![\"Suzie's](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/i15.photobucket.com\/albums\/a385\/AliceAudrey\/Blog\/SuziesHouse2.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gene and Tracy sat at the kitchen table while Mrs. H. watched Miranda cook, which was kind of weird since Miranda was just as old as Mrs. H. and knew how to cook, sort of. Last time it was her turn to cook she left out the salt. Mrs. H. called it a sin of omission.<\/p>\n
\u201cAren\u2019t you going to say anything?\u201d He asked it like it was no big deal, didn\u2019t even look up from his homework all that much.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout what?\u201d Mrs. H. said. She glanced backward at him with a spoon of sauce in her mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout going to MacDonald\u2019s to meet my mom tomorrow.\u201d So much for easing into the conversation.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s fine. I have time. But Gene, I don\u2019t think she\u2019s really your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cReally?\u201d Tracy said. \u201cThey have the same color hair and the same kind of nose.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrown hair and straight noses are commonplace. The reason I don\u2019t think she is his mother is because she didn\u2019t name a single place that Gene mentioned having lived. Not one. If she were his mother, wouldn\u2019t she have named the last place where they saw one another?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, but that wasn\u2019t how the conversation went.\u201d Tracy tapped her notebook with her mechanical pencil.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe didn\u2019t say anything I would expect from a long lost mother, either. No remembrances, no apologies, she never talks about your past together. She isn\u2019t mother-like at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s there to remember? I was five when she left.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI still remember certain diaper changes with Ben.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEven I remember some of those,\u201d Miranda muttered while stirring the Swedish meatballs.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can see a lot of his current characteristics in the way he was then. If I had gone so long without seeing him, I would be looking for them in him. Fran isn\u2019t like that. She doesn\u2019t really seem to care about him at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gene grunted agreement, though he didn\u2019t say anything. Mrs. H. was exactly right. He\u2019d been feeling for a while like there was something wrong with Fran. Not that he wanted his real mom to hang all over him and cry and tell him how sorry she was for leaving him in the hands of his abusive father or anything. But it felt like there should be more from her. Like, why did she even bother to meet him? Why did she keep bothering?<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, if she isn\u2019t his mother, then what does she want?\u201d Tracy didn\u2019t even pretend to look at her homework anymore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guitar,\u201d Miranda said, turning the stove off. \u201cIf she isn\u2019t his mother, then the only thing she knows about him is about the guitar.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJust a beat up old thing,\u201d Gene muttered.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe whoever carved their initials into it was famous. Or her old boyfriend. Who\u2019s going to set the table? Dinner\u2019s ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she would never talk about the guitar. I tried.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s another thing. It isn\u2019t like she isn\u2019t interested in the guitar. It\u2019s like she avoids talking about it at all, except once to ask where we kept it. Table\u2019s already set, Miranda.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s right. She wanted to know where he kept it. So all she wanted was his guitar. She didn\u2019t care about him at all.<\/p>\n
So what? It wasn\u2019t like he needed a mother at all. He\u2019d done all right up until now without one, hadn\u2019t he? Not counting that time he slept in a parking lot and caught pneumonia. So when he went to MacDonald\u2019s, that would be the last time. He\u2019d tell her just what he thought of her then.<\/p>\n
If you enjoy Suzie\u2019s House and would like to see more, please leave a comment. Suzie\u2019s House is powered by its readers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gene and Tracy sat at the kitchen table while Mrs. H. watched Miranda cook, which was kind of weird since Miranda was just as old as Mrs. H. and knew how to cook, sort of. Last time it was her turn to cook she left out the salt. Mrs. H. called it a sin of omission. \u201cAren\u2019t you going to say anything?\u201d He asked it like it was no big deal, didn\u2019t even look up from his homework all that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138,8,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-three-word-wednesday-a-meme","category-fiction","category-suzies-house"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7720"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7724,"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7720\/revisions\/7724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aliceaudrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}