Fin & Lady: A Novel

by Cathleen Schine

  “You’re my guardian,” said Fin.

  “Oh, absolutely, Finino. Tyler is another kind of guardian. He guards your money. Like Fafner.”

  “Who’s Fafner?”

  “A dragon.”

  “Thanks so very much,” said Mr. Morrison.

  “I don’t need anyone to guard my money. Guard it from who?”

  “Whom,” said Fafner.

  “From me, I suppose,” Lady said with a laugh.

  “Don’t worry about it, son. It’s called a trust.”

  “But it means you don’t trust,” Lady said.

  “I don’t have any money,” Fin said.

  “Sure you do. A whole farm’s worth. I’m here to help you and Lady handle the sale.”

  “Oh no,” Fin said, shaking his head. “Not for sale.”

  Lady sat on the floor and pulled Fin down, facing her, as if they were going to play patty-cake. “That’s what we were just talking about, Finny.” She took a drag of her cigarette and blew a smoke ring. “Your mother’s will is still the same one our father drew up for her.” Fin watched the smoke ring rise and stretch and droop and disappear. “Naturally, being the enlightened man he was, he didn’t think Lydia could take care of any money herself.” Fin started at the sound of his mother’s name. Lydia. He thought it was a beautiful name. “As it turned out, she didn’t have to take care of any money,” Lady was saying, “because the bugger didn’t leave her any.”

  “Okay, okay,” Fin said. He hated it when Lady talked about their father.

  “And that’s where I come in,” said Mr. Morrison.

  Fin looked up from the floor at Mr. Morrison, whose hands were in his pockets, legs spread slightly, a sincere expression clamped onto his face.

  “I’ve never even seen you before,” Fin said.

  “Finny, your mother inherited the farm from your grandparents, but she never changed her will, the one Daddy drew up for her.”

  “Now, you can follow that, can’t you, buddy?”

  “For this one act alone I could kill Daddy,” Lady said. “I really could.”

  “Lucky for him he’s already dead,” Fin said.

  Mr. Morrison laughed. “You’re a cocky one. Must run in the family. You know, you’re a lucky little boy to own a whole farm.”

  “Jesus, Tyler, his mother just died. I don’t think ‘lucky’ is the word.”

  “Just trying to get this settled. Just a servant of the law.”

  She shrugged.

  “Let’s look at it like this,” Mr. Morrison said to Fin. “I’m here to help look after you, not the way Lady does, but to make sure you’re protected financially, you know, having enough money, a big, big piggy bank full of money for when you grow up. Get it?”

  “Don’t sell the farm,” Fin said. Get it?

  “Oh, for crying out loud, it sounds like a cowboy song.” Lady started singing in a twangy voice, “Don’t sell the fa-arm. Don’t sell that fa-a-arm.”

  “Cowboys don’t have farms,” Fin said. “They have ranches.”

  Mr. Morrison pulled a gold cigarette case from his jacket pocket, then a lighter. Just the way he flipped open the case, the arrogance of it, infuriated Fin. Mr. Morrison drew deeply on his cigarette and blew out a large puff of smoke.

  Fafner, Fin thought.

  “Well, you see, young man, that decision is up to me, to liquidate your property or not to. As I see fit.”

  “Yakety-yak. You sound like my father. Were you always so pompous? Liquidate your property,” she said, mimicking his voice. “They’re cows, Tyler.”

  Fin turned to her in alarm. He hadn’t even thought of the cows.

  Mr. Morrison said, “Ah, Lady, fairest Lady. You really haven’t changed, have you?”

  Maybe it was the way he said it, but Fin suddenly felt embarrassed, and Lady, he noted, turned red. He looked away and wrote his name in the carpet, the way he had as a little boy. Mr. Morrison tossed his cigarette lighter up and down in his hand.

  “Maybe not,” Lady said at last. “Maybe I haven’t.”

  “And why should you?” Mr. Morrison said, the words loud, hearty, and false. “I’ve changed, though. I really have.”

  “Tyler…” Lady’s voice softened a little. “There’s no point. I mean, good if you’ve changed and good if you haven’t, but it wasn’t your fault and…”

  “What wasn’t his fault?” Fin said. What were they talking about?

  The slap, slap of Mr. Morrison’s lighter landing in the palm of his hand filled the room. Lady stared at the carpet. Fin had written his name twice. Finfin. Like Tintin.

  “It’s history, I know,” Mr. Morrison said. “Ancient history.”

  Cows, Fin wrote, dragging his finger heavily through the carpet. He began chanting, “Cows, cows, cows, cows…”

  “Lavender Jesus,” Lady said. Then, suddenly, her arm on Tyler’s, she said, very gently, “Do it for now. Do it for me.”

  Tyler laughed an odd laugh that Fin would come to know so well, a laugh that was carefree and forced at the same time. Then he smiled at Lady and said, “As always,” holding up his hands in a cloud of exhaled smoke, “I surrender.”

  Fin knew something had happened in that moment, do it for now, do it for me, something he did not understand, something he did not want to understand. Still, he had won. Tyler Morrison had surrendered. Victory! He ran around the living room, shouting it out: “Victory!” Gus followed him, barking.

  “At least this devastating bovine defeat has brought me one victory of my own,” Tyler said to Lady. “I got to see you again, if only for a moment.” He looked around the living room. “Brought me back to the Hadley residence. Brought me back, that’s for sure.”

  Lady looked around the room, too. “Oh, I won’t be here long,” she said lightly. “No, no. I have to get out of here, have to get away from this gilded cage.”

  “Ah yes,” said Tyler. “So you’ve always said.”

  Lady came into Fin’s room at bedtime that night and read more poetry by Walt Whitman.

  “‘And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,’” she read softly, smiling at him in the dim room. “‘And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels.’” And it sounded like a prayer.

  Sextillions of infidels. That’s what Fin decided to call Tyler, after he looked the words up in the dictionary. If he ever saw him again.

  Which he did.

  Why? Why did Sextillions of Infidels keep showing up when there was no more business to discuss?

  “Why are you here?” Fin asked him the first time he appeared.

  “Pyrrhic victory,” said Sextillions of Infidels. “Look it up.”

  Lady insisted Fin call Sextillions of Infidels Uncle Ty.

  “But he’s not my uncle. If he was my uncle, he’d be your uncle, too, you know.”

  She thought that one over, then said, “I’ll call him Uncle Ty, too!”

  “Here I am again,” Uncle Ty said to Fin at the door.

  Fin stood in the doorway, not moving.

  “You’re in my way, young fella.”

  “Did you sell my farm?”

  Uncle Ty picked Fin up, pinning his arms to his sides, and moved him out of the way. “No,” he said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Then why are you here?” Fin said to him.

  “Go polish your overalls or something, kid. I’m here to see Lady.”

  Fin watched him leave with Lady, his arm around her shoulders.

  “Why does he keep coming here?” Fin asked Lady the next morning.

  “Why do any of them?”

  “Any of who?”

  “Ty is an old friend. I told you.”

  “Uncle Ty.”

  “Him, too.” She laughed and ruffled Fin’s hair. “When in Rome,” she said. Then she looked sad. “Or Denmark.” Then she said, “The past is never where you thought you left it, Fin.” Then: “I forget where I read that.” Then she kissed Fin and said, “Fear not,” and they made
ham-and-cheese sandwiches and had a picnic in the park on a white damask tablecloth.

  But Uncle Ty kept returning. He brought Lady flowers, he rushed to light her innumerable cigarettes with a click of his gold lighter, he took her to the theater. Victory? This was more like an occupation. He wore cuff links and a tie clip that matched the lighter. Fin loathed him in feverish, fervid silence, and he watched Lady and Uncle Ty when they were together. There were places you could watch without being seen, sometimes just curled on the sofa in the same room, but reading a comic book, being quiet. They would forget he was around. Uncle Ty would give his odd little laugh, say, “Shit,” shake his head, and say, “Everyone has to settle down sometime, Lady.” Lady would move away from him and say, “Oh, absolutely.”

  Once, when Uncle Ty had downed several glasses of Scotch, he grabbed Lady’s wrists and yelled at her. He said she needed him. “You need me,” he said again, and then again. Fin had looked up from Superman as Lady gently pulled her arms away. Fin waited for Lady to yell back. Lady didn’t need Tyler Morrison, the thought was ludicrous, how could Uncle Ty not know that? Fin waited for Lady to storm out of the room. How dare you? she would say. But she did not storm anywhere. She sat quite still and looked thoughtful. Then: “I can’t think what for.” It was Tyler who stormed out of the room.

  He turned up again, soon enough, as if nothing had happened, nothing at all. Like a bad penny, he said, chucking Fin beneath the chin and popping his hat on Fin’s head.

  “I come before you as a suppliant,” he said to Lady.

  “Don’t be an ass,” Lady said. She smiled and shook her head like a filly, flicking her hair back from her face, but she did not really look like a filly, like a horse frolicking in a pasture. She had that desperate, wild look, like a horse straining at the end of a rope, rearing in the air. Maybe Tyler didn’t notice, but Fin did.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said, and she grabbed her pocketbook and rushed out the door, Tyler behind her, scrambling to keep up.

  Lady went out on other dates, it wasn’t just Tyler Morrison, but Tyler was the one who turned up the most, and he was the one Fin knew he had to watch out for. He could feel it every time Tyler walked in the door.

  “Tough growing up with just that beautiful girl to raise you, isn’t it?” Tyler once said.

  “No.”

  “Sometimes a guy needs another guy around to talk to.”

  “I don’t.”

  “They’ve done studies, you know. Better to have a mother and a father. Even, say, foster parents. It’s healthier. Emotionally.”

  “I’m very healthy,” Fin said.

  Then Lady came in the room, and Uncle Ty changed the subject and did a magic trick, pulling a quarter out of his ear. Fin had to pretend to laugh. He didn’t want Lady thinking he was emotionally unhealthy.

  “Uncle Ty went to boarding school,” Lady said once. “He really liked it. He said he felt independent. He said boys like boarding school. They play lots of sports and they play tricks on each other.”

  “Yeah, but look how he turned out.”

  “Mmm.”

  Fin was on the couch reading the obituary section of The New York Times. Lady sat beside him. “Here’s a lady named Faustina,” he said. “That’s a funny name.”

  “I hope I’m doing the right thing with you.”

  “And a lady named Kat.”

  “After all, I went to boarding school.” Silence. Then: “Of course I hated it. But maybe boys are different.”

  “Faustina and Kat went to school together.”

  “Boarding school?” Lady asked absently.

  “They hated it. They ran away to sea disguised as pirates. They were shipwrecked on an island and had to marry cannibals, but they escaped in a rocket ship…” He went on until Lady noticed and kicked him and laughed and said, “Okay, okay, no boarding school.”

  * * *

  “Why does Lady like Tyler Morrison?” Fin asked Mabel one morning. They sat at the kitchen table while Fin picked at his breakfast and Mabel had a cup of coffee. “He acts like he lives here.”

  “Well, he almost did, didn’t he?”

  Fin slapped his hands on his face like one of the Three Stooges to portray frustration. “What?”

  “She jilted him. Left him standing at the altar.”

  Fin stared at her. “You mean like a wedding?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “I went to a wedding that was Lady’s wedding, but Lady never came.”

  “That’s the wedding, then. Even Miss Lady didn’t skip out on two of her own weddings. Went off to Europe on an ocean liner. She’s never taken an airplane in her life, and I don’t blame her.”

  Lady and Uncle Ty? Impossible. Of course she had jilted him. He was so obviously inferior to her with his trim, insolent manner. Lady, unconstrained and rash, afoot and lighthearted—Lady could never have capitulated to Tyler Morrison and his little spinning hat.

  “Our Miss Lady is foolish, but she’s no fool,” Mabel said.

  Our Miss Lady. Fin smiled. It sounded like a church. Or a television show.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Our Miss Lady is no fool.”

  “Foolish, though.”

  “Yeah. Foolish.”

  “But no fool.”

  “She wouldn’t get married to him again, would she?” he asked Mabel.

  “That,” Mabel said, “is the question.”

  Lady appeared, bleary-eyed. “What is the question?” she said. She poured herself coffee. “My head is pounding.”

  “Will you marry Uncle Ty,” Fin said, “this time?”

  Lady frowned at Mabel.

  “The truth will set you free, Miss Lady,” Mabel said.

  “Well, I didn’t marry him, did I?” Lady said. “Good grief. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? I was eighteen years old, for crying out loud.”

  “It was one of those arranged child marriages,” Mabel said to Fin. “Like the Hindus.”

  “Close enough,” Lady said.

  “You’re not eighteen now,” Fin said.

  “Neither are you. And I’m your guardian until you are, and I have a headache. So dry up.”

  Lady drank her coffee.

  “Hangover?” Fin asked.

  “No.” She glared at Fin. Then: “Yes. So sue me.”

  “So will you? Marry him this time?”

  “You don’t own me, Fin,” she said. “Or you,” she said to Mabel. Then she started singing the Leslie Gore song.

  She sang it all the way through. It was one of her favorites.

  The Promised Land

  Lady was unpredictable, that was the one thing you could predict. That’s what Mabel told Fin. So every morning he woke up in the rose-colored bedroom that had belonged to Lady’s mother and looked out the window to try to predict the weather instead. But the city sky would be just the same—smooth, metallic—and he knew it would be hot, the same as yesterday, and he waited for the day that would not be the same, dreading it, sure of it, curious and impatient.

  It arrived in July.

  “You’re up,” Fin said to a bustling, showered, beaming Lady. “It’s so early.”

  “When you’re up, you’re up,” Lady said. “And when you’re down, you’re down / And when you’re only half-way up / You’re neither up nor down.”

  “Okay.” What else could he say? What do you say to a nursery rhyme? She spread jam on a piece of toast. Even that, even the way her hand held the knife—it was not the way other people spread strawberry jam. Swipe, swipe—giant motions, graceful, but really giant. As if she were wielding a sword.

  Mabel was there earlier than usual, too. “Pack your bag and grab your hat,” she said grimly. “We’re setting sail for the promised land.”

  A sail? The Cristoforo Colombo … “Capri?”

  “Capri?” Lady said. “What are you, the beautiful people? No, no, we’re going to Greenwich Village!”

  “With the ugly people. You got your bongo drums?�
� Mabel asked Fin. “That’s what they do down there. They drum and they sing nasty old field songs. They wear sandals on their dirty feet. They cohabitate. And they dress raggedy. That’s where your guardian, who is charged by the United States of America to take care of you, that’s where she’s taking you.” She poured him a glass of orange juice. “And me.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Fin said. “Is the house ready?”

  “No. Nearly done. But I have to get out of here,” Lady said, almost frantically. “Why does nobody understand that? I have to get away from here.”

  A gilded cage day again. They had become quite frequent, paralleling the frequent visits of Tyler Morrison.

  “You could go to boarding school. With Uncle Ty.”

  “Uncle Ty,” Lady muttered, her tone satisfyingly sarcastic.

  “Then you’re not going to marry him?”

  Why did everyone assume she needed someone to tell her what to do? Lady said. Why did everyone think they needed to be like a father to her, like her father? One Hugo Hadley in a lifetime was enough. This was 1964. She wanted to live her own life, a big life. She needed a big life, a real life. Bigger than the lives of the girls at Rosemary Hall, bigger than the lives of the other girls at Wellesley, bigger than her mother’s life, her father’s life, and certainly bigger than Tyler Morrison’s life.

  “He asked you again and you said no!”

  “I’m not ready to settle down,” Lady said, ignoring him. “Is that a crime?”

  “No!” Fin gave Lady a thumbs-up.

  “Life is big and bountiful. I want to go to Africa to live with chimpanzees.”

  “And that’s why we’re going to Greenwich Village,” said Mabel.

  “Freedom in our own backyard, Mabel. Freedom from this big bourgeois ball and chain, freedom from charity balls, from suitable suitors, from lawyers and stockbrokers and bankers. Freedom from Hadley hell!”

  “Freedom from Uncle Ty!” Fin said.

  “Freedom from all of them!” Lady cried, taking Fin’s hands and dancing him around in a circle. “Come on, Mabel! Freedom!”

  But Mabel just watched them, silent, her expression unreadable.