Justin Kramon (32 page)

Sarah Barksdale calling Finny from her place in Philadelphia, saying, “Finny, I’m engaged!” Finny congratulating her, having to hold the phone a couple inches from her ear, the way she had with Sarah’s mother. Then, a month later, another call. “We had a fight. It was the dumbest thing. About who was paying the security deposit. It just blew up. We broke it off.” Sarah crying into the phone, Finny telling her it was okay, better they found out now. Thinking of Earl, the time they’d fought in Paris before her purse was stolen. She told Sarah to give it a few weeks. She would know if it was the right thing. There was nothing they couldn’t take back. And Sarah thanking Finny, saying she knew Finny was right.

Teaching. Finny loved the children, all the adorable comments they made, the seriousness over cutting out paper circles, gluing glitter to a square of cardboard. Finny laughed at their little arguments. A boy telling a girl that Christmas was about family, and the girl disagreeing, saying she was pretty sure it was about Jesus. They went back and forth for several minutes until Finny said it was about something different in everyone’s house, and in her house it was about presents. Which both seemed to like. Nice to dispatch of problems so neatly, like putting silverware in a drawer. And the health benefits were good. And she had her summers free. She couldn’t see any reason to change, so she just kept renewing the contract, accepting the little salary hikes she got each year.

Until one summer, when she was achingly bored with the job, and on a whim she applied for an internship at a small women’s magazine called
Doll’s Apartment
in New York. She found an artist who was willing to do an apartment swap with her, so she ended up with a disheveled studio in Chelsea that reeked of insecticide. Finny was in her thirties, hardly the type to take an unpaid pencil-sharpening position, but still, it was an adventure. She wrote little captions beneath the photos they gave her, read the slush pile, even contributed a couple of small opinion pieces. (One she particularly liked about the locker-room way men always refer to male writers by their last names and female writers by their whole names.) The editor she worked under, Julie Fried, an almost frighteningly tall and broad-shouldered woman who wore no makeup and kept her red hair in a loose ponytail, liked Finny a lot. Told her she was “fresh.” Offered her a permanent job at a bracingly low salary. The work was fun, but not something Finny could make a career of, so she said thanks, but she’d bow out at the end of the summer.

The call from Sylvan: “Did you hear?” he said. Finny on a plane to Baltimore the next morning. She and Sylvan sitting by their mother’s hospital bed, watching her nap. An enlarged heart, the doctor had said. Funny, it was so much like what had killed their father. A warm, cloudless afternoon, the sun golden as an apricot, slipping behind the buildings outside, casting the room in a honey-colored light. The hospital seemed unnaturally quiet. Shadows stretched across the floor. Laura’s mouth twitched as she slept, and once in a while she whispered things Finny couldn’t make out. A nurse placed a tray of food in front of Laura while she was still asleep. Sylvan mouthed
Thank you
to her.

Laura waking in the middle of the night and saying, “You have to understand.” She stared at Finny and Sylvan with her eyes wide, burning.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Sylvan said, stroking her hand.

“No!” Laura said, looking at Finny. “I just wasn’t strong.”

“It’s okay,” Finny said.

“I just wanted everything to be nice,” Laura said. “I thought everyone would hate me if it wasn’t nice.”

Finny thought of her mother’s pointers, the childlike way she talked to other adults, the preening and politeness, the flirting. How easy it must have been for Gerald to snatch her up, to see that behind the door was just a frightened child, a kid who wanted nothing more than to please, who wanted everyone to like her.

“Mom,” Finny said, “I forgive you.”

Sylvan looked down.

But Laura didn’t say anything else. She died in the morning.

Over gristly chicken salad sandwiches in the hospital cafeteria, they cried a bit. Then Sylvan told Finny he was in a new relationship, and it was going well. Her name was Maureen, but he called her Mari. When he showed Finny the picture, she said, “I know her.” Because it was the curly-haired girl Carter had come to the party at Judith’s with—the party where Finny had run into Earl. It turned out Sylvan had met Mari through Judith, and they’d liked each other, but of course they’d never done anything about it because of Judith. Mari was much less beautiful than Judith. Sylvan said she was a yoga instructor, quiet at first but a good person. They were thinking of moving in together in Philadelphia. It sounded like a good fit.

After lunch Sylvan called Mari. The memory of Judith’s party put Finny in mind of Earl, and she thought of calling him, too. But didn’t. Why would she now? They hadn’t talked in years. She’d tell him about her mother the next time they spoke. If they spoke.

Now she’d lost both her parents. She and Sylvan were the oldest generation in their family. Finny felt as if she’d seen the best and worst that relationships had to offer. She thought it was time to make some decisions about her life. About how it would go from here on out. She was thirty-four years old.

Book Three
From Here On Out

Chapter
32
Finny Gets a Glimpse into the Lives of Her Friends

It was Judith Turngate, again, who brought them all back together. This time she’d sent an email, inviting everyone to a Memorial Day weekend at her summer house on Dune Road in Westhampton Beach. (She and Prince also had an apartment in the city.) The email went to three people: Finny, Sylvan, and Carter. But they were told to bring friends or significant others, anyone they wanted. Finny’s invitation was followed by a personal note from Judith.
Hey, Shorty Finn! I just thought of having this “reunion” at the last minute. The weather’s been beautiful on the island. Prince and I have the barbecue set up. I’ve just been thinking how it would be nice if we could all be friends again. Please come if you can.

“Did you see that email from Judith?” Sylvan asked Finny on the phone the same day she’d received the invitation.

“It was pretty unexpected,” Finny said.

She and her brother talked on the phone a couple times a week, now that their mom had passed away. Sylvan was working as a counselor at Stradler College, Finny’s alma mater. They talked about the news in their lives, about old memories, anything that came up. Finny felt closer to Sylvan than to anyone else in the world. Maybe it was just that she and her brother had been through so much together. But she also had a lot of respect for Sylvan, for how he’d dealt with his pain, for who he’d become. She was certain he’d be an excellent therapist.

“Are you gonna go?” Sylvan asked.

“I don’t know. Are you? If you do, you should bring Mari.”

“The thing is, she’s going to her mother’s that weekend. I actually have nothing to do.”

“Well then,” Finny said.

“Well then, what?”

“I think we should go. Maybe it’ll give some kind of closure. Prove that we’re over it and we can just have a nice time together. You shrinks are into closure, aren’t you?”

Sylvan laughed. “We’re into charging for it.”

“Who knows? You might get a chance to do that, too.”

“At least it’ll be a chance for us to catch up. I have a surprise for you. I’ll save it till when I see you.”

“Is it a bill?” Finny asked.

“That’s coming in the mail,” Sylvan said.

Finny took the Chinatown bus to New York on Saturday afternoon, then the subway to West Fourth. She was planning to meet Carter at the restaurant his boyfriend managed, just off Washington Square Park. Then they were going to ride out to Long Island in Carter’s car. Their plan was to get to Judith’s for dinner.

Carter was waiting in front of the restaurant when Finny arrived. She was wearing her backpack the way she did when she used to visit New York in college. It was a gray afternoon, the clouds above them thick as batter, threatening rain. Carter was talking to a shortish man with a beard who looked to be about forty. Finny assumed it was Garreth, the boy friend. He was soft-looking but attractive, and he wore a somewhat shiny tan shirt and dark slacks. Both he and Carter were smoking cigarettes.

“Now,” Carter said, smacking a kiss on Finny’s lips, “look what the D train dragged in. It’s beautiful to see you, Finny Short.”

“You, too,” Finny said. She noticed Carter was looking a little soft himself, not his usual shipshape skin-and-bones self. His belly pushed at his black Jimi Hendrix T-shirt like a pumpkin beneath a sheet. His hair was parted neatly, not bedraggled like it used to be.

“I’m clean and I’m not smoking anymore,” Carter said, taking a long drag from his cigarette, then tossing it into the street. “That’s why I look like a damn oven stuffer roaster. All I have are bonbons to keep me warm. By the way, this is Garreth.”

Garreth shook Finny’s hand, told her it was nice to meet her, that he’d heard so much about her. He seemed a little shy, Finny thought, but pleasant. He looked her in the eyes when they shook hands.

“I have to move the car,” Carter said to Garreth. “Just remember Yvonne gets the dry food, and Curly the mix.” Carter looked at Finny. “Dogs,” he said.

“Which one gets the dry?” Garreth said. “Kidding. You really are becoming my mother.” Then he kissed Carter goodbye, told Finny again how nice it was to meet her.

“You have dogs?” Finny said to Carter when they rounded the corner.

Carter took a set of keys out of his pocket and pressed a button, causing the blue minivan in front of them to chirp and flash its lights. “And if you say anything about the minivan,” Carter said, “I’m going to lock you in the doggy cage and you’re not coming out till we get to Westhampton.”

Once they’d settled into their lane on the Long Island Expressway, Finny said to Carter, “It seems like there’ve been some changes on your end.”

“You mean the hair?” Carter said.

“Among other things,” Finny said. “Have you joined a mahjong club?”

“It’s the damn married life. Turns a decent couple into the gay version of the Partridge Family. Maybe that’s redundant.”

On their right some strip malls flashed by. Finny saw a fried chicken restaurant, an adult movie store with blackened windows, a defunct Shell station with boarded-up gas pumps. The sky was still gray, but not as ominous, more like a thin milk shake than batter. It seemed the storm might pass without rain.

“What about you?” Carter said. “What ever happened to that cute boyfriend of yours I met in New York? I thought you were on the slow boat to marriage, too.”

“You mean Earl? I think that boat stopped off on some Caribbean island and never got going again. We’re not in touch anymore.”

“Anything happen?”

Finny shrugged. She didn’t know exactly what to call it.

Carter sighed. “So what are your projects nowadays?”

“Work, mostly.” She was going to say something about the magazine job she’d been offered, just float it, but she couldn’t think of how to do it without inviting questions.

Carter wrinkled his eyebrows. “Are you kidding me? I’m as sober as Nancy Reagan at a MADD meeting, driving a fucking minivan to a Memorial Day barbecue, and you’re not going to tell me about getting your buzz on and titty-fucking a stranger in the bathroom of a club called Nerve? What the hell am I driving you around for anyway? Don’t you know that when a married person asks a single friend what’s going on, it’s the equivalent of buying porn?”

“Are you and Garreth really married?”

“In spirit,” Carter said. “We call it ‘committed.’ I think of it as a life sentence, with only the very dim possibility of parole. And not for good behavior.”

“Can I ask you, though, seriously,” Finny said, “what made the change? I mean, I didn’t really expect you to settle down so soon.”

“Yeah, well,” Carter said, and then twisted his hands on the steering wheel, like he was wringing out a soaked towel. He seemed to be considering what to say next. It might have been the first time Finny had ever seen him hesitate.

Then he said, “I found out I have the bug, Finny.” She must have looked confused, because Carter went on. “HIV. Not the grand prize. But a solid runner-up.”

“Oh God, Carter,” Finny said. “I’m so sorry.” Her vision went blurry for a second, then came back, like she’d been shaken. “What happened?”

“I’d just been swinging for too long. It catches up with you. I can’t even tell you the life we were leading, Finny. I know Garreth looks tame. But trust me when I tell you that our first night together I was snorting a line of coke off his dick and he was fucking me senseless while I vomited in the toilet. I don’t mean to say this to gross you out. Well, maybe a little. But what I’m trying to tell you is that we were out of our minds. Possessed. I don’t know if it was love or what, but it went crazy.

“Anyway,” Carter went on, “we had this party. Drugs, booze. Both of us getting fucked left, right, and sideways. It’s the way we lived. Our only agreement was that we’d use condoms. So this one time I didn’t. I don’t remember if we were out, or I was too lazy. But of course I got it. One mistake, and I had doctors telling me my life expectancy.”

“It’s hard to imagine—” Finny said.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” Carter interrupted. He was as serious as she’d ever seen him. He wouldn’t look at her while he spoke, but kept staring ahead through the windshield, almost like he was summoning the story from the gray sky. “Garreth kicked me out. It was the one thing we’d agreed upon—the one thing we both did for the other person, for us—and I’d broken his trust. He said he couldn’t forgive me.

“I found this little rat hole, deep in Hell’s Kitchen, and just started going really hard at the drugs and the booze. I had these days I called ‘missed days,’ which were times when I woke up and started drinking, and the next thing I knew it was tomorrow. It went on for a couple months like that. I think I was trying to kill myself. I lived next to a strip club, and I made some money selling drugs to the dancers and running little errands for them. Buying them tampons and whatnot.”