Susie Moving On
1970
I’D BEEN BACK IN New York a couple of weeks when I got sick, really sick. It was a stomach virus and I couldn’t stop throwing up. One day my roommate found me on the floor, out cold. She called the rector who called the housemother who called an ambulance. I found all of this out later, of course. When I woke up I was in a hospital with an IV in my arm, feeling somewhat better.
My doctor was a handsome resident named Josh Ryan. He couldn’t have been more than five or six years older than me and had sandy hair, wavy and a little daring, long enough in the back that it flipped up on his collar. I guess you could say Josh, I mean Dr. Ryan, was sexy. I liked him right off. He sat on the side of my bed, his leg pulled up and bent at the knee so that his thigh touched my side through the bed sheet.
“Well, well, Miss Burton,” he said. He had a sideways grin and eyes that laughed when he talked. I felt like he was laughing at me, but I wasn’t uncomfortable. “You’ve been a busy little girl, now haven’t you?” I didn’t know what he meant. I guess he read the confusion in my expression.
“So you don’t know?”
“Know what?” His smile faded and a seriousness wiped over him.
“Oh.” He took my hand in both of his. “You are pregnant, Susie. May I call you Susie?” I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted to shut my eyes, to shut out the news, but I couldn’t do that, either. I lay there with my mouth half opened, my eyes wide as if I’d seen a ghost. My hands trembled. I knew he felt them quiver inside his surgeon’s hands.
“Pregnant?”
“Yep. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“Uh. You wouldn’t know him.” My voice trailed off. “We broke up.” I whispered, but he heard me.
“Oh. That’s not good. I’ll give you some time to think about this, to decide what you want to do.”
“Do?”
“Yes, you have choices, of course.”
“Choices?” He was right. I needed some time to think. How far along, I wondered to myself. Thanksgiving to now, seven-eight weeks. Still early.
“I can refer you to an obstetrician.”
“How much time do I have?”
“You sound like you’re dying. You’re not. You’re just having a baby.”
“I can’t have a baby.” That was one thing I knew for sure. I couldn’t have Rodney’s baby. Not now. Maybe not ever. My daddy would kill me. Literally. And the Klan would kill Rodney. And what would happen to this baby?
“Well, I can’t tell you what to do, but I can remind you that abortion is against the law. You could put the baby up for adoption.”
“I can’t have this baby. I can’t put this baby up for adoption. That won’t work.” He looked confused and I couldn’t explain to him that no one would want a mixed-race baby. When Dr. Ryan left my room I cried and cried and couldn’t calm myself down. I wanted to call Rodney and tell him, ask him to come to New York and marry me. Make a respectable woman out of me. But, of course, that would ruin his life.
I couldn’t have an abortion. I was Catholic. I’d go to hell, for sure, if I wasn’t already destined for Hades because I’d had sex—and not just sex, but sex with a colored boy. I didn’t know what to do. The next day when Dr. Ryan came to see me we talked. He asked me if I’d decided what I was going to do. I hadn’t.
The following day he came in and told me I would be discharged later that day. He gave me a prescription for anti-nausea medicine and some warnings about self-care—drink lots of fluids, eat regularly, try to keep my meals down, and relax. Being pent up was bad for the baby—and me. When the nurse rolled me towards the front door of the hospital in a wheel chair, Dr. Ryan caught up with us and took over the nurse’s duties. He asked me how I was getting back to campus. When I told him I was taking a cab, he insisted on taking me back to my dorm in his two-seater convertible. We stopped for a drink. He had a beer, I had iced tea. He warned me about alcohol, caffeine, cigarettes and stress. A few days later he called to check up on me and asked me if I’d like to get some dinner. He said he wanted to make sure I was eating. I met him at a burger joint near campus.
“Look,” he said after he ate his burger and I picked at mine. It smelled like onions and I wanted to puke, but I held it together. “I know you’re in a jam. Do you have anyone you can tell about this? Your mother or father, a sibling, a close friend—the daddy.” I shook my head, No.
I’m not sure how things happened between me and Josh Ryan. I was in quite a state, had no one, and he was there for me. I think I’d have died without him. After a few weeks I knew he was falling in love with me, but I had no control over his feelings. I had enough trouble managing my own. With Rodney’s baby growing inside me, I didn’t have space in my heart for another being. I sort of rolled with the flow. When I look back on that time I realize I’d sort of spaced out, operated in the clouds, put one foot in front of the other and tried not to think or feel.
The spring semester flew by and I didn’t really start to show until the end of May when no one seemed to care during summer classes. I worked in the English Department where I graded papers and read essays and rocked along with only adjunct professors on staff. They didn’t know whether I was married and didn’t ask.
One Monday I called the English Department and told them I was sick. Other than the two days in the hospital it was the first time I’d done that and no one seemed to notice. I had an appointment in Manhattan with an agency that handled “unorthodox” adoptions. It was hard for me, being from the Deep South, to realize couples who wanted mixed-race babies existed—but they did, and I was able to interview several before I selected the perfect parents for the baby I carried—a white professor at Columbia and his attorney wife. The concept of open adoption was new and unusual, but it seemed the right thing for me and this brilliant child I’d be bringing into the world.
The thing I wrestled with most was that this baby was a product of my love for Rodney and his for me. To give her-him-it, away felt like I was giving up on our relationship, our love for each other. In essence, I guess I was. It was a decision I had to make.
I went into labor the last day of summer classes, as if I’d timed it—August 15, the Feast of the Assumption, I thought, ironically. I was so scared when my water broke, I called Josh and he told me to take a cab to the emergency department and he’d meet me there. He was waiting when I arrived and ushered me directly to a delivery room. I squeezed his hand and tried to breathe with the contractions. He was encouraging and assuaged my fears so that, at times, I was laughing at some of the silly things he said.
The pain was intense, but as soon as I heard the baby cry, nothing else mattered. I started to cry, too, as Josh lay the tiny naked infant across my stomach, its cord still attached to my body. Joseph and Emalene came into the room to cut the cord and hold the baby and I detached myself as best I could. I tried to find joy in watching the couple ooh and ahh over the miracle they held, their dreams to have a family finally realized after fifteen years. A girl!
Josh had not met the adoptive couple—in fact I’d just told him about them a few days before the birth, but I hadn’t mentioned the race thing. I watched him look at the beautiful colored woman who held this baby Josh and I had nurtured together for more than seven months and his facial expressions changed from surprise to anger to something I couldn’t detect. He walked out of the room without a word to me or anyone else.
My emotions were flooded with thoughts of Rodney, separation from our baby, happiness for Joe and Emalene, wonder at Josh’s reaction. I turned on my side and sobbed until I fell asleep. When I awoke I was alone in my hospital room. Two days later I was discharged.
I had to move on. Sentimentality would get in my way of me achieving freedom. I had to finish college so I could be on my own. I didn’t forget her, our baby. I thought about her constantly.
On August 15, 1971 I received a picture of an amber-eyed toddler with light brown curls corkscrewed to her head and fastened away from her round face with a huge pink bow. Her smile was a big, toothless, “O,” as she held onto a coffee table, totally proud of herself for standing. I cried all day, then I called Emalene, who told me I was welcome to visit if I felt I could handle it. I thought about that for a long time.
*
By my third year at Sarah Lawrence I’d decided to major in International Relations and Creative Writing. I wanted to write books and see the world, maybe write books about the world and about Catfish’s world.
I didn’t go home for Christmas that year. I knew it would be too painful to be there and not see Rodney, and I still had residual postpartum depression. I was afraid he would know, just by looking at me.
Rodney continued to write and call, but the letters and phone conversations became fewer and farther between until, gradually he faded into a sweet memory of first love, first kiss, first sex, first everything. Or at least I tried to push him back to that memory section of my brain.
I read all the current magazine articles about relationships. I learned that girls needed to get through their first love to understand how it worked. We could use the lessons from the that experience to make the next ones better. I had learned a lot by loving and being loved by Rodney Thibault.
I figured Rodney was dating other girls since I hadn’t heard from him in months. I hoped he was dating colored girls, girls he could take home to meet his parents and in whose homes he would be welcomed. He would never have that with me.
I started to date too, after I recovered and realized Josh Ryan was out of my life. My friends and roommates set me up with a few guys from some of the universities in and around New York. I’d meet them for coffee, go to football games and to an occasional fraternity party. By spring, I noticed that a Connecticut boy, Gavin McClendon, had been asking me out regularly and the other boys had backed off. I liked Gavin. He was intelligent, funny and very handsome. By my senior year Gavin and I were an item. He took me to his fraternity parties and formals at Yale University and he escorted me to the few functions at Sarah Lawrence I cared about attending. The schools were about an hour apart by train.
Gavin asked me to be his date for his senior fraternity formal at the Plaza Hotel in NYC. The Yale KA formal was a big deal to the girls at Sarah Lawrence. They ogled over me because I would be attending, and they obsessed about what I would wear. Only one other SL girl had been invited, a girl engaged to a KA.
Gavin took the train to Yonkers that Saturday morning and picked me up in a cab. The Plaza was a magical place. We arrived and were escorted into an elevator by a bellman who looked like he was dressed to march in the Nutcracker parade. Later I learned that Gavin had stopped at the Plaza and checked in before he came to Sarah Lawrence. He said he didn’t want me to feel uncomfortable standing in the lobby while he registered. I was impressed with his thoughtfulness, especially since I had misgivings about staying in a hotel room with him, or any guy, for that matter. Any guy except Rodney, but it had been almost two years since I’d been in one with him.
I was nervous at first. Then, when Gavin opened the door and I entered the living room of the huge apartment with Persian rugs and French Provincial furniture, I relaxed. I walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Fifth Avenue and Central Park. Next door was Bergdorf Goodman, Louis Vuitton, Chanel and Saks Fifth Avenue. From the outside, the Plaza looked like a castle and I felt like a princess.
I thought the moment the door closed and we were alone, I’d freak out, but Gavin had arranged for me to have a massage and mineral bath in the spa, so I was whisked away and left him in the suite. Later he met me for tea in the famed Palm Court. The magic increased as the day moved on.
My skin was clear and shiny after the facial and, with no make-up, I felt conspicuous in the famous Plaza Tea Room, but Gavin told me he thought I was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. I blushed and we sipped champagne and talked about school, graduation and plans for graduate school. It was like a dream and I was being swept away by a handsome, considerate guy who was easy to be with and about as thoughtful as any man I’d known. I guess it was easy to be thoughtful when you had as much money as Gavin, but who was counting?
Back upstairs in the suite, Gavin ushered me into the elegant French-styled bedroom to use the bathroom with gold-plated fixtures. He told me to take my time then he left me alone to dress for the dance. I soaked in the huge garden tub, piled high with bubbles, shaved my legs and underarms, shampooed my hair and dried off with an Italian cotton towel the size of a bed sheet. When I stepped into the living room in my silver form-fitted formal, a slit revealing my left leg, Gavin gasped. I smiled.
His right hand went to his chest, as if to indicate he was trying to keep his heart from coming out of his body and he smiled at me. I laughed at his gesture. Then he looked at my feet in the three inch silver-glittered stilettos and let his eyes follow the slit in my dress up my leg to mid-thigh, where he paused for a second, then his eyes continued their journey to my neck. I watched him look me over. For some reason I wasn’t put off by his gawking. He didn’t try to hide it and he had an endearing smile the entire time.
While Gavin looked at me, I looked at him. He was attractive, no doubt, with his wide Rugby shoulders and slim rower’s waist. His blonde hair fell across his forehead and sort of shifted sideways while the sides were cut short, over his ears. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, not sky blue but almost navy blue, as deep as bottomless inkwells. He was wearing a black tuxedo with a white shirt, white bowtie and white vest. The combination was unique and, on him, stunning. And he wore a smile that lit his entire face—eyes, mouth, nose, even his forehead lifted to make him seem approachable.
I’d known Gavin for almost a year and I liked him, liked being with him. He took me to museums and on ferry rides. We rode in his convertible roadster to upstate New York for picnics and saw movies as soon as they were released. He escorted me to five-star restaurants and hole-in-the-wall pizza joints. We’d been to formal dances, sloppy football games and sock hops. But on this night things seemed different. Not so casual and fun in a friendship way. I think it was the way he looked at me that made me realize something had shifted.
When his gaze rested on the low-cut neckline of my dress that was held up by slim straps I told myself I’d asked for it by wearing a dress that showed my cleavage in such an alluring way—or at least that’s what Debbie, my roommate said. “You know he’s going to fall into your cleavage. You’d better be ready.” I’d laughed at her comment, but if I was honest with myself, I’d probably wanted that exact reaction I got from him.
I kept waiting for him to look at ME, but his eyes paused at my mouth where I’d taken extra care to apply lip gloss to make them look wet. Finally, his eyes stopped on mine.
“You are fabulous,” he said. I blushed and felt a hint of innocence.
Gavin didn’t try to hide the fact that he was smitten with me, which was charming on him. He dropped all pretense of machoism and discarded the play-hard-to-get games. It was obvious by the way he looked at me and treated me that he was putty in my hands. I guess that’s what sucked me in. His complete condor and honesty. It reminded me of Rodney. No pretense. No playing it cool.
Of course, for a guy who’d always had girls fawn all over him, my indifference towards him over the past nine months was probably a challenge, but I didn’t do it purposely. I really didn’t think about him unless he called and asked me out. I guess if I’d never heard from him again, I wouldn’t have noticed.
Gavin was either a complete gentleman or he was afraid of me, I didn’t know which, nor did I dwell on it. I was simply happy he didn’t pressure me. He kissed me after dates, held my hand in movies and pulled me close when we danced, but he didn’t attempt anything further. That was the reason I felt comfortable agreeing to share a hotel room with him. I trusted him. He’d proven himself.
Looking at him in the living room of the hotel suite that night, gorgeous and unabashedly drooling over me, I guess I let my defenses down.
“You smell as fabulous as you look,” he said. “You found the gift I left for you on the bed?”
“Yes. Thank you so much, Gavin. That was very thoughtful.” It was a beautifully wrapped gift with a bottle of Channel #5 in a navy velvet box. I, of course, dabbed it all over myself.
“It smells good on you. In fact, you give it a unique scent. Perhaps we should name it ‘Susanna Number Five.’” We both laughed. The spell was broken but Gavin couldn’t take his eyes off me and I kept looking at him, too. He was strikingly handsome. I felt happy, something I couldn’t remember feeling since, well, when I thought about it, that week with Rodney in another part of this same city, in a far-off time.
On that magical night at the Plaza I was a princess. All my cares fell away, the past, the pain, the struggles—all of it—and I was happy.
“You look handsome, Gavin,” I said. He smiled and his long eyelashes raised from half-mast to fully opened and touched his light eyebrows, almost white from the sun when he rowed and played sports. His square jaw gave him a masculine appearance and he had a deep, sexy voice.
I had a small box in my hand that I knew he hadn’t noticed. I bent to set it on the coffee table, opened it and pulled out a single, white rosebud. When I pinned it on his lapel, his lips brushed the top of my head and I noticed his scent for the first time. English Leather, a familiar smell, but Gavin’s was flavored with his own porous outpourings. It was intoxicating. I didn’t notice his eyes were closed until I raised my head to look at him, my hands still resting on the lapels of his tuxedo.
“You can open your eyes now, handsome.”
“Oh,” he stuttered a second. “Thank you. I didn’t expect the boutonnière.”
“My pleasure.” I smiled.
I was glad he’d bought a wrist corsage, there was no place to pin one on my shoulder. It was ironic that the one he slipped over my hand was made of white roses—nine of them; one for each month we’d dated, he told me.
I didn’t need a wrap since the dance was downstairs in the Plaza Ballroom. I held a small, silver clutch bag and he put his hand gently on the small of my back as he led me out of the suite and into the elevator. I could feel my own body warmth in the palm of his hand that became sweaty before we exited the elevator, still, he didn’t remove it. He seemed to want to touch me constantly, knee to knee under the table, hand over mine when he led me to the dance floor, arms around me when we danced. It was like we were attached, always in contact with each other.
Other than the occasional glass of wine or champagne, I wasn’t much of a drinker, but that night I felt so relaxed and happy that I drank past my limit. Gavin, on the other hand, who usually drank as much as his fraternity brothers, stayed sober and took care of me. He was ever the gentleman, attentive, kind and loving, a side of him I hadn’t seen before, or maybe I’d never bothered to notice.
He asked the band to play, “Suzanne,” by Leonard Cohen and “I Can’t help myself, by the Four Tops.” When we finally danced the last dance, a slow, sensual pairing to, “Unchained Melody,” by the Righteous Brothers, I was in a trance. I thought I could feel Gavin’s hardness against my leg, but I was tipsy and oblivious. I imagined Rodney’s arms around me and pressed into Gavin. He seemed surprised by my forwardness, and pulled me closer. I let him.
After Gavin opened the door to the hotel suite, he lifted me and carried me into the room like a bride. I wrapped my arms around his neck and nuzzled under his chin pressing my lips against his neck. It seemed natural, like I’d been here before, I thought. He didn’t smell like Rodney, but I was too drunk to think about that.
Gavin took his time and was patient with me. He lay me on the bed and began to kiss my forehead, cheeks, chin, neck and shoulders. He gently slipped the straps of my dress off my shoulders and breathed on my cleavage. He sat next to me and removed his jacket.
Looking back I realize he was giving me every opportunity to stop him. It was like he only wanted me if I really wanted him, too.
All the lights were on. The only sound was our breathing and the horns and sirens in the distance. We didn’t talk. I kept my eyes closed, He waited for me to stop him, but I didn’t. He held me all night. He was staring at me when I opened my eyes in the morning, the sunlight streaming in through the sides of the heavy, velvet drapes. I squinted, closed my eyes and, after a pause, opened them wide.
His arm was under my head and, when I lifted it to look at him, he didn’t take it away. He kissed me on the forehead. I pulled the soft, ivory sheet over my breasts, folding my arms across my chest as I sat up in the middle of the bed. He put both his hands behind his head, elbows spread over his pillow.
I looked at the grin on Gavin’s face and felt humiliated. I was naked. What had we done? Then I remembered. I thought I was making love to Rodney. Oh, God! I couldn’t look at Gavin. I gathered the sheet around me and slipped out of the bed, closing the bathroom door behind me. I leaned against the door and took a deep breath. I thought I heard Gavin chuckle and I felt my cheeks burn.
I took a shower, drank lots of water out of the faucet, brushed my teeth twice and emerged an hour later in the white Egyptian cotton bathrobe I found in the closet.
Gavin wasn’t in the bed. I walked into the living room just as the bellman left with a fist full of cash and closed the door behind him. I smelled the bacon and sausage before I saw the breakfast feast laid out on the dining table, a vase with at least a dozen white roses in the center. Gavin, dressed in jeans and a navy Polo shirt, walked up to me, kissed me on the cheek, put the palm of his hand in the small of my back and led me to the table.
He sure was handsome and his shirt matched his eyes. He didn’t speak. I was glad.
He pulled out a chair and I sat. He sat at the head, catty-corner from me and took my hand. He held it on the beige linen table cloth. The sweet smell of roses filled the room while breakfast aromas rose from below silver domed platters and the rich flavor of fresh brewed coffee seeped from the silver pot. I heard his breathing, or was it mine?
“Susie,” he whispered. I didn’t look up. He put his fingers under my chin and lifted it up. I kept my eyes downcast. “Please, look at me.” I lifted my lashes and looked at him out the tops of my eyes. I looked down again.
“Please,” he repeated.
I looked at him. Tears pooled in my eyes. I couldn’t help it. And I couldn’t explain it. It was too complicated.
“Please don’t cry. You are incredible. Last night ... well, thank you for last night.”
I couldn’t answer. Tears ran down my cheeks. I was so embarrassed. I’d never felt like this with Rodney, embarrassed, guilty as if I committed adultery, cheated on the man I loved. Gavin squeezed my hand.
“What can I do to make you feel better?” he asked.
“Tell me we didn’t have sex.”
“Okay, I’ll tell you that if it will help. But, Susie, I want to remember last night.”
“Well, I want to forget it,” I said. I got up and stormed out of the room and slammed the bedroom door. I could feel his eyes bore through the closed door as if he could drill a hole in it, reach inside and make me come back.
I didn’t want to see Gavin again, but, somehow, it got to be routine. It was easier than starting over with someone new. At least, with Gavin, everything was in the open.
When I went home with him for Christmas his parents fell all over me. When we returned to New York I saw a doctor and got a prescription for the birth control pill.
*
I graduated with honors, but no one from my family was there. I’d only seen them once in the three and one-half years I had been at Sarah Lawrence, so I didn’t miss them. But I still missed Rodney, who I hadn’t seen in almost two years and I missed Marianne. And Catfish. And Tootsie. Rodney and Marianne wrote to me, once a month or so and, every now and then, Rodney called. I never told Gavin about Rodney and, when Rodney and I talked, we didn’t mention our personal lives.
Gavin came to my graduation and looked handsome as ever in his preppy navy blazer complete with Yale emblem on the left pocket, red bow tie and grey slacks. I knew we made a striking couple—Gavin, the tall blond athlete with wide shoulders and a pedigree a mile long, and me, the mysterious redheaded Southern girl with a degree from a prestigious college.
When we entered the ballroom at the Plaza for my graduation ball, heads turned and flashbulbs lit up the room. I smiled as if I was the happiest girl in the world. Why shouldn’t I be? A gorgeous, wealthy, Yale graduate on my arm, a college degree from Sarah Lawrence, and a promising future in writing and publishing.
I knew Gavin’s parents had encouraged him to ask me to marry him. He hinted at it, but I let him know I was not ready to be asked. When I wrote home and told my parents about Gavin, I built him up so they would be proud of me. From the time I was a little girl, my mother told me I would go to college, not for a BA but for an MRS degree. Mama was proud that I had the promise of such an exploit accomplir. Better yet, I would live fifteen-hundred miles away from her.
Graduation night was a repeat performance of the KA formal at Christmas. Gavin and I spent it in one of the Plaza’s lavish hotel suites, but this time, he brought me breakfast in bed in the morning. There was a small gift, wrapped in white paper with a white satin bow and a Tiffany’s label on the bottom right corner sitting on the breakfast tray.
“Gavin, if this is what I think it is, I can’t open it, not yet. I’m not ready.”
“Open it, Beautiful. Don’t be afraid.” He sat next to me in the bed with his arm possessively over my shoulder. I looked at him and repeated my statement.
“I don’t want to open something I can’t accept and make you feel rejected. I’m just not ready.”
“Open it. Trust me.” I thought of how many times Rodney encouraged me to trust him and how he’d never let me down. It wasn’t fair to compare Gavin with Rodney, but who else could I use as an example of the kind of man I could trust with my future? I opened the gift slowly, looking up at Gavin periodically and asked, “Are you sure? Can I trust that this is not something that comes with a commitment?”
“Trust me, Susie,” he’d say. I wanted to believe he understood that, if it was an engagement ring, I would say, “No.”
When I flipped the lid of the black velvet case, I immediately snapped it shut.
No, Gavin couldn’t be trusted. He’d tried to trick me. Rodney would never do that. I handed the untouched gift to Gavin, got out of bed and went to the bathroom. When I closed the door, I knew I’d closed him out of my life for good.
I had applied to Harvard graduate school the previous fall and was accepted. I knew I would only be able to attend if they awarded me a full scholarship because Daddy refused to pay for further education, and, anyway, I was ready for my freedom. But Harvard’s offer only included tuition and books, no room and board. I spent several days in Boston looking for a job and was offered a part time position with a small publishing house. It wasn’t enough to cover living expenses so I took a second job waiting tables at an all-night diner.
I moved to Boston for the summer to see if I could make it work, financially, with the two jobs. Even with a roommate in a small, one-bedroom apartment, I had to work sixty hours a week to make ends meet and I knew I couldn’t continue at that pace and make decent grades in Grad School at Harvard. In addition, I was terrible at waiting tables and quit that job within two weeks. By the first of June I knew it wouldn’t work.