Justin Kramon (29 page)

Still, they parted amiably. Laura took Finny to the train station on Sunday, and Finny gripped the seat and smiled as her mother risked their lives numerous times in speeding traffic. Finny could see that her mother was hardly looking at the cars in front of her. It was like the way she’d stared at things after Stanley died, and Finny understood for the first time how afraid her mother was of the world that had betrayed her again and again. That startled, nervous look she’d always had when Finny misbehaved as a child—it was fear, Finny saw, fear that all the smiling and cleaning and organizing in the world couldn’t stop life from making a mess.

Nonetheless, Finny and her mother hugged tightly in front of the doors of the train station, until a traffic cop asked Laura to move her car. “Thank you, sweetheart,” Laura said, waving to Finny as she pulled away. The driver she’d cut off honked at her, and Laura waved at him.

Back at Stradler, Finny decided to walk to her dorm by the main path through the center of campus rather than by the side route she normally took. It was a gorgeous, bright, cold afternoon, and Finny liked walking along the tree-lined road, the bare limbs of trees twitching in the wind like bony fingers. There was something Finny enjoyed about these days before Earl arrived, about the anticipation, but also the loneliness itself, like she was standing outside a house where a loud party was taking place. She liked long walks on cold afternoons, dinners by herself, the comfortable solitude of her life at Stradler. She saw that it would be different when Earl was there, that she’d lose some of this private space.

And another very strange thought struck her now, as she was walking up the path that ended at the columned façade of Griffen Hall. She realized she’d be okay if she were by herself. Not that she wanted to be. But that she could be. She hoped and intended to spend her life with Earl now that he’d come around, but if for some reason it didn’t work out, she knew she wouldn’t risk all this again. She’d be content with her walks and her studies and the small joys a lonely person experiences: the scent of laundry, sunlight filtered through leaves, dinners with friends, rain tapping on a window. It was enough to get you through.

Behind Finny on the path was a tour group. The guide was telling a crowd of prospective students and their parents that the grounds of Stradler were a national arboretum. Then she began to talk about faculty-to-student ratios, graduate school statistics, majors and minors.

But someone must have raised a hand, because the guide stopped talking and the questioner asked, “Do you think that
rules
are well enforced on campus?” Finny felt as if someone had placed a cold hand on the back of her neck. She would have recognized that voice anywhere. Its screeching, broken sound had marked so many important transitions in her young life. She turned around, and was of course confronted by the familiar figure of her former principal, the Old Yeller, Mrs. Barksdale.

The woman’s stringy orange hair was blowing every which way, over her face and ears, and the veins in her neck strained every bit as ferociously as they always had. Next to Mrs. Barksdale was the small, cowering, entirely bald man that Finny had only glimpsed in the photo on Mrs. Barksdale’s wall; and a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old girl who looked like a younger version of the Old Yeller. Finny took her to be the daughter. Mrs. Barksdale held the small man by the cuff of his jacket, pulling him along, and the daughter had her arms crossed in front of her chest, as if to prevent her mother from taking any similar action against her.

Finny turned away as the tour guide was beginning her stammering answer to the Old Yeller’s question. Finny wanted to talk to Mrs. Barksdale about as much as she would have liked to purchase a selection of spices from Gerald Kramp. Finny started off the path, across the lawn, hoping to avoid any contact with her former principal. But it turned out to be too late. “Hey!” a squealing voice called. “Delphine Short!”

Damn
, Finny thought, and turned around.

Mrs. Barksdale had broken off from the tour group, which she claimed was fairly useless anyway. The bewildered guide was left to pull her diminished group on to the next sight. The Old Yeller was very happy to see one of her former students in such a good liberal arts school. She introduced her husband and daughter, who both nodded uneasily at Finny.

“Now, let me see,” Mrs. Barksdale said. “You were very good friends with Judith Turngate, one of our shining stars, right?”

“The brightest,” Finny said.

“And have you kept in touch?”

“I saw her last weekend.”

“So she must have told you she was coming to Thorndon this weekend,” Mrs. Barksdale said.

“Actually, she didn’t mention it.”

“There was an alumni basketball game last night. It was a big fund-raiser for the school. Judith came back because she had been so dedicated to the team while she was at Thorndon. I would have sent you an invitation, but I suppose you’re not on the alumni mailing list since you didn’t graduate with us.”

“I guess not,” Finny said. She did find it a little weird that Judith hadn’t mentioned anything.

“In any case,” Mrs. Barksdale went on, “I actually had the good fortune of spending a large portion of the evening with Judith, who seems to be doing fabulously as an English major at
Columbia.”

“That’s wonderful,” Finny said. She was running out of supportive comments to make about Mrs. Barksdale’s run-in with Judith.

“But the greatest pleasure for me,” Mrs. Barksdale said to Finny, and here her voice seemed particularly strained by the emotion she felt, “was to see what a fine young gentleman she has chosen as a life partner. That is the most important decision a young woman can make for herself—to find the right man to embark on the journey of life with.” Here Mrs. Barksdale leaned over and planted a forceful kiss on the top of Mr. Barksdale’s bald head. He seemed to cringe, just slightly, at her touch.

Finny was puzzled. “Was it the first time Judith’s boyfriend visited Thorndon?”

Mrs. Barksdale was nodding.
“Fiancé,”
she corrected. “But yes, I had never met Milton Hollibrand before. Though he is just the sort of boy who can make a very ambitious, beautiful, and intelligent young woman like Judith Turngate happy. Because aside from cutting a very handsome and dignified shape, it seems he is also an intellectual. He is very knowledgeable about Eastern philosophy.”

“Oh,” Finny said. She felt as if all the words had been knocked out of her by the assault of Mrs. Barksdale’s news. She wanted to leave, and excuses dangled in her mind.

But Sarah Barksdale beat Finny to it. “Mom,” she said to the Old Yeller, “if we don’t go to Griffen Hall now, we’re never going to have time to see the athletic center.”

“Very true,” Mrs. Barksdale said. “You know that my good friend Miss Simpkin has always said that physical activity is as important as mental. And Miss Simpkin is never wrong.”

Alone in her room, Finny’s first impulse was to call Sylvan. She dialed the numbers for his room at Harvard. The phone rang once.

Then Finny hung up. She had to think this through. If she called Sylvan first, and for whatever reason Mrs. Barksdale’s story was untrue or incomplete, Finny would have set a suspicion rolling in Sylvan’s mind that she knew he’d never be able to stop. He’d always be looking out the corners of his eyes, checking phone messages and receipts. He’d never be able to completely trust Judith.

So Finny decided she had to call Judith first. She owed it to her friend to give her one chance to explain what happened.

Finny tried Judith’s apartment in Morningside Heights, and Judith picked up on the second ring.

“Hey,” Finny said, “it’s me.”

“Finny! I meant to call you this weekend. I wanted to see how you’re doing. The time just got away from me. I guess the first week of classes isn’t as tranquil as I thought.”

“It’s okay,” Finny said. “I was actually out of town. Visiting my mom.”

“Is everything okay?”

“It is now. She was having some trouble with her boyfriend. But I think she’s gotten everything resolved.”

“Good,” Judith said.

“How are things with you and your boyfriend?” Finny asked.

“Actually,” Judith said, “things are good. Though I’m not sure I’d call him my boyfriend yet. We’re still working that out.”

“Are you going to see each other anytime soon?”

Judith paused here. She must have been puzzled at Finny’s sudden fascination with their relationship. Outside her door Finny heard some of the boys on her hall whooping and applauding. She knew what they were cheering for. There was a boy named Hector who pedaled his bike at full speed down the hall, then jammed on the breaks at just the right moment so that his front tire stopped only inches from the wall.

“Maybe next weekend,” Judith said. “We’re taking it slow, Fin. Anyway, what’s the news with you? How are you feeling?”

“I’m feeling okay. My headaches are completely gone, and my eye looks almost normal.”

“I’m so relieved.”

I’ll bet you are, Finny thought but didn’t say. She remembered the rushed way Judith had said goodbye to her earlier that week, claiming she had to “get down to work.” Finny now understood what Judith must have been working on, and the fact that she’d been doing it while Finny was still in her apartment, bruised and dizzy, made Finny practically shake with rage at Judith. She had probably gone to meet Prince while Finny had been out with Carter—or else she’d been planning to meet him that night. It came back to Finny how Judith had downplayed Finny’s bruise that afternoon, saying it looked almost completely healed when Finny still had to apply about five pounds of makeup to hide it. Of course Judith would want to say that the bruise wasn’t that bad, if she was planning on getting together with the animal who had caused it.

But Finny calmed herself enough to say to Judith now, “You’re not going to believe who I ran into when I got back to school today—”

“Actually,” Judith cut her off, “I can probably guess. Was it the Old Yeller?”

“How’d you know?”

“I was at the alumni basketball game last night. Actually, I just got back into town myself. I was going to tell you. Actually, that’s why I was so busy this weekend. The Old Yeller told me she was going to visit your school with her daughter when I saw her.”

Outside her door Finny could hear Hector pedaling back into place for another run. Finny saw that Judith must have been hoping Finny wouldn’t bump into Mrs. Barksdale, that the Old Yeller wouldn’t get a chance to mention whom Judith had been with.

All of this deception made Finny even angrier. She wanted to scream at Judith. But she knew she had to stay calm for another minute, so she simply said, “I heard you were with—”

But Judith stopped her. “Prince had been planning to come for months, Finny. He’d already bought his ticket. It would have been too awkward to change things.”

“You know what else is awkward?” Finny said. “When you get punched in the face.”

“It was a mistake,” Judith blurted out. “Sylvan spat on him. It caught him by surprise. He feels awful.”

“But that’s not the point,” Finny said. She wanted to ask Judith why she was defending Prince anyway, if she was supposed to be “seeing how it goes” with Sylvan. But instead Finny focused her argument on the most important parts. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to Thorndon?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Judith said. “I couldn’t expect you to, after what Prince did to you.”

“That’s bullshit,” Finny said flatly. “You’re lying to cover your ass, Judith.” She felt like a shaken bottle of soda, ready to burst.

“Relationships are complicated, Finny,” Judith said.

Somehow, this feigned wisdom, this apparent assertion that Finny was somehow naïve about the complexities of adult relationships—it was enough to blow the cap off Finny’s rage. “What’s complicated is being a
whore,”
she told Judith. “Carter warned me you were a liar, but I was stupid enough not to believe him. You’d do anything to get what you want. You don’t think about anyone but yourself, Judith.”

Finny expected Judith to come right back at her with some biting line. But instead there was silence. And then, something about Judith’s breathing made Finny realize she was crying.

“You’re not going to tell him?” Judith whined into the phone. “Sylvan, I mean.”

“Of course I’m going to tell him,” Finny said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell him before. I had too much faith in you.”

Here Judith seemed to break down. Finny heard her sobbing into the phone, her breath pounding the receiver. Then Judith said something Finny would remember for a long time: “Not everyone’s as lucky as you are, Finny. Not everyone finds the perfect person. You don’t know what it’s like not to be sure.”

Which was partially true. She was lucky to have found Earl, to be expecting him in a matter of weeks. Though
perfect
hardly captured their relationship up till now. Finny didn’t want to quibble with Judith’s word choice. Whatever Judith’s difficulties, it wasn’t an excuse for what she’d done.

Outside there was a squeal of brakes, a tense moment of silence, and then a small thud when Hector must have hit the wall. “I’m okay,” she heard him telling the other boys. “I’m fine.”

As they applauded, Finny hung up the phone, wondering if it would be the last time she’d ever hang up from a call with Judith.

Late that night she dialed Sylvan’s number again, and he picked up.

“Sylvan, it’s Finny.”

But he cut her off. “I talked to Judith,” he said. “I can’t talk about this any more tonight, but I wanted to thank you for looking out for me, Fin. I’ll call you sometime. When I’m up to it. I’m glad to hear you’re doing better. Judith told me your headaches are gone.”

“Did she tell you about Prince?”

“She told me she’d seen him. I was pretty disappointed.”

“Okay,” Finny said. She remembered the night she and her brother had held each other, crying over their father. She wanted to provide the same comfort for Sylvan now. She wanted to hold him and tell him it would be all right.