The Love Sucks Club Read Online Free PDF Page B

speak, but close it again before any sounds can escape. It’s crazy,
but for a second there, I thought that I was about to cry. I love my best
friend and all, but I definitely don’t want to cry in front of her. Hell, I
don’t even cry in front of myself. As good as a friend as she is, Sam is not
particularly sympathetic to tears. The one time I cried in front of her, years
ago, a few days after Fran’s funeral, she cleared her throat, slapped me on the
back, gave me a hard one arm hug, and took off for the kitchen to grab a beer.
    Composing myself, I try again. “It was just an episode.”
    “What’s the difference?” she asks.
    “Do I look like a doctor?”
    Sam shrugs. We both stare off at the water again.
    The episodes started on my thirtieth birthday. My mother had died
a few months earlier. Susannah was in full melt down mode. Our other sister,
Jamie, was in Africa and had not only refused to come back for the funeral, but
had continued to refuse to come back long after, despite Susannah’s heartfelt
pleas across expensive long distance phone calls. Our father, a silent man who
made a life out of hiding in his workshop to avoid our mother’s constant
harassment, had burrowed even deeper into his own silence. I had thought that
the death of my mother, a woman who, by her own admission, believed that the
only way anyone in the house could be happy was by keeping her happy, would
have helped to bring him out of his shell. He would no longer have someone
yelling at him if his boots were dirty, or screaming from the upstairs bedroom
that he still hadn’t fixed that old light fixture. I guess that deep down the
old man must have liked having someone control his every move, because once
mother was gone, Dad was at a loss. A couple of years after my thirtieth, when
I moved to the Caribbean, Susannah was livid. She felt
it was her obligation to stay and take care of Dad, and she wanted me to stick
around to help her out. I remain of the opinion that an able-bodied man who is
fully functioning and financially independent should be able to take care of
himself and I have never had an interest in giving up my own life in order to
keep house for the old man.
    But on my thirtieth birthday, I was still living in Ohio. I wasn’t
yet making enough on my writing to do it full-time so my life had become a
cycle of working full-time, writing, checking on my father, fielding calls and
visits from Susannah, and dealing with Fran. I don’t think there’s an appreciable
way to explain the madness that was Fran except for this - I was in love with
her. I was in love with her in a way that I don’t think I have ever been with
anyone in my life.
    I literally loved her from the moment I met her. It was a Hallmark
moment. It sounds stupid now, but I did look at her across a crowded room and
fall instantly in love. It wasn’t even as if she was that gorgeous, at least
not at first. Most people didn’t think she was even that pretty. I mean, she
did have that incredibly cute shock of naturally red hair that curled around
her face in soft waves. Her ears were tiny and adorable. To look at her,
though, I just don’t think you’d say that she was an “across a crowded room”
kind of hot. First of all, she was short. Not that I’m that tall, but she was
really short. Like five foot two. She was skinny, too. Not that kind of
adorable skinny that some women have, but way skinny, with knobby knees and
hard pointy hip bones that crushed into me sometimes when we were making love.
I always felt that I had to be careful of positioning when I was cuddling with
her or I was likely to end up with bruises. Her eyes were just brown. Not a
deep brown like mine, but just kind of plain brown. She had sweet lips, but her
nose was kind of long. None of her features were offensive in any way, it was
just that put together in that way, they looked a little awkward, like they
were all meant to belong to different people. Whatever. I don’t think it