Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  I screwed the cap back on the paint, wrapped the brush in a piece of loose-leaf paper, and slipped them both into my backpack. We were all on that portrait now. The three of us. Greta, Toby, and me.

  And the wolf. As I slid the painting back into its metal box I caught a glimpse of him. Still there, still hiding in the shadow of the negative space.

  Thirty-Nine

  “What are you wearing?”

  I looked down at myself.

  “My maroon skirt and a gray sweater.”

  “No, brainless. To the party. On Saturday.”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Ben asked if you were going.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  We were at the end of the driveway, waiting for the bus, which was even later than usual. Greta looked tired. She wasn’t wearing makeup, and her hair was twisted into a messy bun. The strap on her usual backpack had broken on the way home from school earlier in the week, and so she had to use this old Snoopy one from years ago, where Woodstock is fluttering around Snoopy’s head, just about to land.

  “Why are you always trying to get me to care about Ben Dellahunt anyway? I hardly even know him.”

  She let out a frustrated breath. “You are so hopeless.”

  “No, really.”

  She pursed her lips, put her hands on her hips, and stared at me. “Maybe I’m trying to help you. Did you ever think of that?”

  “No.”

  I saw a look pass over Greta’s face then. Like she wanted to say something but couldn’t do it. “Whatever, June. What. Ever. You . . . you . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Anyway,” I said, “maybe you should think about what you’re going to wear to the party. Maybe you’re not looking so great either.”

  Greta spun around, hands on her hips. Her face had turned from normal to murderous in an instant.

  “I know you weren’t at the rehearsal on Monday. You’re a big liar, June. You told Mom and me and you think nobody’s gonna find out where you go? You really think you can keep your big secret forever?” She was actually shouting at me. Right out on the street. It felt like a bomb going off, and I stood there frozen. Then, just as fast, Greta turned her back to me and walked to the other side of the maple tree. She leaned up against it so her whole body disappeared. All I could see was one of her feet edging out from the trunk, tapping at the dirt. We waited another five minutes for the bus, and the whole time I watched Greta’s dainty foot tapping, like she was sending some kind of Morse code message into the ground.

  That night my parents came home in time for dinner. Greta had mentioned that there was no rehearsal, so they decided it would be nice to have a real family dinner together. I was glad I was there, that I hadn’t made plans to go to the city. Sometimes I didn’t even remember that I kind of missed my parents during tax season. It was only when they were finally around that I’d remember how nice it was to have them there. When I got my own dinner I just ladled some stew into a bowl, but when my mother did it she’d make garlic bread and a salad and she’d put a dollop of sour cream on everybody’s stew. It felt like a real meal instead of just something you were supposed to do.

  Greta and I were doing homework at opposite ends of the kitchen table when they got home that night. Greta had made a wall out of her biology and calculus textbooks so she wouldn’t have to look at me. She laid them down when my father came in the door.

  “Guess what I have,” my father said, raising a Caldor bag over his head. He had a huge grin on his face.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Guess.”

  Greta eyed the bag. “Trivial Pursuit,” she said.

  “Oh,” he said, looking disappointed. “Well, okay. I guess you got it.”

  The disappointment hung on his face for a few seconds, but as soon as he had the box open, he started to get excited all over again. I figured we were probably the only family in the nation not to own Trivial Pursuit. My father always held out on buying the latest thing. He always said the smart people waited awhile, until the price came down.

  “So who’s up for a game?” he said, shaking the little pie pieces out onto the table.

  Even though it was a weeknight we played until late. All four of us. My mother made popcorn and instant iced tea, which was sweet and lemony.

  It was the first game in years that our parents were actually good at, and even though Greta refused to look at me for the whole game, it was fun.

  “Who played aging rodeo rider Junior Bonner?” Greta read out, and right away my mother knew it.

  “Steve McQueen,” she said, without a second of hesitation.

  I got a few of the science ones like, What element’s chemical symbol is Fe? and What is the scientific name for the Northern Lights?, but mostly they were really hard. The funniest ones were the sports questions that were actually about drinking. Greta got How do you make a Black Russian black? which she had no trouble getting right. The answer was Tia Maria or Kahlua, and Greta knew both.

  In the end, my dad won it with a history question: “A 1962 agreement between Britain and France led to the building of what?” Greta asked.

  “Ummm . . . Concorde?” he said.

  We all groaned, and he sat there in complete disbelief.

  “I won it? I won a game?”

  My mother went up to bed and Greta left to call a friend, but my father and I sat there, reading out questions from the box to each other and sipping iced tea, until we could barely keep our eyes open. Every once in a while a question like What is a prestidigitator? would come up, and I would think of Toby.

  “Dad?”

  “Wait a second, let me get a new one.”

  “No. I have a real question.”

  He nodded. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Did you know Uncle Finn’s . . . special friend?” I nearly gagged on those stupid words, but I didn’t want to give anything away.

  He looked over his shoulder, down the hall. I guessed he was making sure my mother was long gone. Then he turned back to me.

  “I met him a couple times. When they first moved here. That was maybe eight, nine years ago. What do you want to know?”

  “Just . . . Mom. She seems to hate him and, I don’t know, I can’t imagine Finn being with someone who was that bad.”

  He picked up his plastic pie and tipped the little triangles out onto the table. Then one by one he loaded them back in. He sighed.

  “Okay. I’m going to tell you a couple things, and I’m going to trust you not to make a big deal about them. I’m going to trust you particularly not to repeat them to your mother, okay?” I nodded, and he went on. “I don’t want you thinking your mother’s . . . I want you to see where she’s coming from.”

  “Okay.”

  “You looked at Finn and your mother as adults, and it was like they were so different you’d hardly know they were brother and sister, right? Your mother the accountant; Finn in the city with his art and everything. But that’s not how it used to be. When they were kids, right up through their teenage years, the two of them were together all the time. They’d move to some new army base and it was just the two of them. I don’t know much about art—okay, I don’t know anything about art—but as far as drawing’s concerned, your mother had a talent. She talks about it sometimes. How she and Finn would go off somewhere and draw and draw. Has she ever said anything to you about that?”

  I shook my head. “I never even knew she did drawings.”

  “Exactly.”

  I thought of that sketchbook Finn gave her years ago. The look on her face in that restaurant.

  “You know, she still has the metal watercolor tin they used to take out with them. She said they used to have plans. That the two of them would move to New York and be artists there. They talked about it like it was real. Like it was really going to happen one day. You know Finn. When he said things, you couldn’t help believing in them. She couldn’t help thinking he’d find a way to
make it happen. And then one day he was just gone. Of course he was young—only seventeen—but she was absolutely crushed. He left a note saying he’d come back, that he’d meet her in New York when he figured things out, but it wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get over it. He traveled all over the world. Paris, London, Berlin. He’d send her postcards of his exhibits, which she said was worse than hearing nothing at all. And then one day he came back. He was really in New York. But by then we were married. By that time we had you and Greta and she hadn’t painted or drawn anything for years. We went down together to the city to see Finn, and she was giddy. I could be wrong here, but I think she might have secretly hoped she would finally get her chance to do her own art. That maybe we’d move down into the city and somehow she would work with Finn.”

  I wasn’t sure, but I thought I saw a little bit of hurt on my father’s face then. He tipped the pie pieces back out onto the table and let them sit there.

  “That day in the city, we met Finn at a coffee shop, but he wasn’t alone. Toby was with him. And all the enthusiasm Danni had carried with her into the city seeped away when she saw the two of them together. I didn’t understand it then. I thought Toby seemed okay. Sort of a weird kind of guy, but nice enough. But your mother, she took an instant dislike to him. Later, she told me Finn had written to her about Toby. Told her about his past. I don’t know the whole story, but apparently he’d been in some pretty bad trouble. That’s what she always went back to. How he was unsuitable. How he was using Finn. And then years later when Finn got sick . . . Well, Toby was her answer for everything. He made Finn lazy, made him stop painting, took him away from his family, and then on top of all that he gave him AIDS. I think she imagined that somehow without Toby things might have been different between her and Finn. Danni always said Finn deserved better. But the truth is, I don’t think it had anything to do with what Toby had done in his past or anything like that. He could have been the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and Danni would have had a problem with him. I think . . .” My dad looked down and nudged the pie pieces. “I think your mother was embarrassed about the way things had turned out. Embarrassed that she’d gone and become an accountant. That she’d married a boring old numbers guy like me and was living in the dreaded suburbs. There was Finn, New York City artist, with his cool English boyfriend, and there she was, accountant, mother of two, in the ’burbs, sitting next to me, the uncoolest guy imaginable.”

  This time I was sure there was some hurt in his voice.

  “Did you ever see any of Mom’s drawings?”

  “Just once. Grandma Weiss showed them to me. Your mother didn’t know anything about it. Grandma Weiss said she’d always felt guilty about it. That Danni never got her chance to do what she wanted. I’d say she was as good as Finn. Maybe, I don’t know . . . maybe even better.”

  I went to the fridge and got out the carton of milk. I poured out a glass for me and a glass for my dad.

  “I don’t think Mom’s embarrassed about you.”

  He smiled. “Thanks, Junie. Maybe you’re right.”

  I sipped my milk and my dad sipped his and we sat there in the quiet night kitchen, thinking our own thoughts.

  “Dad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “So, how did Finn become my godfather, then? If Mom was so mad at him.”

  “Oh, she wasn’t angry with Finn. Nobody ever stayed angry with Finn. It was all Toby. You didn’t even have a godfather until you were five. Did you know that? Your mother always had Finn in mind. She kept hoping. Then Finn started writing, saying he was thinking of moving to the city. He never mentioned that Toby would be coming with him. He said he was thinking about coming back from England and getting an apartment downtown somewhere. That’s when she asked him, and he seemed over the moon about the idea. I remember we laughed about it because he said he’d get here as soon as he could. Like it was some kind of emergency.” My dad paused, like he was remembering it again. “I think maybe your mother thought making Finn your godfather was one way to keep him. A tie to hold him. I think Finn saw it kind of differently. Like maybe he and Toby would be your godparents together. A way to settle down. A way to have their own strange kind of family or something. Or maybe that’s nonsense. Maybe it’s just getting way too late.”

  He yawned a big exaggerated yawn and patted his hand over his mouth. Then he picked up our glasses from the table and set them down in the sink. He looked at me thoughtfully and after a while said, “So, does that solve all the mysteries of the universe?”

  I smiled. “Yeah,” I said. “Maybe a few of them.”

  Forty

  The next morning I sat by myself near the back of the bus. I found a blank page in my English notebook, which wasn’t hard because I don’t really take notes in English. If you read Of Mice and Men, why would you need to go through the trouble of writing down that George and Lennie had an extraordinary friendship or that Lennie’s death was inevitable? You’d just know those things. Those things are impossible to forget.

  At the top of the page I wrote this:

  Looking After Toby . . .

  Phase 1: Call him and visit him whenever possible.

  Phase 2: Something big and spectacular (a work in progress).

  I left school as soon as I could that day. I risked cutting woodshop and study hall so I could catch the 1:43 train. When I buzzed up, Toby answered the door in his pajamas and an old fuzzy blue bathrobe that reminded me of the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. His eyes were huge, bigger than I’d ever seen them.

  “Sorry it’s so cold in here, but come in. This is lovely. It’s lovely to see you.”

  I didn’t think it was cold at all, but I didn’t say anything. The thing that was worth apologizing for was what a huge mess the place was. There were dirty plates and glasses everywhere, records lying around out of their sleeves, and at least three ashtrays overflowing with tea bags and cigarette butts. I didn’t care much about that kind of thing, but Finn’s apartment had never been a mess, so it seemed almost like a different place.

  I picked up a couple of plates and headed toward the kitchen.

  “No, no, no,” Toby said. “Leave them.” He took them out of my hands and set them back down on the coffee table.

  “I don’t mind. I can help with things.”

  “I know, but it’s my mess.” He stopped and glanced around. As he scanned the room, he seemed to understand something. He looked at me, embarrassed.

  “It bothers you, doesn’t it?” he said softly. “To see it like this.”

  I shrugged.

  “You’re right. It’s appalling.” He gave a sheepish grin. “Finn would kill me if he saw it.”

  No, he wouldn’t, I thought.

  “Come on, then,” Toby said. “We’ll clean things.”

  For the next hour I collected plates and cups and maybe a dozen little ruby-colored crystal glasses from all over the house. I shuttled them into the kitchen, and Toby stood at the sink, washing. When the dishes were all cleared, I sat down cross-legged in front of a big stack of loose records, trying to match sleeves and jackets.

  “This Finn would kill you for,” I said when Toby came in. He was drying his hands on a green checked dish towel.

  “I know.”

  He sat down on the floor and started sorting through the records with me. I secretly watched him. At first it hadn’t seemed right that some of the things I’d loved about Finn might have come from Toby, but I’d started to think that maybe there was something good about it. Maybe it would work the other way too. If I looked carefully enough, I might be able to catch glimpses of Finn shining right through Toby.

  Toby slid a stack of records into a rack, then glanced down at me. He grinned and popped a cassette into the tape player. He sat down in Finn’s blue chair, and all of a sudden the whole room filled with this super-intricate classical-guitar music. Bach, I thought it was. And familiar. I thought I’d heard that music before. Like maybe Finn had played this exact tape when I was visiting
once.

  “What is this?” I asked.

  “Do you like it?” Toby turned away and bent to pick up another record.

  “Yeah. It’s”—I fished around in my mind for something smart to say—“complex.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Good. Complicated is the bad one. Complex is good, right? So what is it anyway?”

  “Just something I used to do.”

  “You?”

  He nodded.

  “But it sounds like two or three guitars.”

  “That’s the trick. That’s why it’s so difficult. Golden hands, remember?”

  I looked at Toby. How his long body barely fit in the chair. How I knew him but didn’t know him at all. I was starting to understand why Finn would choose him. I could see that Toby actually had something to offer. But what did I have? What would I ever have? I was doomed to mediocrity. Like Salieri in Amadeus. There’s Salieri, knowing he’ll never be as good as Mozart, and on top of all that he’s the villain. He’s the one everyone ends up hating.

  I looked away. “Yeah,” I said. “Golden hands.”

  I told Toby I had to go to the bathroom but ducked into the bedroom instead. I opened a few dresser drawers and rifled around in the closet. I slid open drawer after drawer, looking for something, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something that didn’t exist. Maybe I was hoping for some small object that would prove all the hours I’d spent with Finn meant as much to him as they meant to me. Instead, I picked up a pair of boxer shorts from the third drawer down. I unfolded them and held them up in front of me, trying to figure out whose they were.

  “You can have whatever you want, you know.”

  I spun around. Toby was standing in the doorway, his shoulder leaned up against the frame. I stood there facing him, those blue boxer shorts stretched between my hands like a map. “I might not recommend a pair of my underpants as the prime choice, but, you know, feel free.”

  There were so many layers of embarrassment in that moment. I stood there blushing so hard my head felt like it might burst. I balled up the boxers and set them down on the top of the dresser.