Fin & Lady: A Novel (6 page)

“Lassie!” he said. “You came home.”

Fin had never liked winkers, and now the man had taken off his hat and was spinning it on one finger.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Michael?” said the man.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Morrison,” Mike said, giving Fin a sidelong glance.

The elevator stopped at Lady’s floor and the man got out. He turned to Fin and Gus with an expression of mock dismay.

“Are you two following me?”

Fin was about to speak when Mabel opened the door. “Look who’s here,” she said.

“With bells on,” said the cheerful Mr. Morrison, handing her his hat.

In the living room, Lady was slouched in a chair smoking furiously, as if smoking were something you worked at, practiced, like playing the piano.

Mr. Morrison said, “You look wonderful, Lady.”

“Merry as a cricket,” said Lady, but she did not look merry. She looked ready to bolt, trailing her reins behind her.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Has it?”

“Too long.”

The conversation was stilted, as if it couldn’t breathe.

“I’m home,” Fin said loudly. “Lady, I’m home.”

“Yes, I seem to have acquired an entourage.” Mr. Morrison glanced at Fin and Gus. “Do you know them?”

Mr. Morrison was nattily dressed and, Fin noticed, had beautifully manicured hands. Fin put out his own rather grubby hand and watched with pleasure Mr. Morrison’s brief hesitation before taking it.

Lady poured whiskey into a glass and handed it to Mr. Morrison.

“You remembered,” he said.

“It’s a drink, Tyler.”

Mr. Morrison said, “Skoal?”

Lady turned to Fin. “Mr. Morrison is … an old friend.”

“I hope I am,” said Mr. Morrison. “I want to be friends with you, too, son.”

“My father’s dead.”

But then, to Fin’s chagrin, Lady asked him to leave her and Mr. Morrison alone to discuss business.

In the dining room, Fin helped Mabel set the table. “What
business
?” he asked.

“He’s a lawyer.”

“Why does Lady need a lawyer? Did she get in trouble?” He tried to sound concerned, but he was relieved. A lawyer, not a friend, not a boyfriend.

“White people have lawyers before they get in trouble. Especially when they’ve got boys around. Eleven-year-old boys.”

He grinned at her. She gave a small twitch, which he took to be a smile in return. Mabel wore a wig. She adjusted it slightly.

“Is that hot?” he asked. “Like a hat?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“But is it?”

“Hot as all get-out.”

“So it’s good in winter. And winter’s longer than summer.”

This time, Mabel really did smile.

A little while later, Lady called Fin into the living room. There were a few things they had to discuss, she said. A few things about Fin’s situation. “You see, Mr. Morrison is your fiscal guardian—”

“
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.”