My Mom reached over to touch my hand as my eyes were beginning to water.
“Suze’s father was still in high school when all of this happened. Mary did not think he knew any of what was going on, at least at the time. Their parents would never breathe a word of it to anyone. She had a few thousand dollars in a bank account, money she’d earned over the prior Summer. She’d managed to avoid spending too much of it when school began. In December she bought one of those Amtrak excursion tickets, and after she finished her finals and had to move out of her dorm, she packed what she could into a suitcase, went to Union Station or whatever it’s called in San Francisco, and took a train that got her to New York via Chicago. Right before Christmas.
“She didn’t know anyone in New York. But the girl she was with when her mother stopped by, who was just a one-day fling that changed Mary’s life in an unexpected way, had a cousin who lived in the Village. The cousin, a guy, spoke to Mary before she left and told her that she could stay with him for a few nights and that he could probably hook her up with a job at a bar or restaurant around NYU and perhaps with someone who had some space she could rent.”
My Mom’s eyes were starting to water a bit too.
“So, Mary took the train to New York and to the Village and to NYU. I don’t know the details, and perhaps she’ll share them with you, but yada yada yada she ended up meeting someone, a woman, at NYU. That would be Betty, who you just met. They had a bit of a thing for a few months but Betty ended up marrying a guy, Gerry, she knew from home on the Island and they had a couple of boys before Betty realized that she was gay, that her marriage was loveless, and that no one made her feel complete the way Mary had years before.”
I took a breath.
“Betty tracked Mary down, hoped she was still available and interested and, yada yada yada, after a divorce Mary, Betty, and the two kids moved to Yonkers and, as I understand it from Suze, they’re vaguely talking about getting married one of these days.”
I stopped.
“And the kids?”
“She said that one works in DC and the other is a student up in Boston, I think a junior at Boston College.”
My Mom took a breath. “What about Suzanne’s father, Mary’s brother?”
“Oh, I skipped over that. It’s actually really important. According to Suze, and I think she only recently got this from her Aunt, after she came to New York Mary tried to get what information she could about her brother, who was still in high school outside of San Francisco. Remember, this was the pre-Facebook era so that was pretty tough. But she figured that he probably followed their father to Stanford. When her brother would have been a sophomore she wrote him a letter simply addressed to him care of Stanford University, etc. A week or two later she received a large envelope without a return address. Inside was her letter—she had put her name and return address on the envelope. It was unopened and written across the back of the envelope, in all caps, was ‘DO NOT CONTACT THIS PERSON AGAIN.’
“And that was it. She sent a letter to her brother’s law firm about a decade later but never heard back. I guess Catholics can be just as fucked up as Evangelicals.” My Mom did not approve of that language and gave me a hint of a glare. “Sorry.”
“There was one attempt at reconciliation. Mary was invited to Suze’s house for Thanksgiving six or seven years ago. That’s when she met Mary. Suze overheard her parents making it clear that a future invitation would never be extended, but she and her Aunt had lunch the next day alone and immediately connected with one other. They’ve been communicating, largely behind her parents’ back, ever since and it was Mary who got Suze her Apartment.”
And with that, I exhausted my knowledge of Mary’s history and felt that my Mom knew enough to decide, or at least start to decide, how far a friendship with Suze’s Aunt might go.
Suze: Eileen Neally
“Maybe she’ll adopt you.” It was Annie repeating a comment she’d often made at home when I reported on yet another day of iciness in my own parents’ presence, in contrast to the ease I always enjoyed with Annie’s folks. But when Annie said it in reference to Kerry’s Mom as we walked from the Subway on the last leg of our trip home after finishing the day with Kerry and her Mom, it took a beat longer than it used to for me to respond with “I wish.”
The thought was different, the idea of being with Kerry and her Mom, from when it was just the prospect of hanging out with Annie and her folks. I realized that Kerry had become my best friend, displacing Annie in that role, and was something more as well. I also had, though, a strange attraction to Eileen.
While I was processing this and a few days after our Saturday adventure at Kerry’s place, I got a call from my Aunt.
“Baby”—that’s what she calls me—”I just received a call from Kerry’s Mom. Do you know anything about that?”