Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (14 page)

Matt sits vigil by my bedside, day and night. Daddy never leaves me alone, and I worry about him. I have never loved him more than I do now. He is the best husband, the best friend, a girl ever had.

Connie visits constantly, three or four times a day. I never knew what a great doctor she is, and what a great friend.

I hear her, and I hear Daddy. I just can't respond to either of them. I'm not sure why.

From what I can tell listening to them, I know that I've lost the baby. If I could cry, I would weep for all eternity. If I could scream, I would. I can do neither, so I mourn in the most awful silence imaginable. The sadness is bottled up inside and I ache to let it out.

Grandma Jean comes and sits with me for long stretches at a time, too. So do friends of mine from around the Vineyard, doctors from the hospital and even from Boston. Melanie Bone and her husband, Bill, visit every day. Even Matt Wolfe, my lawyer friend, came by and whispered kind words to me.

I hear bits and pieces of what people are saying around me.

“If it's okay, I'm going to bring Nicky in this afternoon,” Daddy says to Connie. “He misses his mother. I think it's important he sees her.” And then Matt says, “Even if it's for the last time. I think I should call Monsignor Dwyer.”

Matt brings you to my hospital room, Nicholas. And then you and Daddy sit by my bedside all afternoon, telling me stories, holding my hand, saying good-bye.

I hear Matt's voice cracking, and I'm worried about him. A long time ago, his father died. He was only eight, and he never got over it. He won't even talk about his father. He's so afraid of losing someone again. And now it's me he's going to lose.

I just hold on. At least I think I'm still here. What other explanation can there be?

How could I possibly hear your laughter, Nicky? Or you calling out, “Mama,” to me, in the black hole of my sleep?

But I do.

Your sweet little voice reaches down into my abyss and finds me in this deep dark place where I'm trapped. It is as if you and Daddy were calling me out of a strange dream, your voices like a beacon guiding me.

I struggle upward, reaching toward the sound of your voices--up, up, up.

I need to see you and Daddy one more time. . . .

I need to talk to you one more time. . . .

I feel a dark tunnel closing behind me, and I think that maybe I've found my way out of this lonely place. Everything is getting brighter. There is no more darkness surrounding me, just rays of warmth, and maybe the welcoming light of Martha's Vineyard.

Was I in heaven? Am I in heaven now? What is the explanation for what I'm feeling?

That's when the unexpected happens.

I open my eyes.

“Hello, Suzanne,” Matt whispers. “Thank God, you came back to us.”

T HERE WAS only so much of the diary that Katie could take at any given time. Matt had warned her in his note: there will be parts that may be hard for you to read. Not just hard, Katie knew now, but overwhelming.

It was difficult for her to imagine right now, but there were happy endings in life.

There were normal, semisane couples like Lynn and Phil Brown, who lived in Westport, Connecticut, on a really cool little farm with their four kids, two dogs, and one rabbit and who were still in love as far as she or any of their other friends could tell.

The next day Katie called Lynn Brown and volunteered to sit for the kids that night, a one-night-only offer. She needed to be with the Browns. She needed the warmth and comfort of a family around her.

Lynn was immediately suspicious. “Katie, what's this all about? What's going on?”

“Nothing, I just miss you guys. Consider it a pre-anniversary present for you and Phil. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I'm in Grand Central Station right now. I'm on my way.”

She took the train to Westport and was at Lynn and Phil's by seven. At least she hadn't stayed late working at the office.

The Brown kids--Ashby, Tory, Kelsey, and Roscoe--were eight, five, three, and one. They loved Katie, thought she was so neat. They loved her long braid. And they loved that she was so tall.

So off went Lynn and Phil on their hot “date,” and Katie took the kids. Actually, she was incredibly grateful to Lynn and Phil for “taking her in.” They had met and liked Matt Harrison, and basically they knew what had happened between him and Katie. They didn't understand any of it, either. Lynn had predicted that Katie and Matt would be married within the year.

What a great night it turned out to be. The Browns had a small guest house that Phil was always threatening to fix up and make respectable. That was where Katie always went to hang out with the four kids.

They loved to play tricks on her, like hiding her suitcase and clothes or taking her makeup and putting it on (Roscoe included). She took the kids' pictures with her Canon camera. They washed Lynn's Lexus SUV. Went on a group bike ride. Watched the movie Chicken Run. Ate an “everything” pizza.

When Lynn and Phil got home about eleven, they found Katie and the kids asleep on pillows and quilts thrown all over the guest-house floor.

She was actually awake and heard Lynn whisper to Phil, “She's so cool. She'll be a great mom.” It brought tears to Katie's eyes, and she had to choke back a sob as she pretended to be asleep.

She stayed at the Brown house through Saturday afternoon. She finally took the six o'clock train back to New York. Before she left, she told Lynn that she was pregnant. She was exhausted, but she also felt alive again, rejuvenated--better, anyway. She believed in small miracles. She had hope. She knew there were some happy endings in life. She believed in families.

About halfway into the trip, Katie reached down into her bag and pulled out the diary.

S HE GOT off the train from Westport at the gorgeously renovated and restored Grand Central Station, and she needed to walk some. It was a little past seven-thirty and Manhattan was filled with traffic, most of it honking taxis or cars returning from weekend and vacation homes, the drivers already on edge.

She was on edge, too. The diary was doing that to her more and more.

She still didn't have the answer she needed to move on with her life. She wasn't over Matt--and she wasn't over Suzanne and Nicholas.

She was thinking about something she'd read earlier in the diary, the lesson of the five balls: work, family, health, friends, and integrity.

Work was a rubber ball, right?

Suzanne had figured that out, and her life had suddenly become peaceful and manageable. She had gotten away from all of this: work, stress, pressure, deadlines, crowds pushing and shoving, road rage, life rage.

Immersing herself in someone else's reality had made Katie reexamine things that she had been doing on autopilot for the past nine years. She'd gotten her job at twenty-two, fresh out of the honors program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She had been lucky enough to intern for two summers at Algonquin Press in Chapel Hill, which had opened important doors for her in Manhattan. So she had settled into New York City with the best of intentions, and loved so many things about it; yet she never felt that she truly fit, that New York City was where she was meant to be.

She still felt like a visitor here at times--a tall, gawky tourist.

Now she thought that maybe she knew why. Her life had been out of balance for such a long time. She had spent so many late nights at work or at home, reading and editing manuscripts, trying to make them as good as they could be. Rewarding work, but work was a rubber ball, right?

Family, health, friends, and integrity were the precious glass ones.

The baby she was carrying was a glass ball for sure.

T HE FOLLOWING morning at about eleven, she was in a yellow cab with two of her best friends, Susan Kingsolver and Laurie Raleigh. She was going to see her gynecologist, Dr. Albert K. Sassoon, in the East Seventies.

Susan and Laurie were there for moral support. They knew about the pregnancy and had insisted on coming along. Each of them held one of Katie's hands.

“You feel okay, sweetie?” Susan asked. She was a grade-school teacher on the Lower East Side. They had met the one summer Katie had gone in on a summer house in the Hamptons, and had been best buddies ever since. Katie had been maid of honor at Susan's wedding, then a bridesmaid at Laurie's.

“I'm okay. Sure. I just can't make myself believe what's happened in the past few days. I can't believe I'm going to see Sassoon right now.” Oh, God, please help me. Please give me strength.

As she got out of the taxi, Katie found that she was blankly staring at pedestrians and familiar storefronts on East Seventy-eighth Street. What was she going to say to Dr. Sassoon? When Katie had been there for her yearly checkup, Albert was so incredibly excited to hear that she'd found someone--and now this.

Everything was a blur, even though Susan and Laurie were chatting amiably, keeping her up, doing a great job, really.

“Whatever you decide,” Laurie whispered as Katie was called into Dr. Sassoon's examination room, “it will work out great. You're great.”

Whatever she decided.

God, she just couldn't believe this was happening.

Albert Sassoon was smiling, and that made Katie think of Suzanne and her kindly way with patients.

“So,” Dr. Sassoon said as Katie lay down and fitted her feet into the stirrups. Usually, Albert asked Katie not to hit him in the head with her knees. A little joke to lighten the moment. Not today, though.

“So. I was so much in love I stopped using my birth control. I guess I got knocked up,” Katie said, and laughed. Then she was crying, and Albert came to her and tenderly held her head against his chest. “It's all right, Katie. It's all right. It's all right.”

“I think I know what I'm going to do,” Katie finally managed to say between sobs. “I think . . . I'm going . . . to keep . . . my baby.”

“That's great, Katie,” Dr. Sassoon said, and patted her back gently. “You'll be a wonderful mother. You'll have a beautiful child.”

Nicholas,

Today I came home from the hospital, and it's so unbelievably good to be here. Oh, I'm the luckiest girl in the world.

The familiarity of the rooms, your perfect nursery, the way the morning light comes spilling over the windowsills and lights all the things in its path. What a thrill to be here again. To be anywhere, actually.

Life is such a miracle, a series of small miracles. It really is, if you learn how to look at it with the right perspective.

I love our little cottage on Beach Road. More than ever, Nicky. I appreciate it more, every little crevice and crease.

Matt made a beautiful lunch for us. He's a pretty good cook--as handy with a spatula and skillet as he is with a hammer and nail. He laid out a picnic in the sunroom on a red-and-white-checkered blanket. A salad niçoise, fresh, twelve-grain bread, sun tea. Fabulous. After lunch the three of us sat there, and he held my hand and I held yours.

Nicholas, Suzanne, and Matt.

Happiness is this simple.

Nick, you little scamp,

Every moment with you fills me with such incredible wonder and happiness.

I took you into the Atlantic Ocean for the first time yesterday. It was the first day of July. You absolutely loved it.

The water was beautiful, with very small waves. Just your size. Even better was all the sand, your own private sandbox.

Big smiles from you.

And from me, of course.

Mommy see, Mommy do!

When we got home, I happened to show you a picture of two-year-old Bailey Mae Bone, our neighbor just down Beach Road. You started to smile, and then you puckered your lips. You're going to be a killer with the ladies. Be gentle, though, like your daddy.

You have good taste--for a guy. You love to look at pretty things--trees, the ocean, light sources, of course.

You also like to tickle the ivories on our piano, which is so cute.

And you love to clean. You push around a toy vacuum cleaner and wipe up messes with paper towels. Maybe I can take advantage of that when you're a little older.

Anyway, you are such a joy.

I treasure and hold close to my heart every giggle, every laugh, every needy cry.

“Wake up, beautiful. I love you even more today than I did yesterday.”

Matt wakes me this same way every morning since I got home from the hospital. Even if I'm still half asleep, I don't mind being awakened by his soothing voice and those words.

The weeks passed, and I was getting my strength back. I began taking long walks on the beach in front of the cottage. I even saw a few patients. I exercised more than I ever had in my whole life.

A few more weeks passed, and I was even stronger. I was proud of myself, actually.