He, though, apparently was not. On a Friday night in early February, I had planned on staying with him. He got up to go to the bathroom after we’d made love. His phone vibrated and I saw it was “Erica.” It was after 11. When he came back I said, “you just got a call from Erica.” He stopped. “Why the fuck were you looking at my phone?” I’d never heard him curse before and I felt like I’d been slapped. “It’s after 11. Your phone vibrated and I saw who was calling. I just wanted to tell you in case it’s important” “Sorry,” he said, which led me to ask, “Who is Erica, calling after 11?” I mean I wouldn’t have asked except for the way he reacted.
Steven sat next to me, wearing only a towel and me naked below the sheet. “Okay. Erica was…is a friend from high school. I saw her last Summer and we got to know one another a bit, before I met you”—now I was staring at him and reaching for my bra and panties—”and I ran into her in town during the break when I was hanging with my friends and we kind of got together after Christmas.” He took a breath. “And I went out with her for New Year’s and we were both a little drunk and I slept with her. And then I slept with her again when we were both sober.” Silence as I waited, putting on my bra.
“She goes to Penn and I told her that I’d take the train down to see her. I assume that’s what she’s calling about. I never mentioned you.” He got up and tightened the towel and I put my panties on under the sheet. At least he had the decency to turn when I put on my shirt and jeans and shoes.
Smart and clever and hurt as I was, all I could say as I headed to the door after grabbing my bag from the floor was, “I always knew I wasn’t your first and now I know I won’t be your last” and then I was gone, catching the final train of the day—now early Saturday morning—home and promptly waking my Mom, us sharing a hot chocolate as I cried. She let me cry, said she was there for me, and tucked me into bed. She never pushed me about Steven and if he was mentioned again, it was only in passing.
Steven was puppy-eyed for a while when I saw him on campus but after a few weeks, I had pretty much erased him as anyone but just another student and spent more time with my other friends for my final semester. And, as I say, my Mom did not dwell on it. Plus, I was moving on more generally. I had done well on the LSATs and my college grades were good. Although I did not get into Harvard or Yale, Columbia was a yes, which was perfect. Great school and I could commute in under an hour. I could stay with my Mom.
So August 31 was the third day in which I took the 8:13 to the Harlem station and the bus to Amsterdam and 120th and the first day in which I was sitting in a coffee shop on Amsterdam having lunch with Suzanne Nelson. I immediately called her Suze. She seemed to like that; no one else called her that.
Suze: Meeting Mary
Kerry and I found three other first-years to join our study group. Mike and Bill went to Penn together, and Marie was a Vassar grad. We met them chatting in the hall after Legal Method on Thursday and agreed to an every-other-week schedule to start, alternating between Mike’s and Marie’s dorm rooms after class on Wednesdays. We all had the same course load and schedule and figured we could up the frequency as we got deeper into the term.
The two of us took to having our brown-bag lunches together each day and we sat next to one another in each of our classes. Between classes, we quietly prepared for the next one in the library or outside on a campus bench. After each day’s final class, I’d head down to my Apartment on 87th, usually taking the bus but walking when the weather was nice, and she’d hop the bus to 125th for her twenty-minute train ride home.
At the same time, Annie and I tried to get the car every two or three weeks, and we’d head up north through farmland surprisingly close to the City and reminiscent of drives back home. For her part, Annie was loving business school, not least because classmates seemed to find her California disposition and blondeness alluring. More importantly, she was challenged yet comfortable with the class material. We often walked or took the bus to school—about a mile-and-a-half—together.
We both knew, though, that we were changing. It was not just that I had thrown myself into my work. More, it was that I was throwing myself into my friendship with Kerry. Annie knew more about me in some respects than I think I knew myself and never then and never since did she give me a hint of jealousy that Kerry was replacing her as my best friend and I don’t think Annie ever felt the slightest tinge of jealousy, which was another reason I loved her so much.
By mid-October, I felt comfortable enough with Kerry to talk a bit more about Mary, my Aunt. Kerry knew about Aunt Mary because she knew that that’s where I parked my car. She and my father were my paternal grandparents’ only children. My grandpa was a lawyer too and my grandma was a housewife. They also lived in Mill Valley, in a large house. It was far too big for the four of them, but my father’s birth had been difficult, and my grandma never got the big family she wanted. There was a lot of empty space in that house. My father’s parents died in a car accident shortly after I was born, and that old, big house was sold. Growing up, my father sometimes took a detour to drive past it, slowing a bit without saying anything. When he spoke about them at all, it was to say, “They are in a better place.”