“A little.”
Kerry told me that she had given her Mom much of my Aunt’s backstory when her Mom told her that she planned on getting together with Mary. So I felt it appropriate to explain to my Aunt in broad strokes Kerry’s and her Mom’s situation, that Kerry’s Mom was a widow and recovering alcoholic and had been completely under the radar with anyone since her husband died six or seven years ago. According to Kerry, Eileen’s last drink was a G-and-T on the day of the funeral and she was an AA regular for a while. I said “whatever you do, do not let her know that you know any of this. I’m just giving you some background. Don’t worry if you have wine or something because she’s okay with it—remember we had wine when they came over on Saturday—but I think it’s something you should know if a friendship develops.”
I don’t know whether I should have told her any of this. It kind of came out because it was what I immediately thought of when I thought of Eileen, almost like her being gorgeous popped into my brain when I thought of her. I mean, I knew she was lonely and had no idea about how wonderful I found her, but for some reason my knowing about her drinking made her even more wonderfully human.
And when I hit END on my phone after telling my Aunt that I thought it would be great for Eileen and for Mary, and Betty and their kids, to see Eileen, I lowered my hand holding the phone and blindly looked ahead of me and thought again about Eileen. And then I thought about the fact that I was thinking about Eileen.
Kerry: Thanksgiving 2016, in Yonkers
By mid-November, I started to feel comfortable in school. Doubts about whether I deserved to be there had washed away as I found the material challenging but also interesting and in my comfort zone. Other students would ask for my spin about cases—remember, classes were all about cases—after class was over, and Suze engaged with them too. We got through midterms, and work on our course outlines was going well for pre-Christmas finals.
Rather than heading up to Connecticut to be with my Aunt and Uncle in Fairfield for Thanksgiving, we stayed close to home, joining Suze—Annie was with a classmate in Jersey—and her Aunt’s family in Yonkers. Which is how I met Peter and Michael. They spent alternate holidays with Betty, their birth mother, and Gerry, their dad, who now lived in Baltimore with his second wife, and this was the year to be in New York. Peter was the older and Michael the one at BC.
Suze and I took a stroll after dinner and she told me that this was the first time she’d ever felt that she was at a family Thanksgiving. I put my arm around her waist and she did the same to me as we walked on the street. It was quiet, with no traffic, and well lit. “And,” she said after a pause, “I also felt, and I think my Aunt and Betty felt, that you and your Mom are part of our family.”
I knew that my Mom had spent a lot of time with Mary and Betty in the short time since they met and they acted like sisters when they were preparing dinner.
“You know, I can’t recall when I last saw my Mom as alive as she was today. I’m real happy about that, but I draw the line if she starts asking for group hugs.”
She tightened her grip for a moment, and we continued in silence. When we got back to the house, everyone was lethargic and Mom and I bid everyone a good night, leaving with various left-overs from dinner and dessert.
Since she stayed at her Aunt’s, Suze came to my place on Friday and again on Saturday. I grabbed things from the Cave and we spread our stuff out on the coffee table in the living room. We, together and separately, engaged in hours of studying, our joint silences interrupted periodically when I would ask her about a case or she did the same to me and by my Mom bringing us, yes, turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce she had taken home from Mary’s at about one each day and fresh coffee every few hours.
Suze and I decided to take a break with dinner in town on Saturday, and we agreed not to speak of class or the law while we were out. I don’t recall what we talked about, but I remember how relaxed and pleasant the night was even after she dropped me off and headed to her Aunt’s. And I remember that she paused a moment before putting the Camry in gear to leave after saying “good night.”
Suze: End-of-Term
I did not know what I wanted to say but I knew that I wanted to say it and that I could not say it. So, Kerry closed the Camry’s door and walked up the path to her house. I drove back to my Aunt’s and took the train into the City the next morning after I went for a run in the hills around Sarah Lawrence and on a nearby path. When I entered the Apartment, it struck me that I was quite different from what I was when I left it only a few days before.
I never had a Thanksgiving like this. It was usually an almost formal event with my father in a suit and my mother in a dress and me and my brother, Eric, uncomfortable in the long silences. My mother, unlike my father (or so I thought), had siblings but after we had gone to my Aunt Debbie and Uncle William’s house when I was in high school, with a house full of kids of varying ages and sizes, our Thanksgiving contacts with others were via the phone, although I spent each of the breaks from Stanford going out for runs with former teammates and hanging out with neighborhood friends, like Annie.