Shadow Season (16 page)

Finn thinks he can read something between the lines, some serious troubles that kept Murphy on the move.

He’s surprised when Murph continues. “Somehow I wound up in Phoenix, and then went on to St. Louis, and now I’m here balls-deep in snow. Still haven’t been to Florida. But that’s what comes of notions.”

“And what did you want to do?”

“First thought, eh? To rob a bank.”

“What stopped you?”

A knowing chuckle soaked with whiskey sweeps up into Finn’s face. Easy to imagine Murph there with a devil’s grin, his upper lip with just a hint of curl to it, eyes wired into a thousand-yard stare aimed at the girls. “Och, and who said anything did?”

BEFORE FINN HAS A CHANCE TO
decide whether Murph is just fucking with him or not, Judith walks in. He can feel the way she cools everyone in the room. The girls are immediately a bit worried, wondering what they might get a lecture for, thinking maybe Finn and Murph won’t cover for them.

They have to edit their conversations now. They have to consider the way they move, how loud they laugh, how their breath smells. Sally and Suzy Smyth are backed up to the opposite wall, near the window. He can feel their tension.

Murphy licks his lips heavily, drawing at the last of his drink. No different than any guy sucking on the last pull of his glass before having to turn and face the wife, the girlfriend, the woman he never called last Saturday.

He whispers, “Bollocks.”

Finn abruptly thinks that the body he might have heard falling in Murphy’s apartment was probably Judith rolling off the bed.

Murph asks, “Judith
a cara
, can I get you a cup of refreshing eggnog?”

“I’d love it if you would, Roddy,” she tells him, and Finn is surprised that she says it with an almost friendly
air, like a newly married couple talking. Murph walks off but is stopped by Jesse, who’s recently read
Dubliners
and wants to know if Murph was raised in similar circumstances to Joyce and his characters. Murph goes on a minitirade on how Joyce is both the pride and the gob-shite of Ireland, the fooker.

Mint and menthol stream from Judith’s mouth. She’s been chain-smoking the last couple of hours. He sees his mother smoking, something she never did in life, striking a pose and competently easing the filter between her lips, attempting movie-star glamour.

Drawn forward, he moves to Judith, moves closer to his mother.

She says, “You’re staring at me.”

“Am I?”

“Don’t give me that.”

“Have you seen Roz?”

“Not for the last few hours.”

“She went to the store and I don’t think she’s back yet.”

“She hasn’t phoned?”

“I don’t have a cell.”

“Did you check your cottage?”

“Why would she be there?”

“I have no idea.”

No, he hadn’t checked. But Roz wouldn’t make her way through the blizzard to his place without stopping off here first.

Judith works her lips. “It’s dark out and it’s coming down, but it’s nothing to get worried about.” He hears the implicit
yet
in her voice. “Finn?”

“What?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Of course I heard you.”

“She’s fine. Don’t overreact.”

He thinks, She’s one to talk?

“You’re still staring at me.”

“You sorry you didn’t get out of here when you could have?”

“Hell no. At least we’ve got a tree here. And liquor apparently. I can smell it, and everybody’s acting just cagey enough. Am I going to have to check under the cushions for bottles?”

“You can let it ride, nobody’s overindulging.”

“You say that like it makes everything all right. And what happens when their parents find out?”

“Parents never find out, they know only what they want to know.”

Finn’s telling this to his mother, who never wanted to know much about his nights out.

“You worry me sometimes, Finn.”

“I realize that, it’s a gift. Did you call home?”

“You’re actually more paternal toward me than you are to the children. And no. And no one called me either.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh shit, don’t be. In my family, that means we’re merely maintaining the status quo.” She’s giving him a little smack on the snout by using the term “status quo.” He used it himself this morning when describing Vi staying the hell away from him, even if she really isn’t. It’s Judith’s way of telling him to back the fuck off. “Balance is all-important.”

His psychiatrist has told him this too, word for word, and he wonders if Judith’s seeing a shrink as well. He can just guess at the contortions she undergoes and the verbal games that she plays, trying to keep one step ahead of revealing anything crucial or meaningful. It’s how Finn does it too.

She turns and asks anyone within earshot, “Why in the world isn’t Jimmy Stewart on the television?”

“Cable’s out,” Suzy Smyth tells her.

“Surely someone owns a copy on DVD?”

“How square! Can’t we get satellite yet, Mrs. Perry? Please?”

Judith says, “Perhaps your father would be good enough to donate us a dish.”

“I’ll ask.”

“You’re such a dear.”

“He’d probably expect you to pass me in physics though. That’s just the way he is, to be honest.”

“Undoubtedly he has expectations of me, but does he have any for you?”

“I’ll ask.”

Judith leans into Finn, and now he can smell that the mint and menthol are covering a hint of Jameson. More evidence she’s spent some time with Murph today. On some level he hopes it’s true.

She says, “I’ve seen that damn movie nearly every year of my long and mostly adventure-free life. But somehow it’s simply not Christmas until I’ve vomited after that final speech about George Bailey being the wealthiest man in town.”

“The richest man,” he says. He shouldn’t correct others in conversation, but he can’t help it. He does it so
often in class, trying to stay sharp, impeccable, exemplary. “I think it’s a metaphor for love and family.”

“I know, Finn, that’s the saccharine shit that unsettles my stomach.”

“I need to find Roz.”

“Of course you do,” Judith says. Murph hasn’t returned with the eggnog. He must’ve already skipped out the door. The petulance is as thick in her voice as it is in her mind. “Off you go. Bitter nights are meant for lovers, aren’t they?”

IT’S A QUESTION THAT BEGS AN
answer. Finn actually gives it some thought, trying to find a response that doesn’t come off as trite. Nothing comes to mind. He knows the draw of self-destruction.

He realizes Judith is walking the line. She’s in a lot of pain and puts herself in the path for more and more. It’s an addiction in its own right. Part of the ritual is digging into your own wound. He fights for the proper consolation, but by the time something comes Judith has wafted away and is conversing with the girls about Christ knows what.

The undercurrents flowing around Finn lap and break against his body. He rocks and sways on his feet. He imagines himself dancing with Roz, holding her close while the rhythm of the music moves them around the room. It impresses the others as he spins and dips her, the beat becoming their pulse, and the pulse knotting them even more firmly together.

Where the fuck is she? It’s the one time he wishes that she carried a cell phone.

Finn’s hands are fists. He loosens his grip on the cane. He checks to make sure he hasn’t cracked it. It happens from time to time, this show of physical
strength, and not always when he’s frustrated or angry. It’s as if his body cries out for his attention, trying to impress him with what it can still do. A child acting out in front of a neglectful parent. Notice me. See me.
See me
. Over here, over here.

With his open left hand he reaches out, willing Roz to take it.

Sometimes it feels like he’ll never be able to hold any influence over the world again. And sometimes it feels like all he has to do is tilt his head or snap his fingers and whatever he wants or dreams will happen. It’s a bad place to be, thinking like this. He feels himself starting to drift, and drops his hand. The question hammers at him again.

Where is she?

Finn heads for the door, brushes his shoulder against the jamb, slips out of the study room and into the corridor on the fly like he’s in a hurry to catch someone.

The windows at the end of the hall rattle. They’re mournful and at least as alive as he is. They’re telling him, This way, please, please come to us. This loneliness is something he’s well acquainted with. He moves to them. The personification of cold glass seems perfectly natural, its voice needy and human.

These windows want him more than anyone in the school. His footsteps are loud as he speeds toward them. The panes play a soft and adoring contrapuntal to the piano’s brutal catcalls still resonating within his chest.

There’s a breath of air against the back of his neck. His body reacts faster than his mind as he snaps away from a set of lips too close to his ear.

The dodge nearly sends Finn down. His heels slide. Murphy and his men keep the floors well waxed.

Harley Moon says, “Man, your house isn’t settled.”

This is how it happens with the burnout psych cases.

The folks mumbling to themselves walking down Fifth Avenue, holding deep conversations with their lost children, dead parents, their homeroom teachers, drill instructors, all the saints and martyrs, and other imaginary pals.

For an instant Finn wonders who it is that Harley Moon represents, what amalgam of his regrets and mistakes. His first lay, his high-school sweetheart, Danielle, Ray’s hot broads, the fury of Howie, the girls in the morgue who never should have been there. The dead and the missing that rise from his subconscious and offer curious pursuits to keep him alive for another day.

Finn shakes his head. He feels himself quite plainly dividing. The Finn being formed at this instant, who’ll never be the same from this moment on, and the Finn made up of everything that’s gone on before. He’s in transition, second to second. Maybe he always has been. Maybe everyone is.

Harley asks, “You listening to me, blind man?”

It would be childish for him to say, Would it be too much to ask you to call me Mr. Finn? So he doesn’t. But her constant use of “blind man” reminds him, in a way that even his own blindness doesn’t, that he can’t fucking see.

There’s an earthy loam to her scent. She works in the dirt and doesn’t wash much. She smells of pioneer womanhood.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Why’d you run away before?”

“Didn’t run so much as walked out the front door. I said my piece and thought you might take heed.”

“Your piece didn’t make any sense to me. I still don’t know what you’re—”

“But you didn’t listen to me. And now here I am trying again, even though I feel foolish wasting so much of my breath in a single day.” Her voice softens. “I’ve never been inside the Hotel before. It’s … pretty.”

She just doesn’t believe he has no idea what she’s talking about. They keep chasing each other around in dwindling circles.

He says, “You should’ve come in before to get your head looked at.”

“It doesn’t ache any.”

“Still, we should get you checked out.”

“Said I’m fine, didn’t I?”

“You were bleeding. You might have a concussion.” Harley lets out a little hiss to hush him. She steps closer, then steps away. “I don’t like them.”

“Who?”

“These girls who attend here. They make fun of me. They come into town and they get hold of some holler boys, get drunk on our whiskey, and then they chitter and whisper and point. They point at me and other folk like me. They point at my younger sisters and my baby brother. They’re so surefire smart, they’re always smiling and showing their back teeth.”

“They make fun of everybody.”

“So much the worse, then.”

“I simply mean, Harley, that it’s nothing personal.”

“It is for me.”

“That’s just the way it is with most spoiled teenage girls.”

“You think that makes it all right? That isn’t class, the way they slink about and spit like kittens.”

“You’re right.”