Justin Kramon (17 page)

“I guess we were introduced when you came in,” Judith went on. “But how would I know it was you?”

“You guys never met, did you?” Finny said. Earl was just staring at her, speechless.

“No,” Judith said. “Remember, it was that time I came to visit you in Maryland, and I stayed in with your brother when you went to see Earl.”

“Oh my God,” Finny said to Earl now, staring at him again in disbelief. “I just can’t believe it’s you.” And she hugged him, put her arm around his shoulder, brushed his stubbly face with her fingers—anything just to touch him, to make sure he was real.

“It’s me, Fin,” Earl said, shaking his head. “This is unbelievable.”

When she stood back and looked at him, she was amazed at the transformation. It was still Earl—the manly face and torso, the slight blush in his cheeks, the pudgy fingers, the adorably stubby legs—but he looked like he’d aged so much. His skin seemed darker, weathered, and his sandy hair longer, flopping on his forehead, so that sometimes he had to brush it away with his hand. He had the faint shadow of a beard, and he seemed to stand a little straighter, his chest puffed out like he was being challenged to a fight.

“Who’d you come with?” Judith asked. “Not that I’m not thrilled you’re here. I’m
ecstatic.
I’m just wondering how this all happened.”

“It’s weird,” Earl said. “I didn’t even realize where I was going. I was just having a drink with a friend, and he said he wanted to stop by this party. He told me your name was Judith, but I guess I didn’t catch your last name. His name is Paul Lilly.”

“Sure. Paul,” Judith said. “He’s an English major at NYU,” she explained to Finny.

“I actually don’t know where he is,” Earl said. “He was talking to some people, and I just got in from France so I’m ridiculously jet-lagged. I decided to go off and close my eyes for a minute.”

“I saw you sleeping,” Finny said, smiling at him.

Earl laughed. “Did I snort when I woke up?”

“It was hard to hear over the music,” Finny said, “but I think so.”

Judith seemed thrilled by everything Finny and Earl said to each other. She watched them like they were the most entertaining movie in the world, a budding smile on her lips.

“You know what?” Judith said. “This is silly. Why am I standing here getting in the way? I’m going to leave you two alone to catch up.”

“It’s okay,” Finny and Earl both said at the same time.

But Judith shook her head. She pulled Finny and Earl into a three-way hug. When they let go, Judith said goodbye and blew a kiss to them both. She walked out of the study, and Finny heard the music and voices swell for a moment. Then Judith shut the door behind her, and they were alone again in their quiet space.

Finny turned to Earl. “This is strange,” she said.

Earl nodded.

“I feel like when you’re a teenager and your friends lock you in a closet with a boy you like. Not that that ever happened to me. But I’ve heard about it happening.”

Earl smiled. Even though he was exhausted, Finny could see the effort he was making with her, how much he wanted to please her. They stood there for a minute, looking each other over, marveling at what they saw. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence, more like the hush in a museum when people are looking at beautiful paintings. She didn’t feel shy; she knew he understood. There was so much to say, and she couldn’t think of where to start.

At last, though, and without speaking, they fell into each other’s arms. This time they held each other tightly, with more conviction than they had in front of Judith. Finny started to cry. Earl smoothed his hand over her back. He kissed her neck, her cheek, her forehead, her lips. His mouth against hers was like some longed-for taste, a food she remembered from childhood, a feeling that had been part of her so long she couldn’t remember a time before it.

“My God,” Finny said again, pulling her lips away from his, her hands still holding his face. She felt quivery and strangely light. “Why are you here?”

“I’m trying to be a writer,” Earl said. “I’m still figuring out the best way to do it. But I thought New York would be the place to start. I took some time off work. I wanted to come here for a few weeks and see if I could make it.”

He explained that he’d met some Americans last winter in Paris, after he’d finished school and was deciding whether to come back to the States, whether to go to college. Earl had a job in a restaurant, cleaning chickens and stocking the bar and washing dishes. He wasn’t sure if he really needed college to do what he wanted to do. The friends said he could come to New York anytime, crash at their apartment in the Village. They were NYU students, and had cheap student housing. They loved to argue about books and French movies. They’d all grown up in the city, attended Fieldston or Horace Mann or Bronx Science. Earl decided to take them up on the offer this year. He needed to get away from home for a bit, to look around and see what was out there for him. He’d flown into New York the night before.

“So here I am,” Earl said.

“And for how long?”

“Maybe a few weeks. A month. Longer. It depends.”

“On what?”

“On what I see, I guess.”

“Well, what do you think so far?” Finny said, standing back from him, striking one of her silly hand-on-hip poses.

But Earl simply said, “What I see is great, Finny.”

She kissed him then, put her arms around him and squeezed like she used to. “Oh, Earl,” she said, feeling those familiar gears begin to turn.

After a little while, Earl said, “Do you think we should go back to the party?”

“I don’t want to,” Finny said, “but maybe we should.”

“I’d love to just go get coffee with you somewhere and talk.”

Finny hesitated. “Me, too,” she said. “I’d just feel bad, since I came all the way up here to spend time with Judith. I wouldn’t want her to think I was ditching her.”

“That was really nice of her, leaving us alone to catch up. She seems like a thoughtful person. A good friend.”

“She is,” Finny said. And she realized Earl had done it again, built someone up from the scraps of her personality, into a beautiful shape.

“You have a good sense for people,” he said. “I think my dad is as happy as he’s ever been.”

She laughed. “They’re adorable together, Earl. When I go over, he pours the coffee, and she tells him to wash his hands before he touches hers. Then when he falls asleep, Poplan brushes the crumbs off his sleeves and shakes her head in this severe way, but you really know she loves him. And then he plays the piano for her, or tells stories and she never interrupts him. It’s exactly the way a marriage should be.”

Finny was going to say more, but a prickly thought snagged her.

“Earl,” she said, steadying herself, “there’s something I need to ask you.”

“Yeah?”

“I want to know what happened. Why’d you stop writing and calling? I found out from your dad you’d been in town and didn’t even tell me. It really hurt me when I heard that. And then tonight again. You’re sitting there in my friend’s bedroom, and I didn’t even know you were in the country. Couldn’t you have written? Your dad knows my address.”

“Finny,” Earl said, but for a moment he couldn’t say more. He stood there, with a look of such pain that Finny began to feel sorry for him. Yet the splinter of his betrayal was still lodged in her.

“When I heard that from your dad, I almost died,” Finny said. It was dramatic, she knew. And yet the words conveyed something of the horrible, sick feeling she’d had, like she’d been on top of a high building that was beginning to crumble. She’d never forget that moment; at the time, it had seemed the start of some awful, irrevocable decline.

“You have to understand,” Earl said now. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“Then why—” Finny began.

“I just thought—” Earl interrupted, then stopped to look at her. “I just thought it would be better. I didn’t want us to go through high school waiting for something that might or might not happen. I wanted more than anything to write you, to pick up the phone and call you every day. But I couldn’t bear to think I was messing up your life. I wanted you to be able to
live
your life, not wait for it. That’s not the way you should be spending your time. You’re too good for that. And I didn’t know what was going on with you now, so I didn’t want to just barge in assuming you’d want to see me. I figured I’d take my time, find out from my dad and Poplan what you were up to. You have to understand, I didn’t know what the right thing was. You were the first person I’d loved like that.”

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.

Chapter
18
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’!”