Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  “Let’s sit down.” She pointed down the hall, toward the living room. “Go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  The folded note was still in my pocket and I slid my hand in there, letting my fingers riffle the edges. I looked at my mother, thinking she had no idea what I was holding on to, thinking I would tell her when the right moment came along.

  In the living room, the portrait’s eyes were on me. We’d hung it just a few hours after Mr. Trusky dropped it off. At first my mother said it should go in our rooms. Greta’s for a month, then mine for a month, switching back and forth like that. Finn meant it for us, she said. Greta said right away that she didn’t want it in her room. It creeped her out and she didn’t like the way Finn had painted her. She said he’d purposely made her look like an idiot. And, she said, she didn’t like the way he’d painted me either.

  “Why not?” I said. “I think it looks okay.”

  “Of course you think it looks okay. He made you look better than you’ve ever looked in your whole life. You would like it.”

  She was right. I did like myself in that portrait. There was a kind of intelligence in my eyes that I was pretty sure wasn’t there in real life, and I seemed smaller. Greta and Finn and my mother all had the same slim bones. My father and I were the lumbering ones, the misshapen bears. But in the portrait, Greta and I were almost the same size.

  Still, if you looked at Greta and looked at the portrait, you could see that Greta was prettier in real life and prettier in the picture, and I told her that.

  “I’m not prettier, you dweeb. I’m just older. Can’t you even tell the difference?”

  It was a nice thing for her to say. In her way. With Greta you have to look out for the nice things buried in the rest of her mean stuff. Greta’s talk is like a geode. Ugly as anything on the outside and for the most part the same on the inside, but every once in a while there’s something that shines through.

  “Well, then, I’m going to be selfish,” my mother said. “I don’t think it’s fair that the painting stays locked up in one person’s room forever, so I’m going to suggest that we hang it over the mantel. Any problems with that?”

  Greta groaned. “That’s even worse. It’ll creep out the whole living room. Plus, absolutely everyone who comes here will see the thing.”

  “I’m afraid that’s the way it’s going to be, Greta. June, any problem with that?”

  “No. That’s okay.”

  “That’s done, then. We’ll have your father hang it.”

  Since it’s been up, I’ve caught my mother staring at it. Not just once, but a bunch of times. All that time at Finn’s it was like she was completely uninterested, almost repulsed, by the portrait, but since it’s been in our house she’s seemed almost obsessed with it. I’ve seen her eyeing it the same way Finn did. Tilting her head. Muttering things to it under her breath. Walking close, then backing up. This was usually at night, after I was supposed to be in bed, and if she caught me standing there she’d give me an embarrassed smile. Then she’d walk out of the room, acting like nothing had been going on.

  I’d made sure that Greta wasn’t around when I asked about the apartment. I thought she probably knew all the horrible details of what was going to happen to it. She probably knew that it’d be scrubbed with bleach until there wasn’t even a hint of lavender or orange left. She probably knew exactly who the new owners would be and that they were horrible people who’d turn that apartment into some kind of dumpy place with TVs and stereos and wires all over the place. Finn hated wires. He hated having stuff plugged in everywhere.

  At first, when my mother came into the living room, she didn’t say anything. She looked up at the portrait, then she looked at me. She sat next to me on the couch, close, with her arm around my shoulders. She smelled of lemony dish soap.

  “Junie,” she said. “You need to understand some things about Finn.” She turned her face away from me, then turned back. “I know how much you loved your uncle. And I did too. He was my baby brother. I loved him to pieces.”

  “Love.”

  “What?”

  “Love, not loved. We can still love him.”

  My mother raised her head.

  “Of course we can. You’re right. But the thing about Finn is that he didn’t always make the best choices. He did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. He didn’t always . . .”

  “Care what other people wanted him to do?”

  “Yes.”

  “He didn’t care what you wanted him to do.”

  “That’s not the important thing. The important thing to understand is that Finn was a free spirit and a good man, but maybe sometimes he was a bit too trusting.”

  My mother said this kind of thing about Finn a lot. How he never grew up. She said it like it was a bad thing, but to me it was one of the very best things about him.

  “So what does this have to do with his apartment?”

  “Nothing. Just, well, Finn had a different . . . lifestyle. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I know Finn was gay, Mom. Everybody knows that.”

  “Of course you do. Of course. So let’s just leave it there. Okay? We don’t need to worry about the apartment anymore.” My mother rubbed my back and smiled. She started to stand, but I wasn’t done.

  “Well, what if I wanted to go there?”

  My mother shook her head, then stared up at the portrait for a long time. When she finally looked at me again, her face was serious.

  “Look, June, there’s a man living there. Okay? He was Finn’s . . . special friend. Do you see what I mean?” My mother grimaced slightly, though I could tell she was trying to hold it back. “I didn’t want to get into this. . . .”

  Special friend? I stifled a laugh. Special friend reminded me of kindergarten field trips. It made me think of holding hands with Donna Folger and looking both ways before crossing streets.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  “I think you know what it means. Now can we drop it?”

  I was still laughing a little, but as the whole thing started to sink in, my smile faded. Finn had never told me that someone would be moving into his apartment when he died. Why wouldn’t he tell me something huge like that?

  I felt for the note again. The only person who misses Finn as much as I do. That’s what it said. Toby. I knew the special friend’s name. And I knew he’d called me from the apartment, but I guess I figured he’d find a new place to live.

  I would have asked my mother then and there why nobody had ever mentioned this special friend, this Toby, to me, but I couldn’t bear to do it. To embarrass myself like that. To make it seem like this was a big deal to me. For the last few years I’d considered Finn to be my best friend. The very best. Maybe I was wrong about that.

  I nodded at my mother without looking her in the eye. Suddenly the thought of telling her that Finn’s special friend had come right to our front door, that Finn’s special friend knew that I was the only one who missed Finn as much as he did, that Finn’s special friend had asked me to meet him, seemed impossible.

  “Yeah, okay. I’ll drop it,” I said, and although I held it back with every muscle in my body, what I really wanted to do was cry. Not only because Finn had never told me about this guy, but because there was no way to ask him about it. And until then I don’t think I really understood the meaning of gone.

  Fourteen

  “Remember that party?” Greta grabbed me and whispered in my ear as I came out of the upstairs bathroom. My hands were still wet and I rubbed them on my sweater.

  “Ummm?”

  Greta let out an exasperated sigh. “Yeah, you do. Remember I asked if you wanted to go to a party? Jillian Lampton? Remember?”

  I hadn’t exactly forgotten. I think I just filed it away somewhere. Or maybe I thought it was all a joke in the first place. Some cruel thing Greta had said just to see what I’d say. I nodded anyway.

  “Yeah, well, it kept getting put off, but now it’s tonigh
t.”

  “Tonight? But—”

  “I told Mom they need help with the play.”

  “I’m not in the play.”

  Greta rolled her eyes and took a deep steady breath. “Yes. I know. You’ll be at the party.”

  “Oh.” I’d never lied to my parents about where I was going. I’d never had anywhere to go before.

  “You can bring Beans too. If you want.”

  I hadn’t been friends with Beans for years. Not really. When Beans first moved here from Ohio in third grade, with her Dorothy Hamill haircut and her 4-H badges sewn on the outside of her backpack, she had no one. Back then we were best friends. For a long time, all the way through to the end of elementary school, Beans was my only friend. Because that’s how I’ve always been. I only need one good friend to see me through. Most people aren’t like that. Most people are always looking out for more people to know. In the end, Beans was like most people. After a while she had dozens of friends, and by fifth grade it was pretty obvious that even though she was my best friend, I wasn’t hers.

  Somehow my whole family seemed to have missed the thing where Beans and I weren’t good friends anymore. I could call her up and she would be nice and everything, but it would be weird. No matter how many times I told my mother that Beans had tons of other friends, my mother couldn’t stop seeing it the way it used to be between us. Maybe I didn’t want her to, because then she would start nagging me to find some new friends. I didn’t want to explain to her who I was. That I was the weird girl who carried a worn-out copy of The Portable Medieval Reader in her backpack, the girl who only wore skirts, usually with medieval boots, the girl who got caught staring at people. I didn’t want to have to tell her that people weren’t exactly lining up to hang out with me.

  Plus, once you had a friend like Finn, it was almost impossible to find someone in high school who came anywhere close. Sometimes I wondered if I might go through my whole life looking for someone who came even a little bit close.

  Greta unzipped her purse. “Mom was so happy we were doing something together. You know what she did?”

  I shook my head.

  “She gave me ten bucks.” Greta grinned and pulled out the ten-dollar bill from her purse, flashing it in front of me. “She said I should take you out for ice cream after. So we’re set. Are you still up for it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Good. Bring boots. And dress really warm. It’s in the woods.”

  “Greta?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know that guy at the funeral?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He was Finn’s boyfriend, right?” I was trying my best to act like I didn’t care one way or the other.

  Since that day with the teapot, I thought I saw Toby all over the place. I couldn’t remember exactly what he looked like, just the shape of him, which made it worse. There were tall lanky men everywhere, and on first glance any one of them could have been Toby.

  For the past few days I’d been waiting to catch Greta off guard. I thought if I asked her something when she wasn’t expecting it, she might tell me more than she meant to. What I’d learned over the years was that playing dumb was the best way to do it. As soon as she thought I didn’t know something, she’d jump in with everything she had.

  “Congratulations, Sherlock. That only took you a few centuries to figure out.”

  “That’s not all I’m trying to say.”

  “All right, then, what?”

  “So he’s living in Finn’s apartment now?”

  “That’s right. Life ain’t fair. You kill a man and end up with a great apartment on the Upper West Side.”

  “So you think he definitely gave Finn AIDS. You’re sure.”

  “Not just sure, I know he did it on purpose. That guy knew he had AIDS when he met Finn. He knew it.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I just do. I’ve heard things.”

  “So he really is like a murderer?”

  “Exactly.” Her tone had changed. She seemed suddenly pleased that I was interested in what she knew. I thought that maybe I could tell her about the teapot and the letter and about the train station on March 6. Maybe she’d listen and be impressed that I had my own news for once. But I couldn’t get the words out. The letter said not to tell anyone, and maybe Toby was right. Maybe even a murderer can be right sometimes.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay what?”

  “That’s all. I just wanted to make sure.”

  “Whatever, June. Grow up. It’s all over now.”

  “Yeah. I know it is.”

  I called Beans. I guess I thought I should make the effort, but she said she couldn’t get out. So it would just be me. Me and a bunch of Greta’s friends.

  Later, on our way down the stairs for dinner, Greta poked me on the shoulder, then slipped a note into the back pocket of my jeans. Party canceled. It turned out a lot of people couldn’t get out. But Greta had already lied to our parents, so I had to go to the play rehearsal with her anyway. I would have to sit there in the back of the auditorium on those red velvet seats, watching her turn into Bloody Mary over and over again.

  Of course, I was relieved that the party was canceled. It wasn’t only the shy thing, the total social retardation. It was more than that. I wasn’t interested in drinking beer or vodka or smoking cigarettes or doing all the other things Greta thinks I can’t even imagine. I don’t want to imagine those things. Anyone can imagine things like that. I want to imagine wrinkled time, and forests thick with wolves, and bleak midnight moors. I dream about people who don’t need to have sex to know they love each other. I dream about people who would only ever kiss you on the cheek.

  That night I sat in the school auditorium and watched Ryan Cooke, with all his golden charisma, singing about enchanted evenings. Mr. Nebowitz, the director, kept stopping Ryan, making him sing certain parts of the song over and over again, telling him to let the words show on his face.

  “We should be able to read your face like a poem. Even if you don’t say a word, every person in that audience should know exactly how you feel.” Mr. Nebowitz was young, with lots of dark curly hair. It was the end that he wanted Ryan to get right. The part about holding on and never letting go.

  Ryan tried again and again. I couldn’t see much difference, but Mr. Nebowitz said, “Better. Getting better.” He let Ryan go off and then called Greta to the stage.

  “‘Happy Talk,’ okay?”

  Greta nodded and walked onto the stage without any makeup or costume. Just her, in jeans and T-shirt. She didn’t even take her glasses off. She pulled her hair back with one hand and closed her eyes for a second. Mr. Nebowitz started on the piano.

  “Straight through,” he said, nodding at Greta.

  She sang it the whole way through, and I couldn’t see or hear a single mistake. When she finished, Mr. Nebowitz clapped and turned to the rest of the cast, who were sitting out in the audience, and said, “This is the standard I’m looking for, people.” Then he looked back at Greta on the stage and thanked her for all the effort she was putting in. Something like that would have embarrassed me beyond belief, but Greta just took an exaggerated clownish bow, the top of her head nearly grazing the stage, and got a big laugh from the other kids. I laughed too, because that was the first time in so long that I’d seen her loose and jokey like that. It made me glad I’d been forced to go to the rehearsal.

  Greta left the stage and I thought about Toby again. I thought that special friend could mean anything. It didn’t have to be a big deal. Maybe Finn never mentioned him because he was nobody. It was my mother who used the word special. Finn would never call someone that. Not with a straight face anyway. Maybe it was just luck that the guy had ended up with Finn’s apartment. Maybe Finn felt sorry for him.

  The rehearsal ended at around eight-thirty. I stayed put in my seat and watched Greta and Ryan and a bunch of other kids from the play sitting on the edge of the stage, legs dangling, laughing
. These were the kids Greta hung out with now. The smart kids. The ones who weren’t only smart but popular too. The ones who could do anything. Ryan Cooke and Megan Donegan and Julie Contolli. Greta looked happy up there. Relaxed. Like this really was some island in the South Pacific. But she also looked younger than the rest of them. Lined up like that I didn’t know how everyone couldn’t see how obvious it was. Ryan had a little mustache. Megan’s and Julie’s legs were women’s legs. Full and shapely. Greta’s thin legs hung from the stage and made her look like a kid on a swing.

  Mr. Nebowitz said good night to everyone and asked Greta if she had a minute. One by one the kids jumped off the stage and grabbed their coats and bags. Greta followed Mr. Nebowitz out of the auditorium. I stayed in the back row, waiting, thinking I shouldn’t leave without Greta.

  “Hey, you there. I’m shutting the lights.” I could see it was Ben Dellahunt, who was a junior and the assistant stage manager for the play.

  I nodded in the shadows.

  “I’m just waiting for my sister,” I said. “I’ll go in a minute.”

  Ben was one of those kids that you thought might be rich when he grew up. Not because there was anything that great about him, but more because he was the kind of guy who always seemed to have a plan. He always had his hair in a ponytail, and there was a rumor that he’d actually invented a new computer language, but that probably wasn’t true. He wasn’t the best in his class, but he was pretty smart. Smart enough. He put a hand above his eyes and squinted at the back row, like he was looking way out to sea. Then he started walking up the central aisle. When he got closer he looked me over, zeroing in on my feet.

  “Hey, you’re the girl with the boots.” He smiled and nodded like he’d solved some kind of puzzle. He was about to sit down next to me, but before he did, Greta came back through stage left. She stood onstage, looking out over the rows of seats.

  “Are you coming or not?” she called, already turning to leave.

  “Yeah. Coming,” I called back. I said goodbye to Ben, then jogged to catch up with Greta. She stormed ahead, leaving me paces behind for the whole walk home. When we finally got there, she didn’t say a word. She just ran up the stairs, straight into her bedroom, and slammed the door behind her.