“Not one bit,” Marlene said, kissing Finn on the neck. “She’s a very healthy kid. Never gets sick.”
Finn moved away from Marlene and watched Sunny, her head bobbing in time to the song on the radio. “Why is she home from school? She’s always home.”
“School,” Marlene frowned. “She can learn a lot from me. Right here. She can learn everything she needs to know.”
“She’s six years old,” Finn said. “She’s supposed to be in school.”
“I went to school even less than Sunny does,” Marlene said. “I had more important things to do. I had to help my mother. And I don’t think it hurt me one bit.”
Finn sat down at the kitchen table and closed his eyes. He tried to picture Sunny all grown up; he saw the same image, over and over again: an older Sunny, a woman, sitting in another trailer, sorting a man’s socks and listening to the radio.
“Don’t you want her life to be different?” Finn said softly to Marlene.
“Why?” Marlene said, confused and a little angry. “What’s wrong with the way things are?”
“Come on,” Finn said, “do you want her to end up in a trailer camp without an education, even a high-school diploma?”
“What’s wrong with that? Are you saying there’s something the matter with my life?” Marlene said, wishing that Finn would keep quiet the way he usually did.
“Well, I want things to be different,” Finn said. He tried as hard as he could to picture another grown-up Sunny, one who wouldn’t bother with radios and laundry, one who would go off to college, but all he could see was the little girl sorting socks. “I don’t want any more of this,” Finn said to Sunny. “I want you to go to school every day. I want to see you doing some homework.” He had wanted to say I love you, he had wanted to tell her to move far away from Buckley, to major in physics or engineering, but instead he had merely talked about homework. And he had shouted so loud that the little girl on the floor jumped.
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Sunny said to him from her seat on the floor. “You can’t because you’re not really my father.”
“Stop that,” Marlene warned.
“He’s not,” Sunny insisted. “My father died in the war.”
“That’s what I told her,” Marlene said to Finn. “And that might have been him. The boy who died in Vietnam had the same kind of hair as Sunny.”
“You can’t tell me what to do,” Sunny said. She had raised her chin and her bangs fell into her angry eyes.
Something was happening to Finn, something inside. His head felt like a firecracker, and when he stood up, his pulse was so loud it deafened him. If he didn’t do something he would explode, he would break in two. Michael Finn threw the kitchen table on the floor; a toaster and a crystal vase which had been a present to Marlene from her brother, Ben, fell with a crash, and an open package of Sugar Crisps scattered all over the floor like bits of shrapnel. The crash of the table was so loud that it echoed through the metal trailer like gunfire; it echoed in Finn’s own head. Finn then looked down at Sunny, who sat very quietly on the floor, her eyes wide and her mouth open in surprise. He knew that if she had been a boy, his son, Finn would have ignored the table he had sent crashing down. Instead, he would have walked across the room and slapped the boy so hard that the child would have risen up like a puppet, like old trash paper, like Michael Finn himself used to do when his own father had hit him in a rage that Finn had never understood before.
It was then that Michael Finn began to cry. He put his hands over his eyes, and sobs began to escape in a low-pitched wail. Marlene backed up against the stove, her shoulders were stiff. She had been waiting for the punch she was certain she’d receive before Finn started crying. But now she was more shocked than she would have been had Finn blackened both her eyes. The man she was to marry in less than a month was weeping, like a baby; and for the first time Marlene studied Finn as if he truly was a stranger. She did not dare to go near him. Instead, Sunny stood up, left her pile of sorted socks, and walked toward Finn, stepping carefully over the spilled Sugar Crisps. She did not touch him, but she stood so close that Finn could feel her breath, and smell her odor, a soft combination of laundry detergent and spearmint gum.
“You can be my father,” Sunny said nonchalantly.
Finn shook his head, tears streaked through his fingers, he couldn’t speak.
“Sure,” Sunny nodded. “You can. I want you to be.”
“No,” Finn said finally when he had wiped his eyes. He could not look at the child who stood so close to him. “I can’t be.” Finn shook his head. “I don’t want to be,” he whispered.
A few days later, Finn withdrew all his savings and bought a brand new Camaro with wire-spoked wheels, and he left Buckley, West Virginia, taking with him even less than he had brought when he first arrived, nearly a year before. He left at dawn, without bothering to say goodbye to Marlene. Since the day Finn had allowed her to see him cry, without even trying to run out the trailer door before the first tear fell, Marlene could no longer look at him. Although now and then Finn had caught her eyeing him when she thought he could not see, as if he was an impersonator, an impostor who had invaded her trailer and her life.
Finn did not say goodbye to Sunny either, he made it a point not to; he had been avoiding her, and the child seemed not to notice—she had taken to humming to herself as she sat in her corner of the trailer, she sang a soft, private melody which pierced Michael Finn’s heart. The morning he left, as he followed the white highway line which would lead him back to New York, Finn tried to convince himself that Sunny had never really expected him to stay. And although he was certain that if he tried for the rest of his natural-born days he still would never have belonged, Finn could think of nothing but the child who sat sorting socks on the floor.
Later that day, when he crossed the West Virginia state line, Finn imagined that Sunny was with him; she was following him over the hills, she was floating somewhere near his left ear beating a small pair of wings that filled his head with a low whirring noise. In time, the strange noise died away, but even on the second day of his trip, Finn was still looking in his rearview mirror. All the distance in the world couldn’t separate Finn from the steep West Virginia hills he had left far behind, and no matter how fast he drove his new Camaro, he couldn’t ever outrace the incredible speed of sadness and regret.
THREE
HERE ON THE BEACH, THAT small despairing angel of guilt who had sprung from Finn’s imagination still buzzed around us.
“That all happened a long time ago,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Finn said. “Don’t you see? I’m the same person I was then.”
“You’re wrong,” I said. “You’ve changed.”
Finn shook his head. “I would still leave when things got tough. I’d do it again. Even though I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone, I’d still do it.”
“But you were smart to leave West Virginia,” I said. “Everyone was drowning, and if you stayed you couldn’t have rescued anyone; you would only have gone down, too.”
“The risks are too high,” Michael Finn said. “Don’t you see that? Can’t you tell?”
Down the driveway, Carter flashed the headlights of the MG.
“He’s calling me,” I said to Finn.
Inside the house, Reno LeKnight had poured himself another drink and was watching the deck carefully, just to make certain there was no foul play and that Finn would not suddenly disappear into the wild night.
“I think you should go,” Finn said. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Carter flashed his headlights once more; I wished the MG would disappear.
“Are you saying you don’t want to see me?” I asked.
Finn looked down the driveway. “He’s calling you.”
I wished I could shoot down all Finn’s memories; one by one they would fall into the sand.
“Go home,” Finn told me. “There’s nothing else to talk about.”
; Finn’s shirt was as white as a hand raised in treacherous water, his skin was as pale as a man who had never known daylight, but I was too tired to fight, I didn’t even know where to begin, or how to combat bodiless enemies, stronger in spirit than they could ever have been in the flesh.
“Go home,” Finn whispered.
I walked down the icy deck stairs; behind me the double door opened and Reno LeKnight came onto the deck to scold Finn for standing outside without a winter coat. I didn’t hear whether Finn answered the attorney; for all I knew Finn might have been staring after me with tears on his face, for all I knew his feet had been frozen to the wooden deck so that each time he was about to run after me he pulled back, rooted to the spot where he stood. I walked over the sand, through the faded reeds, until I reached the car. When I climbed inside, I slammed the door so hard that the window crank fell off.
“Oh,” I said, picking it up. “I’m sorry.”
“Never mind,” Carter said softly.
He started the engine, drove out the driveway, and then made a slow U-turn on the wide empty road.
“I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” I said once we were over the bridge and the beach house was behind us.
“I never mind waiting for you,” Carter said with a smile.
“I might as well tell you the truth,” I said as we pulled onto the expressway. “I’m in love with Michael Finn.”
“Ah,” Carter said.
I leaned my head against the window, afraid to look at Carter.
“For someone in love, you don’t seem very happy,” Carter said gently.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m not.”
I lit a cigarette. “Are you angry?” I asked.
“I’m confused,” Carter said. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” I confessed.
We drove the rest of the way back to Fishers Cove without talking. When we reached Minnie’s house, I asked Carter inside for tea, hoping he would refuse the invitation.
“I think I should come in,” Carter told me.
We sat in the kitchen, and I made the tea which neither of us would drink. The house was quiet, Minnie and Beaumont were both out.
“It’s like a freezer in here,” Carter said, pulling his sweater down over his hands like mittens, and then warming his fingers on the cup of tea I set down in front of him. “I knew something was wrong,” he said now. “I knew you were unhappy.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I thought you were unhappy with your job,” Carter went on. “I thought you needed a challenge.” He reached inside his coat pocket and brought out several pamphlets. “I got these for you.”
“What are they?” I asked.
“Lists of jobs,” Carter told me. “Political action, solar energy groups. They need social workers, too, you know.”
When I looked through the pamphlets I couldn’t help thinking of Minnie’s letters. If all those letters she wrote over the years had been collected and stored, they would have filled the kitchen from ceiling to floor. Some of them had been written on summer evenings when all the visiting Lanskys wanted to do was drink lemonade and watch the sunset. But Minnie would always appear with white paper and sharpened pencils, along with the addresses of state and county officials. I had refused to write even one of those letters, instead I had gone off to the beach and watched sea gulls drop clamshells on the rocks while up on the porch all of the other Lanskys folded their messages into clean envelopes.
As I leafed through Carter’s pamphlets, I was not so certain as I had once been that all those letters were worthless. Perhaps Minnie had been right when she called down to the beach for me, waiting on the porch with envelopes and paper.
“There’s a possibility I may be fired from Outreach,” I said. “And you’re right, I’ve been unhappy at work.”
“That’s all I thought it was,” Carter said. “I never thought it was anything like love.”
“This doesn’t mean I don’t care for you,” I said. “And it certainly doesn’t mean I’ll ever see Finn again.”
“If you aren’t going to see him, we can still go on as before,” Carter said. “We can try.”
“You know we can’t,” I sighed. “Everything between us is gone.”
“Not everything,” Carter said.
I walked Carter to the door and we kissed good night in the hallway.
“Let’s not do anything right away, Nat,” Carter said. “Take some time. Think about it.”
When I closed the door behind Carter I went to the parlor, and then sat down to read the pamphlets. There were jobs in California and Florida, offers that would take me far away from both Carter and Finn. Some of them even seemed important: a court advocate in San Luis Obispo, an organizer for workers who had left a working power plant in western Florida to form a grievance committee. It seemed to me now that Minnie was quite the opposite of Finn. Her Russian village had been more of a trap than anything Finn had ever faced, the odds against her more heavily weighed. Still, she had managed to survive. And if she hadn’t begun an explosion that would shatter steel, she also hadn’t allowed an implosion that would crack her own heart and rupture every vein. She had taken one step at a time, refusing to accept a fate that was centuries old. Minnie had gotten herself across the Atlantic and stood up to her life with a barrage of letters, and with hope.
By the time Minnie got home I was ready to throw my arms around her and forget all our past differences. I would live without Carter, if I had to I could live without Finn, all of this seemed trivial compared with the destiny that Minnie had had to face. But when I went to greet my aunt and let her know how wrong I had been all those years, I found that she wasn’t alone.
Minnie kicked open the front door with the heel of her boot. “Help,” she called to me. “We need some help here.”
My aunt was struggling with an old brown suitcase. Behind her stood the sisters, Evie and Yolanda, each carrying a box full of clothing and memories.
“They’re moving in tonight?” I asked.
“There’s a TV and a dehumidifier out on the porch,” Minnie told me. “Beaumont’s taken the Mustang and gone back for Arthur. There are times when a compact car isn’t practical, no matter how much fuel it saves.”
I went out to the porch and carried in the TV and dehumidifier.
“Careful,” Evie called to me. “I don’t know what I’d do without my TV. I don’t know how I’d face the morning without the ‘Today’ show.”
“Put everything right there.” Minnie waved her hand toward the parlor. “We’ll sort it out tomorrow.”
“I was thinking about all the summers I spent here,” I said wistfully, but Minnie was studying the boxes and appliances with a scowl.
“Garbage, garbage, garbage,” Minnie said. “What human beings don’t collect in a lifetime.”
“I used to get so angry at all the letters you had the Lanskys write,” I went on.
“You were angry?” Minnie said. “I never noticed.”
“Oh my,” Evie was saying as she stood in the hallway. “Oh my,” she said as she watched her belongings pile up in the parlor.
“Let’s get the show on the road,” Minnie advised. “Let’s get your rooms straightened out.”
But the sisters refused to move from the hallway; they stood clutching each other’s arms, two old women terrified by the freedom they had just been granted.
“I don’t know if we can,” Yolanda said shyly. “I don’t know if we can do anything at all.”
Minnie eyed her friends carefully. “What we all need,” my aunt said, as she removed her coat and her gloves, “is a cup of tea.”
Minnie and I walked the sisters into the parlor; the old women held each other so close that they seemed to be one being. Minnie seated them on the loveseat, and then we went into the kitchen.
“I hope they don’t both have breakdowns,” I said.
“They need a good night’s sleep,” Minnie said.
&nbs
p; “I keep thinking about the past,” I said to Minnie.
“The past?”
“I’ve been mistaken about a lot of things,” I admitted.
“Of course you have,” Minnie agreed, as she collected cups and saucers. “But take my advice,” my aunt said, while she loaded the tea tray, “don’t think about the past too much. Don’t dwell on mistakes. What’s done is done.”
And so I followed Minnie back into the parlor without ever letting her know how much I regretted feelings I had never let her know about in the first place. As far as Minnie was concerned, there was too much of the present to be concerned with to look back to the past. I decided to follow her advice, and have tea with the sisters; Evie and Yolanda had now calmed down enough to remove their coats and spoon honey into their tea.
“I never thought I’d feel like this,” Yolanda said, apologizing for the way her teacup shook in her trembling hands.
“Why shouldn’t you be nervous?” Minnie said. “Even I’m nervous. This communal living is a big step for all of us. It’s a new start, and if you were perfectly calm, you’d be dead. Believe me, it’s better to be nervous than dead.”
When the front door opened and then slammed shut, the three old women smiled at each other.
“That will be Arthur,” Evie said.
“If anyone can cheer a person up, it’s Arthur,” Minnie confided to me.
Beaumont and Arthur came into the parlor, each carrying a suitcase. “Freedom,” Arthur called out to us in greeting.
“This place is getting too crowded,” Beaumont said as he shifted a suitcase from hand to hand.
“Nonsense,” Minnie said. “The more the merrier.”
Beaumont declined to have tea with us; instead he carried suitcases up to the second floor, and then retreated to his quiet basement. I sat and watched the fire. I could have easily fallen asleep, lulled by the old-timers’ voices. But Minnie suddenly stood; she remembered that she had been saving something for me.
“It can wait till morning,” I said, but Minnie had already jumped up and begun to rummage through a bureau drawer in the hallway. When she returned to the parlor she held out a crumpled envelope.