ABOUT THE BOOK
For three middle-aged women in the suburbs of Cleveland, the issues seemed compelling but relatively conventional: sending a child off to college, dealing with a marriage gone stale, feeling "invisible." But changes were coming . . . and not the predictable ones. Because Margie, Katherine, and Abra are feeling a new kind of power inside of them – literally. Of all the things they thought they might have to contend with as they got older, not one of them considered they'd be exploding a few gender roles by becoming superheroes.
At once a delightful and surprising adventure and a thoughtful examination of a woman's changing role through life's passages,
The Super Ladies is larger-than-life fiction at its very best.
Book Details:
Title: The Super Ladies
Author: Susan Petrone
Genre: literary women’s fiction
Publisher: The Story Plant (August 14, 2018)
Print length: 320 pages
On tour with: Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours
INTERVIEW WITH SUSAN PETRONE
Q: Susan, what’s the story behind the title of your book?
A: I normally have a lot of trouble with titles, but not with this book. Once I came up with the concept of three friends who develop superpowers when they go through menopause, it couldn’t be titled anything but
The Super Ladies.
Q: Where’s home for you?
A: I live in Cleveland, Ohio. I went to college in Annapolis, Maryland for a time and lived for two years in Alkmaar, the Netherlands, but I always come back here. It’s home.
Q: What’s your favorite memory?
A: My daughter was born in China; my husband and I adopted. Our hotel room in Nanchang had two double beds. We put her crib in between them because we both wanted to be next to her. Our daughter was tiny and lovely with huge eyes that saw simply everything. She didn’t cry, but you could tell she was a little wary of everything that was happening.
The first night with her, I couldn’t sleep and just laid awake marveling at the glorious little being who was suddenly our child. Now that this dream of becoming a parent was a reality, I had an overwhelming wave of joy mixed with fear that I wouldn’t be up to the task. I wanted to be the parent this sweet, good-natured little baby deserved. The baby woke up and looked at me. We stared at each other for a moment, and I put my fingers through the wooden bars of the crib to touch her insanely tiny fingers. She reached out a tiny finger and touched mine back and gave me just the smallest hint of a smile. It was the first time she had smiled at either of us. It really felt like our first moment as mother and daughter.
Q: If you had an extra $100 a week to spend on yourself, what would you buy?
A: I’d save it for travel money. I think our next big trip is going to be Iceland. Either that or I’d sock it away in my IRA so I can retire earlier and have more time to write.
Q: What do you love about where you live?
A: I love swimming in Lake Erie (yes, you really can swim there) and the change of seasons. I know we can have some snowy, cold winters but that just makes you appreciate the gorgeous spring all the more. And the fall colors are breathtaking.
Q: Have you been in any natural disasters?
A: I live in Cleveland, so the answer is “No.” That’s also another great thing about my hometown—no earthquakes to speak of, no mudslides, no hurricanes, no wildfires, no floods, no tornadoes. We’re pretty safe in that regard.
Q: What is the most daring thing you've done?
A: When I was at college in Annapolis, Maryland, I used to take walks down to the docks to look at the water and the boats. That summer, there was a replica of a clipper ship called the Mystic Clipper that took people on overnight trips. I was an 18-year-old college freshman with no money and knew nothing about sailing. But I really wanted to go on the ship. I figured it I wanted it, I had to make it happen. I approached the owners of the ship and asked if they ever let people work for their passage. Now all of my sailing knowledge had come from reading
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in elementary school and going out in a little tiny sailboat twice that semester with the cute guy who worked in the boathouse and who tried to teach the basics. I didn’t tell this to the owners of the Mystic Clipper. If I have a superpower, it’s acting as though I know what I’m doing even when I don’t. The ship’s owners said “okay,” so the following Saturday, I showed up at the Mystic Clipper with a change of clothes and my toothbrush and went aboard.
The crew was three or four young guys and, for that weekend, me. I helped in the galley and polished the brass and hoisted the mainsail and felt a little bit like a sailor. Then one of the guys said that we had to tie down the forestays on the bowsprit and did I want to help. I said, “Sure.” It turns out that the bowsprit is the long, pointed bar sticking out from the prow of the ship. There’s a thin cable running below it. You walk on the cable, over the water, while holding onto the bowsprit and tie down the forestays. I didn’t know this when I said “Sure,” but once I had committed, there was no turning back.
They said the ship didn’t go “that” fast—maybe five or six knots—but looking down and seeing the wake from the ship’s prow and realizing that if I slipped I would surely drown made it seem as though we were going very fast. It occurred to me that maybe two people knew where I was that weekend. I don’t even think the owners of the boat knew my last name. I wondered what they would tell the college if something happened to me. One of the guys made his way out on the cable on one side of the bowsprit, expecting me to follow on the other side. After talking my way into this, how could I chicken out now? I screwed up my courage, put one foot on the cable and then the other, and made my way out over the open water. I tied down the forestay, and I didn’t slip, and it was exhilarating.
Q: What is the stupidest thing you've ever done?
A: Getting married in a foreign country to someone I had only known for six months.
Q: What’s one thing you wish your younger writer self knew?
A: That being clever and in a hurry won’t get you published; you need to slow down and take your time and revise.
Q: What makes you bored?
A: If left to my own devices, I don’t get bored because there is always something to do or see or learn or think about.
Q: What is your most embarrassing moment?
A: Oh my, I can’t even begin to list them.
Q: What makes you nervous?
A: Public speaking.
Q: What makes you happy?
A: Breathing, being awake and alive.
Q: What makes you scared?
A: Thinking about something bad happening to one of my family or friends, especially my kid.
Q: Do you have another job outside of writing?
A: Yes. I do communications for a research center at Case Western Reserve University. I also teach as an adjunct for Hiram College.
Q: Who are you?
A: I am still figuring that out.
Q: How did you meet your spouse?
A: I had just started working at Cleveland State University’s College of Urban Affairs. We were playing a one-off softball game against the County Commissioners office. He was playing on the college’s team as an alum. My first words to him were “Hi, I’m Susan. I think I’m batting after you.”
Q: What brings you sheer delight?
A: A 30-mile bike ride on a perfect morning, all by myself.
Q: Would you rather be a lonely genius, or a sociable idiot?
A: I kind of want to be both.
Q: If you could live anywhere in the world, where in the world would it be?
A: London, England.
Q: What would you like people to say about you after you die?
A: She was a damn good writer, and she made me laugh.
Q: Who are your favorite authors?
A: Jane Austen and Kurt Vonnegut.
Q: Where and when do you prefer to do your writing?
A: I generally write at night after my family goes to bed, but that’s more out of necessity than preference. I work half time and am off one day a week. On my off day, I try to spend most of the day writing. We have a small house, but I’ve commandeered a portion of the second floor as my office. I typically write up there or at the library or coffee shop.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m working on a few things, but my next book will be called
The Heebie-Jeebie Girl. It’s about a seven-year-old girl who can pick the daily lottery number and her great-uncle as they try to find the guys who robbed her grandmother. I keep telling people it’s a bit like
Crime & Punishment in 1977 Youngstown only with jokes.
EXCERPT FROM THE SUPER LADIES
On the way home, Katherine called shotgun, so Abra had to sit in the back of Margie’s minivan amid soccer shin guards, baseballs, stray sneakers, swim goggles, granola bar wrappers, a rubber-banded stack of Pokemon cards, and a book on playing Minecraft. “How was this shoe not on the seat when we left?” Abra asked.
“I really couldn’t tell you,” Margie replied over her shoulder. “Things back there just seem to migrate around on their own. Hold it up.” Abra did so, and Margie took a quick look at it in the rearview mirror as they pulled out of the parking lot and onto Superior Avenue. “I don’t even think that belongs to one of mine.”
“Now you know why I called shotgun. The backseat scares me,” Katherine said. “I sometimes get overwhelmed with one kid. How do you manage three?”
“I have no life. Duh,” Margie replied.
Margie cut south onto East 12th Street and then turned east onto Chester Avenue, which would take them through Midtown, up Cedar Hill, and back home. As they drove by Cleveland State University, she asked Katherine, “Do we still have to flip the bird to CSU for denying Hal tenure?”
“Nah, the statute of limitations has expired on that one, I think.”
“I like the new housing they’re building down here,” Abra said. “If I ever move downtown, would you two come and visit me?”
“Hell yes,” said Katherine.
“Sure,” Margie added. “Are you seriously thinking of moving or just toying with it?”
“Toying. If I can unload the house to the bank, I’ll have to rent somewhere. And I’d be closer to work.”
“If you move, who will I run with every morning?” “I don’t know. Get another dog?”
Chester was a wide, three-lanes-in-each-direction boulevard that took them past the university neighborhood and through the dead zone in between downtown, where most of the office buildings and entertainment areas were, and University Circle, where most of the city’s museums and cultural gems were ensconced. Economic development hadn’t hit this middle area, and much of it was taken up by vacant buildings, empty lots, and boarded-up houses.
Nine fifteen on a Thursday night in mid-May isn’t late and isn’t scary. Still, Margie got a bad feeling when she saw a young woman on the sidewalk walking fast, hands folded across her chest, not looking at the man who walked next to her. The girl was a stranger—not her age, not her race, not her neighborhood, but still, the girl was someone, some mother’s daughter.
Margie pulled over to the curb, leaving the engine running.
“Why are you stopping?” Katherine asked.
The few other cars on the wide road passed by without slowing. No cars were parked on the street; Margie’s van was the only stopped vehicle for blocks. Katherine and Abra followed Margie’s gaze to the scene unfolding on the sidewalk. The man was yelling at the woman now. They couldn’t make out exactly what he was yelling but heard the words “bitch” and “money” a few times. And they could see his flailing arms, his face leering up against hers. She stopped walking and said something to him, and he hit her. She lost her balance and fell against the chain-link fence that ran along the sidewalk. They were in front of an empty lot, where once there might have been a house but now was only a square of crabgrass and crumbling concrete and stray garbage. For a moment, there were no other cars on the road. There was no one else on the street, no inhabited buildings for a couple blocks either way. If not for them, the woman was on her own.
“Call nine-one-one,” Abra said as the man hit the woman again. The woman tried to get away, but he grabbed her shoulders and shoved her hard against the fence.
“There’s no time,” Katherine said. In a heartbeat, she was out of the car.
“Darn it, come on…” Abra muttered as she fumbled with the sliding side door and jumped out. “Keep the engine running,” she said as she followed Katherine.
“I’ll go with you…” Margie started to say. No, Abra was right. Someone had to stay with the van, keep the engine running, stay behind the wheel in case they needed to make a quick getaway. Glancing behind her, she backed up alongside the people on the sidewalk. It felt proactive. She could hear Katherine’s strong teacher voice saying loudly but calmly, “Leave her alone” and the woman yelling, “Call the police!” It suddenly occurred to Margie that she had a phone. She could call the police. Hands trembling and heart racing, Margie frantically fumbled through her bag for her phone.
She told the 911 dispatcher where she was and what was happening, the whole time watching Katherine and Abra and the couple on the sidewalk. Suddenly, there was a glint of something shiny in the streetlight as the man rushed toward Katherine. She heard a scream, and then she couldn’t see Abra anymore.
•
Katherine got out of the car purely through instinct. There was someone in trouble—helping is what you were supposed to do, right? It wasn’t until she was on the sidewalk, walking toward the man and woman, saying loudly, “Leave her alone” and watching the man turn to face her that she realized she had absolutely no idea what to do next. None. It was then that her heart started pounding and a hot wave of fear tingled through her arms and legs.
Up close, she could see the guy was taller and more muscular than he appeared from the safety of the van. He was maybe white, maybe light-skinned African American with a shaved head. An indecipherable neck tattoo peeked out from under his close-fitting, long-sleeved black T-shirt. She tried to burn a police description into her brain. The woman yelled, “Call the police!” at the same time the guy said, “This is none of your damn business, lady” to Katherine. The utter disdain in his voice cleared everything out of her brain except one thought: This was such a mistake. This was such a stupid mistake. There was no way this could end well. For a split second, she imagined Hal and Anna without her, wondered if they would think her foolish for getting herself killed in this way. She heard Abra say softly, “Just let her go, man.”
Katherine could just see Abra off to her right. Margie had backed up, and the open doors of the van were only a few yards away. She could faintly hear Margie’s voice, talking to 911 maybe? Knowing they were both nearby gave her a tiny bit more courage. Katherine took a tentative step toward the woman, who was kneeling by the fence. Her face was bloodied, the sleeve of her shirt ripped. “Miss?” she asked. She looked about nineteen or twenty. Not a woman. A girl. “Why don’t you come with us? We’ll give you a ride.”
“She don’t need a ride,” the man said.
The rest of the street seemed eerily quiet. Couldn’t someone else stop and help? Someone big? Someone male maybe? Katherine wasn’t that big, but she was big enough, strong enough. She could help. Slowly she extended her left arm. If the woman wanted to take her hand, she could. Katherine held the woman’s gaze, hoping she could silently convince her that leaving with some strangers was preferable to getting beaten up by her boyfriend. Katherine was so focused that she didn’t see the knife until it was against her arm, in her arm. The man cut so fast that she hardly saw the blade, only the flash of metal against her pale white skin. It occurred to her that she needed to get out in the sun. Why am I worried about how pale I am? I just got cut. She felt the sensation of the blade slicing through flesh, felt a momentary spark of pain, and then the pain was gone. It happened faster than a flu shot—a quick prick, then nothing.
The man only made one swipe, then stopped, triumphant, staring at her arm, expecting blood, expecting her to scream, to fall. There wasn’t any blood on her arm or the knife. No blood, just Katherine staring at him wide-eyed and unharmed.
Then the man was on the ground, hit from the side by…something, something Katherine couldn’t see. The knife dropped from his hands and landed near her foot. She kicked it away at the same time she heard Abra’s voice yell, “Run!” But where the hell was Abra? She must be in the van. Katherine couldn’t see her.
Katherine said, “Come on” to the woman, who was now up and moving toward her. The woman needed no more convincing and was in the car before Katherine, even before Abra. Where had Abra been? How could she be the last one to pile into the minivan, yelling, “Go! Go!” to Margie, who was slamming on the gas before the door was even closed.
Nobody said anything for a moment. The only sound in the car was that of four women catching their breath, being glad they had breath left in their bodies. Then all of them simultaneously erupted into words of relief and fear, asking each other “Are you all right? Are you all right?”
“Oh sweet mother, I can’t believe you all just did that,” Margie said. “I thought—Katherine, I honestly thought he was going to kill you.”
“So did I,” Abra said. “How the hell did he not cut you? How did he miss you?”
“He didn’t miss me,” Katherine replied quietly. Feeling fine seemed intrinsically wrong, but there it was. Unreal sense of calm? Yes. Pain and blood? No.
Before Margie or Abra could respond, the woman exclaimed, “Oh my God, thank you! Sean would’ve done me in this time, I know it. Y’all were like superheroes or something. You saved my life.”
The three women were quiet for a heartbeat. For the moment, the hyperbole of the phrase “You saved my life” was gone. It was arguably true. This was a new sensation. Frightening and humbling. Then Margie said, “Shoot, I dropped the phone.” With one hand on the wheel, she felt around in the great vortex of tissues, empty cups, and scraps of paper in the molded plastic section in between the two front seats.
“I got it,” Katherine said, coming up with the phone. The 911 dispatcher was still on the line, wondering what was going on. “Hello?” Katherine said. “We’re okay. We got away, the woman is safe. We’re going—where are we going?”
“Anywhere away from Sean,” the woman in the back said.
“There’s a police station right down the street at one hundred and fifth,” Abra said.
“Right, I know where that is,” Margie said.
A police car with the siren off but lights flashing came roaring down Chester Avenue in the opposite direction.
“Was that for us?” Margie asked.
“I think so,” Abra said.
Katherine hardly had time to explain what had happened to the dispatcher before they were at the station. There was a long hour-plus of giving witness statements to a jaded-looking police officer who told them several times how lucky they were to have gotten out of the situation with no harm done. “What you three ladies did was very brave and very stupid,” he said in closing.
“We know,” Abra replied.
They were told they might be called as witnesses if the woman, Janelle, decided to press charges against her boyfriend. Then they were free to go. The three of them walked out of the police station and to the waiting minivan. It was nearing midnight, and the spring evening had moved from cool to downright chilly. Even so, none of them moved to get into the van. Margie unlocked it and opened the driver’s door, then just stood looking at the ground, one hand on the door, the other on the side of the van, breathing slowly. Abra paced in a slow oval near the back of the van, while Katherine leaned against it and gazed up at the few faint stars that could be seen against the city lights. She suddenly wanted to be somewhere quiet, away from the city, away from people. Margie’s voice brought her back: “I’m sorry I didn’t do anything to help.”
What are you talking about?” Katherine said. “If it weren’t for you, we never would have gotten out of there.”
Abra walked around the van to Margie. “You were the only smart one. I’m sorry I got out of the car. That was stupid.” As Abra said this, she shivered, her lips trembled, and she started to shake. “That was so stupid.” “I got out first,” Katherine said. “I’m the stupid one.” Katherine almost never saw Margie cry. Even when her eldest child was going through hell, Katherine had been amazed and admiring of her friend’s resilience. But now Margie seemed overwhelmed by heaving sobs. “I’m just so glad the two of you are okay,” Margie stammered. Crying people generally made her nervous, but Katherine joined Margie and Abra on the other side of the van.
When your friends need you, they need you.
***
Excerpt from The Super Ladies by Susan Petrone. Copyright © 2017 by Susan Petrone. Reproduced with permission from Susan Petrone. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Susan Petrone’s short fiction has been published by Glimmer Train, Muse, Conclave, and Whiskey Island. She is the author of the novels
The Super Ladies (2018),
Throw Like a Woman (2015), and
A Body at Rest (2009), which won a bronze medal for regional fiction from the Independent Publishers Book Awards (IPPY). Her short story, “Monster Jones Wants to Creep You Out” (Conclave, 2010) was nominated by the editor for a Pushcart Prize. On the non-fiction side, Susan’s work has appeared on ESPN.com, and CoolCleveland.com, and she co-owns the Cleveland Indians blog,
ItsPronouncedLajaway.com, for ESPN.com’s SweetSpot network. She is also one of the co-founders and board member of
Literary Cleveland. Susan lives with one husband, one daughter, and far too many animals in a little house near some medium-sized woods.
Connect with Susan:
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Blog |
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