Mrs. Neally laughed. “Do you know that old New Yorker cover, the one with the map looking west and everything west of the Hudson sort of disappears?” After we nodded, she continued. “That’s pretty much my world and I hate to admit my view of the rest of the world. I always wanted to go to California, and San Francisco in particular, but it never happened.”
Annie piped in, “Suzanne and I loved growing up there but, let’s face it, it was kind of boring compared to what we imagined the real world looked like.” Kerry interrupted by saying “You do realize that a lot of shows set in New York were filmed in Toronto don’t you?” to which Annie mockingly responded, “What? And are you telling me that Harry never met Sally?” which she said while glancing at me.
I called her a dork. “It’s like Annie’s favorite movie. She brought it up while we were driving here since we too were making the life-altering change of moving to New York. She even displayed her mock-orgasm skills somewhere in—” I stopped, blushing as I realized that Kerry’s Mom was standing there, and switched to saying, “Anyway, believe me, any illusions or delusions we had about New York vanished about thirty-six hours after we rode into town. But, yeah, you should visit San Francisco at least once. LA? Not so much.”
Kerry interrupted this love fest by offering to show Annie and me what she called her “Cave,” which turned out to be in the basement. She had carved out a space for a desk and a bookcase, and a computer sat on the former and her case books in the latter.
Suddenly Annie said, “This is bullshit.” I was stunned and Kerry looked like she’d been slapped. Annie smiled, “Kerry, you can’t work in these conditions. The Department of Labor would shut you down if they saw it.” Kerry looked and I was puzzled. WTF?
“You lawyer wannabes are clueless,” Annie said. “It’d take us like an hour to move stuff around down here—tell me, Kerry, if I’m overstepping—so that you can work without feeling that the fucking walls are moving in on you.”
Kerry called up to her Mom. “Mom.” Getting no response, she went up a few steps and shouted “MOM!” and when her mother got to the top of the steps Kerry said, “These California girls think they can do something about my Cave. They want to know if there is any stuff down here that we can just get rid of.”
She came down and said, “Well I have been after your uncles. We can put some of this stuff into the garage so I can see it and decide what needs keeping and what needs not-keeping so that’s fine with me. But honey I don’t want your friends to do it. They look tired.” And pointing at me she said, “And Suzanne here doesn’t look like she could carry a cup of Starbucks,” to which I responded, “Hey, I’m a lot stronger than I look. I’ll have you know”—at which Eileen—that wasn’t so hard now that she suddenly seemed so approachable—laughed, “I’d be surprised if you could lift a pencil but I’m willing to live and learn just how strong you are.”
Kerry looked at her Mom who she’d apparently never seen so animated and Annie said, “Get a room” to which Kerry said, “I thought that’s what we trying to do.” It was left to me to be the voice of reason. “Guys, guys. Let’s figure this out. What can we move and how are we gonna move it?”
The next two hours passed faster than any two had passed since I’d left home. This was happening a lot with Kerry. At about five I called my Aunt to give her an update on what we were doing and when we expected to drop the car off. When Eileen asked who I called, I said, “My long-lost aunt. She lives over near Sarah Lawrence and I keep my car there. I try to go for a drive once or twice a month or so to clear out some of the cobwebs.”
By then we had moved several pieces of not-too-heavy furniture and maybe twenty boxes of papers into the back and around to the garage. We could actually see the floor and there was a clear path to the basement’s sole window. We decided that an oriental carpet and some new lights would liven up the place. At least it wouldn’t be such a cave anymore and Kerry might find it less stressful to study down there.
When we all walked upstairs, Kerry’s Mom asked if she could get us anything. After we all said water would be good, and after she handed glasses around she looked at me and said, “Suzanne, I do apologize. It seems you’re a lot stronger than I gave you credit for.” She drew it out.
Kerry: Suze’s Aunt
Holy Fuck. Was my Mom flirting with my best friend?
A couple of things to unpack there.
First, yeah, Suze was my best friend. But I wasn’t hers. She had tons of other friends, including Annie, who I liked, and others she knew from California. I did not care. We sat together in class and went to our study group together. Between classes, and because neither of us had a dorm room to head to, we’d sit silently next to one another in the library or on a bench on Morningside Drive preparing for our next class. (Morningside Drive runs along the eastern edge of Columbia—the Hudson is its western border—and there is a sharp drop, almost a cliff, to get to Harlem itself. Hence the area’s name, Morningside Heights.) It wasn’t like we did everything together. I mean, she went out for a run on her own three or four times a week and I always took the train home before seven. But we did speak almost every night.