Suzie's By Ellen Grace
“All ready?”
“Yup. Let’s go.”
Veronica punched out for her break, an amalgamation of all the breaks she was legally obliged to take all rolled into one. Suzie’s teashop was just around the corner from Locks & Chains, the bike shop where Veronica had been working for the past year and a half. Her and her mother had been going there since she had been a little girl, and in all that time the only thing that had changed were a few wait staff.
Veronica and her mother took a table for two by the window looking out on the shopping mall that had been built around Suzie’s at some point in the early 1950s and had only grown since like a city using a now ex-hamlet as its starting point and ordered a pot of the house blend for two. In minutes a waitress presented them with a pair of white cups and a green teapot, a white milk jug and a green-handled metal tea strainer.
“Enjoy.” The waitress smiled at the two of them, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes. Veronica thanked her, and her mother returned her smile, then she left, and they turned to each other and waited the mandatory two minutes for the tea in the teapot to finish brewing.
“How’s Lara?” Veronica asked, pouring a cup for herself and another for her mother.
Veronica’s mother rolled her eyes. “Losing her mind. She’s talking about taking out a loan to cover some of the cost.”
Veronica furrowed her brow. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”
“I don’t see why they can’t just do it in a registry office,” Veronica’s mother shook her head. “It was fine for me and John. It was fine for me and Evelynn. But no, they’ve got to have a castle.”
Veronica frowned. “It’s not a castle.”
Veronica’s mother raised her eyebrows. “It’s not? Well, for what this place is charging, they certainly seem to think they are.”
Veronica swallowed a sip of her tea.
“Anyway, darling, let’s talk about you. Tell me how you are.”
Veronica took a deep breath and put her cup down on the table. “Well, Rufus might be moving out, so if he does we’ll have to find another housemate, but Yvonne reckons one of her flatmates from halls might be getting a job somewhere nearby, so they might be interested. We’ll have to see what happens with that, though. None of us particularly want to start advertising to strangers.”
“Mm-hmm.” Veronica’s mother nodded.
“I heard from dad. He said one of the girls in his class is about to take the Grade 8 exam, and he’s really nervous for her.”
“Well, I’m sure he’ll tell us all about that when he comes over for dinner on Sunday. Anything else?”
“Uh…” Veronica wracked her brains.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Veronica!” Veronica’s mother brought the flat of her palm down on the table and only just managed to pull her slap in time to prevent making a racket. She winced and glanced around the shop, but no one seemed to have noticed. She turned back to Veronica. “Tell me about the job application.”
Veronica shifted in her seat. “Well… I didn’t really want to say anything until I knew for sure, but…they’ve given me an interview.”
“Oh!” Veronica’s mother clasped her hands together in front of her smile.
“It’s not an offer.”
“But it’s an interview! Oh, I’m so happy for you.”
“Please, don’t get your hopes up yet,” Veronica sighed. “I’m so tired of disappointment.”
Veronica’s mother cleared her throat and took a sip of her tea. “Of course, of course. I understand. Eee!”
Veronica scoffed.
“Just imagine, my daughter the executive!”
“That isn’t the position I applied for-”
“We’ll have so much further to come to Suzie’s. We’ll have to sort out logistics.”
Veronica hid a mischievous smile behind her cup. “Or we could just go somewhere else.”
Veronica’s mother’s grip slackened on her cup’s handle and her tea threatened to spill over onto the table. She caught the china before a disaster happened and placed it carefully down on the table to wag a disapproving finger at Veronica.
“My mother brought me in here every week until she died, like her mother did for her, and I shall do for you, and you’d better do for your eldest-”
“Mum! I was joking!”
Veronica’s mother sat back in her chair and adjusted the light scarf around her shoulders. “You mustn’t joke about tradition, Ronnie.”
“Tradition is a social construct.”
Veronica’s mother let out a deep sigh. “Is that the only thing you learned from three years of reading sociology?”
“Drink your tea.”
Veronica’s mother did.
Veronica got back from Lock & Chain at five-thirty that evening to shouting and an envelope addressed to her.
She dealt with the envelope first: a save-the-date from her sister. Veronica pocketed it and went into the living room. Annabelle, Delilah, and Yvonne were sitting on the sofa facing the blank TV, with discomfort written into their entire bodies.
“What’s going on?” Veronica sat down.
“What do you mean, ‘it meant nothing’? What exactly does that mean?” Rufus’ muffled voice filtered through the walls.
“We think Rufus and Kath are splitting up,” Annabelle said.
“I don’t care if it was five years ago! That just means you’ve been lying for so much longer! Were you just hoping I’d never find out? Was that your plan?”
“Yeah, apparently the party on campus in second year wasn’t as sin-free as Rufus thought,” Yvonne added.
“As any of us thought,” Delilah mumbled into her lap.
“You could have told me all that time ago! Instead I find out from… from him?”
Veronica cringed and settled into the armchair. The tirade only continued until, ten loud minutes later, Rufus stormed into the living room, his face as red as his hair.
“Call off the housemate search. I’m not going anywhere.” Then he stormed out and slammed the door behind him.
The four women exchanged discomforted glances.
“I guess I’d better tell Lucy to keep her options open,” Yvonne winced. She unfolded her legs from underneath her and made for her room. Delilah left with her, and Annabel reached for the remote. Veronica watched Annabel play a video game for an hour then went to her room to change before cooking her dinner.
Veronica had the only room in the house with a double bed: she had won it in a long and complicated coin flip tournament just before they had moved in. Veronica’s ‘smart clothes’ were hanging from the wardrobe, all on a single hanger. Veronica afforded them a glance before grabbing her pyjamas from atop her bed.
The day of the interview arrived with little pomp and no circumstance. Veronica caught the right train at the right time, had done her hair and make-up in what she hoped was a professional manner, and had ironed her smart clothes every day since Tuesday. She arrived at the office exactly fifteen minutes before her appointment, affixed her visitor badge to her jacket lapel, and filled out a questionnaire given to her by the receptionist who had greeted her upon her entrance into the glass office block.
At exactly 10 o’ clock, she was called in. The man interviewing her offered her a seat opposite him.
“Welcome, Ms Lennox. I trust you are well.”
“I am, thank you, Mr Stevens.”
Mr Stevens gave her a genuine smile, and his eyes glistened.
Then followed the same rigmarole to which Veronica had become well-adjusted over the last three years: What could she bring to the role? What did she consider to be her greatest strength? Why was she considering leaving her current job? What would she do if such-and-such a situation were to arise? Mr Stevens received all her answers with a smile, then made a confession.
“I must admit, when I was looking at your CV I saw that you were on the LGBTQ+ committee.” Mr Stevens gestured to the computer screen in front of him, as if Veronica could see what it was displaying. “I was on committee a few years before you. I must ask, how is the society?”
“Oh!” Veronica blinked. “Well, I left myself three years ago, but everything was going fine then. I think the committee we handed off to had grand ideas of lobbying the uni for gender-neutral toilets. Admittedly, we ran it as more of a social society than an activist one, but we got good feedback, especially from people who were only out at uni.”
Mr Stevens grinned. “Oh, I’m so glad. The society really supported me, especially when I decided not to transition. It’s nice to hear that it’s still going strong.” He looked over Veronica’s head at the clock above the door. “Well, I have a few other candidates to see. It was lovely to meet you. We’ll be in touch within the next month.”
Veronica thanked Mr Stevens, went home, changed into pyjamas, and turned on the television. When she remembered to check her phone two and a half hours later, there was a message from her mother asking her how the interview had gone.
At 2 o’ clock on a Tuesday, three months after Veronica had replied to her mother’s message, her mother turned up Lock & Chain. Veronica punched out for her break, an amalgamation of all the breaks she was legally obliged to take all rolled into one, and the two of them left for Suzie’s teashop, just around the corner.
Judges Comments
The signs of the times are all there is in Ellen Grace's clever, witty story Suzie's – because by the end we realise it's a story on a loop, where things happen but nothing changes. The passage of time is marked by lead character Veronica's visits with her mother to the café, Suzie's – and in this story where the pattern of life unchangingly repeats itself, Suzie's was also the place where her mother met her own mother, and her mother before it.
The theme of Suzie's is that its characters are trapped in a life on a loop, but Ellen plays with this idea by tantalisingly offering possibilities of escape: Veronica might get a new job; she and her housemates might get a new flat-mate. The conversation Veronica has with the man who interviews her for the new job suggests they've bonded over common life experiences, but it goes nowhere. It's never made explicit by Ellen and there isn't a single clunk in the narrative, but hope, disappointment and frustration are skillfully woven into the story.
The way Ellen plays with the short story form is interesting and well executed; it's sufficiently experimental to show that she's looking at what a short story is and what it can do, but not to the point of drawing attention to its process in a way that distracts the reader. A quirky, thought-provoking examination of the human condition, it well deserves its place as the runner up of our Signs of the Time competition.