Finny

by Justin Kramon

  Graduation. A muggy morning. Finny lifting her robe to get some air on her legs. Afterward, Laura and Sylvan taking Finny to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. They got seated at a table for two, since it was all that was available and no one had thought to make a reservation. Laura looked much older than she had when Finny started college; when she smiled, lines appeared on her face like cracks in ice. For the first time, Finny could imagine the way her mother would look as an old woman. Laura grinned a lot, but Finny and Sylvan did most of the talking. They both knew this was the routine now when they visited their mother, who hadn’t been the same after the trouble with Gerald. The lunch made Finny think about her father for the first time in a while, and they all laughed when the waiter brought out a plate of General Tso’s chicken and Finny insisted on calling it Chicken à la Picasso.

  Another publication for Earl. He wrote Finny with the news. They’d communicated a little by mail—no calls—keeping each other up to date. Finny didn’t see the harm in it, since they weren’t getting back together. This time his story was coming out in a magazine called Trophy, which Earl said could be found in the most dimly lit and out of the way corner of Barnes & Noble…. Finny wrote him congratulations. When the story came out that summer, she read it, sitting in a Barnes & Noble café. The story was beautiful—about a woman who goes to a doctor to get a skin cancer treated, and it ends up bringing up all these memories about her father dying and her losing the man she loved. It was a long, wandering, lyrical story, and it went back and forth in time. By the end, Finny had a sense of such great loss and sorrow that she actually began to weep in the middle of the bookstore. She’d been transported by the story, and she didn’t know how Earl could write so convincingly about a middle-aged woman. He seemed able to tap into some sadness in his stories, some truth and wisdom he didn’t always have in real life. She wrote him again that night to say it was one of the best stories she’d ever read.

  The move to Cambridge. Finny had loved the area when she’d visited Sylvan at college, and so, on a whim, she decided to move there. More boxes, more dirty bedsheets flung over furniture. She and Sylvan had actually traded places, since Sylvan was now pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology at Bryn Mawr, outside Philadelphia. Finny got a job hostessing at a restaurant near Harvard Square. She liked the work, though she knew she could hardly make a career of it. So she started interning for a literary magazine at Harvard, reading their fiction submissions, hoping to put her English degree to work.

  It didn’t even occur to her that both her jobs were in exactly the areas Earl worked in. She didn’t analyze herself that way. She simply wrote Earl the news, and they even chatted on the phone once in a while. Earl told Finny he had an agent now, but it was hard to sell a collection of stories. He was still living across the hall from his mother, because it was cheap and it allowed him the mornings to write. She didn’t ask if he was living with anyone. Mona had become a partner at the salon, as promised. Finny asked Earl if he was writing a novel, and he said, “No. Stories are my thing.” He was almost finished with an undergraduate degree in France.

  An invitation forwarded from Laura, to attend “the union of Judith Marie Turngate and Milton Gaylord Hollibrand.” Finny had been in Cambridge a couple years already, but had never given Judith the address. The wedding notice was written in a simple blue script, on a white background, with a plain blue trim. Finny knew they must have spent thousands on the invitations alone. She looked at the two boxes: Yes, I will attend and With regrets, I am unable to attend. There was no room on Finny’s card to add a guest. She thought of simply not returning the card. Then she thought of checking the regrets box and adding a little note. But in the end, she decided to attend. Anything else would have been too dramatic. And she had to admit—she was curious.

  The ceremony, which the Turngates and Hollibrands had set up through their many connections, was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They rented out the Egyptian tomb area for the reception, which turned out to be a five-course formal catered dinner. The only whimsical element was that when the glasses for the toast were handed out, Finny realized they contained cranberry juice—which must have been a point of great importance to Mr. Turngate. Hal Hollibrand offered a toast to the married couple, in which he called their union “the greatest merger I’ve ever seen,” and afterward he shook hands with the Turngates like they were sealing a business deal.

  Luckily, Finny was seated next to Carter, who provided lots of entertaining commentary on all the distinguished-looking guests. He told Finny that Prince’s parents—who were both rather small—had adopted the mutant Prince when Bonnie Turngate had made noise about adopting a baby from China. They were always trying to show each other up. He also said that the only thing tackier than having a wedding reception on top of a national treasure was if they had actually set up the bar inside the Egyptian tomb, giving the guests little mummies to stir their drinks with.

  Halfway through dinner, he came out with his news. “I have a boyfriend, Finny. A steady one. First time in my life. His name is Garreth, which is the gayest thing I’ve ever heard. And my name’s Carter.” It was then that Judith and Prince started making their rounds. Judith appeared at Finny’s table looking almost too beautiful, her cheeks slightly blushed, her skin golden against the white dress. Prince was grinning, his enormous chest nearly bursting the seams of his tuxedo. Finny did have to admit they looked pleased together. “I’m so happy you came,” Judith said to Finny. And Prince added, “It means so much to us.” Judith and Finny said they’d have to get together, though Finny knew her former friend would never call. Only when the newlyweds walked away did Carter say, “I’ll bet his dick is the size of a Mike and Ike.”

  Finny chatting with one of her managers at the restaurant during a slow afternoon. Mentioning she had a minor in education. “Are you serious?” the manager said. Her name was Brandy, but everyone called her Bee. She told Finny that a friend of hers was responsible for hiring at a kindergarten in Boston and they were looking for a teacher’s assistant. Asked Finny if she might be interested. Finny said sure, and got the job at the interview. In a month, when one of the head teachers left to have a baby, Finny took over her position. It was a fluke, but she loved her new job. The kids called her Miss Finn.

  Some dates: a bartender at the restaurant where she’d worked; a divorced father of one of the kids she taught; a man she’d been set up with who worked in film and kept talking about all the people he knew at HBO and how close they were to buying his projects. Sometimes Finny slept with them; sometimes she didn’t. It was based more on how lonely she felt at the time than how attracted she was to the man. Nothing lasted for more than a couple months, which was fine with her.

  Finny’s apartment in Cambridge: the bottom floor of a two-story home owned by a Brazilian couple. The house’s address was on a little one-way street called Berkshire Street, but the place was tucked behind another row of houses, so you could access it only by an alleyway. Quiet in the apartment all day. Plus it was enormous—a bedroom and a study off the large kitchen, and then a separate living room down the hall. It was one of the reasons she found it so hard to contemplate leaving Cambridge. She was paying less than a thousand a month. The Almeidas liked her, and they saw no reason to change tenants.

  Sundays she met Bee from her old restaurant job, or other teachers at her school, and they stood in line at the S & S deli to get a table for brunch. Latkes and blintzes, mimosas in soda glasses. Dinner plans once or twice a week, or stopping by to see her aunt Louise, who happened to live just outside Boston with her new crop of cats. Concerts—at Symphony Hall or the Middle East or the Orpheum—which Finny was happy to attend by herself if no one else wanted to go. Last-minute theater tickets, or catching the Alvin Ailey or Paul Taylor troupes when they came to town. Coffee shops she loved, and bars and restaurants and bookstores. Laughing at the women’s magazines like she used to in college, even once sending in a letter to the editor (I mastered all twenty “blow his head o
ff” orgasm techniques, she wrote, but my kitchen still doesn’t look as clean as the one in the photo), which came back to her with a polite rejection slip saying they valued her subscription and would she like to renew it with a special “career woman” rate? Dim sum at China Pearl. The Museum of Fine Arts, which was free for Finny since she was a teacher. Time rolling by. Another summer and another.

  Sarah Barksdale calling Finny from her place in Philadelphia, saying, “Finny, I’m engaged!” Finny congratulating her, having to hold the phone a couple inches from her ear, the way she had with Sarah’s mother. Then, a month later, another call. “We had a fight. It was the dumbest thing. About who was paying the security deposit. It just blew up. We broke it off.” Sarah crying into the phone, Finny telling her it was okay, better they found out now. Thinking of Earl, the time they’d fought in Paris before her purse was stolen. She told Sarah to give it a few weeks. She would know if it was the right thing. There was nothing they couldn’t take back. And Sarah thanking Finny, saying she knew Finny was right.

  Teaching. Finny loved the children, all the adorable comments they made, the seriousness over cutting out paper circles, gluing glitter to a square of cardboard. Finny laughed at their little arguments. A boy telling a girl that Christmas was about family, and the girl disagreeing, saying she was pretty sure it was about Jesus. They went back and forth for several minutes until Finny said it was about something different in everyone’s house, and in her house it was about presents. Which both seemed to like. Nice to dispatch of problems so neatly, like putting silverware in a drawer. And the health benefits were good. And she had her summers free. She couldn’t see any reason to change, so she just kept renewing the contract, accepting the little salary hikes she got each year.

  Until one summer, when she was achingly bored with the job, and on a whim she applied for an internship at a small women’s magazine called Doll’s Apartment in New York. She found an artist who was willing to do an apartment swap with her, so she ended up with a disheveled studio in Chelsea that reeked of insecticide. Finny was in her thirties, hardly the type to take an unpaid pencil-sharpening position, but still, it was an adventure. She wrote little captions beneath the photos they gave her, read the slush pile, even contributed a couple of small opinion pieces. (One she particularly liked about the locker-room way men always refer to male writers by their last names and female writers by their whole names.) The editor she worked under, Julie Fried, an almost frighteningly tall and broad-shouldered woman who wore no makeup and kept her red hair in a loose ponytail, liked Finny a lot. Told her she was “fresh.” Offered her a permanent job at a bracingly low salary. The work was fun, but not something Finny could make a career of, so she said thanks, but she’d bow out at the end of the summer.

  The call from Sylvan: “Did you hear?” he said. Finny on a plane to Baltimore the next morning. She and Sylvan sitting by their mother’s hospital bed, watching her nap. An enlarged heart, the doctor had said. Funny, it was so much like what had killed their father. A warm, cloudless afternoon, the sun golden as an apricot, slipping behind the buildings outside, casting the room in a honey-colored light. The hospital seemed unnaturally quiet. Shadows stretched across the floor. Laura’s mouth twitched as she slept, and once in a while she whispered things Finny couldn’t make out. A nurse placed a tray of food in front of Laura while she was still asleep. Sylvan mouthed Thank you to her.

  Laura waking in the middle of the night and saying, “You have to understand.” She stared at Finny and Sylvan with her eyes wide, burning.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” Sylvan said, stroking her hand.

  “No!” Laura said, looking at Finny. “I just wasn’t strong.”

  “It’s okay,” Finny said.

  “I just wanted everything to be nice,” Laura said. “I thought everyone would hate me if it wasn’t nice.”

  Finny thought of her mother’s pointers, the childlike way she talked to other adults, the preening and politeness, the flirting. How easy it must have been for Gerald to snatch her up, to see that behind the door was just a frightened child, a kid who wanted nothing more than to please, who wanted everyone to like her.

  “Mom,” Finny said, “I forgive you.”

  Sylvan looked down.

  But Laura didn’t say anything else. She died in the morning.

  Over gristly chicken salad sandwiches in the hospital cafeteria, they cried a bit. Then Sylvan told Finny he was in a new relationship, and it was going well. Her name was Maureen, but he called her Mari. When he showed Finny the picture, she said, “I know her.” Because it was the curly-haired girl Carter had come to the party at Judith’s with—the party where Finny had run into Earl. It turned out Sylvan had met Mari through Judith, and they’d liked each other, but of course they’d never done anything about it because of Judith. Mari was much less beautiful than Judith. Sylvan said she was a yoga instructor, quiet at first but a good person. They were thinking of moving in together in Philadelphia. It sounded like a good fit.

  After lunch Sylvan called Mari. The memory of Judith’s party put Finny in mind of Earl, and she thought of calling him, too. But didn’t. Why would she now? They hadn’t talked in years. She’d tell him about her mother the next time they spoke. If they spoke.

  Now she’d lost both her parents. She and Sylvan were the oldest generation in their family. Finny felt as if she’d seen the best and worst that relationships had to offer. She thought it was time to make some decisions about her life. About how it would go from here on out. She was thirty-four years old.

  Book Three

  From Here On Out

  Chapter 32

  Finny Gets a Glimpse into the Lives of Her Friends

  It was Judith Turngate, again, who brought them all back together. This time she’d sent an email, inviting everyone to a Memorial Day weekend at her summer house on Dune Road in Westhampton Beach. (She and Prince also had an apartment in the city.) The email went to three people: Finny, Sylvan, and Carter. But they were told to bring friends or significant others, anyone they wanted. Finny’s invitation was followed by a personal note from Judith. Hey, Shorty Finn! I just thought of having this “reunion” at the last minute. The weather’s been beautiful on the island. Prince and I have the barbecue set up. I’ve just been thinking how it would be nice if we could all be friends again. Please come if you can.

  “Did you see that email from Judith?” Sylvan asked Finny on the phone the same day she’d received the invitation.

  “It was pretty unexpected,” Finny said.

  She and her brother talked on the phone a couple times a week, now that their mom had passed away. Sylvan was working as a counselor at Stradler College, Finny’s alma mater. They talked about the news in their lives, about old memories, anything that came up. Finny felt closer to Sylvan than to anyone else in the world. Maybe it was just that she and her brother had been through so much together. But she also had a lot of respect for Sylvan, for how he’d dealt with his pain, for who he’d become. She was certain he’d be an excellent therapist.

  “Are you gonna go?” Sylvan asked.

  “I don’t know. Are you? If you do, you should bring Mari.”

  “The thing is, she’s going to her mother’s that weekend. I actually have nothing to do.”

  “Well then,” Finny said.

  “Well then, what?”

  “I think we should go. Maybe it’ll give some kind of closure. Prove that we’re over it and we can just have a nice time together. You shrinks are into closure, aren’t you?”

  Sylvan laughed. “We’re into charging for it.”

  “Who knows? You might get a chance to do that, too.”

  “At least it’ll be a chance for us to catch up. I have a surprise for you. I’ll save it till when I see you.”

  “Is it a bill?” Finny asked.

  “That’s coming in the mail,” Sylvan said.

  Finny took the Chinatown bus to New York on Saturday afternoon, then the subway to West Fou
rth. She was planning to meet Carter at the restaurant his boyfriend managed, just off Washington Square Park. Then they were going to ride out to Long Island in Carter’s car. Their plan was to get to Judith’s for dinner.

  Carter was waiting in front of the restaurant when Finny arrived. She was wearing her backpack the way she did when she used to visit New York in college. It was a gray afternoon, the clouds above them thick as batter, threatening rain. Carter was talking to a shortish man with a beard who looked to be about forty. Finny assumed it was Garreth, the boy friend. He was soft-looking but attractive, and he wore a somewhat shiny tan shirt and dark slacks. Both he and Carter were smoking cigarettes.

  “Now,” Carter said, smacking a kiss on Finny’s lips, “look what the D train dragged in. It’s beautiful to see you, Finny Short.”

  “You, too,” Finny said. She noticed Carter was looking a little soft himself, not his usual shipshape skin-and-bones self. His belly pushed at his black Jimi Hendrix T-shirt like a pumpkin beneath a sheet. His hair was parted neatly, not bedraggled like it used to be.

  “I’m clean and I’m not smoking anymore,” Carter said, taking a long drag from his cigarette, then tossing it into the street. “That’s why I look like a damn oven stuffer roaster. All I have are bonbons to keep me warm. By the way, this is Garreth.”

  Garreth shook Finny’s hand, told her it was nice to meet her, that he’d heard so much about her. He seemed a little shy, Finny thought, but pleasant. He looked her in the eyes when they shook hands.