Justin Kramon (24 page)

In the morning Finny and Earl woke up early so they could roast in bed together for a while before she left. They didn’t even have sex. They buried their faces in the warmth from the other, and already Finny was feeling lonely and a little depressed. Would life always be this way? she wondered. Would there ever be a place she could rest?

They took the train to Charles de Gaulle. They had breakfast in an airport café—some cold coffee and an American bagel that tasted like rubber. Then it was time. Finny strapped on her backpack, kissed Earl goodbye. Told him she had a great trip. Nothing about the future.

Just before she walked away, Earl said, “Wait.” He took an envelope out of the bag he was carrying. “Here,” he said, handing it to Finny. She could see his hand was trembling. “Promise you won’t open it till you get on the plane.”

Chapter
23
My Father the Collector

The summer before I went to college and left my dad behind in the little brown house with all our animals, I only wanted to read. I had a job in a restaurant, yanking the cold guts out of chickens and rubbing the fat birds down with oil till they shined like prizefighters, hauling crates of dusty soda bottles up a shadowy staircase that squealed with the anguish of a dozen thwarted safety inspectors; but my real life began when I switched on my bedside lamp and read things like: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Every minute I spent listening to my manager holding forth on the latest addition to his entertainment center and the virtues of layaway financing (“Nothing this month, Chris. Not a
single penny!”)
, I was counting in my mind the pages I had left to read that night to stay on pace in
The Grapes of Wrath
or
Candide
or
The Republic.
Every evening I would come home exhausted and smelling like an herb garden, pluck some leftovers from the refrigerator, and lock myself in my room with Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky and Marx. It was late when I’d emerge to find my father at the kitchen table, reading selections from his favorite book, the Guinness book of world records, to our parrot, Romulus. He would ask me if I could guess how long the longest toenails in the world were….

Finny looked out the plane window for a minute while she tried to absorb this opening paragraph of Earl’s short story, “My Father the Collector.” At first, she couldn’t help hearing the words in Earl’s voice, like he was reading them to her. She knew she was looking for the little trail of footprints that would lead her to some hidden enclave, some stashed-away part of him. But she couldn’t enjoy the story that way. So she stopped doing that; she just read.

It turned out the story was about a lonely teenager in his final year of high school, preparing to leave his even lonelier father behind in the house they’d shared for Chris’s entire life. There was no mother in the picture. Chris’s father wants to have some fun with Chris, the way they used to, so he takes him out to an abandoned field they’d sometimes visited, to toss an old easy chair down a big hill, just for the fun of it, to watch it break. But when they throw it, the chair ends up hitting a stray dog they hadn’t seen, and Chris sees his father break down, devastated over what he’s done:

And I stood there, not knowing what to do or say, because what could you do or say in a moment like this? I watched my father in the dirt just crying and crying. It was like he’d been broken; he couldn’t stop.

And then the scene shifts. Chris is leaving home, saying goodbye to his dad. There’s a brief epilogue that takes place some time later, after Chris’s father has died, where Chris comes back to the house to sort through his father’s things:

I made a last pass through the rooms, checking under beds and in drawers for anything left behind. I knew my father was a great collector, and he could have hidden his findings anywhere.

For some reason, this line touched Finny. She finished the story in tears.

More than anything, her first reaction was relief—relief that it was good. After the time in the Italian restaurant when Earl had gotten upset because Finny had said she’d enjoy reading his work even if it wasn’t good—after that, she’d been worried that when she did finally read one of his stories, it would be silly, or too intellectual, or like a million other stories twenty-year-olds write. Finny knew that Earl wouldn’t settle for that. She could tell, by their conversation in the restaurant, that this was more than a hobby or a dream for him. And she was excited to see he had real talent to back it up. Confused as their relationship was, he was someone special.

Finny was amazed that the story didn’t “sound” like Earl at all. She caught pieces of Earl in Chris—the way Earl had used his experience working at the restaurant in France in Chris’s summer job at the restaurant, the complicated relationship with a quirky father, the little brown house—but Chris was not Earl. Earl had transformed himself, used the scraps of his own experiences to build an entirely new character, to show something about the world. In a way, it was like how Earl built up the people around him, making them livelier, more interesting, better than they ever could have been on their own.

And it was funny. She’d been afraid that because Earl took writing seriously, his
writing
would be overly serious. But there were several parts where she laughed out loud. She thought the father’s character was marvelously strange. The story was about something sad, though Earl hadn’t been afraid to make it funny. This made sense to Finny, because her view of life was very much that way—that it was both hilariously funny and devastatingly sad. And only if you saw both things could you ever have a realistic idea of the subject.

Of course there was a part of her that wondered where Finny was in all this. She’d had a small hope that the story would be about a love affair, about a couple being apart for many years and then coming back together, that the beautiful heroine would be based on Finny Short, that Earl would reveal all his hidden hopes about their future—but Finny quickly jogged herself back to reality. She knew that life was more complicated than that, and that a story wasn’t some kind of secret message. She was touched by how sensitively Earl had captured certain aspects of his own life. In the end, Finny was happier that it was a good story
not
about her than if it had been a bad story about her. She concluded that Earl was a talented writer, and that, as in other areas, he just needed time to grow, to see more of the world, to practice.

“What’s that you’re reading?” the woman next to Finny asked when Finny put down the story. She was a small woman, though she wore a large hat with flowers sewn into the brim. She had a squawking voice. As she looked at Finny, the woman had an expression of intense concentration on her face, and Finny knew she was gearing up for a long chat.

So Finny did something she’d never done before. She put a hand to her own throat and mimed like she was being choked.

The woman looked confused. Finny tore off a square of paper from the bottom of Earl’s story, took a pen out of her purse, and wrote,
I just had an operation on my throat. Can’t talk. Very sorry.

When she showed it to the woman, the woman made a
hmph
sound and turned back to the movie she’d been watching, as if it were Finny’s fault for getting the operation right before this opportunity to have a lovely discussion. Finny felt bad, but she just didn’t want to talk about Earl’s story with the woman. When the stewardess came down the aisle for drink orders, Finny had to point at what she wanted.

Finny was going to be staying at Judith’s apartment in Morningside Heights for the night, then heading back to Stradler on Sunday morning. Her classes began on Monday. It was fine with Finny that she’d be staying in Morningside Heights, since she figured she’d be more comfortable there than at the stuffy Beresford. Finny was looking forward to having a night away from the intensity of her time with Earl, her swirling thoughts about him, and Judith always provided a good distraction.

At a little after eight, Finny arrived at 110th and Broadway, where Judith lived. The street was quiet: only a D’Agostino grocery store and a Chinese takeout were open. Judith had mailed Finny the extra set of keys, in case she wasn’t home when Finny got in, so Finny opened the lobby door, then took the elevator up to the ninth floor.

The hallway here was much less adorned than the one at the Beresford. There was a gray carpet that was coming up at the sides. The walls had at some point been white but were now scuff-marked from top to bottom because of all the people moving in and out with bulky furniture. One ceiling light was out, and another blinked on and off, giving a disco effect to the hallway. At the door of 9G, Finny knocked, just in case Judith was in the middle of something. No one answered. Again Finny knocked.

This time the door swung open, revealing Judith with tears streaming down her face, saying, “Oh God, Finny, I’m so glad you’re here. Please help me.”

Chapter
25
In Which the Potential Becomes Actual

Judith’s apartment had an odd design. The entrance faced one wall of a small hallway that led to the right of the front door. To the left of the door was a bedroom that Finny guessed was Judith’s because of the Thorndon bumper sticker tacked to a corkboard. The room was tidy: a bed, a desk, a dresser—not unlike Judith’s half of the dorm room at Thorndon. There was a frilly blue and white quilt on the bed, and a framed poster of the Edward Hopper painting “Nighthawks” on the wall, which Finny had seen in about a dozen dorm rooms at her school already. Finny wondered if Judith still had the black clothes. She guessed not.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Judith was saying to Finny. Judith was still crying as she led Finny down the hallway. Finny dropped her bags here, not knowing what else to do with them. The wooden floorboards creaked under their footsteps. “It just got out of hand,” Judith said.

They passed the kitchen, a pretty room with large yellow tiles on the floor, a little window with long white curtains.

“What’s going on?” Finny asked. “Is someone hurt?”

“No,” Judith said. “At least, not yet. By the way, your brother’s here.”

The hallway turned to the left. There was a
Bonnie and Clyde
poster on the wall, Warren Beatty holding Faye Dunaway by her hips like he was about to kiss her. There was a bathroom on the left. The hallway ended at a glass-paned door that was now shut, a curtain pulled over the glass panes so that you couldn’t see into the room. Finny heard voices behind the door. She couldn’t make out what they were saying over her own creaking footsteps. But then someone yelled, “And I’m not fucking around anymore!”

Finny recognized Prince Hollibrand’s voice.

Judith turned the door handle, and the door squealed open. The scent of Prince’s cologne filled the room, like a thick sweet mist. Finny sneezed.

The first Finny saw of the room was a large television parked in front of a window that looked onto the apartment building across the street. There was a gray sofa facing the television, and beside the sofa’s arm was Prince, standing with hands on hips, that vein bulging in his temple. He looked every bit as chiseled and exaggeratedly handsome as he had when Finny met him. Only now his forehead was damp, as if he’d been under some strain. His skin reflected the overhead lights.

At first Finny couldn’t find Sylvan in the room at all. Prince took over the space, the way a large, colorful painting can dominate a gallery. Finny wondered if Sylvan had found a way out while Judith was getting the door.

“Hey,” Finny said to Prince, hoping that the presence of a near-stranger might calm him down.

“Hey,” a voice said. But it wasn’t Prince’s. It came from behind the gray couch. “Sylvan?” Finny said.

Sylvan stood up from behind the couch and looked at Finny. His eyes were unfocused, and he had a strange, excited smile on his face. Finny noticed a trickle of blood running from his mouth.

“Hey, Fin,” Sylvan said. “How was your trip?”

“What are you doing?” Finny asked.

“I just came to visit.” He was speaking casually, as if they were all sitting around over drinks, discussing their evenings. “It was supposed to be a surprise.” He laughed. “I guess it was.” Here Sylvan’s head dipped forward, and he had to brace himself on the back of the couch to keep from falling. He looked dizzy, and a little sick. He was paler than normal, and his hair flopped in a funny way over his ears.

“It was a big misunderstanding,” Judith said now. “I didn’t invite anyone, but they both showed up a little while ago. I was planning on spending the night with you, Finny.”

Finny nodded. She didn’t like the way Judith was appealing to her sympathies now, as if this were all just some funny scheduling mistake. But it wasn’t the time to tell Judith what she thought of the situation, of Judith’s part in it.

“I don’t like this,” Prince was saying to Judith. “This is the
old
me. This conflict is bringing out the worst in me, Judith. Could you please
take care of this?”
He spoke these last words through clenched teeth, and to Finny it sounded like a threat.

“I’m not leaving,” Sylvan said, and shrugged.

“It might be better if you did,” Finny said. She figured Sylvan was the best person to reason with. “It’ll give you all a chance to cool down. I’m sure you can talk it over once you settle down.”

“Oh, I’m settled,” Sylvan said. “I’m down.”

She wasn’t even sure he knew what he was saying. His head was drooping again. His eyelids began to close, like he was falling asleep. Then he started awake, and his eyes came wide open.

“Are you okay?” Finny asked him.

“This guy pushes pretty hard,” Sylvan said, nodding at Prince. “I might have knocked into something. And I have to admit I had a few drinks before.”

“You’re drunk,” Judith said.

“I don’t like to do this,” Prince said to Finny about the pushing. “‘An outside enemy exists only if there is anger inside.’”

“I think there’s some anger,” Sylvan said.