“About what?” Finny said, hoping Dorrie would say, Steven or Having a baby when I’m nineteen.

But Dorrie shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, and turned back to her meal. She plucked a piece of lettuce out of her salad bowl with her fingers and ate it. “That’s the thing,” she said. “I don’t know what my problem is. I think it’s just the hormones making me like this.”

“Time to go!” one of the dining hall staff yelled at Finny and Dorrie. Finny knew the man. He’d come around and bang on the tables if you didn’t get up.

“Well,” Finny said. They bused their uneaten food to the conveyor belt that would carry it back to the clattering kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Finny said to Dorrie when they were walking to the door. It was the best she could do.

“It’s okay,” Dorrie said. “I’m just being stupid. It’s all a gift.”

“No, you’re not,” Finny said.

But Dorrie didn’t seem to hear. They walked out under the heavy sky, going separate ways.

Then March came. The day of Earl’s arrival was warm, and something about the sudden change in weather made Finny feel as if spring were decidedly here. The air smelled of grass. Cross-country runners trotted across campus in shorts and T-shirts, and girls in tank tops laid down blankets on the stretch of lawn Stradler students called “the beach,” in front of Griffen Hall. Finny knew it was too early for this weather, that it had to be a false spring, but still, it brought hope.

And then, just as Finny was heading out to meet Earl, taking her keys off the desk so she could lock the door behind her, the phone rang.

She picked up.

“Hello?” Finny said.

“Finny, it’s Earl.”

The moment she heard his voice she deflated. He was supposed to be on the plane. How could he be calling her?

“I have some sad news,” he went on.

“What?” she said. “What is it?” She could already feel the wave crashing down on her.

“My mom. She’s in the hospital.”

There was a pause, in which Finny knew Earl must have been trying to collect himself.

“What happened?”

“She tried to kill herself,” Earl said.

It turned out that Mona had been more upset about Earl’s leaving than he’d let on. He’d wanted to convince himself that she could make it on her own, yet she’d cried most days, once she knew he’d bought his ticket. Often the fits would strike her out of nowhere. They’d be sitting at a meal, or watching a movie, and all of a sudden she’d just crumble. It was like watching her collapse, Earl said, the way she started to tremble, tears spilling from her eyes. She had become so dependent on him; she didn’t have anyone else in Paris. Her doctor was a psychiatrist in a state hospital, and he called her prescriptions in from his vacation home in Nice.

Plus, Mona would never leave France. She’d moved there in desperation, fleeing her personal and familial problems. And now she was too scared to go anywhere else. She’d never held such a stable job as the one in the hair salon.

Some days she told Earl she’d be okay, that he should live his life, and yet she could hardly get the words out before she was practically shivering with grief. As he told Finny about it, she heard Earl begin to cry himself.

“I always thought she might do something,” he said. “Ever since I came to France in high school, I’ve felt like she was my responsibility. I felt like she was given to me in a way, to take care of. Like a baby on the doorstep or something. It’s a terrible way to think about your mother.”

But Finny saw that Earl felt this way about both his parents. It had been something she’d admired about him, his instinct for caregiving. She remembered the way he used to help his dad out, offer encouragement, take over the wheel of their car when Mr. Henckel fell asleep. It was what Finny had seen in Earl’s story, in the way Chris fretted about leaving home. He felt a responsibility, as Earl did, to make sure everyone was all right.

“Who found her?” Finny said, stupidly, since she already knew the answer.

Earl was sobbing. “She was so out of it,” he said. “She took pills and tried to cut herself. Oh God.” Finny heard his breathing. “This is just so sad,” he finally got out. He sounded like a frightened child.

“But she’s okay now?” Finny asked. It was the best way she could think of to be encouraging.

Earl didn’t answer. All he said was, “I can’t come, Finny.”

She didn’t know what to say. How could this gift be torn from her again?

Finally she asked, “How long are you staying for?”

“I can’t leave,” Earl said. “I can’t do that to her.”

Finny looked at her keys, which she’d now placed back on the desk. “What are you saying?” she asked.

“This is where I’m needed. I don’t have a choice.”

“What are we going to do?”

Then it happened. She didn’t know how, but she felt it, that slightest shift, like a cloud passing over the sun. “How can you ask me that?” he said. “Honestly. How can you worry about yourself?”

She felt a hot wave ripple down her body. She realized it was hatred she felt—hatred toward Mona. For being so helpless. Demanding so much. The feeling was so intense as to be physical, like hunger or cold. And then, with the same swift certainty, she felt her anger turn toward Earl. It was a wretched, jarring move, but she couldn’t quiet her own clamoring needs. She’d never felt anything so strongly in her life. She hated him. She hated Earl. He’d done this to her. Made her into this. Only now could she see how her old self—that gutsy, bold, rebellious girl—had been squelched by her love for him. Maybe that was why Mona’s neediness made Finny so angry—it was so much like her own.

“Don’t do this,” she said to Earl. Her voice was rough, like her throat had been scraped. It didn’t even sound like her. “It’s an excuse. You’re nervous about coming. Take a minute to think—”

“Don’t analyze me.”

“Your mom could easily fly over here when she’s better. There are plenty of places she could work.”

“That’s not the point, Finny.” Something about hearing her name made her feel small, like when her parents used to lecture her about doing her homework or cleaning her room. “Don’t you see I need to be with her? That’s what I have to think about now. She’s asking how much I care about her.”

So am I, Finny thought. And she didn’t want to ask anymore. All he had to say was that he’d do it, he’d leave for her. Then she’d relent. It would be proof enough. She saw that the argument had become a kind of test—of what he felt for her, how much he’d sacrifice.

“I can’t do it anymore,” Finny said. “Live this way. I can’t sit around waiting.”

“Then don’t.”

A week later he called again. They talked a little about their fight, about how angry each had gotten, both trying to make light of it, to salvage what hadn’t been swept up in the torrent of it. Actually, it made Finny feel a little better, like they might be able to hoist themselves out of what had seemed an impossibly deep and dark hole. But when she asked him what he was up to, he said, “Not much. Just catching up with friends.”

She didn’t know why, but some instinct told her to ask, “Who?”

“I don’t know,” Earl said. “Just some high school friends.”

“You slept with her, didn’t you? Camille.”

“I guess.”

It was like a door clicking shut in her mind. To think she’d waited so long, expected so much. The idea of how gullible she’d been made her almost physically ill. Like Earl in his fiction, she’d invented a character, built someone up out of the air, because she’d wanted so much for him to be real, to be what she needed.

“Okay, Earl,” Finny said at last. She wasn’t even angry anymore. Just tired. “All right. That’s enough.”

Chapter31
Another Interlude

After Earl’s call, Finny felt as if the train that had carried her through her days had ground to a halt. There was a squeal of metal on metal, a hiss of breaks, the slow sigh of an engine coming to rest. The world seemed fixed in place. Eventually, though, it began again. The engine whirred, the train jolted forward. Life went on.

And so did Finny’s story. Once again, this is not the place to linger. Here is another album of memories, a few handfuls of time.

Schoolwork. She found that if she just sat there, her mind would wander. She’d stare at the wall, thinking of Earl, of what they’d said, of how they’d ended things. But if she fastened her mind to a task—to reading a certain number of pages in a physics text, or completing an English paper—she could keep herself from drifting back. Her grades were still strong. She hadn’t let herself slip.

A call from Sylvan. Finally. Her brother saying he was sorry he hadn’t called sooner. It was a tough time. He’d had to accept that Judith wasn’t the right person for him. But he’d been feeling better lately. He said he’d been thinking of changing his major. He’d always been interested in psychology. He’d planned to be a history professor, but couldn’t see himself as a stuffy academic anymore. Something new in Sylvan’s voice. Not pain exactly. But he sounded older.

A letter from Earl. His mom was doing better. I’m sorry I’ve been disappointing, he wrote. I just couldn’t think about anything clearly. I know you’re very angry at me. And you have a right to be. Just know that I still love you and think the world of you….

Dorrie coming back to school with her belly round and taut as an overinflated beach ball. Her feet turned out when she walked. Finny putting her hand on Dorrie’s stomach, feeling the miniature Steven Bench give a couple of mild kicks. Then, a few weeks later, Dorrie showing up at Finny’s dorm room with a little red-faced howling infant. Not particularly cute, so Finny ended up telling Dorrie he was “quite a baby.”

Another surprise in the mail: a videotape in a plain brown envelope, no return address. Playing it on the VCR in the lounge in her dorm. A picture of a female newscaster came on the screen, saying, “Now, here’s a story about a Baltimore couple who are making a difference in their community….” Then the screen flashed to a film of Mr. Henckel conducting a group of six-and seven-year-olds through the Bach minuet Finny used to play. Mr. Henckel’s comb-over flapping to the rhythm of the music. The story was about an after-school arts program that Poplan and Mr. Henckel had set up, funded through a charity Poplan had established. There was a clip of Poplan explaining how she wanted the program to be a fun, safe place for these kids to go. Then the tape cut to a picture of Poplan lining the children up to wash their hands before a game of Jenga. The story concluded with a quote by Mr. Henckel. “I just want these children to know that here the coffeepot is always warm for them.”

A form arriving, asking Finny to check off a box for which major she’d like to pursue. She had no idea. She hadn’t even thought about it. Deciding to check off English, since she had the most credits in that one. Then she checked off a box for a minor in education, for no reason other than that it looked better than just a plain English major. And with that one stroke, a decade of her professional life was decided.

A hot morning in September. The first day of classes Finny’s junior year. Walking into Griffen Hall and seeing Sarah Barksdale holding a notebook, checking her mail. Finny was about to run. Any reminder of Finny’s former principal made Finny grit her teeth. But she decided she had to say hi. She walked over and tapped Sarah on the shoulder, reintroduced herself. Though Sarah was cursed with her mother’s grating voice, it turned out she had a sense of humor. She told Finny that Mrs. Barksdale had tried to get Miss Simpkin to spend a night “under cover” in the dorm with Sarah, in order to “evaluate the social dynamics.” But Sarah had convincingly argued that no one would act normally around Miss Simpkin, and furthermore, the idea of Miss Simpkin under cover of anything but a sweatsuit was ludicrous. Finny laughed, and she and Sarah ended up having lunch a couple times a month.

Evenings in the library, sitting by herself at a synthetic wooden table in the periodicals section, surrounded by the garish orange carpeting the school had laid down in a misguided attempt to keep students awake. Finny liked to sneak off here some Friday nights, when she was feeling gray, and thumb through old women’s magazines, laughing at the sex tips and social pointers, the pictures of smooth-skinned women lounging with their boyfriends on white comforters. It was a way to escape, to think that five blow job tips could save your relationship, or that you could find your career through a multiple-choice survey. She even took some of the surveys. Found out she’d be best suited for woodworking or pet clothing design.

A party in one of the Stradler frat houses. Dim lighting, throbbing music, the sour smell of beer. Finny didn’t normally go to parties, but she’d promised Sarah Barksdale she’d stop by this one. They danced together for a while, until a tall, muscular boy with hair as red as Finny’s asked Finny to dance with him. The dancing turned out to be a lot of calculated rubbing, which, in combination with the three cups of astringent fruit punch she’d drunk, did the trick of putting Finny in the mood to stop by the boy’s dorm room. Finny said bye to Sarah and stumbled with the boy across the cold, dark lawn to his dorm. Inside his room, which was decorated with posters of jazz musicians, they kissed clumsily to a Bill Evans record, then began to take off their clothes. They ended up sleeping together a couple times before he graduated, after which they never talked again.

A vacation with Sarah Barksdale in Mexico over spring break Finny’s senior year. Getting conned into paying rental insurance on the already overpriced rental car by a sweaty man who kept shrugging and saying, “This is Mexico. Anything can happen.” On their way back, at the Cancún airport, Finny and Sarah stopped in a duty-free to buy souvenirs for their families. There was a counter where an old white guy with silver hair was pouring samples of jarred salsa into plastic cups, and when Finny looked closely, she recognized the man. It was Gerald Kramp. When he saw Finny, he turned as red as the salsa. Finny bought two jars of mild from him, telling him she could do without the spices.

Graduation. A muggy morning. Finny lifting her robe to get some air on her legs. Afterward, Laura and Sylvan taking Finny to lunch at a Chinese restaurant. They got seated at a table for two, since it was all that was available and no one had thought to make a reservation. Laura looked much older than she had when Finny started college; when she smiled, lines appeared on her face like cracks in ice. For the first time, Finny could imagine the way her mother would look as an old woman. Laura grinned a lot, but Finny and Sylvan did most of the talking. They both knew this was the routine now when they visited their mother, who hadn’t been the same after the trouble with Gerald. The lunch made Finny think about her father for the first time in a while, and they all laughed when the waiter brought out a plate of General Tso’s chicken and Finny insisted on calling it Chicken à la Picasso.

Another publication for Earl. He wrote Finny with the news. They’d communicated a little by mail—no calls—keeping each other up to date. Finny didn’t see the harm in it, since they weren’t getting back together. This time his story was coming out in a magazine called Trophy, which Earl said could be found in the most dimly lit and out of the way corner of Barnes & Noble…. Finny wrote him congratulations. When the story came out that summer, she read it, sitting in a Barnes & Noble café. The story was beautiful—about a woman who goes to a doctor to get a skin cancer treated, and it ends up bringing up all these memories about her father dying and her losing the man she loved. It was a long, wandering, lyrical story, and it went back and forth in time. By the end, Finny had a sense of such great loss and sorrow that she actually began to weep in the middle of the bookstore. She’d been transported by the story, and she didn’t know how Earl could write so convincingly about a middle-aged woman. He seemed able to tap into some sadness in his stories, some truth and wisdom he didn’t always have in real life. She wrote him again that night to say it was one of the best stories she’d ever read.

The move to Cambridge. Finny had loved the area when she’d visited Sylvan at college, and so, on a whim, she decided to move there. More boxes, more dirty bedsheets flung over furniture. She and Sylvan had actually traded places, since Sylvan was now pursuing a Ph.D. in psychology at Bryn Mawr, outside Philadelphia. Finny got a job hostessing at a restaurant near Harvard Square. She liked the work, though she knew she could hardly make a career of it. So she started interning for a literary magazine at Harvard, reading their fiction submissions, hoping to put her English degree to work.

It didn’t even occur to her that both her jobs were in exactly the areas Earl worked in. She didn’t analyze herself that way. She simply wrote Earl the news, and they even chatted on the phone once in a while. Earl told Finny he had an agent now, but it was hard to sell a collection of stories. He was still living across the hall from his mother, because it was cheap and it allowed him the mornings to write. She didn’t ask if he was living with anyone. Mona had become a partner at the salon, as promised. Finny asked Earl if he was writing a novel, and he said, “No. Stories are my thing.” He was almost finished with an undergraduate degree in France.

An invitation forwarded from Laura, to attend “the union of Judith Marie Turngate and Milton Gaylord Hollibrand.” Finny had been in Cambridge a couple years already, but had never given Judith the address. The wedding notice was written in a simple blue script, on a white background, with a plain blue trim. Finny knew they must have spent thousands on the invitations alone. She looked at the two boxes: Yes, I will attend and With regrets, I am unable to attend. There was no room on Finny’s card to add a guest. She thought of simply not returning the card. Then she thought of checking the regrets box and adding a little note. But in the end, she decided to attend. Anything else would have been too dramatic. And she had to admit—she was curious.

The ceremony, which the Turngates and Hollibrands had set up through their many connections, was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They rented out the Egyptian tomb area for the reception, which turned out to be a five-course formal catered dinner. The only whimsical element was that when the glasses for the toast were handed out, Finny realized they contained cranberry juice—which must have been a point of great importance to Mr. Turngate. Hal Hollibrand offered a toast to the married couple, in which he called their union “the greatest merger I’ve ever seen,” and afterward he shook hands with the Turngates like they were sealing a business deal.

Luckily, Finny was seated next to Carter, who provided lots of entertaining commentary on all the distinguished-looking guests. He told Finny that Prince’s parents—who were both rather small—had adopted the mutant Prince when Bonnie Turngate had made noise about adopting a baby from China. They were always trying to show each other up. He also said that the only thing tackier than having a wedding reception on top of a national treasure was if they had actually set up the bar inside the Egyptian tomb, giving the guests little mummies to stir their drinks with.

Halfway through dinner, he came out with his news. “I have a boyfriend, Finny. A steady one. First time in my life. His name is Garreth, which is the gayest thing I’ve ever heard. And my name’s Carter.” It was then that Judith and Prince started making their rounds. Judith appeared at Finny’s table looking almost too beautiful, her cheeks slightly blushed, her skin golden against the white dress. Prince was grinning, his enormous chest nearly bursting the seams of his tuxedo. Finny did have to admit they looked pleased together. “I’m so happy you came,” Judith said to Finny. And Prince added, “It means so much to us.” Judith and Finny said they’d have to get together, though Finny knew her former friend would never call. Only when the newlyweds walked away did Carter say, “I’ll bet his dick is the size of a Mike and Ike.”

Finny chatting with one of her managers at the restaurant during a slow afternoon. Mentioning she had a minor in education. “Are you serious?” the manager said. Her name was Brandy, but everyone called her Bee. She told Finny that a friend of hers was responsible for hiring at a kindergarten in Boston and they were looking for a teacher’s assistant. Asked Finny if she might be interested. Finny said sure, and got the job at the interview. In a month, when one of the head teachers left to have a baby, Finny took over her position. It was a fluke, but she loved her new job. The kids called her Miss Finn.

Some dates: a bartender at the restaurant where she’d worked; a divorced father of one of the kids she taught; a man she’d been set up with who worked in film and kept talking about all the people he knew at HBO and how close they were to buying his projects. Sometimes Finny slept with them; sometimes she didn’t. It was based more on how lonely she felt at the time than how attracted she was to the man. Nothing lasted for more than a couple months, which was fine with her.

Finny’s apartment in Cambridge: the bottom floor of a two-story home owned by a Brazilian couple. The house’s address was on a little one-way street called Berkshire Street, but the place was tucked behind another row of houses, so you could access it only by an alleyway. Quiet in the apartment all day. Plus it was enormous—a bedroom and a study off the large kitchen, and then a separate living room down the hall. It was one of the reasons she found it so hard to contemplate leaving Cambridge. She was paying less than a thousand a month. The Almeidas liked her, and they saw no reason to change tenants.

Sundays she met Bee from her old restaurant job, or other teachers at her school, and they stood in line at the S & S deli to get a table for brunch. Latkes and blintzes, mimosas in soda glasses. Dinner plans once or twice a week, or stopping by to see her aunt Louise, who happened to live just outside Boston with her new crop of cats. Concerts—at Symphony Hall or the Middle East or the Orpheum—which Finny was happy to attend by herself if no one else wanted to go. Last-minute theater tickets, or catching the Alvin Ailey or Paul Taylor troupes when they came to town. Coffee shops she loved, and bars and restaurants and bookstores. Laughing at the women’s magazines like she used to in college, even once sending in a letter to the editor (I mastered all twenty “blow his head off” orgasm techniques, she wrote, but my kitchen still doesn’t look as clean as the one in the photo), which came back to her with a polite rejection slip saying they valued her subscription and would she like to renew it with a special “career woman” rate? Dim sum at China Pearl. The Museum of Fine Arts, which was free for Finny since she was a teacher. Time rolling by. Another summer and another.

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

Chapter32
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.”

Carter took a long breath, like a drag from a cigarette, and then exhaled it slowly. “Then one day Garreth showed up at my door. At first I didn’t even recognize him. I didn’t believe it could be him. I thought my life was over.” Carter sniffed, and Finny saw that he was blinking away tears. “He came in and sat me down at my kitchen table. I only had one chair. But he made me sit while he cooked me an egg. It was the only thing in my refrigerator. He sat there on the counter and watched me eat it. Then he asked if I was eating okay, if I was getting out. He was concerned. He said that since I left, things just didn’t feel right.”

Carter sniffed again, then sighed. He rolled his shoulders like he’d been sitting in the same position for too long.

“He loves you,” Finny said. “I can tell by how he looks at you.”

“Eh,” Carter said, waving Finny off. “I feed his dogs.”

“Everyone needs a dog feeder.”

“Anyway, now we have our place near Ditmas Park with our little backyard. I’m taking all the drugs my measly Healthy New York policy can afford, and doing pretty well. I have a flower business. I actually do the flowers at Garreth’s restaurant. I would have shown you if I hadn’t been feeling sick from all the doggy planning.”

“I admire you,” Finny said.

“But my point,” Carter said, as if Finny hadn’t spoken, “is that it is up to you to provide the drama, Finny Short. I cannot deal with a boring weekend. And I think you and I have both seen enough of Judith’s drama. She’s probably as bored and horny as I am, anyway. So you better think quickly of some interesting stories, or else make some Memorial Day resolutions to find some.”

“I’ll do my best,” Finny said.

“And one more thing,” Carter said as they were rolling into the pine barrens. There had been a fire here a couple summers ago, Finny knew, and beside the highway the new trees, bright as grass in the early spring, were beginning to peek through the dull forest floor. “I haven’t told Judith about the whole being-sick thing. I don’t exactly see her as a shoulder to cry on, if you know what I mean. So maybe keep that quiet?”

“You can trust me.”

“I know I can, Finny Short. It’s one of the many reasons I like you.”

Carter took the turn into Judith’s U-shaped pebble driveway, and Finny listened to the stones crunch beneath the tires. The clouds had parted, like curtains unveiling the late-afternoon sun. Dune Road was simply a strip of land—wide enough for only a two-lane road with a house on each side—shielding a portion of the south shore of Long Island from the ocean. The houses on one side of the road backed onto the ocean, and on the other side the bay. Judith’s property was on the bay side, sandwiched between a large white modern-looking house that was shaped like a bullet, and a gray house that looked like something a child might make out of blocks. The Hollibrands’ house itself was all on one floor, beach-bungalow style. Finny could see through the front windows that there was a large living room in the center, and then a wing on each side, where she assumed the bedrooms were. Behind the house was the bay.

Judith must have heard the minivan in the driveway because she came out of the front door waving both hands, saying something Finny couldn’t hear. Carter pressed a button to lower the passenger-side window, and Finny caught the words “… my best friends.”

They got out of the van. The air was warm and salty. Judith was wearing a purple dress with a swath cut out of the neckline, revealing an extensive view of her suntanned breasts, which seemed impossibly larger to Finny, round and brown as two cantaloupes. Judith had put on makeup—some eye shadow, blush on her cheeks—though she seemed to have applied it with a heavier hand than she used to, like she was about to walk onstage. Finny could see a crinkly border of cover-up around her eyes. Judith hugged Carter and Finny in the driveway, and again Finny felt that old creeping discomfort, like she’d been asked to give a speech she hadn’t prepared for. She felt herself hunching, and she tugged at the little black sweater she was wearing. Carter pressed the button to make the minivan chirp.

“What is that?” Judith asked, laughing.

“That,” Carter said, “is your future. You laugh now, but no one can escape the minivan. It’s like wrinkles and nursing homes.”

“It even has a doggy cage,” Finny offered, “which you get locked in if you make fun of it.”

“By the way,” Judith said to Finny, “your brother’s already here. We’re having drinks on the patio. Why don’t you stick your stuff inside. I’ll show you your rooms. Then you can meet us out there. Prince is driving out with his sister. Unfortunately, she’ll be spending the weekend with us, too.” Judith seemed out of breath when she finished these announcements. Finny could tell she was excited to have her friends back.

“Just show me the hookers and the hot tub,” Carter said.

“You have an entirely mistaken idea about the Hamptons,” Judith said.

“Sorry,” Carter said. “Do the hookers prefer saunas?”

Outside on the patio, Sylvan was lying on a chaise longue, with a red fruity-looking drink in his hand. Unlike Carter, Sylvan had kept his thin shape into his thirties, though he’d been less successful at keeping his hair. For a while he’d tried to hide the coin of scalp at the back of his head, combing and growing his hair in different ways—including a brief, ill-advised bout with a ponytail—but as his hairline eroded, Finny convinced him that the only sensible route was to face the music and shave his head. Actually, it didn’t look bad on Sylvan. It made him seem older than he was. But that was how Finny thought of him anyway. And the brushstrokes of gray in the stubble at the sides of his head only contributed to a look of distinction.

Judith told Carter and Finny to have a seat while she brought out some more strawberry daiquiris.

“Make mine a virgin,” Carter said. “I never thought I’d say that.”

“Are you kidding?” Judith said.

“Does that goddamn minivan look like I’m kidding?” Carter responded.

Judith slipped into the kitchen through the sliding glass door. Everyone said hi. Hugs and kisses all around. Sylvan and Carter knew each other from when Sylvan used to date Judith. The chairs on Judith’s patio, which extended the length of the house, were faced toward the inlet behind the house. The chairs were all made from the same unfinished wood, which Finny knew was calculated to give a rustic effect, and the furniture would have been a chore to move. Around the patio were some reeds and dune plants, and farther down, a strip of beach and the lapping water. It was late afternoon, and the sun spilled its colors across the water. There was a boat doing laps around the inlet, dragging a water-skier. Every once in a while Finny could hear the boat’s driver give an excited shout. She smelled smoke in the air from someone’s barbecue.

Judith came back out with the drinks for Finny and Carter, and then sat down next to Sylvan. Finny sipped her drink, and winced at the amount of rum in it.

“Is it okay?” Judith asked Finny. “I make them a little sweeter than Prince does. He likes to really taste the alcohol.”

“Oh,” Finny said. “It’s good, then.”

“So,” Judith said, “Sylvan was telling me you’re teaching in Boston.” When she said this, Judith brushed Sylvan on the arm with her fingertips. Finny saw her brother start, like he’d gotten a static shock.

“I am,” Finny said.

“So how’s that?”

“It’s pretty good,” Finny said. “I only hit the kids when they don’t shine my shoes properly.”

Judith laughed. Finny could see she was having a good time, and Finny found it endearing that her friend could be so thrilled just to sit around and talk with her. It’s what Finny had always liked about Judith—how much fun they could have together, how genuinely Judith enjoyed the company of her friends.

“What about you?” Finny asked Judith. “What are you doing?”

“I’m boring the heck out of myself,” Judith said. “It seems like Prince and I are out to dinner or at someone’s party every night. I’m getting my real estate license. The course is a joke. I think I’m ready to have kids. I’m horny as hell, and I keep telling Prince we should take advantage of it.”

Finny looked at her brother when Judith made this comment, and she saw his eyes dip to Judith’s cleavage for a moment. Judith must have noticed, and been pleased by it, because Finny saw her smile, as if in response to a compliment. It all happened in an instant, but suddenly Finny was worried. She saw that it might have been a mistake to get everyone back together, as if they could just go on as friends. And there was something else Finny saw in that moment. It was something teasing in Judith, something Finny had only glimpsed that summer after she’d left Thorndon, when Judith had talked all the time about “fucking” and how good or bad it was, and who was fucking whom. That summer, Judith had seemed to grow up and become more bitter both at once, and somehow, the woman who sat before Finny now, with her blushed cheeks and swollen breasts, seemed the fruition of a seed that had been planted all those years ago.

But maybe Finny was wrong. Maybe she was taking it too far. She looked at Carter, and saw that he was practically asleep, probably cursing himself for having driven all this way to listen to other people talk about how boring their lives were.

Then Prince arrived. He opened the sliding door and walked onto the patio, trailed by a petite woman with frizzy blond hair who was wearing an oversize T-shirt and patched-up jeans. She looked a decade older than Prince, and if Judith hadn’t mentioned before that the woman was his sister, Finny would never have known. Prince’s sister had a large brown and black dog on a leash, who sniffed at the boards of the deck.

“How’s everyone?” Prince said, waving, smiling his famous smile. Everyone greeted him, and he leaned down to give Judith a kiss, which Finny noticed her brother observing with special interest. For Prince’s part, he looked more clean-cut and professional than he had when he was in college. His dark hair was slicked with gel. He wore a polo shirt and khaki shorts, and appeared just as muscular as he always had, only with maybe a bit more of a belly from all the daiquiris. He seemed comfortable in his role as host, happy to share his good fortune with his wife’s friends. Finny was pleased to note that he no longer doused himself in cologne.

“This is my sister, Korinne,” Prince said.

“And this is Homer,” Korinne said, presenting the dog as if he were a guest. “He’s part Doberman, but don’t worry. He is the best and sweetest dog in the world.”

“I hope no one’s allergic,” Prince said. “I asked her to leave him in the city.”

“He doesn’t shed,” Korinne said sharply. “And besides, there’s no way I could leave him. He gets depressed when I’m not around.”

“How do you know he’s depressed?” Finny said.

“He just mopes and droops. Mopes and droops.”

“So would you like a drink?” Prince said to his sister. He already seemed a little exasperated by her. “Or are you all hungry?”

“Well,” Korinne said, “it’s not that I’m hungry or thirsty. I don’t matter. But when I look at this poor sweet dog. When I look into his dear little eyes”—and here she got on her knees and performed this very task—“he’s telling me he not only wants to eat, but he needs to eat. I can’t deny such a darling creature.” She scratched Homer on the head, lifted his left ear then his right. The dog raised one eyebrow at her.

“Do you want me to pick up some dog food?” Prince asked.

“Ha!” Korinne said. “You must be joking. Are you joking? Because it seemed like you were joking, knowing what you do. You said we were going to grill tonight. Homer likes his burger medium-rare, a little pink in the middle.”

“I can just make it for him now,” Prince offered. “Then we could all enjoy a drink.” He smiled at everyone, which appeared to take some effort.

“You’d have to be crazy if you think he’s going to eat alone,” Korinne said to her brother. “That would just be sad.”

“Then he might mope and droop,” Carter offered. Finny could see that he found Prince’s sister funny, and he was going to take full advantage of the tension. Carter seemed to have come back to life, roused by the first hint of entertainment in this crowd. “We don’t want to keep the puppy waiting,” he went on. “Maybe he enjoys a little drink before dinner? A glass of wine?”

But Korinne didn’t seem to see the humor in this. “He only drinks tequila,” she said. “Don Eduardo. One shot on special occasions. He’s not a lush.” She flattened her mouth and shook her head at Carter.

“Of course not,” Carter said. “In fact, maybe he’d enjoy some of this strawberry milk shake Judith made me. I can’t finish it without the booze.”

“The only fruits he likes are mangoes and pomegranates,” Korinne said, and then went inside with Prince to change for dinner.

“Prince,” Carter called, “I think you might have to go to the market!”

Finny and Judith were left to make the salad in the kitchen while Prince and the other men worked the grill and Prince’s sister took Homer for his walk. Judith’s kitchen would have been plain—white cabinets and a white tiled floor—except for the view of the water through the glass doors that were one wall of the room. Through the glass, Finny could also see the corner of the deck where the boys were working on the barbecue, though she couldn’t hear them. Prince was getting the coals ready, Sylvan was nodding approvingly, and Carter was squirting little streams of lighter fluid onto the coals from a large plastic bottle.

“This is so nice,” Judith said. “Having you here. I feel like we’re back at Thorndon.”

“Then I’d have to think of a dare,” Finny said. “I think yours was the last one. When I stuck that note under Poplan’s door.” She glanced at Judith after she said this, to see the effect of her words.

Judith laughed. “I felt so bad about that. Telling on you. I had a guilt complex for years.”

The news struck Finny like a blow from behind. “And here I thought you were my friend,” she said. Then she laughed at her own joke just to make sure Judith knew she was kidding. Finny could see how much effort Judith was putting into this weekend, how much she wanted to be friends again, and Finny didn’t want to spoil that. So she tried to ask Judith her next question as casually as she could. “But why’d you do it? We were getting along so well.”

Judith shrugged. “I saw how close you were to Poplan. I guess it bothered me.”

Finny remembered the story Poplan had told about catching Judith and Jesse with the alcohol. How angry Judith had been at Poplan. And Judith could see how close Finny and Poplan were getting. She must have realized that for Poplan, not knowing who had written the note wouldn’t be half as bad as knowing Finny had betrayed her.

“Anyway, it was a long time ago, Finny,” Judith said, and opened the refrigerator. It was like Judith to diminish any topic that didn’t cast her in a flattering light. Finny wanted to say more, but she held back. They had the whole weekend in front of them.

A minute later, while Judith was washing the lettuce, she asked Finny, “How’s your sex life?”

Finny was slicing some pears into long strips. “It’s more of an afterlife,” Finny said. “I don’t have that much time since I’m heading the after-school program, too.”

“I take it you don’t see Earl anymore, then?”

“No,” Finny said. For some reason she didn’t feel comfortable getting into it with Judith. She hoped her friend wouldn’t ask any more questions.

Judith seemed to take a moment to absorb the information. Then she said, “Prince and I tried anal sex for the first time recently.”

Finny wasn’t sure how they’d arrived at this topic, or whether she really needed the inevitable mental pictures it would inspire. “That’s funny,” she said, “I just had calamari for the first time.”

Judith looked puzzled. “I’d always been afraid of it,” she went on. “I just thought of it as somehow dirty. Like something they’d do in a porno. We’d tried it once, about five years ago, but Prince couldn’t even get in me. This is going to be gross, but I have to tell you: it felt like I was taking a shit backward. I know, I know, it’s disgusting.”

“I felt the same way with calamari,” Finny said. She finished with her pears. “What else?” she said to Judith.

“There’s a nice aged Gouda in the fridge,” Judith said. “You can take that out and chop it up.”

Finny opened the heavy door of the refrigerator, hoping that the previous topic had passed, but as soon as Finny had the cheese on the counter, Judith started up again. “I realized the trick,” Judith said as Finny saw the grill light up outside in a whoosh of flames, the guys all leaping back for cover. “The trick is to get really lubed up. And then you bring your knees way up, like, almost to your chest. He needed to work his finger around in there for a while to get me to relax. But then he slipped right in. I can’t even tell you how amazing it was. I came three times.”

Now Judith was spinning the salad dry, and she looked at Finny. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can see I’m making you uncomfortable.”

Finny waved her off. “I love Gouda.”

“It’s just that I don’t have girlfriends to tell this stuff to. I’m not even really sure what other women’s sex lives are like. I mean, we do it all the time. Prince says he needs it every day to go out there and sell his funds or whatever. So I give it to him.”

“It’s okay. I’d tell you my stories if I had any.”

“By the way,” Judith said, “your brother looks really cute with his head shaved.”

“I’ve been telling him to do it for years,” Finny said.

“I think Prince is cheating on me,” Judith said. “In fact, I know it.”

They were joined at dinner by a friend of Prince’s named Bradley Miller. Brad had gone to Columbia with Judith and Prince, and he now worked with Prince in finance. He was probably a couple of classes ahead of Judith and Prince, because he looked older, maybe his late thirties. Not unattractive, though. He was nicely built, with strong shoulders, his shirt opened a couple buttons at the neck so Finny could see his bristly chest hair. He was paler than Prince and Judith, with dark hair that was just beginning to make a widow’s peak, and he had silvery half-moons under his eyes. Finny guessed he spent a lot of time at the office. He seemed to know about wine and food. He’d brought the bottles of Brunello they were drinking with dinner, and he explained about his travels to the town in Italy where the wine was made, how the long hot summers and mild winters made it the perfect climate for the Sangiovese grapes.

“Is this real silver?” Brad said, touching his knife.

“Yeah,” Prince said. “We got it for our wedding.”

Brad nodded. “It’s nice,” he said.

They were eating at the large round table in the living/dining room, in front of the glass doors that led to the deck. It was dark now, and constellations of lights speckled the inlet. You could hear crickets, waves pawing the shore, boats knocking the dock. There was a lazy Susan in the middle of the table, where Judith had laid out all the platters of grilled meats and buns and salad and potatoes, and people spun the wheel back and forth to get what they wanted. Homer ate his burger off the same china the other guests did, lying on the floor next to Korinne, and Prince’s sister frequently stopped the conversation to point out something about Homer’s tastes—such as that he liked onions but abhorred pickles—and everyone had to agree how interesting it was before the conversation moved on. Brad had traveled a lot in Europe, and he and Finny had a long exchange about their favorite things to do in Paris. When Brad mentioned a restaurant Finny hadn’t tried—it sounded very expensive—he said, “Well, I’ll have to take you sometime.” Judith grinned at Finny when he said that, and Finny said she’d have to check her calendar.

“What the hell do you people do here on the weekends?” Carter said, amidst the clacking of knives and forks. Finny could tell he’d been fighting the urge to sip from the glass of wine set before him. His abstinence must have been making him cranky.

“Mostly quiet stuff,” Judith said. “We can go to the beach tomorrow. Take a walk in town.”

“Or maybe do some knitting,” Carter suggested.

Sylvan laughed, but Prince didn’t seem to find it funny. “When you have a long hard week of work,” he told Carter, emphasizing this last word as if it were a foreign term, “it’s nice to have a little peace and quiet at the end of it. Judith and I take a long bike ride most mornings, then go for a swim in the bay and have a big breakfast.”

“I’d actually love to check out the town,” Sylvan said, and Finny recognized the therapist’s instinct in her brother to defuse the tension. “I’m curious to see some of the shops.”

“I’ll show you around,” Judith said quickly, and flashed a smile at Sylvan. Judith pushed a strand of hair behind one of her ears—a gesture Prince couldn’t have noticed because he was seated next to her—and Finny once again got the distinct impression that Judith was flirting. She was wearing another low-cut shirt, made of a loose gold netted fabric, and a diamond necklace that dropped into the shadows between her breasts.

“That would be great,” Sylvan said, and smiled back at Judith.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, is this real?” Brad Miller said, brushing his hand along the marble top of a cabinet behind him. But before anyone answered, he said, “It’s beautiful.”

Finny excused herself to use the bathroom.

“You can use ours,” Judith said. “It’s right behind you.”

Finny went into the master bedroom and closed the door. The room was more disheveled than Finny had expected, clothes on the bed and floor, and only a small window, now shielded with blinds, above the large mahogany bed frame. The carpet was a faded pastel blue, and felt damp under Finny’s toes from the sea air. The bathroom was to Finny’s right, and she was just about to step in when she remembered something. What she remembered was the day she’d arrived at Thorndon and looked into Judith’s dresser before Judith had gotten there, seeing all of Judith’s black clothes. Now Finny looked at the large armoire next to the bed, made of the same mahogany as the bed frame, with a matching ornamented trim. Of course Judith and Prince would have a bedroom set in their vacation home. But what interested Finny more was what Judith had inside her closet now. She felt an almost unbearable urge to open the mahogany armoire.

So she did. She wasn’t normally a snoop. But Judith seemed to bring it out in her. Finny needed to get to the bottom of her friend’s mystery. She wanted to know who Judith Turngate actually was, behind the smiling and the makeup and the sex talk. What was the reason for all of it?

Most of the clothes on the hangers were standard beach stuff—sundresses, and cute little tops, shorts, and some skirts and dresses for the evenings. Tucked in between were some racier samples of lingerie: lots of lace and silk. Finny went on to the drawers. Here were G-strings and push-up bras. They weren’t things that Finny would have ever worn herself, but still, somehow she’d expected more.

She was careful to keep everything in the exact place and folded in the exact way she’d found them. Finny was about to close the armoire, resigned to the impenetrableness of Judith, when she saw on the top shelf of the dresser, in precisely the spot where she’d found Judith’s black lipstick twenty years before, a small stack of photographs. Finny lifted the stack, making sure not to smudge the photographs, and began to thumb through them.

The first few were standard couple photos of Judith and Prince, arms around each other, smiling at the camera. But as she went through the stack, the photos changed. There was one of Judith naked, taken from below. She was straddling a man who must have been Prince, cupping her breasts in her manicured fingers. Another photo showed Judith in one of her lingerie outfits—a black and pink one—bending over to display the pink rim of her anus to the camera, smiling shyly, almost timidly, over her shoulder, like she’d been cajoled into taking the picture. There was a photo that must have been taken in the mirror, of Prince mounting Judith from behind, flexing his biceps. What the hell is this? Finny thought. And yet she couldn’t stop. Not until she got to the final photo—of Judith wearing dark lipstick, her mouth shaped like an O, ready to accept Prince’s penis (which Carter had correctly identified as tiny).

Just as Finny was stacking the photos back up, a small slip of paper fluttered out of the top of the pile, which Finny had only skimmed through. The paper sailed to the floor like a feather in a breeze. Finny picked it up. A note was written on it: You shouldn’t be looking at these. It was in Judith’s handwriting—the same writing that had been slipped under Poplan’s door at Thorndon. Finny turned around. She had the uncanny sensation that Judith was in the room with her. Yet no one was there. Finny remembered Judith’s comment at Thorndon that “no one stops at the top of the dresser,” and now Finny saw the wisdom of it, of what Judith had known at such a young age: once you’ve opened the door, you’ve already crossed over. Finny wondered if the note was intended for her.

Finny gathered everything as well as it could be gathered. She knew that eventually Judith would probably figure out what Finny had done. The certainty was in the note. A beautiful woman like Judith knows people will want to go through her stuff. It’s probably why Judith had told Finny to use the master bathroom in the first place.

Finny put the photos back on the shelf and went to the bathroom.

Back at the table, Judith asked Finny, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Finny said. “Just more to drink than I’m used to.”

Brad looked concerned. “Drink a lot of water,” he said. “In London, since the bars close so early, we used to pound a dozen beers, then drink a gallon jug of water so we could walk home.”

“If Homer’s stomach is upset,” Korinne offered, “I crush up Pepto-Bismol tablets in his food. It’s funny: he’s very picky. He’ll only eat Pepto, not Tums or Mylanta.”

“He would have gotten along with Dad,” Sylvan joked to Finny.

She smiled at everyone. She had the feeling the room was spinning, or rocking, as in a large boat. “Really, I’m fine,” she said.

And Judith grinned in the knowing way she had earlier, when Sylvan had looked at her breasts.

After dinner they turned on a movie. They sat on the enormous wraparound couch—enough room for fifteen people, like the couch Judith’s parents had at the Beresford—which was behind the dining table. The movie was some silly action story that Finny couldn’t put the effort in to follow, and besides, she was distracted by the fact that every time there was a sex scene, Korinne let out a little shriek and placed her hand over Homer’s eyes, claiming, “He’s very sensitive. He’s offended by gratuitous nudity.” Carter was asleep. Prince and Brad were talking about investments. Judith was in the kitchen, washing dishes. She’d insisted that no one could help her.

“You want to go for a walk?” Sylvan asked Finny.

“I can’t tell you how badly,” Finny said.

They walked down to the belt of beach around the inlet. It was quiet here, with just the sounds of the water and the boats. Finny could see into the houses of some of the other people who lived on the water—warmly lit kitchens and living rooms, the flicker of television sets.

“So, what’s your surprise?” she said to her brother. They were walking barefoot, and the sand and seaweed were cold on Finny’s feet.

Sylvan laughed. “I was just going to tell you,” he said.

“So?”

“I’m engaged,” he told Finny.

She stopped and punched him on the arm. “Hey,” she said. “Congratulations!” She hugged him. She was thrilled for her brother. With only one reservation: for some reason she couldn’t get the image of him looking down Judith’s dress out of her head.

“Thanks,” he said, in his awkward way. “I know, it’s weird.”

“Are you happy?”

“I think so,” Sylvan said. “She’s great.” And then he added, “Mari, I mean.”

Back inside, Carter had gone to bed. He was going to be sharing a room with Finny that had two twin beds in it. Sylvan had the room across the hall, which had a double bed, since Judith hadn’t been sure if he was going to bring Mari. Korinne was sleeping on the couch, since she said that Homer liked to get up at four-thirty for his walk, and Prince said that no one else would want to hear that.

Brad was ready to go. He kissed Judith goodbye and shook hands with Sylvan and Prince. Then he said to Finny, “Walk me to the door?”

They walked outside and stood on the front porch together. A few cars sped past on Dune Road, their headlights briefly lighting the pine trees in front of the house.

“I waited for you to get back before I left,” Brad said to Finny. Finny could see now that he was swaying a little from the Brunello. His eyes moved up and down Finny’s body in the appraising way he looked at Prince’s expensive things, and Finny half-expected him to ask if she was real.

She was about to make a joke, when Brad leaned over and kissed her on the mouth. He then put his hands around her waist and drew her to him. Normally Finny would have pulled back, or kicked him, or screamed, but something about the suddenness of it, the confident—even forceful—way he drew her in, it surprised her. She felt a hot spark of lust, a familiar spreading warmth, and she found she liked kissing him.

In a few minutes, after some hasty examinations of each other’s bodies, Brad said, “You know, I’m in Boston all the time for business. I’d love to take you out for dinner.” He pulled a card from his pocket with his number on it. “I really enjoyed, uh, talking to you.”

He squeezed her hand, then got in his car—a purple Audi—and drove off.

Inside the house, Judith said, “I guess you guys hit it off.”

“I think so,” Finny said, still a little dizzy from the wine and the sexual charge of Brad’s embrace.

“I had a feeling,” Judith said.

Carter was snoring when Finny came into their room. He was passed out, an episode of The Golden Girls playing on the little TV in front of the bed. “I should always meet men lying down,” the Southern character said. Then the sassy old woman said, “I thought you did.” Canned laughter spilled into the room. Finny flipped channels on the TV for a few minutes; she didn’t feel like sleeping. She washed up in the bathroom and came back out in her pajamas. It was after midnight. She assumed everyone was asleep.

Then she heard a door click open in the hall. It was Sylvan’s door, and Finny rushed to the door of her own room to catch him. She didn’t know what she’d say, but she wanted to talk to him.

She opened her door, and was on the point of speaking, when she saw that it wasn’t Sylvan coming out of his room. It was Judith, wearing a silky Asian-printed nightgown that barely covered her backside. The nightgown was only loosely knotted around Judith’s waist, as if she’d put it on in a hurry.

Finny and Judith looked at each other across the dark hallway, silently acknowledging the other’s presence. But they didn’t say anything. Judith walked back to her bedroom.

In the morning Sylvan was seated on a stool at the island in the sunny kitchen, hunched over a bowl of Cheerios. He was reading the Times, which they’d gotten early, and sipping intermittently from a mug of coffee.

“Hey,” Finny said when she walked into the kitchen.

“They’re fighting,” Sylvan said.

At first Finny thought he meant Prince and his sister, since they’d seemed testy with each other the night before. But then Finny heard Judith shouting behind the bedroom door, “Nothing. It didn’t mean anything.”

“What happened?” Finny said.

“I don’t know,” Sylvan said. “I woke up and things seemed okay. I said hi to Judith. Then I went to wash up, and when I came back, they had the door closed and were yelling at each other. I don’t know if I had something to do with it.”

Finny kept looking at her brother, to see if he would say more, mention Judith’s trip to his bedroom last night. But he just shook his head and stuffed a large spoonful of Cheerios in his mouth.

“Not again!” Prince screamed. “I’m sick of this, Judith. Your behavior is disgusting.”

Finny heard Judith crying, then Finny said to her brother, “Where’s Korinne?”

“Walking the dog. How about Carter?”

“I think he’s planning to sleep through the whole weekend. He’s had a hard time, Sylvan. He’s just getting his life together.”

“Tell him to let me know how it feels,” Sylvan said, and Finny wasn’t sure if it was an invitation to ask about what wasn’t together in Sylvan’s life.

“You feel like you’re ready to get married?” Finny tried.

“I’m ready for a change,” Sylvan said. “Yeah, I’m ready. I feel like I’m going in circles now, and I need to head down a path. I love Mari. I really think she’s a good person. We have fun together.”

Finny nodded. It was another bright, calm day outside. The water in the inlet was so still it reflected a perfect view of the sky. Seagulls sat on the dock pilings, their eyes ticking over the scenery. Then Judith shouted, “You bastard! Give me those!”

“Beautiful morning,” Sylvan said.

But Finny felt she had to say something. “Sylvan,” she started, “really, do you think you have anything to do with it? With why they’re fighting?”

Sylvan shrugged and looked back at the newspaper. He read for a couple of seconds. Then, without lifting his eyes, he said, “If Judith can’t let go, it’s certainly not my fault.”

“But don’t you think it’s better for you both to let go?” Finny prompted him.

Before Sylvan could respond, though, Korinne burst through the front door with Homer on a leash. “I’ve been up since four-fifteen!” she shouted into the house.

The door to Finny’s room opened, and Carter came out in his boxers and an undershirt, scratching his stomach. “Woo-hoo,” he said. “Hope you all didn’t wait for me.”

“Wait for you?” Korinne said. “We’ve already walked five miles. Homer prefers walking on the beach, which is a better workout anyway. And we had to stop at the bakery in town for a linzer torte, since that’s his favorite breakfast in the world. He gets the sugar all over his face and it looks like—”

But Korinne was interrupted by a crash from the bedroom. Then the door swung open, and Judith stepped through, shutting it behind her. She strode into the living room, wearing shorts and a sleeveless athletic top. “Leave me alone!” she called back to Prince. Her eyes were red and her face was splotchy. For the first time this weekend she wasn’t wearing makeup, and her skin had a puffiness that made her look tired.

The door opened again and Prince was standing there, in a loose-fitting T-shirt and spandex biking shorts. “And take your fucking whore photographs!” he said, tossing a handful of photos into the living room after Judith. Prince slammed the door so forcefully the house shook, and as they recovered from the sound, the photos twirled like snowflakes through the room.

“Oh God,” Judith said, running to snatch all the pictures before anyone saw them. Of course Finny knew which photos they were. Prince must have tossed them into the room just to humiliate his wife.

Judith couldn’t grab them quickly enough, though, because in a moment Korinne let out a long howl, as if she’d been struck down in battle. She clapped her hand over Homer’s eyes, keeping her own shut, and screamed, “It’s too awful for words! He’s going to be traumatized!”

“Oh, let me see,” Carter said, bending over to pick up one of the photos. He examined it, and said, “Judith, this is a good angle for you.”

Judith fell on her knees, buried her face in her hands, and wept, her chest heaving, her shoulders shaking. Finny expected Sylvan to run to comfort her—it was what he always did—but this time he just sat there, watching her from his stool in the kitchen. So Finny went over and kneeled down. Put her arm around Judith’s shoulders. Helped her up off the floor. The others watched, quiet as a theater audience. Only Korinne repeated the word traumatized, as if to make sure everyone had heard. She still had her hand over Homer’s eyes.

Then the phone began to ring. Once, twice, three times, the jangling covering up Judith’s crying.

“You want me to get it?” Sylvan said.

Judith didn’t respond, so Sylvan picked up the phone. “Hello?” he said. Everyone’s attention turned to him, as if the caller might provide the comfort they were waiting for. Finny could tell it was a woman’s voice on the other end, because of the tinny sound.

Sylvan said, “Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure. I’ll get her.”

He held the phone up, and Finny was about to tell him he should probably take a message, when Sylvan said, “Finny, it’s for you.”

Chapter33
Another Trip

The next half hour—which involved Finny racing around the house to gather her things, get dressed, and purchase airplane tickets—provided a much-needed distraction from that morning’s episode. Everyone seemed to rally around Finny, and all the energy that had previously been directed toward the conflict between Prince and Judith was now rerouted toward getting Finny to her plane. Sylvan agreed to get on the computer to check prices and schedules, and then call various airlines if it was too last-minute to purchase tickets on the Web. Carter helped Finny comb the bedroom and bathroom for dropped clothes and personal items. Judith made Finny sandwiches from the leftover meat and packed them in a Zabar’s bag. Korinne performed the double duty of keeping Homer out of Finny’s way and making sure Homer wasn’t frightened by the commotion of Finny’s departure. Even Prince finally came out of the bedroom and offered to give Finny a ride to the airport, or pay for a cab, though Sylvan said he was planning to take Finny.

The flight was from MacArthur airport, in Islip, a good fifty-minute drive from Judith’s house. When Finny had her bag packed, she said a hurried goodbye to everyone, not even taking the time to give hugs since she was in that much of a hurry. She told Judith she would call her, and thanked Prince for letting her stay at his house. Then she thanked everyone else. She couldn’t even think straight; she just wanted to get on the road. Finally, she was strapped into her seat in Sylvan’s car. She said to her brother, “I know you’re normally not a speed demon, but you’re going to have to zoom a little for me. I can’t miss this plane.”

“I know,” Sylvan said.

And so his Ford Taurus was driven as it had never been driven before. Tires screeched, the engine groaned, turn signals were neglected, traffic lights ignored.

“Who’s going to pick you up when you get there?” Sylvan asked.

“I’ll call the airport shuttle,” Finny said.

“That’s going to waste your time. Why don’t I call from my cellphone once I drop you off?”

“I don’t know the number.”

“I’ll get it,” Sylvan said. “Don’t worry.” He patted her on the leg. “I’ll give them your flight info.”

She was glad Sylvan was the one driving her to the airport. He was good at reassuring her in times of crisis. And there was some continuity in sharing these moments with her brother. They’d been through so many together. She wouldn’t have felt as comfortable with anyone else.

“How did she sound?” Sylvan asked Finny now.

“Not like herself,” Finny said. “It’s the first time I’ve heard her really panic.”

“What else did she say?”

“She gave me a long explanation about how she’d gotten my number. I guess I’d mentioned to her that I was going to Judith’s for the weekend. So she called Thorndon and got the number of the beach house from the alumni directory. I wasn’t sure why she was telling me all that stuff. I think it was just the first thing that came into her head. It was almost like she couldn’t hear herself talk. Her mind was somewhere else.”

“It’s scary when that happens.”

“Especially with someone like Poplan,” Finny said. “I always expect her to be in control.”

“You can’t control this,” Sylvan said. “Did she say anything about how he was doing?”

“She said he’d been having stomach pains. And then he just passed out at the dinner table. At first Poplan thought he’d fallen asleep, but when she saw the way he was breathing she realized it was worse than that. She called an ambulance, and it turned out he has a tumor the size of a grapefruit. Inoperable. She said they told her he was in his final days—that he’d been lucky to make it this far. Now he’s getting a ton of pain medication. They hired a nurse so he could die at home.”

“Oh, Finny,” Sylvan said, “it’s so sad.”

“It really is,” Finny said. “I feel like I’m not built to handle this stuff.”

“All you can do is what you’re doing.”

Finny shrugged, but just then an old woman in a large-brimmed hat pulled her Volvo wagon in front of Sylvan’s Ford Taurus. She was going only about fifty miles per hour in the fast lane of Sunrise Highway, and Sylvan honked his horn and flashed his lights. But the display had no effect. Sylvan honked some more, but still no response. It was at this point that Sylvan jerked the car into the middle lane, tires screeching, and sped past the old woman who had clogged his lane. In the rearview mirror, Finny saw the old woman, who was wearing large plastic glasses with a librarian chain, lift her hand to give Sylvan the finger.

“Wench,” Sylvan said.

In ten minutes they were stopped in front of MacArthur airport and Sylvan was helping Finny get her bag out of the trunk. He gave her a quick hug and said, “Good luck. I love you.”

Mr. Henckel’s bed had been set up in the living room of the little brown house, so that he could be next to his piano while he slept and woke. At the moment when Finny walked in, he was in a sleeping phase. Poplan was the only conscious member of the household. She greeted Finny with a long hug, explained that the nurse had gone out for the afternoon and that Earl was due to arrive in the evening. She brought Finny to the bedside, where Finny sat in a chair next to the pole on which the IV bag hung, dripping morphine into Mr. Henckel’s vein.

Mr. Henckel lay in a square of late-afternoon sunlight that had pierced one of the tiny windows in the room. The light was so clear and soft that it set him off almost unnaturally from the rest of the room, which lay in a dull shade. He looked nearly as pale as his white bed sheets, and his face had an oily sheen to it. He was thinner than Finny remembered him from her last visit. She could see the cords in his neck. It struck her all of a sudden how old he’d gotten; she’d never thought about how old he was when she was a teenager. His hair, or what remained of it, was now a uniform steely gray, like an answer his body had settled on. He had the covers pulled up all the way to his chin, and the morphine must have been responsible for the content look on his face.

“He’s been out of it because of the drugs,” Poplan said to Finny. Her voice sounded weak, thinner than Finny had ever heard it. “Thank you for coming. He was asking about you before.”

“How are you doing?” Finny asked Poplan.

“Exhausted,” Poplan said. “This is a lot to take.”

Finny reached over and gave Poplan’s hand a squeeze, and they both smiled sadly at each other.

“Do you need anything?” Finny asked.

“Just your company,” Poplan said. “How was your trip?”

Finny told her about her brother being cut off by the old woman with the glasses and the floppy hat, and Poplan laughed. They talked on about small things for a while, as Mr. Henckel napped. The light from the windows was fading, yet neither of them got up to turn on a switch. Mr. Henckel’s eyelids seemed held shut by the most tenuous pressure, and Finny felt as if the smallest movement might cause them to snap open like window shades. He was sweating now, his forehead wrinkling then falling slack. He seemed to be working over something in his sleep.

“Is he in pain?” Finny said.

“Not for long,” Poplan said. “Linda should be back soon.”

At around seven Linda showed up, a large dark-skinned black woman with a pink scar over her left eye. She was dressed in hospital scrubs, her hair in braids. She asked Poplan how Mr. Henckel was doing. Poplan introduced Finny, and when Finny extended her hand, Linda gave her a hug. She told Finny about what she was doing for Mr. Henckel—mostly controlling his pain—and said she’d be happy to answer any questions Finny had. But Finny didn’t have any. She decided to go for a walk while Linda adjusted Mr. Henckel’s medicine and cleaned him up for the night.

Finny walked to the old vineyard. She took the familiar path, down the hill, across the road, past the bird pond that was too dark to see at this hour. She hadn’t been back across this route since the summer when Earl left that first time, and now, as she walked between the vines that wrapped the wire trellis, she was struck by how small it all looked. She was a head taller than the green walls, and she could see all the way across the valley from where she stood. The countryside was quiet, the sky enormous, a gray-black ocean above. Lights were coming on in the farmhouses, like candles in a dark room. There is so much space in the world, Finny thought, hearing her own breath, looking across the wide valley, feeling a rush of loneliness like a cool breeze. She thought of that night years ago when she’d woken to the sound of pebbles tapping her window, Earl’s awful news, their sad goodbye. And the way that afterward she was left by herself to bear it, as you finally are with all bad news, while the world spins in its well-worn circles.

She was getting cold. Night was dropping its curtain over the valley, and Finny worried she would have trouble finding her way back, it had been so long. So she started off toward the little brown house. She tugged her thin black sweater more tightly around her, the one she’d been wearing yesterday when she got to Judith’s. It felt like so long ago.

Back at the house, Earl had arrived. He was sitting in the chair where Finny had sat, next to the IV drip. He got up and gave Finny a hug, thanked her for making the trip. He had a beard now, clipped short, and though he looked older, he was well-groomed and handsome in his way. His body had filled out in the years since Finny had last seen him, the youthful muscularity settling into a comfortable fleshiness—not fat, but solid. He seemed to stand straighter now in his checked sweater and faded khaki pants. He had the look of a tenured professor or a lawyer on his day off.

“It’s so good to see you,” he told Finny. “If only it wasn’t such a miserable occasion.”

“I know,” Finny said. “It’s a sad reunion.”

They both sat down next to Poplan. Linda was in the kitchen, reading the Bible and humming to herself. Later she would go to sleep in Earl’s bed, which Mr. Henckel had kept for him ever since he’d moved away. Poplan, Earl, and Finny stayed up through the night with Mr. Henckel as he slept in the living room. They’d switched on lamps, which provided only a dim light for the bedside. But it was enough. They could see Mr. Henckel with the sheet pulled up to his chin, looking small and scared as a child. Finny wanted to comfort him, to ease his sleep. They took turns holding the hand that wasn’t hooked up to the IV, and when he woke briefly, they whispered comforting things to him, about how much they loved him, how wonderful their memories of him were.

Finny said she’d never forget her piano lessons, that he was the kindest teacher she’d ever had. She said she’d always be grateful for the way he’d welcomed her into his home. He mumbled something back about the coffeepot being warm for her. Earl talked about what a loving father Mr. Henckel had been, how close he’d always felt to him, how lucky he was to have been taken care of so well. He said he knew he was always loved, and he had such great respect for what his father had made of a difficult situation. Poplan simply said that her years with Mr. Henckel were the best and most meaningful of her life. She kissed him on his damp forehead and then wiped it with his handkerchief, the way Mr. Henckel used to after his confessions. They told him all the things they’d never found the right moment or taken the time to say. It was like a bedtime story for Mr. Henckel, as his eyelids began to close. Or like a suitcase they were packing for the journey ahead of him.

Toward morning he woke up. He seemed more lively and alert than he had during the night, though when he spoke, his speech was slurred. “Goff,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” Poplan said. “What?”

“Goff. Ee.”

Earl understood. He went to the kitchen and prepared the coffee, setting the silver pot on the silver tray and then bringing it to the bedside. He poured the coffee into the china cups, and they each clinked their cup against Mr. Henckel’s one last time. Mr. Henckel drank his thirstily. Finny distributed the milk and the sugar, stirring it with the little silver spoon, and they all enjoyed a brief coffee party together, like the old days, until Mr. Henckel lost his strength and spilled coffee on himself. Poplan was worried he’d been burnt, but he assured her he was fine, that coffee could never harm him.

“And one more. Thing,” Mr. Henckel said, between heavy breaths, as if he’d just run up a flight of stairs. Finny could tell he was still dazed from the morphine, by the way his eyes wandered the room, yet the coffee seemed to have given him strength for this request.

“What is it?” Poplan asked him in her new, softer voice. “Can I get you something, sweetheart?”

Mr. Henckel shook his head slowly. He looked at Earl. “I wanna tell you,” he said to his son, his tongue still sluggish. He swallowed to moisten his throat. “That I always thought. You and Finny were good for each other.”

And with that, he fell asleep, for what would turn out to be the last time. In the final hours Poplan lay in bed with him, and held him as he slept.

Chapter34
Finny and Earl Have a Chance to Catch Up

Fortunately, Linda was there to take care of everything. She liked Poplan, and was happy to help. Poplan wasn’t up to all the practical chores she normally would have taken charge of. Linda made the calls, arranged for the paperwork and talked to the funeral home. It ended up that she called Finny’s old friends, the Haberdashers, and through the receiver Finny could hear when Mr. Haberdasher let loose a giant sneeze and his wife in her pickled voice yelled, “Holy Christ, you blew my head off!” Linda took the phone away from her ear for a second, then got back on and in a polite, assured way explained that Mr. Henckel was to be cremated.

Since Mr. Henckel’s family had disowned him, and he hadn’t talked to any of them for years, and his only friends were the kids he taught, they decided it was best not to have a formal service. They took the ashes back to the little brown house, and Finny played a few bars of a piece she remembered from her piano lessons. Earl read a page he’d written about his father’s life, including Mr. Henckel’s performing days and his time as a teacher. Poplan talked about how rich their life had been together, how she loved nothing more than to see him play the piano, how fulfilling their charity work had been. Poplan had informed Mr. Henckel’s students about his death, and over the course of the afternoon, a number of them stopped by to pay their respects.

And then, because they wanted to lend some sense of finality to their ceremony, they decided to pour the ashes out of the bag, into the silver coffeepot. Earl did it, since he had the steadiest hands, and they listened to the sand raining on the bottom of the pot. Then Poplan said she would keep the pot on the piano, for as long as she stayed in the house. She didn’t plan to be going anywhere soon. She would keep up the after-school program, and maybe go back to working at a school as well. Earl was going to stay with her for a few days, until she was ready to be on her own. Having Mr. Henckel’s remains in the house with her, she said, would help her feel less lonely.

Earl offered to drive Finny to the airport in Mr. Henckel’s car, a brown station wagon, though not the same one he had driven when Finny was a child. Finny had taken two days off work and couldn’t afford to leave her kids with a sub any longer since it was the end of the school year. So she said goodbye to Poplan and that she hoped Poplan would come visit her in Boston when she felt up to it. They hugged, and Poplan thanked Finny for coming all this way to be with them.

“I’d always known you’d turn out to be a special person,” Poplan said.

“I wouldn’t have been anything without you and Mr. Henckel,” Finny said.

Then she and Earl got into the car and started off toward the airport.

Finny and Earl hadn’t said anything to each other about their lives for the entire three days they’d been together, since all their attention had been focused on Mr. Henckel, and now Finny experienced that old feeling of having too much to say to Earl, not knowing where to begin. Having spent such an intense couple of days with him, Finny didn’t even feel angry or disappointed with Earl now; she simply wanted to talk, to open herself up to someone she could trust, who knew her. It was Wednesday evening, and she was booked on the last flight from BWI to Boston. She would get in around ten o’clock.

Earl steered them onto the paved tongue of the expressway ramp. He was saying something about Air France and American Airlines, how the food was better on one but the other was more punctual, but Finny couldn’t still her mind for long enough to take it in. The car’s wheels thumped little heartbeats over the grooves in the road. The stadium lights above the highway were lit, charging the night sky with an electric brightness. As they merged onto the road, Finny saw that it was crowded with the red and yellow cat eyes of other cars. The sheer number of other people was a surprise to Finny, after seeing so few people in Mr. Henckel’s house, and Judith’s before that. But here were other families, other lives, other stories. For a second, Finny was overwhelmed by the multitude of destinations, of paths that crossed and recrossed, journeys beginning or coming to an end.

“I wish we had more time to catch up,” Earl said. His face had a raw, windburned look from all the crying he’d been doing the last couple days. “I know this just isn’t the right time.”

“I do, too,” Finny said. “I mean, I wish we had a few minutes to chat.”

“Are things going well?”

“Pretty well.” She felt as if she should say something to lighten the mood between them, there’d been so much heaviness the last couple days, so she told Earl, “The other day one of my kids said he knew the ‘three baddest words in the world.’”

“What are they?” Earl asked.

“Crap, ass, sass,” Finny said, “according to Gabe. I’m not sure how sass got in there.”

Earl laughed. Finny could tell he was relieved to hear something funny. “Sass is not always a bad thing,” he said, glancing at Finny. “It really could go either way.”

“So do you think your mom will want to hear about your dad?” Finny asked Earl.

“Um,” he said, and swallowed. “My mom passed away, Finny.”

“I—” Finny began, but couldn’t finish the thought. “I’m sorry, Earl. What happened?”

“She took pills,” Earl said. “Last winter. It was all really sad. But it was a long time coming. She never really got her head above water. In the end, even having me there didn’t make a difference. There was nothing I could do.”

Why didn’t you tell me? Finny almost asked Earl. But then she recalled sitting with her brother in the hospital cafeteria, after her mother died, and deciding not to share her own news with Earl. She couldn’t blame him. It wasn’t the kind of thing you called someone up to report when you hadn’t seen the person in years.

So Finny said, “My mom died, too. Last summer. Heart disease.”

“I’m really sorry,” Earl said, glancing over at Finny again. She noticed his eyes had a way of creasing in the corners. She could tell he was sad for her. Earl never had to fake his sympathy. If anything, he felt too much.

“We’re a pretty cheerful crowd,” Finny said.

Earl let out a long breath. Again he seemed much older to Finny. “You know, I keep telling myself it’s part of life,” he said. “But that doesn’t really help. It doesn’t make it any easier.” He shook his head. He seemed to be grieving over more than just his own losses.

“You never think about this part when you’re younger,” Finny said. “It’s natural to ignore it. You’re too caught up in the fun. But it’s like you can’t have one without the other.”

“Beginnings and endings,” Earl said.

But Finny felt they’d gone far enough down this road. “Anyway,” she said, “are you planning to keep your mother’s place, or did you decide to move?” She wanted to steer them away from these gloomy subjects.

“I’m going to move,” Earl said. “The only reason I stayed was that I was finishing up some writing and editing. I actually have a book coming out.”

“Wow. That’s terrific news, Earl.” She really was excited for him, knowing how hard he’d worked for it. “Did your dad know?”

Earl nodded, pressed his lips together. “He got to read the stories this year. He said some nice things.” Earl’s voice was flat as he reported this news about his life. Finny could tell he was depressed, and as always, her heart leapt toward him. She had to restrain herself from reaching out to touch him.

“It’s not a huge deal or anything,” Earl went on. “I won a contest. A university press is putting the collection out. Pittsburgh, actually. They’re just going to print a couple thousand copies.”

“Still. That’s great.” She put her hand on Earl’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’m proud of you, Earl. I knew you’d do it one day. I’m sorry it comes at such a sad time, but you should feel good about this. What’s the book called?”

“It’s called Calling Across the Years,” Earl said, flushing a little, the way he used to when he was younger. “I’m not crazy about the title. Especially now. It seems dramatic and silly to me. But I just wanted to capture the idea of moving across time. It’s a line from one of the stories.”

“I like the title a lot,” Finny said. “It’s pretty.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah. But you remember our deal?”

Earl smiled. “Of course,” he said. “A personal letter. I’ll write it inside the front cover for you. As soon as the book comes out.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

And then Earl looked at Finny and said, “I have another piece of news. There just wasn’t a good time for me to say it.”

“What is it?” she said, watching the pavement stream beneath their headlights.

He turned back to the road. He opened his lips, then closed them, as if considering what to say. Then he told her, “I’m seeing someone, Finny. I mean, living with her.”

“Oh,” she heard herself say. She didn’t know why, but the news struck her with an almost physical force. For some reason, she’d assumed Earl was moping around his Paris apartment by himself. And then she realized: she’d been waiting for him to ask her out, to say they should give it another try.

“Well, congratulations again,” she said to Earl, though she knew her voice sounded odd, plastic.

“I didn’t say anything at the house because it just didn’t seem like the right time to talk about it. I know this is a bad way to end our visit, but I thought you’d want to know.”

“I’m glad you told me.”

“I met her while I was teaching a writing workshop in France,” Earl continued. “She was a student.” He blushed again. “Her name’s Mavis. She’s American. Ten years younger than me, to tell you the truth. She was studying abroad. We just kind of hit it off. She’s living with me now. She would have come, but it would have been hard for us to afford the trip if we both took off work. Plus, I hadn’t really talked to Dad about her. She’s working as an assistant to a fairly well-known French scholar.” Earl looked uncomfortable. She knew he felt like he needed to explain.

But she didn’t want to hear any of that. She didn’t want to put either of them through the discomfort of it. So she said, “Actually, I met someone, too. I’m really glad for you, Earl. We should do a double date sometime.”

“Oh,” Earl said, his mouth dropping open a little. “Oh. That’s great.” She could tell he was surprised by her news, that it hadn’t been what he’d expected either. Yet he kept talking. “Mavis and I are hoping to move to a larger place in Paris, now that I’m done with the book. I have some fellowship money, and I’ve been working different jobs. Mavis can’t leave Paris, because of her work. It’s too good an opportunity for her. But she’s hoping to come to New York with me this fall, when my book comes out. Maybe we can all hang out together then.”

“Great,” Finny said.

“What’s your boyfriend’s name?” Earl asked.

“Brad. Brad Miller. It sounds plain, I know, but he’s a fascinating guy. He’s traveled all over Europe.” She felt that if she kept talking she could pave over the silence between them, the things they didn’t say, the words Mr. Henckel had left them with. Finny didn’t want to be alone in her head with these thoughts. If she kept talking, it wouldn’t quite be real.

“I’m happy for you,” Earl said. With an effort, he smiled; there was something hesitant and unconvincing in his manner. “Brad sounds really nice.”

Their conversation was awkward for the rest of the ride. They jumped between topics, such as the weather in Paris versus Boston, Finny’s teaching routine, the best ways to travel in the U.S. and in France, the relative merits of living in your own country versus moving abroad. They finally agreed that each experience was good in its own way, and felt comfortable leaving it at that.

Earl pulled up to the curb in the drop-off lane at BWI. Finny got out and took her bag from the back of the station wagon. She shut the door and was just planning to wave to Earl through the window, but he got out of the car and came over to her side. He put his arms around her, and they both hugged each other more tightly than they normally would have. She could tell there was so much left to say, but neither of them could figure out how to say it, to step across the gap between them. Finny felt herself begin to cry as Earl held her, and she swallowed back the hot ball in her throat. Neither of them seemed to want to let go. Only when several cars honked behind them did they loosen their grips on each other. As they came apart, Finny’s lips brushed Earl’s. She didn’t know if it was his initiative or hers, but she saw that he noticed it. He had a startled expression on his face. It wasn’t exactly what you’d call a kiss, though it felt like the beginning of one. Again, Earl seemed like he had something to say but was holding back.

She told Earl to let her know the dates he’d be in New York, and he promised he would. They exchanged email addresses. She said that she thought his dad was a great man, like a father to Finny, and she felt so sad about losing him. Earl thanked her, and said he would get that letter to her when the book came out in the fall. She said she couldn’t wait.

Then they said goodbye.

Chapter35
Another First Date

It was easy to immerse herself in her life in Boston in the weeks after she’d left Baltimore. She caught up on her shopping and bill paying, her phone calls and emails. She got her hair cut, shorter than she’d ever had it before, almost boyish, though mussed in a hip way. Everyone at work said they liked it. And then there were the last weeks of school, the parent conferences and student reports. Through all this activity, Finny was successful at making the sad events of her time in Baltimore feel distant, like something she’d experienced a long time ago. She remembered a phrase from the first story Earl had shown her, when the narrator is describing the way he felt about his father, and he said that his dad was like an object in the rearview mirror. It was how so much of Finny’s life felt now. She was young, but she felt old, like she’d lived a lot.

The only connection to her past now were the periodic calls she made to check in on Poplan. They didn’t seem to have much news for each other, but somehow they were always able to fill up an hour on the phone. They could talk about anything—about something they saw on TV, or the books they were reading, or trips they would like to take. Finny felt so comfortable with Poplan that sometimes they could sit for a minute or two on the phone without saying anything, and it wasn’t awkward. Poplan seemed more subdued now that Mr. Henckel had passed away. Finny kept telling her she should come up to Boston, but they never got around to planning it.

She hadn’t heard from Judith since the weekend in the Hamptons, except for a brief email saying how sorry Judith was about Earl’s dad, and that she hoped Finny would call her when she felt up to it. But in truth, Finny didn’t feel up to it. She still couldn’t shake the image of Judith in her nightgown coming out of Sylvan’s room, the way Judith had looked at her in the hallway without saying anything, as if acknowledging both Finny’s presence and how meaningless it was at the same time. Finny felt awful for how screwed up Judith’s marriage was, but she also couldn’t help thinking that Judith had brought it on herself.

As for Sylvan, Finny didn’t get around to calling him either. As much as she would have hated to admit it, she’d lost respect for her brother after seeing him collapse under the weight of Judith’s sexual advances. And she couldn’t tell him that, how hurt she’d been by it. So she stayed away. She wrote emails that didn’t say much.

The only notable event in the early part of summer was a call from Julie Fried, the editor Finny had worked under at Doll’s Apartment magazine in New York. The ostensible purpose of the call was to say hi, see how Finny was doing, but after a minute of small talk Julie said, “Look, you know I can’t do all this how-are-the-grandkids stuff. I just want to tell you we have a job for you, Finny. An editorial assistant position is opening up after Thanksgiving. You’d be on a track to full editor. We only do it with people we really like. I know it’s not The New Yorker, but usually our people do pretty well. And by the way, the salary’s a little better than last time we talked.” Julie named a figure that wasn’t as horrifyingly low as the previous one.

“It’s not that I don’t want to do it,” Finny said. “It’s just a little late for me to be starting over.”

“Think about it, okay? Even though you’re a hundred years old.”

Finny laughed. “Thanks,” she said, and hung up.

Only toward the end of July, a month after school had let out, two months after Mr. Henckel’s death, did Finny begin to feel a little bored. Earl had never written about when he was coming to New York, and the long hot month of August stretched ahead of her like a sun-parched field. It was around this time that, going through her address book one evening, she came upon the card Brad Miller had placed in her hand the night he’d kissed her in front of Judith’s vacation home.

Impulsively, she picked up the phone and dialed what she guessed was his cellphone, a 917 number. It rang five times, and Finny was on the point of hanging up when the line clicked on and she heard Brad say, “Brad Miller.”

Did she really want to go through with this?

“Hello?” Brad said.

She knew that if she hung up now she could never call again, since her number would be in Brad’s phone and the next time she called he would guess what had happened. But it was okay. She didn’t need this.

And yet, against every good instinct, she found herself saying, “Hi, Brad? This is Finny Short, Judith’s friend from—”

But he stopped her. “I’m so glad you called,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about you.”

It turned out Brad was coming to town that week for business. He and Finny made plans to meet on Friday night at a restaurant Brad wanted to try on Hampshire Street in Cambridge. He’d offered to pick Finny up at her apartment, but she assured him that the restaurant was a very short walk from her place and she liked getting the exercise.

Their reservation was for eight o’clock on Friday night, and Finny was running late. At seven-thirty she was still having trouble choosing her outfit. The blouse she’d originally planned to wear looked too low-cut when she put it on. So she switched to a vintage summer dress that showed off her legs, but then decided it was too formal for the occasion. So she went back to the blouse, which had a way of highlighting her shoulders and the plane of her chest. Since she didn’t have boobs, she found she did best to accentuate her long, thin body. But then her hair didn’t seem to do what she wanted it to. Her new style required her to comb it with her fingers, but it kept sticking up in back in a way that made it look like she’d just gotten out of bed. Maybe it was the humidity. In any case, she finally had to give up. She walked out the door at 7:56.

At the restaurant, Brad was already seated at their table. He was wearing a suit, without a tie. Like in Westhampton, Brad had the appearance of just having come from work. He looked a little pale and worn-out, and Finny figured it had been a long week for him. His forehead reflected the overhead lights as he studied the wine list, not seeing Finny as she approached the table. The top buttons of his shirt were undone once again, revealing a nest of chest hair. Finny couldn’t help feeling a pulse of excitement—or was it anxiety?—at the sight of him.

When she was next to the table, she said hello. He got up and kissed her, then looked her up and down in the approving way he had that night on Long Island, like she was a car he was planning to purchase.

“I love your hair,” he said as they were getting seated.

“Oh,” Finny said. “Thanks. Actually, it was giving me all kinds of problems tonight. I’m sorry I’m late.” She wondered if she’d given away too much by saying all this. Would he expect more if he knew she’d taken time to get ready for him?

But Brad simply smiled at Finny—he had a wide, pleasant smile that showed some teeth—and said, “If we were in New York, you’d be early. Don’t worry about it. I just figured I’d get our table. This place is so popular.”

Finny looked around at the restaurant. It was a cute place. The dining room, where they were sitting, was designed simply, with wood paneling and floors made of some kind of varnished stone. The tables were packed tightly together, but Brad had gotten a booth near the back of the room, which gave them a bit more privacy. A long window to Finny’s right offered a view of Hampshire Street, a quiet, mostly residential street. Only a few cars passed at this hour, and once in a while a couple or a small group on their way to a neighborhood bar. From the menu, it seemed the food was Middle Eastern, though the prices were much higher than what Finny would have expected for that type of food.

“Why don’t we make things easy?” Brad said. “We can get the tasting menu and a nice bottle of wine. Then we don’t have to make any decisions and we can enjoy each other’s company.”

“Or sit in agonizing silence,” Finny said.

“Or that.” Brad smiled.

In truth, she wouldn’t have minded looking over the menu, which seemed interesting to her—cinnamon-scented pork, scallops wrapped in phyllo dough—but she agreed it was nice not to have to make decisions. She glanced at the price of the tasting menu—eighty-five dollars—and said a silent prayer that Brad had a generous expense account.

When the waitress arrived, Brad ordered for them. He then deliberated over the wine, whether to start with a Viognier or a Grüner Veltliner, two names Finny had never heard and that sounded vaguely like the names of exotic dancers.

Finny said, “I only usually have a glass, so get whatever you’d like. I’ll have a lamp shade on my head in ten minutes either way.”

“I don’t see any lamp shades around,” Brad said.

“I brought one.”

Brad laughed. He settled on the Grüner, thanking the waitress for her help.

“So, what made you pick up the phone and call me all of a sudden?” Brad asked.

“Drugs,” Finny said, and for a second Brad looked alarmed. “No. Actually, I’d been meaning to, but it’s been a busy time.” She didn’t want to explain about Mr. Henckel, her trip to Baltimore, catching up at work. She figured Prince wouldn’t have mentioned it. And furthermore, Finny felt detached from all that history tonight. Part of why she was interested in Brad was that she could be someone else, play a new role.

“Well, either way,” Brad said, “I’m really excited to get to spend the evening with you.” He reached across the table and squeezed her hand the way he had that night on Long Island, before he got into his car. They smiled at each other, and Finny felt again the flutter of anticipation Brad seemed to awaken in her.

The waitress came and poured their wine. Brad swirled it and sniffed it and tasted it. Then nodded his approval. Before the waitress left, he asked her, “Is this real bluestone?” pointing at the floor.

“Yeah, they spent a fortune on it,” she said.

“I had a feeling,” Brad said. He had a way of letting conversations hang like that, never stating his purpose, and the waitress hesitated a moment before leaving the table.

The food runner brought their first course, which was a miniature falafel made with spinach. Finny wrapped hers in the homemade pita bread and took a bite.

“Definitely better than Mamoun’s,” she joked.

“I should hope so,” Brad said. “I’ve been reading such great reviews about this place.”

She assured him it was a wonderful choice. They moved through a couple more tasty dishes: a salad with garlicky dressing, a peasant casserole with scalloped potatoes and spicy ground lamb, everything like miniature versions of less expensive dishes Finny had tried in other restaurants. They talked about their jobs and how nice Prince and Judith’s place on Long Island was. Soon they’d finished the first bottle of wine. Brad ordered a second, with less discussion this time, then excused himself to use the bathroom.

When he came back, he looked refreshed. He seemed to have splashed cold water on his face, since his forehead was damp again. He still had the silvery half-moons under his eyes, but they were fainter. Finny admired his muscular arms, and the confident way he pushed his chest out when he walked.

“So,” Brad said, “the important question is what we’re going to do after this.”

“I don’t know,” Finny said. “We could find an old lady to stick up. Or steal a car and go for a joy ride. Or just go for a walk or something. Your call.”

“Let’s keep thinking about it,” Brad said. He’d nudged up closer to her under the table, and now she could feel his knee against hers. Suddenly his hand was there, too, and she felt him massaging her leg.

“Do you like that?” he said.

“My quads are a little tight since I played basketball the other day,” Finny began, before realizing she didn’t know what she was saying. “So it feels good.”

“Good,” Brad said, and flashed his wide smile. It was a corny gesture—the thought struck her that he was a silly man—but still, she couldn’t help those tingly rushes of excitement rippling through her body when he touched her. She could feel herself getting warm, and the dampness between her legs. It was as if what she’d told Earl about her relationship with Brad were a kind of pact, and now it was simply a matter of going through with it.

Soon Brad excused himself again. He came back excited and bright-eyed, asking Finny if she’d thought more about what they’d do afterward. She said she hadn’t. So they kept eating. And drinking. Brad went through more wine than she did, though Finny drank plenty. Maybe all the wine was the reason Brad kept getting up to use the bathroom. Finny counted that it was close to half a dozen trips by the time the shared dessert arrived—an enormous baked Alaska, its snowy peaks singed by a blowtorch. It was beautiful, but Finny was full.

“I think I’d have to sign a waiver to eat that,” she told Brad.

“Then we’ll just look at it,” he said, and did that for a moment. Finny could tell he was drunk. He’d worked his hand farther up Finny’s leg, even brushing his fingers along the zipper of her pants, testing. They’d turned down the lights in the restaurant, and since Finny and Brad were tucked so far back in the crowd, Finny knew no one was observing them. She put her hand on the inside of his leg, and felt that he had an erection.

He smiled at her and said, “Your place is close to here, right? What do you think about walking in that direction?”

“I might consider it,” Finny said coyly. She felt like an actress reading a script.

It was just then that the waitress brought the check. Brad handed her his card without even looking at the bill.

“Well, keep considering,” he said, and gave Finny’s leg another squeeze. He got up from the table, straightening his pants to hide his excitement, then went to the bathroom.

When he got back, Finny said, “If you’re doing anything interesting in there, let me know.” She knew she was drunk, too, since normally she would never have made a comment like that.

“Maybe I will,” Brad said. “Once we get to your place.”

The waitress returned with the receipt for Brad to sign. She’d been quiet and somewhat cold the entire evening, but with the prospect of Brad adding a generous tip to the bill, she seemed to perk up.

“How did you all enjoy your flavors this evening?” she asked Finny and Brad.

It was an odd way to phrase the question, but they both answered that everything was great. Phenomenal even.

Back at Finny’s apartment she barely got the door closed behind them before Brad had her against the wall, his hand on her breast, his erection poking her leg like an accusing finger. He’d dropped his messenger bag next to where they stood, on top of the row of shoes Finny kept by the door. As they kissed, he worked his other hand over her body, feeling her belly, her ass, her legs. He seemed warm from their walk outside, his forehead glistening. Finally, he inserted his hand into the waist of her pants, his fingers smoothing over the unmistakably wet patch on her underwear.

“I’m really turned on by you,” he said.

Finny nodded. She felt his hand working into her underwear, then one of his fingers slipping inside her. She moaned. She couldn’t help it. A flood of warmth rushed to her groin. She felt her hips begin to move with his in a gyrating motion, like an imitation of sex. His finger was gliding in and out, in and out.

“Where’s your bed?” he said.

She tilted her head in the direction of her bedroom. She wasn’t sure if she could speak, she was so turned on. She felt feverish. Buds of sweat had begun to bloom on her forehead. She put both her hands around his neck and let his finger thrust inside her.

“I want you so bad, Finny,” he said. “It’s painful.”

She grabbed his shirt collar and gave it a tug. “Let’s go,” she said.

They slipped off their shoes, and she took him by the hand down the hallway. Their palms were hot and moist against each other. Finny could hear footsteps in the hallway above them, the Almeidas getting ready for bed. She snapped the light on in the kitchen so they wouldn’t trip, and something about the sudden brightness, the cold linoleum on the pads of her bare feet, made her feel as if the act were already done, as if she were leading Brad to the front door, saying good night. She flipped off the light.

The bedroom was dim. Finny turned on some music she liked—Elliott Smith playing a solo concert with his acoustic guitar. The lights of the stereo cast the room in an electric blue glow. Brad pulled Finny to him, and for a minute they swayed together to the music like old lovers. She closed her eyes and imagined herself dancing in faraway places: Tokyo, Mexico, Paris.

Then Brad was laying her down on the beige comforter, his hands working over her, undressing her. He pulled her blouse over her head. He unfastened the clasp of her bra. He unbuttoned her pants and tugged them over her hips, revealing the small pair of black panties Finny had chosen for the occasion. He grinned at the sight of them. With one finger, he tugged on the lip of her panties, releasing the marshy scent of her arousal. He pulled the underwear down and pressed his nose into the thatch of her pubic hair.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said, just before she felt the tip of his tongue inserting itself where his finger had been. She shivered, convulsed. He was unbuttoning his own shirt, removing it. She heard the buttons tick against the floor when he tossed it off.

In a minute he was standing in his underwear, his chest shining in the blue light from her stereo. He had a nicely muscled body, some faint ridges along his abdomen, which was slightly bulged from all the food. The hair on his chest, which Finny noticed also grew more thinly on his upper arms and the top of his back, was the color of sawdust, and it looked softer than it had through the V of his open-necked shirt.

“Can you give me just one minute?” he said. “I don’t know if you need to get ready or anything.”

She knew he meant birth control. “I have condoms,” she said.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He walked out into the dark kitchen, and she heard him knock into a chair and curse to himself. She laughed. She began to masturbate lightly, so that she’d still be ready for him when he returned.

In five minutes, he hadn’t come back. She got up from the bed, put on her bra and underpants, and went into the kitchen, briefly flicking on the light so that she didn’t knock into anything. She had goose bumps on her arms and legs. It was cool for summer, and Finny was always sensitive to temperature. She heard some clicking and unzipping in the bathroom, and noticed the line of light under the door. She was worried he might have gotten sick from all the wine, and thought that maybe she should check on him.

When she got into the hall, she noticed his messenger bag was not where he’d placed it before, on top of her shoes. He must have taken it with him into the bathroom, which was a strange thing. She was just about to knock on the bathroom door when she heard a long, decisive sniffing sound, like someone with a very bad cold. Then she heard the sound again. It was unmistakable. And it came to her all of a sudden why Brad had been making so many trips to the bathroom, what he had in the messenger bag.

She hurried back to the bedroom, stepping silently on the cold floor so that he wouldn’t hear her, wouldn’t know she’d been listening to him. She got back in bed, under the comforter, feeling cold all over. She’d lost her buzz from the alcohol, and with her drunkenness her ardor had also fled. She felt a rush of shame for how she’d acted. Like a horny teenager, she thought. So frivolous. It wasn’t that Finny objected to sex, even casual sex; it was just the fact of getting it in this childish way, all the drinking and pawing at each other, the bribe of a fancy meal. And why Brad, who had probably snorted enough coke over the course of the evening to fund a Colombian cartel?

She got out of bed and started to dress. She no longer wanted to sleep with him, was even slightly repulsed by the idea. The springs had dried up. But how do you tell a man like Brad you’ve lost interest, once you’ve gone so far?

And the appearance of Brad at the bedroom door, his eyes glazed with lust and drugs, didn’t make things any easier. Finny had put her pants and blouse back on, and had turned up the lights.

“What’s the matter?” Brad said. His speech was rapid, quick as a drumroll.

“I just got cold,” Finny said.

“I think I can help with that,” he said, sitting down beside her, snuggling his hand into her crotch. “Can you get the lights, babe?” he asked, kissing her neck, swirling his tongue in her ear. It tickled, and she had to suppress the urge to laugh at him.

“Brad,” she said.

He didn’t respond.

“Brad.”

“These lights are killing me, babe,” he said.

“I’m not sure, Brad—”

But he pushed her back on the bed, straddling her. She knew that if she tried to wiggle free, his weight would keep her pinned to the mattress. Not that she tried. Not that she really meant to get him off her. He seemed encouraged by resistance anyway, and he smiled his wide smile at her. He planted a kiss on her lips. She could feel his nose pressing into her face, and when he pulled back, she saw blood in one of his nostrils. At first she had the irrational thought that it was hers, that he’d somehow cut her or bitten her. But then she realized it was his own blood, that nosebleeds were probably as common in his life as trips to the bathroom.

“You’re bleeding,” she told him weakly.

But he didn’t seem to care. He’d opened the button of her pants and was tugging them down along with her underwear. Finny didn’t even care anymore. She didn’t see the point in resisting. She just wanted to get it over with as soon as possible so she could have the apartment to herself.

“Just use a condom,” she told Brad.

While he was unbuckling his pants, she reached into a drawer by the bed and produced a condom for him. He tore the wrapper with his teeth and slid the rubber over his penis with remarkable swiftness. He was fairly large with an erection, and when he pushed into Finny, she gasped as if she’d been socked in the stomach. He began to move to the rhythm of the guitar music from the speakers, pushing in and pulling out of her. She felt a tingle at this familiar motion, and decided she would close her eyes. The bright light was bothering her anyway. But the spark never caught. She couldn’t bring herself to enjoy him.

Soon she felt hot raindrops on her face. At first she thought it was his saliva, like from a rabid animal. But then she realized it must have been the blood from Brad’s nose that was speckling her, and probably the comforter, too. She was thinking about how much a new comforter would cost, when he let out a long sigh, and she realized he’d finished. She heard applause from the CD.

“Oh,” Brad said, breathing heavily. “Damn, that was good.”

Finny pushed him off her, pulled up her pants, and went to the bathroom to pee. She wanted to get the feeling of his body out of her as soon as she could. And she wanted to get his actual body out of the apartment even sooner. When she was done peeing, she went to the sink and looked at her own face under the Hollywood bulbs of her bathroom mirror, her skin dotted with rust-colored beads of blood. She thought of the blissful expressions of couples in women’s magazines, next to articles about hookups and sex moves. She thought of the way she used to model her rat’s nest in front of the mirror when she was a child, and she laughed at herself—always her first reaction to pain—at how much had changed. She leaned down and turned on the faucet, splashing the blood off her face with water that was too hot and that ran in a pink stream into the drain.

When she came back, he was already dressed. He’d wiped the blood off his own face and had smoothed his hair. He was adjusting his belt, his shirt neatly tucked in. He was well aware of the fact that she wanted him to leave.

“Thanks,” he said, coming over and kissing her on the cheek. “You were amazing.”

He started toward the bedroom door. She knew she should have just let him go, but she couldn’t help saying, “You were a fucking asshole.”

He stopped. He turned around and looked at her. She could see how easily his lust turned to anger, like a train switching tracks. He breathed deeply, and his eyes widened.

But all he did was say to her, “You knew I didn’t have any business in Boston, right? When I saw you, I knew I could have my dick in you in ten minutes.”

Then he turned back around and walked out the bedroom door. Finny heard him picking up his messenger bag in the hall, putting on his shoes, and then the slam of the front door as he left the apartment.

Later that night, after she’d decided she couldn’t sleep, Finny went into her study and turned on the computer. She checked her email, and saw that she had a message from Earl Henckel in her inbox:

Finny! I’m going to be in New York in September to do the reading for the book. It’s at the Barnes & Noble on St. Mark’s Place. I’ll give you details when it gets closer, but I know the date is the 19th. I’m bringing Mavis, and I hope you can bringBrad. Maybe we could all have dinner together afterward. Actually, it’ll be kind of a celebration, since I have some news: Mavis and I are planning to get married when we get back to Paris after the reading. I know this is kind of sudden, but we’ve just decided it ourselves. It’s going to be a courthouse wedding, no guests, since neither of us is into the idea of a big ceremony. Anyway, I’m really looking forward to seeing you, Finny, and will of course fill you in on all the details. And I’ll have your copy of the book all ready!

She saw by the time on his email—8:17 A.M., six hours ahead of her—that he’d just written it. She knew that at this very moment he was sitting in Mona’s old apartment. She imagined him with his laptop and a cup of coffee at the breakfast table in the room Finny had shared with him all those years ago. It was Saturday morning, and sunlight was streaming through the little high window.

Chapter36
A Pleasant Evening

Finny, her brother’s email began, what are you up to? How have you been? I feel like you dropped off the face of the earth. I haven’t talked to you in forever. Are you doing okay? Send me a smoke signal … … Sylvan

She wrote back: I’m doing fine, Sylvan. Thanks for your concern. It’s been a tough summer since Mr. Henckel passed away. I just need some time to get moving again. I’ll call you soon.

But he wouldn’t leave it at that. We have to get together before summer’s over, he wrote. I have two weeks with absolutely nothing to do. I was thinking I’d go up to New York one day. Why don’t you come down?

After her evening with Brad, Finny hadn’t wanted to see anyone at all. She’d called Julie Fried and said thanks but she really couldn’t make the move now. Julie would see very soon how big a mistake Finny was, and then Finny would be out of a job in the most expensive city in the country. Brilliant.

She couldn’t talk to anyone—especially the people she was closest to—about what had happened with Brad. That’s why she avoided Sylvan. And yet that evening occupied so much of her thoughts. Talking with Sylvan and not discussing it, she would have felt like she was lying. Plus, there was still the issue of Sylvan’s affair with Judith. A nagging itch.

But when Finny didn’t respond right away to her brother’s email, he called her. And called her. And called her. Finally, in exasperation, she agreed to meet him one night for dinner in New York. He was bringing Mari, whom Finny hadn’t seen since college.

In order to balance out the table, and so that Finny wouldn’t be subjected to her brother’s intense psychological scrutiny, she called Carter to ask if he’d be her date.

“I won’t be expected to give you head, will I?” Carter asked.

“Only if I buy you dessert,” Finny said, cringing at the memory of the untouched baked Alaska that had sat between her and Brad.

“Well then,” Carter said, “in order to prevent such blatant exploitation, I propose we go to Garreth’s restaurant. We’ll be treated very well, and I’ll receive enough free food that I won’t be forced to compromise myself for a molten chocolate cake.”

“Sounds good,” Finny said.

“And by the way,” Carter said, “I bring news from the front.”

“Which front?”

“The silicone one.”

“You really think Judith’s boobs are fake?” Finny said.

“I was talking about Prince,” Carter said.

So they all decided to meet at the restaurant where Garreth was a manager, in the bottom floor of a building off Washington Square Park. Finny took the bus down to have dinner with everyone, and then she planned to sleep on Carter and Garreth’s couch, which Carter said was upholstered in a dog-hair fabric.

The restaurant was below street level, and when Finny walked into the bar, she could see pedestrians’ legs scissoring across the large amber-tinted windows. The room had about a dozen small brass-topped tables in it, like in a French bistro. On the walls hung portraits of famous female movie stars—Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard—in an art deco style. There were also reproductions of famous paintings like Klimt’s “The Kiss,” made out of small tiles fit together into a mosaic. Only one table in the room was filled: two older women sharing a pot of tea. Carter had said it would be empty: summers were slow, and they were eating early. It was only six.

She found Garreth behind the large brass-railed bar with a synthetic marble counter. “He’ll be here in one second,” Garreth said about Carter. He had a pleasant, laid-back, almost sleepy way of talking, as if he’d known Finny for years. “I think he’s buying cigarettes at the Duane Reade. He does that a lot since he quit smoking. By the way, I love your hair.”

“I’m thinking of growing it out,” Finny said.

“Why?”

“I’m not sure I like the guys it attracts. You excluded, of course.”

Garreth smiled. “Well, let me grab you a drink while you’re waiting.”

“I’m not much of a drinker,” Finny said.

“Which means you like fruity drinks,” Garreth said. “Something you could get sitting under a beach umbrella in Tulum, right?”

“Sounds about right,” Finny said, happy to see that Garreth had a sense of humor. She didn’t think anyone could live with Carter without a sense of humor.

Garreth poured half a dozen ingredients into a shaker with ice, put the cap on, and then gave the whole thing a vigorous shake. He poured it into a chilled martini glass with a lime on the rim. The drink was a deep red, almost burgundy, color.

“What is it?” Finny asked.

“It’s a goddamn travesty,” Carter said from the doorway of the bar. The two women drinking tea looked in his direction, frowned, then went back to their tea. Carter was dressed in a bright yellow button-down shirt that reminded Finny of his yellow Ship Shape shirt. The color didn’t sit particularly well on Carter. It made him look sallow, and a little puffy. “I don’t even see how you can call that a martini,” he went on about the drink, walking into the room.

“And what are you having?” Garreth asked Carter.

“Cranberry and soda,” Carter grumbled.

Garreth poured Carter’s drink into a martini glass, placing an inordinate amount of fruit—cherries and orange wedges, even a disk of green apple—on the rim. Then he passed the drink to Carter, who smelled richly of cigarette smoke.

“Very funny,” Carter said. “I’m glad you take pleasure in the spectacle you’ve made of me. You’re carting me around like your goddamn lobotomized grandmother.”

“Just eat your orange and I might let you play with the soda gun,” Garreth said.

Finny laughed, enjoying the coolheaded way Garreth responded to Carter’s bluster.

In a few minutes Sylvan and Mari walked in. Carter got up from his bar stool and gave them both a kiss. Finny could tell her brother felt a little odd getting kissed by a man, but he bore it admirably. Only a slightly stiff expression on his face betrayed his discomfort. Mari, on the other hand, looked thrilled to see Carter.

“You look great!” she said to him.

“I look like Orson Welles at an all-you-can-eat buffet,” Carter said. “But thank you for the thought.”

Finny got up, and there were more hugs and greetings. Everyone said how much they liked Finny’s short haircut. Carter introduced Garreth. The two women with the tea seemed irritated by all the commotion, and one of them began waving her finger for the check and calling, “Yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo,” to Garreth.

“I love when they do that,” Garreth whispered to Finny. “Don’t ever get old.”

She asked him how much she owed him for the drink, since it looked like Carter was heading to a table, and Garreth waved Finny off. “On me,” he said, and went to attend to the tea women. “What can I do for you ladies?” he asked them, grinning, suddenly cheerful, and Finny could see why he made a good manager.

Carter picked out a table in the back corner, beneath the portrait of Marlene Dietrich. He and Sylvan sat on the cushioned bench that stretched all the way down the wall, and Finny and Mari took the chairs opposite them. They had the room to themselves. Soon the night bartender took over for Garreth, who had gone into the main dining room. Some rock music came on in the speakers above them, and a man’s voice began to sing. Several appetizers arrived at the table before they’d even ordered: fresh guacamole and chips, fried calamari, a baked flat bread with sausage and cheese on it.

“He takes care of me,” Carter said to Finny.

“I can tell,” Finny said.

They all caught up for a few minutes about their lives. It was still bright outside the amber windows. Carter pointed out the flower arrangement he’d done for the window by the bar, which was full of sunflowers and purple lilacs, a cheerful summery look. The bartender was busy making drinks for the restaurant. The music cycled through a mix of eighties pop and jazz and soul. Finny noticed that Mari watched Sylvan when he talked, the way she’d watched Carter at Judith’s party, where Finny had first met her. Mari barely took her eyes off Finny’s brother, who seemed to enjoy the attention. When he talked about his work, she nodded and encouraged him. Finny thought it was sweet. And she knew her brother needed someone like that, who hung on his every word. Mari had grown into a plain-looking woman, with a wide, flat Midwestern face. She was, in fact, from Michigan, and she’d attended Columbia with Judith and Prince. She’d met Carter since he’d hung around the drama-and English-major crowd while he was acting and catering in the city. Mari had a straightforward, quiet, unadorned way of speaking about herself, and she wasn’t vain at all. What a difference from Judith, Finny thought, and she wondered if that could be the reason her brother liked her. Because she was safe.

“So you’ll be interested to know, Finny,” Sylvan said as they were starting a bottle of wine, waiting for their entrées to come out, “that a friend of yours stopped by during my summer office hours.”

“Who?” Finny said.

“You remember Dorrie Kibler?” Sylvan said.

“Really? Why did she come by?” Finny asked.

“I didn’t even realize she was your roommate until we’d been talking for a minute, and I remembered you mentioning her. When I told her who I was, her mouth literally dropped open.”

“Isn’t there some sort of patient confidentiality agreement?” Carter asked. Finny realized he must have been seeing a shrink.

“Normally, yeah,” Sylvan said. “But she didn’t come in as a patient. She was just visiting the school, and she decided to drop by. She wanted to thank us. Or rather, to thank you, Finny.”

“Thank me?” Finny said.

“She said she had lunch with you when she was pregnant, in college, and she admitted to you how scared she was. She said you were really supportive, and you listened to her, and didn’t judge. It got her thinking that maybe that’s what she needed—someone to listen. So she started coming to psych services at Stradler, not telling anyone. As you know, she had the baby. But maybe what she didn’t tell you was that she ended up divorcing the guy she was with—Steven, I think—when she graduated. She’s bringing the kid up on her own now. She got another degree in chemistry or something, and she’s working on a big paper about proteins in mice. Anyway, she’s doing well. She just wanted to say what a difference it made to have people who listened to her. That her life is much bigger than it ever would have been without that.”

“Wow,” Finny said. “Who would have thought? I assumed she’d be popping out little Steven Benches for the next twenty years.”

“Those little moments can make a huge difference,” Sylvan said, and Mari nodded. The music in the bar had switched over to a French singer with a light, breathy voice. It was pleasant, though it reminded Finny of her time in Paris, which always brought some sadness. Two college-age boys had come in and were sitting at the bar, talking to the bartender. One of them wore a corduroy hat and jacket and had some scruffy facial hair, and the other was wearing a full tuxedo with a cummerbund. They seemed to be the bartender’s friends.

“Well,” Carter said, “since we’re on the topic of people leaving people, I have some news that I think this crowd will appreciate.”

The food runner arrived with their plates and set them down in front of everyone. Finny had ordered a short rib dish. The meat had been braised in wine, and it was tender and rich and brightly flavored, better than anything she’d had during her eighty-five-dollar dinner with Brad. It put her in mind of the sorts of dinners she hoped to have from now on, the people she wanted to enjoy them with. “This is amazing,” Finny said.

“See why I’m so fat?” Carter said.

“Anyway,” Finny said, “you were saying?”

“Yes,” Carter said, “I was saying. To make a long story short, Judith left Prince.”

Sylvan’s knife slipped out of his hand, clattering on his plate. They all turned toward him, and his cheeks flushed. “Sorry,” he muttered. Mari patted his arm.

“Are you serious?” Finny said.

“She’s camped out at the beach house,” Carter went on. “Prince is at the apartment in the city. I think she’s really serious about it. She says she’s getting her stuff together to go back to school for English. She wants to get her Ph.D.”

“I really can’t believe it,” Finny said. “I figured she’d be taking his abuse as long as Dorrie was having Steven Bench’s babies.” She noticed Sylvan had stopped chewing and was staring at Carter. Mari had a polite smile on her face. “What do Judith’s parents think?” Finny asked.

“They’re not happy,” Carter said. “According to Judith, her mom isn’t talking to her. And her dad is useless. He’s always been. He tells Judith he’ll talk to her mom, and then he promises her mom he won’t talk to Judith. He’s about as effective as a glass of cranberry juice.”

Finny smiled at that. “So what was it? What made the change?”

“It was that weekend,” Carter said. He turned to Mari and explained, “We witnessed the newest season of Guiding Light at Judith’s house over Memorial Day weekend.”

“I heard from Sylvan,” Mari said, and Finny wondered exactly how much her brother had told her. She saw how dedicated Mari was to Sylvan, and she couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for her, for the disappointments she was sure to face. Finny heard the boy in the tuxedo at the bar saying, “You really fucked me over,” and the boy in the corduroy cackling at him, then coughing a rattly smoker’s cough.

“Anyway,” Carter said, “that fight and then the thing with the photos just pushed it over the top. They didn’t talk to each other the rest of the weekend. Judith stayed in the room with me. By the way, thank you for leaving me in such comfortable circumstances, Finny Short.”

“Finny had a lot to attend to,” Sylvan said.

“I know, I know,” Carter said. “I’m just joking. I’m really sorry about your friend, by the way.”

“Thanks,” Finny said.

“The whole weekend kind of opened her eyes,” Carter said. “She told me she saw what she’d been missing in her life with Prince.”

Sylvan looked at the table. He had the same stiff expression on his face as when Carter had kissed him.

“You should call her,” Carter said to Finny. “I think it would mean a lot. I get the sense she’s really trying to make amends. I can feel for her on that one. She wants to see you and Sylvan when she’s back on her feet.”

“Did you know any of this?” Finny asked Sylvan.

Sylvan shook his head. “It’s new to me,” he said.

Later, when they were finishing dinner and the light was fading outside the amber windows, Carter went into the dining room to talk to Garreth. Mari got up to use the bathroom. The boys had left the bartender alone again, and the music had switched back to some piano jazz.

“Sylvan,” Finny said when she and her brother were alone. She knew she was a little drunk, but she also knew she had to talk to Sylvan now about Judith. “I saw Judith coming out of your room that night. It was late and I heard something in the hall—”

But her brother started shaking his head. “I had a feeling,” he said. “Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?”

“No—” Finny started to say. But she couldn’t say any more. Because of course he was right. He knew her too well.

“Listen,” Sylvan said, and reached across the table to grab Finny’s arm. He pulled her toward him, a little forcefully, and Finny almost yelled at him to stop. She could tell he was drunk, too, and she worried he would say something he’d regret. But when she leaned forward to speak, he cut her off. “You’re totally wrong about what you think happened,” he whispered. “I’m going to tell you the truth very quickly, before everyone gets back, and I don’t want to say anything more about it. Judith came into my room and took off her clothes. She figured I’d jump in bed with her the second I saw her naked. And trust me, Finny, I wanted to. I know you don’t want to hear this from your brother, but you don’t know what it’s like for a man to have a woman like Judith standing naked in front of him. It’s painful. She started telling me all the kinky things she did with Prince, trying to get me excited. I could tell it was a power thing, like she wanted to prove the hold she still had over me. But I started to feel sorry for her, Finny. I saw how sad and desperate she was, and how much Prince had hurt her. And that’s what kept me from sleeping with her. I just felt sad. I told her to leave. So she wrapped herself up and went. I didn’t know she saw you. She wouldn’t have told me that.”

“Then why was she fighting with Prince in the morning?” Finny asked.

“Because he’s an asshole. And because even someone as dumb as Prince can tell when his wife is flirting. He was a dick to me the rest of the weekend, and I ended up leaving early.”

After saying this, Sylvan nodded quickly at Finny, as if to say, You see? He watched her, waiting for her reaction, and all of a sudden Finny felt an awful twang of guilt. She’d been wrong. She’d misjudged. Why hadn’t she given Sylvan a chance to explain? It was as if she’d wanted to believe the worst about him. As if all her disappointments had colored her view of even the people she cared most about.

Sylvan didn’t lie to Finny about how he’d felt, about how difficult it had been to resist Judith’s magnetic sexuality. Finny knew it wouldn’t have been fair to expect Sylvan not to be attracted to Judith. But Finny could see that her brother took pride in the fact that he’d been strong enough to know it was the wrong thing, that he cared enough for Mari, and for Judith, not to give in. Finny remembered the way Sylvan had sat there that morning when Judith had wept on the floor of the beach house, after Prince tossed the photos into the room. She understood now how angry he must have been at Judith for putting him in the position she had, for teasing him with what she knew was a long and deeply felt affection. He simply couldn’t bring himself to go to her. Finny realized all that he had held in that morning, all that he’d suffered alone, and she wanted to tell him how sorry she was for doubting him. How much she loved and respected him.

But just then Mari came back from the bathroom. She saw Sylvan and Finny gathered close together, Sylvan’s hand still gripping Finny’s arm.

“Is everything okay?” Mari asked.

“I think so,” Sylvan said, letting go of Finny and sitting back on the bench.

“It is,” Finny said, watching her brother as she spoke. “We had a miscommunication about something. But I apologized to Sylvan. He knows I think I was wrong, and that I hope he’ll forgive me.”

Sylvan looked back and forth between Finny and Mari. He seemed dazed, as if the emotion of his confession had drained him.

“He will,” Sylvan finally said, and took a slow breath. “He does.”

Chapter37
The Reading

She was running late. The reading was set to begin at eight o’clock, and Finny was coming up the subway stairs at 8:02 by her watch. She was back to teaching, and she’d gotten out late today because one of the parents hadn’t shown up to pick up a kid. So Finny missed her train. Then the next one was fifteen minutes delayed. She’d fixed herself up in the train bathroom, putting on her lipstick and doing her hair as the car wobbled and jostled her. It wasn’t a perfect job, but it would have to do. Her hair had grown out a bit, and she didn’t have to be so precise with it anymore.

Now there was a guy in front of Finny on the stairs taking forever. He had a green Mohawk, and the sides of his head were tattooed with some Chinese characters. He had piercings in the cartilage of his ears and the skin of his neck, and spacers that made the holes in his earlobes as large as quarters. When he turned, Finny could see he had a bull ring in his nose. She couldn’t get around him because of the people coming the other way. Finally she said, “Excuse me, sir, I’m late.” He looked back at her. He was a couple feet taller because he was higher on the stairs. He rolled his eyes and said, “I’m early.” But Finny didn’t have time to fight with him, so she simply ran around him and yelled back, “Do you know those Chinese letters spell asshole?”

“Bitch!” he yelled at Finny as she walked out of the station. She couldn’t help chuckling.

Finny had figured out what she would say to Earl about Brad: out of town for the weekend, a business trip. As she walked past the bright shops of St. Mark’s Place, the men with DVDs spread out on ragged quilts, the street punks and the drug dealers and the expensively dressed couples on their way to dinner at the latest Lower East Side gem, Finny prepared the smile she’d offer to Earl and to Mavis when she met them after the reading. It was a warm night, unusually humid for September, and Finny’s skin felt prickly. She knew she was on the verge of breaking out in a sweat—one of those uncomfortable full-body sweats that leave the back of your shirt cold—and her anxiety over the coming meeting didn’t help. What was there to worry about? She’d listen to a story, grab a bite to eat, and head back to her hotel. (She hadn’t told her friends she’d be in town.) But still, each time she considered it, she felt a twitch of electricity in her chest.

At the Barnes & Noble she was directed upstairs for the reading. It was 8:18, and Finny worried she might have missed a good portion of it, but when she got there, she saw that a woman with black plastic-framed glasses was just finishing her introduction. She read a couple of nice quotes about Earl’s book—probably from the back cover—and then asked everyone to welcome him. Finny sat down in the fourth row of folding chairs as Earl walked to the microphone that had been placed on top of the Barnes & Noble podium. There were only about twenty-five people in the audience, and the applause was polite, enthusiastic but not at all raucous. Finny wondered if the people gathered were friends of Earl’s from when he’d been in New York. He’d mentioned that the only readings he was doing were this one and one he’d done earlier in the week at the University of Pittsburgh, where he’d won the contest.

Earl got up to the microphone and said that he was going to read from the first story he’d written in the collection, which was called “My Father the Collector.” Finny was happy he’d chosen a familiar one. Earl even smiled at Finny when he read the title, since she was only about twenty feet from him. He seemed nervous, and a little shaky. She saw his hand tremble as he turned pages to find the story. He didn’t talk as he did this, and the audience murmured to one another in the too-long pause. Earl still had his beard, but his hair was cut shorter and looked neater than it had in a while, like the way it was when he was a kid. At last, he found his place, and looked up at the audience. “Sorry,” he said. “Here we go. ‘My Father the Collector.’”

Immediately, when he began reading, his voice changed. It seemed deeper, less pinched, and he read at an easy, slow pace, pausing after the jokes as if he knew the audience would laugh. Which they did. Finny was taken aback by Earl’s sudden confidence. The rhythm of the words he spoke seemed to calm him, and soon she wasn’t hearing Earl anymore but Chris and his father. It’s what Finny had always admired about Earl’s writing: that ability to transform himself, to inhabit a character; that expansive sympathy.

As he read, Finny intermittently scanned the crowd, looking for Mavis. Finny had never seen a photo, but over the weeks since Earl had told Finny about Mavis, she’d developed a picture of her. She was short, olive-skinned, pretty in a serious, intellectual way. She wore glasses and dark clothes that were slightly too big for her, masking her body, which Finny even went as far as to imagine was nicely curved. (The opposite body type of Finny’s long, limber frame.) But Finny didn’t see this woman anywhere in the crowd. Most of the people were Earl’s and Finny’s age, except for a half dozen older listeners, probably retired people who regularly attended these readings. One pink-faced man with bifocals and hair as white as blank paper studied Earl intensely as he read, the man’s mouth puckered and his forehead wrinkled, as if he were having trouble understanding what was being said.

There was a woman in the front row who also seemed to be paying particularly close attention. She was thin and fair-skinned, with dark hair, and she wore a plain blue turtleneck and black pants. She had her hair up in a loose bun. She smiled as Earl read, and Finny thought she had a pleasant, attractive face. Finny knew this was Mavis. No one else would have watched Earl so closely.

He was getting to the part at the end of the story when Chris goes back to his father’s house, after his father died, and takes one more look around. Finny thought of those days she’d spent with Earl and Poplan as Mr. Henckel was dying, watching him sleep in the square of light from the little window. She didn’t know if it was this or simply the story that made her eyes fill up when Earl said, “I knew my father was a great collector, and he could have hidden his findings anywhere.” But Finny saw that the entire small audience was captivated, held up for a moment by the beauty of his words. She remembered the time Mr. Henckel had played the piano at the seafood joint in Baltimore and she’d witnessed the same thing, the way art can suspend you, the remarkable ability these men had to move people. For all the pain it had caused her, she considered herself lucky for having known Earl.

When the story was done, the woman who had introduced Earl came back up to the microphone and asked if anyone had any questions. There were a few questions about authors Earl liked reading, whether he’d gone to school for writing. He had a shy, somewhat awkward way of answering questions. He said um a lot. Clearly, the spell of the story had been broken.

But Earl was polite and unpretentious, and when the pink-faced man asked how he’d gotten the idea for the story he’d read, Earl said, “You know, I think all my stories are a combination of things I’ve lived through, feelings I’ve had, and then a bunch of stuff I think is probably funnier or more interesting or somehow more telling than what actually happened. So for example, with this story, I did grow up in a little brown house with my father. But my father was still alive at the time I wrote the piece. He’d never been a teacher’s assistant. And we’d never tossed a chair down a hill together. Actually, he remarried very happily as soon as I left home. But I felt like I could talk best about some of my feelings about him by setting up the story this way. And I just thought it might be entertaining.”

Earl seemed like he was going to leave it at that. He looked down at the book he’d read from, and smiled in a tight-lipped way. But then he looked back up at the man who’d asked the question and said, “I’ve always felt like there was a lot of loss in my life. Even before anyone I knew actually died. It probably wasn’t much more than the normal bumps everyone gets, but for some reason they hit me harder. I think that’s maybe the best reason I can give for why I wanted to become a writer—to be able to hold on to some things. I moved to France before I wrote this story, and I was away from both my father and a woman I loved very much, and though a lot of bad decisions came out of that time in my life, one good thing was this story. It captured for me that mix of happy memories and very painful regret.” Earl nodded after he said this, like a punctuation mark, or as if to say that he’d gotten out exactly what he meant.

Then the reading was over. Everyone clapped again, and the introducer got up and said that people could get in line to have their copies signed. Earl sat behind a wide pine desk, and as the line filed forward, the introducer asked everyone for the spelling of their names, to make things easier for Earl. Since there were only a dozen people in line, Finny wasn’t sure it was really necessary. When the woman asked Finny for her name, Finny said, “I’m an old friend. I’m pretty sure he knows how to spell my name.”

When she got up to where Earl was sitting, she said, “You were wonderful.”

He smiled at the sound of her voice, in the genuine, unrestrained way she’d always loved about him. “Thanks for coming,” he said.

“I could tell everyone loved the story,” Finny said.

“Half of them are my friends. They’re paid to love it.”

“No, really,” Finny said. “I was crying at the end. It was beautiful.”

“That means a lot to me, Finny.” He reached across the table and touched her arm. “I’ve got your copy set aside. I’ll give it to you later. I want to introduce you to some people.”

Since Finny was the last in line, Earl got up from the table. He thanked the woman who had given the introduction, and she said he’d done a great job, that she’d expect him back when the next book came out.

“Whenever that is,” Earl said.

“Whenever that is,” the woman repeated, and shook his hand.

Earl walked over to the pink-faced man, who was reading Earl’s book through the bottom of his bifocals. The book was a paperback with what Finny recognized as an inexpensive cover, a blurred photograph of a parrot in a cage on the front. Earl grabbed the man by the elbow and said, “John, this is my friend Finny. Finny, this is my agent and sometimes-friend, John.”

The man laughed at this introduction, and patted Earl on the back. “You’ll see what a good friend I am when that novel comes along.”

“You’re writing a novel?” Finny said to Earl.

“Allegedly,” he said, and blushed the way he used to when he was a kid.

“It’s damn good,” John said. And then to Finny, “Make sure you keep up your friendship with Earl so he can buy you dinner when it comes out.”

“Thanks,” Earl said to his agent. “Thanks for coming, John. I really appreciate it.”

“Of course,” John said, and slapped Earl again on the back in a sportsmanlike way before telling Finny it was nice to meet her and then taking his leave.

Next, Earl brought Finny over to a man in a brown collared shirt, with dark eyes and curly hair that hung over his ears like an unpruned plant. The man had a light beard that grew down his neck, as if he hadn’t shaved in a week. His hands were plunged in his pockets, jingling the coins and keys he kept there. He was standing next to the woman in the blue turtleneck. Finny thought it was nice how Mavis stood back and let Earl enjoy his evening in the spotlight.

“This is Paul Lilly,” Earl said to Finny.

“I know you stayed at my place,” Paul said, shaking Finny’s hand, “but I don’t think we ever got the chance to meet.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Finny said. Paul’s hand was damp from being stuck in the pockets of his wool pants. “And thanks for letting me stay over.”

“This is Shana, Paul’s girlfriend,” Earl said, presenting the woman in the blue turtleneck. It took Finny several seconds to process what Earl had said, and so she stood there, probably with a blank look on her face, as Shana smiled and held out her hand. Shana. Not Mavis.

“Nice to meet you,” Finny finally said, and shook hands.

“So, what are you up to?” Paul asked Earl.

“I’m going to catch up with Finny tonight, since we haven’t gotten to do that in forever. But let’s get lunch tomorrow. Are you guys still up for that?”

Paul and Shana said they were. They congratulated Earl, told him what a great reading it was, and then headed off, clutching their copies of Calling Across the Years.

“By the way, where’s Brad?” Earl asked Finny.

Her lie flashed in her mind—business trip, out of town—and suddenly the whole story seemed foolish to her. She simply told Earl, “Things didn’t work out with Brad. But it’s for the best. Where’s Mavis?”

“She couldn’t make it,” Earl said, pressing his lips together in a way that told Finny there’d been an argument about it. “Work again. She’s very busy.”

“Oh,” Finny said. “That’s too bad.”

“But you’ll still have dinner with me, right?” He looked at Finny hopefully.

“Only if you bring my copy.”

“Deal,” Earl said.

They decided to walk west, since Earl knew the neighborhoods better in that part of the Village. He only had a small messenger bag, and Finny just had her backpack with a change of clothes. Earl said he wanted to take Finny somewhere special. And then Finny said he was wrong about one thing: she was taking him.

“Like your agent said, you can treat when your novel comes out,” Finny said.

“Listen,” Earl said, “if you want to have dinner again with me in the next decade, I think you’re safer not to place your hopes on my novel.”

“John said it was great,” Finny said. “I think he would know.”

“What he liked was the part I sent him a year and a half ago, before my mom died. I haven’t been able to write a word since.”

“You will,” Finny said, looking at him. “You just need time. You’ve been through a lot. Once you and Mavis settle somewhere new, I think it’ll be what you need.”

“Thanks,” Earl said. “It’s nice to hear that.”

They were walking along the south side of Washington Square Park now. The arch, on Finny’s right, was illuminated, and the cement pit in the middle of the park was full of people. There were hippies with dreadlocks strumming out-of-tune guitars and singing. There were crowds of skateboarders, and college students. There were the drug dealers in trench coats, riding bicycles, holding open the flaps of their jackets to display their merchandise to passersby. There were couples holding hands or kissing on park benches. There were the chess men along the southwest entrance to the park, sitting over their dirty boards, saying, “Want a game? Want a game?” Squirrels and rats scurried across the paths, or scampered into garbage bags. Since her time with Earl in the city, Finny had always had an affection for this part of New York.

“So where should we eat?” Earl said as they turned south on MacDougal, toward the noisy bars and falafel shops and pizza parlors, the music and the drunk people staggering out of restaurants.

“I don’t know,” Finny said. “What kind of food do you feel like?”

“Anything,” Earl said. “To tell you the truth, I’m actually not that hungry yet. I was so nervous, I don’t know how much my stomach can take. But I want to get you something good.”

“You know,” Finny said, “I’m not that hungry right now either. Why don’t we walk and see how we feel?”

So they walked. They turned right and headed over to Sixth Avenue, walked north on Sixth past the IFC theater; the bright windows of the sex shops; the mannequins with breasts like torpedoes; the newsstands; the men holding brown paper bags of pornography, ducking into the entrance for the orange line. They turned left on Tenth, headed toward the river, past the bistros and coffee shops. It was still warm, and the streets were busy and well-lit from all the open stores. A stream of cars flowed past them.

“Oh,” Earl said. “Here. Before I forget.” He opened his bag and took out a copy of his book, handing it to Finny. “But promise me,” he said, while his hand was still on the book, “that you won’t look at what I wrote until we say good night.”

“Why?” Finny said.

Earl still had his hand clamped over the book. “Because I’m shy, and I have a tendency to be corny. Looking over all these old stories stirred up a lot of memories. So please indulge me.”

“All right,” Finny said, and put the book in her backpack. “Anyway, what’s Mavis so busy with at work?”

Earl looked down. They were stopped at a corner, next to a Starbucks, waiting for the light to change. There was a large brick building on the opposite corner, which Finny took to be a school. Its windows were dark.

“She’s just very absorbed in her work,” Earl said. “It’s become kind of an issue between us.”

The light changed, and they crossed the street, headed toward the school.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah,” Earl said. He seemed to be thinking about something. Then he said it again. “Yeah. I was just very disappointed that she couldn’t make it for this trip. This is a big moment in my life. It wasn’t the way I expected it to happen. I’d hoped I’d have some big book deal, and we’d be rich. But it just didn’t go like that. I got the sense that once she realized how small it was, she was disappointed.”

“Earl,” Finny said, and put her hand on his arm, “you should be proud of this. The stories I’ve read are some of the best I’ve ever seen, no matter how much you got paid for them. You can’t let yourself worry about that stuff. You just need to write.”

He was looking forward, and Finny took her hand from him. She wondered for a second why he wouldn’t turn to her, but then she realized his eyes were wet.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted us to have a nice evening together.”

“This is nice,” Finny said.

They were coming up on the water, and across from them was the West Side promenade, where joggers pounded across the brightly lit pavement, men and women on roller skates performed twirls and danced to unheard rhythms, homeless people pushed shopping carts and dug in the cluttered trash cans. They crossed the West Side Highway and sat down on a cement bench that wrapped a little swath of green garden, watching the people and the sloshing water, the gray clouds bunched like frosting on a cake, the distant lights of New Jersey. Finny put her backpack in her lap.

“Why didn’t it work out with Brad?” Earl asked.

“He wasn’t the right person for me,” Finny said. “I was fooling myself into believing he was. But he wasn’t.”

“Why? What wasn’t right?”

“Almost everything. He didn’t care about me. He only thought about himself.”

“What did you like about him in the first place?”

“I don’t know,” Finny said. “It’s hard to say. I think maybe I just felt like I needed to find someone. Like it was time. But I don’t think that anymore. I’ll be okay by myself. In fact, I’m making a career move.” She didn’t know what made her say it, but the moment she did, she knew it was true. She’d call Julie in the morning.

“Move to what?” Earl asked.

“I worked at this women’s magazine one summer. Not the typical kind, but sort of counter to that—a lot of pieces about how screwed up everyone is. My kind of thing. It was fun. I feel like I might have something to add.”

“I think you’d have a lot to add.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it.”

Earl glanced at Finny, then back ahead of them, like a driver checking his rearview mirror. “Mavis is leaving me,” he said. “She’s moving in with the French scholar. Jean-Pierre. Like something out of Les Mis.”

“Jesus,” Finny said, looking at Earl. “I’m sorry.”

“Like I said,” Earl went on, “she needs something bigger than me.”

“That’s a dumb thing to say,” Finny told Earl. “It sounds like this might be for the best.”

Earl shrugged. They both looked at the water, the heavy clouds above it.

“You remember the old vineyard?” Finny asked him.

“Of course,” Earl said.

“Well, that’s where I went that night. When your dad was dying. Before I came and met you. I went back to the old vineyard.”

“How was it?”

“Pretty much the same,” Finny said. “Except for everything looked smaller. I think I like the memory better. Nothing’s the same when you come back to it.”

“I know,” Earl said. “I like the memory, too.”

Finny asked Earl what his plans were now that Mavis was moving out, and he said he wasn’t sure, it was all up in the air, he’d have to see. He just wanted to settle somewhere and start writing again.

Then it seemed they ran out of things to say. They sat for a few more minutes, not talking, until Finny mentioned she was tired.

“It was a long day,” she said. “I should probably get some sleep.”

“Oh,” Earl said, “sure. Sure. I don’t want to keep you up. I know you’re busy.”

Finny didn’t say anything to that. She saw that somewhere along the way it had been decided they wouldn’t have dinner together, though neither of them mentioned it. The moment had simply passed.

Now Earl offered to walk Finny back to her hotel. But she said no, she was fine. The hotel was on the West Side, and she’d walk along the promenade, where it was safe on a warm evening. He protested, but she assured him she’d be okay by herself. She told him to call next time he was in the States.

“I will,” he said.

Then they parted, only a hug as goodbye. Earl headed east, Finny north.

She was almost to the pier that stuck out like a tongue into the Hudson when she remembered Earl’s book in her bag. She unzipped her backpack and took the book out to see what he’d written. But when she opened the book to the title page, where she’d expected he’d written, there was nothing there. It was blank. She flipped the page, and still there was nothing.

Then something fluttered out of the book. It was too quick for Finny to see it, but when she looked up from the book, she saw the object twirling and rocking in the breeze. She reached up and snatched it out of the air, held it up in the light from the overhead lamps.

She knew instantly what it was: a blue and silver feather, the one she’d stolen from the pond with the exotic birds, the one she’d given to Earl the day she’d met him, on the hillside near her old house. All of a sudden, like a warm gust of wind, his words came back to her: I’ll treasure it always. At the time she thought he was being smart, sarcastic in the offhand way she herself had perfected. But she saw now that he was simply telling her the truth.

She turned and spotted Earl standing on the cement island next to the West Side Highway, waiting for the light to change. He had his hands in his pockets and was examining the sidewalk like he’d dropped something there. He hadn’t seen her open the book, probably figured she’d wait until she got back to the hotel. She saw him step into the street, walking slowly, as if unsure where he was headed.

Without considering what she was doing Finny called out, “Earl!”

He turned, and when he saw her, he waved his arms over his head in his old way, like he was signaling an aircraft.

He started walking back toward her, and they met on the promenade, next to the metal railing by the water.

“The feather,” she said, smiling, though as the words left her mouth, she was struck by a feeling that could have been either happiness or sadness, she wasn’t sure. It swept over her like some dashing river, and for a moment she couldn’t speak.

“I’m sorry,” Earl said, standing in front of her, looking at her with an expression of such honest longing that Finny could do nothing but take him in her arms. He began to cry, and Finny smoothed his hair.

“I’m sorry for everything,” he said. “For disappointing you. For not being better.”

“I know,” she said.

“I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“I don’t either.”

And then he kissed her. It was starting to rain, a late-summer mist, and Finny felt drops on her face.

Chapter38
A Final Look

The wedding took place the following summer, outside the little brown house. Finny got a week off work. She’d taken the editorial assistant job. Julie was going on leave in the fall to do some teaching, and another editor was stepping up to take her place, leaving a spot open that had been promised to Finny. Earl had agreed to stay in New York as long as Finny’s work kept her there. She’d insisted on that before they started planning the wedding.

The ceremony was held in the open air, the reception in a tent, and while it was all very moving for those involved, it is perhaps in some respects true, to rephrase Stein, that a wedding is a wedding is a wedding. Finny wore a white dress, Earl a dark suit. As a gesture of forgiveness, Finny had asked Judith to be her maid of honor, and in the pale yellow dress they selected, Judith was nearly radiant enough to eclipse the couple in whose honor the ceremony was being held.

To her credit, though, Judith didn’t seek this attention. She was much less aggressive in her approach to makeup and jewelry than she’d been, and the dress she wore was more conservative, if more elegant, than the direction in which her wardrobe was tending when Finny visited her on Long Island. Judith had been accepted as an English Ph.D. candidate at Columbia—to everyone’s surprise, considering her age—and was set to start in the fall. She talked about it as a second beginning. Money, of course, wasn’t an issue for her. Her divorce from Prince was complete, and she came to the wedding alone. At the ceremony, Judith smiled and cried along with everyone else, and it seemed to Finny an especially significant development that Judith was happy to simply be one of the crowd.

Poplan took her job as best man very seriously. Earl had considered asking Paul Lilly to perform that role, but Earl and Finny decided in the end that they wanted to involve Poplan in a more intimate way in the proceedings. In accordance with tradition, Poplan donned the dark suit befitting a groomsman, as well as a purple silk tie—her favorite color—and seemed to lower her voice just slightly on the day of the wedding, so as to be more convincing in her role. After presenting the ring to Earl during the ceremony, Poplan proceeded to bow formally to Earl, and then to Finny and the priest, and then to the entire audience. Though Earl was puzzled by the gesture, and no one ever quite figured out the reason for it, Finny assumed it was made in the spirit of celebration, goodwill, and general love of Asian cultures. As Poplan had predicted, she’d stayed on in the brown house, expanding her charity work to include not only the after-school program but a day care and a weekend activities center. She spent nearly all her time with the children, and as a mark of her enduring love for and dedication to Mr. Henckel, she required all of the kids to learn how to perform a successful smile-frown.

Sylvan was of course in attendance as well, as a groomsman, and not at all offended that he didn’t have a larger function in the ceremony. He knew that Earl was much closer to Poplan, and Sylvan was much less willing than Poplan to cross-dress, which dashed any hopes that he’d be the maid of honor. One surprise about Sylvan’s attendance was that, like Judith, he came alone. In one of the phone conversations that had become a weekly routine for Sylvan and Finny once again, Sylvan confirmed Finny’s suspicion that, though he cared for Mari, he wasn’t prepared to commit to her. Finny was sorry. She liked Mari, and thought she was a good person. Though she knew that these were not strong enough reasons for Sylvan to marry her. They’d broken up when Sylvan had moved out of Philadelphia to start his practice in Westchester, just outside New York City.

The other bridesmaid was Sarah Barksdale, Finny’s friend from Stradler and the daughter of Finny’s former principal. She also came to the wedding alone, never having gotten back together with Scott, the man she’d been engaged to briefly. Finny had debated for a long time over whether to invite the Old Yeller as well, since she held no particularly fond feelings for Mrs. Barksdale, and finally she decided to go ahead and do it. She left room for Mrs. Barksdale to bring a guest, assuming it would be her husband, though it turned out that Mrs. Barksdale’s guest was a much larger and more imposing presence. Miss Filomena Simpkin came dressed in the most formal attire Finny had ever seen her wear: a great expanse of blue crêpe fabric that, with the many plungings and billowings it made over Miss Simpkin’s generous form, had the appearance more of a rollicking sea than a party dress. Miss Simpkin also wore her signature white flower behind her ear.

It was only after the ceremony, when guests were lining up to offer their congratulations to Finny and Earl, that Finny had reason to feel the slightest pinch of regret over inviting this pair. She overheard Miss Simpkin say that Poplan’s choice of wardrobe was “regrettable,” and Mrs. Barksdale responded, “Once again, Miss Simpkin, you have proven your absolute unassailability in all matters of taste. I had entertained a similar thought myself but was unsure whether to verbalize it, until my suspicions were confirmed by your impeccable judgment. Many thanks, Miss Simpkin. Many thanks!”

Among the other members of the distinguished party, as Mr. Henckel would have put it, were the now-ancient Aunt Louise, who had to excuse herself periodically to call the cat-sitter; Earl’s agent, John Goines, who had just sold Earl’s first novel; Finny’s boss, Julie Fried, and her partner, Amanda; and Dorrie Kibler with her fifteen-year-old son. Carter had brought Garreth along to the wedding. They had both lost weight, and during the reception Carter explained they were on a carb-free diet. “You don’t know what it’s like,” Carter told Finny. “I dream of bread. I salivate when I pass an Italian restaurant. I’m like a pedophile walking by a kindergarten.” Garreth shook his head. “His trick is, he goes through a pack of cigarettes like it’s a box of Ding Dongs.” Finny laughed, and left them to argue it out. She knew how crabby Carter could be when he was hungry.

A wedding always seems a hopeful occasion, and in many ways this one was, though it’s probably only fair to mention that there was also some sadness under the tent beside the little brown house. Finny thought of her parents, both long buried now, and of the dinners they used to have where she teased her father and fed Raskal under the table. She thought of her father’s burnt cooking, her mother sitting upright in the hospital bed and saying You have to understand, and Finny realizing, in that one moment, how much her mother regretted. She thought of Mona, adrift in a tide of sadness so deep and fierce she was never able to free herself. She thought of Mr. Henckel, gulping his coffee for the last time, his face drawn and pale, and the final words he’d offered Earl and Finny, his blessing.

All these ghosts were in the room with them that evening as they danced and laughed and drank. Along with the spoiled relationships and bad marriages and illnesses and betrayals and failed friendships, the disappointments in work and love. As well as the questions: What made her call out to Earl that night on the promenade? Why did she accept his advances after she’d promised herself she never would? Was it simply affection? Or was the affection mixed with something else, something like pity or sentimentality? She would ask herself these questions again and again over the years, though never to a completely satisfying end. It was all too muddy, too stirred up with other things she felt. To know all the sources of love would be like knowing every stream that has fed an ocean.

Whatever her reasons, Finny understood there was more of it ahead of her, both the good and the bad, and the uncertainty. To leave her at this comfortable place is not to suggest that life stopped here, only that it paused for a moment to take a breath, before beginning again on its winding course.

There is only one further occurrence worth noting at this cheerful gathering, and that is the appearance, arranged by Poplan, of a genuine Irish fiddler. He came through the tent flaps, which were now tied open to let in the cool breeze. The sun was setting, and the light, in its final moments, had that wonderful clarity. The band stopped playing and the fiddler walked onto the stage. His hair was the color of a ripe tomato, and he had a spray of freckles across his nose and cheeks, like he’d been splashed with mud. He lifted the fiddle to his chin, raised the bow, paused dramatically for a moment, then began to play.

At first the crowd didn’t know what to do. Most of them had never danced to an Irish fiddle before. But Sylvan helped the situation a little by pulling Judith onto the dance floor, spinning her out and then drawing her back to him, his arm around her waist, as if he didn’t want to let her go.

And then Earl, with Finny’s permission, held his hand out to Poplan, who took it eagerly, and ended up leading Earl onto the floor. Finny watched the two of them go. For a moment, they appeared much younger, like the people Finny had met all those years ago. There he was, the boy who’d caught her when the fence broke, and who’d helped her under the top rail. There was the woman who’d met Finny in the lobby of the Thorndon School, asking her if she’d washed her hands. They seemed to have shed the intervening years like so much bulky winter clothing.

The last image Finny would recall from the party, when she thought back about it many years later, was of Earl spinning Poplan on the dance floor. Finny saw her purple tie flapping in the breeze.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the organizations that supported me while I was writing this book: the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, the Hawthornden Fellowship, the Bookhampton Fellowship, the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, the Southampton Writers’ Conference, and the Bogliasco Foundation.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to a number of teachers and writers for their generosity, advice, and encouragement: Ethan Canin, Bob Shacochis, Elizabeth McCracken, Maxine Rodburg, Melissa Bank, and Betsy Bolton.

Thank you to Ayesha Pande, my inimitable agent, for your intelligence, guidance, and dedication; to Millicent Bennett for your peerless insights, energy, thoughtfulness, and humor; to Jill Schwartzman for so many great ideas, so much enthusiasm, and such valuable help in the final stages of this book; to Kate Medina for your wisdom and enormously meaningful support over the years; to Linda Swanson-Davies and Glimmer Train magazine; and to Jane von Mehren, Sally Marvin, Beth Pearson, Anne Watters, Kathleen McAuliffe, Lindsey Schwoeri, and the many people at Random House who have given their talents, care, and weekend hours to this book.

Thanks also to Connie Brothers, Lan Samantha Chang, Asali Solomon, Bob Reeves, Christian McLean, Adrienne Unger, Dan Salomon, Jan Zenisek, Deb West, and Marika Alzadon.

And for love and remarkable tolerance, my deepest gratitude to my family: Jim Kramon, Paula Kramon, Annie Kramon, Salli Snyder, Liz Harlan, Ellin Sarot, John Trieu, Sandy Hong, Brian Trieu, and, of course and always, Lynn Trieu.

J USTIN K RAMON is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Story Quarterly, Fence, Boulevard, and TriQuarterly. He has received honors for his fiction from the Michener-Copernicus Society of America, the Hawthornden International Writers’ Fellowship, The Best American Short Stories, and the Bogliasco Foundation. Now twenty-nine years old, he lives in Philadelphia. You can find additional information about Kramon and his work, as well as the reading group guide for Finny, at his website: www.justinkramon.com.

Finny is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Random House Trade Paperback Original

Copyright © 2010 by Justin Kramon

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Random House
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Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Kramon, Justin.
Finny: a novel / Justin Kramon.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60367-2
1. Teenage girls—Fiction. 2. Boarding school students—Fiction. 3. Boarding schools—Fiction.
4. Adolescence—Fiction. 5. Parent and child—Fiction.
6. Friendship—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3611.R365F56        010
813’.6—dc22 2009034297

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