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Suzi Q doesn’t know when it all became too quiet.
As she looked onto the bustling city below, her gaze soon fixated itself onto her reflection in the window. Her golden hair had turned pale yellow with a couple strands the color of New York snow in the winter. Her skin papery with crinkles around her eyes and mouth. Her husband grew old as well, the least he could do was slow down and spend more time in their home with her. But he insisted on still going on business trips and staying late at the office.
Today was no different.
With a promise to be home before 11 he had kissed her forehead and she had bid him a good day as he walked out the door.
The penthouse that Joseph had gotten for them a few years after Holly had gone to Japan and married, felt too large…too devoid of life.
It was nothing like the little house with a yard and picket fence that they owned while raising their daughter. Where Joseph would bring colleagues over for dinner or Holly making her friends tag along for homework and boy gossip. There was never a dull moment. Suzi always made sure to be the perfect hostess and she prided herself in it.
Now, it seemed that only Rosas and herself, cohabited the ample space but even today Rosas was gone (per her request that he have a mini vacation and visit his family in Italy).
Suzi Q sighing, walked over to the turntable and placed one of her son-in-law's records. Joseph hated anything involving the man, but without him here to nag, she turned the dial up on the volume.
Jazz music echoed throughout the apartment as she strided into the kitchen. August was halfway through and the air got crisper as splatters of orange against pink clouds painted the sky.
Filling a kettle with water she settles it on the stove to boil before moving on over to the pantry, in hopes of finding some ginger, oranges, and honey.
Successful in her findings, she added the ingredients to steep and little by little the apartment filled with the tea’s aroma.
Opening one of the cabinets above her kitchen sink, she lets her eyes roam for a few moments before settling on a white porcelain tea cup with lavender and daisy flowers delicately painted on its sides.
This will do.
She gently strokes the sides and handle of the teacup, lost in its design before the whistle of the kettle calls her back into focus. Carefully pouring the hot liquid into her cup, she makes her way over to the living room where a tin of cookies sat waiting for her on the glass coffee table.
It was only a little past 6 o’clock when she began to settle into one of the velvet chairs, that a knock emerged from her front door.
At first it was so quiet she had thought she’d only imagined it. But as the seconds passed the knocker seemed to grow impatient as the knocking became quick, consecutive, sharp raps on the door.
Heavens, who could it be?
Suzi stood up trying to remember if her husband had mentioned anyone coming over. None that she could recall, though, she wouldn’t put it past herself to have forgotten.
Since her youth she had always been quite flighty which Joseph would either find endearing or troublesome…depending on the situation.
Regardless, the doorman would have telephoned her of any guests. The building wouldn’t just let anyone in.
A feeling of unease hung over her shoulders as she slowly began walking towards the door. In the 40 seconds it took Suzi Q to make it from her living room to the door, she was unknowingly experiencing her last moments of innocent ignorance.
Suzi Q slowly opened the door to find a young 20 something year old woman at her doorstep.
She was of average height, slender, with straight long black hair and wispy bangs. She was clearly of Asian background, wearing a light blue summer dress that stopped at about mid calf and white cardigan. Her shoes are in perfect match with the rest of her outfit - a pair of low white heels. Her smooth, glass-like face is free of almost any make up save for the light pink lipstick and mascara. Her pink rimmed, tired eyes meet Suzi’s quizzical ones.
It took Suzi a moment to notice the small bundle cradled in her arms.
“I’m sorry...I didn’t…I didn’t know-” the young woman began in broken English, her voice soft and shaking.
An empathetic look flickers across Suzi’s face and she exhales in relief.
Of course, silly me, the poor dear must have knocked on the wrong door.
The young woman quickly looked down at her feet as she cleared her voice, seeming to try and recompose herself.
As Suzi begins to interject, wanting to help find wherever she needs to go, the woman looks her in the eyes, the look she gives makes Suzi’s mouth clamp shut. The unease she had felt moments before returning to settle in her.
“I…I cannot keep him,” the woman says, visibly swallowing.
She holds out the bundle before placing, no, pushing him into Suzi’s surprised arms. Suzi stumbles back for a moment, but remains silent as her mind tries to comprehend what was happening.
“I-I’m sorry…I’m sorry, but I cannot do this,” the woman continued. “P-perhaps if… if it h-had been a girl…perhaps then…but a boy needs to be with his father. He needs to be with Joseph.”
Suzi felt her body run cold and a burning in her throat, as if she had swallowed a cupful of sea water.
The woman looked down, opening her bag and quickly pulled out a piece of paper, nearly throwing it at Suzi’s face in her haste. Unslinging a light purple bag from her shoulder she places it at Suzi’s feet once the woman realizes that the elder would not reach out to take it from her hands.
“H-his birth certificate… and his baby bag,” the young woman said, trying her best to not let her emotions get the best of her. “His name is Josuke.”
An involuntary whimper escapes from Suzi’s throat as the woman looks from Suzi to the bundle.
“I’m sorry Josuke,” her gaze returns to Suzi as she takes a step back to give a deep and quick bow to the older woman.
“I’m sorry…I’m so sorry.” She then turns and hastily makes her way toward the end of the hall.
Anger, grief, betrayal, indignation- all blossomed deep within Suzi’s chest and it felt like its thorns would rip her from the inside out.
She had been a homemaker, a good wife who attended to her husband’s needs and wants, who rarely ever let him come home to find a hair out of place. This…this was the gratitude she received.
As much as she wanted to scream at this other woman, for coming to HER home and weaseling into HER life she knew that she was not at fault. If her words and expression were anything to go by, then she truly didn’t know that the father of her child has a wife that was very much still alive and who laid restless on nights when he said he would return.
Suzi watches the back of her, mouth gaping with words that refuse to make their way to her lips. The bundle in her arms begins to wriggle, her arms quickly readjusting to support the weight of the child.
The clicking of her heels echoes down the hallway and with a momentary pause, the elevator dings as she steps in. Baby Josuke chose that moment to let out a wail.
With her back to her flesh and blood, she disappears out of their view.
Suzi breathes in a ragged breath after breath as she waits for the woman to return. Surely, she didn’t mean to give this baby to a foreign elderly woman, surely she would change her mind! That it had all been a mistake, a misunderstanding.
But the longer she stood at her door with the restless, crying boy in arms, the more it settled in that she would not be returning. Suzi Q could swear she heard her heart shatter. Suzi crouched down to pick up the diaper back before nudging the door shut with her shoulder and walked slowly back towards the living room, seating herself behind her still un-sipped but now room-temperature tea.
I’m going to kill him, oh I’m going to kill that man!
In her anger, her mind wandered off to a muddied memory from a peculiar night.
—
It had been around the same time last year, somewhere between late night and early morning. She was laying asleep when she felt a weight shift in the mattress that startled her awake.
“Joseph?” she had whispered.
“Hi, sweetheart…yes it’s me.” he whispered back to her.
But something in his voice had made Suzi quickly turn to face him. Her glasses on the nightstand, she’d carefully reached out trying to find his face in the dark. Joseph had taken her hands and placed them on his cheeks.
“H-How was Japan?” she asked cautiously.
A pause followed.
“Suzi…”
She waited.
“I love you so much, I hope you know.”
“I know, Joseph.” she had responded softly.
Suzi was accustomed to this.
Her husband was never really good with words, even worse when using his words to woo women. To which she’d tease him about how lucky he was to have even let him marry her at all. To which he’d jokingly grumble back at her.
Words became hard especially after the loss of their mutual friend, Caesar, when they had both only just entered adulthood. It was a week after his death that Suzi knew Joseph had secrets he wasn’t willing to confess. Many years had passed since that day but every once in a while she would see the faraway look in his eyes and she would remain by his side.
Yet, what Joseph often couldn’t say in words, he would show through action and Suzi had loved that about him.
He was a man who never broke the trust she placed on him and a man who never went back on his word.
“Suzi,” he continued. “You’re the only woman for me and I couldn’t ask for a better or greater mother to our daughter and wife. You continue to be as beautiful as the day I set my eyes on you in Italy. I need you.”
His voice had broken off ever so slightly and Suzi’s eyebrows had puckered.
“Oh, Joseph.” she smoothed out her expression before placing a kiss on his nose but worry hovered over her like a blanket.
Joseph would tell her more when and if he was ready. She trusted him
—
A coward. I married a lying, cheating, good for nothing coward!
Her body shook with anger as the realization hit her like a battering ram. That…that night was the night he fell. He had strayed and broken his vows.
She had discarded the memory because… well, Joseph never spoke a word. But it seemed he didn’t have to now because his secret came knocking at their door.
Josuke’s angry shrills snapped Suzi to the matter at hand. Taking deep and slow breaths to ground herself. It took a few moments for her shaking hands to finally begin unwrapping the boy from his swaddle.
Josuke
So small and tender, he couldn’t be more than two months old. A plumpness to his small face and limbs, very much gained from his mother’s milk, and his toothless mouth agape, face red from his screaming.
As if having already sensed that he'd been abandoned.
The boy continued to cry, hard and relentless, that Suzi could begin the hopeless of it all settling around her. His cry finally elicited the tears that had gathered on the edges of her eyes to spill.
“You have to stop, little one,” Suzi sniffed with a begging whisper. “Sweet little boy, you have to stop. Please, little one. Don’t cry. Please.”
Josuke’s cries slowly began to falter, turning into hiccuped whimpers. His teary eyes opened to meet Suzi’s own tear filled ones. She sucked in a breath and gave the boy a gentle, tired smile.
She pulled him close, with his head laying on her shoulder as she tugged down on his onesie. Embedded on his tiny shoulder was the star-shaped birthmark that she’d seen hundreds of times on Joseph, the same mark passed onto her own daughter, Holly.
Her heart gave a pang as she pulled up his onesie, her hand rubbing soothing circles on his back. The boy let out the tiniest of yawns before nuzzling his face into the older woman’s neck, seeming to find comfort and trust in her.
The sound made her heart turn the pang she had felt only momentarily into a flutter.
“It’s going to be okay, little one. Everything will be okay now.” she said reassuringly, not just to the child, but also for herself.
It dawned on Suzi that today they both lost something dear to them. So she held him close and as tenderly as she had held her Holly many many years ago.
A baby in the house, again. She thought wistfully as a serenity settled over the two of them for the first time since they began this unwelcome and strange journey.
Joseph would receive the full might of her fury once he returned but for now she held onto the calm in midst of the storm.
This boy needed someone to care for him, to love him, and protect him. He needed a mother. Suzi could do that, she could begin again. She would do that. Her heart thrummed.
Suzi had made up her mind.
“I will love you.” Suzi whispered to him, kissing the side of his head.
And she did.