by Finny (v5)
Finny tried to let herself absorb this. She imagined Earl, taking his lonely walks through Paris, eating his banana crêpes, sitting in his tiny apartment with the one high window, thinking of her. It was a sad picture. And her own wasn’t much brighter: four years scooped out of her life. She felt the hole they’d left, the drafty cave of Earl’s absence. But the word that stuck in her head was the one he’d just said: loved. Not love.
“So you waited for me?” Finny said.
“I guess so,” Earl said, blushing a little. “Do you think you can forgive me, Finny? Can you understand?”
“I think so,” Finny said, and took his hand in hers. His palm was moist, cold, and she understood how nervous this confession must have made him. She squeezed his hand harder. “Only next time,” she said to Earl, as gently as she could, “please consult me before you take my interests in mind. If I wanted to spend my time waiting, that was my choice.”
“I know. I can see that now. I didn’t think of how it would seem to you. I just thought it would be easier, that you’d forget about me.”
“I’ll never forget about you, Earl,” Finny said, and when she looked at him, she knew somehow it was true.
“So, what do you think?” Earl said. “Should we go back?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Finny said. “I guess so.”
“How long are you in New York?”
“I just came for the night. I mean, I was supposed to head back tonight.”
“Can you stay till tomorrow? Maybe we could have brunch together.”
“The thing is,” Finny said, “I have this midterm on Monday. I’ll definitely stay if it’s the best time to see you. But are you going to be around next weekend?”
“Absolutely.”
“Do you have plans?”
“My plans are to spend as much time as humanly possible with Finny Short.”
“Deal,” Finny said. “Then shall we go back and make our appearance?”
“We shall,” Earl said, and took Finny by the arm, escorting her back to the party.
Chapter18
A True First Date
The midterm, which was in philosophy, went well. Finny handed in the test, sweating and red-faced, as she always was after exams, and went back to sleep in her dorm room.
Her roommate wasn’t there. She hardly ever was. Her name was Dorrie Kibler, and she was on the swim team. She was tall and broad-shouldered for a girl, though with a gentle voice, a thin nose like some invisible fingers were pinching it. She was exceedingly polite, always asking Finny if she needed anything when Dorrie went to the co-op in town, or if Finny minded if Dorrie kept her light on at night to study. Dorrie was in the campus Christian fellowship, and her social life revolved around that group. Friday nights were spent in prayer group, Saturdays baking cookies and breads for charity, Sundays at church, and then the church brunch. Dorrie had a boyfriend in the group, a nice and very dull junior named Steven Bench whose only mark of rebellion was a small silver hoop earring in his left ear. Dorrie spent a lot of nights in Steven’s room—Finny hadn’t realized what a time commitment not having sex was—and often the only trace of her in their room was a faint odor of chlorine.
So Finny had the room to herself that week, to her thoughts and worries and hopes about Earl. Her night with him in New York already felt like a dream, something you wish for so much your mind makes it true. And then that awful feeling of waking up, knowing it was all in your head. It was especially tough because she hadn’t gotten any word from Earl since the night of the party. She’d told him she would be busy studying, so it was perfectly reasonable that he wouldn’t call. But still, she wanted him to. Just to say Hi, I’m here. What a mess I am, Finny thought.
It was during this time that Finny went to the music library to look for the piece Earl’s father had played that first day she met him, when Earl took Finny to the little brown house. It was an odd thing: now that Earl was so close, the distance and the time apart were almost unbearable. She needed some part of him to be close to her.
Finny sat there, going through album after album of piano music. Earl had mentioned Brahms once, so she tried Brahms. Then Chopin. But she couldn’t get the piece. She asked the music librarian, a man with a goatee who stroked his facial hair in a creepy way as you talked, but her descriptions didn’t help. She could hear it, but when the music librarian asked her to sing a little portion, she faltered. She’d always been a terrible singer. So the music stayed inside of Finny. She gave up on her search. She could have called Mr. Henckel, but she didn’t want to have to talk about Earl.
Then, on Wednesday, the phone rang.
“Hello?”
“So, what do you feel like doing this weekend?” It was Earl’s voice. Relief washed over her.
“Whatever. I just want to spend time with you.”
“But we have to do something, don’t we? It would be boring just sitting around the apartment.”
“What do you like to do?”
“Um,” Earl said, “just walk around mostly.”
“Walking around sounds good.”
“Anywhere in particular?”
“Anywhere you want,” Finny said. “I’ll let you choose.”
“Then how about Central Park?”
It was the week before Thanksgiving, though it felt like September in the city. The afternoon was warm, the light on the buildings golden, the sky a gemstone blue. Finny walked out of Penn Station, into the tide of shoppers and commuters, feeling as if she were being swept up in the energy of the place, a powerful wave guiding her to shore. She smelled smoke from the man cooking kebabs on the corner, heard a woman speaking into a megaphone, “Jesus Christ is your savior, honey. Let me ask you a question: If ya don’t trust Jesus, who can ya trust?” And a man, in torn canvas pants and an overcoat, with a scraggly beard and a mane of frazzled hair, yelling back at the woman, “Ma toes is itchin’! Ma toes is itchin’!”
She decided to walk uptown; she’d only brought a backpack with her. She was meeting Earl at three at the southeast corner of Central Park, and she had time.
She passed Times Square, walked under the hot lights of the theaters, past the windows with displays of women in lingerie, the video shops with dirty movies, the pizza parlors, the jewelry stores, the clothing racks, the blankets spread on the sidewalk paved with scarves and hats and purses. She crossed Sixth Avenue at Fiftieth Street, peeked in at the ice skaters doing laps at Rockefeller Center, some of them wearing only T-shirts. She walked up Fifth Avenue, past the doormen in caps and jackets, the Bergdorf Goodman window displaying an elaborate crime scene enacted by mannequins, the Paris Theatre. She stood at the corner of the park, waiting, smelling the barnyard smell of the horse carriages, watching tourists have their portraits sketched, the cabs swinging around the bend onto Fifty-ninth Street.
Then Earl was coming out of the park, a thick book in his hand, saying, “It was so beautiful, I spent the day reading. How long have you been waiting?” It was 3:45. His face was clean-shaven now, his eyes wide and excited.
“I just got here,” Finny said. “What are you reading?”
“Dickens. David Copperfield. It’s the funniest book I’ve ever read.”
They slipped into each other’s arms, like they’d been meeting here every week. He kissed her. He took her backpack and strapped it on his shoulders. They held hands, walked into the park.
“I saw the skaters at Rockefeller Center,” Finny said. “Isn’t it early for that? It’s so strange in this weather. But it looked fun.”
“Do you like to skate?”
“I like it, but I’m terrible at it. I’ve only done it a few times.”
“Let’s go skating,” Earl said. “I know another place. It’s less crowded.”
She was happy to be led by Earl, to give herself up to the flow of his intentions. She didn’t want to make decisions today. She was content to watch the world, the shafts of sunlight through the tree branches, the startlingly green lawns, the fat go
lden leaves dropping from the trees.
They went to Wollman rink, which was less crowded than Rockefeller Center, as Earl had predicted. They rented skates and a locker for Finny’s bag, then set out on the ice. Big band music was playing on the speakers, and Earl did a little dance step to the rhythm, crossing his right skate over his left. He was a good skater, Finny noticed with surprise. For some reason she’d expected him to be clumsy, timid, but instead he turned effortlessly, backward and forward, his feet swishing along the ice.
Meanwhile, she was the one with ankles turned, feet shuffling and slipping. Earl took her by the hands, and he skated backward while she went forward, like they were dancing. She warned him when there was someone in the way—a slow skater like herself, or a fallen child. Finny flinched every time she heard someone fall— whup! whoa!—as if the unfortunate skater were going to pull her down with him. But Earl didn’t let her fall. He always had a hand on her, an arm around her, keeping her balanced.
“Where did you learn to skate?” she asked him.
“In Paris,” Earl said. “My mom and I would go a lot of weekends every winter, outside the Hôtel de Ville. It’s free, and my mom is actually a great skater. Since she’d been a dancer, she’s very graceful. She can even do some figure skating, pulling her body in and spinning on one skate. That kind of thing.”
“So you did a lot together?”
“That was the most fun thing we did. Or the most natural, I mean. The other times it was forced. There was always this barrier. I guess it’s like that when you don’t meet your parent until you’re a teenager. There are always these questions. Why did you do that? Why didn’t you want me? Even though I tried not to think those things, I couldn’t help it. When we were ice skating, we could just enjoy each other’s company, and we only had to think about getting around the rink.”
“But you think she loves you, right?”
“I do. And I care about her a lot. She has such a lonely life in Paris. She only half-speaks the language, after all this time. But she’s also really hard to get to know. You’ll see one day, when you meet her.”
“You think I’ll meet her?” Finny said.
“I hope so,” Earl said.
“You know,” Finny said, “I used to imagine the way your life was in Paris, what you were doing at that exact moment, that kind of thing.”
“Really?”
“I wondered things. Like, did you have other girlfriends?”
“Well,” Earl said, and Finny noticed he had a brush of color on his cheeks, “not really girlfriends.”
She realized then that she didn’t want to hear about it, no matter how many or few girls he’d dated. She’d had her own dark little tussles with boys on her campus, understood the fuzzy embarrassment surrounding them. So she was glad when Earl started on a new topic. “By the way, how’s your mom?” he asked.
“We hardly talk,” Finny said. “In a way, I think it was a relief for both of us when I went to school. But I think she’s good. Same as always.”
“It’s so funny that I’ve never met her.”
“It is.”
“And your brother.”
“And my brother. I know. But you should still be mad at him for turning us in that time. He’s the reason I got sent to Thorndon.”
“But you wouldn’t have met Judith if you didn’t go to Thorndon. Then we wouldn’t have met in Judith’s bedroom. Everything has different sides.”
“That’s true,” Finny said. “It’s crazy. All of this.”
“Are you going home for Thanksgiving?” Earl asked.
“I am. Are you?”
“At least for a couple days. I have to see my dad and Poplan. I promised them. So we’ll spend some time when we’re both at home?”
“Sure,” Finny said.
After they’d taken a couple more laps, Finny had to stop because her feet hurt—though she would have liked to go round and round the rink all night. They returned their skates. It was evening now—darkness at five o’clock, a reminder that the warm weather wouldn’t last. The temperature was dropping, and Finny got an extra sweatshirt out of her bag.
“Hey,” Earl said when she put it on.
“What?”
“That sweatshirt. What do you call it?”
“Oh. The green reaper. It’s pretty torn up now. But I just can’t seem to part with it.”
“I love it,” Earl said. “Don’t ever part with it.”
They decided to take the subway back to the Village, near where Earl was staying. They walked to an Italian restaurant Earl knew, several blocks south of Washington Square Park. He seemed to know a lot of the restaurants in the neighborhood, and he pointed some out to Finny, saying that they’d have to try this one or that one together sometime. It was as if he were building up a future for them—dinners in the city, trips to France—the way he built people up, out of moments, glances, words. The world was gleaming with possibilities.
At dinner—in their private nook next to the waiters’ station, where Finny could hear one waiter complaining about a customer “dicking” him—she said to Earl, “I want to read something you’ve written.” The idea had just occurred to her. They were sitting over nearly finished bowls of pasta, both of them having been hungry from the skating.
“Sometime,” he said. “When I have something good enough to show you.”
“It doesn’t have to be good,” Finny said. “I’m just interested.”
She realized she’d said the wrong thing when she saw Earl’s expression, the way his lips tightened.
“What I mean is, I just want to know you. To know that part of you.” And it was true. She felt as if Earl were some great expanse of land, like that green ribbon of horizon she’d watched as a child, and she wanted to walk every inch of his terrain.
“But I know it will be good,” she told him.
“Thanks,” he said, and they didn’t talk any more about it.
The apartment where Earl was staying was on Tenth Street, near University Place—an odd-shaped building, one of its four corners jutting out so that two of the walls were longer than the others. There were four rooms in the apartment: a common room and three bedrooms. The rooms were small and stuffy, cluttered with textbooks and soda bottles and ragged furniture. There were dishes in the sink, a little puddle of something that looked like ketchup on the counter, turning brown, which no one had thought to wipe up. Earl was sharing a room with one of his friends, a guy named Eric, but he mentioned that his roommate wouldn’t be coming back tonight. In fact, at this hour—a little after eight—none of his friends were home.
So Finny and Earl decided to watch a movie in Earl’s bedroom, on the small TV Eric kept on the window ledge, in front of the window fan. Finny could see flashes and glimmers of the busy street below, through the fan’s plastic case. Earl rifled through Eric’s movies, saying to Finny, “I’m sorry. The selection’s not great. They’re a little snobby about movies.”
“Well, I’m a little snobby about clean kitchens,” Finny said. “So we’re even.”
Earl laughed and put in a cassette: Jules and Jim. He said he remembered watching it with his mom once and liking it. He and Finny sat on the bed, backs to the wall, knees at their chests, their legs and arms pressed against each other but not linked.
It turned out not to matter what they were watching, because soon Finny and Earl were kissing. Actually, Finny had liked the movie—the doomed energy of the characters—but she liked kissing Earl more. She found herself closing her eyes, her mind floating off as he pressed against her. They lay down. He touched her stomach, her back, her breasts. It startled her, the sudden closeness.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m just—this all feels so strange. But in a good way.”
“I’m really happy I found you, Finny.”
She smiled at that, and let him go on, touching, stroking, kissing. He took her shirt off, then his own. He still had a strong chest, square shoul
ders, but a lip of skin hung over his belt. She thought it was adorable: a place to rest her hands. His skin was pale, etched with dark hairs like pencil marks. He took off her bra, with surprising competence, like when he’d dashed onto the ice in his skates earlier. He put his mouth on Finny’s nipple, and she felt a shock of excitement. She sighed.
He was gentle with her. Each time he’d start something new, he would ask her, “Is this okay? Do you like this?” And she would nod, too feverish to speak. He guided her hand down his stomach, beneath his belt, and she felt his erection.
“Do you want to have sex?” she finally got out, through heavy breaths. She remembered the time she’d returned from one of their sessions in the old vineyard, and her underwear had been dotted with blood from their investigations. She felt as if he’d made a promise to her then, begun something he needed to finish.
“If you do,” he said.
“I do.”
“I have a condom.”
“I do, too,” she told him, just so he’d know.
They ended up using his. She watched him roll it on. Thinking of what he’d said before while they were skating: Not really girlfriends.
But she loved this. Every part of this. Not just the rushes of tingly warmth but these funny unsexy moments, like when they had to stop to get their pants off, or put the condom on. You never saw those parts in movies. Though to Finny they were just as much a piece of the experience as the panting and the moaning.
When he pushed into her, she felt a pinch, like from a thumbtack. Then a surge of quivery heat passed through her body. Her leg trembled. Tears filled her eyes. “Oh God,” she said, realizing she’d come. She tilted her head back, let her mouth fall open, and moaned. She felt him plunging, plunging. It wasn’t painful, as she’d feared it might be. When he came, his mouth dropped open, too. She pulled him to her, wanting to protect him, and also to feel him thrust inside her one more time.
Afterward, he wrapped the condom—which was only slightly bloody, a not unpleasant pink—in tissues, and dabbed himself off. She laughed at his fastidiousness.
