Angel Landing

by Alice Hoffman

  Finn still looked as gloomy as if he’d been sentenced to a life term, but he had begun to drink, and once he had started he ordered a second gin and tonic and then a third.

  “This is some celebration,” Carter said.

  “Sorry.” Finn shrugged.

  “Have you made up your mind yet?” Carter now asked Finn.

  “About what?” Finn cracked the ice cubes between his teeth.

  “I’m going to New Hampshire for a meeting, and I think you should go up there with me. You know, you can’t be tried on the same charges twice. You can come out with the truth now, you can let people know what really happened.”

  “Well, I just need some time,” Finn said.

  “I’ve got news for you,” Carter told Finn. “There isn’t any time. We’re racing against the clock, and talking about survival. Tell him, Nat.”

  “Survival.” I nodded, though I couldn’t imagine Carter and Finn working side by side in New Hampshire.

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere right now,” Finn said. “I’m not going anywhere at all, understand?”

  “All right,” Carter said. “At least I tried.” He stood up. “If you decide you want to help me close down Angel Landing Three,” he said, “I’ll be back from New Hampshire next week. That goes for you, too,” he said to me. “And if you feel you have other things to do which are more important,” Carter said as he kissed me goodbye, “I’ll understand that, too.”

  Without either Carter or Reno, there was no way around it: Finn and I were the only two people at the bar, although no one would have guessed we were together.

  “Congratulations,” I said to Finn.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” Finn said.

  “What do you do now?” I asked him.

  “I have a drink,” Finn said. “Alone. What the fuck do you think I do?”

  “Forget it,” I said, turning quickly away and reaching for my drink.

  “What the hell kind of question is that?” Finn said. “What do you do now?” he mimicked. “Shit.”

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” I suggested, my back to him.

  “You think I should give lectures with Sugarland about nuclear power?” Finn went on. “Maybe a corporation would like to hire me as a consultant. Maybe I’ll write the story of my life.”

  “Forget it,” I said.

  “Everyone asks me what I’m going to do,” Finn said. “What the hell is different? My life is still the same. The only difference is now I’ll be asked to leave the union. I’ll have even lousier jobs, lousier pay.”

  “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “You don’t know anything about it, nothing at all, so keep quiet,” Finn said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

  “You people who think everyone has control of his own life don’t know anything,” Finn said.

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” I said.

  Finn’s hands were shaking, and he finished his third gin in one gulp. “I’ve told you before,” he said, as he signaled the bartender for another drink, “I only want things I know I can’t have.”

  “You’re so wrong,” I said.

  “You say that now. But I know what would happen. I’ve seen it happen before. Men start wishing for things, wanting things, and they start going crazy, it gets into their blood. Better not to,” Finn said. “Much better.”

  I ordered another whiskey and soda and turned to watch the men in the barroom who were reaching for their drinks, men who were long past middle age, long past wishing for a different sort of life. They ordered whiskey and beer and remembered when they were still young enough to believe their day would come: then they would quit the jobs they hated, the lives that took away everything they had. One of those men got up from a table at the rear of the room, left his drink, walked up to the bar, and stood behind his son.

  When Finn felt someone behind him, he turned. “Pop,” he said.

  “I couldn’t make it to the trial,” Danny Finn said. “I’ve been working at the power plant ever since it reopened.”

  “It was all just a stupid mistake,” Michael Finn said.

  “Hey, what did you think?” Danny Finn said. “Did you think you were too good to make a mistake? Shit, everybody makes a mistake.”

  The two men did not look at each other as they spoke.

  “Would you like a drink?” I asked Danny Finn.

  “I’ve got one,” Danny Finn responded. “Back at my table.” He turned to Michael, who was reaching for his glass. “When are you going to start working again?” Danny Finn asked him.

  “I don’t know if I’m still a member of the union,” Michael Finn said.

  “You’d Goddamn better believe you are,” Danny Finn said. “I saw to it.”

  “I’ll probably have to take nonunion jobs.”

  “I told you don’t worry about it,” Danny Finn said. “We had a vote, and I saw to it that you were voted in. I stood up and told them I would know who voted against you, and I would remember that fucker, and I would be watching him, because somebody makes a mistake every day at the job, and even if they didn’t get caught or have something blow up on them, I would know. I’d be watching.”

  “What did they say?” Finn asked.

  “They didn’t say anything,” Danny Finn said. “They just voted you in.”

  Finn turned to face his father. “You did that?”

  “And I would have known who voted against you,” Danny Finn went on. “Nick Albert, who counts the ballots, was going to let me see every one marked with an X if you were voted out.”

  If Finn had held his glass any tighter it would have burst in his hands; gin would have fallen in between his fingers and into the hollows of his palms. “You said all that?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Danny Finn said. “So when do you think you’re coming back to work?”

  Michael Finn didn’t answer.

  “You can’t find better money,” Danny Finn said.

  “I’ve gotten a couple of other offers,” Michael Finn said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “I’ve got an offer up in Massachusetts. I may even be offered something in California,” Finn went on.

  “California,” Danny Finn said. “I’m impressed.”

  “I’ve got to weigh the pros and cons,” Michael Finn said so softly I could barely hear him. “You understand,” he said to his father.

  “This offer union work?” Danny Finn asked.

  “No, no,” Michael Finn said. “But there’s a lot of money in the deal.”

  There were no offers from California, no big money, I knew; but Finn was trying to give his father something in return for standing up at the union meeting. He was giving out hope, a story to tell the other welders, a son to be proud of.

  “You let us know what happens about California,” Danny Finn said. “Your mother will want to know.” He reached out and touched Finn’s shoulder. There was a flutter; it seemed that a nerve had been touched right through the suit jacket and the clean white shirt. “And, son, if things don’t work out, I’ll see you at the plant next week,” Danny Finn said.

  “Sure,” Michael Finn said. “Next week.”

  Michael Finn didn’t move or speak until Danny Finn had left us and returned to his table, where his beer had grown flat. Though they were on different sides of the room, the two men were closer than they had ever been before. Danny Finn was proudly announcing to a table full of construction workers that his son had just beaten a trumped-up rap and now had an offer in California for big money. His son, Danny Finn smiled, was too smart for cops and district attorneys; someday the boy would be rolling in cash, and Danny Finn always knew it, or at least had always hoped for it; he had dreamed of his son’s success in his private hours when no one could even guess that he ever had dreams.

  And at the bar, where he had just begun another gin and tonic, Michael Finn’s eyes were damp. “Son. He never called me that before. Not to my face.”


  “Let’s go outside,” I suggested, reaching for Finn’s coat and my own and paying for our drinks. I expected an argument. I thought Finn would refuse to walk outside with me, but instead he nodded and followed me out the door. We walked with no destination, with no purpose other than a need for darkness and clean air. We walked west on Route 18. Even without looking, I knew Finn was crying. Up on Main Street some stray dogs bayed, and the howl shook the night as if it had come from Finn’s own throat.

  We found ourselves down at the harbor; in only a few months the parking lot where we stood would be crowded with cars: in the morning vans carrying groups of swimmers, in the evenings the Chevys and Fords of lovers who had nowhere else to go. But now, ice covered the parking lot, as it had years before when Michael Finn and his father crouched and hid their heads from the shadows they were most afraid of. The wind from Connecticut hit against us; sleeping gulls, frightened by our presence, flapped their wings and took off, flying unevenly. Michael Finn looked as if he wished he could throw back his head and howl along with the chorus of strays on Main Street.

  Suddenly Finn spoke. “I always wanted him to say it.”

  It would never be enough to make up for years of sadness, the hours of wasted rage, but Danny Finn had reached across the years, he had called Michael son, their terrible bond was now a fragile rope.

  “I’m not even like him,” Finn said, taking my hand for a moment and then letting it fall. “I’m really not,” he said. “Not at all.”

  He looked at his hands: the blisters, the blue veins, the nails topped by half-moons; they were nobody else’s hands, no palms of ancestors, they were his alone.

  We stayed in the parking lot until Finn was finished; and although there were times when I thought he would never be done crying, when he faced into the wind and closed his eyes and let all the pain free, running down his face, finally he did turn away.

  “Are you sure you’re ready to leave?” I asked.

  Finn wiped his eyes with his palms. “Yeah, I’m ready,” he said.

  I hesitated; ready to go where, ready to do what? When we walked away from the parking lot, would we walk in opposite directions, would we wave to each other from a street corner?

  “Come on,” Finn said. “I’ll walk you home.”

  We walked toward town, I put my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t be tempted to take Finn’s hand. Every step I took hurt, I walked on daggers, on hot blue fire. Not holding him was like not breathing, not being quite alive.

  As we walked, Finn’s tears continued to fall, but he ignored them, he brushed them away as if crying in the night was the most natural thing a man could do.

  “It’s crazy,” Finn grinned. “The tightness in my chest is gone. It’s disappeared.”

  “I knew it would happen,” I said to Finn.

  “You did, didn’t you?” Finn smiled.

  It had been happening since the first time I met Finn; the past had been unwinding inside him, and with it all the terror and pain he had tried to ignore for so long.

  “I can breathe,” Finn said, taking in air. “I can breathe,” he told me, delighted.

  I tried to walk as slowly as I could, I tried to make it last forever. But when Minnie’s house came into view, I knew I would soon be standing outside her front door, and Finn would nod, and grin, and disappear forever.

  I stopped on a street corner. “Do you mind,” I asked Finn, “if I ask you now what you plan to do?”

  “Do?” Finn said. He leaned against a lamppost and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. “I don’t really think that matters.” He cupped the match in his hand and bent down. “Anything,” Finn said. “As long as it’s new. As long as it keeps the past in its place.”

  I was part of that past, I was probably fading right before his eyes.

  “I’m leaving town,” I said. If I stayed there would be too many things to remind me of Finn; every coffee shop, every street in town. I would take a room until I found an apartment. On summer nights I would swim in the ocean, or in a town pool ringed by lifeguards. And after swimming, when my hair was still wet, I would walk home. Sand would stick to my bare feet. The roses and the jasmine would smell so strong that when I opened the window in my room I would nearly grow dizzy from their scent. I would sit by the window, fanning myself with a Miami newspaper that was long out of date, and later I would write a letter to Minnie and one of my local congressmen. And when the winter came I wouldn’t even notice; the jasmine might give way to zinnias, but there would be no ice, no cold stars, no harbor to remind me of Finn. No one would haunt my dreams when I fell asleep on clean white sheets beneath a tier of mosquito netting. “I think I may be going to Florida,” I told Finn. “I’ve applied for a job there. Therapy doesn’t seem to be what I’m best at.”

  “You were good for me,” Finn said.

  “I was never your therapist,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Finn said. “Of course you were.”

  “We just talked,” I said. “That’s all.”

  “I don’t care,” Finn said. “I’m glad you hadn’t already gone to Florida that day I walked into Outreach.” I looked up at him. “I am, you know.” He smiled.

  We stayed on that street corner until Finn had finished his cigarette.

  “Thank you,” Finn said to me. He took my hand in his as if we were about to shake hands, but instead he held my fingers entwined with his own, he pressed hard, and then let go. I left then, I turned and ran, I couldn’t bear for him to walk away from me. And when I had crossed the street and stood in front of Minnie’s house, I turned, but he was gone.

  Finn had left. From now on he might only appear on an occasional night when the temperature rose over ninety and the past was like a fever which refused to be still. I went home then to a house that was so quiet I could almost hear the breathing of the sleepers on the second floor: Minnie, the two sisters beneath matching blankets, Arthur with his head on a clean linen pillowcase. I left my coat on and went into the parlor; when I heard Beaumont hammering in the basement I was relieved, calmed by the steadiness, and the sound of wood and nails. I picked up a goblet and then wondered if Minnie and Alex had both drunk from the crystal glass I now used, one of a set presented by a Lansky from Detroit. Or perhaps Minnie had never drunk sherry before Alex’s death; maybe one night, when Alex had already been dead for some time, Minnie was unable to sleep. She may have come into the parlor dressed in a flannel nightdress mailed to her from one of the Manhattan Lanskys who worked in the 34th Street Macy’s. Then Minnie may have sat in the easy chair and wondered how many more days she would have to live, how many more nights she would sleep alone.

  She may have even tried to conjure up Alex right there in the parlor; even if she didn’t believe in spirits. But that night in winter, Minnie may have found that she wasn’t able to recall what Alex had looked like as a man, she could only remember him as a very young boy, as he was when she first met him.

  It was then that Minnie would reach for the bottle of sherry she kept in the parlor in case a guest should be accustomed to drinking. She would pour the liquor into a small crystal glass and then raise a toast to that invisible boy she had once known, the boy who had slowly replaced the memory of the man she had been married to for so many years. It was as if, so many years after his death, the two of them were starting all over again; only this time there would be no ending, no sadness to forget; Alex would be a young boy forever—all other memories had been slowly washed away. I, too, poured myself a drink; and I also raised my glass, in memory of Finn, and then I sat down in the easy chair and proceeded to try to forget.

  THREE

  A LETTER CAME FROM THE agency in Florida sooner than I expected. I would receive six thousand dollars a year and the use of a three-speed bicycle the previous worker had left behind. Already, reservations had been made in my name at the Blue Parrot Motel; the bicycle could be found around the back, waiting for me behind the soda machine. It was much more difficult than I had ev
er dreamed to tell Minnie that I was leaving.

  “Florida?” Minnie said. “There are alligators there. The temperature goes over a hundred, people eat nothing but grits and Coca-Cola.”

  “I’ll be working for a grievance committee of workers from a nuclear power plant,” I said.

  “You?” Minnie said, cocking her head. She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms. “A political job?”

  “I know I haven’t done anything like it in the past.”

  “I’ll say,” Minnie agreed.

  “I thought you’d be pleased,” I said, disappointed by such a cool reaction.

  “Don’t run off to Florida to please me,” Minnie said. “If I had wanted that sort of relationship with someone, I could have had a child.”

  “Well, I’ve agreed to take the job,” I said.

  “Why Florida?” Minnie said. “What’s wrong with Angel Landing? We have our own power plant right here.”

  “You always told me to try something new.”

  “That’s true,” Minnie said. “But you’ll have to stay a while. I’m having a party. You’ll leave after that.”

  “All right,” I said.

  My aunt looked at me. “What about Michael Finn?”

  “The past,” I said. “All in the past.”

  “I certainly hope you’re not running off to do good works just because of the lousy state of your personal life,” Minnie warned. “That sort of thing never works out.”

  “It’s nothing like that,” I said.

  Minnie left the table abruptly and went to the stove, where she put up water; she stood there until steam began to rise. Finally she turned back and faced me. “You’re going to Florida,” she said.

  “That’s right,” I said, accepting the cup of peppermint tea placed before me.

  “I’m going to miss you,” Minnie said.

  “Oh, Minnie,” I said. I would never have believed I would be so sad to leave my aunt’s house.

  “Naturally, I have my own life to lead,” Minnie went on. “And I’m pretty damn busy. In fact there’s someone at Mercy who could use your room, there’s no reason for her to be in a home, she’s as strong as an ox. One day one of her earrings fell off and rolled onto the floor. She picked up the bed to find it. But all the same,” Minnie said, “I’m going to miss you.”