“It’s only a headache. I wouldn’t mind some water, if you have any.”
“Sure, no problem. There’s a cooler in the hallway.” He gets up, lumbers out of the room and reappears with a flimsy plastic cup of water. He hands it over, spilling a fair amount on her leg. “Shit . . . sorry.”
“Doesn’t matter.” She brushes it off and drinks what’s left while he returns to his seat. “So what do you do now?”
“Pay her a visit with the DEC.” Flaherty leans forward. “I get a break in five minutes. How about that coffee?”
“But . . . wait. What happens then?”
“We read her the riot act, take away the wolves, and ticket her.”
“Ticket her? That’s all? She’s putting my kid in danger, Mike! Flanner told me she pointed a gun at him! Doesn’t law enforcement care about the safety of children at all?”
Flaherty fiddles with a pen here, a stapler there, the blond hairs on his hands glittering under his desk lamp. His desk, Beth notices, is laden not only with papers, telephone messages, pens, paper clips, a computer, and file folders but with a lump of clay that vaguely resembles an owl and a fuzzy blue pig made out of a washcloth.
“Well, the problem is,” he finally says, “your son was on her property. And how can we be sure that a wolf actually tried to attack him?”
“Because he said so right here in his report!” Beth remembers now why she was never much interested in Mike Flaherty. He has the mind of a banana.
“He’s a kid, Beth. Kids are prone to . . . well, exaggerate when they’re upset. As he must be right now, if you don’t mind my saying. And then a lot of time has passed. I mean, when did this happen—almost two months ago, according to the date on your son’s report, right?”
“My son does not exaggerate. Or lie, either, if that’s what you’re implying.”
Flaherty raises his clean pink hands. “No, no, I’m sure he doesn’t.” He leans forward again. “Listen, I know this must be a pain for you, specially at this, uh, difficult time, and I’m sorry. I’ll go pay this lady a visit for sure, get her to explain herself.”
He stands and adjusts his utility belt. “Now, coffee or no coffee?”
Beth stands, too, glancing at the wall clock. “I can’t, I have to pick up Flanner from football practice.”
“Another time, then?”
“Maybe.” It is beyond her to even think about this proposition right at the moment.
Flaherty runs his eyes over her once more. “Okeydoke, I’ll give you a call. Oh, and Beth? The DEC are police officers, too. Which means that they’re armed. In case Ms. Drummond decides to go a little hog wild with her guns.”
28
ATONEMENT
Naema is alone in her kitchen, preparing kebab iroog for dinner and thinking about the death of Todd McAllister. She wonders whether it is true that misfortune arrives in clusters, as Hibah used to insist. “Luck is like a magnet,” she would say. “The bad collects the bad, the good the good. Allah wills it so.” This has certainly been true for Naema, losing so many family members in quick succession, and then escaping a war only to almost drown in a flood. And now it has happened to Beth and Flanner, too. Yet perhaps the adage reflects nothing about Allah’s will, or luck, either, but only the fact that life is so full of misfortunes there is no room for them to arrive in any other way.
She hears a knock at the door just as she is chopping vegetables, so wipes her hands on a towel and goes to open it, assuming it is Tariq, having forgotten his keys again. But no, there is Louis, standing on her doorstep for the first time in a week, looking oddly bashful.
“Come in and join me for supper—I am just making it now,” she tells him with a lift of spirits. He has never stayed away so long before, let alone neither called nor sent her a text, and this has disturbed her more than she cares to admit. She notices he is more formally dressed than usual: a green button-down shirt strained tight over his shoulders, black trousers instead of his usual jeans, dress shoes rather than his typical scuffed-up desert boots.
“You sure you have enough food?” he says. “I didn’t show up to make you feed me.”
“Of course I have enough.” She looks at him in surprise—she always has enough food.
He steps into the house. “Tariq here?”
“Not yet. He has gone to see Juney again. I thought her mother unpleasant when I met her, but she has clearly made him feel at home. He is always at their place these days. I can hardly get him to stay at home for more than five minutes.”
“But he should be helping you. Your strength isn’t all the way back yet.”
She waves a hand. “I am perfectly all right, and he is helping me enough by being happy. Come, you can fix the vegetables. I am making aubergine.”
He removes his shoes and follows her into the kitchen, listening to her breathing. Nearly seven weeks have passed since she came home from the hospital, yet he can still hear the strain in her chest.
“Now,” she says as she returns to chopping the peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes she has gathered into a pungent heap on the counter, “tell me what you have been doing all week and why you look so nice.”
“Oh, working. It’s the usual fall craziness. I’m dressed like this ’cause I came from a meeting.” He washes his hands, avoiding her eyes, and steps around her in the narrow kitchen to take two eggplants out of the refrigerator. In fact, he dressed up for her, as if to clothe himself in atonement.
“I suppose you must have been looking after poor Beth, too. How is she managing?”
He takes some time slicing the eggplant before he can answer. “She’s fine.” He realizes how absurd this sounds. “Not so good, to tell the truth.”
Naema scoops her chopped vegetables into a bowl of ground beef and kneads them together. “I feel sorry for her, I do, for what she went through with her husband, and now his death.”
Louis can add nothing to that.
“And Flanner? How is he? When Khalil, he was killed, Tariq was so small he has been able to forget him. Well, almost. But Flanner, he is old enough to remember forever.”
Louis has no idea how Flanner is. Several times, he has been on the verge of calling Beth to ask, only to lose courage at the thought she might interpret his concern as courtship and reentangle him. And again he sees himself in her bed, spinning down from intoxication to the cold fact of what he had done: Todd’s widow. Todd’s house. Todd in the woods. Todd in his coffin. Careful not to wake her, he’d slipped out from under the sheets, written a quick note of apology, and fled to spend the rest of the week hiding in self-disgust.
“I’m not sure how Flanner’s doing,” he replies. “But he looked pretty shut down at the funeral.”
“I worry about that child. Beth has no control over him. Look at what he did to my poor Tariq.”
Louis snatches a glance at Naema while she shapes the beef into oval patties and lays them on a platter. She shows no sign of having heard anything about him and Beth, even though gossip can race through this town of theirs with the speed of a flu virus, but he would rather not press his luck by discussing Flanner any further. “But how are you?” he says quickly. “I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch. Between work and—”
“Yes, you have been neglecting me terribly.” Flashing him a teasing smile, she squeezes beside him at the sink, rinses her hands, and moves back to the stove. She is about to light the burner when she drops her arms and turns away. Crossing the room, she sinks into the chair in the corner. “I am all right, my friend. But . . .” She trails off.
“But what?”
“Oh . . .” She looks up at him. “I had not a good day today.”
“Why, what happened?”
She pulls at her long fingers, an old habit she resorts to when distressed. She is achingly beautiful to him right now, her hair loose, her slender figure bending like an iris under her soft blue tunic. He remembers when she went through a phase of trying to look more American, dressing in tight clothes and cove
ring her scar with makeup. It was during the year after she had fled Jimmy Donnell’s house to live in that run-down apartment in Albany, when she was sewing mattresses at a Soft-Tex factory during the day and attending medical school at night. “The other students, they look at me so strangely,” she said to Louis one day. “I will never make friends looking like this.” But after she saw a photograph Tariq had taken of her—the foundation over her scar like a slab of putty, the stiffness with which she was holding herself in her tight skirt—she never made such attempts again. Now she wears the modest garments in which she is comfortable, eschews all makeup but kohl, and, to Louis, is lovelier than ever.
“Nothing happened,” she replies. “It is just that I do not like this new job.”
He pulls a chair out from under the table and sits facing her. “What’s wrong with it? Are the other doctors treating you badly again?”
“Sometimes. But that is not what I mean. I feel lost, Louis. Ever since the VA clinic, it was destroyed, I have lost my way.” She pauses, pulling again at her hands. “I do not belong in this city emergency room. It is all teenage gang members with gunshot wounds, or who have hurt themselves with drugs. Children who have been beaten by other children or adults. Girls who cut or starve themselves. Addicts. Boys who try to commit suicide . . .”
She looks at him again. “I know these children, they need a doctor as much as anyone else, but I am not the right person to help them. It is hard to avoid growing angry at a girl who is starving herself when one has lived through the deprivations we did in Basra. And it is hard not to resent a child who tries to throw away his life when my brother’s own life was taken at thirteen and he so loved to live. Does this sound very heartless?”
“Of course not. You—”
“I want to undo the war. If I can heal an innocent child who has been hurt by the war in my country, even the child of an American, then I have undone one small piece of the harm caused by this terrible inhumanity. But this city hospital, it is too removed from that. Too distant. You understand?”
“I do. I understand.” And he does. He, too, would give anything to be able to undo the war one human being at a time. But as a veteran with the blood of so many humans on his hands, he cannot imagine how.
“So it is like this,” she is saying. “I spend my days with these troubled teenagers, or with children run over by drunks or sick with asthma or bad food, or who have swallowed paper clips or toys, and meanwhile in Iraq, thousands of children, they are born without legs or arms or eyes because of the toxins left by our wars and yours, while others are losing their limbs to mines or bombs, like my Tariq. And now, with the rise of all these new extremists, it is happening again, more and more killings, more and more brutality!” She stands in distress. “Oh, Louis, why am I not there to help?”
He stands, too, and takes her hands in his. “Shh,” he murmurs. “You are a wonderful doctor, doing wonderful things. It’s too dangerous for you to go back. You know that. But you’ll find a way to do what you want here, I’m sure. We’ll figure out something.” And without thinking, he enfolds her in his arms.
She rests her head against his chest. It does not occur to her to step back out of propriety, the way she always has in the past. She only lays her cheek against him, basking in the comfort of being encircled by her dearest friend in the world. Why, she wonders now, has she never let him hold her like this before? It is as if Khalil’s death and the decimation of her family have sunk her to the bottom of a river, where she has lain for seven entire years, as cold and senseless as if sealed under ice.
As for Louis, he is in delicious agony, scarcely able to believe it is Naema pressed up against him, Naema so soft and alive in his arms. He yearns to run his hands over the curve of her back with its play of tiny muscles, the dip of her waist, the swell of her hips. Cautiously, afraid of ruining the moment with one wrong move, he rests his lips on her head; her smooth hair scented with jasmine and a touch of cardamom from her cooking.
“Naema,” he whispers, unable to hold back the words. “I don’t want you to go anywhere. I want you to stay here with me.”
He draws her closer, still afraid she will push back in outrage. But she only holds him tighter. “Is this all right?” he whispers. “Is this really all right?”
“Yes, yes. Don’t let go.”
Clasping her as fervently as he dares, he breathes her into him. And when she raises her face, her lips parted, he knows, the way a man in love does know, exactly what she wants.
29
ARROW
Now that Silver’s growing sicker by the day, the kids spend almost all their time together at the wolf fence, calling out to her and pushing little treats through the hatch in the hope of tempting her to eat. She has crawled out of the woods to be nearer the food, but all she can manage is to lie panting on her side, eyes glazed, ribs more visible than ever. Rin can hardly stand to watch. Painful as it will be for her if Silver dies or Flaherty takes her and the other wolves away, she can’t even think of what it will do to Juney and Tariq.
“You want to stay for dinner?” she asks Tariq today. She figures the kids need each other with all this sadness in the air. “Call your mom and tell her I’ll run you home later.” Rin can do that now. It is not, she realizes, so very impossible.
“Thanks, Mrs. Drummond. I’d like that.” He pulls out that phone of his and taps on it with his thumbs so fast they turn into blurs. A second later the phone emits a small bing, like a tiny doorbell. Rin has never really understood cell phones. “She says it’s fine.”
In the kitchen, Rin puts on some potatoes to boil and sets Tariq to chopping carrots and Juney to washing tomatoes—Rin doesn’t like her handling knives. Then she goes into her back nook to call the veterinarian again, leaving the children to themselves.
“I wonder if wolves move anywhere else after they die,” Tariq says once she’s gone.
Juney rubs a sticky spot off a tomato. “No, they just crumble into earth like Hiccup.”
Tariq thinks of his father’s remains soaking into the soil, the ear-shattering blast that haunts his dreams, and then of Juney’s own father, photographs of whom are all over the house: a tall, blond man with a high-boned face and lanky limbs, either lounging in jeans or standing upright and serious in an army uniform and cap.
“I don’t know. I bet they turn into somebody else. Somebody with a soul.” He scoops up the carrots he has chopped so far, a heap of bright orange coins, and drops them one by one into a saucepan.
“Like a ghost, you mean?” Juney turns off the water and listens to the dropping carrots, which make little ringing sounds, like the tapping of a miniature tin drum.
“No, not a ghost.” Tariq searches for words to describe the sense he has when he looks into Gray’s eyes. “I just don’t think Silver will really go away if she dies. I think she’ll still be here looking after you and your mom, even if nobody can see her.”
Juney feels for the tomatoes she has piled into a pyramid beside the sink and balances the one she just washed on top. “Like a fairy godmother? Silver would be good at that, yeah. Just kind of stinky.” She giggles but then grows serious again. “I don’t know. I wish that was true, ’cause Mommy’s going to miss her so much. But I’ve held a lot of dead animals, and when they’re dead, they’re just dead.”
Rin closes her study door to make sure the children can’t hear and picks up her phone, the good old-fashioned kind that doesn’t sound like a doorbell or allow the feds to spy on her from right inside her own pocket. She likes this veterinarian, who is down-to-earth and sensible. Rin calls her “Doctor Doolittle” because, like her, she is better with animals than people.
When Doctor D. answers, Rin describes Silver’s symptoms. “My guess is it’s cancer. She won’t eat, and I can tell she’s in pain.”
“I could sedate her and bring her in for X-rays, if you’d like. It’s expensive, though.”
“No one’s shooting sedatives into my wolves, thank you. I’m going
to let nature take its course. I just want to ease her suffering.”
And this is another reason Rin likes Doctor D. She doesn’t try to guilt-trip Rin into spending money she doesn’t have for fancy treatments she doesn’t want. She only says in her atonal way, “All right. I’ll send you a prescription for painkillers. You can mix them with her food. Give her soft food for now; see if she’ll take it. She probably can’t handle much else.”
Rin thanks her and hangs up, a weight sinking through her. Poor Silver. She was such a good mother to Ebony, licking him, feeding him, teaching him how to hunt and play and howl. Such a good mate to Gray, too. If she and Gray were in the wild, he would chew and regurgitate food to feed her now that she’s sick—wolves do that for their ailing mates, just as the mothers do for their pups. He might do it yet, although Rin will feed mush to Silver in case he doesn’t. But now she has to make a decision: whether to let Silver suffer out her last days in the woods, as she would in the wild, or put an end to her misery herself. Rin does, after all, own more than one gun.
Standing at the window, she thinks this over while a late autumn fly thuds mechanically against the glass, its movements clumsy now that it’s winding down to winter catatonia. The trees outside look stripped and cold, their naked branches tangling against the soot-smeared sky, and the leaf-smothered lawn is already matted. Rin is not a fan of winter.
The dogs startle her just then by breaking into a cacophony of barking. The wolves begin howling as well, the howl of GETOFFANDGOAWAY—a howl they only make when they know the dogs are seriously alarmed. Rin runs to the kitchen and grabs her M16 from its rack. “Stay inside!” she yells at the children, and crashes through the front door.
First one vehicle comes up her driveway, then another. The front one is a patrol car, the usual dark blue shark with a yellow stripe down its middle and a bar of lights across its roof. The back one is a big blue van, POLICE stamped in huge yellow letters on its side, along with the words NEW YORK STATE ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION.
Wolf Season Page 23