Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (6 page)

And then he walked through the door of her office, and she was even more amazed. No, make that entranced. The most primitive parts of her brain and nervous system locked on to the image before her--the poet, the man. Katie felt her heart skip a beat, and she thought, My, my. Careful, careful.

He was taller than she was--she guessed about six foot two. He had a good nose and strong-looking chin, and everything about his face held together extremely well, like one of his poems. His hair was longish, sandy brown, clean and lustrous. He had a deep workingman's tan. He smiled at something, hopefully not her height or her gawkiness or the goofy look on her face--but she liked him, anyway. What was there not to like?

They had dinner that night, and he gallantly let her buy. He did insist on picking up the tab for a couple of glasses of expensive port a little later. Then they went to a jazz club on the Upper West Side, on a “school night” as Katie called her work nights. He finally dropped her off at her apartment at three in the morning, apologized profusely and sincerely, gave her the sweetest kiss on the cheek, and then off he went in a cab.

Katie stood on the front steps and was finally able to catch her breath, maybe for the first time since he had walked through the door of her office. She tried to remember . . . was Matthew Harrison married?

He was back in her office the following morning--to work--but the two of them skedaddled off to lunch at noon and didn't return for the rest of the day. They went museum hopping, and he certainly knew his art. He didn't show off, but he easily knew as much as Katie did. She kept thinking--who is this guy? And why am I allowing myself to feel the way I'm feeling?

And then--why am I not trying to feel like this all the time?

He came up to her place that night, and she continued to be astonished that any of this was happening. Katie was infamous with her friends for not sleeping around, for being too romantic, and way too old-fashioned about sex; but here she was with this good-looking, undeniably sexy, housepainter-poet from Martha's Vineyard, and she couldn't not be with him. He never, ever hustled her--in fact, he seemed almost as surprised about being in her apartment as she was that he was there.

“Hummuna, hummuna,” Katie said, and they both laughed nervously.

“My sentiments exactly,” Matt said.

They went to bed for the first time on that rainy night, and he made her notice the music of the raindrops as they fell on her street, the rooftop, and even the trees outside her apartment. It was beautiful, it was music; but soon they had forgotten the patter of the rain, and everything else, except for the urgent touch of each other.

He was so natural and easy and good in bed that it scared Katie a little. It was as if he had known her for a long time. He knew how to hold her, how and where to touch her, how to wait, and then when to let everything on the inside explode. She loved the way he touched her, the gentle way he kissed her lips, her cheeks, the hollow of her throat, her back, breasts--well, everywhere.

“You're absolutely ravishing, and you don't know it, do you?” he whispered to her, then smiled. “You have the most delicate body. Your eyes are gorgeous. And I love your braid.”

“You and my mother,” Katie said. She loosened the braid and let her long hair cascade over her shoulders.

“Hmmm. I love that look, too,” Matt said, and winked at her.

When he finally left her apartment the next morning, Katie had the feeling that she had never been with anyone like that, never experienced such intimacy with another person. My God, why not? she asked herself.

She kind of missed Matt already. It was insane, completely ridiculous, not her; but she did miss him. My God, why not?

When she got to her office that morning, he was already there, waiting for her. Her heart nearly stopped.

“We'd better do some work,” she said. “Seriously, Matthew.”

He didn't say a word, just shut her office door and kissed her until Katie felt as if she were melting into the hardwood floor.

He finally pulled away, looked into her eyes again, and said, “As soon as I left your place, I missed you.”

Nicholas,

I remember all of this as if it happened yesterday. It's still vibrant and alive. Matt and I were riding on the Edgartown–Vineyard Haven road in my Jeep. Gus went along for the ride. He sat on the backseat and looked like one of the lions that guard the front of the New York Public Library.

“Can't you drive any faster?” Matt asked, tapping his fingers on the dashboard. “I walk faster than this.”

I am by my own admission a slow and careful driver. Matt had found my first flaw.

“Hey, I got the safety-first award in my driver's ed class in Cornwall on Hudson. I hung the diploma under my medical degree.”

Matt laughed and rolled his brown eyes. He got all of my dumb little jokes.

We were driving to his mother's house. Matt thought it would be interesting for me to meet her.

Interesting? What did that mean?

“Oops, there's my mom!” Matt said just then. “Oh, man. There she is.”

She was up on the roof of the house when we got there. She was fixing an ancient TV antenna. We got out of my old blue Jeep, and Matt called up to her.

“Mom, this is Suzanne. And Gus the Wonder Dog. Suzanne . . . my mother, Jean. She taught me how to fix things around the house.”

His mother was tall, lanky, silver-haired. She called down to us, “Very nice to meet you, Suzanne. You, too, Gus. You three go have a seat on the porch. I'll only be a minute up here.”

“If you don't fall off the roof and break both your legs,” Matt said. “Fortunately, we have a good doctor in the house.”

“I won't fall off the roof.” Jean laughed, and went back to her work. “I only fall off extension ladders.”

Matt and I took our seats at a wrought-iron table on the porch. Gus preferred the front yard. The house was an old saltbox with a northern view of the harbor. To the south lay cornfields, and then deep woods that gave you the impression you were in Maine.

“It's gorgeous here. Is this where you grew up?” I asked.

“No, I was born in Edgartown. This house was bought a few years after my father died.”

“I'm sorry, Matt.”

He shrugged. “It's another thing we have in common, I guess.”

“So why didn't you tell me?” I asked him.

He smiled. “You know, I guess I just don't like to talk a lot about sad things. Now you know myflaw. What good does it do to talk about sad things in the past?”

Jean suddenly appeared with iced tea and a plate heaped with chocolate-chip cookies.

“Well, I promise I won't give you the once-over, Suzanne. We're too mature for that sort of thing,” she said with a quick wink. “I would love to hear about your practice, though. Matthew's father was a doctor, you know.”

I looked over at him. Matt hadn't told me that, either. “My dad died when I was eight years old. I don't remember too much.”

“He's private about some things, Suzanne. Matthew was hurt badly when his dad died. Don't listen to him on that. I think he believes it might make other people uncomfortable to hear about how much he hurts.”

She winked at Matt; he winked back at her. I could tell they were close. It was nice to see. Sweet.

“So, tell me about yourself, Jean. Unless you're a private person, too.”

“Hell, no!” she said with a laugh. “I'm an open book. What do you want to know?”

It turned out that Jean was a local artist--a painter. She walked me through the cottage and showed me some of her work. She was good, too. I knew enough to be fairly sure that her paintings could have sold at a lot of galleries in Back Bay, or even New York. Jean had framed a quote from the primitive artist Grandma Moses. It said, “I paint from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the cattle, and then the people.”

Jean laughed at my praise of her work and said, “I once saw a cartoon with a couple standing before a Jackson Pollock painting. The painting had a price tag of a million dollars under it, and the man turned to the woman and said, ‘Well, he comes through clear enough on the price.'” She had a good sense of humor about her work, about anything really. I saw a lot of her in Matt.

The afternoon turned into evening, and Matt and I ended up staying for dinner. There was even time to see a priceless old album of some of Matt's baby pictures.

He was a cutie, Nick. He had your blond hair as a boy, and that spunky look you have sometimes.

“No naked bottoms on bear rugs?” I asked Jean as I went through the pictures.

She laughed. “Look hard enough, and I'm sure you'll find one. He has a nice butt. If you haven't seen it, you should ask for a look.”

I laughed. Jean was a hoot.

“All right,” Matt said, “show's over. Time to hit the highway.”

“We were just getting into the good stuff,” Jean said, and made a pouty face. “You are a party pooper.”

It was about eleven when we finally got up to leave. Jean grabbed me in a hug.

She whispered against my cheek, “He never ever brings anybody home. So whatever you think of him, he must like you a lot. Please don't hurt him. He is sensitive, Suzanne. And he's a pretty good guy.”

“Hey!” Matt finally called from the car. “Knock it off, you two.”

“Too late,” his mother said. “The damage is already done. I had to spill the beans. Suzanne knows enough to drop you like a bad habit.”

The damage was probably already done--to me. I was falling for Matthew Harrison. I couldn't quite believe it myself, but it was happening, if it hadn't already happened.

The Hot Tin Roof is a fun nightclub at the Martha's Vineyard Airport in Edgartown. Matt and I went there to eat oysters and listen to the blues on Friday night. At that point, I would have gone anywhere with him.

A host of local celebrities floated in and out of the bar: funky, laid-back Carly Simon, Tom Paxton, William Styron and his wife, Rose. Matt thought it would be fun to sit at the raw bar and just people watch. It was, too.

“Want to slow dance?” Matt asked me after we'd had our fill of oysters and cold beer.

“Dance? No one is dancing, Matt. I don't think this is a dancing-type place.”

“This is my favorite song, and I'd love to dance with you. Will you dance with me, Suzanne?”

I did something I do infrequently. I blushed.

“Come on,” Matt whispered against my cheek. “No one will tell the other doctors at the hospital.”

“All right. One dance.”

“Done well, one dance will always lead to another,” he said.

We began to slow dance in our little corner of the bar. Eyes started to turn our way. What was I doing? What had happened to me? Whatever it was, it felt so good to be doing it.

“Is this okay?” Matt checked.

“You know, actually, it's great. What is this song, anyway? You said it was your favorite.”

“Oh, I have no idea, Suzanne. I just wanted an excuse to hold you close.”

With that, Matt held me a little tighter. I loved being in his arms. I loved, loved, loved it. Corny maybe, but absolutely true. What can I say? I felt a little dizzy as we spun around in rhythm with the music.

“I have a question to ask you,” he whispered against the side of my ear.

“Okay,” I whispered back.

“How do you feel about us? So far?”

I kissed him. “Like that.”

He smiled. “That's how I feel, too.”

“Good.”

“I lived with somebody for three years,” Matt said. “We met while we were at Brown. The Vineyard wasn't right for her, but it was for me.”

“Four years. Another doctor,” I confessed.

Matt leaned in and lightly kissed me on the lips again. “Would you come home with me tonight, Suzanne?” he asked. “I want to do some more dancing.”

I told him I would love to.

I have this wink that Matt calls “Suzanne's famous wink.” I did it for the first time to Matt that night. He loved it.

Matt's house was a small Victorian covered in gingerbread lace that draped itself over the eaves and softened all the corners. The trellises, railings, and overhangs looked as if they'd been lifted off some elaborately trimmed wedding cake and carefully placed around the rim of the roof.

It was the first time I had been invited, and I was suddenly nervous. My mouth was cottony and dry. I hadn't been with anyone like this since Michael, and that was still a bad memory for me.

We went inside and I immediately noticed a library. The room had been remodeled to be made up of nothing but shelves. There were thousands of books in there. My eyes traveled up and down the bookshelves: Scott Fitzgerald, John Cheever, Virginia Woolf, Anaïs Nin, Thomas Merton, Doris Lessing. An entire wall was devoted to collections of poetry. W. H. Auden, Wallace Stevens, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, James Wright, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, and many, many more. There was an antique globe; an old English pond boat, its sails stained and listing; some nautical brass fittings; a big pine table covered in writing pads and miscellaneous papers.