Justin Kramon (30 page)

But she couldn’t. She knew there was nothing she could say. So she said goodbye.

Chapter
30
Earl Is Coming!

Earl was due to arrive in the beginning of March, which gave Finny only five weeks. She was familiar with these kinds of weeks, though, which were so different from the kinds of weeks she’d spent in Paris. These kinds of weeks stretched on and on, like enormous glaciers, or perfectly calm seas, endless and unvaried. She knew it was simply a matter of waiting, of a certain number of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, walks to the library, nights alone in her dorm room. She knew that everything was settled, tickets were purchased, goodbyes were being said; and yet, the distance between herself and Earl’s arrival seemed monumental, nearly untraversable. Especially now that she wasn’t talking to Judith, and Sylvan appeared to have dropped off the face of the earth.

Dorrie had moved in with Steven Bench. He had a single in one of the more desirable dorms on campus. Dorrie left some clothes and textbooks in the room, but she came back only a couple times a week, and she always knocked like she was a guest. When Finny saw her in the halls, it was like running into an old classmate, someone she’d known a long time ago. Dorrie was nothing if not polite. She always treated Finny like they’d been better friends than they were.

One afternoon in the middle of February, Finny and Dorrie happened to both walk into the dining hall just as it was closing its lunch service. They hurried through the buffets, pulling out random fried items and making quick mismatches of food on their plates. They sat down together at one of the window tables. It was a gray day. They picked at their unattractive food, talked in a scattershot way about their lives, then moved to their relationships. Finny told Dorrie that Earl was coming in a couple weeks.

“That’s fantastic!” Dorrie said. She had her hair pulled back, which gave her nose a pointy look.

“I know. I can hardly wait,” Finny said.

“Does he know where he’s going to live?”

“I think in an apartment near here. Maybe in a building with some Stradler students.”

“Wow,” Dorrie said, practically glowing over Finny’s news.

“It feels like he’s never going to get here,” Finny said.

Dorrie breathed quickly from her nose—like a laugh, but without smiling. “I know how that is,” she said. “But you should try to enjoy it.”

“Enjoy what?”

“The waiting, I mean. You still have all these ideas about how it’s going to be and what you’ll do together and the way your place will look. But the thing is, it’s never quite like that, exactly. I mean, it’s never the way it is in your mind. Not that it’s bad. I love living with Steven. But there’s something different about being
in
it. It doesn’t have the same sparkle.”

“Do you love Steven?” Finny asked.

“Of course I love him,” Dorrie said, with what seemed like the first hint of annoyance Finny had ever glimpsed in her. “It has nothing to do with whether I love him. There’s other things. I’m just telling you, there’s something nice about having stuff to look forward to. Once you’re there, you realize it’s just the same from here on out.”

“Have you guys talked about what you’ll do after Steven graduates?”

Then Dorrie came out with it. “I’m pregnant, Finny.” She must have been working around to it the whole time, but when she couldn’t find a space for her news, she just said it, dropped it like a piece of unwanted mail. Finny understood Dorrie had no one else to tell.

“Does Steven know?” Finny asked.

Dorrie nodded. And then she burst into tears. “And we haven’t even really had sex yet,” she sobbed. “We thought we should wait.” Dorrie lost herself to crying for a moment, though in between bouts of tears she described to Finny—in surprising detail—the medieval methods of birth control she and Steven had employed while technically not having sex. Finny felt terrible for her roommate. She wanted to ask her why she hadn’t just gotten some condoms from the health center. But of course that advice would have been useless now.

“So, what are you going to do?” Finny asked.

“What do you mean?” Dorrie seemed puzzled by the question.

“I mean, about the baby.”

“We’re going to get married over spring break,” Dorrie said, as if the answer were obvious. “I’m not going to get really fat until summer. Then I have to decide if I want to come back in the fall or take a semester off.”

She started to cry again, and Finny found herself reaching across the table to touch Dorrie on the shoulder. This produced a fit of tears, and then a surprising statement from Dorrie. “I’m so happy about all this, Finny. It’s just—this isn’t the way I expected it to happen. I just have to accept that God’s plans aren’t always clear to us.”

Finny took her hand back and put it in her lap. She wasn’t convinced God had anything to do with it. Finny picked up a piece of fried zucchini and took a bite. The zucchini was soggy now, floppy as a cooked noodle, and it left a puddle of oil on the plate. Finny put it down and wiped her hand on a napkin. She wasn’t sure how to respond to Dorrie.

“How does Steven feel about all this?” Finny asked.

“He seems to be taking it in stride,” Dorrie said. “He said we could get an off-campus apartment next year, if it’ll make things easier for me.”

Or him, Finny thought. But she said, “That’s nice.”

Dorrie nodded. She looked out the window, at the gray day. Something seemed to have caught her eye, but Finny couldn’t see it.

“For a second,” Dorrie said, still looking out the window, “right when I found out, I wondered if I wasn’t making a huge mistake.”

“About what?” Finny said, hoping Dorrie would say,
Steven
or
Having a baby when I’m nineteen.

But Dorrie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, and turned back to her meal. She plucked a piece of lettuce out of her salad bowl with her fingers and ate it. “That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t know what my problem is. I think it’s just the hormones making me like this.”

“Time to go!” one of the dining hall staff yelled at Finny and Dorrie. Finny knew the man. He’d come around and bang on the tables if you didn’t get up.

“Well,” Finny said. They bused their uneaten food to the conveyor belt that would carry it back to the clattering kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Finny said to Dorrie when they were walking to the door. It was the best she could do.

“It’s okay,” Dorrie said. “I’m just being stupid. It’s all a gift.”

“No, you’re not,” Finny said.

But Dorrie didn’t seem to hear. They walked out under the heavy sky, going separate ways.

Then March came. The day of Earl’s arrival was warm, and something about the sudden change in weather made Finny feel as if spring were decidedly here. The air smelled of grass. Cross-country runners trotted across campus in shorts and T-shirts, and girls in tank tops laid down blankets on the stretch of lawn Stradler students called “the beach,” in front of Griffen Hall. Finny knew it was too early for this weather, that it had to be a false spring, but still, it brought hope.

And then, just as Finny was heading out to meet Earl, taking her keys off the desk so she could lock the door behind her, the phone rang.

She picked up.

“Hello?” Finny said.

“Finny, it’s Earl.”

The moment she heard his voice she deflated. He was supposed to be on the plane. How could he be calling her?

“I have some sad news,” he went on.

“What?” she said. “What is it?” She could already feel the wave crashing down on her.

“My mom. She’s in the hospital.”

There was a pause, in which Finny knew Earl must have been trying to collect himself.

“What happened?”

“She tried to kill herself,” Earl said.

It turned out that Mona had been more upset about Earl’s leaving than he’d let on. He’d wanted to convince himself that she could make it on her own, yet she’d cried most days, once she knew he’d bought his ticket. Often the fits would strike her out of nowhere. They’d be sitting at a meal, or watching a movie, and all of a sudden she’d just crumble. It was like watching her collapse, Earl said, the way she started to tremble, tears spilling from her eyes. She had become so dependent on him; she didn’t have anyone else in Paris. Her doctor was a psychiatrist in a state hospital, and he called her prescriptions in from his vacation home in Nice.

Plus, Mona would never leave France. She’d moved there in desperation, fleeing her personal and familial problems. And now she was too scared to go anywhere else. She’d never held such a stable job as the one in the hair salon.

Some days she told Earl she’d be okay, that he should live his life, and yet she could hardly get the words out before she was practically shivering with grief. As he told Finny about it, she heard Earl begin to cry himself.

“I always thought she might do something,” he said. “Ever since I came to France in high school, I’ve felt like she was my responsibility. I felt like she was given to me in a way, to take care of. Like a baby on the doorstep or something. It’s a terrible way to think about your mother.”

But Finny saw that Earl felt this way about both his parents. It had been something she’d admired about him, his instinct for caregiving. She remembered the way he used to help his dad out, offer encouragement, take over the wheel of their car when Mr. Henckel fell asleep. It was what Finny had seen in Earl’s story, in the way Chris fretted about leaving home. He felt a responsibility, as Earl did, to make sure everyone was all right.

“Who found her?” Finny said, stupidly, since she already knew the answer.

Earl was sobbing. “She was so out of it,” he said. “She took pills and tried to cut herself. Oh God.” Finny heard his breathing. “This is just so sad,” he finally got out. He sounded like a frightened child.

“But she’s okay now?” Finny asked. It was the best way she could think of to be encouraging.

Earl didn’t answer. All he said was, “I can’t come, Finny.”

She didn’t know what to say. How could this gift be torn from her again?

Finally she asked, “How long are you staying for?”

“I can’t leave,” Earl said. “I can’t do that to her.”

Finny looked at her keys, which she’d now placed back on the desk. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“This is where I’m needed. I don’t have a choice.”

“What are we going to do?”

Then it happened. She didn’t know how, but she felt it, that slightest shift, like a cloud passing over the sun. “How can you ask me that?” he said. “Honestly. How can you worry about
yourself?”

She felt a hot wave ripple down her body. She realized it was hatred she felt—hatred toward Mona. For being so helpless. Demanding so much. The feeling was so intense as to be physical, like hunger or cold. And then, with the same swift certainty, she felt her anger turn toward Earl. It was a wretched, jarring move, but she couldn’t quiet her own clamoring needs. She’d never felt anything so strongly in her life. She hated him. She hated Earl. He’d done this to her. Made her into this. Only now could she see how her old self—that gutsy, bold, rebellious girl—had been squelched by her love for him. Maybe that was why Mona’s neediness made Finny so angry—it was so much like her own.

“Don’t do this,” she said to Earl. Her voice was rough, like her throat had been scraped. It didn’t even sound like her. “It’s an excuse. You’re nervous about coming. Take a minute to think—”

“Don’t analyze me.”

“Your mom could easily fly over here when she’s better. There are plenty of places she could work.”

“That’s not the point, Finny.” Something about hearing her name made her feel small, like when her parents used to lecture her about doing her homework or cleaning her room. “Don’t you see I need to be with her? That’s what I have to think about now. She’s asking how much I care about her.”

So am I, Finny thought. And she didn’t want to ask anymore. All he had to say was that he’d do it, he’d leave for her. Then she’d relent. It would be proof enough. She saw that the argument had become a kind of test—of what he felt for her, how much he’d sacrifice.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Finny said. “Live this way. I can’t sit around waiting.”

“Then don’t.”

A week later he called again. They talked a little about their fight, about how angry each had gotten, both trying to make light of it, to salvage what hadn’t been swept up in the torrent of it. Actually, it made Finny feel a little better, like they might be able to hoist themselves out of what had seemed an impossibly deep and dark hole. But when she asked him what he was up to, he said, “Not much. Just catching up with friends.”

She didn’t know why, but some instinct told her to ask, “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Earl said. “Just some high school friends.”

“You slept with her, didn’t you? Camille.”

“I guess.”

It was like a door clicking shut in her mind. To think she’d waited so long, expected so much. The idea of how gullible she’d been made her almost physically ill. Like Earl in his fiction, she’d invented a character, built someone up out of the air, because she’d wanted so much for him to be real, to be what she needed.

“Okay, Earl,” Finny said at last. She wasn’t even angry anymore. Just tired. “All right. That’s enough.”

Chapter
31
Another Interlude

After Earl’s call, Finny felt as if the train that had carried her through her days had ground to a halt. There was a squeal of metal on metal, a hiss of breaks, the slow sigh of an engine coming to rest. The world seemed fixed in place. Eventually, though, it began again. The engine whirred, the train jolted forward. Life went on.

And so did Finny’s story. Once again, this is not the place to linger. Here is another album of memories, a few handfuls of time.

Schoolwork. She found that if she just sat there, her mind would wander. She’d stare at the wall, thinking of Earl, of what they’d said, of how they’d ended things. But if she fastened her mind to a task—to reading a certain number of pages in a physics text, or completing an English paper—she could keep herself from drifting back. Her grades were still strong. She hadn’t let herself slip.