The Neallys Ch. 01: Suzanne Goes to NYC

In the normal course of events, law students line up summer associate positions at big firms, which try to get top students to sign up for starting their careers there, students who when they become associates can be billed out at high hourly-rates and who can be worked very hard with the carrot of partnership dangling in front of them. I'd travel this well-trod path.

Having cut myself from Kerry and to some extent Mary and Annie, I had a good amount of time to consider what I was doing and where I was going. I had been on autopilot and meeting everyone else's expectations for a long time and was tired of it all.

In mid-April, I took the train to see Aunt Mary. It was a nice Saturday and I got in a 10-mile run with teammates in the morning. We met up by her for lunch, at a small place, a table by the window. And it all came out. The literal coming-out moment but what happened with Kerry and my building resentment toward my father and my concerns about my future.

We were in a public place and I was able to prevent my moistened eyes from tearing. She reached for my left hand.

"We're very alike, you and I," she said kindly. She to me kindly. "Now that you've filled in a few pieces, I see that more than ever. Smart. Gay. Coming to New York for a new life."

She was underappreciating what she went through to get to New York, thrown out right before Christmas with no contacts, and I started to remind of how easy I have had it when she stopped me.

"Baby, it's not a contest. We're alike but we're not the same. I made my choices. You have to make yours. I can't tell you what to do about your parents. I can't tell you what to do about Kerry. All I can do is assure you that whatever you want will have my full support. I'll do anything I can do to help you with your choice. Helen too. You know that."

I admitted that I did and felt that I was unfair to them both for keeping things from them. And after a "I promise to let you know what I'm doing and where my head's at" the conversation turned to her describing in great detail--she is a writer after all--her early days in the Village and some of her more interesting assignments over the years.

She walked home after seeing me off for my train. The one thing I made her promise is that she not tell Eileen what I said. Whatever was to be done about Kerry was something I had to figure out and I hadn't done that yet and wouldn't for a while. I wanted no one else to know what I decided more generally.

The strange thing is that she didn't speak in specifics, she didn't say that I should do this or I should do that. What she did is instill confidence that whatever I decided to do not only would have her support but that it would be the right thing to do. For me.

And over the next few weeks as I prepared for my final exams, I made a major decision. Two, actually.

New York had become my home. I didn't know what would happen with Kerry, but I did know that I wasn't heading west anytime soon.

On a Monday afternoon two weeks after our lunch, morning in San Francisco, I called the firm where I was to work. I explained to the hiring coordinator that for personal reasons I wouldn't be able to be in California for the summer. He was very nice and told me that the firm would keep the spot open if things changed.

On Tuesday, I tracked down one of my teaching assistants. We sat on a bench near school. I told her that for personal reasons I decided not to go to San Francisco for the summer and had backed out of my job there. Swearing her to secrecy, I told her that I was also considering leaving school for a year and asked if she knew where I could get a full-time job.

To say she was surprised would be an understatement. She and our other TA had gotten to know all of us, including Kerry, and genuinely cared for us. After our finals in December, we'd had a party at her apartment on West 72nd. After I assured her that there were some things, including financial things, that I had to work through, she promised to investigate some options and get back to me. She hugged me as she left.

I should say something about the "financial things" I mentioned. My parents were paying half of my tuition and my portion of the rent on the apartment. I insisted that the money be a loan, and signed a zero-interest promissory note. The balance of my tuition and a stipend for living expenses came via a student loan, which didn't have a zero-interest promissory note.

Things were building for a while. It began long ago, when my father disavowed his sister. Then when how they, my mother and my father, treated her on Thanksgiving in 2010. It had been smoldering within me ever since, and much as Mary told me to let bygones be bygones, I could not let it go. And now looking at how comfortable I felt in New York, especially with Mary, I wanted to stay. I understood that part of staying meant separating myself from the financial tangles I had with my parents. I started viewing it as blood money. I would not take their money. I couldn't afford to repay what I already received yet, but I'd not add to my debt.

Which is why I couldn't afford to pay for school. Perhaps I could later work out a financial arrangement so I went to the Administration. After explaining matters, focusing on the financial, I was allowed to withdraw for second year and would (assuming my first-year grades were good enough, which I knew they would be) be allowed to re-enroll in September 2018.

On Friday--this was all happening lightning fast--I left school at noon and took the 1 train to midtown. I met with a partner at a midsized law firm, Sullivan & Wilson. My TA had set the interview up for me. The partner, Carol Wright, was kind and understanding and immediately offered me a job as a paralegal. We both knew that she was getting a great deal, and I think she jumped at the chance to snag me. I'd start a week after exams.

And on Saturday, now in early May, I went up to Yonkers again. I sat with Mary and told her. I don't know that she was happy about it. I do think she understood and, as she promised three weeks earlier, she told me she would support me in any way she could, including allowing me to move into her house come September when I'd have to give up the apartment.

All these changes were more than enough for me. I got into compartmentalize mode and focused on school, even if it might be my final term.

Kerry: Moot Court

Things were super busy. I had to prepare for moot court. It's a rite of passage. Teams of two first-years--I signed up with Marie from our study group--get a package of materials and must write a brief for one side or the other, with each side having two issues. Then you go before a panel of three alums and argue an appeal. It's the first real-world test we get although it is moot, not real.

As to Suzanne, I didn't know what to do. Short of dropping a brick on her head, I could not get her attention. I felt like such a dick, but I tried.

Suzanne: Running with Patsy

Kerry moved on. We were in a state of perpetual estrangement. If she even noticed me it was only in passing and would hang with Marie, her moot-court partner, and Mike and Bill from the study group. My moot-court partner was a guy named Patrick, who sat next to me in our Property class. He was nice and relaxed, and I enjoyed working with him. And I enjoyed drafting my moot-court brief and doing my argument.

Outside of school, Patsy had become a good friend. She loved telling, and I'm afraid I loved hearing, her tales of dating woes. "Everyone thinks I'm this badass butch," she told me more than once, "but I can't just point to someone and say 'here, now.' I'm so misunderstood." But of course she was that type of badass butch but I think she felt that it was a role thrust upon her that she was tired of and just wanted to find her "her," whoever that might be.

She figured that someone was missing from my life. I never went out on a date, or at least never told her that I had gone out on a date, and the girls in our group were not shy about sharing-too-much. It's part of what made them so much fun to run with.

In June, about a month after first year ended, though, Patsy and I were doing a couple of Central Park loops at a conversational pace. After thinking about it for the first seven or so of the twelve miles we planned and as we were passing the Sheep Meadow I simply said, "I'm gay." Patsy said, "No shit." To my "I've only told that to two other people, including my gay Aunt," she told me to calm down.

"Look," she said. "First, to be clear, I don't care one way or the other. I don't think anyone we run with cares. I mean do you care about anyone else's quote-unquote orientation?"

I said, "I haven't given it a thought. We're just a bunch of hot, fast, good-looking girls. But, you know, I have never really looked."

"Well," she laughed, "some of them have looked at you but I'm not saying who. Think of it as a way to keep your get-away speed up." I slapped her left wrist.

"Just kidding," she said, none too convincingly.

"But, Suzanne, while I've never given it a ton of thought, you've always seemed gay. But my gaydar is wrong as often as it's right. What I need to know is why you're telling me this now."

We were approaching the southern edge of the Park, gliding along in our own cocoon. Although we were going at an easy pace for us, except for the guy or occasional girl passing us in super-smooth cruise-mode we were passing tons of people. The Park Drive narrows briefly so we had to concentrate to get around the slower runners and the walkers. Once we had cleared that we resumed our talk.

"I fell in love and I fucked it up."

"Talk to me."

Over the next half-mile, I told Patsy about Kerry. How it was her mother that got it started. I explained that her Mom had, probably unconsciously, flirted with me and how gorgeous she was. That it was like she was channeling her daughter because her daughter didn't know enough to do it herself.

Sometimes when you run your brain starts to frazzle. It doesn't happen often but in a matter of strides you can go from a relaxed run to just shutting down and suddenly you can't run and talk at the same time. It's entirely a mental thing. It was happening to me. I touched Patsy's wrist as we approached the lakehouse, and we pulled off to the side, dodging a pair of camera-wielding tourists as we did so.

When we stopped, she hugged me.

"I met her during my first week of school. I didn't know anyone, and something attracted me to her. I was lonely, but it wasn't like I was grasping at anyone to be my friend. Then suddenly she was my friend. We hung around all the time at school.

"Months later I sort of invited myself to her house. She lives in the burbs with her Mom and takes the train in every day to school. She's smart, very pretty, and, I dunno, comfortable."

We were now sitting on a wall off the Drive. "When Annie and I, you know, my roomie from home, stopped by at Kerry's, I met her mother. Seriously, Pats, the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen. And I come from California."

"Washington doesn't just grow great looking apples," she countered to my thrust.

"Seriously. She's a MILF to the hundredth power. She's been a widow for a while. Kerry told me her story."

Patsy, having made a mental note that she had to meet this woman, interrupted. "I'm starting to get a bit chilled here." It was still spring and the warmth we felt during our run was rapidly fading. "Let's just jog for a bit."

We started up again. "Anyway," I continued, "she was looking at me, Kerry was looking at her and I swear to god it was like one of those Star Trek episodes where some alien is channeling his thoughts through, like some other, but possessed alien and Troi's boobs start shaking."

"You are such a geek," Patsy said. "At least you didn't go back to Kirk."

"Stop. I need you."

"Sorry."

I resumed. "Anyway, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I've never kissed a girl although I'd long wanted to and now I knew that there was one girl I needed to kiss. And I knew enough about her to know, or at least think, that she was straight."

"And when you hit on her she backed away like you had the plague?" Patsy asked. "Been there, done that."

"No," I said, my arms flailing about as we jogged up Cat Hill--a sculpture of a crouching cougar menaces those who pass. "It never got that far. I told her I was gay because I wanted to see her reaction to that before I did anything else. And that's when she looked at me like I had the plague. She gave me a disgusted I-thought-you-were-normal look and without thinking I threw her out.

"I wouldn't let her apologize. I saw her all the time in school but didn't speak to her and avoided her whenever possible and I'm miserable. Miserable."

"I'm sorry Suzanne." And she stopped us, pulling me off the Drive again.

"It's not just gays. Whenever anyone offers her heart to another person, she exposes her essence and sometimes, you know, it's unrequited and all you can do is try to place it back into where it belongs and hope that you get the chance to offer it to someone else down the road. Look, I hate to admit it, but I've never taken mine out of its slot in my chest and that's in part because I don't want to have to put it back. It's safer that way but, you know, that's not what it's there for."

She hugged me again and into my ear, she whispered, "And I think this is something no one can tell you about except yourself." Backing away but holding my upper arms she finished with, "but, babe, you have a lot of people who love you. You'd be surprised how many of our gang care deeply for you as a friend as they know you do for them. And talk to your Aunt. We all love you."

With that, she resumed her run. I was too spent to do anything but jog home across the Park. 

Kerry: Summertime

In the summer I learned that I made Law Review. My grades and writing sample were good enough. It meant my summer job became three-days-a-week since I had to be at the law school before classes began. I was sorry, though, that Suzanne didn't make it.

Back to me. Something was simmering just below the surface of my psyche every day. I could keep it dampened in school but being a summer associate meant the chance to do a good deal of socializing. The firm tried to give some semblance of the servitude that would be expected of me were I to become a real Big Law associate but also wanted to keep its prized recruits happy with large and regular doses of entertainment. Mets games. (Yeah!) Yankee games. (Boo!) Cruises in New York Harbor. Exclusive showings at the Met. Mozart at the other Met. Billy Joel tickets. (Ugh!) And lots of cocktail parties. It truly is like one of those movies in which an average guy gets seduced by a drop-dead gorgeous blonde who turns into Lucifer as soon as there's a signature on the dotted line.

I met a lot of nice people at these events. I still felt a bit outclassed with my non-Ivy pedigree and I was shy by nature. Some, I thought, might become friends and some connections worth developing but no more than that, including the men, real associates and a couple of partners among them, who asked me on dates. I wasn't tempted by any of them and some were really nice and really smart and really handsome. No. No. No.

Then in August, after I left a partner's apartment after a cocktail party on the Upper East Side and was Ubering to 125th Street for my train, I thought about the contrast between meeting these people at cocktail parties and meeting Suzanne in Legal Method. I remembered that I was shy and felt even more outclassed then and that she was really nice and really smart and really pretty, beautiful actually, and it was yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I wanted more dates with her, although she didn't call it that but that's what our just being-close-to-one-another-doing-our-own-things was.

Later that month I was at school for some Law Review prep work and finished early. I decided to enjoy a walk down to 87th. It was a sunny Saturday and hot-and-humid. I wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, shorts, and trainers, and with now-battered Columbia backpack over my right shoulder.

Suzanne was home, in San Francisco, doing her summer stint at a firm there. I hadn't spoken to Mary in months, not since I ran into her and Helen and had that long coffee in town. They both asked me as I finished up there to be patient. I knew that was all I could do.

Nor had my Mom, who went with Mary and Helen a fair amount, said a thing about Suzanne.

Now I sat on Suzanne's stoop. I hadn't been there since that horrible January day. I don't know why, but I sat on her stoop. I was sweaty and needed the break. I plopped my backpack next to me and took a sip from the water bottle it carried, then holding the bottle lightly in my hands as I thought.

I thought about her a lot. In some ways, she was my only friend and now I had nothing but acquaintances. Classmates who were summer associates with me. Michael, Bill, and Marie, the other members of the study group, which had, without Suzanne, carried through the spring semester and proven its worth by having each of its members achieving Stone Scholar status for the year. We all missed her, but she kept her distance from them as well. I thought of her when I found that out because I didn't know whether she was also a Stone Scholar.

So, I sat on her stoop for about half-an-hour and then slowly rose and grabbed my backpack, hoisting it over my right shoulder. I had not thought of her and just of her this intensely for a long time; I almost always did before drifting to sleep. I was now very, very tired and I got on the subway, changed to the bus, and took the train home. I almost, but didn't, cry. Until I got home when the tears flowed and my Mom hugged me tightly as I told her how I had screwed everything up.

Suzanne: Trapped

Shit. It's her. She has the stupid backpack that her Mom's so proud to see. I want to meet Patsy for a run but she's sitting on the stoop.

I sent a text:

{Suzanne:} Patsy. Something's come up. I'm stuck in my apartment. Go without me. S.

I loved her but I didn't know if I could trust her let alone whether she could ever love me as anything but a friend. If I went to her, I was afraid the dream of our becoming lovers and more would evaporate and I wouldn't have anything with her.

Kerry: "You're Not in California?"

My phone rang. I was taking a nap after walking and concentrating so much. And crying so much. More than anything, the concentrated thoughts of her wore me down.

It was Suzanne. My stomach churned. She had not called me since that day I was at her apartment. She was in San Francisco so I wondered why she was calling.

"Hello."

"I saw you."

"What??"

"Why did you come to my apartment?"

"Wait. Aren't you in San Francisco?"

"No. I never went."

She'd been in New York the whole time. She was a half-an-hour away the whole time.

"Why didn't you?"

"Not now. I have to see you. I've hated myself since...well, you know. I need to tell you something and I don't care what happens when I do. Can I come up to see you tomorrow?"

"I need to speak to you too. I can drive down and meet you now. Or tomorrow."

"I'll take the train to Bronxville in the morning. I'll text when I get in. I'll meet you and we can walk and, well, talk."

"That works."

"I...I'll see you tomorrow. Sleep well."

"For a change, I just might." I didn't mean to say that last bit. It popped out. But I didn't care if I was sharing too much. With Suzanne. 

Suzanne: Rolling the Dice

I don't know how it was for Kerry but I hardly slept at all. When I saw her on the stoop, I could have run down to her. I hadn't seen her since the last day of exams months before.