Susan Rosenbaum
Susan never married, and no-one who knows her is really sure
why. She was beautiful and sweet, and in fact she still is.
She went with Bernard, her next door neighbor, for about
two years. It didn't work out, and after that there was nobody.
For some years, she worked as an exercise instructor, and
now she works for her father, who still wonders every day why
she never married or bore him grandchildren. His theories
include the possibility she was too much in love with Bernard
(but he also thinks his daughter is shallow and incapable of
great love) or that she didn't want to marry badly enough
(but he doesn't really believe that either, because Susan
always did the easy thing, and for most people getting
married is easier.) His experience
of the world shows him nonetheless that
plain women enter
into happy marriages every day, while his beautiful daughter
returns to her condo in Bayshore and falls asleep alone,
with the TV on, at nine o'clock every night.
Susan has become an avid reader of lighter fiction, and the
Irish novelist
Sinead Gregory, whose romantic stories always end happily,
is one of her particular favorites.