We found the pillow for the ring bearer, our grand-nephew Jase Catullo, superquick. I don’t know what people did before the Internet, because we Googled “ring bearer pillows with a cherry blossom theme,” and four hundred options came up—and then we had to choose one! We didn’t want to put the actual rings on the pillow, just in case something happened along the way with all the hustle and bustle, so we sewed on our original 2001 commitment rings (so they wouldn’t fall off), and our friend Wayne kept the real rings in his pocket. Wayne was very concerned that he wouldn’t remember which was mine and which was Kim’s because we don’t have the same finger size, so I told him to put mine in his right pocket because I’m always right. He didn’t like that idea and suggested instead, “Right pocket, because you always think you’re right!”
We had a lot of fun choosing the food for our reception. It was another team effort—we brought Emily and her wife, Annie; our nephew Jeff; and his wife, Chris. Jeff’s a former Auburn University football player, a big guy who loves food, and we specifically picked him because we knew he’d have opinions. It wound up being hilarious, because he had very clear and specific opinions on everything we tasted. He’d say, “This slider, the meat is good, but it’s not the right bun; the bun is too puffy, it’s overwhelming,” or “This would be good if it was half its size,” or “This would be good with more of this, less of that . . .” Not surprisingly, we wound up choosing a lot of Italian things, and we made sure that there was a ton of it because the Catullos love food. A lot of the guests were big food people, too, and you just don’t want people to leave hungry.
As the final week approached, Kim and I were feeling that wonderful mix of emotions: we were happy and excited and nervous. We only had a short list of things that needed to be done, and all of them were totally doable. Given my Irish heritage, I should have been expecting the potato famine to start at any moment, but I have to admit that I’d totally let my guard down. So when the bad news came, it came as a terrible shock.
CHAPTER 14
Shadows
It was a gorgeous morning, the day before our wedding, and if everything had gone according to plan, we would have been headed to the nail salon or to the florist for a final check of the flowers. Instead Kim and I were sitting in a sparsely furnished and depressing doctor’s office at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her brother—my soon-to-be brother-in-law Anthony Catullo. Anthony was an identical twin and seventeen years my senior, but since I’d first met him ten years prior, he’d always felt like my younger brother—an irresistible, six-foot-four-inch-tall little brother who was my biggest champion, who would do anything for me, and who frequently drove me up the wall.
Anthony had lived a pretty wild life in New York City as a bartender during the Studio 54 era, and he knew everybody there was to know. After I met Kim’s family, he and I quickly became very close. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about him; everybody did, including all the nieces and nephews, who were never happier than when they were spending the day in the city with their uncle Anthony seeing a Broadway show. And somehow he got tickets to every musical you could name.
Just one story about Anthony. He was at the theater with one of his very young nephews who was having a hard time seeing over the person seated in front of him. Anthony folded up his coat and put it on the seat under his nephew so he could sit on top of it. Before the curtain went up, the woman behind Anthony’s nephew complained to the usher that he shouldn’t be allowed to sit on his coat, because now he was blocking her view. The usher didn’t seem very happy about having to do it, but he told Anthony that his nephew couldn’t sit on the folded-up coat. So rather than putting up a fight, Anthony traded seats with his nephew and sat in front of the woman who had complained to the usher. Anthony was big—over six feet tall. He didn’t confront the woman; he just quietly sent her a message. That was Anthony in a nutshell.
Earlier in the week before the wedding, Anthony had gotten a preliminary diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and now, following additional tests, we were back for the final verdict. From everything I knew about pancreatic cancer, it was pretty much hopeless, even in the best of circumstances. As the doctor reviewed Anthony’s case with us, my attention kept being drawn to the hospital computer’s screen saver, which alternated between beautiful scenes of the ocean and snow-capped mountains. I remember thinking, Why in God’s name do you have that running on your computer screen when you’re delivering such horrible news? Do you really think pretty pictures are going to help?
Given that I instinctively expect the worst, I might not have been shocked when we heard the test results. Still, the doctor’s words took my breath away, and the implication was almost more than I could take in. While pancreatic cancer was an aggressive disease, he explained, Anthony was a good candidate for surgery—for the Whipple procedure, which he explained in detail using a diagram. The Whipple, in combination with chemotherapy, wasn’t a cure, but it could buy us time—months, maybe years.
As the doctor took us on a detailed tour of a diagram of the stomach and pancreas, I stopped listening because I thought I was going to faint or throw up or both. I absolutely could not let myself do that, so I silently repeated to myself, Don’t throw up, you can’t throw up, don’t throw up. When I finally was able to focus again, I heard the doctor explain that despite how obviously jaundiced Anthony was, he was not in a life-threatening situation, and that his focus right now should be on getting to the wedding. Anthony made it clear to the doctor that more than anything, he needed to go to the wedding on the following day. The doctor said, “I want you to enjoy this wedding. We know it’s really important to you. You’re going to be there, and you should be happy.”
Everyone we dealt with at the hospital seemed to know about the wedding. Anthony had told us that the day before, when he went to the hospital for an MRI, the nurse who signed him in said, “We all know about the wedding. It’s like our wedding here in New York City. We’re going to get you to that wedding.” Anthony was so proud of us and so excited that I’m sure he told that nurse—and every other nurse and doctor at Sloan-Kettering—everything about the wedding, including details we’d asked him to keep private. And if Anthony hadn’t told them about the wedding, it had already been all over the news, so it wasn’t exactly a secret that Kim and I were about to be married.
We were a bit stunned by how much press attention our wedding drew, but it had been less than a year since gay people were allowed to marry in New York, and I was the most prominent elected official in the state to take advantage of the new law. On the way out of our apartment building earlier that morning, the doorman at the front desk was reading AM New York, one of New York’s free daily newspapers, and there was a huge picture of me on the front page with the headline THE BRIDE & THE PRIDE. I grabbed it out of his hands to get a better look. The subhead read CITY COUNCIL SPEAKER QUINN SET FOR HISTORIC NUPS SATURDAY. We’d had no heads-up that AM was even doing a story, so it was a total surprise to see my picture on the front—and it was actually a nice picture, which was an even bigger surprise.
As devastated as Anthony was by the diagnosis, he seemed far more concerned about making it to the wedding—and not spoiling the day for us—than he was about his cancer diagnosis. Later, as we were leaving the hospital, he told us, “I want you both to get the family on the phone and tell them what the situation is, and then I don’t want to talk about it again all weekend.”
But before we could leave the hospital and make those calls, Anthony had to have blood tests. They’d scheduled a minor procedure for the day after the wedding to clear a blocked bile duct, which was why he’d turned yellow. They had to clear up the jaundice before they could do the big surgery, which was scheduled for two weeks later, just after we returned from our honeymoon.
From the doctor’s office we had to go to another part of the hospital for Anthony’s blood tests, but Kim and I wanted to speak privately with the doctor about the pr
ognosis. We didn’t want to ask in front of Anthony. So we suggested to Anthony that he rest for a few minutes while we went out into the hallway with the doctor. The doctor didn’t hedge about what a difficult cancer this was, but he wasn’t willing to give us a specific amount of time. He said, “You really can’t say at this point. We just have to wait until after the surgery to know.” And he added, “I’m sorry.”
We went back in and got Anthony and walked slowly—Anthony was very weak—through a maze of hallways to the other part of the hospital. Halfway there it dawned on me that I hadn’t been back to Sloan since I was sixteen, when my mother had been a patient there. I let Anthony and Kim get ahead of me, because I was feeling overwhelmed and didn’t want Anthony to see me upset. I ducked into a small corner of the hallway and began crying uncontrollably.
Looking back, I can see that the experience of being at Sloan with Anthony triggered those old feelings of powerlessness and terror that I had experienced the first time it was clear my mother was going to die. Now here I was about to lose someone I loved all over again, and there was nothing I could do about it. In that moment I was no longer a forty-five-year-old woman who was about to marry the love of her life. I was no longer the second-most-powerful elected official in New York City. I was a sixteen-year-old girl terrified of having to live without one of the most important people in her life.
Kim, who had no idea that I wasn’t directly behind her, continued on to the waiting room and got Anthony settled before coming to look for me. After retracing her steps, she found me huddled in a corner near a storage closet, sobbing. She put her arm around me and asked what was going on, and all I could say through the tears was “I’m so sorry.” Here she was already dealing with her own pain over the likelihood that she was going to lose her brother, and on top of it she had to deal with me, in a puddle of tears in a very public place.
Gasping for breath, I told Kim how sorry I was for breaking down. She asked, “What’s wrong, other than the obvious?” I had a hard time talking but managed to say, “I haven’t been in this hospital in thirty years, not since my mother died, and I can’t believe I’m here the day before our wedding.” And then I began to really sob.
She gently guided me to the nearest ladies’ room, where we’d have some privacy. She was very sweet and helped me pull myself back from 1982, when I lost my mother, to the present day. She said she hadn’t realized that I’d not been back to Sloan-Kettering since then and added, “I could never imagine walking into St. Barnabas in Livingston, New Jersey, the day before my wedding.” That’s the hospital where Kim’s mother had died when she was seventeen. She said, “You’re going through so much. You need to stay here. I’ll go back and deal with Anthony.”
I didn’t want Kim to have to go back alone, so I dried my eyes, and we joined Anthony in the waiting room. When we walked in, we noticed a bunch of people reading AM New York with that huge picture of me on the cover. Anthony had already noticed and had a big smile on his face.
Reflecting back on that morning, I feel terrible about breaking down. I should have been the one comforting Kim. But once it occurred to me where I was after all these years, there was nothing I could do to stop the tears. That morning I thought I’d had everything under control. All the wedding preparations were complete. I’d stepped in to make sure Anthony was taken care of: I’d found the specialists, talked to the doctors, made the appointments, everything. I was concerned about Kim. I was worried about Anthony. But I hadn’t stopped to think about—and steel myself for—the impact all of this might have on me in light of what I’d lived through earlier in my life.
But dark sometimes yields to light, and it did that day. That evening we had the wedding rehearsal and then the rehearsal dinner. By the time we got to the venue, I had pulled myself together. When I practiced walking down the aisle with my father, I was crying again, but this time it was tears of joy.
From the rehearsal, we all went to a tiny restaurant, Piccolo Angelo, in the West Village, which is owned by this lovely family. We were about forty in all in a space that could hold maybe forty maximum. It was very cozy, loud, and festive, and the delicious Italian food kept flowing from the kitchen.
Then our goddaughter Olivia sang. She’d already been on the news because her mom was making our wedding cake, and when one of the local news stations in New York went down to interview her mom, Olivia was in the bakery, and the reporter said, “I’ve heard about you. You’re the one who’s going to sing at the wedding. Will you tell me what you’re going to sing?” She said, “I can’t tell you that.” So he said, “Will you sing anything?” And so she sang an a cappella version of “Danny Boy.”
Three-quarters of the way through dinner, when we were talking about Olivia being on the news, Kim asked Olivia if she’d sing “Danny Boy” for us. Kim said, “It’s beautiful, just let her sing it.” So she sang it, and it knocked us all out. And sure enough, my dad was crying, but everyone was crying, including the owner of the restaurant, so he certainly wasn’t alone.
Afterward Kim asked me if I wanted to say something, and I choked up again—because I was so happy. But through my tears I managed to say that in my wildest dreams I never thought I’d have a wedding day, that I never thought I’d get to be the beautiful bride.
Then Kim talked, and she said, “I just want to thank all of you. We have such an amazing family now officially comprised of our Italian and Irish contingents.” Then she added, “I don’t mean to be overblown about this, but we’re going to change the world tomorrow in some small way. If some gay child or some parent of a gay child sees this, then we will change their world for the better. What an amazing thing that will be. So as the person who didn’t want a big wedding, the thought of making some teenager like me feel that much better, earlier, well, that’s a wonderful thing.”
At the end of the evening, someone put a Dean Martin song on, and we all danced the tarantella, which is a traditional Italian dance. There wasn’t room, but before the song was over, we were all up on our feet laughing and dancing. It was the happy ending to a day that started so sadly, and the perfect way to kick off our wedding weekend.
CHAPTER 15
Wedding Day
The morning of the wedding we got up with the sun so we could exchange gifts before we changed out of our pajamas. We settled in on the sofa with our mugs of coffee, and Kim gave me her gift. Inside the small, perfectly wrapped box was a beautiful rose gold watch that was inscribed “For all time 5/19/12.” She knew that my mother had left me a number of rose gold pieces, so a rose gold watch would be a welcome reminder of her. She also knew that I needed a good watch and that I’d see it every day and think of her and be reminded that she wasn’t going anywhere despite my worries.
My present for Kim came in a big plywood box that had been impossible to wrap, so I gave it to her just as it was. I knew she would have no idea what it was. The gallery where she had first seen it years before was out of business. Eight years earlier, around the time we bought the beach house, we had passed by a gallery in Asbury Park and seen a Bruce Springsteen photograph in the window. It was a black-and-white picture from 1982 of Bruce in a pickup truck in Brewster, New York. Kim is a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and loved the photograph, but at the time we had recently bought the shore house, and she felt the photograph was too expensive, so she didn’t buy it. Over the years, whenever we drove by the gallery, Kim would always comment about how she regretted not buying it. And then the gallery closed.
Luckily I’d saved the owner’s card, so when I decided to try to hunt down the photograph, I had someplace to start.
With my friend Wayne’s help, I found the gallery owner in Arizona. She had sold the photograph to a friend in New Mexico, but when I explained what it was for, she persuaded the friend to sell it back to her, and she sold it to me.
You should have seen the expression on Kim’s face when she opened the box. She would be the first to tell you she was blown away that I’d tracked it down for h
er. I think that she would have been surprised even if I hadn’t had to go hunting for it, but she said that my putting that much effort into tracking it down made it feel all the more special.
After the exchange of wedding gifts, we changed into our workout clothes and headed out for the nine a.m. spinning class at SoulCycle in Tribeca. We thought it would be fun to take friends and family, who were willing to go, to what had become our favorite exercise place. Exercise was relatively new to me. I had never liked to do it, never. I knew it was important, but after playing sports in high school, I had not exercised regularly again until about two years ago. That was around the time I was looking to lose weight, and my friend Annie, who was crazy for spinning, suggested I take a class. So once when Kim and I went away for a weekend, the place we were staying had a spinning class, and we both tried it and kind of liked it and started going to SoulCycle a couple of times a week. The short, intense classes fit into my work schedule, and I liked doing something where I simply had to follow instructions. And it’s something Kim and I enjoy doing together. Also, the music is very loud, so if you’re screaming in pain (which I often am) no one can hear you. And as I came to discover, in addition to helping me lose weight and stay fit, the exercise has helped take the edge off my occasional anxiety and gives me a sense of relief.
With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir Page 16