Justin Kramon (31 page)

A call from Sylvan. Finally. Her brother saying he was sorry he hadn’t called sooner. It was a tough time. He’d had to accept that Judith wasn’t the right person for him. But he’d been feeling better lately. He said he’d been thinking of changing his major. He’d always been interested in psychology. He’d planned to be a history professor, but couldn’t see himself as a stuffy academic anymore. Something new in Sylvan’s voice. Not pain exactly. But he sounded older.

A letter from Earl. His mom was doing better.
I’m sorry I’ve been disappointing
, he wrote.
I just couldn’t think about anything clearly. I know you’re very angry at me. And you have a right to be. Just know that I still love you and think the world of you….

Dorrie coming back to school with her belly round and taut as an overinflated beach ball. Her feet turned out when she walked. Finny putting her hand on Dorrie’s stomach, feeling the miniature Steven Bench give a couple of mild kicks. Then, a few weeks later, Dorrie showing up at Finny’s dorm room with a little red-faced howling infant. Not particularly cute, so Finny ended up telling Dorrie he was “quite a baby.”

Another surprise in the mail: a videotape in a plain brown envelope, no return address. Playing it on the VCR in the lounge in her dorm. A picture of a female newscaster came on the screen, saying, “Now, here’s a story about a Baltimore couple who are making a difference in
their
community….” Then the screen flashed to a film of Mr. Henckel conducting a group of six-and seven-year-olds through the Bach minuet Finny used to play. Mr. Henckel’s comb-over flapping to the rhythm of the music. The story was about an after-school arts program that Poplan and Mr. Henckel had set up, funded through a charity Poplan had established. There was a clip of Poplan explaining how she wanted the program to be a fun, safe place for these kids to go. Then the tape cut to a picture of Poplan lining the children up to wash their hands before a game of Jenga. The story concluded with a quote by Mr. Henckel. “I just want these children to know that here the coffeepot is always warm for them.”

A form arriving, asking Finny to check off a box for which major she’d like to pursue. She had no idea. She hadn’t even thought about it. Deciding to check off English, since she had the most credits in that one. Then she checked off a box for a minor in education, for no reason other than that it looked better than just a plain English major. And with that one stroke, a decade of her professional life was decided.

A hot morning in September. The first day of classes Finny’s junior year. Walking into Griffen Hall and seeing Sarah Barksdale holding a notebook, checking her mail. Finny was about to run. Any reminder of Finny’s former principal made Finny grit her teeth. But she decided she had to say hi. She walked over and tapped Sarah on the shoulder, reintroduced herself. Though Sarah was cursed with her mother’s grating voice, it turned out she had a sense of humor. She told Finny that Mrs. Barksdale had tried to get Miss Simpkin to spend a night “under cover” in the dorm with Sarah, in order to “evaluate the social dynamics.” But Sarah had convincingly argued that no one would act normally around Miss Simpkin, and furthermore, the idea of Miss Simpkin under cover of anything but a sweatsuit was ludicrous. Finny laughed, and she and Sarah ended up having lunch a couple times a month.

Evenings in the library, sitting by herself at a synthetic wooden table in the periodicals section, surrounded by the garish orange carpeting the school had laid down in a misguided attempt to keep students awake. Finny liked to sneak off here some Friday nights, when she was feeling gray, and thumb through old women’s magazines, laughing at the sex tips and social pointers, the pictures of smooth-skinned women lounging with their boyfriends on white comforters. It was a way to escape, to think that five blow job tips could save your relationship, or that you could find your career through a multiple-choice survey. She even took some of the surveys. Found out she’d be best suited for woodworking or pet clothing design.

A party in one of the Stradler frat houses. Dim lighting, throbbing music, the sour smell of beer. Finny didn’t normally go to parties, but she’d promised Sarah Barksdale she’d stop by this one. They danced together for a while, until a tall, muscular boy with hair as red as Finny’s asked Finny to dance with him. The dancing turned out to be a lot of calculated rubbing, which, in combination with the three cups of astringent fruit punch she’d drunk, did the trick of putting Finny in the mood to stop by the boy’s dorm room. Finny said bye to Sarah and stumbled with the boy across the cold, dark lawn to his dorm. Inside his room, which was decorated with posters of jazz musicians, they kissed clumsily to a Bill Evans record, then began to take off their clothes. They ended up sleeping together a couple times before he graduated, after which they never talked again.

A vacation with Sarah Barksdale in Mexico over spring break Finny’s senior year. Getting conned into paying rental insurance on the already overpriced rental car by a sweaty man who kept shrugging and saying, “This is Mexico. Anything can happen.” On their way back, at the Cancún airport, Finny and Sarah stopped in a duty-free to buy souvenirs for their families. There was a counter where an old white guy with silver hair was pouring samples of jarred salsa into plastic cups, and when Finny looked closely, she recognized the man. It was Gerald Kramp. When he saw Finny, he turned as red as the salsa. Finny bought two jars of mild from him, telling him she could do without the spices.

Graduation. A muggy morning. Finny lifting her robe to get some air on her legs. Afterward, Laura and Sylvan taking Finny to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. They got seated at a table for two, since it was all that was available and no one had thought to make a reservation. Laura looked much older than she had when Finny started college; when she smiled, lines appeared on her face like cracks in ice. For the first time, Finny could imagine the way her mother would look as an old woman. Laura grinned a lot, but Finny and Sylvan did most of the talking. They both knew this was the routine now when they visited their mother, who hadn’t been the same after the trouble with Gerald. The lunch made Finny think about her father for the first time in a while, and they all laughed when the waiter brought out a plate of General Tso’s chicken and Finny insisted on calling it Chicken à la Picasso.

Another publication for Earl. He wrote Finny with the news. They’d communicated a little by mail—no calls—keeping each other up to date. Finny didn’t see the harm in it, since they weren’t getting back together. This time his story was coming out in a magazine called
Trophy
, which Earl said could be found
in the most dimly lit and out of the way corner of Barnes & Noble….
Finny wrote him congratulations. When the story came out that summer, she read it, sitting in a Barnes & Noble café. The story was beautiful—about a woman who goes to a doctor to get a skin cancer treated, and it ends up bringing up all these memories about her father dying and her losing the man she loved. It was a long, wandering, lyrical story, and it went back and forth in time. By the end, Finny had a sense of such great loss and sorrow that she actually began to weep in the middle of the bookstore. She’d been transported by the story, and she didn’t know how Earl could write so convincingly about a middle-aged woman. He seemed able to tap into some sadness in his stories, some truth and wisdom he didn’t always have in real life. She wrote him again that night to say it was one of the best stories she’d ever read.

The move to Cambridge. Finny had loved the area when she’d visited Sylvan at college, and so, on a whim, she decided to move there. More boxes, more dirty bedsheets flung over furniture. She and Sylvan had actually traded places, since Sylvan was now pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology at Bryn Mawr, outside Philadelphia. Finny got a job hostessing at a restaurant near Harvard Square. She liked the work, though she knew she could hardly make a career of it. So she started interning for a literary magazine at Harvard, reading their fiction submissions, hoping to put her English degree to work.

It didn’t even occur to her that both her jobs were in exactly the areas Earl worked in. She didn’t analyze herself that way. She simply wrote Earl the news, and they even chatted on the phone once in a while. Earl told Finny he had an agent now, but it was hard to sell a collection of stories. He was still living across the hall from his mother, because it was cheap and it allowed him the mornings to write. She didn’t ask if he was living with anyone. Mona had become a partner at the salon, as promised. Finny asked Earl if he was writing a novel, and he said, “No. Stories are my thing.” He was almost finished with an undergraduate degree in France.

An invitation forwarded from Laura, to attend “the union of Judith Marie Turngate and Milton Gaylord Hollibrand.” Finny had been in Cambridge a couple years already, but had never given Judith the address. The wedding notice was written in a simple blue script, on a white background, with a plain blue trim. Finny knew they must have spent thousands on the invitations alone. She looked at the two boxes:
Yes, I will attend
and
With regrets, I am unable to attend.
There was no room on Finny’s card to add a guest. She thought of simply not returning the card. Then she thought of checking the regrets box and adding a little note. But in the end, she decided to attend. Anything else would have been too dramatic. And she had to admit—she was curious.

The ceremony, which the Turngates and Hollibrands had set up through their many connections, was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They rented out the Egyptian tomb area for the reception, which turned out to be a five-course formal catered dinner. The only whimsical element was that when the glasses for the toast were handed out, Finny realized they contained cranberry juice—which must have been a point of great importance to Mr. Turngate. Hal Hollibrand offered a toast to the married couple, in which he called their union “the greatest merger I’ve ever seen,” and afterward he shook hands with the Turngates like they were sealing a business deal.

Luckily, Finny was seated next to Carter, who provided lots of entertaining commentary on all the distinguished-looking guests. He told Finny that Prince’s parents—who were both rather small—had adopted the mutant Prince when Bonnie Turngate had made noise about adopting a baby from China. They were always trying to show each other up. He also said that the only thing tackier than having a wedding reception on top of a national treasure was if they had actually set up the bar
inside
the Egyptian tomb, giving the guests little mummies to stir their drinks with.

Halfway through dinner, he came out with his news. “I have a boyfriend, Finny. A steady one. First time in my life. His name is Garreth, which is the gayest thing I’ve ever heard. And my name’s Carter.” It was then that Judith and Prince started making their rounds. Judith appeared at Finny’s table looking almost too beautiful, her cheeks slightly blushed, her skin golden against the white dress. Prince was grinning, his enormous chest nearly bursting the seams of his tuxedo. Finny did have to admit they looked pleased together. “I’m so happy you came,” Judith said to Finny. And Prince added, “It means so much to us.” Judith and Finny said they’d have to get together, though Finny knew her former friend would never call. Only when the newlyweds walked away did Carter say, “I’ll bet his dick is the size of a Mike and Ike.”

Finny chatting with one of her managers at the restaurant during a slow afternoon. Mentioning she had a minor in education. “Are you serious?” the manager said. Her name was Brandy, but everyone called her Bee. She told Finny that a friend of hers was responsible for hiring at a kindergarten in Boston and they were looking for a teacher’s assistant. Asked Finny if she might be interested. Finny said sure, and got the job at the interview. In a month, when one of the head teachers left to have a baby, Finny took over her position. It was a fluke, but she loved her new job. The kids called her Miss Finn.

Some dates: a bartender at the restaurant where she’d worked; a divorced father of one of the kids she taught; a man she’d been set up with who worked in film and kept talking about all the people he knew at HBO and how close they were to buying his projects. Sometimes Finny slept with them; sometimes she didn’t. It was based more on how lonely she felt at the time than how attracted she was to the man. Nothing lasted for more than a couple months, which was fine with her.

Finny’s apartment in Cambridge: the bottom floor of a two-story home owned by a Brazilian couple. The house’s address was on a little one-way street called Berkshire Street, but the place was tucked behind another row of houses, so you could access it only by an alleyway. Quiet in the apartment all day. Plus it was enormous—a bedroom and a study off the large kitchen, and then a separate living room down the hall. It was one of the reasons she found it so hard to contemplate leaving Cambridge. She was paying less than a thousand a month. The Almeidas liked her, and they saw no reason to change tenants.

Sundays she met Bee from her old restaurant job, or other teachers at her school, and they stood in line at the S & S deli to get a table for brunch. Latkes and blintzes, mimosas in soda glasses. Dinner plans once or twice a week, or stopping by to see her aunt Louise, who happened to live just outside Boston with her new crop of cats. Concerts—at Symphony Hall or the Middle East or the Orpheum—which Finny was happy to attend by herself if no one else wanted to go. Last-minute theater tickets, or catching the Alvin Ailey or Paul Taylor troupes when they came to town. Coffee shops she loved, and bars and restaurants and bookstores. Laughing at the women’s magazines like she used to in college, even once sending in a letter to the editor (
I mastered all twenty “blow his head off” orgasm techniques
, she wrote,
but my kitchen still doesn’t look as clean as the one in the photo)
, which came back to her with a polite rejection slip saying they valued her subscription and would she like to renew it with a special “career woman” rate? Dim sum at China Pearl. The Museum of Fine Arts, which was free for Finny since she was a teacher. Time rolling by. Another summer and another.