Love Attempts

By Carroll Ann Susco

People kill for love. What is this drive? This desire? What makes us tie ourselves in knots and pursue it?
Love is hard to find and hard to maintain. This book explores the topic of love from different angles, different philosophies, seeking something that may or may not be attainable. The journey for love we all identify with. This book ponders love relationships and questions current propaganda. No rom com here, but an honest portrayal of hearts in the world looking for that enigma love in all the wrong places and every so often finding it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carroll Ann Susco
• Release date: Oct 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215387603

Carroll Ann Susco

Carroll Ann Susco holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh and has a chapbook, Bean Spiller, on Variant Literature press and numerous publications, including in The Sun Magazine, Cutbank and Painted Bride Quarterly. Her books are available below: Love Attempts and Stigmata and Other Essays. She likes to teach and tutor, read and watch a good movie. And do stuff. Like go to a wine bar :)

Book preview

Love Attempts

Carroll Ann Susco

Copyright 2023

Table of Contents

Sinking

The Air She Rides On

A Small Love

My Ex Fiance

Love Story: An Untelling

The Tree

Plan B

Medusa: An Autobiography

A Fisher of Men

Love Reduced

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Sinking, Short Fiction by Women, Jan. 1, 1992

The Air She Rides On, West Branch, 36

A Small Love, Gulf Coast, Summer 1998

My First Fiance, Eclectica, July/Aug. 2020

Love Story: An Untelling, Cutbank, Spring 1999

"The Tree," Indiana Voice Journal, Dec. 1, 2014

Medusa: An Autobiography, Fickle Muses, 2013

A Fisher of Men, The New Jersey Review, Summer 1994

Love Reduced, The Blood Pudding, April 24, 2023

Sinking

My mother and I, we position ourselves for maximum sun, so it hits us head on, sit close to the water for cooling, for better roasting. Our chairs are so low our butts get wet when the waves come in. Piles of sand sit like loads in our suits. We don our U.V.-protected sunglasses so our eyes are covered with mirrored lenses. We apply sun block. The book I gave her to read, My Mother, My Self, sits unread in her bag. The book on her lap is titled Nights of Passion. Her thumb is stuck to the page. I wonder if she’s gotten to a good part yet. I am unable to read so watch seagulls flying. Waves come in, go out. We have our feet firmly planted in the sand. The water rushes up, hissing, washes some of the sand away, and we sink a little bit more.

Look what you’ve done to your feet, I say.

She bends over and looks down. What? They are gnarled tree roots. And just as hard.

Look at them. They look like they hurt. She pulls one side of her mouth back, sits back, goes back to reading. Why do you wear your shoes so tight that they do that to your feet? I say.

She says, You want me to wear those dumpy shoes you do? No wonder you’re always home when I call on Saturday night. I look at my feet. I have callouses on my little toes from my dress flats but my toes are still straight.

Mangled feet aren’t sexy, I say.

She doesn’t look up from her book. She half mumbles-says, They’ll never get that far.

I look at the choppy water, the wind rippling the surface. Well maybe I don’t want a man who wants me to wear high heels all day, kill my feet on that concrete.

Oh would you get off it, she says. She almost slams her book closed but doesn’t. I don’t tell you how to dress. She looks at me with one eyebrow raised—I dare you. I look into her mirrored lenses looking for eyes but instead I see my floating head on each lens, my hair curling from the heat, my too-cool sunglasses, my bright red nose, my lips pursed. Her floating head in my sunglasses reflects her raised eyebrow turned on herself.

I watch the water swell, feel the heat on my skin. The sun’s hot and burns right through the sun block. I have no base tan. She is such a liar. How many fights did we have that started--

Her: You’re not going out like that.

Me: Watch me.

Her: You step one foot out that door.

Me: And what? I can’t come back?

Her: Yes. (When she is mad it is clean and obvious. Her look is bold. But her face changed. Like she’d just stepped on a nail.)

Me: Fine. (Here my face changed. I looked like her but with teeth clenched and jaw tight. I can step on two nails.)

I look up the beach, away. Did you drink all the lemonade? she says. She sits with arm extended, glass empty, sour look. Yes, I drank it all. I was dehydrated, from the sun, from the beer I drank in the car coming, in the parking lot waiting, preparing to meet her.

It’s too hot to sit here. Let’s go in the water, I say. Sweat beads on her chest, her lip, wets the hair above her ear. She says O.K., marks her page. We remove our sunglasses. We stand where cold water rolls in and splashes us up to our knees. I squint to look at the bright water sparkling.

You should really lose that pot if you’re going to wear a bikini, she says. I look her over, looking for flaws.

You’re getting saggy arms just like Grandma had, I say. Your whole back is flabby and freckled. I turn her by pressing my hand to her shoulder. I press my fingers into her back and scratch her shoulder blades. The skin is sticky and greasy, a layer of it comes away under my nails. She smells of coconut and sweat and I love her.

Run before the waver crashes. I dive under it as it curls over me. The cold takes my breath, and the sand burns my knees. She wades out slowly, letting the small waves crash into her waist. No big ones come. She plods toward me, her hair still dry.

We wade out to a sand bar and beyond to where the waves only swell. Water makes my thigh fat and white. We float on our backs, squat with only head and shoulders exposed, look back at the beach and our empty chairs.

A school of blue fish pass right in front of us, their silver-green bodies so close I could step forward, reach out, and touch them. But I squat, still, feel the lightness of water around me. The blue fish pass with wide open expressionless eyes. Their lips pout. I watch the water turn dark where the school swims. My mother is following them with her eyes, too. She says they will attack people if they are hungry enough. I tell her not to spoil it. But then I start to worry about stepping on a crab or touching a jellyfish. My hair hangs in dry salty lumps.

We wade back in, sit in our chairs till water turns to salt crust, put our sunglasses back on so we don’t get frown lines, so the brightness doesn’t burn our retinas.

I’m going inside, I say, before I’m toast." I press my thigh with my finger. Pushing makes white, releasing red. I start to leave, walk on hot sand and broken shells.

Just put on more lotion, she says. I turn, and we’re looking at each other. Already her skin is pink red. She will stay here until she blisters if I let her. Coming? I say.

I guess, she says. She was waiting to be invited. I say "Good.