Fin & Lady: A Novel

by Cathleen Schine

  “A going-away toast,” she said, “to my son, who should know better,” and she swallowed a glass of warm champagne.

  “We will drink champagne and toast my Biffi every day, yes?” said Mrs. Deutsch. “You will read to me Colette. Such days! A fête, every day a fête.” Then she began to cry.

  Biffi put his arms around his little mother.

  “Take care of her, please,” he said to Fin.

  “Where’s your uniform?” Fin said.

  Biffi shrugged and said, “Soon enough.”

  “Too soon,” wailed Mrs. Deutsch. “Too soon.”

  Biffi spoke to her in Hungarian, then hugged Fin. “You will look after each other,” he said. He said it as a question.

  Fin said, “Good luck.”

  Biffi held out his hand. Fin grasped it, shook hands, and found, when he pulled his hand back, a wad of twenty-dollar bills there.

  “Whoa.”

  “For emergencies.”

  After Biffi had gone, Fin took Mrs. Deutsch up to his room. He had a small safe, a toy really, that Mirna had given him as a twelfth-birthday present. He kept his stash of grass there when he had any, but it was empty at the moment. He convinced Mrs. Deutsch to lock her paper bag of “medicinals” there.

  “See?” he said, as if he were talking to a little kid. “I’m putting my money there. So you can put your paper bag there, too. For safekeeping.”

  She closed the little door with a sigh of satisfaction and turned the red combination lock. “Now,” she said, “if only my son could be as safe.”

  She went back to the living room to crochet and drink champagne and cry.

  Fin sat on his bed and tried to ignore the weight of the emptiness he sensed everywhere in the house. Lady was gone. Biffi was gone. He looked out the window at the gardens of his neighbors, strangers. A cat walked delicately across a brick wall. There were three robins poking for worms in the dirt. The sky was a flat powdery blue. He wondered what the sky was like in Capri right at this moment, in Crete, in Vietnam. He went downstairs and found Mabel and asked her if she knew Biffi had left his mother with them.

  “Yes,” she said. “Not quite what I was expecting. But then nothing ever is.”

  Mirna called that night.

  “She’s not here,” Fin said. “She ran away.”

  “Very funny.”

  “She did. On a ship. To Capri. She left a note.”

  “Oy.”

  “Yup.”

  “Are you … okay?” Mirna said in her Mirna voice.

  “No.”

  Mirna was silent a moment. “Oy,” she said again. “Fin, you’ll come stay with me. Until Lady comes home. She’ll come home soon. I have a couch. It pulls out.”

  Stay with Mirna? Good grief. But he was touched that she would ask. She hated people in her apartment. They cluttered it up, she said. With themselves. “It’s okay,” he said. “Mrs. Deutsch is staying here. Biffi brought her. We are babysitting for each other. And Mabel’s here. Except she has to go home every night because she has a family. Did you know she has a family? She never mentioned it before. She has a sister with diabetes and two cats. And her son and his wife live two blocks away from her and they have two babies, a girl and a boy. I never knew any of that until Lady ran away. So I’m glad Lady ran away. Because now I know Mabel better. She’s a grandmother. Do you know I didn’t even know her last name? It’s Sparks.”

  He hung up.

  “Mabel,” he said, finding her in the kitchen, “Mirna invited me to stay with her. But I said no thank you.”

  “I’m thinking of throwing Miss Lady across my knee when she comes back.”

  “You could come to Italy when she sends for me. Then you wouldn’t have to wait as long. Except you have a whole family here.”

  “That’s the truth.”

  “Lady is my family.”

  “That’s the sad truth.”

  * * *

  The sad truth was everywhere that spring, an enormous sad truth, bigger than Fin’s. It filled the days and the nights and the street and the country and the world. Martin Luther King was assassinated. There were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam.

  Mrs. Deutsch was miserable, her son having gone off in the service of what she called a second-tier imperial nation. Fin was miserable, too, his sister having gone off the deep end, and they suited each other just fine. They sat upstairs after dinner watching television, something Lady would never have done. They both liked Bonanza.

  Downstairs, lurking, were the two remaining suitors.

  It occurred to Fin that Biffi had assigned his mother to baby-sitting duty not so she could look after Fin or so that Fin could look after her, but so she could look after his own marital interests.

  Sometimes Fin was so angry at Lady that he had to literally walk it off. An hour, two, three hours’ walk in the lengthening afternoons. He would compose angry letters to Lady in his head. You left me with a crabby, senile Hungarian lush, a superannuated high school prom king, and a rat-pack impersonator. How could you?

  Did he use those words? Not then, not striding through the streets in a fury. He used those words later, years later, when he tried to explain how angry he’d been and how, after taking one of these walks of wrath, he would think of a horse, a wild horse, a mustang, no, a thoroughbred, prancing, eyes rolled back, nostrils flared, backing away, its head high, and that vision of that horse would make him think of Lady and of her suitors and of her ward, him, and of life itself, and he would think, Of course she ran away, what else could she possibly do?

  He did write to her. Real letters. He told her what was happening in school, which was not much. He told her that he still went to the silent peace vigils. He told her about Tyler and Jack inhabiting her house on Charles Street, drinking her Scotch. He told her Mrs. Deutsch was babysitting, that she still had her paper bag of jewelry, that she had arrived with two cases of champagne, which she’d almost polished off already. He told her the wisteria was blooming. He told her to come home.

  The Odyssey

  First shalt thou reach the Sirens; they the hearts

  Enchant of all who on their coast arrive.

  The copy of the Odyssey arrived two weeks before school ended, two weeks before the telegram summoning Fin to Capri. “The Sirens lived here,” Lady wrote in a note tucked into the book. “On Capri.” Where she’d found it, an English translation, in Italy, she did not say. But it arrived on a Tuesday and was waiting for him in the living room when he got home from school.

  “A classic,” said Mrs. Deutsch. “By János Arany.”

  “It’s by Homer, I think, Mrs. Deutsch.”

  “In Hungarian, it is by János Arany.”

  “So he’s, like, the translator?”

  “I read it in Hungarian. Therefore it is by János Arany.”

  Fin liked Mrs. Deutsch. Her occasional bursts of gaiety and underlying melancholy reminded him of Biffi. He missed Biffi terribly, almost as much as he missed Lady. Mrs. Deutsch liked to check the safe each night before she went to bed. Fin would open it and extract the bag of jewels and old, rock-hard cookies, and her delight at finding them there, just as she left them, surprised Fin every time. The sigh she gave, a soft puff of air, as if she’d been punched, lightly; the smile, small and secret, the relief in her eyes were the same every night, and every night Fin felt strangely protective of her, paternal, strong, and tender.

  “János Arany was a great poet,” she continued. “Shakespeare is the János Arany of English.”

  “I guess you miss Hungary.”

  “No,” she said. She shook her head. “No. I miss the past.”

  Tyler took Fin to Connecticut, as requested by Lady. The dog came, too. He was going to stay with Mr. Cornelius, the music teacher, while Fin was away.

  “Turned out not to be such a bad idea, holding on to your Connecticut property,” Tyler said. “Real estate keeps going up, sport.”

  “Are you referring to my ancestral home? And all the chattel there
in?”

  “Oh brother.”

  “When you say ‘brother,’ are you referring to my blood tie to Lady Hadley?”

  After that there was silence in the car for an hour or so. Then, from Tyler: “What have you got against me? Exactly?”

  Fin thought for a minute. “I’m not sure, actually.”

  “Just chemistry, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “You excited about going to Capri?”

  Fin thought about that for a minute, too.

  “It would be better if Lady just came back,” he said.

  “We agree on something, then.”

  Fin tried to read the Odyssey, knowing it would somehow annoy Tyler, but he immediately felt carsick and closed the book. It annoyed Tyler, anyway—he gave a dismissive grunt—and Fin was content.

  Fin stared in front of him, waiting for the carsickness to pass. Why did he hate Tyler? Because he wore an ascot? Yes. Because he was in control of everything Fin had? Yes. Because he wanted to be in control of Lady? Yes, that most of all.

  “No one can control Lady,” Fin said aloud.

  Tyler emitted his small, sarcastic laugh. “Even Lady can’t control Lady.”

  “She’s free,” Fin said. “That’s all.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler said. “Right. Free as a bird.” Again that laugh. Then: “A vulture.”

  “So why do you stick around? If she’s such a vulture?”

  “I like getting my eyes pecked out. Don’t you?”

  “Ha ha.”

  Silence for a while. Not real silence, the roar of the road was loud enough, but human silence. And in the silence, Tyler seemed almost human, too, unhappy and human. Fin shook off the sensation. Don’t go soft on Tyler now, after all these years, he told himself. Do not fall for this pretense of humanity. But then, in a voice that was, indeed, soft, he found himself asking, “Why do you stick around, really?”

  Now it was Tyler who took a while to respond. “I don’t know exactly,” he said at last. He gave Fin a quick smile, then turned back to the road. “Chemistry?” he said. “Bad, bad chemistry.”

  They stopped at a Carrols and had cheeseburgers and French fries.

  “One for the cur?” Tyler asked, and Gus got to have his own hamburger, which made Fin almost like Tyler. The car smelled of hamburger grease.

  “She’s just so damn inconsistent,” Tyler said when they got back on the thruway.

  “That is her charm,” Fin imitated Biffi’s voice and immediately felt disloyal.

  “Now he’s an odd one,” Tyler said. “How are you doing with the mother?”

  “We watch TV. She taught Mabel to make something disgusting with sour cream.” He didn’t mention the paper bag of jewels and stale cookies.

  “She makes me nervous, prowling around all night,” Tyler said.

  “Maybe you make her nervous,” Fin said. “Hanging around all night.”

  “Touché, kid.”

  And there was silence again.

  Tyler drove fast, faster even than Lady. He didn’t slow down when they turned off the thruway, either. Slow down! Fin thought, but he wouldn’t give Tyler the satisfaction of saying it. Slow down! I’m sorry I said you hang out all the time at our house, even though you do, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, just slow down. Instead, Fin gripped the door handle. They were going to hit a deer, they would squash a rabbit, the car would skid into an oak tree and flatten like an accordion, like a car in a cartoon.

  The car stopped in the familiar driveway, a sudden jerky stop that stirred the dust.

  There was the house, newly painted. There was the barn, still peeling dark red paint. He heard a cow.

  “Calling your name,” Tyler said.

  Fin wondered, suddenly, for the first time in all the years that he’d known Tyler, what it was like to be Tyler. Not what it was like to be with Tyler, not what it was like to watch Tyler with Lady or Mabel or Biffi or Jack. But what it was like to be Tyler Morrison, not married, jokey and sarcastic and dapper in a way that was a little old-fashioned, a man who had to drive a fifteen-year-old boy to a farm in Connecticut because the woman who had left him at the altar a decade ago asked him to, and had not even asked nicely, a man stuck in a car with a fifteen-year-old boy who hated him and said so.

  He turned and looked at Tyler. Tyler was wearing driving gloves. Fin felt suddenly and deeply sorry for Tyler. He was natty. He was rich. He was in a dirt driveway with Fin.

  “Really,” Fin said softly. “Really, why?”

  Tyler knew what he was talking about. He shrugged. “Really? I don’t know, Fin.”

  Fin thought it might have been the first time Tyler had called him by name. Before that it had always been “kid” or “sport” or the dreaded “son.”

  “Not money, because you have enough money, right?” Fin said.

  Tyler laughed. “No one ever has enough money. Didn’t Lady teach you the facts of life? But no, not money.”

  “I used to think it was money.”

  “Yeah, you would. But no. No, it’s like you get an idea in your head … no, it’s more like you get an idea in your heart.”

  Fin must have made some movement, or expression. He didn’t mean to. But he was surprised. He couldn’t have been more surprised. Tyler, the odious Uncle Tyler, was being so serious, so earnest. So eloquent, to Fin’s mind. An idea in your heart. Of course. That’s what Lady was for him, too. But he must have moved or twitched or something, because Tyler said, “Laugh all you want. I don’t care.”

  “No, I’m not,” Fin said. “I’m not.”

  “It all used to seem so important, so urgent.” Tyler pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Now I’ve had it. So go ahead. Laugh your head off. The joke’s on me. This last little caper … I surrender.” He held his hands up, as if someone had a gun to his back. The way he had the day Fin met him. I surrender, he had said then. He had surrendered to Lady. Now his car keys jingled in his hand. “I surrender, Lady. You go your way, I go mine. No more begging, no more hanging around for me. The spell is broken.”

  The spell, Lady’s siren spell, was broken. Tyler no longer needed to lash himself to the mast, to stuff his ears with beeswax. That night, Tyler dropped Fin off at the house on Charles Street and did not come in. Fin climbed into bed and read about the Sirens. The spell of the Sirens, of the mellifluous siren song. The island of the Sirens, Capri, where he was going, where all around the bones of men lie, accumulated, now putrid, and the skins mould’ring away.

  * * *

  But mould’ring or not, Tyler was there the next morning. He sat at the kitchen table with Jack reading the Sunday paper. Mrs. Deutsch had made them fried eggs. She put paprika on the eggs. She put paprika on everything.

  “Telegram from Lady,” Tyler said. He handed it to Fin.

  The telegram said Fin should fly to Rome, then take the train to Naples, then take the ferry to Capri.

  “Is she going to meet me? In Rome? Or at least in Naples?” Fin asked.

  “You’re a big shot,” Tyler said. “What do you care?”

  Jack laughed.

  “Not like in the war,” Mrs. Deutsch said. “Peacetime easy peasy.”

  “No, really,” Fin said.

  “Really, wise guy,” Jack said.

  Fin sat on the steps and missed the dog. If he could just have put his face against Gus’s silky ears. The dog never did much, no rescuing people from wells, not even any tricks, but he was always there, his breathing was always there, his tail sweeping the air, the click of his nails on the wood floor, his nose pushing and herding, the way he looked at you, hopeful, as though you could actually make something happen in the world. Maybe that was the way Lady felt about the suitors. But she had run away from the suitors, and he would never run away from Gus. Maybe that was the way the suitors felt about Lady.

  Phoebe came down the steps of her house. She wore a flowered cotton dress, black, with gaudy red roses, long and smocked like the dresses pioneers wore in the movies. She was barefoot. Her
hair was long now and she wore it in a braid. She crossed the street, her bare feet slapping. She had tried to get her parents to send her to a commune in Haight-Ashbury instead of camp. They had declined. They compromised on a teen tour through Europe.

  “When do you leave?” she asked. She sat down on the step below him.

  “Thursday.” School ended Wednesday. “When do you go?”

  “Saturday. The other girls will probably be so straight. I could run away and come see you in Capri.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Hitch a ride.”

  “Yeah.”

  They sat gloomily. Phoebe said, “Bummer.”

  Fin said, “Yeah.”

  Phoebe said, “Is that all you can say?”

  Fin said, “Yeah.”

  Sometimes he wanted to touch Phoebe. But not very often. Sometimes, like now, she touched him. She grabbed his leg and put her head on his knee. He stroked her hair.

  “Maybe I’ll lose my virginity,” she said. “Maybe I’ll fall in love and lose my virginity.”

  “Your parents thought of that already. That’s why it’s all girls.”

  “True. But maybe I’ll meet someone.”

  “Who? The bus driver?”

  “The incredibly gorgeous bus driver.”

  “Ralph Kramden.”

  “Shut up, Fin.”

  “In the bushes with Ralph Kramden.”

  Now she stood up, grabbed his hand, and dragged him over to her house. Up the stairs, into her room. Onto the bed.

  They made out for an hour or so.

  Then Phoebe jumped up.

  “What?” Fin said.

  “We’re not in love. We love each other, but we’re not in love.”

  At that moment Fin didn’t really care if they were in love or had just met or were sworn enemies. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Yes, you do.”

  He told her she was beautiful, which on that day she was.

  “I know,” she said.

  “What if the bus driver is ugly? And old?”

  “I like older men. It’s a complex.”

  This was so like Phoebe, the Phoebe he rarely thought of touching, that Fin came to his senses.