Justin Kramon Read online

“Thanks,” Finny said.

  She didn’t call her mother that afternoon. She knew Laura was too overwhelmed to deal with anything, and she figured she’d get all the information from her brother when she got home. Poplan said she would drive Finny to the airport. When Poplan turned on the car, some lively Irish fiddle music blared through the speakers, and Poplan had to hurry to turn it off. “Sorry,” she said. They fell silent for the rest of the ride. The last thing Poplan mentioned was that she had some cousins in Virginia she visited a lot, and that she’d love to stop by and see Finny in Maryland during a vacation sometime if Finny wouldn’t mind a visitor.

  At seven-twenty Finny boarded the plane that would hurtle her back into a very different world from the one she had left only ten weeks before.

  Chapter11

  A Sad Time

  The Haberdasher Funeral Home was just off Reisterstown Road, one of those four-lane commercial havens lined by strip malls and representatives of every chain store under the sun. The funeral home was an olive-green A-frame house with black shutters, nestled between a Target and a John Deere outlet. Inside, the floors were varnished pine, the walls wine-colored. The doors between rooms opened by a latch rather than a knob. The windows were small and square, and the strangled light that pushed through them left the house dim and shadowy, even in the middle of the day.

  Which was the time now. Laura had brought Sylvan and Finny along to help her make decisions about the funeral. She’d read an article the night after Stanley died that said a grieving widow must bring people with her to the funeral home with whom she can discuss options, because she won’t be in a condition to make appropriate decisions herself. This proved to be true in Laura’s case, as evidenced by the fact that she’d brought her children here.

  The house was lit only by some electric lights that looked like candles, encased in glass jars that were mounted on the walls. The floors creaked as the Shorts toured the facilities. Finny could hardly believe they were getting ready to put Stanley’s body in the ground. She kept thinking of her father’s face completely still, like he was sleeping, and that seemed the closest she could get to accepting he was dead. She remembered him telling his stories, reciting his quotations, and she couldn’t find a way to fit that liveliness into the picture of him lying motionless in a coffin. She remembered the letter he’d written her only a few weeks before, all those feelings he’d never been able to share.

  But she stopped herself. He was gone now, drained from the world like bathwater from a tub.

  Mrs. Haberdasher was a short and very stout woman in her sixties who walked with a cane and whose nose always seemed to be twitching as though she had an itch there. She wore a green velvet cap like a loose-fitting beret. She walked slowly, and knocked her cane against the floor with every step. Mr. Haberdasher allowed her to lead when they were walking. He was a demure man, tall and with the approximate body type of a string bean. His voice was soft as a whisper, his yellow-gray hair silky as a baby’s.

  “Now,” Mrs. Haberdasher said, “there are two basic options for coffins.” She was indicating the two options displayed on tables in front of the Shorts.

  But before she was able to explain the options, Mr. Haberdasher let loose a gigantic sneeze that echoed in the small room.

  “Holy Christ!” Mrs. Haberdasher yelled, and jumped away from her husband, much more dexterously than you would expect a woman with a cane to jump.

  Mr. Haberdasher shrugged and wiped his nose on his shirt cuff.

  “Now,” Mrs. Haberdasher said, coming around to the coffins again, “as I was saying, there are two options to consider. The first, to your left, is the standard coffin. Made out of wood, with the tapered shape. And we can offer you a variety of interiors and exteriors for that. The second is a casket: rectangular shape, made of—” She was unable to finish the sentence, though, because her nose began to twitch. She rubbed her finger against it, but it was of no use, and very soon she let out a sneeze that equaled—if not surpassed—her husband’s previous accomplishment. Mrs. Haberdasher’s sneeze was accompanied by a cry—of pain or surprise, one couldn’t tell—as if she’d been struck down by an arrow.

  “Mother of God!” Mr. Haberdasher yelped, and jumped away from his wife. It was the first time the Shorts had heard him raise his voice, and they watched to see what he would do. He proceeded to inform his wife that she had taken five years from his life, and that people in China would suffer aftershocks for days.

  Laura watched the exchange between husband and wife with a blank expression. It was the look she’d had since Finny had gotten home. Laura had greeted Finny at the airport with a kind of joyless smile on her face, telling Finny how great it was to see her, as if Finny had just come home for a vacation. It seemed that some spell of dreaminess had been cast on her mother. Finny wanted to shake her, tell her to focus.

  Mrs. Haberdasher completed her explanation of the difference between a casket and a coffin, and after some deliberation, Finny and Sylvan persuaded their mother that a metal casket would be the best option for Stanley. The shape would allow them to place various items in the ground with their father, such as some of his favorite books and his Bach records. They would even be able to engrave a message on the casket as a memorial to Stanley. They decided it would say: Here lies a great man.

  “Now,” Mrs. Haberdasher said, “I think that’s a very sensitive choice.”

  “Yes,” Mr. Haberdasher said, and nodded.

  “We just need to go over some of the services you would like for the burial.”

  “Services?” Sylvan said. He’d taken on the role of spokesman, seeing that Laura wasn’t going to do it.

  “Transporting the body, for example,” Mrs. Haberdasher said.

  The body, Finny thought.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Haberdasher said, “for the—”

  But before she was able to finish the statement, Mr. Haberdasher interrupted with a wallop of a sneeze.

  This time Mrs. Haberdasher leapt with remarkable agility onto the table where the casket was displayed, seating herself next to it. She put her hands over her ears and began to make various assertions about her physical condition, including the fact that her ears were bleeding and her organs were all “crushed up against each other.”

  Mr. Haberdasher shrugged and wiped his nose on his shirt cuff.

  Soon options were being tallied. In the main room Mr. and Mrs. Haberdasher stood behind a wooden counter that came up almost to the wife’s head. Mrs. Haberdasher had to keep shuffling to a back room, knocking her cane as she went, in order to check various prices and options. Each time she left the room, she walked past Mr. Haberdasher and said, “Your feet, sir, are in my way.”

  “Because you have chosen to walk over them,” Mr. Haberdasher informed her in his whispery voice.

  “It would be impossible not to,” Mrs. Haberdasher shot back, “seeing as they take up half the floor.”

  At last a final price was settled upon, and handed to Laura on a sort of scroll that the Haberdashers must have preferred using on such an occasion. The scroll lent a solemnity to the proceedings, which a printed receipt might not have carried. Finny had never had such a strange feeling as when her father’s price tag was handed over the counter to her mother. Laura eyed it. Finny suspected she wasn’t even reading the numbers.

  “Now, do you want to take care of this today?” Mrs. Haberdasher said.

  “Certainly,” Laura blurted out. Then stood there, waiting.

  “Mom, your credit card,” Sylvan said.

  “Oh,” Laura said, “of course,” and handed the Haberdashers her card.

  “I am very sorry for your loss,” Mrs. Haberdasher said to the Shorts as she swiped Laura’s card.

  “Thanks,” Sylvan said.

  “It’s a tough road, young man,” Mr. Haberdasher said.

  “Are you the expert?” Mrs. Haberdasher asked him.

  He shrugged and wiped his nose on his shirt cuff.

  And then, as if in resp
onse, Mrs. Haberdasher released an echoing shriek of a sneeze, which caused Mr. Haberdasher to actually run around the counter, and then half a dozen strides away from his wife.

  “My ghost just departed,” he said, when he’d finally come to rest.

  The burial was the next morning. Mr. Haberdasher drove the hearse, and he seemed to take great pride in the duty, wearing a black chauffeur’s cap he reserved for the occasion. Mrs. Haberdasher navigated. Finny saw the little woman hop into the cab of the hearse, like a jockey mounting a horse, already informing her husband that he was the last person she would choose to drive for her last ride. She sat on the armrest between the driver’s seat and passenger seat, and as they all pulled out of the funeral home, Finny saw her directing Mr. Haberdasher with her cane, pointing to road signs and passing traffic.

  The graveyard was not far from the funeral home, and the Shorts followed the hearse in their car. They stood around the grave. Finny recognized a number of the mourners—faces from her father’s office Christmas parties, her parents’ dinner parties, family reunions. She saw Aunt Louise, rubbing her ball of tissue across her nose. Mr. Hedgwick was there, the farmer who cleared the Shorts’ driveway in the winter with his tractor and who’d let Finny play with his golden retriever puppies. There was Arnold Arnold—a cruel joke by his parents—who used to give Finny rides to soccer games when she played on the Cockeysville rec team. And Kitty Plinket, who always wore red and had shown Laura how to dance the tango.

  Earl, of course, was not there. Finny knew he would have wanted to come and that Laura would have objected, so Finny decided she wouldn’t tell him until it was over.

  When the priest said the line about “As for man, his days are like grass …,” Finny burst into tears. Sylvan put his hand on her back, and she watched the rest of the service through bleary eyes.

  Then they were lowering the casket into the ground. A few symbolic shovelfuls of dirt were tossed into the hole. There was an awful tapping sound when the dirt hit the metal casket, which made Finny erupt into tears again.

  And then it was over. The mourners were saying how sorry they were, telling Finny and Laura and Sylvan how much they’d miss Stanley. Aunt Louise offered her condolences, a hand clasped to her breast as she spoke to Finny. There were the sounds of doors clicking, motors starting, a man telling his wife they needed to stop for gas on the way. And finally, Mrs. Haberdasher could be heard informing her husband, as they got back into the hearse, that his feet were very much in the way.

  After dinner that night, Finny excused herself and went upstairs. She sat on her bed, staring at the dark window. She knew her brother would come, and in ten minutes he did. She heard a knock on the door, and opened it.

  “Hey,” Sylvan said.

  “Hey.”

  “I want to tell you what happened with Dad, since it doesn’t seem you’ll ever get the full story from Mom.”

  Finny nodded. Motioned for him to come in. He shut the door and they sat down together on the bed.

  “She’s acting crazy,” Finny said.

  “She just can’t handle it. It’s like she’s overloaded.”

  “She hauled all Dad’s stuff out. I mean, like, all of it.”

  “I had a feeling. I heard her last night banging around. Then she took a bunch of trash bags to the dumpster this morning.”

  “Aren’t you pissed off?”

  “I’m more sad than pissed, Finny.”

  Finny hated when people said her name like that, like a rebuke. She was about to strike back at Sylvan, but instead she said, “Okay. What?”

  “Dad died on the toilet.”

  “What?” Finny said again, and started to laugh. She felt guilty for it, but she couldn’t help it. “Are you kidding?”

  Sylvan shook his head. He explained that he’d gotten the whole story while the paramedics were on their way. It seemed that Stanley had woken up before five and told Laura he was going to the bathroom. “Probably to ‘brush his teeth,’” Sylvan said. When he didn’t return after fifteen minutes, Laura assumed his indigestion was worse than usual and fell back asleep. Stanley must have thought the same thing, because when Laura woke two hours later and went to the bathroom, she found him sitting on the toilet, his chin resting on his chest. The indigestion had been chest pains. He’d had a heart attack.

  “I don’t believe it,” Finny said, still laughing. “I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s funny. It’s just so—perfect for Dad.”

  “I know,” Sylvan said, and he began to laugh, too.

  Then they started to laugh harder. Finny couldn’t have explained it, but soon they were falling back on the bed, gasping for breath. She laughed until her sides hurt, until hot tears sprang to her eyes. She pressed her face against Sylvan’s shoulder, and laughed until she could have puked.

  And then at some point the laughter became crying. It was a funny thing. Finny wasn’t sure exactly where the transition was, the two acts felt so similar. But soon she and her brother were hugging each other in the bed, sobbing onto each other’s shoulders because they didn’t want to show their faces. She felt her brother’s breath on her neck, his chest rising and falling, tears on her shirt. She’d never seen him cry before. They stayed like that, holding each other, until at last they fell asleep.

  Chapter12

  Things Begin to Brighten

  It was easier now, during Finny’s spring break, to sneak over and see Earl, since Laura was on another planet. Laura spent most of her day in the bedroom, or else running small, unnecessary errands for the house, such as getting rugs cleaned, or buying new cords for the phones. When Finny said she was going out, Laura said, “Okay, sweetie,” and rarely asked where. Still, it was sad for Finny to see her mother this way. It was as if after Stanley died Laura’s foundations cracked. The façade was the same, but Finny knew the inside was crumbling.

  Besides Sylvan, Earl was the only person Finny felt comfortable talking to about her father. When they went for walks, Finny explained to Earl how she felt as if Stanley had been snatched away from her, just as they were beginning to have some understanding of each other, just as they were beginning to get close. She told Earl about the letter Stanley had written her, how he’d said he was proud of her, and when she started to tear up, Earl hugged her and let her cry. Another boy her age would’ve gotten shy around all those feelings.

  One day she took Earl to the old vineyard. Their feet scuffed the dirt path. Finny noticed their heads almost reached the top of the green walls on both sides of them. Yet there was a feeling of being sheltered. They stopped, faced each other, half-covered in shadows from the vines. Earl held her hands.

  She let Earl lower her onto the dirt. He sat beside her, and they kissed for the second time. She put her arms around his neck. “Oh, Earl,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek, “I missed you so much when I was at school.” His cheek was scratchy. He smelled like oatmeal, and a little like pears.

  They fell back on the dusty ground together. She snuggled close to him in the deep shade of the vines, her head burrowing in his neck, in the heat from his skin. He kept his arms around her, holding her like they were sleeping. At first Finny thought they would have to tussle around like she’d seen people do in movies, but neither of them tried to do that. They just lay there. It was what they wanted to do together, to curl up and sleep in each other’s arms. It was the most intimate thing Finny could imagine. Years later, holding Earl like this in a tiny apartment in Paris, Finny would feel just as warm, just as protected as she did now. More than kissing, even more than sex, this holding would always be Finny’s favorite part of love with Earl. It was when she could imagine them growing old together.

  Most afternoons they would lie in the vineyard for hours and talk. Finny felt a remarkable freedom during these afternoons. She told Earl things she’d never thought of telling anyone, not because they were particularly private but because they seemed like thoughts you would keep to yourself, thoughts no one would be interested in. She told him
about how she used to look at the fuzzy green ribbon of horizon from her bedroom window and imagine walking there one day, finding some magical landscape of mountains and waterfalls. She told him about the day after they’d met, when she’d gone to the pasture and seen that no one was there, and her heart sank because she thought Earl had already forgotten about her. Finny had never spoken so easily about her feelings, but something in her grief had liberated her. She spoke more directly now, and without fear of what people would think.

  “Show me your house,” Earl said to her one afternoon, and they walked along the fence to Finny’s backyard. She pointed at her window.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  “I can imagine you there,” Earl said, “looking out.”

  “Sometimes I thought I could see your house. I liked to think that.”

  “Maybe I can come over one day. When your mom is feeling better.”

  “Maybe,” Finny said.

  There was another change in Finny that spring when she was fifteen. It had to do with her outlook on love—or rather, an aspect of love. She’d always thought of sex as silly, a little crude, all that poking and moaning and rolling around. It was hard to take seriously. And though she still saw the comedy in it, there was a part of her now that yearned for it, to be abused in that particular way. Sometimes when she lay with Earl in the vineyard, she felt herself getting warm, a kind of tingly excitement spreading over her body. She had to wrap her legs around Earl and squeeze him in order to push the feeling down in herself. At night, when she was dressing for bed, she noticed her breasts were plumper, the development she’d waited so long for. She felt a heaviness in her nipples, and sometimes she pinched them just for the electric thrill of it.

  She was the one who started the touching. Reaching down to rub him, feeling him grow hard beneath her hand. She loved that—his almost instant response. He followed her lead, touching her the way she touched him. At first they felt each other above the clothes, and then just the underwear, then beneath it. Hidden between the green walls of the vineyard, Finny’s desire swelled. She was bolder than she’d ever been.