damn.
6/18
Steve and I went to the lake today. He was really moody. He keeps asking me what I’ll do if I get into Harvard or Princeton. As if I would turn one of them down! It’s so obvious that we’re going to split up when that time comes. I don’t know how I can keep playing this role until then. I already can’t remember what made me date him in the first place. I mean the physical element is still there, but aside from that, it’s hell. He can’t carry on a conversation that’s not about baseball or deer hunting or what so-and-so looks like. And he’s so VAIN. I don’t think he’s ever passed a mirror without looking into it. He’s always fixing his hair and asking me how it looks. He’s such agirl . Nobody would believe it, but he is. God, I want a guy I can talk to. I hope like hell the guys at college are different. The ones at colleges around here sure aren’t, though; they’re the Steves that left high school two or three years ago. Please let me get in early decision.
6/29
Played tennis with Ellen Elliott after work today (6-2, 6-1). She was so pissed. I wonder if they still make love. I really doubt it. Mom told me she heard that Ellen cheated on him a couple of years ago. Why would she do that? She’s got a guy most women would give their left ovary for and she’s cheating with some stupid tennis pro? Is there something I don’t know about Drew? Is he terrible in bed? Brilliant and interesting but incompetent between the sheets? No way. That can’t be it. They sleep in different rooms now. He says it’s because of his knee, but I’ll bet that dates back to the tennis pro. I bet I know why she did it, too. I’ve seen the insecurity in her, that need for constant reassurance. Like the breast implants.Way too big. Don’t ever let me be that pathetic.
7/1
Drew talks to me like an equal. None of the condescending crap I get from most adults around here. That drives me bat-shit . Most of them haven’t read a book in twenty years other than John Grisham or Nora fucking Roberts. The other day I made an allusion to John Updike and Mrs. Andersen thought I was talking about an actor. Hello?!!! Sometimes when his knee is really hurting, Drew asks me to read to him. I love it! He lies there on the sofa just looking at the ceiling. He lets me pick what I want to read, too. I read him a play by Paddy Chayefsky, one of Kesey’s books. Part of Goat. An essay by Ayn Rand. He asks me where I come up with this stuff. Nabokov would be too obvious, but once I tried to embarrass him by reading an incestuous sex scene from Anais Nin. He kept a straight face for about five minutes, then closed his eyes. When I got to the really explicit part, he started to snore. I really thought he’d fallen asleep! Bastard!
7/28
Ellen won’t look me in the eye when we’re in their house. On the tennis court we’re fine, but if she comes home while I’m keeping Tim, she won’t meet my gaze. It’s weird. It’s like she sees me as a threat. I go out of my way to speak to her, but she cuts every conversation short. Has she caught Drew looking at me when I’m not looking or something? Has he talked about me to her? Maybe she feels I’m usurping her position with Timmy. If it weren’t for Drew, I’d want out of there.
8/9
Drew’s knee has gotten a lot better. He’s talking about going on the mission trip to Honduras after all. Ellen told me I should go along, that it’s the kind of real-world experience that a lot of the kids going into the Ivy League may already have had. I mean, what? When I asked why she doesn’t go, she told me once was enough. She apparently got a case of dysentery in the Dominican Republic, and that killed her desire to help “the unfortunate” in any way except by writing a check. If he’s serious about letting me come, I’m going to do it! Why not? I’d love to see Honduras, and I’d really love to be with him somewhere without Ellen and Timmy. Just to see how we are.
On August 18, Drew and Kate flew to Honduras along with a team sponsored by a local church.
8/21
This is a journey into the unbelievable. Never have I seen people so poor, so sick, so helpless. Yet never have I seen smiles so broad, eyes so bright, or heard laughter so pure. I’ve shot a hundred pics already. My admiration for Drew grows every day that I watch him work. There are five other doctors with us-some of them specialists-but somehow Drew is the de facto leader of the team. I’ve watched the other doctors gape in awe as he works. Yesterday he removed four cancerous masses from a miner’s neck. Two of the other doctors warned him not to do it. They said the patient needed a hospital and general anesthesia. Drew said the guy would never get either, and that the cancer would probably cut off his air supply within a month. The operation took place under a tarp stretched over a picnic table. Drew injected the man with lidocaine, told him to be still, then cut on him for about an hour. He had to inject more lidocaine throughout the procedure, but the miner just smiled and murmured encouragement all through the operation. He somehow knew Drew was his last, best hope. I know one thing now: that’s the kind of man I want. Not a doctor, necessarily, but a man who’ll take risks to do what he knows is right. Who won’t be paralyzed by anxiety or rules or anything else. I want someone who acts. When Drew walked out of that tent, I waited until no one was around and then hugged him as tight as I could and told him I thought he was wonderful. Corny, maybe, but I don’t care. Anybody with eyes to see would have said the same.
8/22
Today I asked Drew if he believed in God. I mean, this is a mission trip, right? But it doesn’t seem to me that he’s into all the praying and Bible stuff the others talk about every night. He told me he doesn’t believe in the conventional concept of God. He said the idea of a God that watches the sparrow fall, that intervenes in human affairs, that rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked is a wishful fantasy. I asked him about life after death, and he just shook his head. “Come on,” I said. “What happens after you die?” He looked at me like he was a thousand years old and said, “Kate, when you die, you’re dead.” I think he’s watched a lot of people die in pain. “So this is all there is?” I asked. He nodded and said, “All we’ll ever know as individuals, anyway.” “Then I guess we’d better do all we can to be happy,” I said (which I believe). He looked so sad then, but he said, “I think you’re right.” And then I made this colossal blunder and said, “Are you happy with your wife?” I NEVER meant to say that. I meant to say, “Are you happy with your LIFE,” but it just came out, and I let it stand. He looked at me for a really long time without saying anything, and then he turned away. And then I knew. I guess I’d always known. He wasn’t happy, and he hadn’t been for a long time. And I wanted to make him happy, wanted it in a way I never wanted anything before. I wondered what would make him happy, and whether maybe I could. I knew then that I’d do whatever it took to take away the pain and loneliness in that face.
The mission team soon returned to Natchez, but too much had happened to go back to the way things were before.
8/27
It finally happened! We were talking in his workshop (fourth time I sneaked out) and it was really hot. His air conditioner was broken. I said we ought to go over to the Johnsons’ pool, since they’re out of town. Drew was worried at first, but then he said yes. We slipped through the trees and then across the open grass to the edge of their pool. He looked at me like he was unsure what to do, so I went first. I took off my top and my shorts, and then I walked into the water. I turned back and watched him strip to his underwear-boxer briefs. I couldn’t stop shivering. I’d seen him in just tennis shorts before, but this was different, because we were alone. We swam for a while, keeping our distance, talking from a few yards apart. But then finally we came together, and he held me while we talked. He moved out to where the water was about five feet deep, and I wrapped my legs around him and laid my head on his shoulder. We talked for a long time, and then we stopped talking. I asked if he wanted to kiss me. He didn’t say yes. He just raised my head, looked into my eyes, and did it. My whole body was quivering. I’d waited SO LONG for that moment. His kiss was so tender and knowing, not like Steve’s at all, not like anyone’s
