She ignored my calls and my texts and was gone—pfft!—from Facebook. I knew some of what was happening to her since we were in the same classes again, but we no longer sat together. She was cold to everyone else and frigid to me, waiting until I was up and gone before she stood to leave the classroom. I would stand a discrete distance away from the door to watch her leave, but she was always stoic, always silent as she left the building or headed up to the library.
I rarely went to the library between classes, fearing I’d make her uncomfortable. It was just so fucked up. And I hadn’t even addressed my own feelings for her.
Suze: The Armory
Out of the blue in late January I got a call from Patsy Davis. She ran for Washington and we’d chat after Pac-12 meets. I liked her. She was tall and slim and had ink-blank hair. I don’t know how she tracked me down. Probably some super-secret network of post-grad runners.
Patsy asked if I was still running. She was doing some film thing at NYU and had hooked up with a local elite women’s club. “They have these crazy all-comers meets at the Armory on Thursday nights. No pressure but lots of fun. If you can handle the dry air.” The Armory has a high-tech banked indoor track. It was an old armory and I’d heard that where the track was used to be where they stored jeeps and stuff. It was near Broadway and 168th Street.
I told Patsy that I was so focused on law school—”some of us go to a real school you know,” I said to her—that I only ran a few times a week, including on a treadmill, and had not done speed work since my last semester at Stanford.
“No one cares,” she responded. “As long as you don’t get lapped on a 200-meter track, you can only embarrass yourself so much.”
So that’s why I was sitting on the 1 Train heading up Broadway. I had my spikes, scarlet Stanford-singlet, and loads of nerves. I hate racing but love it when I am finished.
Patsy assured me that she would be there, and when I walked up to the track I saw her. She was wearing black boyshorts and a white singlet with a red Mercury logo. Yeah, she was running for an elite club and she looked taller than she had at Washington, with her hair much shorter than it had been when she wore it in a pony-tail during races.
She gave me a hug and pulled me over to some teammates. Like a college team, they came in all shapes and sizes and they all looked slim and, more to the point, fast. After consulting with them, I elected to run the 1500. And I died. I wasn’t lapped and I wasn’t DFL, i. e., dead fucking last. But I died. I hacked my way through the entire final lap, collapsing to the infield afterward. I felt I had embarrassed my singlet but at that point I only wanted water to moisten my dry mouth.
I was happy. Rusty, but happy.
Kerry: Coffee with Mary & Betty
I landed a summer associate position with a large midtown firm. Four of my classmates would be there too, although I did not know any of them well. I figured I would by the end of the Summer. I would again be commuting from Tuckahoe each morning.
Steven, my boyfriend from Fordham, called me in early February, asking if we could meet for dinner. I begged off, figuring something had happened over Christmas with his hometown girlfriend, Erica, and he was trying to reconnect with me. But while he was fun and I used to enjoy being in his company, and thought I loved him, going out with him did not seem right. Nor, I had to admit, did I have an interest in going out with any of the guys I knew at school. January and February passed very slowly and it was a relief to resume classes.
In mid-March, I was window-shopping in Bronxville and ran into Mary and Betty. After I said hello, how are you, etc., I tried to leave. Betty asked me to sit down with them for a coffee. So, we went to the small non-Starbucks coffee place in town. Betty cut right to the chase. “What happened between you and Suzanne?” I paused and sipped my coffee.
“I disappointed us.”
I did not know what else I could say. It was not for me to out her to anyone, even her lesbian Aunt and her partner. Especially them because if she hadn’t told them there must have been a good reason. I mean, I know I was the only person to whom Suze had come out to. She hadn’t told me that but I just knew it. I just knew it because I knew her. And I knew that.
“I can’t say how. I can only say that I disappointed her and I disappointed myself.” I teared up. “It was two fucking seconds and I revealed to her and to me how much of a shit I am.”
Mary laughed. My head shot up and I glared at her. “She’s your niece. How can you be so glib, so cruel?”
Betty reached for my wrist. “Mary is never cruel. She can be glib. But she’s never cruel. I think Suzanne gets that from her.”
Mary reached over and touched my other hand.
“It was a nervous laugh. My brother, Suzanne’s father,” she began, “is often cruel and he doesn’t have the humor to be glib. It took me a long time to forgive him for returning that letter I sent to him back with that ‘Do not contact this person again’ crap.”