Getting Chilled
I took more than my fair share of finger-food and after another hour or so Kerry and I were on the subway heading up to the train station, and we sat quietly once on board.
“Sweetie,” Kerry said with my head on her shoulder, “I’ve suffered from loving you for nearly two years and that’s not going to change. You know that don’t you?”
“I do but sometimes—”
“And you know how happy you make me and how lucky I am that you love me, don’t you.”
“I’m the lucky one.”
“No sweetie. You’re the hot one. I’m the lucky one.”
“Well, you are pretty smart so you must be right.”
“It’s good to know you’re at least smart enough to understand that,” she said, which drew a light slap on her leg from my free hand.
A bit later, I asked Kerry about a photo in Carol and Rachel’s bedroom. It was of a striking Asian woman in a Hopkins shirt, taken in what I recognized as Sausalito. I recalled a more-formal picture of her on a bookshelf in Carol’s office.
“That is Carol’s first wife.”
I did not know Carol had been married before Rachel.
“It is really sad. She got very sick and Carol took a leave of absence to care for her but in the end, she didn’t make it.”
“Wow. No one mentioned it when I was there.”
“I think it’s still sensitive and people leave it to Carol to talk about. She only told me a few weeks ago when I asked about that picture in her office.”
“So Rachel is the kids’ stepmom.”
“Oh my god, don’t get Carol going. She told me that Rachel fell in love with the twins—they’ve visited a couple of times and, let me tell you, she takes no guff from those kids who are pretty polite to begin with—ages before she fell in love with her and that she only agreed to marry so she could get custody. It took a while for Carol to be so easy about saying things like that.”
What Kerry said sent a chill through me. About a minute after she stopped speaking and as we were just leaving the Bronx, I lowered my voice and whispered, “I can’t lose you again Kerry, I can’t have you taken away from me” and the prospect of such a thing rifled through me and Kerry said, “that won’t happen if I have anything to do with it, my love.”
It took me a little longer to fall asleep and I held my love a little tighter than usual that night, with the horrible, unthinkable thought haunting me. It was days before the concerns, which I knew were unreasonable as a practical matter, dissipated sufficiently for me to put them out of my daily consciousness.
Spreading the News
When we got to the house I called my Aunt and told her the news and the date and Kerry called Mom and told her the news and the date.
Parties to the Second Party
Kerry was staying late at school for a project so I figured it was a good chance to do a speed workout with the AC. We were doing hill repeats at the northern end of the Park. We gab-gab-gabbed until the repeat began, during which the only noise that any of us made was heavy breathing, which was followed by gab-gab-gab as we jogged down the hill before doing the whole thing again. Eight times.
When done, we headed over to a nearby bar where we could get a large table and eat, with no one caring how stinky we all were. When we arrived, I went to the bathroom to exchange some of my sweatier stuff for a clean T-shirt and shorts that I had in my backpack. A bit of a towel bath and I headed to where I heard the girls, in the back. And there, sitting amid the gang, was Kerry.
They all loved her. She came to most of my races and joined us for our warm-downs. When we had weekend long runs on trails to the north, she’d go for a walk and meet us afterward. And there she was for our very own hen party, wearing a stupid tiara with a veil and I saw, too late, Patsy moving next to me and putting an identical one on my head. After a half-hour, though, we had to dash the subway so we could get the train home.
An Unexpected Visitor
After speaking to my Mother and Kerry, I sent a wedding invitation to my father. I did not think that he would be disruptive and wanted to give him a chance, however unlikely to be taken, to attend his daughter’s wedding.
On September 7, a Friday morning just over two weeks before the wedding, I got a call from Greg at Trallis’s front desk that there was someone to see me. I suspected who it was. I said I would be right there. My Mother and I and Kerry and I had discussed what I would do if he tried to contact me, even if he just showed up, and we agreed that the same line drawn for my Mother’s involvement with me would be drawn for him.
He stood at the front in one of his nice blue suits, white shirt (with French cuffs and gold cuff-links), red tie, and shiny black Oxford shoes. He stood like he just addressed the U. N. General Assembly and I would say that he had done so to impress me but this was the way he always dressed when in business- or Church-mode.