Finny

by Justin Kramon

  “That’s fantastic!” Dorrie said. She had her hair pulled back, which gave her nose a pointy look.

  “I know. I can hardly wait,” Finny said.

  “Does he know where he’s going to live?”

  “I think in an apartment near here. Maybe in a building with some Stradler students.”

  “Wow,” Dorrie said, practically glowing over Finny’s news.

  “It feels like he’s never going to get here,” Finny said.

  Dorrie breathed quickly from her nose—like a laugh, but without smiling. “I know how that is,” she said. “But you should try to enjoy it.”

  “Enjoy what?”

  “The waiting, I mean. You still have all these ideas about how it’s going to be and what you’ll do together and the way your place will look. But the thing is, it’s never quite like that, exactly. I mean, it’s never the way it is in your mind. Not that it’s bad. I love living with Steven. But there’s something different about being in it. It doesn’t have the same sparkle.”

  “Do you love Steven?” Finny asked.

  “Of course I love him,” Dorrie said, with what seemed like the first hint of annoyance Finny had ever glimpsed in her. “It has nothing to do with whether I love him. There’s other things. I’m just telling you, there’s something nice about having stuff to look forward to. Once you’re there, you realize it’s just the same from here on out.”

  “Have you guys talked about what you’ll do after Steven graduates?”

  Then Dorrie came out with it. “I’m pregnant, Finny.” She must have been working around to it the whole time, but when she couldn’t find a space for her news, she just said it, dropped it like a piece of unwanted mail. Finny understood Dorrie had no one else to tell.

  “Does Steven know?” Finny asked.

  Dorrie nodded. And then she burst into tears. “And we haven’t even really had sex yet,” she sobbed. “We thought we should wait.” Dorrie lost herself to crying for a moment, though in between bouts of tears she described to Finny—in surprising detail—the medieval methods of birth control she and Steven had employed while technically not having sex. Finny felt terrible for her roommate. She wanted to ask her why she hadn’t just gotten some condoms from the health center. But of course that advice would have been useless now.

  “So, what are you going to do?” Finny asked.

  “What do you mean?” Dorrie seemed puzzled by the question.

  “I mean, about the baby.”

  “We’re going to get married over spring break,” Dorrie said, as if the answer were obvious. “I’m not going to get really fat until summer. Then I have to decide if I want to come back in the fall or take a semester off.”

  She started to cry again, and Finny found herself reaching across the table to touch Dorrie on the shoulder. This produced a fit of tears, and then a surprising statement from Dorrie. “I’m so happy about all this, Finny. It’s just—this isn’t the way I expected it to happen. I just have to accept that God’s plans aren’t always clear to us.”

  Finny took her hand back and put it in her lap. She wasn’t convinced God had anything to do with it. Finny picked up a piece of fried zucchini and took a bite. The zucchini was soggy now, floppy as a cooked noodle, and it left a puddle of oil on the plate. Finny put it down and wiped her hand on a napkin. She wasn’t sure how to respond to Dorrie.

  “How does Steven feel about all this?” Finny asked.

  “He seems to be taking it in stride,” Dorrie said. “He said we could get an off-campus apartment next year, if it’ll make things easier for me.”

  Or him, Finny thought. But she said, “That’s nice.”

  Dorrie nodded. She looked out the window, at the gray day. Something seemed to have caught her eye, but Finny couldn’t see it.

  “For a second,” Dorrie said, still looking out the window, “right when I found out, I wondered if I wasn’t making a huge mistake.”

  “About what?” Finny said, hoping Dorrie would say, Steven or Having a baby when I’m nineteen.

  But Dorrie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, and turned back to her meal. She plucked a piece of lettuce out of her salad bowl with her fingers and ate it. “That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t know what my problem is. I think it’s just the hormones making me like this.”

  “Time to go!” one of the dining hall staff yelled at Finny and Dorrie. Finny knew the man. He’d come around and bang on the tables if you didn’t get up.

  “Well,” Finny said. They bused their uneaten food to the conveyor belt that would carry it back to the clattering kitchen.

  “I’m sorry,” Finny said to Dorrie when they were walking to the door. It was the best she could do.

  “It’s okay,” Dorrie said. “I’m just being stupid. It’s all a gift.”

  “No, you’re not,” Finny said.

  But Dorrie didn’t seem to hear. They walked out under the heavy sky, going separate ways.

  Then March came. The day of Earl’s arrival was warm, and something about the sudden change in weather made Finny feel as if spring were decidedly here. The air smelled of grass. Cross-country runners trotted across campus in shorts and T-shirts, and girls in tank tops laid down blankets on the stretch of lawn Stradler students called “the beach,” in front of Griffen Hall. Finny knew it was too early for this weather, that it had to be a false spring, but still, it brought hope.

  And then, just as Finny was heading out to meet Earl, taking her keys off the desk so she could lock the door behind her, the phone rang.

  She picked up.

  “Hello?” Finny said.

  “Finny, it’s Earl.”

  The moment she heard his voice she deflated. He was supposed to be on the plane. How could he be calling her?

  “I have some sad news,” he went on.

  “What?” she said. “What is it?” She could already feel the wave crashing down on her.

  “My mom. She’s in the hospital.”

  There was a pause, in which Finny knew Earl must have been trying to collect himself.

  “What happened?”

  “She tried to kill herself,” Earl said.

  It turned out that Mona had been more upset about Earl’s leaving than he’d let on. He’d wanted to convince himself that she could make it on her own, yet she’d cried most days, once she knew he’d bought his ticket. Often the fits would strike her out of nowhere. They’d be sitting at a meal, or watching a movie, and all of a sudden she’d just crumble. It was like watching her collapse, Earl said, the way she started to tremble, tears spilling from her eyes. She had become so dependent on him; she didn’t have anyone else in Paris. Her doctor was a psychiatrist in a state hospital, and he called her prescriptions in from his vacation home in Nice.

  Plus, Mona would never leave France. She’d moved there in desperation, fleeing her personal and familial problems. And now she was too scared to go anywhere else. She’d never held such a stable job as the one in the hair salon.

  Some days she told Earl she’d be okay, that he should live his life, and yet she could hardly get the words out before she was practically shivering with grief. As he told Finny about it, she heard Earl begin to cry himself.

  “I always thought she might do something,” he said. “Ever since I came to France in high school, I’ve felt like she was my responsibility. I felt like she was given to me in a way, to take care of. Like a baby on the doorstep or something. It’s a terrible way to think about your mother.”

  But Finny saw that Earl felt this way about both his parents. It had been something she’d admired about him, his instinct for caregiving. She remembered the way he used to help his dad out, offer encouragement, take over the wheel of their car when Mr. Henckel fell asleep. It was what Finny had seen in Earl’s story, in the way Chris fretted about leaving home. He felt a responsibility, as Earl did, to make sure everyone was all right.

  “Who found her?” Finny said, stupidly, since she already knew the answer.


  Earl was sobbing. “She was so out of it,” he said. “She took pills and tried to cut herself. Oh God.” Finny heard his breathing. “This is just so sad,” he finally got out. He sounded like a frightened child.

  “But she’s okay now?” Finny asked. It was the best way she could think of to be encouraging.

  Earl didn’t answer. All he said was, “I can’t come, Finny.”

  She didn’t know what to say. How could this gift be torn from her again?

  Finally she asked, “How long are you staying for?”

  “I can’t leave,” Earl said. “I can’t do that to her.”

  Finny looked at her keys, which she’d now placed back on the desk. “What are you saying?” she asked.

  “This is where I’m needed. I don’t have a choice.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  Then it happened. She didn’t know how, but she felt it, that slightest shift, like a cloud passing over the sun. “How can you ask me that?” he said. “Honestly. How can you worry about yourself?”

  She felt a hot wave ripple down her body. She realized it was hatred she felt—hatred toward Mona. For being so helpless. Demanding so much. The feeling was so intense as to be physical, like hunger or cold. And then, with the same swift certainty, she felt her anger turn toward Earl. It was a wretched, jarring move, but she couldn’t quiet her own clamoring needs. She’d never felt anything so strongly in her life. She hated him. She hated Earl. He’d done this to her. Made her into this. Only now could she see how her old self—that gutsy, bold, rebellious girl—had been squelched by her love for him. Maybe that was why Mona’s neediness made Finny so angry—it was so much like her own.

  “Don’t do this,” she said to Earl. Her voice was rough, like her throat had been scraped. It didn’t even sound like her. “It’s an excuse. You’re nervous about coming. Take a minute to think—”

  “Don’t analyze me.”

  “Your mom could easily fly over here when she’s better. There are plenty of places she could work.”

  “That’s not the point, Finny.” Something about hearing her name made her feel small, like when her parents used to lecture her about doing her homework or cleaning her room. “Don’t you see I need to be with her? That’s what I have to think about now. She’s asking how much I care about her.”

  So am I, Finny thought. And she didn’t want to ask anymore. All he had to say was that he’d do it, he’d leave for her. Then she’d relent. It would be proof enough. She saw that the argument had become a kind of test—of what he felt for her, how much he’d sacrifice.

  “I can’t do it anymore,” Finny said. “Live this way. I can’t sit around waiting.”

  “Then don’t.”

  A week later he called again. They talked a little about their fight, about how angry each had gotten, both trying to make light of it, to salvage what hadn’t been swept up in the torrent of it. Actually, it made Finny feel a little better, like they might be able to hoist themselves out of what had seemed an impossibly deep and dark hole. But when she asked him what he was up to, he said, “Not much. Just catching up with friends.”

  She didn’t know why, but some instinct told her to ask, “Who?”

  “I don’t know,” Earl said. “Just some high school friends.”

  “You slept with her, didn’t you? Camille.”

  “I guess.”

  It was like a door clicking shut in her mind. To think she’d waited so long, expected so much. The idea of how gullible she’d been made her almost physically ill. Like Earl in his fiction, she’d invented a character, built someone up out of the air, because she’d wanted so much for him to be real, to be what she needed.

  “Okay, Earl,” Finny said at last. She wasn’t even angry anymore. Just tired. “All right. That’s enough.”

  Chapter 31

  Another Interlude

  After Earl’s call, Finny felt as if the train that had carried her through her days had ground to a halt. There was a squeal of metal on metal, a hiss of breaks, the slow sigh of an engine coming to rest. The world seemed fixed in place. Eventually, though, it began again. The engine whirred, the train jolted forward. Life went on.

  And so did Finny’s story. Once again, this is not the place to linger. Here is another album of memories, a few handfuls of time.

  Schoolwork. She found that if she just sat there, her mind would wander. She’d stare at the wall, thinking of Earl, of what they’d said, of how they’d ended things. But if she fastened her mind to a task—to reading a certain number of pages in a physics text, or completing an English paper—she could keep herself from drifting back. Her grades were still strong. She hadn’t let herself slip.

  A call from Sylvan. Finally. Her brother saying he was sorry he hadn’t called sooner. It was a tough time. He’d had to accept that Judith wasn’t the right person for him. But he’d been feeling better lately. He said he’d been thinking of changing his major. He’d always been interested in psychology. He’d planned to be a history professor, but couldn’t see himself as a stuffy academic anymore. Something new in Sylvan’s voice. Not pain exactly. But he sounded older.

  A letter from Earl. His mom was doing better. I’m sorry I’ve been disappointing, he wrote. I just couldn’t think about anything clearly. I know you’re very angry at me. And you have a right to be. Just know that I still love you and think the world of you….

  Dorrie coming back to school with her belly round and taut as an overinflated beach ball. Her feet turned out when she walked. Finny putting her hand on Dorrie’s stomach, feeling the miniature Steven Bench give a couple of mild kicks. Then, a few weeks later, Dorrie showing up at Finny’s dorm room with a little red-faced howling infant. Not particularly cute, so Finny ended up telling Dorrie he was “quite a baby.”

  Another surprise in the mail: a videotape in a plain brown envelope, no return address. Playing it on the VCR in the lounge in her dorm. A picture of a female newscaster came on the screen, saying, “Now, here’s a story about a Baltimore couple who are making a difference in their community….” Then the screen flashed to a film of Mr. Henckel conducting a group of six-and seven-year-olds through the Bach minuet Finny used to play. Mr. Henckel’s comb-over flapping to the rhythm of the music. The story was about an after-school arts program that Poplan and Mr. Henckel had set up, funded through a charity Poplan had established. There was a clip of Poplan explaining how she wanted the program to be a fun, safe place for these kids to go. Then the tape cut to a picture of Poplan lining the children up to wash their hands before a game of Jenga. The story concluded with a quote by Mr. Henckel. “I just want these children to know that here the coffeepot is always warm for them.”

  A form arriving, asking Finny to check off a box for which major she’d like to pursue. She had no idea. She hadn’t even thought about it. Deciding to check off English, since she had the most credits in that one. Then she checked off a box for a minor in education, for no reason other than that it looked better than just a plain English major. And with that one stroke, a decade of her professional life was decided.

  A hot morning in September. The first day of classes Finny’s junior year. Walking into Griffen Hall and seeing Sarah Barksdale holding a notebook, checking her mail. Finny was about to run. Any reminder of Finny’s former principal made Finny grit her teeth. But she decided she had to say hi. She walked over and tapped Sarah on the shoulder, reintroduced herself. Though Sarah was cursed with her mother’s grating voice, it turned out she had a sense of humor. She told Finny that Mrs. Barksdale had tried to get Miss Simpkin to spend a night “under cover” in the dorm with Sarah, in order to “evaluate the social dynamics.” But Sarah had convincingly argued that no one would act normally around Miss Simpkin, and furthermore, the idea of Miss Simpkin under cover of anything but a sweatsuit was ludicrous. Finny laughed, and she and Sarah ended up having lunch a couple times a month.

  Evenings in the library, sitting by herself at a synthetic wooden tab
le in the periodicals section, surrounded by the garish orange carpeting the school had laid down in a misguided attempt to keep students awake. Finny liked to sneak off here some Friday nights, when she was feeling gray, and thumb through old women’s magazines, laughing at the sex tips and social pointers, the pictures of smooth-skinned women lounging with their boyfriends on white comforters. It was a way to escape, to think that five blow job tips could save your relationship, or that you could find your career through a multiple-choice survey. She even took some of the surveys. Found out she’d be best suited for woodworking or pet clothing design.

  A party in one of the Stradler frat houses. Dim lighting, throbbing music, the sour smell of beer. Finny didn’t normally go to parties, but she’d promised Sarah Barksdale she’d stop by this one. They danced together for a while, until a tall, muscular boy with hair as red as Finny’s asked Finny to dance with him. The dancing turned out to be a lot of calculated rubbing, which, in combination with the three cups of astringent fruit punch she’d drunk, did the trick of putting Finny in the mood to stop by the boy’s dorm room. Finny said bye to Sarah and stumbled with the boy across the cold, dark lawn to his dorm. Inside his room, which was decorated with posters of jazz musicians, they kissed clumsily to a Bill Evans record, then began to take off their clothes. They ended up sleeping together a couple times before he graduated, after which they never talked again.

  A vacation with Sarah Barksdale in Mexico over spring break Finny’s senior year. Getting conned into paying rental insurance on the already overpriced rental car by a sweaty man who kept shrugging and saying, “This is Mexico. Anything can happen.” On their way back, at the Cancún airport, Finny and Sarah stopped in a duty-free to buy souvenirs for their families. There was a counter where an old white guy with silver hair was pouring samples of jarred salsa into plastic cups, and when Finny looked closely, she recognized the man. It was Gerald Kramp. When he saw Finny, he turned as red as the salsa. Finny bought two jars of mild from him, telling him she could do without the spices.