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.”
Chapter 37
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.”
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