Fin & Lady A Novel by Cathleen Schine

Author:Cathleen Schine
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Adult, Historical
ISBN: 9780374154905
Publisher: Sarah Crichton Books
Published: 2013-07-09T07:00:00+00:00

“If you don’t push it, what’s the point?”

It had been one year since Fin’s mother died, one year since coming to New York City to live with Lady. He’d been an orphan for one year. It felt like ten.

They went back home to Connecticut on the anniversary of Lydia Hadley’s death, a lovely, gentle Saturday in May. Fin sat in the same seat, in the same little Karmann Ghia convertible, the same Lady beside him at the wheel, darting from lane to lane, honking back at the truck drivers who honked at her, the same Gus in the backseat, his head poking out, his ears pushed back by the wind.

Just a different direction. Everything turned around. A turned-around Fin.

Lady was always happy when she was driving. “It makes me feel as though I actually have someplace to go,” she once said. She pulled across two lanes and whipped off the thruway at exit 18. “Ice cream for lunch,” Lady said. “Carvel!”

They had cones dipped in chocolate, Brown Bonnets.

“Who would wear a brown bonnet, though?” Lady said when they were back on the road. “What a sad bonnet that would be.”

Fin didn’t have much to say. He was looking at the sumac that grew along the thruway. It was so familiar. He didn’t sit in his room on Charles Street or walk along Eighth Street or stare out the window in school and think, I miss the stalks of sumac that grow alongside the New England Thruway. But he had missed the sumac, anyway. Just hadn’t realized it.

They pulled into his driveway. What else had he missed that he didn’t know he missed? The apple blossoms were out and perfumed the air. And there was that other smell of spring, the wet, green smell. And the sound of the peepers. And a red-winged blackbird. He was almost dizzy with the sounds around him, with the scent of hay, with the dry, hot dirt in the driveway and the warm animal presence of the cows. Moo, moo, that’s what Tyler had taunted him with, a drunk Tyler. Moo, moo. He laughed suddenly. Moo, moo. The cows were mooing. Tyler could stagger down the street and taunt him all he wanted, but cows still said moo, moo, and no one could ever change that.

“Moo!” he said, turning to Lady.

Gus jumped out of the car and Fin followed. The dog rolled in the grass, his legs sticking up, kicking. Fin wished he could roll in the grass and kick his legs. But here came Mr. Cornelius, the music teacher.

“Welcome home, my liege,” said Mr. Cornelius, who always was a little weird. He bowed.

Fin bowed back. Then—he didn’t mean to, he just did it—Fin hugged Mr. Cornelius. Then, and again he didn’t mean to, he burst into tears.

Mr. Cornelius, who might have been odd but was used to children, said, “You’re as tall as I am.” Which wasn’t saying much, as he couldn’t have been more than five foot six, but was saying it at exactly the right time and in exactly the right tone of voice.

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