The Neallys Ch. 01: Suzanne Goes to NYC

Author's Note: This story has grown into a family saga but parts 1 through 5 make up the essential story. I am updating since that event, but you needn't read all of the later parts.

You will be introduced early on to Mary Elizabeth Nelson. Because her story begins long before this story, I have published a separate, first-person story for her. It is entitled "Mary Elizabeth Nelson" and is in "Lesbian Stories."

Special thanks to CareyThomas, who kindly reviewed drafts of this. Her two New York-centric stories, "A Ghost of a Chance" and "Could You Be Mine?," are among my favorites and warrant multiple readings; there are a number of Easter-egg references to those stories in this, with (slightly) different names, all intended in appreciation for the originals. All character are fictitious. Your comments are invaluable and all, good, bad, and indifferent, are appreciated.

Suzanne: Meeting Kerry

My introduction to New York was a burst of hot, humid air on Manhattan's Upper West Side late on a Thursday morning in August 2016. My best friend--that would be Annie Baxter--and I completed our three-day drive from the Bay Area to New York. I had just double-parked on West 87th Street, which is where we would live for the foreseeable future, and rushed to greet the woman who had our keys.

That was my aunt Mary Nelson. She was my father's estranged sister, from him and from their parents before they died, because she was gay. She lived in New York and arranged for Annie and me to get the apartment. It was only a mile-and-a-half from Columbia, where I was going to the law school and Annie to the business school. I'd only met Aunt Mary twice in my life, both times at Thanksgiving weekend nearly seven years before. My seeing her and talking to her regularly since then were things I didn't dare tell my parents about.

That's for later. Right then, I was hugging her on the sidewalk and then she was helping us with our things, assuring us that the car wouldn't be towed if we put the flashers on and hurried back.

She stocked the fridge with a few things, and Annie and I each took water before I left her to tidy while I drove Mary up to Yonkers, just north of the city, where I'd be keeping my hand-me-down Camry.

Me? I'm Suzanne Nelson. Of average height with long dark-brown hair and a bit on the thin side. Were you to ask me to tell you something particular about myself it would be that I was a good runner. Good enough to run on Stanford's women's cross-country and track teams.

My father, William, Jr., was a lawyer. So was his father. While they went to Stanford Law, I wanted to get away, which is why I was going to Columbia. It was crazy to have the car, but we could use it for weekend drives.

Just over a week after we were moved in, I sat in the back row of a large classroom at Columbia Law. While I was paying attention to the professor, I found myself paying too much attention on the nape of neck of the woman in the row ahead of mine. It was my third day of school and a thought occurred to me. One wants to regularly sit with four or five other students to go through material. I didn't know anyone and there was something about this woman so I thought I might ask if we could be in the same study group together. She didn't seem to know anyone either.

When class ended, I mustered my courage and reached to tap her on the shoulder. She turned, surprised.

"Can I have a word?" It didn't quite pop out as I hoped, but it worked and we stood in the noisy hallway while I made my suggestion. She confirmed she was not in any group and said she'd be happy to be with me, though she warned that she didn't live on campus.

"I don't live on campus though."

"I'm Suzanne Nelson, I'm from California, and I don't live on campus either."

"Kerry Neally. Looks like we're in the same classes. But when I said off-campus, I mean I live at home in the suburbs with my Mom and take the train to school each morning."

She seemed embarrassed. I thought it sweet, and we agreed to see if we could find a few others to join us, though not before having lunch together.

Kerry: Meeting Suzanne

I noticed her at orientation and now I sat across from her having a burger and fries a few blocks north of school. She had a cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake, which was strange because she looked like she never ate anything but salad.

Over lunch, she told me about going to Stanford undergrad and running and deciding to come east for law school. How her father was disappointed she didn't go to Stanford as apparently was a family tradition.

I gave her my mini-bio. Grew up just north of the city and still live in my Mom's house. My Dad died when I was sixteen, and my Mom never remarried. I'm the only child. Fordham University, where I did well enough to get into Columbia Law. No boyfriend since I broke up with Steven when I was a senior at Fordham; he was a junior who returned to a high-school friend over the Christmas break. And not many boyfriends before that. I said I planned to take the train in every morning since it took less than an hour and I could stay with my Mom and save a ton of money.

Much as I felt comfortable with her that first day, I was not comfortable enough, or brave enough, to fill in many of the details. Those details, which she'd come to learn over time, were as follows. My parents met in Brooklyn before it was "Brooklyn" and moved to the suburbs when they married. Both were alcoholics. Booze killed my Dad in 2010. I was a junior in high school. He simply wasted away and then was gone. My Mom never recovered. She was still young and very pretty but I don't think she once went out for dinner with another man nor did she develop relationships with other women, never even going out shopping or to dinner. Instead, she devoted herself to me, her only child, to keeping off the booze, and to her job at a small bank in White Plains, the business center about 30 miles north of midtown. Her last drink was a gin-and-tonic she nursed in the hours after everyone but I had gone on the day of her husband's funeral. She just stopped.

My Dad, Michael, worked for an insurance company in the city. My parents did well enough that we had a four-bedroom colonial on a hill just above the train station. I walked to my Catholic grammar school in my uniform and took the train each day to my Catholic high school in the Bronx, also in my uniform. I was one of the top three or four students in high school. I did well enough at Fordham to get into Columbia Law.

On the romance front, not much to report either. In college, I went out with a few guys and I met my first steady boyfriend early in senior year. But Steven blew up after he confessed to going to bed with a friend from high school when he was home over Christmas and he was the one and only true (in some respects) boyfriends I had.

All that was behind me. The day I sat with Suzanne, August 31, was the third day in which I took the train and the bus--only half-an-hour--to school.  

Suzanne: Meeting Mary

Kerry and I found three other first-years--Mike, Bill, and Marie--to join our study group. We all had the same course load and schedule and figured we could up the frequency as we got deeper into the term.

Kerry and I took to having our brown-bag lunches together each day and we sat next to one another in each of our classes. Between classes, we quietly prepared for the next one in the library or outside on a campus bench. After each day's final class, I'd head down to my apartment on 87th, usually taking the bus but walking when the weather was nice, and she'd hop the bus to 125th Street for her twenty-minute train ride home.

At the same time, Annie and I tried to get the car every two or three weeks, and we'd head up north through farmland surprisingly close to the city and reminiscent of drives back home. Annie was loving business school, not least because classmates seemed to find her California disposition and blondeness alluring. More importantly, she was challenged yet comfortable with the class material.

We both knew, though, that we were changing. It was not just that I threw myself into my work. More, it was that I was throwing myself into my friendship with Kerry. Annie knew more about me in some respects than I think I knew myself and never then and never since did she give me a hint of jealousy that Kerry was replacing her as my best friend and I don't think Annie ever felt the slightest tinge of jealousy, which was another reason I loved her so much.

By mid-October, I felt comfortable enough with Kerry to talk a bit more about my Aunt Mary. She and my father were my paternal grandparents' only children. Grandfather Nelson was a lawyer too and Grandmother Nelson was a housewife. They also lived in Mill Valley, in a large house. It was far too big for the four of them, but my father's birth had been difficult, and my grandma never got the big family she wanted. My father's parents died in a car accident shortly after I was born, and that old, big house was sold.

When my father was in high school, so I was told when I was in high school, my Aunt moved to New York. I didn't know my father had a sister until then. She was, again I was told, a "free spirit" who turned that spirit into paying jobs as a journalist and short-story writer, with bylines in Time and other magazines and several short stories in The New Yorker.

So, I knew of her existence but I'm ashamed to say that I made no effort to contact her. Here was my father's only sibling, the only living member of his family, and for all intents and purposes he was an only child. And I never thought to ask about her or to find out what her phone number was. Or anything.

Then I met her at Thanksgiving in 2010, a couple of years after I learned of her, and had my first talk with her at lunch in town the next day. And when I told her how horrible I felt for how I treated her--or didn't treat her--she waved it off, saying, "Think of it as having suddenly discovered a long-lost relative. Living in New York." And I laughed with her. "I don't have loads of money, though, so don't expect to suddenly learn that you've inherited a boatload of cash. Plus, I have two boys."

That stopped me cold. I have cousins on my father's side? There were plenty on my mother's since she had two brothers and two sisters and they were all married and had kids and we'd see them at Christmas and on birthdays and we always had fun together. But, as I said, my father was like an only child. We were the poster family for a happy Catholic extended family in Marin County. And my Aunt Mary was the black sheep, hidden away in New York.

When she told me about her two boys, I saw no wedding band and when she noticed she said she was gay and had been living with her partner for nearly ten years. Helen, a psychologist, was married--in those days, a woman could only marry a man--and had two boys before her amicable divorce. The kids had been largely raised by Helen and my Aunt with, as I say, amicable visits from their dad, Gerard.

All of this is background of course. Once I got over the initial shock of learning at the post-Thanksgiving lunch that there was a gay woman in my own family, I felt like I had known Aunt Mary forever. She was careful to avoid any suggestion that anything that my mother or father did to her or to me was wrong, dismissing it as "That's just who they are." She added, "sometimes my brother, your father, has his head up his ass. The only regret I have is that I'm only meeting you now."

From that point on we spoke regularly. My folks didn't like it, but they tolerated it. I soon was in college for god's sake. When I decided to go to New York for law school, it was in part with the guidance of Aunt Mary.

And there she was as I pulled up outside my new home on 87th Street. This was only the third time I had seen this woman, but I had long since felt that I had always known her.

Kerry: School Days

It's funny. Columbia is extremely competitive. But I never feel I'm competing with anyone but myself. We're all in a super-intense environment but we're all in it together. People, strangers, started coming to me after class and asking questions. I had no idea why. I was doing the prescribed reading of fifteen pages of our casebooks a night. It was far different from college lectures. We read a case and the professor asks about the principle it articulated, drawing out our answers so that we understood, we hoped, the point.

Then the exams. This too is different. Most are open book. You can bring whatever you wanted to. Books, notes, rosary beads. Which sounds great until you realize that everyone else can bring their own things in. Because we aren't being tested on facts like when was the Battle of Gettysburg or what were the contents of Mr. Darcy's letter to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. You get a fact pattern and need to explore all the relevant legal issues that arise. There are rarely the right answers. It's all on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand stuff.

Putting all this together meant that preparation was crucial. That was the point of the study group. Work together on course outlines and go over the principles again and again. Sure, there were pre-packaged outlines built around a particular casebook. But I didn't trust them or myself. I had to do my own outline. And so I did and I shared it with the others in the group, as they shared what they had done. 

Suzanne: A Drive in the Country and Meeting Eileen

On the first Saturday in November, Annie and I picked up the car and drove to Beacon, one of those Brooklyn-on-the-Hudson towns you read about in The Times. And we had fun wandering about.

While we sat at an outdoor table finishing our lunches--salad for Annie, a burger for me--Kerry texted:

{Kerry:} Hey. Are you on the road today?

{Suzanne:} Yeah. Annie and I are just finishing lunch in Beacon. What's up?

{Kerry:} Nada. Just bored. I always get depressed when I remember we're gonna change the clocks and it gets dark early.

{Suzanne:} Think of how we California sun-worshippers feel!

{Kerry:} Bullshit. You come from San Francisco and wouldn't know the sun if it slapped you across the face.

{Suzanne:} LOL. Gotta go. Annie is getting jealous.

What? Am I flirting?

{Kerry:} Good thing you don't have pictures of me to show her. Then she'd really be jealous!!

{Suzanne:} How do you know I don't????

{Suzanne:} Don't worry. I haven't shown them to her...She's already steaming.

{Suzanne:} LMAO. Kidding! She's just pissed that I'm ignoring her. See you Monday.

Okay. Not flirting.

"What was that about?" Annie asked. "You were texting like it was with George Clooney and hiding it like I was Amal."

"Just Kerry."

Annie and I finished our lunches and coffees and wandered through a few shops and a gallery before getting the Camry and heading home. It was a beautiful drive down the parkway even if the peak leaf-changing had passed. Annie was driving. I asked if she'd like to meet Kerry.

"I imagine I'll meet her one of these days," she said, glancing over from the driver's seat. My bare feet were gripping the dashboard just above the glove compartment as I watched at the wooded area pass by. Without turning to Annie, I said, "We'll be nearly right next door when we bring the car back. She sounds lonely. I'll see if she's around." Annie told me to go ahead.

{Suzanne:} Hey. I'm bringing the car back to my Aunt. You want us to stop by before we do. You can meet Annie and she can tell you the deepest secrets of my life???

I waited for about ten minutes, bouncing the phone lightly between my hands.

{Kerry:} I could really use a break. I'm tired of outlining. Do you have the address?

{Suzanne:} No.

She texted it to me and I plugged it into my phone.

{Suzanne:} Got it. Thanks. We're about 20 minutes away. Does that work?

{Kerry:} See you then!!!!

I gave my Aunt a quick call, telling her we were stopping at a friend's house nearby and that I'd let her know when I'd be dropping the car off.

Kerry's Mom answered the door. She was stunning. About my height, 5'7", and wonderfully curved. She had fair skin and amber hair, which she kept above her shoulders. That hair had a slight wave to it and seemed to frame her high cheekbones and round face. With eyes that were blue but not cut-like-a-diamond blue. Quiet, restful blue that I could imagine turning into something very treacherous. And that's just what I got in a single glance.

She had, perhaps, spent a little too much time in the sun when she was young--and she was hardly old when I met her, no more than her late forties--and there were some wrinkles beside those eyes and on her neck.

Her Mom was wearing a nice yellow shirt without a collar, blue jeans, and a pair of Asics trainers. No jewelry other than what I recognized as a runner's watch. She paused for a moment upon seeing me and after asking who was Suzanne and who was Annie, she hugged each of us and led us in. Annie and I, in turn, said, "Hello Mrs. Neally," and she said, "Please don't remind me that I've gotten old. Call me Eileen. I guess I should be glad that you didn't call me 'Ma'am.'"

Kerry's house sat on a small lot, close to its neighbors. It had a brick-facing, and when we entered the dining room was to the left and the living room to the right and a staircase to the second floor in the middle. It was nicely decorated and maintained but in something of a time warp. It was a home in which people lived, though, and after glancing around I told Mrs. Neally that I loved it. Unlike my much larger house in California, it had life and unlike my house in California, it was a home.

Kerry came in and asked us what we wanted to drink and the four of us went into the kitchen. I'd had enough coffee for the day and don't drink soda so I was glad to get an iced tea, with Mrs. Neally insisting on cutting a slice of lemon for it and for Annie's.

Mrs. Neally laughed. "Do you know that old New Yorker cover, the one with the map looking west and everything west of the Hudson sort of disappears?" After we nodded, she continued. "That's pretty much my world and I hate to admit my view of the rest of the world. I always wanted to go to California, and San Francisco in particular, but it never happened."

Annie piped in, "Suzanne and I loved growing up there but, let's face it, it was kind of boring compared to what we imagined the real world looked like." Kerry interrupted by saying "You do realize that a lot of shows set in New York were filmed in Toronto, don't you?" to which Annie mockingly responded, "What? And are you telling me that Harry never met Sally?" which she said while glancing at me.

I called her a dork. "It's like Annie's favorite movie. She brought it up while we were driving here since we too were making the life-altering change of moving to New York. She even displayed her mock-orgasm skills somewhere in--" I stopped, blushing as I realized that Kerry's Mom was standing there, and switched to saying, "Anyway, believe me, any illusions or delusions we had about New York vanished about thirty-six hours after we rode into town. But, yeah, you should visit San Francisco at least once. LA? Not so much."

Kerry interrupted this love fest by offering to show Annie and me what she called her "Cave," which turned out to be in the basement. She had carved out a space for a desk and a bookcase, and a computer sat on the former and her case books in the latter.

Suddenly Annie said, "This is bullshit." I was stunned and Kerry looked like she'd been slapped. Annie smiled, "Kerry, you can't work in these conditions. The Department of Labor would shut you down if they saw it." Kerry looked and I was puzzled. WTF?