Super Mom Saves The World
a novel by Melanie Lynne Hauser
a novel by Melanie Lynne Hauser
Chapter 1
What happens when a normal, PTA-fearing mother of two teenagers suddenly finds herself thrust into a new career at the tender age of forty-one?
And what if that career happens to involve an entirely new wardrobe, including high heels (which she hasn't worn in decades) and underwire bras (ditto)?
Furthermore, what if the job description includes keeping the world safe for democracy and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with really evil villains with unusual names?
Well, apparently she starts hearing voices.
At least, that's what happened to me, after a full six months on the job as the newest kid on the superhero block, that maternal dynamo known as -
Super Mom. (That's me.)
I'd just come home from yet another busy day of fighting crime. I stumbled up to the back door tired, cranky because I'd forgotten my key, but then realized that it wasn't necessary because the extra set was dangling from the door knob, practically sending out an engraved invitation to any interested evil villains to c'mon in and take their best shot at me. I sighed, pulled the keys out of the door knob and pushed the door open with my shoulder, because it's old and it sticks.
"Who left the keys in the back door?" I called, stumbling over the pile of discarded tennis shoes, flip-flops, snow boots and chunky platform wedges just inside the door. None of which was mine. I flipped on the kitchen light, only to shield my eyes from the devastation - the open cabinets, dirty dishes and globs of peanut butter - that greeted me. "Well, I have had it," I muttered, tightening my Apron of Anticipation around my waist, preparing myself for one more final, epic battle between good and evil.
(I'm good, for those keeping score.)
"Martin," I called, my hands on my hips. "Pick up your shoes! Kelly, get that backpack out of the way! Has it occurred to anyone around here to close a cabinet door lately? And what have I told you about turning out these lights? Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!"
I was met by a menacing silence that set my Super Mom sense on high alert; I whirled around, tense, ready for the onslaught of an enemy more terrifying than any villain imagined -Teenagers.
(They're evil. In case you're still keeping score.)
"Mom, I'll just have to put them on again tomorrow, so what's the use? Jeez!"
"Mother, please! I'll get it later when I do my homework! Have you tried lifting that thing, anyway? Do you want me to put my back out by bringing it all the way up to my room?"
I tugged on the offending backpack, crammed full of high school textbooks; even with my superpowers I couldn't lift it. So I kicked it out of the way and sighed dramatically, just in case anyone was paying attention to me. Then I trudged upstairs, untying my Apron of Anticipation, shaking out the dirt and cookie crumbs that had settled into the pockets - and bumped into two huge piles of laundry in the hallway. Stepping around them, I tripped over an empty soda can somebody had left in the middle of the hall - only to discover that it wasn't really empty.
My chest started to vibrate. I clenched my fists, reared my head back and felt my mouth almost split my face in two.
"ALL RIGHT! THAT'S IT! I HAVE HAD IT, I CANNOT LIVE IN A PIGSTY ANYMORE. NO ALLOWANCE THIS WEEK, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO ALLOWANCE!!!!!!!!"
My Mighty Roar thundered through the house; mirrors shook, dishes rattled and I cringed, just waiting. Sure enough, I heard a huge crash accompanied by the tinkling of shattered glass.
"Mom, that's the second picture this week!" My children confronted me at the foot of the stairs, their arms folded over their chests, twin pillars of martyrdom.
"Can't you learn to control yourself?" Kelly arched one golden eyebrow.
"Now who's going to clean it up?" Martin shook his head.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "Sorry. It just - came out." I took a deep breath, worked up some quick tears and pulled another weapon out of my arsenal. Super Guilt Trip.
"It's just that I've been a little busy today, fighting crime and all," I whispered, wiping my eyes with the corner of my Apron. "I'm sorry if I seem a little cranky - but I did stay up late last night doing all this laundry. But never mind." I sighed and sat down on the top step, showing off the cuts and bruises on my hands, hitching my costume up to reveal a giant gash on my knee from an earlier battle. (Me vs. The Ice Cream Man from Hell, who was notorious for driving away with little kids' change and not giving them their Push-Ups. I won. Just in case - you know, the score thing.)
"I'll find the time to put it away for you," I said with a groan. "I'll just have to get up earlier tomorrow, go without my own breakfast, maybe let an evildoer or two slip through the cracks - but that's fine, I don't mind. That's what mothers do, you know…"
"Oh, please." Martin grinned in that patronizing way he inherited from his father; Kelly shook her head.
"Come here, young lady." I sat up straight, my Super Mom Sense - which alerted me to the first sign of a child in trouble - tingling the back of my neck. "What on earth have you done to yourself?" I grabbed a hunk of her glossy blond hair - which was shot through with bright pink streaks - and yanked on it.
"Ow! Oh, that." She shrugged. "Vienna thought it would look cool, so she did it for me after school. It's no big thing, Mother, so stop looking at me like I pierced my tongue."
"Vienna? Tell me, what kind of person names their daughter after a city? And if Vienna thought it would look so cool, why didn't she put one in her own hair?"
"She did. It's purple."
"Oh."
"I'm hungry," Martin interrupted. "There's nothing to eat. When's the last time you went to the grocery store?"
"Well, excuse me, I was a little busy saving the world. But there's plenty to eat. I think I counted fourteen boxes of cereal."
"There's nothing good."
"Why don't we go out to Wally's Pizza Station? We haven't been there in ages. Remember how much you love the little train that brings the pizza to the tables?" I perked up, feeling the burden of being a superhero and a mother of teenagers slide off my shoulders; we always have a good time at Wally's Pizza Station. Plus you get free breadsticks.
"Mother, really. I wouldn't be caught dead in that place." Kelly twisted a pink strand of hair around her finger and admired it.
"It's a little lame," Martin agreed. "Can't we just order in?"
"I guess…"
"Forget about me, I'm going to Vienna's to study. She's picking me up in a minute."
"She can drive?"
"Yes, and she's a safe driver, so don't worry."
"Kelly, I'm not so sure, I hardly know her and I've not met her parents and-"
My daughter narrowed her gray eyes at me, put her hands on her hips and hit me with her best shot, simply by asking a question. The Question. The Question that punches every parent in the gut no matter how many times it's asked - and answered: "Don't you trust me?"
And the thing is I do. So far. But sometimes it seems that by saying so, I'm giving her permission to run off and do some terrible, unspeakable thing. Like knock off a couple of liquor stores with a sawed-off shotgun.
"I…well, of course I do…" I stammered, helpless, my superpowers failing me.
"Thanks, Mom!" She granted me a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she ran off to unearth the perfect pair of chunky wedge shoes from the pile downstairs.
I studied Martin, who, being the younger sibling, knows far too much. If he wasn't my son, I might have to kill him. "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing." He grinned. "Don't forget to order the pizza - pepperoni."
"Right." I sighed as he retreated to his lair to do whatever it is he does when I'm not around. Then I surveyed the piles of laundry surrounding me; faded underwear and mismatched socks and bras held together with safety pins. I plucked out a pair of sweat pants, T-shirt, comfy bra (meaning no underwire) and retreated to my own lair to change clothes and wonder what Wonder Woman was doing tonight. Probably getting a deep-tissue massage from some man-slave.
As for me, I trudged downstairs, grabbed a broom and dustpan and swept up the glass from broken picture frame, then called for the pizza delivery. I made quick work of the kitchen, taking full advantage of my ability to clean with the power of 10,000 Swiffers, which was by far the most practical of the superpowers I had acquired since suffering my Horrible Swiffer Accident last fall. (***Swiffer, by the way, is a remarkable cleaning product that I heartily endorse. And which was not responsible for my Horrible Swiffer Accident, as I had violated the warranty by negligently pouring dangerous combinations of household cleaners in the reservoir and inhaling their fumes due to improper ventilation.)
***Just a little legal mumbo-jumbo that Proctor and Gamble "suggested" I use from now on.
When I was done with the dustpan I put it away, in the cabinet under the sink. But as I did so I knocked something over - I heard a metallic thunk - so I knelt down, reached past the five dozen paper bags, neatly folded, that I keep in there for no apparent reason other than genetics (there are five dozen identical bags underneath my mother's kitchen sink), and grabbed the knocked over can. I pulled it out, saw that it was a very old can of shower cleaner, chuckled a bit at the idea of me, Super Mom, using a plain old commercial household cleanser, and was about to toss it in the trash when I heard a little "chirrup."
I stopped, looked around, shook my head, and then started toward the trash again.
"Purrupp," chirped something. Something adorable, because it was the cutest, brightest little sound you've ever heard.
"Did somebody bring a puppy home?" I called. Neither of my children answered. I bit my lip, opened the cabinet where the trash can was stored, and dropped the can -
Only to hear a slightly anguished "ooohhggooogoooo….." as it fell into the trash can, down, down, down…
And that's when I yelped.
"God, Mother, get a grip," my daughter said as she regally made her way across the kitchen and picked up her backpack with ease. "Are you starting to talk to yourself now?"
"No, but…I swear…" I looked into the trash. The can of shower cleaner - rusty along the edges, the label faded so that the Scrubbing Bubbles' eyes weren't quite so brightly black - lay nestled among Pop-Tart wrappers and yesterday's paper. "That can talked to me…"
"Mother. Honestly. You are so losing it." But Kelly stopped to give me a hug before she ran out the door to the tune of one car honking.
"Kelly, when will you be home?" I ran to the door and called after her retreating form, just a gray shadow in the dusk.
"Ten!"
"Because I want you home by ten - oh! Well, then, make sure you are. Home by ten." I waved pathetically at my teenaged daughter as she got in a car driven by a girl I hardly knew, who happened to be named after the capital of Austria. And if recent history has taught us anything, it's that a girl named after a foreign city is going to be trouble. I told myself that it's not my daughter I don't trust. It's everyone else in the world.
I watched the car back out of the driveway. I couldn't tell if Kelly had buckled her seatbelt. I also couldn't tell if Vienna was smoking a cigarette. I definitely couldn't tell if there were any open containers of alcohol or lusty teenaged boys stashed in the backseat, and because I couldn't tell, I could only begin to imagine. Which is never a good thing to do on an empty stomach, a superhero outfit within easy reach.
I wrestled with my conscience for a full twenty seconds. Then I threw some money down on the table for the pizza guy, ran upstairs, pulled on my costume again, and hit the streets in my brand new Mom Mobile (complete with Super Paint Color Changing Panels, to protect my identity).
I may have even snickered with evil maternal glee as I kept a discreet distance behind the VW Beetle that was speeding my daughter away to points unknown. I definitely forgot how tired I was, how hungry, how my high-heeled pumps pinched my feet. I even forgot about the talking can of shower cleaner.
Because the truth is, a Super Mom's job is never done. Especially when her own children are involved.
- - - - - -
"How was your session yesterday?"
"Birdie, you know I can't talk about it. Doctor/patient privileges, remember?"
"C'mon, you can tell me! I promise I won't tell anybody else!"
"Well…" Carrie, my best friend and co-worker at the Marvel Food and Fine Beverages, shut her register drawer and leaned across her conveyor belt. "Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to be smashed to a pulp by an evil arch-nemesis." I held up my hand, Girl Scout-style.
Carrie giggled, tugged at her straight black bangs, and adjusted her thick glasses. "You didn't hear it from me, but Robin, the Boy Wonder, is a total mess. Father issues, latent homosexual feelings, and a scary tutu fetish."
"Ooh! Freaky!"
"Shhh! Not so loud. But it is creepy, isn't it? He came to me just in time." She shook her head and blinked her little blue eyes like a mole.
"Carrie Peters. Psychiatrist to the superheroes." I smiled proudly. After all, it wasn't just anybody who could turn a thesis about superheroes and stifled childhood aggression into a thriving psychiatric practice endowed by the Justice League of America. (Although the JLA, not wanting the rest of the world to know that their superheroes have some pretty disturbing psychological issues, asked Carrie to keep her day job as a cover.) "Speaking of which…have you ever heard of a superhero seeing things?"
"What kind of things?"
"Oh, you know. Inanimate objects suddenly becoming - animate."
"Birdie, you're talking about a bunch of paranoid people, one of whom believes he can talk to fish, several who claim that they're inter-planetary travelers, and one woman of very advanced years whose breasts continue to defy gravity even though she swears she's had no plastic surgery."
"So, you're saying…?"
"That as a whole, you're a seriously messed-up bunch," she said with a professional cluck of her tongue.
"No fair." I pouted, more than a little hurt. I, too, was a card-carrying member of the Justice League of America (although I hated the picture on my ID card; my cape made me look fat).
"So," Carrie said with an elaborate shrug as she wiped down her conveyor belt. "How's Kelly been lately?"
"Fine. Although she has a new hairstyle."
"Really?"
"Yes. A pink streak running down the side."
"Kelly?" Carrie put down her dust cloth. "Kelly's hardly the pink streak type. Although pink was always her favorite color…"
"I know. From pink clothes to pink hair." I tried to laugh as if I were one of those cool mothers who believed in allowing their kids to experiment with finding themselves. But Carrie and I both knew I wasn't.
"I suppose I would never have known. Chrissie hardly sees her anymore…"
"I know, I know." I sighed. I'd been dreading this conversation for a month now. Carrie's daughter, Chrissie, and Kelly had been best friends since kindergarten. But now, it seemed, they'd grown apart. And as much as I grieved for the apparent end of their friendship, I was more worried about how it would affect Carrie's and mine. What happens to parents when their children aren't friends anymore? I didn't know, and I was afraid to find out.
(Continue to Next Page)
Order Confessions of Super Mom Contact Melanie for Book Club Visit Contests and Fun Additional Melanie Writing
Reprinted from Super Mom Saves The World by Melanie Lynne Hauser by permission of NAL, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Melanie Lynne Hauser. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.
What happens when a normal, PTA-fearing mother of two teenagers suddenly finds herself thrust into a new career at the tender age of forty-one?
And what if that career happens to involve an entirely new wardrobe, including high heels (which she hasn't worn in decades) and underwire bras (ditto)?
Furthermore, what if the job description includes keeping the world safe for democracy and engaging in hand-to-hand combat with really evil villains with unusual names?
Well, apparently she starts hearing voices.
At least, that's what happened to me, after a full six months on the job as the newest kid on the superhero block, that maternal dynamo known as -
Super Mom. (That's me.)
I'd just come home from yet another busy day of fighting crime. I stumbled up to the back door tired, cranky because I'd forgotten my key, but then realized that it wasn't necessary because the extra set was dangling from the door knob, practically sending out an engraved invitation to any interested evil villains to c'mon in and take their best shot at me. I sighed, pulled the keys out of the door knob and pushed the door open with my shoulder, because it's old and it sticks.
"Who left the keys in the back door?" I called, stumbling over the pile of discarded tennis shoes, flip-flops, snow boots and chunky platform wedges just inside the door. None of which was mine. I flipped on the kitchen light, only to shield my eyes from the devastation - the open cabinets, dirty dishes and globs of peanut butter - that greeted me. "Well, I have had it," I muttered, tightening my Apron of Anticipation around my waist, preparing myself for one more final, epic battle between good and evil.
(I'm good, for those keeping score.)
"Martin," I called, my hands on my hips. "Pick up your shoes! Kelly, get that backpack out of the way! Has it occurred to anyone around here to close a cabinet door lately? And what have I told you about turning out these lights? Money doesn't grow on trees, you know!"
I was met by a menacing silence that set my Super Mom sense on high alert; I whirled around, tense, ready for the onslaught of an enemy more terrifying than any villain imagined -Teenagers.
(They're evil. In case you're still keeping score.)
"Mom, I'll just have to put them on again tomorrow, so what's the use? Jeez!"
"Mother, please! I'll get it later when I do my homework! Have you tried lifting that thing, anyway? Do you want me to put my back out by bringing it all the way up to my room?"
I tugged on the offending backpack, crammed full of high school textbooks; even with my superpowers I couldn't lift it. So I kicked it out of the way and sighed dramatically, just in case anyone was paying attention to me. Then I trudged upstairs, untying my Apron of Anticipation, shaking out the dirt and cookie crumbs that had settled into the pockets - and bumped into two huge piles of laundry in the hallway. Stepping around them, I tripped over an empty soda can somebody had left in the middle of the hall - only to discover that it wasn't really empty.
My chest started to vibrate. I clenched my fists, reared my head back and felt my mouth almost split my face in two.
"ALL RIGHT! THAT'S IT! I HAVE HAD IT, I CANNOT LIVE IN A PIGSTY ANYMORE. NO ALLOWANCE THIS WEEK, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO ALLOWANCE!!!!!!!!"
My Mighty Roar thundered through the house; mirrors shook, dishes rattled and I cringed, just waiting. Sure enough, I heard a huge crash accompanied by the tinkling of shattered glass.
"Mom, that's the second picture this week!" My children confronted me at the foot of the stairs, their arms folded over their chests, twin pillars of martyrdom.
"Can't you learn to control yourself?" Kelly arched one golden eyebrow.
"Now who's going to clean it up?" Martin shook his head.
"Sorry," I mumbled. "Sorry. It just - came out." I took a deep breath, worked up some quick tears and pulled another weapon out of my arsenal. Super Guilt Trip.
"It's just that I've been a little busy today, fighting crime and all," I whispered, wiping my eyes with the corner of my Apron. "I'm sorry if I seem a little cranky - but I did stay up late last night doing all this laundry. But never mind." I sighed and sat down on the top step, showing off the cuts and bruises on my hands, hitching my costume up to reveal a giant gash on my knee from an earlier battle. (Me vs. The Ice Cream Man from Hell, who was notorious for driving away with little kids' change and not giving them their Push-Ups. I won. Just in case - you know, the score thing.)
"I'll find the time to put it away for you," I said with a groan. "I'll just have to get up earlier tomorrow, go without my own breakfast, maybe let an evildoer or two slip through the cracks - but that's fine, I don't mind. That's what mothers do, you know…"
"Oh, please." Martin grinned in that patronizing way he inherited from his father; Kelly shook her head.
"Come here, young lady." I sat up straight, my Super Mom Sense - which alerted me to the first sign of a child in trouble - tingling the back of my neck. "What on earth have you done to yourself?" I grabbed a hunk of her glossy blond hair - which was shot through with bright pink streaks - and yanked on it.
"Ow! Oh, that." She shrugged. "Vienna thought it would look cool, so she did it for me after school. It's no big thing, Mother, so stop looking at me like I pierced my tongue."
"Vienna? Tell me, what kind of person names their daughter after a city? And if Vienna thought it would look so cool, why didn't she put one in her own hair?"
"She did. It's purple."
"Oh."
"I'm hungry," Martin interrupted. "There's nothing to eat. When's the last time you went to the grocery store?"
"Well, excuse me, I was a little busy saving the world. But there's plenty to eat. I think I counted fourteen boxes of cereal."
"There's nothing good."
"Why don't we go out to Wally's Pizza Station? We haven't been there in ages. Remember how much you love the little train that brings the pizza to the tables?" I perked up, feeling the burden of being a superhero and a mother of teenagers slide off my shoulders; we always have a good time at Wally's Pizza Station. Plus you get free breadsticks.
"Mother, really. I wouldn't be caught dead in that place." Kelly twisted a pink strand of hair around her finger and admired it.
"It's a little lame," Martin agreed. "Can't we just order in?"
"I guess…"
"Forget about me, I'm going to Vienna's to study. She's picking me up in a minute."
"She can drive?"
"Yes, and she's a safe driver, so don't worry."
"Kelly, I'm not so sure, I hardly know her and I've not met her parents and-"
My daughter narrowed her gray eyes at me, put her hands on her hips and hit me with her best shot, simply by asking a question. The Question. The Question that punches every parent in the gut no matter how many times it's asked - and answered: "Don't you trust me?"
And the thing is I do. So far. But sometimes it seems that by saying so, I'm giving her permission to run off and do some terrible, unspeakable thing. Like knock off a couple of liquor stores with a sawed-off shotgun.
"I…well, of course I do…" I stammered, helpless, my superpowers failing me.
"Thanks, Mom!" She granted me a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she ran off to unearth the perfect pair of chunky wedge shoes from the pile downstairs.
I studied Martin, who, being the younger sibling, knows far too much. If he wasn't my son, I might have to kill him. "What are you looking at?"
"Nothing." He grinned. "Don't forget to order the pizza - pepperoni."
"Right." I sighed as he retreated to his lair to do whatever it is he does when I'm not around. Then I surveyed the piles of laundry surrounding me; faded underwear and mismatched socks and bras held together with safety pins. I plucked out a pair of sweat pants, T-shirt, comfy bra (meaning no underwire) and retreated to my own lair to change clothes and wonder what Wonder Woman was doing tonight. Probably getting a deep-tissue massage from some man-slave.
As for me, I trudged downstairs, grabbed a broom and dustpan and swept up the glass from broken picture frame, then called for the pizza delivery. I made quick work of the kitchen, taking full advantage of my ability to clean with the power of 10,000 Swiffers, which was by far the most practical of the superpowers I had acquired since suffering my Horrible Swiffer Accident last fall. (***Swiffer, by the way, is a remarkable cleaning product that I heartily endorse. And which was not responsible for my Horrible Swiffer Accident, as I had violated the warranty by negligently pouring dangerous combinations of household cleaners in the reservoir and inhaling their fumes due to improper ventilation.)
***Just a little legal mumbo-jumbo that Proctor and Gamble "suggested" I use from now on.
When I was done with the dustpan I put it away, in the cabinet under the sink. But as I did so I knocked something over - I heard a metallic thunk - so I knelt down, reached past the five dozen paper bags, neatly folded, that I keep in there for no apparent reason other than genetics (there are five dozen identical bags underneath my mother's kitchen sink), and grabbed the knocked over can. I pulled it out, saw that it was a very old can of shower cleaner, chuckled a bit at the idea of me, Super Mom, using a plain old commercial household cleanser, and was about to toss it in the trash when I heard a little "chirrup."
I stopped, looked around, shook my head, and then started toward the trash again.
"Purrupp," chirped something. Something adorable, because it was the cutest, brightest little sound you've ever heard.
"Did somebody bring a puppy home?" I called. Neither of my children answered. I bit my lip, opened the cabinet where the trash can was stored, and dropped the can -
Only to hear a slightly anguished "ooohhggooogoooo….." as it fell into the trash can, down, down, down…
And that's when I yelped.
"God, Mother, get a grip," my daughter said as she regally made her way across the kitchen and picked up her backpack with ease. "Are you starting to talk to yourself now?"
"No, but…I swear…" I looked into the trash. The can of shower cleaner - rusty along the edges, the label faded so that the Scrubbing Bubbles' eyes weren't quite so brightly black - lay nestled among Pop-Tart wrappers and yesterday's paper. "That can talked to me…"
"Mother. Honestly. You are so losing it." But Kelly stopped to give me a hug before she ran out the door to the tune of one car honking.
"Kelly, when will you be home?" I ran to the door and called after her retreating form, just a gray shadow in the dusk.
"Ten!"
"Because I want you home by ten - oh! Well, then, make sure you are. Home by ten." I waved pathetically at my teenaged daughter as she got in a car driven by a girl I hardly knew, who happened to be named after the capital of Austria. And if recent history has taught us anything, it's that a girl named after a foreign city is going to be trouble. I told myself that it's not my daughter I don't trust. It's everyone else in the world.
I watched the car back out of the driveway. I couldn't tell if Kelly had buckled her seatbelt. I also couldn't tell if Vienna was smoking a cigarette. I definitely couldn't tell if there were any open containers of alcohol or lusty teenaged boys stashed in the backseat, and because I couldn't tell, I could only begin to imagine. Which is never a good thing to do on an empty stomach, a superhero outfit within easy reach.
I wrestled with my conscience for a full twenty seconds. Then I threw some money down on the table for the pizza guy, ran upstairs, pulled on my costume again, and hit the streets in my brand new Mom Mobile (complete with Super Paint Color Changing Panels, to protect my identity).
I may have even snickered with evil maternal glee as I kept a discreet distance behind the VW Beetle that was speeding my daughter away to points unknown. I definitely forgot how tired I was, how hungry, how my high-heeled pumps pinched my feet. I even forgot about the talking can of shower cleaner.
Because the truth is, a Super Mom's job is never done. Especially when her own children are involved.
- - - - - -
"How was your session yesterday?"
"Birdie, you know I can't talk about it. Doctor/patient privileges, remember?"
"C'mon, you can tell me! I promise I won't tell anybody else!"
"Well…" Carrie, my best friend and co-worker at the Marvel Food and Fine Beverages, shut her register drawer and leaned across her conveyor belt. "Promise?"
"Cross my heart and hope to be smashed to a pulp by an evil arch-nemesis." I held up my hand, Girl Scout-style.
Carrie giggled, tugged at her straight black bangs, and adjusted her thick glasses. "You didn't hear it from me, but Robin, the Boy Wonder, is a total mess. Father issues, latent homosexual feelings, and a scary tutu fetish."
"Ooh! Freaky!"
"Shhh! Not so loud. But it is creepy, isn't it? He came to me just in time." She shook her head and blinked her little blue eyes like a mole.
"Carrie Peters. Psychiatrist to the superheroes." I smiled proudly. After all, it wasn't just anybody who could turn a thesis about superheroes and stifled childhood aggression into a thriving psychiatric practice endowed by the Justice League of America. (Although the JLA, not wanting the rest of the world to know that their superheroes have some pretty disturbing psychological issues, asked Carrie to keep her day job as a cover.) "Speaking of which…have you ever heard of a superhero seeing things?"
"What kind of things?"
"Oh, you know. Inanimate objects suddenly becoming - animate."
"Birdie, you're talking about a bunch of paranoid people, one of whom believes he can talk to fish, several who claim that they're inter-planetary travelers, and one woman of very advanced years whose breasts continue to defy gravity even though she swears she's had no plastic surgery."
"So, you're saying…?"
"That as a whole, you're a seriously messed-up bunch," she said with a professional cluck of her tongue.
"No fair." I pouted, more than a little hurt. I, too, was a card-carrying member of the Justice League of America (although I hated the picture on my ID card; my cape made me look fat).
"So," Carrie said with an elaborate shrug as she wiped down her conveyor belt. "How's Kelly been lately?"
"Fine. Although she has a new hairstyle."
"Really?"
"Yes. A pink streak running down the side."
"Kelly?" Carrie put down her dust cloth. "Kelly's hardly the pink streak type. Although pink was always her favorite color…"
"I know. From pink clothes to pink hair." I tried to laugh as if I were one of those cool mothers who believed in allowing their kids to experiment with finding themselves. But Carrie and I both knew I wasn't.
"I suppose I would never have known. Chrissie hardly sees her anymore…"
"I know, I know." I sighed. I'd been dreading this conversation for a month now. Carrie's daughter, Chrissie, and Kelly had been best friends since kindergarten. But now, it seemed, they'd grown apart. And as much as I grieved for the apparent end of their friendship, I was more worried about how it would affect Carrie's and mine. What happens to parents when their children aren't friends anymore? I didn't know, and I was afraid to find out.
(Continue to Next Page)
Order Confessions of Super Mom Contact Melanie for Book Club Visit Contests and Fun Additional Melanie Writing
Reprinted from Super Mom Saves The World by Melanie Lynne Hauser by permission of NAL, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © 2006 by Melanie Lynne Hauser. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.
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