Other Susan

Sorry other Susan—have rectified.

Susan giggled as she read the email. One hand scrolled and clicked while the other was looped in the handle of her mug, the tea too hot to drink and needing to steep two minutes more. For the past month, she had been mistakenly included on a group email thread. This was far from the first time such an email situation had happened to her, her name quite common and her email address—susansmith@gmail.com—the expected email address for any and all Susan Smiths. She had received inadvertent emails from the distraught former lovers, concerned colleagues, overzealous classroom parents, and complaining neighbors of other other Susans for years. Once, she was included on the discussion of a rider for the writer Susan Smith. Of course she downloaded that PDF! Gummy bears and tepache waiting in the hotel room? She had had to Google tepache and then went out to pick some up at her local Target, along with a bag of Haribo gummy bears.

This recent case of Susan substitution brought her into digital contact with a church group based in Australia. She lived on the other side of the world, in Erie, Pennsylvania. Folks around here, they didn’t use words like rectified, ever. But at Hearts of Life, they did, and Susan had been really into it. She started using select phrases she picked up from their emails at the Truist branch where she worked. “Let me clear your request with my supervisor and revert,” she told one woman with a smile just last week.

Susan was sad to give the thread up, but it was time. Last night, an email came through, and in it explicit instructions for her—well, Susan. When that happened, Susan didn’t think it was fair or right—ethical, really—to stay engaged. The other other Susan, the intended Susan, needed to know:

We have to caution you, Antony, that if at any time Susan is unable to be with you during your session in the centre, you are not to use the centre. Kindly adhere accordingly.

In the morning, while her electric kettle boiled water for tea, she sent her one and only reply—I think you have the wrong email for Susan Smith. Then—surprise!—apology emails rolled in. The first one: Sorry other Susan—have rectified. These had the effect of reversing the downward trend Susan had felt her spirit take that morning when customer after customer approached her with the mood: bank errors, they claimed, not in their favor. Indeed, by lunch, when she read another remorseful reply, this time from Whitney, she felt better about humanity, both in Erie and more generally.

Usually when she alerted groups or individuals that she was not the Susan they thought she was, she was summarily excised or ghosted, respectively (another word the Aussies used in their emails). But not this group: they acknowledged her. Susan thought it might, probably, should have been her place to apologize. For a month now, some other other Susan was out there not getting the emails the rest of the group thought she was getting. In that time, Susan wondered, had their opinions about this woman changed? Were they like, whoa, okay, Susan. Way to not respond! A month of emails and you chime in not at all? Even when the plans mention you (but vaguely, not as directly as they did last night)? Or maybe they knew Susan to be busy or introverted or not the sort of person to add an email to the thread for the sake of participation. Maybe she and other other Susan were alike in this way: quietly watching from the wings until called out to perform. That afternoon, Susan had the opportunity to tell three patrons kindly adhere accordingly after she shared with them a set of directions for setting up the bank’s mobile app, a new policy on the disbursal of large bills in large quantities, and a nod toward the sign directing patrons to the front of the line. What fun!

Dinner that night was ramen finished with a slice of American cheese and an egg cooked in the warm broth. The recipe had been in the New York Times’s cooking newsletter that morning, which she had read along with her other emails over her cuppa tea and some toast before work. By the time she sat down at her computer to eat, the email thread seemed officially dead to her, apologies exhausted (from the church group members, anyway), and Susan found herself wondering what would have happened if she hadn’t said anything. What if Antony had used the centre without other other Susan? What if he had not kindly adhered?

In rereading, Susan noted that that final email carried a bit of a threat: We have to caution you it had started. And not was underlined. She slurped noodles and imagined Antony wandering around a labyrinthine centre alone only to discover a lost ark or a chamber of secrets, an oxy operation, endangered species in floor to ceiling cages: Mountain Gorillas, Red Pandas, and Black Rhinos, oh my! Susan eyed the mortar and pestle on the shelf above her stove, last used to make guacamole for her monthly book club, while she plucked the remaining noodles from her bowl. Maybe, though Susan acknowledged this was a stretch, Antony—sans Susan—stumbled upon children laboring to bake communion wafers out of flour enriched with the baby-teeth dust they ground themselves. Susan considered this last option would be some sort of rite of passage for the children of the church, teaching them how to make their way around the kitchen while capitalizing on an entirely expendable natural resource to bolster communion-wafer batter.

Susan shuddered, then shrugged, brought her bowl to her mouth to drink the broth. Antony was probably fine. She turned her attention back to her screen, her open inbox, the set of unread emails waiting for her.