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Topic: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (Read 4953 times) |
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K....
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A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« on: Jan 26th, 2005, 5:24pm » |
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Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
~james patterson~
Katie
Katie Wilkinson sat in warm bathwater in the weird but wonderful old-fashioned porcelain tub in her New York apartment. The apartment exuded “old” and “worn” in ways that practitioners of shabby chic couldn’t begin to imagine. Katie’s Persian cat, Guinevere, looking like a favorite gray wool sweater, was perched on the sink. Her black Labrador, Merlin, sat in the doorway leading to the bedroom. They watched Katie as if they were afraid for her.
She lowered her head when she finished reading the diary and set the leather-bound book on the wooden stool beside the tub. Her body shivered.
Then she started to sob, and Katie saw that her hands were shaking. She was losing it, and she didn’t lose it often. She was a strong person, and always had been. Katie whispered words she’d once heard in her father’s church in Asheboro, North Carolina. “Oh, Lord, oh Lord, are you anywhere, my Lord?”
She could never have imagined that this small volume would have such a disturbing effect on her. Of course, it wasn’t just the diary that had forced her into this state of confusion and duress.
No, it wasn’t just Suzanne’s diary for Nicholas.
She visualized Suzanne in her mind. Katie saw her at her quaint cottage on Beach Road on Martha’s Vineyard.
Then little Nicholas. Twelve months old, with the most brilliant blue eyes.
And finally, Matt.
Nicholas’s daddy.
Suzanne’s husband.
And Katie’s former lover.
What did she think of Matt now? Could she ever forgive him? She wasn’t sure. But at least she finally understood some of what had happened. The diary had told her bits and pieces of what she needed to know, as well as deep, painful secrets that maybe she didn’t need to know.
Katie’s slipped down farther into the water, and found herself thinking back to the day she had received the diary --- July 19.
Remembering the day started her crying again.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 1:15pm by K.... » |
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K....
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Milan,
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #1 on: Jan 26th, 2005, 5:30pm » |
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On the morning of the nineteenth, Katie had felt drawn to the Hudson River, and then to the Circle Line, the boat ride around Manhattan Island that she and Matt had first taken as a total goof but had enjoyed so much that they kept coming back.
She boarded the first boat of the day. She was feeling sad, but also angry. Oh, God, she didn’t know what she was feeling.
The early boat wasn’t too crowded with tourists. She took a seat near the rail of the upper deck and watched New York from the unique vantage point of the brooding waterways surrounding it.
A few people noticed her sitting there alone--- especially the men.
Katie usually stood out in a crowd. She was tall--- almost six feet, with warm, friendly blue eyes. She had always thought of herself gawky and felt that people were staring at her for all the wrong reasons. Her friends begged to differ; they said she was close to breathtaking, stunning in her strength. Katie always responded, “Uh-huh, sure, don’t I wish.” He didn’t see herself that way and she knew she never would. She was an ordinary, regular person. A North Carolina farm girl at heart.
She often wore her brunette hair in a long braid, and had since she was eight years old. It used to look tomboyish, but now it was supposed to be big-city cool. She guessed she’d finally caught up with the times. The only make-up she ever wore was a little mascara and sometimes lipstick. Today she wore neither. She definitely didn’t look breathtaking.
Sitting there on the top-deck, she remembered a favorite line from the movie The African Queen: “Head up, chin out, hair blowing in the wind, the living picture of the hero-eyne,” Bogart had teased Hepburn. It cheered her a bit---a titch, as her mother liked to say back home in Asheboro.
She had been crying for hours, and her eyes were puffy. The night before, the man she loved had suddenly and inexplicably ended their relationship. She’d been completely sucker punched. She hadn’t seen it coming. It almost didn’t seem possible that Matt had left her.
Damn him! How could he? Had he been lying to me all this time---months and months? Of course he had! The bastard. The total creep.
She wanted to think about Matt, about what had happened to separate them, but she wound up thinking of times they’d shared, mostly good times.
Begrudgingly, she had to admit that she had always been able to talk to him freely and easily about anything. She could talk to Matt the way she talked to her women friends. Even her girlfriends, who could be catty and generally had terrible luck with men, liked Matt. So what happened between us? That’s what she desperately wanted know.
He was thoughtful---at least he had been. Her birthday was in June, and he had sent her a single rose every day of what he called “your birthday month.” He always seemed to notice whether he’d seen her in a certain blouse or sweater before, her shoes, her moods---the good, the bad, and occasionally the stressed-out ugly.
He liked a lot of the same things Katie did, or so he said. Ally McBeal, The Practice, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Girl with the Pearl Earring. Dinner, then drinks at the bar at One if by Land, Two if by Sea. Waterloo in the West Village; Coup in the East; Bubby’s on Hudson Street. Foreign movies at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema. Vintage black-and-white photos, oil paintings that they found at flea markets. Trips to NoLita (North of Little Italy) and Williamsburg (the new SoHo).
He went to church with her on Sundays, where she taught a Bible class of preschoolers. They both treasured Sunday afternoons at her apartment---with Katie reading the Times from cover to cover, and Matt revising his poems, which he spread out on her bed and on the bedroom floor and even on the butcher-block kitchen table.
Tracy Chapman or Macy Gray, maybe Sarah Vaughan, would be playing softly in the background. Delicious. Perfect in every way.
He made her feel at peace with herself, completed her circle, did something that was good and right. No one else had ever made her feel that way before. Completely, blissfully at peace.
What could beat being in love with Matt?
Nothing that Katie knew of.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 12:23pm by K.... » |
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K....
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Milan,
# 71
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #2 on: Jan 26th, 2005, 5:46pm » |
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One night they had stopped at a little juke bar on Avenue A. They danced, and Matt sang “All Shook Up” in her ear, doing funny but improbably good Elvis impersonation. Then Matt did an even better Al Green, which completely blew her away.
She had wanted to be with him all the time. Corny, but true.
When he was away on Martha’s Vineyard, where he lived and worked, they would talk for hours every night on the phone---or send each other funny e-mails. They called it their “long-distance love affair.” He had always stopped Katie from actually visiting him on the Vineyard, though. Maybe that should have been her early-warning signal?
Somehow, it had worked---for eleven glorious months that seemed to go by in an instant. Katie had expected him to propose soon. She was sure of it. She had even told her mother. But, Of course, she had been so wrong that it was pathetic. She felt like a fool---and she hated herself for it.
How could she have been so stupefying wrong about him? About everything? It wasn’t like her to be this out of touch with her instincts. They were usually good; she was smart; she didn’t do really dumb things.
Until now. And boy, had she made a doozy of mistake this time.
Katie suddenly realized that she was sobbing and that everyone around her on the deck of the boat was staring at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and motioned for them to please look away. She blushed. She was embarrassed and felt like such an idiot. “I’m okay.”
But she wasn’t okay.
Katie had never been so hurt in her life. Nothing came close to this. She had lost the only man she had ever loved; God, how she loved Matt.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 1:17pm by K.... » |
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K....
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Milan,
# 71
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #3 on: Jan 26th, 2005, 5:51pm » |
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KATIE COULDN'T bear to go in to work that day. She couldn’t face the people at her office. Or even strangers on a city bus. She’d gotten enough curious looks on the boat to last a lifetime.
When she got back to her apartment after her trip on the Circle Line, a package was propped up against the front door.
She thought it was a manuscript from the office. She cursed her work under her breath. Couldn’t they leave her alone for a single day? She was entitled to a personal day now and then. God, she worked so hard for them. They knew how passionate she was about her books. They knew how much Katie cared.
She was a senior editor at a highly thought of, collegial, very pleasant New York publishing house that specialized in literary novels and poetry. She loved her job. It was where she had met Matt. She had enthusiastically bought his first volume of poetry from a small literary agency in Boston about a year before.
The two of them hit it off right away, really hit it off. Just weeks later they had fallen in love---or so she had believed with her heart, soul, body, mind, woman’s intuition.
How could she have been so wrong? What happened? Why?
As she reached down for the package, she recognized the handwriting. It was Matt’s. There was no doubt about it.
She wanted to hurl the package away with all the power and strength in her body, and nearly dropped it.
She didn’t. Too much self-control---that was her problem. One of her problems. Katie stared at the package for sometime. Finally, she took a deep breath and tore away the brown paper wrapping.
What she found inside was a small antique-looking diary. Katie frowned. She didn’t understand. Then she felt her stomach begin to knot.
Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas was handwritten on its front cover---handwritten, but it wasn’t Matt’s handwriting.
Suzanne’s?
Suddenly, Katie’s head was reeling and she could barely catch a breath. She couldn’t think straight, either. Matt had always been closemouthed and secretive about his past. One of the things she had found out was that his wife’s name was Suzanne. That much had slipped out one night after they had drunk two bottles of wine. But then Matt hadn’t wanted to talk about Suzanne.
The only arguments they ever had were over the silence about his past. Katie had insisted on knowing more, which only made Matt quieter and more mysterious. It was so unlike him. After they `actually had a fight about it, he’d told her that he wasn’t married to Suzanne anymore; he swore it, but that was all he was going to say on the subject.
Who was Nicholas? And why had Matt sent her this diary? Why now? She was completely puzzled, and more than a little upset.
Katie’s fingers were trembling as she opened the diary to its first page. A note from Matt was affixed. Her eyes began to well up, and she angrily wiped the tears away. She read what he’d written.
Dear Katie,
No words or actions could begin to tell you what I’m feeling right now. I’m so sorry about what I allowed to happen between us. It was all my fault, of course. I take all the blame. You are perfect, wonderful, beautiful.
It’s not you. It’s me.
Maybe this diary will explain things better than I ever could. If you have the heart, read it. It’s about my wife and son, and me.
I will warn you, though, there will be parts that may be hard for you to read.
I never expected to fall in love with you, but I did.
Matt
Katie turned the page.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 1:19pm by K.... » |
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K....
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Milan,
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #4 on: Jan 26th, 2005, 5:56pm » |
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The Diary
Dear Nicholas, my little prince ---
There were years and years when I wondered if I would ever be a mother.
During this time, I had a recurring daydream that it would be so wonderful and wise to make a videotape every year for my children and tell them who I was, what I thought about, how much I loved them, what I worried about, the things that thrilled me, made me laugh or cry, made me think in new ways. And, of course, all my most personal secrets.
I would have treasured such videotaped if my mother and father had recorded them each year, to tell me who they were, what they felt about me, and the world.
As it turned out, I don’t know who they are, and that’s a little sad. No, it’s a lot sad.
So, I am going to make a videotape for you every year--- but there’s something else I want to do for you, sweet boy.
I want to keep a diary, this diary, and I promise to be faithful about writing in it.
As I write this very first entry, you are two weeks old. But I want to start by telling you about some things that happened before you were born. I want to start before the beginning, so to speak.
This is for your eyes only, nick.
This is what happened to Nicholas, Suzanne, and Matt.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 1:13pm by K.... » |
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K....
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Milan,
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #5 on: Jan 26th, 2005, 6:09pm » |
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Let me start the story on a warm and fragrant spring evening in Boston.
I was working at Massachusetts General Hospital at the time. I had been a physician for eight years. There were moments that I absolutely loved, cherished: seeing patients get well, and even being with some when it was clear they wouldn’t recover. Then there were the bureaucracy and the hopeless inadequacy of our country’s current health-care programs. There were my own inadequacies as well.
I had just come off a twenty-four-hour rotation and I was tired beyond anything you can imagine. I was out walking my trusted and faithful golden retriever, Gustavus, a.k.a. Gus.
I suppose I should give you a little snapshot of myself back then. I had long blond hair, stood about five foot five, not exactly beautiful but nice to look at, a friendly smile most of the time, for most of the human race. Not too caught up in appearances.
It was a late Friday afternoon, and I remember that the weather was so nice, the air was sweet and as clear as crystal. It was the kind of day that I live for.
I can see it all as if it just happened.
Gus had sprinted off to harass and chase a poor, defenseless city duck that had wandered away from the safety of the pond. We were in the Boston Public Garden, by the swan boats. This was our usual walk, especially if Michael, my boyfriend, was working, as he was that night.
Gus had broken from his lead, and I ran after him. He is a gifted retriever, who lives to retrieve anything: balls, Frisbees, paper wrappers, soap bubbles, reflections on the windows of my apartment.
As I ran after Gus, I was suddenly struck by the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. Jesus, what is this?
It was so intense that I fell to my hands and knees.
Then it got worse. Razor-sharp knives were shooting up and down my arm, across my back, and into my jaw. I gasped. I couldn’t focus on anything in the Public Garden. Everything was a blur. I couldn’t actually be sure of what was happening to me, but something told me heart.
What was wrong with me?
I wanted to cry out for help, but even a few words were beyond me. The tree-laden Garden was spinning like a whirligig. Concerned people began crowding around, then hovering over me.
Gus had come skulking back. I heard him barking over my head. Then he was licking my cheek, but I barely felt his tongue. I was flat on my back, holding my chest.
Heart? My God. I am only thirty-five years old.
“Get an ambulance,” someone cried. “She’s in trouble. I think she’s dying.”
I am not! I wanted to shout. I can’t be dying.
My breathing was becoming shallower and I was fading to black, to nothingness. Oh, God, I thought. Stay alive, breathe, keep conscious, Suzanne.
That’s when I remember reaching out for a stone that was near me in the dirt. Hang on to this stone, I thought, hang on tight. I believed it was the only thing that would keep me attached to the earth at that scary moment. I wanted to call out for Michael, but I knew it wouldn’t help.
Suddenly I realized what was happening to me. I must have passed out for several minutes. When I came to, I was being lifted into an ambulance. Tears streamed down my face. My body was soaked with sweat.
The EMT woman kept saying, “You’re gonna be fine. You’re alright, ma’am.” But I knew I wasn’t.
I looked at her with whatever strength I could muster and whispered, “Don’t let me die.”
All the while I was holding the small stone tightly in my hand. The last thing I recall is an oxygen mask being slipped over my face, a deathly weakness spreading through my body, and the stone finally dropping from my hand.
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K....
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Milan,
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #6 on: Jan 26th, 2005, 6:12pm » |
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So, Nicky,
I was only thirty-five when I had the heart attack in Boston. The following day I had a coronary bypass at Mass. General. It put me out of action, out of circulation for almost two months, and it was during my recuperation that I had time to think, really think, maybe for the first time in my life.
I thoroughly, painfully examined my life in Boston, just how hectic it had become, with rounds, research, overtime, overwork, and double shifts. I thought about how I’d been feeling just before this awful thing happened. I also dealt with my own denial. My grandmother had died of heart failure. My family had a history of heart disease. And still I hadn’t been as careful as I should have been.
It was while I was recuperating that a doctor friend told me the story of the five balls. You should never forget this one, Nicky. This is terribly important.
It goes like this.
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls--- family, health, friends, integrity--- are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.
Nicky, I finally understood.
tbc….
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 1:23pm by K.... » |
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teagirl
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #7 on: Jan 27th, 2005, 7:09am » |
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Please continue, kianna...I wish I can read this in bed!
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I love to sing in the shower. I'm good, too! All my shampoos think so.
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K....
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Milan,
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #8 on: Jan 27th, 2005, 10:24am » |
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 Teamay. I will.
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K....
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Milan,
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Re: A novel: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
« Reply #9 on: Jan 27th, 2005, 10:27am » |
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Nick,
As you can probably tell, this is all pre-Daddy, pre-Matt.
Let me tell you about Dr. Michael Bernstein.
I met Michael in 1996 at the wedding reception for John Kennedy and Caroline Bessette on Cumberland Island, Georgia. I must admit that both of us had led pretty charmed lives up until then. My parents had died when I was two, but I was fortunate enough to have been raised with great love and patience by my grandparents in Cornwall, New York. I went to Lawrenceville Academy in New Jersey, then Duke, and finally Harvard Medical School.
I felt incredibly lucky to be at each of the three schools, I couldn’t have gotten a better education--- except that nowhere did I learn the lesson of the five balls.
Michael also went to Harvard Medical School, but he graduated four years before I got there. We didn’t meet until the Kennedy wedding. I was a guest of Carolyn’s; Michael was a guest of John’s. The wedding itself was magical, full of hope and promise. Maybe that was part of what drew Michael and me together.
What kept us together for the next year was a little more complicated. Part of it was pure physical attraction, and at some point I want to talk to you about that--- but not now. Michael was--- is--- tall and dashing, with a radiant smile. We had a lot of mutual interests. I loved his stories, always so droll, laconic, biting; I loved to listen to him play the piano and sing anything from Sinatra to Sting. Also, we were both workaholics--- me at Mass. General, Michael at Children’s Hospital in Boston.
But none of these things are what love is really about, Nicholas. Trust me on that.
About four weeks after my heart attack, I woke up one morning at eight o’clock. The apartment where we lived was quiet, and I luxuriated in the peacefulness for a few moments. It seemed to have a healing quality. Finally I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself breakfast before I went off to rehab.
I jumped back when I heard a noise, the scratch of a chair leg against the floor. Nervously, I went to see who was out there.
It was Michael. I was surprised to see him still home, as he was almost always out of the house by seven. He was sitting at the small pine table in the breakfast nook.
“You almost gave me a heart-attack,” I said, making what I thought was a pretty decent joke.
Michael didn’t laugh. He patted the chair next to him at the table.
Then, with the calmness and self-reverence I was used to from him, he told me the three main reasons why he was leaving me: he said he couldn’t talk or relate to me the way he could with his male friends; he didn’t think that I could have a baby now, because of my heart attack; he had fallen for someone else already.
I ran out of the kitchen, and then out of the house. That morning the pain I felt was even worse than the heart attack. Nothing was right with my life; I had gotten it all wrong so far. Everything!!!
I did love being a doctor, but I was trying to do it in a large, somewhat bureaucratic, big-city hospital, which just wasn’t right for me.
I was working so hard--- because there was nothing else of value in my life. I earned about $120,000 a year, but I was spending it on dinners in town, getaway weekends, clothes that I didn’t need or even like that much.
I had wanted children all my life, yet here I was without a significant other, without a child, without a plan, and no prospects to change any of it.
Here’s what I did little boy.
I began to live the lesson of the five balls.
I left my job at Mass. General. I left Boston. I left my murderous schedule and commitments behind. I moved to the one place in the world where I had always been happy. I went there, truly, to mend a broken heart.
I was turning endlessly around and around like a hamster on a wheel in a tiny cage. My life was stretched to the limit, and something was bound to give. Unfortunately, it had been my heart.
This wasn’t a small change, Nicky; I had decided to change everything.
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| « Last Edit: Jan 30th, 2005, 1:27pm by K.... » |
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