She saw my puzzled look. “Suzanne asked me if she could tell you that story and the other things about me and I said I have no secrets. She told me that she wanted you to understand how screwed up her family is and, I guess, to give you the sense that she is not like that.”
I nodded.
“I mean, her father was at Stanford and I thought he was able to think for himself. I thought he would realize that I was trying to avoid putting him between me and our parents. But he didn’t even open up the letter. He knew it was from his only sister and he didn’t open the letter.
“They say like marries like”—I noticed her smile at Betty, who said, “at least eventually”—”and that’s what he did. Nice Catholic wedding—I wasn’t invited of course and saw the notice in the Chronicle—with a white gown and limos and rice and all. I was truly happy in my own life here in New York, except for my pining for Betty here. I knew whether I liked it or not there was zero chance to create a relationship with them, Suzanne’s parents.”
We all paused and sipped our coffees, catching our breaths.
Mary resumed. “In 2010 I received an invitation to Thanksgiving at his house. It was clear that it was just for me. No ‘plus one.’ I still don’t know why it was sent. I had not received anything from him. Ever.
“Anyway, I arranged to get a gig writing a think piece out there and went to dinner. An invitation to stay was never extended, and I wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.”
Another sip.
“That’s when I met Suzanne.”
Suzanne: New Things/New Focus
For the Spring, I decided to focus on school and running. And Kerry? Well, I decided to focus on school and running.
Kerry: Mary’s Version
A few weeks after I had coffee with Mary and Betty, I sat on the 8:13. Tuckahoe and Bronxville, the stop closest to the part of Yonkers near Sarah Lawrence where Mary and Betty lived, were on Metro-North Harlem Line and the final two stops heading into the City were Harlem and Grand Central. I normally stood. Figuring others could use a seat more than I did and that my trip to 125th Street wasn’t as long as theirs.
I thought of what Mary told me about Suzanne. Suzanne was sixteen when they met on that Thanksgiving. It was the only Thanksgiving she spent with her niece until the one just shared. She loved her niece immediately. She had a good soul and jumped in to quell anything that threatened to expose the rift between her parents on the one hand and her Aunt on the other. With just her fifteen-year-old’s glance, she made it clear that nothing would be tolerated.
Unfortunately, the restraint did not carry over once the dishes were cleared and the dessert eaten. Suzanne overheard her father, her upstanding, every-Sunday-Mass-going father, tell her mother in the kitchen, “I will not allow her to do to Suzanne what she did to herself. I’m not giving her another chance,” and her mother agreed, “I don’t know why you thought it would be a good idea to ask that bitch here.” Mary said that she heard it too.
It broke Suzanne’s heart and, Mary said, she hoped it would have a chance to recover. She decided to lay low and not put Suzanne in the middle. There would be no middle. She knew Suzanne was smart and, more importantly, would grow into her own woman. As she had.
So back in 2010, Mary arranged to meet with Suzanne for lunch the day after Thanksgiving. At the end of their talk, Mary told her that she had to leave, and assured her of her love, and promised she would greet her with open arms if Suzanne ever sought her out. As she left, she kissed Suzanne on the forehead and whispered, “I know you are not of their world.” And she left and did not see her niece for nearly seven years.
They spoke often, though, especially when Suzanne was at Stanford. Mary told of watching her in cross-country and track meets online. When it was time for law school, Mary hoped that Suzanne would take the opportunity to leave the West Coast, at least for a bit, and that she’d end up in the Northeast. She was perversely happy that Yale and especially Harvard, way up in Cambridge, rejected her niece and overjoyed that she was heading to Columbia.
Mary cried when she told me of seeing the grown-up Suzanne double parking her Camry outside her new Apartment, which Mary had arranged for Suzanne and Annie. (She left it at that, not explaining how it came to be, although in fact she had used one of Annie’s cousins as a strawman so Suze’s father wouldn’t know.)
Free of her parents, Mary saw how happy Suzanne had become by Labor Day, two weeks after starting school. I told them that she had approached me not long before and how we were great friends by Labor Day.
Suzanne: Changes
With the arrival of Spring and the receipt of my first-term grades, in which I got two As and two Bs—which I figured put me in the top quarter of my class—I felt more comfortable at school, comfortable enough that I was running every day. Generally, I was still doing a six-mile loop of Central Park when I returned from class and tried to go out with Patsy’s club for a long run on either Saturday or Sunday. I even hopped into some roadraces, wearing my Stanford singlet for the first couple but the AC’s from that point on.