Forever Finley

by Holly Schindler

  She had only just passed a large white statue decorated with carvings of Civil War-era muskets when her sneaker hit a slick spot—a puddle from the afternoon’s brief shower, lined by fallen leaves. Natalie lost her footing; she slipped and threw her arms out as she tried to catch herself. But she just kept staggering, her shin slamming painfully against a white marble slab.

  “Ooomph,” she said, her knees buckling. She closed her eyes, prepared for the pain of slamming into the ground.

  And then, out of nowhere, someone caught her.

  “Thanks,” Natalie breathed. “And sorry. I didn’t mean to run into you.” But she wasn’t sorry at all. She wanted to hang on.

  “No apologies necessary.”

  When Natalie pulled herself away, she saw him—the man who had caught her: slender build, a vintage looking olive green woolen coat buttoned up around his throat. Short dark hair, flashing blue eyes, and a smile warm enough to melt the damp November chill.

  He offered her his arm. Natalie was shocked to find nothing strange or frightening about sliding her fingers into the crook of a stranger’s elbow.

  “George,” he offered.

  “Natalie,” she said.

  And suddenly, just like that, they became friends. In the same way that once, simply asking another girl in pigtails if she wanted to be on the opposite side of the playground teeter-totter could make the two inseparable. Natalie relished their instant, inexplicable connection.

  George talked as though they’d known each other for years. Like this was a date, an afternoon they’d planned on all along. When Natalie let go of the shock of their easy way and focused on what George was actually saying, she realized he was telling her about being stuck overseas. About month after month spent in foreign places—lands that looked nothing like home.

  He was handsome, Natalie thought as he carried on, his words coming both rapidly and smoothly, but he was attractive in a way that seemed more sophisticated than any of the men Natalie had been close to. He seemed more ironed shirts and neckties. Old-fashioned thank-you cards and dancing a waltz in front of a bandstand. His voice was measured—intelligent and polite, like he was used to calling women “ma’am” with no sense of sarcasm.

  “I’ve learned a trick,” he confided, lowering his voice in a way that said it was a secret he didn’t want to share with anyone else. “A trick for dealing with solitude or homesickness.”

  Natalie gasped. Her eyes swelled. Did it show? Did she look lonely? Was he taking pity on her?

  He placed his hand on her back in a manner that reassured her, insisted he was only talking about himself. “You have to pretend that what you’re doing right now, at this moment, is merely practicing a tiny bit of self-inflicted denial, in order for you to increase the pleasure of enjoying something beautiful that will be coming along soon.”

  When Natalie wrinkled her forehead at him, he continued, “Haven’t you ever gone without lunch—or maybe even just nibbled at a few soda crackers—before a big dinner in a fancy restaurant? Sure you have. You sacrifice your midday meal in order to be completely ravenous by the time you get to dinner. And then it tastes all the better for having gone without for a little while.”

  A sense of utter peace washed over Natalie. He was right. She had done that before.

  “What am I waiting for, though?” she blurted. “What’s the big wonderful thing that’s coming?” She covered her lips with her fingers. Why was she asking him? What did George know of her life?

  As she chewed her lip, a comfortable silence slipped its arms around them. Twilight was quickly giving way to night. The sun would soon pull the horizon over its head like a blanket and settle in for a good long rest. George was steering her toward the exit, where the caretaker was leaning against his car, waiting for them to leave so that he could close the gates for the night. Surely George had other places to be, even if he was far from home. He had things to do, too. Everyone did.

  Still, though, she wanted to ask him to forget his plans, to come with her to get coffee or cross the street and share her still mostly frozen microwave dinner.

  He seemed to sense what she was thinking. Looking directly into her eyes, he finally answered her question. “You’ll know. About your big wonderful thing. Come December.”

  “Come—?” Natalie started to ask. But George was leaving her, slipping away into the fog and the darkening night. Natalie shivered, sliding her hands into the pockets of her sweats. Her fingers wrapped around her phone as George paused to glance behind his shoulder and wave. Without thinking, she pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of him. The flash seemed to startle him—he raised one of his arms, elbow out, as though to duck for safety.

  She regretted scaring him, but not taking the picture. She wanted proof of the first truly lovely thing that had happened since her arrival.

  But her picture was uncharacteristically fuzzy and amateurish and out of focus. Clarity was what had drawn her to lenses in the first place—she’d always loved how sharp and defined an image or footage looked after it had been captured by one of her cameras. But then again, why wouldn’t this picture be blurry? Didn’t it just figure, when so much of her life seemed out of focus? And there she went all over again, falling right back into her sour feelings.

  Only, she didn’t fall as deeply. Not this time. Natalie was surprised to find, the next day, that her loneliness didn’t quite fit the same—not when she thought of George. It was no longer the second skin she had grown the moment she’d crossed the city limits, squeezing her tight. It didn’t cover every inch of her.

  That night, as Natalie sat in five o’clock coming-home traffic, it seemed to her that the whole world was playing George’s game. Getting ready for the upcoming holidays—rushing out to shop and stock up for enormous family feasts. Scrimping on their regular weekday meals and toiletries in order to buy gifts. Everyone was going without right now, in order to prepare for their big wonderful thing. Just like she was. It made her feel less alone.

  She raced straight to the cemetery, past the caretaker’s car and through the gates. George was coming down the path, dressed in the same olive coat. Wearing the same pleased expression.

  It continued this way—the two of them walking through the twilight fog after Natalie’s workday. George making confessions about the games he’d played in his mind, the fantasies he’d cooked up to carry him through his loneliest days. Natalie had her own now, too—fantasies of what it would be like to get George beyond the stone barriers, past the gate. How life would be when he stopped sidestepping her invitations and avoiding her questions of what he did during his days. At times, she felt the cemetery was the real world, and the other hours of the day were a sleepwalk she engaged in until she could get back to him, her George.

  “Come December,” he kept assuring her. “It’ll all change come December.”

  “What will?” she wanted to know.

  George only smiled as he drifted off into the evening.

  But things had already changed. Natalie had someone—she had her George. And that made her feel so good that she often hummed under her breath as she arrived for work. She bought a corsage of mums on a whim—”Just because,” she’d told the florist—but really because it was the sort of old-fashioned touch that she imagined George would appreciate. She wore it to work, and got the kind of compliments that said that maybe it wasn’t so bad after all to stand out, maybe she wasn’t supposed to spend the entire day concealing herself behind her lens, staying out of sight.

  That led to her daring to shoot events at different angles or pan across the area the moment her ears picked up on any odd sounds. She caught moments of action during a standoff with police at an apartment building, anguished human moments at the scene of an accident when the mother of an injured boy was comforted by her husband. She was doing better work. Reporters at the studio were seeking her out, asking her to come with them on location. Her voice bounced through the control room as she aided in editing her footage.
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  She was invited to a Thanksgiving dinner being thrown by one of her coworkers—all of the singles were going to have their own feast, a potluck extravaganza.

  “My big meal!” she giggled when she next saw George. “Just like you said, the day we met. You should come with me.”

  George shook his head. “It’ll change,” he promised her. “Come December.”

  It was beginning to sound like some sort of prediction, a fortune, her fate. Was he telling her he was leaving? He was returning home? She was afraid to ask.

  She went to Thanksgiving dinner wearing one of her corsages and carrying homemade cranberry salad, a recipe recited by her mother over the phone. At first, she felt sad thinking about George, wondering what he was doing and wishing he could have joined her. But she drank wine and she listened to her producer’s long story of thawing the turkey and she danced with a man from marketing after the pumpkin pie, and it was wonderful, wonderful.

  All because of George. Because of the mind game he’d taught her to play. It had made the world look different. And because it had looked different, she’d acted differently in it. And then the world wasn’t just seeming different, it was different. Lighter and full of more people and dreams that were beautiful and could be chased until they came true.

  That evening, she raced through the rows of pristine white stones, the cranberry stain still on her lips. She wanted to tell George how full her belly was with food and how full her ears were with laughter. And how he’d opened her up to these things.

  He knew it, the minute he stepped from a wisp of autumn fog and saw the expression on her face. No need for explanation. He was so happy for her that he grabbed her hand and together, they raced to the band pavilion, where they climbed onto the stage—the same stage that hosted Veterans Day and Memorial Day celebrations. And they danced. He twirled her as he hummed the kind of old-fashioned love song that played behind the most romantic scenes of the classic movies Natalie’d watched with her mother.

  He stroked her cheek. “You look so joyful,” he told her. “My trick has worked.”

  “My big wonderful thing was you,” she blurted. “Right? Wasn’t it you, all along?”

  Instead of answering, George pulled her close. He smelled like chimney smoke and cedar boxes and yellowed love letters as he lowered his face toward hers. His lips brushed her own, almost shyly. The kiss tingled across her face.

  “Your lips are cold,” Natalie whispered, wrapping her arms around George’s waist and pressing her cheek against the scratchy wool of his coat. “Come inside with me.”

  “No,” George whispered. “You have to go.”

  “But when will—”

  “Come December,” he promised, and he kissed her cheek softly, sweetly. Sending tingles through her a second time.

  Thanksgiving fog swirled, dancing across the path. George slipped away from her—dissolving more than he seemed to walk away.

  Natalie returned to the cemetery at the same time the next day, racing through the rows of white stones. But George didn’t show—the first time since she’d started coming to the cemetery that she didn’t see him. It made her feel panicky and off-center. She returned the next two evenings, calling his name. She raced back to the pavilion where they had danced. But he was nowhere.

  “Excuse me,” she called out to the caretaker who was carrying an armload of pine wreaths and whistling a carol. “Have you seen that man? The one in the green coat? George.”

  The caretaker stared back blankly.

  “The one I’ve been walking with in the evening. You know.”

  “No,” he confessed. “I haven’t seen anybody but you in here lately. Like I said, nobody jogs too much this time of year. Especially with the shorter days. Gates close so early, you know.”

  Natalie frowned. “But you saw us that first night, before Thanksgiving. The night you were waiting by your car?”

  He offered a shrug of his wide shoulders. “I feel better if I know you haven’t been in here by yourself. Always did wonder why a young girl liked to spend so much time alone in a cemetery.” His whistle returned as he took up the task of decorating the iron gate with red outdoor ribbon and small wreaths.

  The caretaker was getting on in years, Natalie reasoned. Either his eyes or his memory had begun to fail him.

  Come December. George would return then, she told herself. He would be hers.

  The first evening of the month, Natalie raced home, and she dressed like a girl getting ready for a date with a man she was falling in love with. Her hands shook as she curled her hair. She fumbled nervously in her attempt to pull the tags from a new suede skirt and tug on her favorite boots. Her mouth ran dry in anticipation as she popped open the fridge, retrieving yet another of the corsages that had become something of a signature look.

  She raced across the street. Snow flurries brushed her face and stuck to her eyelashes. The air was so cold, it pinched her lungs and stung her cheeks.

  “George!” she called out. Her voice echoed. Hardy winter sparrows scattered through bare tree limbs. “George?”

  He didn’t answer. Her pounding heart throbbed inside her ears. Where was he?

  She took a step backward, yelping as her foot slammed into a headstone. She’d been here before; she recognized the white statue with the Civil War muskets. This was where she’d met George, where he caught her. This headstone—it was the same one she’d tripped over that first day, now marked by a small holiday arrangement of pine cones and an evergreen branch that had been tied together with red ribbon. The stone’s simple inscription read, “G.A. Hargrove. US Army. WWI.”

  She cocked her head to the side, scanning the rest of the cemetery for George’s face.

  The wind picked up. Bare tree limbs swayed, clicking together. The caretaker’s holiday decorations rolled through the rows like tumbleweeds.

  Natalie squatted, picking up the small pine arrangement that had just fallen on the toe of her boot. It had a label, like the one the caretaker had asked her to place on any decoration: “George Hargrove.”

  A funny sinking feeling overtook her as she quickly replaced the arrangement and dug out her phone. Her thumb flew across the screen while she searched for the photo she’d taken that first night. There he was—her George. But as she stared, George’s faint image grew still hazier, then disappeared completely into the blur.

  Natalie began to tremble. George had never talked about the present. Only mentioned that he was far from home. Far from home, but never with a car? Natalie thought, turning toward the parking lot, where she saw only the caretaker’s ancient Ford. Far from home, but always at the cemetery to meet her—even on Thanksgiving?

  Or, Natalie thought, staring at the headstone, George had been in a foreign land a long time ago. He was only telling her he understood what it was to be gloomy and heartsick.

  Just as quickly as all these thoughts rose, though, another round of questions eclipsed them all: Had Natalie been playing games in her mind in order to stop feeling so terribly lonely? Like a solitary child with imaginary play friends? Had there never been a George? A burgeoning romance? Only a dream—a silly little daydream about a beautiful stranger who could rescue her from sadness? A daydream that she could use to tide herself over until she had made a few real human connections in her new hometown?

  It had all seemed so incredibly real, though. Perhaps the lens up there in her head was the strongest of all. Able to turn even the fuzziest of ideas into the sharpest of images.

  Come December. Somehow, she’d known all along it was how much time she’d need to make this new home feel comfortable. That was it—wasn’t it?

  Natalie touched the cold marble headstone as gently as she’d once imagined George stroking her cheek. “Bye, George,” she whispered. But it didn’t sound like a sad parting—it sounded more like an expression of her own amazement.

  She backed away from the grave, hurried toward the gate. Her breath drew pretty cursive letters through the air as she wave
d to the caretaker.

  Inside her hallway, a young man was struggling to hold a cardboard box and unlock a door at the same time. Natalie rushed to help him. A move she never would have made without the introduction of “George” and his game. Yes, Natalie thought as she chuckled to herself, without George, she would have simply tucked her head down and darted away from the stranger, wallowing in her isolation.

  Now, though, she offered a neighborly, “Let me help,” sliding the box from his arm. It jingled, like it was full of something fragile, something made of porcelain or glass. Which made her feel even better about coming to his aid.

  “Thanks,” he said, unlocking the door. “I’m a little disorganized. I’m just moving in.”

  He pushed the door open and turned toward her. He had warm blue summer day eyes; the skin around them rippled as he smiled at her. It was a kind smile. A welcoming smile. The sort of smile that maybe Natalie had been dreaming of the day she’d jogged in the cemetery, when she’d first imagined George. Of course she had imagined George. What was the other possibility?

  Natalie’s new neighbor took the box from her, placed it gently on the ground. “I’m Damien,” he said, extending his hand in greeting. And paused. “I’m warning you—my last name’s a doozy. You’ll laugh.”

  “Oh, please. How bad could it be?”

  He sucked in a breath. “You’ll never believe me, especially at this time of year.”

  “Try me.” She loved that he used that word—believe. Couldn’t she see the world through any lens she wanted? Isn’t that what “George” had taught her? Didn’t that mean that a girl would be a fool not to believe in pure magic?

  “It’s December,” he confessed. “Damien December.”

  January Thaw

  Big dreams, a small town, and friends who know you better than you know yourself.