The Neallys Ch. 05: The Story's End

Maya lay there, recovering, waiting for her lover to return and only then, looking around and seeing trophies and Stanford memorabilia, did she realize in whose room it was and it stunned her and then she was stunned further when William appeared at the door, now fully sober and in a robe, and told her he had some work to do and that he would drop her off at the station.

His last words to her, as she got out of his car: "I'm sorry. Goodnight." She waited twenty minutes for the train to arrive and she felt like a whore.

For his part, William felt nothing. What happened to him...no, what he did seemed inevitable, a train set in motion on the day his wife left him in his house and accelerated on the day his daughter disavowed him in that park in New York. He sat on the sofa where he sat when his wife spit her ultimatum at him in July, the day before she left him. Today was another Sunday, now in September. and he was alone with his single-malt, neat, and his thoughts. He had done it. It had been so easy, and he had done it. Less than a month after congratulating himself in early September about having overcome the temptation to simply accept his daughter, and his sister, he had done something worse than they had done. The sacred vow he made before his God, of fidelity, was smashed, and he feared his faith was in tatters.

William did not go to work on Monday. His secretary rebooked some meetings, and he got on three client-conference-calls but otherwise he just sat, until noon, when he got up and got dressed and walked into Mill Valley and to his Church where he genuflected before kneeling in a pew not far from the altar. His wife had told him about having done something similar in New York and how important it was to her in clarifying herself and her faith. After a minute or so, his knees not being what they once were, he lifted himself and sat. The Church was otherwise empty, with a handful of votive candles flickering on either side. There was a hint of incense in the air, presumably from an earlier funeral. He stared at the large crucifix behind the altar. He spoke to his God and asked for his God's forgiveness. He had sinned.

He got up and walked to the rectory, asking if a priest was available for his confession and, being recognized, he was told that Father Charles would meet him in the Church and when Father Charles arrived they entered the Confessional and William told Father Charles what he had done the day before. After telling the priest that he regretted it and vowed not to do it again, he received his absolution and God's forgiveness and he walked home.

On Tuesday morning, he was at work, attending to the things that he had neglected the day before.

Maya Distraught

Maya Yang did not go to work on Monday either. The night before she stood under the shower for thirty minutes, until the water turned icy. What she did was wrong, but she felt it was inevitable. He selected her to be his confidant, and she accepted him to be her lover. She realized that all the men—boys really—who had been with her fucked her and that she fucked them. No more. No less. William was her first lover and for a brief sliver of her life, she felt complete, the three minutes between when he entered and filled her and when his seed exploded within her womb. She even cherished the moments when he left her to finish herself off, thinking that we would return to lie with her in their bed.

It came crashing down moments after she realized it was his daughter's bed and when he wanted her to leave as soon as she could, to practically throw her into the street. She wanted it even more. She puked in the train car as it approached the city. By the time her shower water was cold, she thought she was empty of all tears. But they reemerged and carried her into a fitful sleep.

"I'm sorry. Good night." His last words to her.

By Monday night, she was recovered enough to resume her life. If only she could not have met him for lunch back in July. He would have met someone else and that someone else would be beneath him as he exploded the night before but that someone else would not be her. So Maya moved on, slowly reclaiming her heart.

Confessions

William partook of the apple and for a day he was cast out but his life quickly resumed its trajectory. His brain really did work in that way. His religion offered him simplicity otherwise absent from his life. The episode with Maya was a test he failed. But his God gave him the chance to be restored and He would not be forsaken. On the following Saturday, he thought again of Maya Yang. He was cruel to her. He did not intend it but that is what it was. He used her. He fucked her. He discarded her and in his darker moments he tried to think of her as a whore but he knew she was not. He sinned against God, he sinned against his wife, and he sinned against Maya Yang. His God forgave him. Maya Yang never would. He had to call his wife.

The Call

Kate's phone read "William." It was early on Sunday afternoon, just over a week after Suzanne's wedding. She was relishing memories of it as she sat on the sofa in her apartment reading "Persuasion." She was staring at her phone. It rang four times before answering with a cold "Yes."

"Kate, it's me."

"I know. What do you want?"

He expected coldness. Hearing it chilled him.

"I need to confess something to you."

"William, you needn't confess anything to me anymore. Unless you tell me what you need to say about Suzanne I do not care what you think you—"

"I fucked someone," he interrupted.

"Do you love her?"

"Of course not. I needed someone and—"

"You needed someone? You're pitiful. You're calling me to get absolution. I'm sure your Church has given it to you. But—"

"Kate, just listen for fuck's sake." He was angry and desperate, and she knew it.

"Go ahead."

"Kate...I took her home. She'd been an associate at the firm years ago. She was almost random"—this was not helping his case—"and I did it in Suzanne's room." He paused.

Kate was stunned. "Tell me one thing," she asked. "Did she look like your daughter?"

"She's Chinese...but maybe a little—"

And those were the last words Kathleen Nelson ever heard from William Nelson.

Kate

Sunday, after the call, Kate was sick, retching in the bathroom. All of the earlier happiness drained in an instant. She did not know what she should do. She did not know who she should call. It was still warm, so she just grabbed her purse and headed to Riverside Park, ending up on the greenway overlooking the Hudson and stopping to look across the River. In the few weeks she lived in the city, she learned to enjoy this view and to feel the hundreds of people running and biking and strolling behind her, all oblivious to her turmoil as she was of theirs, and those tending late-summer flowers in the enclosed gardens in the center of the wide path. Like the final scene in "You've Got Mail."

She found no happiness here now. Only despair. Her thoughts did not go to him. There were no open issues there. Her thoughts went to her daughter. Suzanne had told her shortly after William visited her about what happened in Madison Square, and they were both relieved that it was over and that Suzanne had made her terms clear: He must accept her. She did not know now, after the wedding, what to tell Suzanne about what her father had done.

She felt as helpless and as lost as she had been when she came to New York in late June and first confronted Eileen. This thought, though, was a comfort to her. She had climbed out of that hole and she would climb out of this one. The issue was what to tell the others. She realized who she could call, her sister Lizzie, and when the call went to voicemail, she left a brief message, that it was very important.

"Hey, sis. What's up?" This was twenty minutes after the voicemail. Kate was walking along the Hudson.

"It's William. He called and confessed to sleeping with someone," to which Lizzie said it was probably inevitable notwithstanding the whole hypocrisy-thing but she was silent when Kate added, "He did it in Suzanne's room with someone he admitted looked like Suzanne."

"Lizzie?"

"I'm sorry, Kate. That is just so fucked up. How did he defend himself?"

"I did not let him. I hung up and never want to see let alone speak to that man again."

Lizzie knew enough to let her sister alone on this part of things and in the end she was the only person to whom Kate spoke about it. Kate decided she did not want to upset Suzanne and that it was unlikely that William would approach Suzanne given her daughter's ultimatum and his failure to meet it before the wedding. It would destroy any chance, however unlikely, of a reconciliation with her father. Lizzie agreed.

Lizzie insisted separately on raising the practicalities of Kate and her financial situation and marriage situation. As to the first, she told Kate that at the least she needed money. "It's all in a joint account, right? So you have to get a lawyer out here to get some of it now, worrying about everything else later. I mean, Kate, he shouldn't be using your joint money either."

Kate did not want to get the girls involved, but she called Carol Wright, a guest at the wedding for whom both girls worked, who spoke to her wife, Rachel, who spoke to an English friend who worked in an investment firm who spoke to someone else who worked at that firm and once lived in San Francisco who spoke to a lawyer in San Francisco who handled her house sale who spoke to a colleague who did divorce work and by the end of the day Kate had a name to call in San Francisco. The name was Karen Novack.

Kate called Karen Novack and in three days one million dollars were wired into an account Kate opened for herself in New York, and two thousand dollars were wired into the account each week. This was, Karen told her new client, a preliminary distribution of marital assets. Her husband had similarly been allowed to move one million dollars from the joint accounts into his own and the weekly payments were agreed upon between the lawyers and their clients. The two million removed from the joint accounts was a small portion of what was there, but it was enough to distribute until final distributions were agreed to or ordered by a court.

Kate had not decided whether to start a divorce proceeding. Such a thing was, of course, anathema to her former faith, but she was no longer absolutely opposed to it. Particularly given what happened between William and that woman in Suzanne's room.

Of course, the money meant a couple of things. Most important, Kate did not have to stay at her job. It paid the bills, but it was well beneath the work she had been doing in Mill Valley.

It also meant that she could give the girls a proper wedding-gift. It had tremendous sentimental value for her daughter, and for Annie, but the Camry, its California plates long traded in for New York ones, was getting a bit long in the tooth. It would still be nice for the city-folk—Kate and Annie—to use every once in a while but Suzanne and Kerry should have something sturdier. So three weeks after the wedding, Kate insisted on going for a drive with her daughters and she got Eileen to pick her up in Bronxville before they picked up the girls. Eileen and Kate sat in the front and the newlyweds in the back as they drove to a car dealership and when the quartet walked in a manager walked up to the newlyweds and asked, "The Neallys I presume" and the Neallys (junior division) looked at each other in shock and were told by Kate that she arranged for them to have any car they wanted, "tax and license included." Which ended up being a "Cool Gray Khaki" Subaru Crosstrek, to be picked up in a week. When Eileen said (outside the girls' hearing) she wanted to pay half, Kate ended that discussion by pointing out that (i) she had a boatload of money, (ii) the girls were living in Eileen's house, and (iii) "I owe them so much."

And perhaps getting ahead of ourselves, Kate quit her job, began working for the Episcopal Charities in its New York office—it was not a lot but she was being paid—and on January 2, 2019, instructed Karen Novack to file on her behalf a petition for dissolution of marriage in a California c Court. In the end, she and William (through their attorneys) agreed to a fifty-fifty split of their assets, after an agreed-upon third-party appraised the non-financial assets, with a trust established to pay for Eric's remaining years at Yale and three years of grad school for him.

On August 1, 2019, Kate was no longer married in the eyes of the law. She would always be married in the eyes of the Catholic Church, but that no longer mattered to her. She did agree, though, to cooperate with William insofar as he sought an annulment from his Church. As for him, he became a regular at the gatherings of his wife's parents and siblings—all except Lizzie and the rest of the Windsors of course—and they commiserated with him about the unfairness and inappropriateness and evil of all he was put through. And the calls and the Christmas cards to Kate from California were no more. Except from Lizzie and her family.

Getting to the Church on Time

But, of course, that last bit was the unhappy ending of a marriage.

We return to the more happy beginnings of one. That would begin with:

The Wedding of

Eileen Susan Neally

and

Thomas Edward Doyle

at

11:00 am

on

November 10, 2018

at

St. Mary the Virgin Church

Chappaqua, New York

Kate was taking care of everything, as we said. She planned for rain—the weather being outside of even Kate's power—and so two ushers were standing at the entrance to the Church waiting for the limo to stop and for the limo's contents to disembark.

Back to the Chappaqua Spread at about nine-forty-five on Saturday, November 10, 2018. Andi, Suzanne, Kerry, and Kate got Eileen into her gown and did her make-up for her, her hair taken care of the day before. Eileen was, objectively speaking, the most beautiful bride any of them had ever seen. Kate—Kate!—began to cry and the youngsters looked on in amazement as she and Eileen hugged. Eileen ended the trance with "it's time" and the five went downstairs to await the carriage that would take her to the church.

It was not a carriage, of course, but a black limo and Kate had plugged some nerves/hugging time into her schedule so when it appeared out front at ten-thirty for the short trip to the Church, they were ready and making liberal use of the umbrellas Eileen and the three girls carefully got in back and Kate followed in the girls' new car.

The Third Wedding

Weddings themselves tend to be pretty standard fare and this one was no exception. James stood with his father and Kerry with her mother. Eileen walked down the aisle alone, following Andi and Suzanne. St. Mary's was full, largely with members of Tom's (and now Eileen's) Chappaqua crowd as well as relatives, including some of Eileen's and her late husband Michael's siblings and their families, and work colleagues, and assorted friends.

One person was noticeably absent from the Church's nave. Eric Nelson was in the choir loft. He had volunteered to play the music at the ceremony and savored the chance to try out his piano skills on St. Mary's pipe-organ. Early arrivals were greeted by a hodgepodge of jazz and rock and, of course, Bach. He was not alone. Sitting on the organ's bench with him was Lynn Billings, who had accompanied Eric at Kerry and Suze's wedding. Eric played the requisite in/during/out music as well as some improvised interludes, with Lynn's angelic voice echoing through the Church.

Vows and rings were exchanged, the reverend pronounced, the bride and groom kissed, and the happy couple left, after some out-front picture-taking, for the reception at their club.

The reception too was nothing out of the ordinary. Eileen was amused when Simon Douglas, who of course was invited, came to her and after pointing at Tom said, "I could understand losing you to a doctor or a lawyer but to a risk-assessment guy?" and after Tom said, "Hey!" Eileen noted, "He has a lawyer and a doctor in the family so I have all the bases covered," and Simon ended it all by tightly hugging the bride and assuring her, truthfully, that he was incredibly happy for her and shaking Tom's hand and saying, truthfully, that he was incredibly jealous of him.

After the dessert plates were cleared and the coffee poured, Eric sat at the club's Steinway and Lynn stepped up to a microphone and the room quieted. Eric, playing what Jerome Kern wrote, lightly rolled an Ebmaj9 chord then a passing D in the bass to a Cm9 and a G bass note to Fm9 and a C in the bass to Bb9 and then he paused, a low Bb hovering over the otherwise silent room.

With a barely perceptible nod between the two, Eric played a new Emaj9 and Lynn began, slowly but firmly breathing Dorothy Fields's words:

Some day, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow just thinking of you.
And the way you look tonight.

At which point the band's bassist and drummer joined and Tom led his bride—neither of them having made the song selection, leaving the choice to Eric and Lynn—to the dancefloor and they took a turn about it and most—but not all, this is the suburbs after all—of the couples in the room gave an extra squeeze to their love's hand and many, including Mary & Betty and Kerry & Suzanne, joined them. Two guests sans dates—Kate and Simon—sat at Kate's otherwise empty table and talked.

And then, as it was late, the bride and the groom rose to leave, the bouquet was tossed (caught by we-will-not-say), and with kisses and hugs and fond farewells, the happy couple were off to the airport for a honeymoon in Paris, and those left behind gathered their belongings and went home. Except for Eric and Lynn, who could not resist the chance to play on and sing along with the Steinway until being told by the club manager that the lights were about to be turned off. And except for Kerry and Suzanne, who had waited into the night to take care of Suzanne's baby brother and someone who had all the hallmarks of being the love of his life and who, this being Kerry and Suzanne, did not waste the extra time, spending it in an alcove off the ballroom until hearing the final notes of Eric's playing and Lynn's singing.

Kate. She was also there, sitting off to the side where she could watch and hear her son and his own love and happier than she had ever been.

As the five—Eric, Lynn, and Kate squeezed in the back, Kerry and Suzanne in the front—drove from the reception, Suzanne thought that as Tolstoy never said but Austen probably thought, all weddings are the same but all happy couples are happy in their own way.