“Hey, here’s a man who fought in the Spanish-American War,” Fin said, going back to the obituaries.
“Too old for us,” Lady said.
“William H. Hands,” said Fin. “And his son is named H. William Hands!”
“Good grief,” said Lady. “And all because the Times has no funnies.”
* * *
That summer, Fin read the Post and the Daily News as well as the Times. He checked the sports section of the Daily News in the morning at the newsstand, then bought the Post in the afternoon and brought it home to examine the box scores, study the standings, read the sports features, then skim through the rest of the paper, through the stories about students from New York going to Mississippi to register voters, stories about the two students who never came back. The riots in Harlem that summer were in the newspaper, too, and Fin read about them, but Harlem was so far away from Charles Street it might as well have been Mississippi. It wasn’t the Long Hot Summer for him. It was long and it was hot, but when you’re eleven, you’re eleven, and that’s just the way it was, though even an eleven-year-old knew something was happening. You could feel it in the air, even in the air of Lady’s house in Greenwich Village.
On the day Flannery O’Connor died, which he always remembered because she lived on a dairy farm like him and because someone enthusiastically referred to her in the obit as a “white witch,” a “literary white witch,” but still, Lady was having a dinner party for which she seriously considered using her mother’s finger bowls.
“Don’t they know how to use napkins?” Fin asked.
Lady sighed. No finger bowls. “But they used to look so pretty. A lemon slice floating on top…”
Mabel cooked all day in preparation. Pounds of shrimp, an entire salmon.
“We’ll serve it cold,” Lady said. “No one could eat a hot dish. Not in this heat.”
“No one eats dishes, even cold ones,” Fin said. “Ha ha.”
“Ha ha.”
“Food’s got to cook,” Mabel said. “It’s got to get hot before it cools off.”
“What a terrific slogan, Mabel. Like something the Freedom Riders would say,” said Lady.
“Not a slogan,” said Mabel. “A fact.”
In the kitchen, Fin helped Mabel. He dumped slippery gray shrimp into the sink and shelled them, the stink of the ocean overwhelming the sweltering kitchen. Steam rolled from the pot on the stove, almost indistinguishable from the hot moist air. “I used to think they started out pink,” Fin said, watching the shrimp when Mabel dropped them in the pot.
“Color, color, color,” Mabel muttered, wiping sweat from her face with a dishcloth, “that’s all I hear these days. Now look at all those shrimps. Why’d Miss Lady go to all this expense, anyhow? Same old riffraff with their sandal feet…”
“Nope, she’s having rich people tonight.”
“Don’t call Miss Lady ‘she.’”
“Even Mirna and Joan aren’t invited. It’s to raise money.”
“First I heard.” Mabel dumped the shrimp into a colander in the sink.
“She thought you’d get mad,” Fin said. “It’s to raise money for Negroes.”
“Oh Lord,” said Mabel, scowling just before a fog of fishy steam obscured her face. “Lord save us from Miss Lady and her whims.”
When Fin came downstairs later in his navy wool funeral suit, Lady took one look at him and said, “Good God, Fin, what have you done?”
Fin stood at the bottom of the stairs, his wrists poking three inches from his jacket cuffs, his pants high above his shoes. He had grown, that’s what he’d done.
Lady tapped her lips thoughtfully, a gesture Fin remembered from his father.
“Daddy used to do that,” he said, tapping his own lips.
“Nonsense.”
“I could wear Levi’s.”
“Nonsense again. Here’s ten dollars. Go buy yourself some decent pants, for God’s sake.” She handed him a few more bills. “And a couple of shirts. Good grief.”
Fin went to a children’s clothing store he’d spotted on one of his walks, and though the proprietor of the establishment looked surprised when no one but a big collie dog followed the eleven-year-old in, he was nevertheless able to produce a pair of chinos and several long-sleeved button-down shirts.
“Your mother will be proud,” the man said when Fin came out of the dressing room. Fin rolled the cuffs back and admired himself in the mirror.
“My mother’s dead,” Fin said. He watched the man’s face in the mirror. They all did the same thing, exactly the same thing. They glanced away, quickly, as if they’d seen the rotting corpse, then they looked back at Fin with a kind, determined smile.
“Dear, dear,” the man said softly.
Fin relented. “My guardian will be very pleased,” he said.
The relieved proprietor gave him a lollipop, a red one, which Fin stuck in the corner of his mouth. He wore his new pants and a new blue oxford shirt out of the store.
At dinner, he was seated beside a very old lady with powdery white skin and frail birdlike hands that trembled as she reached for her glass of wine. On his other side sat a woman of about forty. Her dress was pale green silk. There were dark half-moons beneath each pale green silk arm. She insisted Fin call her Cee Cee. The old lady was named Mrs. Holbright.
“And what’s your name, young man?” Cee Cee asked.
“Fin. It means ‘the end’ in French. My father wanted me to be the last of his children.”
“Sounds like Hugo,” said old Mrs. Holbright. Her mouth made a clicking sound when she spoke, as if she were a mechanical toy. “He’s Hugo’s boy,” she said to Cee Cee. “Same eyes. Is Lady good to you? I’m sure she is. Excellent fellow, your father, up to a point. Do you have a temper, Fin?” Her mouth clicked shut, and she stared expectantly at Fin.
“I guess,” Fin said. He smiled politely.
“Ha!” Mrs. Holbright said. “I don’t believe it for a minute. You’re as sweet-tempered as a lamb, just like your poor mother. And as polite. Aren’t you? Don’t dare contradict me, young man. I enjoy being right. Most people do, you know. But you will find that I am particularly inclined in that direction.”
Cee Cee, who had been effectively silenced by the older woman, gave a tiny, demure cough in apparent agreement. She patted her décolletage with her napkin, as surreptitiously as possible, sopping up a thick film of perspiration.
Fin thought of his mother, her girlish laugh. He tried to remember his father’s eyes. He envisioned only the end of a cigar burning high above him.
“Now,” Mrs. Holbright was saying, “what do you make of the colored question, I wonder.”
Fin realized she was addressing him. “The Negro question,” he said automatically.
Cee Cee looked embarrassed, as if he had said a word like, say, “penis.” “What a warm night,” she said.
“Good heavens. Colored, Negro … Mabel, which is it?” Mrs. Holbright’s voice was piercing. All conversation in the room stopped. All eyes turned to Mabel.
Mabel stood holding a silver pitcher of ice water.
More silence. General, awkward silence. Cee Cee looked as though she wanted to throw her damp napkin over her head and hide. A few guests looked down. Someone coughed. Lady, who had just lifted a large shrimp to her lips, held it there like a Milk-Bone in front of a dog and smiled broadly, clearly enjoying herself. Drops of water beaded the pitcher.
Mabel looked thoughtful, considering the question.
“Well,” she said at last, “call me anything, just don’t call me late for dinner.”
Lady swallowed her shrimp like a sea lion. “Ditto.”
Fin, horrified by the entire exchange, tried to catch Mabel’s eye to somehow apologize for the guests, for his sister, for the entire Caucasian race, but Mabel deposited the pitcher on a silver dish and disappeared without a glance at him.
“Segregation is wrong,” Fin said to Mrs. Holbright, a little too loudly.
“Yes,
yes, I suppose it is. So shall I give Lady and her Negro friends a donation?”
“Of course you should,” Fin said.
“Or shall I march?” the old lady was saying, not having waited for the answer.
March? Fin looked at the old lady. They would have to carry her on a litter.
“Although I should not like to go to jail, I’m sure,” she added.
Carry her to jail on a litter.
“Anyone can march,” he said. “Not everyone can give money.”
“Clever, clever. A little diplomat. You’ve got Hugo’s tongue in you. Charming man, your father. Charmed everyone. Except his own daughter, of course.”
“Don’t gossip,” Cee Cee said.
“Oh pooh. I’m old and I can behave as badly as I want to. Isn’t that right, Fin?”
Before Fin could answer, Cee Cee reached across and pinched the loose flesh of the old lady’s arm. “Mother!”
Mrs. Holbright was Cee Cee’s mother? Fin looked at them both curiously. He tried to imagine pinching his mother. Would his mother ever have gotten as white and slack as Mrs. Holbright, if she had lived? His young, tender mother?
“My mother’s dead,” he said to Cee Cee.
She pulled her arm back, as if Fin had been about to sink his teeth into it.
“Oh dear,” she said. “Let’s concentrate on the Negroes, shall we?”
Jack Jordan had not been invited. He was currently out of the picture, which at first had been a relief to Fin, except that Uncle Tyler now seemed to be back in the picture in a prominent way. He sat at what he considered the head of the table, which Fin, as of that moment, considered the foot. Pierre, who decorated all the rich people’s houses and apartments, was there, too. Fin didn’t know anyone else. He wished Biffi were there. He often wished Biffi were there.
“In Europe, the Negro is far better off,” said Pierre.
“That’s because they don’t have any,” said Uncle Ty.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Lady said.
Fin leaned on his elbows and happily listened to Uncle Ty and Lady disagree about civil rights. All the guests became louder as more wine was served. Even Mrs. Holbright seemed tipsy.
“Young man!” she shrieked at Fin. “A shoulder to lean on!”
He helped her to the bathroom. She had a gigantic pocketbook swinging from her arm.
“Keep an eye on your sister,” Mrs. Holbright said as he helped her back to the table. “I’m very fond of her.”
“Me, too.”
“You do look like your father, you know. Handsome man when he was young. And don’t mind Lady about him. She was fond of him.”
“Ha ha.”
Mrs. Holbright stopped to get her breath. “Divorce, temperament—they took a toll, I’m not saying they didn’t, but remember, Lady is one of those people who likes a good enemy, needs one. The drama, I suppose.” And they resumed their slow waddle, Mrs. Holbright’s hand heavy on his shoulder. “Yes, she really does like to bat them around a bit.” Mrs. Holbright gestured toward a smiling Lady and an exhausted, defeated Tyler Morrison. “I had a cat like Lady,” Mrs. Holbright continued. “Cee Cee! Cee Cee!” She reached across and poked her daughter.
“Mother! For goodness sake…”
“What was the name of that cat? The one who played with the mice? While they were alive?”
Cee Cee grimaced. “Latimer,” she said.
“Yes! Latimer.” Mrs. Holbright sighed. “We had to put him down.”
“Never tell a child what he can learn for himself”
Lady seemed to move from one suitor to another without warning, without rhyme, without reason. This time, though, Fin knew he had civil rights to thank. Finally, as August drew to a close, Tyler was out and, after a week or so of frenzied parties, Biffi was back. Fin followed him wherever he went in the house. Gus followed Fin.
“A parade,” said Lady.
Lady was a force of nature, Biffi said. A hurricane, a tornado, a sunrise, a shower of gentle rain. “Never be angry at the weather,” he told Fin. “There is no gain in it.”
Fin was not angry. He was relieved, relieved to have Biffi back, relieved not to be in boarding school, but mostly relieved to have discovered, even in the short time he’d been living with Lady, if not rhyme or reason, then at least a rhythm, a pattern, some order to things. The path Fin had been on since the death of his mother had seemed such a vague one, fading off into the mist, unmarked and going nowhere. But now he began to see his days as parts of weeks, his weeks as parts of months, all of them marked by short, specific seasons. There was cold, gray Tyler season and bland, humid Jack season, and there was Biffi season, bright cloudless skies that darkened dramatically into violent storms, then lifted to reveal the sudden blue sky again. It was Biffi season now.
“Tell the boy about his education,” Biffi said one day.
“Good grief, what’s your hurry?” she said.
“Where am I going to school? When?”
“Who said you were going to school at all?”
“I want to go to Phoebe’s school.”
“Okay, okay.” Lady solemnly put her hands on Fin’s shoulders. “You start school next week. And, yes, Phoebe’s school. I didn’t want to tell you until I had to. The prison-house walls and all that.”
Fin gave her a hug.
“Thanks, Lady.”
“It’s against my principles.”
“I know.”
“It is the American law, I believe,” said Biffi.
“Unless you get kicked out. Like Holden Caulfield,” Fin said.
“It’s not prep school, Fin!” Lady said. “For criminy Dutch sake.”
“I know. You would never do that.” Not now. Not with Biffi here.
“They sent me to boarding school because they didn’t like me around the house. But I like you around, Fin.”
“Did you go to boarding school?” he asked Biffi.
Biffi shook his head. No, no boarding school.
He took Fin for a celebratory hamburger.
“I’m glad Lady let me know I’m going to school before school actually started.” Then Fin told Biffi everything he could about the uncles. “She doesn’t even like Uncle Ty at all,” he said. “But there’s this hold he has over her.”
“History,” Biffi said.
“I guess. And Uncle Jack, forget it, she doesn’t like him, either. Not really.”
“But here is a question, my friend: Does she like Biffi?”
Fin wanted to say yes. He wanted to say, Of course she does, she’s in love with you. Instead, he ate his French fries, four at a time, covered in ketchup, until he could stuff no more in, a way to say nothing at all.
“And,” Biffi continued, “really, does she like anybody? Really like them? Sometimes I don’t know.” He handed Fin an extra paper napkin. “But we know she loves you.”
“Ty said I was the son she would never have to have,” Fin said through the French fries. But Biffi must not have heard, because all he said back was “You eat like a peasant.”
* * *
The first day of school, Fin arrived half an hour early and nervously entered what was supposed to be his classroom. There were no desks. There were no chairs. Just a man who seemed to be kneading dough on a long table by the windows. Fin said, “Sorry,” and turned to leave.
“Are you Fin Hadley?” the young man asked him. “Your mother said you’d be here early.”
“My mother is dead.”
Fin watched with delight as the young man flushed and cleared his throat. “I’m so sorry. I thought…”
“You mean my sister, I guess.”
“Oh. I see. Yes, she did seem rather young. Well! Here we are!”
“Is this Mr. Shelby’s classroom? Sixth grade?” Fin asked. But it couldn’t be. What kind of classroom had no desks?
Mr. Shelby explained that he was Mr. Shelby, but he was not, for all intents and purposes, Mr. Shelby at all: no one was called Mr. or Mrs. or Miss at the Ne
w Flower School.
“We’re all one here,” Mr. Shelby explained. “No distinctions.”
“Okay.”
He said his name was Rufus, but he liked to be called Red. Then he laughed. “For all sorts of reasons; the only one you need to know is that Rufus means red in Latin.”
“Do we study Latin?” Fin asked, excited. He was reading a book about the Battle of Actium.
“This is a progressive school,” the teacher said, obviously taken aback.
Mr. Rufus Red Shelby. What a jerk.
When the other kids arrived, ten in all, they sat on the floor in a circle. There were six girls and four boys. Even sitting, the girls towered over the boys.
Red’s pedagogical method became clear that first morning. When a little girl raised her hand, he ignored her. When she began violently swinging it in front of his face, he tilted his head away and did not otherwise respond.
“Red! Red!” she cried out at last.
“Finally!” he said. “You have learned your first lesson. We do not submit to establishment imperatives like ‘raising hands.’ If you want to ask a question, just ask your question! You have as much right to speak as I do.”
By now the little girl was squirming pretty desperately.
“Can I please have permission to go to the girls’ room?” she said.
Red considered this for a moment, then said, “Permission? This is not a matter of permission, Betsy. I like to put most of our endeavors to a vote.” He eyed the wriggling child. “But under the circumstances, yes, you can.”
Looking relieved, the girl asked, “Where is the girls’ room, Red?”
“Ah,” said the teacher brightly. “Never tell a child what he can learn for himself.”
New Flower was so different from Fin’s old school that he hardly thought of it as school at all. They began each day with Community Meeting, usually a song by Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger, once with Pete Seeger actually there to lead them. Sometimes, when they went back to class, Red would ask them to be a tree, which took about fifteen minutes. They would stand or sway, whatever their tree was feeling like that morning. In Science, they raised fruit flies and made posters of different generations of fruit flies, coloring in their fruit-fly eyes with red or yellow, depending. They built a longhouse for Social Studies and ate beef jerky in it, then made posters of it. Some of the kids were bored with the longhouse because they had made a longhouse the year before, but Red said that wasn’t a longhouse at all, that was a wigwam. In Language Arts, they read and discussed the liner notes of Bob Dylan albums and made more posters. For Math, they had a different teacher, an older woman with lint on her sweater, who gave them colored blocks to arrange. No posters.
Fin & Lady: A Novel Page 10