Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (2 page)
She didn’t. Too much self-control—that was her problem.
One
of her problems. Katie stared at the package for some time. 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’d 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 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.
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 videotapes 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.
Let me start the story on a warm and fragrant spring night 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 program. 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 enough 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 Gar- den, 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
catch my breath. 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 all right, 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.
So, Nicky,
I was only thirty-five when I had the heart attack in Boston. The following day I had a coronary by-pass 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.
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 Carolyn 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, and 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 had 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 four years 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 also 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 be- hind. 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.
Nicky,
I arrived on the island of Martha’s Vineyard like an awkward tourist, lugging the baggage of my past, not knowing what to
do with it yet. I would spend the first couple of months filling cupboards with wholesome, farm-fresh foods, throwing out
old magazines that had followed me to my new home, and I would also settle into a new job.