John and I aren’t in the part of our relationship where he knows about my life in my early 20’s. He doesn’t know about my love for the city or the life I was set to have there at that point in my life. Back then, I was a senior at Rutgers University and I was graduating with a dual degree in art history and journalism and media studies. I had been accepted into some of the best programs for art business and curating, including a new program being offered through Sotheby’s. And that spring I fell head over heels in love with a boy that was several years older than me and we had a very intense relationship that ended in him one day telling me that his love for me had stopped growing and so I broke up with him. For years, he would talk to our former mutual friends about me and I would avoid relationships all together because of that hurt that Landon had left me with.
This was in 2008 and at a time where the economy tanked overnight. Within days I had a choice: was I going to fight for the loan that I had to go to my dream masters program or was this the universe telling me to pursue graduate school elsewhere and be closer to the boyfriend that I thought was it for me. I chose to begin to look at graduate school closer to him. And within a couple of months, the relationship was totally over. I often look back at that time in my life as a crossroads where I could have had a life of Manhattan, but instead my life brought me to teaching and in turn to Phil and to my children and South Jersey. I do not regret that crossroads because my children are the loves of my life, but I sometimes do wonder if I had chosen differently, what my life would have become?
Once I was with Phil things like Manhattan trips stopped all together and I was very much swept up into his life and his friend circle. I had lost myself in my relationship with him and then again in motherhood and becoming his caretaker. Standing just outside of Penn Station with John, looking at the big buildings and the craziness of the streets, brought a little light back inside of me that had been dimmed for many years. This moment in time felt like a return to myself and a day that I hadn’t really known that I needed until I was living it. And I was there with John, a man that I was trying my very best not to stare at.
We walked from the station to the hotel that we were going to be staying in for the night. We faded in and out of small talk as we walked.
“Are you still nervous about the hotel room,” he asked me.
I probably blushed somewhat. “No, I don’t think you’re a serial killer.”
He laughed. “Ok, well let me know we can always get another room or separate keys…or whatever, whatever makes you comfortable.”
I am taken with John in a multitude of ways. There is physical chemistry between us, but I am also taken with him for the way that he considers me. This was our first actual date with one another and he had gone out of his way to make it extra special for me. Despite myself, I had already begun to feel myself falling for him over our late night phone conversations, but since we were together I was feeling that pull even more and it surprised me because as artistic and romantic as I am, I am also very logical, but being with John, logic seemed to be leaving me quicker than I could try to grab it back.
When we get up to our hotel room, I put down my bag and walk over to the huge window overlooking the city. You could see the statue of liberty very faintly off in the distance and I just stood there and took all of it in. This weekend in so many ways was the return to myself and to the possibility of new beginnings with John. Eventually, John finished getting himself in order and I turned around to face him.
I laughed when I turned around, because the bathroom was totally illuminated and showcased the open shower to the room. A design feature probably included so that whoever was staying here could shower and still have a view of the city. John’s eyes follow my gaze and he too now sees the shower.
“I’m sorry, if I am honest I had help with booking the room. Geez, that is one heck of a shower,” he adds, clearly embarrassed and nervous all at once.
I lightly touch his arm. “It’s okay, we will figure it out, but that is some shower for a weekend where no sex was agreed upon.”
He laughs and smiles at me, it is his coy smile that he would go on to give me many times over the nearly year and a half that we would be together. It is when I know that he is humored, but reflective at the same time and the flash of his eyes that would always follow that coy smile of his, that would make me want to do everything and anything with him.
John excuses himself from the room to give me some privacy so that I can get ready to go to dinner. A new wave of excitement has found me and I eagerly take off my jeans and slip back into the dress with the pretty underwear that Sasha said all went well together. I feel beautiful and I feel like myself in those moments. John eventually comes back up and changes and then suddenly we are back on the streets of Manhattan walking to the Irish pub.
The food at the pub is not the greatest, but I am thankful for my first rum cocktail in many months and picking apart the tacos that were the only slightly appetizing thing they had to offer. We send back the flavorless mozzarella sticks and make a joke about how food in Manhattan and especially places like this are always hit or miss. John got a steak sandwich and after a bite, he immediately takes some off of his plate and puts it onto mine. It stops me for a moment because I am taken back to one of the many conversations that I had had over the years with dating and finding the right guy for you before she passed away a couple years before. One of the things she always told me about dating was to wait for the man who feeds you off of his own plate. To my grandmother this was a sign of both respect and care, because it showed that the man would want to provide for you and cared for you enough to take something away from himself and to give to you. I try to stop my mind from wandering into things that it is too soon to think about.
John pays for our food and drinks and we begin to walk towards the theater. He is attentive and talkative and constantly making sure that I am near him, not in a controlling way, but in a protective way that once again strikes something deep inside of me and I find myself beginning to fight with myself about how far I was going to allow this to go. In the back of my mind, I always think about my kids and that they too are part of the deal with whomever I wind up with. Will it all be too much for a single man used to his own life and the way he likes things? Despite myself and the reality of my situation, I allow the soft feelings and little butterflies to take over because at that moment, it is just John and I and my kids are a state away enjoying their first sleepover with their grandmother.
The broadway version of The Notebook totally butchers the book and the movie that I had loved for years. It gave into the need for wokeness that entertainment has turned to in recent years and both John and I leave confused as to who people even are in it as they frequently changed actors based on race in each scene. In one scene Noah was the black man, but in the next he is white again–it served no real purpose to the story and made it hard to follow. By the end of the show, neither John nor I stood for the ovation.
Turning to me, John asked, “Why aren’t you standing?”
Knowing why, but not wanting to hurt his feelings since this was our first date and I knew the kind of planning that he did for it, I hesitated.
“I am not standing because it was awful.”
I exhale with a smile. “Yes, I feel the same, but I really enjoyed being here with you.”
His smile widened. “Yes, the company was made for a standing ovation, but not the singing by screaming at the top of their lungs.”
I nod. “And I don’t know about you but I was confused as to who was who in every single scene change.”
“Exactly! What was that?!”
Afterwards, we meandered around the city in search of coffee for me and things to do. We find ourselves in Times Square, John buys both of us a New York hat. My body begins to feel the end of the excitement and the toll of a day steeped in travel and activity. I am growing tired as the night begins to unfold.
“Would you like to go back to the hotel,” John asks me.
“I would, but I would still like to do something when we get back there.”
“Well what should we do?” He stops walking for a moment and I follow suit. “Do you know how to play UNO? Or any card games?”
I smile. “Yes to both. And I hate to brag, but I am one heck of a game of war player.”
“Sounds like we better stop at a drug store and get UNO and some cards then.”
We walk a couple more blocks and find a store that has both after a creepy elevator ride into a New York store basement and questionable people all around. Afterwards we walk back to the hotel and John excuses himself so that I can shower and change. When he comes back he readies himself for bed and we sit in our hotel room with Manhattan lit up behind us playing several games of war until I feel my eyes fighting themselves to stay open. There is heavy banter flying between us as we play war and make jokes about the physical tension between us.
Towards the end of our last game, John stops joking for a moment and looks at me. It is a gaze that he won’t go on to give me often, but when he does give it I know he wants me to clearly hear what he has to say, it makes me feel loved and protected. “Katherine,” he says, my name always sounding like honey from his mouth. “In all seriousness, I know how to be a gentleman and I will be one until you tell me that I no longer have to be.”
I can feel my face flush ten different shades of red while my body can’t decide what it wants to do with itself. I clear my throat, trying to hold onto my composure and these sudden waves of intense feelings that have come sweeping into me. “Well then, do you like to cuddle?”
He smiles and cleans up the rest of the cards. “I am a very good cuddler.”
John slides into bed next to me. My head is all over the place. I am still breast feeding my youngest and I think to myself what if my body ultimately betrays me and I have to explain soaked sheets in the morning. Or worse yet what if one of the panic attacks that I have frequently been getting since Phil died takes over in the night and I wake up into it again, terrified that Phil is dying all over again. Then I look over at John and the noise in my head seems to stop. He invites me to lay down next to him and I let him hold me for the first time.
A warm and peaceful feeling washes over me when he touches me for the first time and within moments, I am fast asleep and beside John, I sleep through the night for the first time since my husband died.
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 