Justin Kramon Read online

  The ceremony: held outdoors at Mr. Henckel’s house, under a tent pitched in the yard. Earl was there, as the best man. It turned out this was the first time he could make it home. A few teachers from Thorndon were there, too. Finny was the maid of honor. It was a small party, but lively, helped along by the Irish fiddler Poplan had hired, and the somewhat raucous dancing of her cousins. By the end they were all step dancing together. Earl was Finny’s partner. The night ended when the remaining guests gathered in Mr. Henckel’s living room to listen to him play a song for Poplan.

  Earl stayed for a month. He and Finny spent as much time together as they could, but their houses were farther apart now, and their dates depended on Sylvan or Mr. Henckel acting as chauffeur, since neither Finny nor Earl could drive. Earl wanted to spend time with his dad, too. Mr. Henckel had delayed his honeymoon so that he could be with Earl as much as possible during Earl’s time in the States. Finny tried to get over to see them both, but it wasn’t always easy.

  Then Earl left. More promises of visits and letters. Tears. A kiss goodbye.

  Phone calls from Judith. Sylvan handing the phone to Finny every time. Sometimes it didn’t even ring, and Finny knew that Sylvan had been the one to call. Judith seemed even brasher than when they’d been at school together. Every other sentence was about someone fucking someone else. Oh, they fucked a long time ago. She used to fuck him. Fucking is overrated. Like a role she was trying to play, some jaded New York socialite.

  A weekend when Judith came to visit, and Finny was pretty sure she and Sylvan had sex after Finny went to sleep, because they were acting so strange in the morning. Another time: Sylvan coming into the den in the new house, telling Finny he was going to New York for the weekend. Finny saying okay, okay, not letting him tell her why.

  A line from one of Earl’s letters: It was so great to see you this summer, Finny. It feels so long ago now! I haven’t talked to you in forever.

  A winter night. Finny waking up and hearing Raskal whimpering in the kitchen. The wind whistling around the house. Waking Laura and Sylvan. Raskal lying down, squealing, shivering, vomiting. A seizure, the vet said in the morning. They buried him next to the lion. He was so big they needed to ask their neighbor the UPS man to help dig.

  Afternoons with Poplan and Mr. Henckel. Coffee. The silver pot, the little silver spoons. Piano music when Finny was lucky. Every Asian snack food imaginable: sheets of beef jerky sprinkled with chili flakes, cakes made out of sweetened rice with salty peanuts on top, little doughy balls covered in sesame seeds with a paste inside made from mung beans. Married, and having left her job at Thorndon, Poplan seemed to have become a new person. She still required hand washings and Jenga games, but she was less rigid, less severe than she used to be. She wiped crumbs from Mr. Henckel’s sleeve, which seemed to Finny the tenderest act in the world. Poplan was the one who drove with Mr. Henckel to his lessons on Mondays now, in case he fell asleep at the wheel. It was one of the great joys of Finny’s early life to see them together. She felt an intense, disproportionate sadness whenever she left the little brown house, as if she’d never visit again.

  Phone calls from Judith tapered off. A last one, telling Finny that Judith was pretty sure she would be going to college in New York, at Columbia. Her parents had influence there, too. Asking Finny where she thought she would go, and Finny saying, “To tell you the truth, I don’t really care.”

  Not so many letters from Earl. Most of them full of the kind of news you’d tell a stranger: taking tests, a trip to Italy, a cold he just got over.

  A boy in Finny’s math class named Gregory Bundt sitting next to her almost every day. They scribbled notes to each other, drew pictures of the teacher and laughed behind their notebooks. He was thin, pale. His hands left sweaty marks on her desk. He asked her to a dance. He leaned forward, kissed her in a clumsy hard way. The next time, they sat apart in math class. A mutual decision.

  A picture of Sylvan on the front steps of Widener Library. He’d been accepted to Harvard. He wrote Finny, Cambridge isnice, except for the Harvard students. It’s kind of a know-it-all group. Meaning, Finny knew, that he was afraid they were smarter than him. Finny wrote back, You should fit right in. And when she visited him, it seemed he did.

  “And what do you hear lately from my globe-trotting son?” Mr. Henckel asked one Sunday afternoon.

  “Nothing,” Finny said.

  “He’s had quite a semester.”

  “Why?”

  “Take a guess.”

  She couldn’t help thinking: a girlfriend, an engagement. Her stomach churned. “I really have no idea,” Finny said.

  “A straight-A student,” Mr. Henckel announced, to Finny’s great relief. “Finally, the Henckel genes are kicking in. He showed me the report card when he visited last month.”

  “He visited last month?”

  Mr. Henckel must have realized his mistake, because he had to pass through many smile-frowns before he was able to say, “It was a brief trip, Finny. I’m sorry.” And in a short time he fell asleep.

  After that the landscape of Finny’s school days flattens out. She graduates. She’s leaving for college, arriving at college, saying goodbye to her mother. She stands there, waving, waving, perched on the edge of a whole new set of adventures.

  Book Two

  Reunions and New Friends

  Chapter16

  Judith Has a Party

  It was a cold and rainy November evening, two months into Finny’s freshman year at Stradler College in Pennsylvania, and Finny was in a taxi, racing toward the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was on her way to visit her old friend Judith Turngate, at Judith’s parents’ apartment on West Eighty-First Street, near the park. Finny was nineteen. This was her first time in New York alone—she’d been several times with her parents, when her father was alive—and so she’d decided to spring for a cab, uncertain of her ability to navigate the unfamiliar letters and numbers of the subway.

  Though, on another occasion Finny would have been the first down the subway steps in a new city. She wasn’t the type to get intimidated by foreign places. It was just that she wasn’t quite herself tonight. Hearing Judith’s instructions on the phone, she’d felt suddenly small, like she was fourteen again, marveling at the mysterious life of more mature, more beautiful Judith. Finny knew she wasn’t bad-looking herself. In her long wool coat, she cut a slim, attractive figure. She still had the apple cheeks, the freckles and red hair of her childhood, though the freckles were fainter, the hair not so stridently red. Only, next to Judith, Finny knew she’d appear awkward and bumbling, a plain and flat-chested girl.

  Judith, now a sophomore at Columbia, was the one who’d initiated the contact. She’d written Finny a long letter just after Finny had left for Stradler. She addressed the letter in care of Laura, and asked Finny’s mother to forward the letter to Finny, since Judith didn’t know where Finny was going to school. In the letter Judith said many kind things about the memories she had of Finny, and their time together at Thorndon. She brought up some of the old nicknames Finny hadn’t thought of in years: Old Yeller, Pits of Death, the Jackhammer. They still made Finny laugh. She had such a good time reading the letter, reliving those old memories, that she’d almost forgotten it had been nearly two years since she’d talked to Judith. At the end of the letter Judith wrote, I’ve just been thinking about all the fun we had, and how sad it is that we don’t even talk anymore. I was hoping that maybe we could reestablish the contact a little bit. What do you say, Shorty Finn? I miss you.

  Finny was touched. She wrote Judith back the next day, and in the letter she said, I’m so glad you took the time to write, Judith. You’ve always had the balls in this relationship. (Excuse the expression.) I love you for it. I’m looking forward to getting back in touch.

  Soon phone calls started. Long, giggly conversations that went on late into the night. Talking to Judith, Finny felt like they were back in their dorm room together, after lights-out, nestled in their privat
e space between the hall and the black windows. She could still make Judith laugh, sometimes so hard her friend dropped the phone. Like when they were in school, Finny waited for that decisive clunk. She told Judith about the sweet Midwestern girl who danced like a stripper at parties, whom Finny called the Moving Violation, and about the drunk boy whom Finny made out with at a rugby party who then pretended he didn’t know her when they were introduced the next day in the dining hall. Finny’s conversations with Judith got her through the first awkward months of college, made her feel solid enough to raise her hand in class, eat in the dining hall alone. Her phone bill was astronomical in October. She bought a phone card.

  Then, a few days ago, Judith had called and told Finny, “I’m having a party this weekend. My parents are out of town. You should come.”

  For a moment Finny couldn’t speak. She was suddenly, desperately nervous. Somehow, she hadn’t imagined taking this relationship beyond the phone. “I have a midterm on Monday,” she got out at last.

  Judith laughed. Then she said, “Oh, you’re serious. Well, you could just come up for the night. Actually, New York is only an hour and a half from Philly.”

  “Okay,” Finny said.

  “When you get off at Penn Station, just grab a cab. It’ll save you time.”

  “Okay,” Finny said again. She didn’t really have the extra money to grab a cab, but she felt Judith’s old confident grip on her, like she was leading her through a crowded room.

  “Well then I’ll see you Saturday.”

  “See you Saturday,” Finny repeated.

  Now, in the cab, the taxi driver said to Finny, “North side. South side.”

  “What?” Finny said.

  “You want north side of street? South side of street?”

  “Oh, I don’t know which side,” Finny said. “The Beresford.”

  “Oh,” the taxi driver said. “Very snobby.”

  The cab pulled over. Finny paid and got out. She gripped the package she’d brought for Judith under her left arm. Inside was a purple T-shirt with the name Shorty Finn stenciled on the back, in the same pea-soup-green letters that had been printed on Finny’s shirt when she was fourteen. She thought the present would make Judith laugh.

  When Finny got to the door of the Beresford, it swung open. The lobby was everything Judith had said it would be: a chandelier the size of a dining table, ornate rugs so plush you could hide in them, an elegant-looking wooden chair parked next to an end table with spindly legs, huge mirrors with gold-plated frames, old-fashioned molding around the ceiling. Finny froze for a minute in the doorway, afraid to go farther. What was she doing here? How could she even think of fitting in in a place like this? The door was still open, and cold air streamed into the lobby. Then a timid voice said “Miss?” and Finny realized that a small man in a red coat and hat was holding the door.

  “Oh, sorry. Sorry,” Finny said.

  The man nodded, and made a little bowing gesture with his head.

  Finny bowed back.

  “You’re here for 15J, miss?” the man in the red hat said, once the door had swung shut. He had a thin mustache, black hair and dark eyes, and he spoke in what seemed a studied English.

  “Turngate,” Finny said.

  “Yes, miss,” the man said. “Could I have your name, please?”

  “Finny,” Finny said.

  He gave her a puzzled look, as if waiting for more, then picked up a small phone from the wall and pressed a few buttons. In a moment he said, “Yes. We have a Finny here for you.” There must have been some noise in the background, because the man was forced to repeat, “A Finny for you, Miss Turngate. A Finny!”

  The man cleared his throat. Finny felt a little embarrassed having her name shouted in the lobby of the Beresford. But Judith must have caught it the third time the man said it, because even Finny could hear the scream on the other end of the line. The man held the phone an inch away from his ear, blinked twice, then said, “I’ll send her right up, Miss Turngate.”

  “Finny!” Judith screamed again when she opened the door to the apartment. Her face was flushed, and she leaned across the doorway at an odd angle, as if she’d had to lunge to open it. Somewhere in the apartment some bassy dance music was playing, making the walls of the old building vibrate, and there were loud voices in the background. Judith looked almost the way she had at Thorndon except, somehow, completely different. Her features were more defined now, her cheeks sculpted in the way beautiful women’s often are. Even her somewhat wide jaw was alluring, like a canvas for the glossed lips and white teeth she loved to display. Her hair seemed darker, styled in a more fashionable way, with bangs and a deliberately tousled look. She wore a fitted black button-down shirt, with the cuffs flared, and some gray wool pants that hugged her form. The outfit would have been conservative on someone else, but on Judith’s body it had a calculated sexiness. She was exactly the woman Finny had imagined she would turn out to be.

  “It’s so good to see you,” Finny said, trying to keep up the excited tone of their meeting. She felt the way she had when she’d just met Judith, as if this gorgeous young woman had handed her a heavy tray of glasses and Finny had to make sure not a single one dropped.

  “Come in, come in,” Judith said, waving Finny in from the hall.

  Finny came through the door, and Judith shut it, then gave Finny a long tight hug.

  “I brought you a present,” Finny said, and handed Judith the package she’d been gripping in her sweaty hand.

  “A present? You didn’t have to bring anything,” Judith said, smacking Finny with an open hand on the shoulder. Then she began untying the bag.

  “Oh my God!” Judith screamed. “I don’t believe you. Shorty Finn!” She was hugging Finny again. “This shirt is hilarious. I’m going to change into it right now.” Then she padded off to a room directly in front of Finny and closed the door.

  Finny took the opportunity to look around the apartment. The floors were parquet, and beside the door in front of Finny, there was another door to her right. The door to her right was also closed, and Finny heard voices and music behind it. To her left was an enormous living room, with a wraparound couch that could have seated twenty people. Though at the moment it held only eight. Everyone was holding drinks in real glasses with some silver cross-hatching and gold rims—not the plastic cups Finny was used to from college parties. Behind the couch was a large wooden dining table, and a grand piano that must have been as big as Mr. Henckel’s. There was a window that took up the whole far wall of the apartment, and since Judith had the shutters open, Finny got a sparkling view of the city at nighttime, like the stars outside her window when she was a kid. To the right of the city lights was a dark swatch that must have been Central Park.

  “Hey there,” one of the boys on the big couch said to Finny, and held his glass up to her like a toast.

  “Hey,” Finny said, and because she was still frazzled from the whole scene in the lobby, she gave a small bow.

  The boy began to laugh hysterically, so hard that he spilled some of his brown drink onto the sofa. “Oh shit,” he said, and then got down on his hands and knees and put his mouth on the sofa cushion, trying to suck the stain off. The curly-haired girl next to him started to laugh. “You’re good at that,” she said.

  Then Judith emerged from the room. “How do I look?” she said, hands on hips, modeling the shirt for Finny the way Finny had modeled hers at Thorndon.

  “Beautiful,” Finny said, and it was true. The shirt was supposed to be a nightshirt, but it fit Judith as snugly as the black shirt she’d been wearing a minute before.

  “Your coat,” Judith said, and began helping Finny out of her coat. When it was off, Judith placed it on the coat rack by the door. Finny tried to straighten herself—Shoulders back, boobies up, she’d once heard a model advise on television—but she found herself retreating into a comfortable slouch. The shirt she’d picked out—a blue sleeveless with brown polka dots, which a girl at Stradler had tol
d her looked “hot”—felt clownish now.

  “Let’s meet people,” Judith said, and took Finny by the arm into the living room. The music was softer here, a faint throbbing. Judith picked up a glass off an end table and pressed it into Finny’s hand, saying she was drinking it before but decided she didn’t want it.

  “This is Carter,” Judith said now, holding a palm out to the boy who had a moment ago been sucking on her couch. He stood at attention, not even saying Excuse me to the curly-haired girl he’d been talking to, though she didn’t seem to mind. His dark hair was long for a guy’s, and tousled like Judith’s. He was frighteningly skinny, his eyes dark around the lids like he was wearing eyeliner, the veins in his arms plump as electrical cords. His clothes fit tightly—faded blue jeans and a bright yellow shirt that said Ship Shape across the front and showed a stick figure lifting a dumbbell on the deck of a boat.

  “This is my very old and dear friend Finny,” Judith said to Carter.

  “Pleasure, darling,” Carter said.

  Finny held out her hand, but Carter leaned forward and smacked a kiss right on Finny’s lips. For a moment she could hardly believe he’d done it. She stood there, stunned, lips tingling. The curly-haired girl watched them impassively. The nerve, Finny thought.

  But before she could say anything, Judith told Carter, “Finny got me this shirt. Tell me what you think of it.” Judith did a quick spin in front of Carter.

  “Look at you,” Carter said. “Gorgeous.” He put a hand on one of Judith’s breasts and squeezed. “I could eat you alive.”

  Finny was speechless, scandalized by Carter’s boldness. She took a long sip of the brown liquid in Judith’s glass, which burnt her throat and made her cough. Judith must have noticed Finny’s discomfort, because she quickly told her, “Don’t worry. Carter’s gay.”