Scary Suzanne

I was 24 and recently separated from my husband.

I had two tiny children and I was terrified. I was afraid of the future, afraid of being alone, and scared to death of dead of night intruders. I thought for sure that someone would break into our house and kill me and the children or worse.

As a result, I kept every light in the house on all night long. I sat in the hallway outside the kids bedroom with a hammer and a kitchen knife. I could only fall asleep when the sun started coming up. This might have been reasonable if we lived in a blighted area but we did not.

One more thing, I had Willie, my 125 pound German Shepherd. One night I thought I heard an intruder and I called the police. Willie would not allow the officers to come in to search the house. The cops shook their heads at me and told me everything was fine. I felt a little stupid, but I was still terrified.

My mother had a friend named Suzanne. Suzanne and her two daughters had recently been displaced from their home because of a fire. My mom suggested I might want to offer Suzanne a place to stay for a while because my house was a 3-story job with about 6 bedrooms. I had met Suzanne on a couple of occasions, but really didn't know her. I thought of the nights of terror at being home alone and being the only line of defense to protect my cubs and figured, "how much worse could it be?" I invited Suzanne and her teenage daughters to stay with me for a while. I never could have imagined that having this 40 something woman and her 13 and 15 year old stay at my house could have turned into my worst nightmare.

Suzanne was a tall bosomy redhead with a very forceful personality. Two days after moving in, Suzanne sent her daughters to her ex-husband's for the night and told me we were entertaining a couple of professional football players from the Oakland Raiders that night. She went shopping and brought back more liquor than I had ever seen outside of a bar, along with groceries for dinner. While I started dinner, Suzanne went in to "dress" for the boys. She came out in a plunge neck dress, high hooker heels and startling green eyeshadow along with 2 inch long false eyelashes. Suzanne told me to go get changed and she would finish up in the kitchen. ("Changed into what?" I wondered.) I did change out of my jeans and sweatshirt and into something more suited to an office than a cocktail party, and I put the kids to bed for the night.

Suzanne explained to me as we had a cocktail, that the guys were going to expect to be shown a good time. Now I can tap dance a little, but I quickly understood this was not what she meant. She came out and told me they would "expect" to have sex. Say what? I told her that wasn't happening. Suzanne looked at me and said "You're kidding right? Do you know who these guys are?" Actually, I didn't. I didn't follow football thank goodness. Suzanne looked at me and said "I hope you aren't going to ruin this evening for everyone."

We actually had a nice enough time having a drink and dinner with the men. All I can really say about either one of them is that they were big. When Suzanne and her friend went off into the bedroom, I said goodnight to the guy I was supposed to "entertain" and went in and got in bed with my 3 year old son.

When I woke the next morning, Suzanne and the two football players were having coffee on my deck and having a grand old time. She was wearing a blue silk nightgown. I was horrified that my neighbors could see this blatant display of big men and a slutty woman on my deck. (Yes, I was sort of a little prude.)

Suzanne stayed with me for two more weeks. She did bring boyfriends over a couple more times but didn't bring one for me.

It was probably just as well.