Mary Elizabeth Nelson

I had tried. He was an ass. I'm sure my parents were proud of him.

To get it out of the way now, I had no further contact with my brother until 2010, and I'll get to that. In 1993 or 1994 I went through Time's morgue—where copies of old newspapers were kept in those days—as I periodically did, going through the society page of The San Francisco Chronicle. I saw that on June 8, 1991, Kathleen Pugh, Daughter of Eric and Mary Pugh, of Glenview, California married William Nelson, son of William Allen and Mary Suzanne Nelson, of Mill Valley, California.

Of course they did. There was a picture of the couple and their parents. His wife, Kathleen, was pretty, I'll grant her that. If I could wipe the smirks off my parents' and off my brother's faces I would have. I kind of felt sorry for Kathleen Pugh Nelson but she walked in with her eyes open and it'd be a while before I came to hate her. That's for later too.

Since my job had me all over the place, I didn't have the chance to enter into a committed relationship with anyone. I had some wonderful, torrid affairs. Some with married women. One transcendental evening with a tall Chinese woman in Shanghai named Nian Zhen that I cannot forget if I wanted to. Which I don't. But I was too busy for anything else. The women with whom I slept knew what they were getting, or not getting, into. My sex life, I thought, was good and satisfying.

I did not understand I was wrong. It was spring 2005. I was nearing 42, in my office at Time on Sixth Avenue. The switchboard said it was "a Ms. Allen" and not knowing any "Ms. Allen" I asked that the receptionist find out what it concerned. A moment later, "It is a Ms. Allen from Huntington. She says she knows you." My heart skipped several beats and my breathing accelerated as I asked that she be "put through."

"Mary?"

And of course it was her and in those two syllables my happy world collapsed. "Betty?"

"Yes. I'm at a payphone near Rockefeller Center. Can I meet you or come up to see you?"

It was a sunny afternoon. I was not on deadline so I told her I'd meet her on the promenade to the east of the Prometheus statue, towards Saks. Ten minutes later one of us was in the other's arms. Probably both. I had not spoken to or seen her for nearly twenty years. Her wedding band was all too obvious. We sat among a recently-installed floral display.

"Mary. I am married and I have two children. I will leave him—but not them—if you tell me you love me." It was rehearsed, probably a hundred or a thousand times.

What do you say to something like that? What is one supposed to say to something like that? I didn't have a clue and I still don't. I wanted to say—shout—"I Love You" but we're talking about someone's family. True as it was—and be clear it was true—I couldn't say it and she knew I couldn't say it. This was the beginning of something that was as likely to explode in our faces as it was to be anything good.

"Betty. I am not committed to anyone right now. But I cannot commit to you. We have to talk."

With that we walked up Fifth Avenue to Central Park and through the Zoo and wandered north until I saw a bench along the path. We sat. On the way, I told her of what I had been doing—she told me she saw my byline now and then and that she subscribed to The New Yorker in case I had one of my stories in it (and for the cartoons). One, "Autumn Fling," sounded suspiciously familiar. She was right. "Autumn Fling"'s characters were left in limbo at the end, up to the reader to decide which way a man went when faced with two equally-compelling women, one of whom his parents approved but his heart did not, the other of whom they did not but his heart did.

In a draft he chose the latter but that was too easy and it was left ambiguous in the published version. I regretted that she read it, though. I feared it rekindled an old spark and unnecessary regret. She made her choice and I did not want her to revisit it. It was my most personal piece. In telling me about it I knew she revisited us. I regretted that.

I knew what she wanted to hear from me more than anything and I finally said it: "I never found someone." In those days, of course, gays couldn't marry so there wouldn't be the tell-tale band. She told me of her two boys, Peter, who was almost fourteen, and Michael, who was nearly ten. All of these things were bounding around my head when we sat.

"I don't know if I ever loved Gerry. He's a good husband and a great father. Even before I met you I had doubts. I should've listened to them but, you remember . . ."

I stopped her. No point is going over this.

"To now then. He may have loved me but, and it's probably my fault, but I don't think he does anymore. We're both going through the motions. The sex? Even he's lost his enthusiasm for me and I never really had much for him. We both kind of take care of our separate needs separately. Nothing extramarital though. So far as I know." (And let me interject that in fact neither of them engaged in anything extramarital until after my meeting with Betty that day and she and I were out in the open with him. Gerry was, and still is, a very good man and a very good father and according to Betty he was a very good husband.)

"Gerry and I have spoken about it. I think he'd be OK with me leaving. Not happy. But OK. We'd have to work out something about the boys, of course, but I think it could work. But it all depends on you, Mary. Do you love me?"

Mary and Betty

I'd be lying if I denied loving her. There probably wasn't a moment since shortly after I met her in that Austen class that I did not. It's not that I didn't try to find my someone. I just never succeeded. My life was not some fairytale. As I look back, maybe I did compare my other women to her. I was not, though, staring at my phone pining for her call.

In fact, as Austen wrote, speaking of Captain Wentworth and Anne Elliot, "he meant to forget her, and believed it to be done. He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them. Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself."

And now Betty Anne Elliot was asking me to live with her. Now she was asking me to be a homewrecker. So I gave the only answer I, or anyone, could.

"Betty, I need to think. I need time."

She nodded. We got up and resumed our walk north, past the Boat Pond and the Hans Christian Andersen statue I sometimes rubbed when I walked this way home. We left at the subway stop at 86th and Lexington, where she caught the Number 4 train to 125th Street where she caught her train home.

And I turned and walked into the Park by the Metropolitan Museum and across to my 83rd Street apartment. I sat until it got dark. I threw something into the microwave for my dinner. Glass of wine. Maybe two. I knew that if she were unattached there would be no issue. But she wasn't. She had two boys in school in Westchester. I had no idea who I could call. I had lots of friends, but I could not open to any of them. Then I thought of, and you will think that I am making this up, but I did it. I worked for Time and I probably shouldn't have but I tracked down Evelyn Donnell. She was one of my high-school teachers on whom I had a crush. I ran into her in a vintage-clothes shop in the East Village about five years earlier. She lived in Scarsdale, which meant she was married and probably had two-and-a-half kids and a Lab or Golden Retriever. And it turned out that she was married to a doctor and she was still teaching, at a local high-school.

I called her and after I told her who I was she said she remembered me. I don't know if she really did, but she was happy to meet on the following day, a Saturday. I called Betty and told her I needed time and she told me, and I'm sorry but I still treasure it, she'd wait "forever." I didn't want to hear that.

I headed to the Harlem-125th Street Station, as Betty had a few days earlier. To Scarsdale. Standing on the platform when the train arrived was, I must say, a woman who did not look what I imagined a woman-married-to-a-cardiologist-in-Scarsdale looked like. For a moment, a nanosecond, the twinge of a crush shot through my veins. She let me call her Miss Donnell three times before telling me to cut it out. "It's Ev."

She took me to a small restaurant, insisting I have wine "or I'll feel guilty for mine." After we ordered, I told her why I needed to see someone. She was a mother—two girls and a boy—probably ten years older than me.

"I love my husband to bits. I couldn't imagine being with anyone else and his existence makes me glad every day that I came to New York"—she too was a northern-Californian—"so I won't pretend to know what your friend is going through if she doesn't have that. I can't know what she's going through. What is it, the whole 'all unhappy families are unhappy in their own way'?

"All I can tell you is that I could not imagine the torture of living day-after-day with someone I did not love. Whether it's you or someone else, if, and I emphasize the 'if,' if she does not feel that, it's not for you to decide what she's supposed to do."

She grabbed a piece of bread and buttered it before continuing. I did the same.

"I'm a romantic and perhaps naïve but I believe in happily-ever-after. Not perfect but happy. So here's my advice. If you weren't there, weren't available, would she still leave?"

Our salads having come in the midst of this and the waiter having offered us pepper, both of us shaking our heads "no," I looked over at Ev and thanked her. I did not know what I would do but I knew she was right. Which is what I told her. Then we moved to less-treacherous territory.

We ate our salads and finished our wines and had our coffees—no desert thank you. We got up. I asked how far away Yonkers was. After she told me—about five miles—I nervously stepped to a public phone to call Betty. She answered on the third ring. I asked whether we could meet. She paused. I suspected that she feared I would end it, so I added, "It'll be OK."

Where she lived was close to Bronxville, and she asked to meet by the train station there. When Ev told me she knew where it was, I said I'd be there. About twenty minutes later I saw her sitting on a bench in a small park near the train platform. I asked Ev if I could introduce her, but she declined. "This is on you. Good luck." After dropping me off, she headed home. She became something of a support system for me from that day forward.

On that Saturday, though, I had no idea what I would say to Betty. No matter how hard I thought as we drove down, I didn't know what I would say to her.

"Well?" She later told me that the minutes since my phone call were the most frightening of her life, and I regretted having extended it. It was hard for me.

"If I told you I was happy with someone, would you still leave Gerry?"

She panicked. "Are you?"

I stopped her. "Betts. That's an 'if' question. I need to know whether you want to leave him because of me or because of you."

We got up and she led me to another, larger park. She was angry. "I shouldn't have done it. OK? It was stupid and I knew it was stupid and I did it anyway." It took a moment but I got that she was talking about Gerry. "Everyone else was so fucking happy. Gerry's a great guy. Everyone loves him. The problem is that I love him the way everyone else does. No More Than That. OK?

"It's supposed to be More Than That." We crossed two streets and I could see where she was taking me.

"Look, the thing is, Gerry does not matter in this. He simply doesn't. It's not there. He knows it. I know it. The only issue is the kids, Peter and Michael.

"So I'm done bullshitting OK? You act like there's some third ground, some two-step dance. But, Mary, this is my world. I know if I leave him and come to you that we can create a space where Peter and Michael can thrive. We would never cut Gerry out. But their mother can be happy and their father can be happy and right now neither of us is."

Again I was at a loss. I needed time.

"Look, Mary, I told you I'd wait forever. I will. I promise you that it will work for Peter and Michael."

She paused for breath.

"I've told Gerry what's going on. But to answer your question, I told you I love him but not in the way I should. I need someone else. I want that to be you. If it's not, I'll have to search for her. This is me. Not you."

We passed the hospital and turned into the path along the Bronx River where a small lake appeared, finding a bench. When we sat, I grabbed her hands and turned towards her.

"There is no one else for me. There never has been. I could have lived happily enough knowing you weren't available. I can't say that anymore. I love you."

She started sobbing. Enough that a number of passersby looked at her, one or two asking if she was alright. She was.

A Devoutly-to-be-Wished Consummation

It remains one of the happiest days of my life so please indulge me. And, yes, I am lucky that each day with her seems happier than the last. But that all began on a Sunday about a month after I admitted my love for Betty. She told Gerry the specifics the night she and I met in Bronxville. He was, she told me, relieved. A blockage in their marriage was cleared and they could finally get on with their lives.

Betty and I spoke regularly, and I met her in Bronxville on a couple of weekends, with her once taking me for a drive upstate—but not too far upstate—where I'd never been and which reminded me a bit of Marin County, with beautiful farmland and quiet towns.

Sunday, April 24, 2005, though, was the date we agreed upon to make love. Gerry would be home in Yonkers. The kids would be out doing what they did in those days. Betty drove down. She got a parking space a few blocks from my apartment on West 83rd Street. When she came to my door after I'd buzzed her in she was ravishing. She wore a turquoise dress that went below her knees. Completely inappropriate for brunch on the Upper West Side. She knew it was special. So did I; I had a raspberry dress. We each gave ourselves a slight touch of makeup and wore two-inch heels.

My heart skipped a beat when I saw her. She beat me to it and had her arms around me before I could move to her. The kiss. Rodin could not do justice to the kiss. My eyes closed—I assume hers did too but, well, I couldn't see because my eyes were closed—and we inhaled each other. First just lips and then tongues unleashed until she pushed away. We both needed air.

"That's the appetizer. We need to get out of here before they discover our bodies in a week or two after a neighbor complains of the smell." She smiled when she said it, but I knew it was true. I turned to get my pocketbook and keys as she waited on the landing, not daring to again cross the threshold.

After locking up, I followed her down the stairs. We headed west, hand-in-hand, to Columbus Avenue, to a place at 79th Street, across from the Natural History Museum. We got a few stares as we did; we were way overdressed. A pair of women in their mid-40s holding hands and giggling like the schoolgirls we in some respects were. People passed and nodded to and mostly smiled at us; it was obvious, again, that we were on a hot date. One ass, male, asked if he could "watch." We ignored him.

It amazes me, but I recall the details. Perhaps from my waitressing days. The waiter in black slacks and a white shirt and white apron was tall and clean-shaven. The busboy was a short girl in her late teens with brown hair and a ponytail. The place was about half-full, the piped-in music originals from the Great American Songbook. Porter. Gershwin. And the rest. "Embraceable You." "The Way You Look Tonight." And the rest.

We both had coffee and mimosas. Betty had Eggs Benedict and I went with Eggs Florentine. They came with a nice, lightly-dressed salad. I think we each had a few more coffee-refills than we should have. I know I, and I think she, had to use the ladies' room before we left. She left a slight lipstick stain—a sultry red—on her coffee cup. I think she reapplied it after the kiss while I got my purse.

I was high. On the mimosa, the coffee, and Betty as we headed "to my place." That sounds so clichéd. But it is true.

I couldn't get the door unlocked and opened fast enough. The apartment was a one-bedroom. There was a slight hall with a closet to the right. It opened into a living room and to the left was the kitchen and next to that was a short hall to the bedroom. Queen-sized bed. Cheesy, yes, but I had candles strategically placed and some potpourri containers were open. The head of the bed was against the left wall, and the window faced north, out to a brownstone on 84th Street.

She stopped in the bathroom, which was across from the bedroom. I made sure everything was in order in the bedroom while she did. I turned down the blanket. I can't believe now that I did it, but I lit several candles and lowered and closed the blinds over the window. At least I didn't put a scarf over a lamp.

I heard the bathroom door open. If I did not have a strong heart I would not be writing this. I would be dead. Betty walked in wearing nothing. Nothing. It's a vision seared into my brain. 5' 5" tall. Her narrow face. Her light-brown hair draped about three inches below her shoulder, released from the bun into which it was placed earlier. Her tits sagged, but only slightly. They were perfectly shaped and perfectly sized. Her nipples could put someone's eye out. She had a slight tummy and a wild bush. Her legs were, as Lincoln said, long enough to reach the ground with perfect curves as they got there. Her feet a little small, with red toenails.

She reapplied her lipstick in a shade that can only be described as fuck-me red. She sashayed over to me. "Someone's overdressed." As she ran her right finger across my cheek and then down the center of my dress, stopping and making a small circle around my cunt. That's what it was. My wet, needy cunt.

Her eyes burnt into mine as she kept her circling. "Fuck." That was me. "That's the plan." That was Betty.

I turned so she could unzip me. I turned back and after shaking my arms, my dress fell to the floor. I stepped out of it. Then off went my shoes. I was in a lace bra and panties. She reached and undid the clasp in front, and released my tits. They were bigger than hers, but not by much. They sagged more than hers did but she immediately raised them with her hands. She kissed my right nipple and then my left. They'd never sparked, not even with Nian Zhen, the way they did while she suckled on and then bit them. I grabbed my panties and pushed them down and off.

In all my years with all my partners, there had only been one that came close to doing what Betty was doing to me. That was Betty those decades ago. I ripped the blanket from the bed and led her to it. She lay down to the left, and I was next to her. I then got atop her, our tits pushing against one another. I leaned to kiss her and had I not been lost to her those decades before I was lost to her now. Somehow I was positioned so that my cunt was rubbing against her left thigh and my left thigh was rubbing against her cunt. As we kissed we were grinding into each other, completely lost in the passion. She suddenly pushed my chest away as she came, her body shaking. I was an animal, not caring about her but only about me and while she shook my legs clutched her thigh so that I could get off. Just as she settled back, my own explosion hit. Now I was shaking, saying nothing but "Betty" again and again.

We both lay staring at the ceiling and trying desperately to catch our breathes. She began to sob. Her chest heaving.