Justin Kramon (3 page)

“I come up here a lot,” he said. “When my dad’s giving lessons. He teaches piano. We live down there.” He pointed at a little brown house, which looked from where they sat to be hardly bigger than Finny’s living room. “It’s kind of small,” the boy said, “so I like getting out if he has people.”

“Do you have brothers and sisters?”

“No. Just my dad.”

“No mom?” Finny said.

“No,” the boy said, and left it at that.

“My name is Finny.”

“I’m Earl.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Earl,” Finny said, and held out her hand to shake. It was an imitation of the jokey, flirtatious way her mother sometimes introduced herself to men. But it was all she had.

He took her hand, though, and shook firmly. She noticed his palm was slick. And his round cheeks were still flushed.

“How old are you?” Finny asked.

“Fifteen,” Earl said. “I just turned.”

“I’m fourteen,” Finny said. “But I’d say I act at least sixteen.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s no one I like who’s under seventeen. Except my brother. Sometimes. When he’s not being a kiss-ass.”

“How old’s your brother?”

“Sixteen. We live way over there.” She pointed in the direction of her house.

“That’s probably nice. He’s in high school with you?”

“Yup. But he doesn’t like it. He thinks the work is too easy. He’s a nerd.”

Earl laughed. “I’m glad you like him, then,” he said.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer the question. He stood and walked a few steps away, a breeze pushing his hair off his face. Finny thought he looked better like that, without his hair hanging down on his forehead. She watched his boxy silhouette against the sky.

“My dad’s done,” he said, and pointed down to his house. Finny could see a car pulling away from it, a tiny spark of light from the setting sun reflected on its hood. There was another car in the driveway, a brown station wagon. Earl’s dad’s car.

“That was his last lesson,” Earl said. “I better go.”

Finny wanted to say something about how she’d had a nice time sitting with him, but she didn’t know how to do it without sounding foolish, like she was trying to get him to invite her over or something. She never wanted to seem needy, like she couldn’t make her own meal without the scraps of praise other people offered.

Then she remembered the feather—the blue and silver one she’d nabbed from beside the bird pond. She took it out of her pocket. “Here,” she said, and handed it to Earl. “I found it while I was walking. Have a good evening.”

Earl looked at it, then put it in his pocket. “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll treasure it always.” He took her hand, and helped her out of the grass. When she was up, he did something unexpected. He brought her hand toward his face. She was afraid he was going to kiss it, and she almost screamed to stop him. She hated the thought of some saccharine scene, a romantic farewell.

But all Earl did was brush the backs of her fingers quickly over his chin. She felt the scratch of his stubble. It was a strange gesture, a cross between a dog’s nuzzling and something a very old man would do.

Then he was off, headed back down the hill to his house. Finny went down the other side of the hill, under the fence in the place Earl had shown her. The crickets were chirping now. She went back through the hills, through the old vineyard, where she tried to find her scuff marks from walking before. But in the dim light she couldn’t find them.

When she was out of the vineyard, she started to run, back along the fence to her house.
What the heck were you doing?
she imagined her father saying.
We were worried sick. I almost called the police.

It was getting cold. A dog barked—maybe Raskal—and then let out a long howl. Lights were coming on across the valley, speckling the countryside like stars. She ran toward her house, its windows aglow in the gathering dusk.

Inside, her mother was carrying a casserole dish to the dining room. “Wash your hands, Finny,” she said. “I was just going to get you.”

Chapter
2
An Important Introduction

She woke up with a tingly feeling on the backs of her fingers. His chin, she realized. All night she’d dreamed about it, the sandpapery feeling of his stubble against her hand. Again and again, she’d found herself stroking his face, like she was calming a young child. She couldn’t understand why that moment, that sensation, had made such an impression on her. She got out of bed, laughing a little at herself.

And as she waded into her morning, the day before did seem more and more like a dream. There was breakfast with her mother and brother. Finny didn’t like to eat in the mornings, but Laura always said, “If there is one meal that people expect you to eat, it’s breakfast.” So Finny force-fed herself a few mouthfuls of granola, toast with peanut butter. At the kitchen table her brother was reading a book of short stories by women writers for English class. When Laura asked him how it was, he said, “Good but not great.”

Then the ride to school with her father. Before they got out of the driveway, Stanley stopped the car.

“Oh,” he said, like he’d just remembered something. “I forgot to brush my teeth.” He clicked his top and bottom teeth together, then bolted out of the car.

Stanley came back in ten minutes, his suit jacket making crinkling sounds from the Pepto wrappers he’d stuffed in his pockets, his breath smelling like peppermint ice cream. They started driving. Sylvan was in the front, as always. He was reading his book of short stories.

“What are you reading?” Stanley asked him.

“Some stories for English,” Sylvan said. “All by women writers. They’re pretty boring.”

“‘There are no dull subjects,’” Stanley quoted. “‘There are only dull writers.’” He nodded at the book. “Mencken.”

“Are there dull car rides?” Finny asked.

When she got home from school, she walked back to the field where she’d met Earl. She passed the pond with the fountain in it, but this time the birds didn’t look so stridently colorful—just the usual blues and grays. She wondered if maybe she’d exaggerated to herself. The afternoon was overcast, and she had the hood of the green reaper over her head. Not tied tight. She didn’t want to look scary. When she got to the pasture where she’d met Earl, he wasn’t there. She looked down at his house, and there were no cars in the driveway. Not even the brown station wagon.

She felt suddenly depressed. Hugely, embarrassingly so. She had expected—irrationally, she realized—that he would be here, waiting for her, whenever she arrived. That she didn’t need to call or make a date. That, like in a book, he would know she was coming. But the world was never like the world in books. There were always these snags and bumps, these unexpected turns and abrupt disappointments.

She could have gone to his house. She could have knocked. But it seemed so far away. She felt foolish for all her misplaced hopes and expectations, like she’d gussied herself up for a party that was on another day. He’d probably forgotten all about their meeting already.

Walking back home, she felt as if she’d been holding a full basket and something had dropped out of it. She didn’t know what or where, but she knew it was important, weighty. She wasn’t sure she’d ever get it back.

She promised herself she wouldn’t go back the next afternoon. And in school she did a pretty good job of forgetting about Earl. She took notes in history class. Worked on a diorama about Ancient Greek theater during her lunch hour. In biology they dissected an owl’s pellet, which was a wad of hair an owl throws up after digesting its food. Hers had the skeleton of a mouse tangled in it, the tiny bones brittle as matchsticks. She wondered if the owl needed to swallow some Pepto after it ate that. She thought of joking to her teacher that she’d found some Cheetos and half a doughnut in hers. But there wouldn’t have been much point. Mrs. Alston would have just looked confused, read the package the pellets came in to see if there’d been a mistake.

“What are you going to do this afternoon?” Laura said when they got back home from school.

“Go for a walk,” Finny said.

She was just going to walk around their yard, by the horse fence, and maybe into the vineyard. But then when she was in the vineyard, she couldn’t resist going a little farther.

Up the road. Past the fountain. Over the hill.

The brown station wagon was there.

She thought of going down and knocking on the door of the little brown house.
Hi. I’m Finny. Is your son home?
Then Earl coming to the door.
Oh, hi.
But if he wasn’t every bit as excited as she was, it would kill her. She would literally drop dead in his doorway. Just to show him.
There, now you clean up this mess.
It would be embarrassing, but it wouldn’t matter because she’d be dead.

She decided it was too risky. She turned away. Headed back down the hill.

But then she heard something behind her. A voice. She didn’t turn around, though.

She heard it again: “Finny!”

Now she turned around, and he was standing there, just behind the fence, waving his arms over his head as if flagging down an aircraft. She laughed. Relief more than anything else. She wasn’t sure if she would have come back a third time.

“Earl!” Finny shouted, waving her arms like his. It would have seemed too playful, too familiar, with anyone else.

“I thought it was you,” he said when she got back up to the top of the hill. “I’m so glad you came today. I was worried all yesterday that you were going to come and I wasn’t going to be there.” His cheeks were flushed. “On Mondays my dad travels for lessons, and I usually go with him after school.”

Finny was about to tell him she did come yesterday, how she felt when she saw he wasn’t there. She could have told Earl that. But instead she said, “You’re lucky I didn’t.”

Earl smiled. He had a way, she’d learn, of softening under her pressure, offering up his belly the way a puppy would. When she kidded him or spoke sharply, he just laughed and went on. He seemed to trust in her good intentions. When Finny teased her mother, Laura puckered up her mouth like she’d eaten something sour. But here was this funny little half-man, the best audience she’d ever had.

“You wanna see my house?” Earl said.

“Sure,” Finny said.

When they got close to the house, Finny could hear the piano music. She didn’t recognize the piece, but she knew it was beautiful. Or thought it was. Something about the way it swirled and tumbled at you. She understood that her feelings about Earl might have influenced her reaction to the music. But she still allowed herself to believe this was the most beautiful music she’d ever heard. Much later, when she and Earl had to be apart for some time, she would go to a library and try to find the piece in their music collection. It was a sentimental gesture, but she knew that no one would ask her why she was doing it. She didn’t know anything about classical music or composers. She listened to dozens of albums. She tried to describe the piece to the music librarian: “It’s this cascade of notes. All piano. Just really full and happy, but with an edge of something sad.” And then she realized she was describing her own feelings, and stopped.

Now, though, she asked Earl, “Is your dad giving a lesson?” She hadn’t seen another car.

“He’s just practicing,” Earl said.

When Earl opened the door, the piano immediately went quiet. The instrument was enormous, probably eight or nine feet long, and it took up half the living room. It was kept against the shadowy wall opposite where Finny stood. In fact, the whole house was shadowy. Only a couple of little peephole windows punctured the wall to her right, and then one window in each of the two bedrooms, the doors of which were open. The house was decorated in dark colors, a brown and gold rug on the floor of the living room, beige shades, wood on the walls and floor, giving the place the look of a cabin. The light was dim, too, flickery like candlelight. In the kitchen there was a stove with some pots stacked on it, and the sink was full of dirty dishes.
(It’s a sad but true fact that guests to your home will lose their appetites if they see a sink full of dishes
, Finny’s mother once told her.) There was another door that presumably led to a bathroom. And that was the whole house.

“Dad?” Earl said.

“Yes,” the man sitting at the piano said.

“I have a guest.”

“No,” Finny said, “don’t stop because of m—”

But the man was already turning around. He was a short man, and when he sat up fully on the piano bench, facing Finny as he did now, his feet dangled just off the ground. (In order to play, he’d had to sit on the very edge of the bench.) He had a paunch, and the top half of his body was shaped like a summer squash. He’d combed a flap of wispy walnut-colored hair over his astoundingly pale scalp. His head was round as a basketball, and his lips pouted a little when he closed them, so that he seemed to have an expression of mock-seriousness or concentration on his face.

“Menalcus Henckel,” he said to Finny, and at first she thought he was casting a spell on her, the words sounded so crazy. His voice was high like Earl’s, though not as gentle. He had a touch more impatience in him. After he spoke, he did an odd thing with the corners of his mouth, moving them up and down, like he was switching between a smile and a frown.

Finny realized he had said his name, so she said, “Finny.”

She stood there, then, for maybe five seconds, in absolute silence, until Earl said, “We met outside up there.” He pointed in the direction of the hill above his house. “Finny lives in the neighborhood.”

“Very good,” Mr. Henckel said, like he was commenting on a piano exercise Earl had just finished, and then he performed three of his smile-frowns.

“So, Dad, we’re going to spend some time here, okay? You can just go on practicing if you want.”

“Actually, I’d love that,” Finny said.

Finny had trouble seeing Mr. Henckel in the dim light, but it looked like he was nodding. It also looked like he had his eyes closed. He was very still. And then all of a sudden his mouth dropped open.