of hair was just enough to give him a bit of a cool-guy edge.

  “Hey, thanks for letting me pick up the lumber and the drywall,” he said as he got out of a humungous black pickup truck. A second guy, tall and skinny with a huge afro, hesitantly got out of the passenger seat. “This is Doug. He came to help.” Doug shuffled his feet and gave a half-hearted wave. It seemed like he might be a little stoned.

  “New car?” Abra asked by way of hello.

  “Oh, no, it’s Doug’s. Hey, Margie,” he said with a glance and a cursory nod in her direction. Then he looked back at Abra and just sort of stopped, taking her in. “You look great,” he proclaimed, as though his opinion regarding her appearance mattered.

  “Thank you.”

  Margie was proud of Abra for not giving into false pleasantries. Instead she set the guys straight to work. Richard looked pretty good, despite the unmistakable beginning of a pot belly. Somehow the sight of the rubbery little paunch spilling over the waistband of his jeans delighted her. Margie hoped it bothered him.

  Richard and Doug made short work of loading the drywall and lumber into the back of the pickup. Abra and Margie at first only watched, but then it seemed easier to help load the truck. “The sooner it’s loaded, the sooner he’s gone, right?” Margie whispered. Abra shrugged.

  Doug might have been a stoner, but he was meticulous about neatly stacking the drywall in one pile and the lumber in the other. When they were done, every edge and every corner lined up. Once the truck was loaded, Richard announced that he wanted to go inside and get a few books and other things he’d left there.

  “You didn’t leave anything here,” Abra said. Except a mess, Margie thought.

  “Yeah, I did. There were some books, and a big photo album with pictures from when I was a kid. I can’t find it at my place, so it’s gotta be here.” Without asking Abra’s permission, he headed for the side door. He went in the house, followed closely by a protesting Abra. Doug and Margie watched them go then looked at each other.

  “Do you think she’d mind if I went in and used the bathroom?” he asked, sounding a little shy.

  Hating Richard for Abra’s sake probably didn’t need to extend to his stoned flunky. “I’m sure she won’t,” Margie replied with a sigh.

  She considered going inside as backup but figured she’d just get in the way. Abra wouldn’t let Richard take anything that wasn’t really his. She wandered over to the back of the ginormous black pickup. Even though Abra didn’t want the lumber and drywall and would never use it, the idea that Richard was taking something Abra had paid for bothered her. Richard had used her friend poorly in so many ways. It wasn’t her fight, but it felt like hers. Abra was as good as a sister. If she wouldn’t exact retribution, Margie would have to do it for her.

  She ran a hand across the pristine white board on top of the stack of drywall. She thought about heat, about fiery angry and felt the now-familiar warmth begin coursing through her body. Delighted, she watched a light brown burn stain begin traveling across the drywall sheet’s paper covering. She lifted the top sheet and did the same thing to the second one down, but then the drywall got a little heavy. She could stick a hand under two sheets, but that was it. Margie had to satisfy herself with running a hot hand along the edge of the stack, hoping that would be enough to put a burn mark on the paper cover of every drywall sheet she touched. The back gate of the pickup was still down. Without bothering to check if anyone was coming back outside, she scrambled onto the truck bed and into the narrow gap in between the drywall and the lumber. Doug had stuffed a couple rolled up movers’ blankets in between the two stacks to hold them in place, but she was able to push them out of the way so she could get closer to the lumber. She placed a hand on top of a two-by
-four and thought hot thoughts, thought about rage and forest fires and the heat of angry mobs with torches until the wood beneath her hand began to smolder. With one burning index finger, she burned the word “Liar” in script on the side of the board. Moving down, she burned the same word on the side of the second board. Then, just for kicks, she burned the word “Asshole” on the third one and “Thief” on the fourth.

  It would have been nice to mark every board and sheet of drywall, but there wasn’t time for that. She replaced the movers’ blankets, making sure to cover the words and burn marks, and scooted off the back of the truck just as Doug and Richard came out the side door, followed closely by Abra. Richard carried three books as though they were prizes he’d just won. Margie noted that he did not have a photo album. Abra looked resigned and tired. It seemed the right time to tag in.

  “Are you all done?” Margie asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Richard replied.

  “Good. Time for you to go.” Margie didn’t let Richard say anything else, didn’t let him linger to do or say anything kind or horrid, just told him to leave. Slightly Stoned Doug closed up the back of the truck. If he noticed the new stain marks on the drywall or the lumber, he didn’t say so. Finally, they got in the truck and backed out of the driveway. The Evil Richard Brewster had the audacity to wave to Abra as they headed down West Anderson, as though he had been there on a pleasant visit and was looking forward to seeing Abra again, as though she wanted to see him again. Abra didn’t wave, and when the truck was out of sight, she turned to Margie and gave her a hug.

  “Thanks,” Abra whispered. “I couldn’t have dealt with him on my own.”

  Margie resisted the urge to tell her about the burn marks on the drywall and the wood. As she thought about it now, the burn marks seemed a weak attempt at vengeance. It didn’t really hurt Richard in the same way he had hurt Abra. “I didn’t do much,” Margie whispered back.

  IC_SuperLadies posted: I wonder if the Super Friends would do things like help each other move or pick each other up at the airport? We do.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Katherine checked the Super Ladies comic online each morning to see if Eli had posted a new strip. Some days he had, some days he hadn’t. Anna looked at the comic once in a while, “borrowing” Katherine’s phone while they drove to the grocery store or a friend’s house. But it wasn’t important enough in her nine-year-old world to remember to tell her dad about it. And Katherine never shared it.

  There was never a good time to talk to Hal. He wasn’t much of a morning person and mainly gave one-word answers to any question posed before 10:00 a.m. That was one of the reasons Katherine had started running in the morning in the first place—it gave them both a little time to wake up and face the day in their own way. In the evening, he wanted to “relax” and didn’t feel like talking, at least not about anything important. Consequently, she didn’t tell him anything.

  She still talked to him about Anna and the garden and current events and his work and the upcoming school year and her work and whether he felt like going to see a movie next weekend and all the other pieces of news and thoughts that make up a shared life. Sometimes it was easy—too easy—to imagine a life without him in it every day. There were even a couple times, late at night when she didn’t feel like pretending to sleep but wasn’t ready to go out on her run, when she would search online real estate sites, just looking. It was somewhat more than daydreaming but somewhat less than planning.

  Leaving Hal was an abstraction, one possible solution to the reality that intimacy seemed to have become indifference. She had gotten out of the habit of telling Hal anything challenging. She didn’t tell him what had happened after the explosion or about the incident with the knife. She didn’t tell him about her body, her strength, or what she did on her early-morning runs.

  She did tell Abra and Margie. Margie told Eli, and Eli turned those tellings into Super Ladies comics. As the summer wore on, Katherine just started emailing or texting Eli herself. She’d give him the general gist of what happened and a few details, and he’d turn it into a strip. It seemed simpler to tell Eli directly, especially because he’d be leaving for college soon.

  When she reminded Margie of this the next time they all went out to La Fiesta, Margie said, “Shut the front door. We aren’t talking about that.”

  “Isn’t move-in next week?” Abra asked gently.

  Margie directed all her attention to the slate-gray ceramic bowl of salsa on the table in front of them. “Two weeks,” she replied, raising her eyes to them. “I’m in denial. Don’t judge.”

  “Of course not,” Katherine replied. “This is a big transition.”

  Margie looked up as though she’d been waiting for someone to tell her it was permissible to freak out before her oldest child went to college. “I know Baldwin-Wallace is super close, but…it’s Eli. I worry.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Katherine said, although she had no guarantee for this claim, just a gut feeling that Eli’s days of hurting himself were in the past.

  “I know. Okay, deep cleansing breath,” Margie said as she inhaled.

  “Deep cleansing margarita,” Katherine added, raising her glass.

  “Even better.”

  Abra toasted with them then said, “Change of subject: my ankle is completely healed. Wanna start running again in the mornings?”

  Katherine momentarily found herself in an awkward dilemma. She loved running with Abra but found herself enjoying her solo runs in the middle of the night. Her hesitation was obvious because Abra quickly said, “It’s cool if you don’t want to anymore.”

  “I do want to, but…I’ve been getting up really early.”

  “Like how early?”

  Katherine looked from Abra to Margie. If she were to tell anyone, it ought to be them. “Like three o’clock in the morning.”

  “Isn’t that…?” Margie stopped herself. “I guess it isn’t dangerous. Not for you.”

  “Not for any of us,” Abra added.

  Katherine had made going out on her own a regular part of her life. It wasn’t just the guys stealing copper from an empty house or the older couple whose car needed a push to the gas station; it was running ten or twelve miles almost every night, often to the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods in the city and being a one-woman Block Watch. Most of the time, nothing happened. It was just her and the sound of her running shoes padding away on the pavement, the thoughts in her head alternating between peaceful calm at the quiet of an August night and random bursts of anger that flared over something stupid like Hal throwing out leftovers that she was going to have for lunch or the hirsute little man in a kiosk at the shopping mall who handed her a hand lotion sample and then said he also had something for “zee puffy eyes.” Other times things did happen.

  One night she stopped a young guy who was breaking into a parked car, tied his hands with the cord of his earbuds (she wondered what music one played while breaking into a car), and called the police on the guy’s phone before running down the street. At 4:35 one morning, she came across an older woman sitting in an otherwise empty bus stop at the corner of Euclid Avenue and East 125th Street. Katherine wasn’t sure which of them was more surprised to see the other, but she’d asked, “Do you need someone to wait with you, ma’am?” and then waited ten minutes until the bus arrived. The woman—Estelle was her name—worked as a cleaner in an office building downtown. Katherine had gotten into the habit of running by that corner most days around the same time, just to make sure no one bothered Estelle. How do you explain that you can’t run with one of your closest friends in the mornings anymore because you’ve become someone’s guardian angel?

  “I run pretty far these days, and I’m usually gone for a few hours. Some nights I’m doing twelve fast miles.”

  “I think I could keep up. I run much faster when I’m invisible. Almost like floating.” He
re Abra took a little breath then added, “Granted, I really don’t want to go running at four in the morning.”

  “Maybe we ought to try a test run.”

  “I’d be game. On a weekend,” she added with a grin.

  Katherine sat back in her chair and took a long drink of her margarita. She’d spent so much time alone lately, so much time thinking about herself and her powers that she hadn’t thought about what Abra and Margie were doing. Each of them had been poking around on her own, doing random acts of kindness here and there when she saw a need. But that was hit-or-miss. If they really wanted to make a difference, they ought to let people ask for help. Without saying anything, Katherine pulled out her phone and went to the Super Ladies’ IcyU page.

  “Hey, you’re breaking the no-phone rule,” Margie said. “You have to buy the next round.”

  “That’s fine,” Katherine replied. When she was done typing, she handed her phone to Margie. “Here, look,” she added proudly.

  “‘Do you need help? Send a message to the Super Ladies. If we can, we will,’” Margie read off the phone. “What?”

  Abra scooted her chair closer to Margie’s to look at the phone. “You’re telling people to call us?” she asked.

  Katherine hadn’t expected either of them to sound quite so incredulous. “Yeah. We can’t just roam around looking for people doing…you know, bad things.”

  “That sounds so dorky,” Margie said.

  “I know. And it isn’t the most efficient crime-fighting technique. This way, people can contact us if they need help.”

  “They can also call nine-one-one,” Abra said. She gave a little shake of her head and took another chip from the almost-empty basket.

  “It’s like the Bat Signal. You send it up when you need help.”

  “It’s a good idea, but it isn’t practical,” Abra said. “I mean, let’s say someone sends us a direct message on IcyU. One of us has to actually see the message, contact the other two, extricate herself from whatever she’s doing—I can’t just up and leave work in the middle of the day—and get to wherever the problem is. It could be an hour before one of us got there, by which time whatever emergency that was happening would be long over.”