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.
“I’m really sorry, I’m . . .” I could feel hot tears starting to form, and I looked down at the floor.
“Hey,” Toby said. “Don’t worry about it.”
He stepped into the room and sat on the edge of Finn’s side of the bed. He patted the space next to him, and without looking him in the eye I skulked over and sat down. He put his long arm around my shoulders, and I found myself leaning my head against his chest. We sat in that dim room for a long time, neither of us saying anything. I could see the pictures on Finn’s bedside table. Toby looking young and even kind of beautiful in his weird way, with his dark eyes and his scruffy hair. I snuggled in closer and I felt his arms squeeze in tighter. It felt good. Toby was warm and kind and, in a strange way, almost familiar. And sad. Just like me.
“Hey, you know, I’ve been thinking,” Toby said. “You know that I’m dying, right?”
Toby had never said anything like that before. Nothing so big. So definite. I felt numb. Like cold, hard concrete had been poured into all the little spaces in my head where I’d been hiding maybes.
“I guess.”
“Do you see what that means?”
“I think so.”
“Tell me.”
“It means you won’t be here much longer.”
Toby nodded. “Yes, there’s that, but, also, do you see? It means I can do whatever I want. We can do anything we want.” For a weird second, sitting on the bed like that, I thought Toby meant having sex. I gave him a grossed-out look and he pulled away from me so quickly I almost fell off the bed. He sat there with his arms crossed over his chest saying, “No, no, no. Nothing like that. Oh, June, God, you don’t think.”
“Ugh,” I said. “Don’t be so gross.”
That was one of Greta’s tricks. Make the other person think the gross thing was their idea and you’re off the hook.
Toby’s posture loosened. “Okay. All right. Seriously, June.”
I stood and wandered around the room. I picked up a glass paperweight and let my fingers slide over the smooth cold surface. I thought about what Toby had said about being able to do anything. It didn’t quite make sense.
“Well, no offense or anything, but I’m not dying.”
“No. But what’s the worst thing that could happen to you? Me, I could get sent to jail or deported, but now it wouldn’t matter. I’m free. Do you see?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“So, tell me. If you could do anything, what would you want to do? Whatever you want, June.”
I couldn’t think of anything right away. Also, I didn’t think Toby understood that even though I couldn’t probably go to prison, I could get in all kinds of other trouble at home.
“Well, I don’t know. It’s a nice offer and all. I’ll think about it, okay?”
“I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Take some time. Mull it
over.”
“Toby?”
“Yeah?”
“How long is not much longer?”
Usually I wouldn’t ask something like that. Usually I wouldn’t want to know. Greta always wanted to know everything. Every little detail. But I understood. You can ruin anything if you know too much. But things were different now. I was in charge of taking care of Toby. I needed to know things.
Toby shrugged. “I’m not really one for doctors.” Then he put on a flaky, airy voice and said, “One day at a time, June. One day at a time.”
Toby leaned over to his side table and pulled out two cigarettes. I smiled, because I’d been practicing in the far corner of my backyard when nobody was home. I sat down on the bed and tilted my head back to take a great deep pull off the cigarette. The smoke felt warm and good, like a blanket laid out all along the inside of my body.
“Finn didn’t even seem to care that he was dying,” I said. And it was true. Finn was as calm as ever right up to the very last time I saw him.
“Don’t you know? That’s the secret. If you always make sure you’re exactly the person you hoped to be, if you always make sure you know only the very best people, then you won’t care if you die tomorrow.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. If you were so happy, then you’d want to stay alive, wouldn’t you? You’d want to be alive forever, so you could keep being happy.” I reached over and tapped my ash into a pretty pottery dish that Toby was using for an ashtray.
“No, no. It’s the most unhappy people who want to stay alive, because they think they haven’t done everything they want to do. They think they haven’t had enough time. They feel like they’ve been shortchanged.”
Toby flattened both his hands and mimed pressing them up against a window. “Wax on, wax off,” he said, moving one hand at a time in a flat arc. “You’re turning me into Mr. Miyagi with all this talk. I feel like I’m in The Karate Kid.”
I laughed so hard, because I couldn’t imagine Toby ever watching that movie. What he’d said still didn’t really make sense, but there was a tiny flicker of something I felt like I was almost catching. Just for a second it felt like I understood, and then it evaporated again.
“What about you?” I said.
“Me?”
I nodded. “I mean . . . have you been shortchanged?”
Toby took a long drag of his cigarette and stretched his arm across the bed.
“I suppose I’m in that very small group of people who are not waiting for their own story to unfold. If my life was a film, I’d have walked out by now.”
“Well, I wouldn’t,” I said. “I wouldn’t walk out.”
“That’s because you haven’t seen the first half.”
“Tell me, then. All of it.”
Toby ran a hand through his hair, frowning for a second.
“Another time, all right? Another day. Look, it’s nice out. For once you haven’t brought the rain with you.” He smiled to let me know he was joking. “Let’s go out somewhere.”
I understood right then that I would never know the real story of Toby’s life. There was no other time. Everything between Toby and me was in the here and now. That’s all there was. The here and now and Finn. No other history, just scraps and the next few months. And, you know, there was something perfect about that. It meant that everything could be put right. Everything could be new and exactly how it should be.
“Is that what you’re wearing?” I said, pointing at the fuzzy blue robe.
“Only if you want me to,” he said in a jokey voice. I got up and left the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind me so he could change.
When I was in the city, I always had the feeling that everyone could see right through me. Like all the real city people could see immediately that I was from the suburbs. No matter what I wore or how cool I tried to look, I could tell that Westchester was written all over me, head to toe. But not when I was with Finn. Finn was like a ticket into being a real city person. He had a glow that covered me in authentic city light. I thought it would be like that with Toby too. But it wasn’t. With Toby, I felt like we were both strangers in this place. I didn’t just feel like I was from the suburbs but like I was from someplace a world away from here. Like I didn’t belong but also like I didn’t want to. Like I didn’t care. And in lots of ways that felt just as good as blending in. Maybe even better.
It was a beautiful afternoon. Bright blue sky and warm, and everyone we passed seemed to be in a good mood. We walked over to Riverside Park, which is long and thin and stretches along the Hudson right up to 158th Street. It was good to have someone to talk to again, and I talked way too much. I told Toby about Greta. About South Pacific and Annie. How Greta was probably about to become a Broadway star.
Toby laughed. “Broadway? Oh June, Finn would have loved to see her up there.”
Then I told him how I’d found her all covered in leaves after the party. I told him how the two of us used to be best friends but how we weren’t anymore. How Greta hated me.
“She doesn’t really hate you,” Toby said. But I told him she did. She really, really did.
“And there’s another party Saturday,” I said. “She roped me into another party and I don’t even want to go.”
“Maybe you’ll have fun.”
I gave him a look that said there was no chance of that happening. Toby gave me a sympathetic look back.
“That’s why Finn painted the portrait, you know,” he said after a while. “He had this idea that if he painted you together like that, then you’d always be connected. I don’t know exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to do something because of how things ended up between him and your mother.”
“What do you mean?”
Toby’s forehead creased and he didn’t answer me at first. Then he seemed to come to a decision.
“I shouldn’t tell you any of this; it’s not my place. But who cares? What does it matter now? Finn always felt sad that he and Danielle weren’t close, that she’d drifted away from him. They used to be so close. Because of all the moving. They were all each other had for so many years. She was the one who made sure their father never had any idea about Finn being gay. Finn didn’t care who knew, but she understood what it would mean. Especially with their father being this big military guy. She’d set up fake dates with her friends for Finn. And of course they all ended up falling in love with him, so it was kind of cruel, really.”
I blushed.
“He told me he never meant to be away so long. You know about that, right? How Finn left?” I nodded like I’d known for years. Like it wasn’t just another thing nobody had bothered to fill me in on. “He told me he wrote to her all the time. Right from the day he left. On the bus out of town. For years he didn’t hear anything back. Not a single letter. And, you know, I can understand it. But Finn never meant his leaving to be hurtful. He didn’t see it as leaving anyone behind. He always thought he’d be back in a few months. But when she didn’t write and he started being out in the world . . . Well, he was seventeen. You can imagine.”
I couldn’t. I didn’t want to.
“He said he even sent her money once. To meet him in Berlin. Maybe that was her chance to do something different. I don’t know. But she didn’t go, so that was that. Then finally he comes back and he’s nothing like the little brother she knew. The young boy on the beach. And the next thing you know he’s sick and there’s Danni losing him all over again. None of it’s fair. None of this. This thing about me not being part of Finn’s relationship with you, the whole thing is about Danielle wanting to say to Finn that he can’t have everything. That he needed to make a sacrifice, too. He always felt like he owed Danni something . . . and I suppose I ended up being that thing.”
“But it’s so stupid. It didn’t solve anything.”
“Of course it didn’t.”
I thought of my mother’s story. The one about Finn carrying that enormous horseshoe crab for her.
“But if they
loved each other so much, couldn’t they talk it out?”
Toby gave an exasperated laugh. “You get into habits. Ways of being with certain people.” He stared over at an empty bench. He gazed at it like he could see all the people who’d ever sat there and all the people who might ever sit there in the future. Or maybe he was just thinking about Finn. “It’s hard sometimes, you know? Hard to stop. Finn didn’t want that to happen to you and Greta. So he stuck you into that portrait together.”
Two women in tennis skirts jogged by us, then we passed a man walking two droopy basset hounds. The dogs were panting, their tongues almost grazing the ground.
How would a portrait stop Greta from despising me? And then I had a thought. Maybe it was Finn who’d sent the portrait to the paper. Maybe, somehow, that was all part of what he was thinking. Thrusting us out into the world like that. The two of us in the limelight together for everyone to see. But how would that change anything?
Toby stopped at a Slush Puppie stand and bought an orange one for me and a blue-raspberry one for himself. We sat on the steps of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, slurping through our thick straws.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“About what?”
“About you having to hide yourself away for me.”
He shrugged. “It’s not your fault.”
I knew it wasn’t, but somehow the thought of it being my mother’s fault seemed worse than taking it on myself. It was such a childish demand to make—so desperate and petty—and I didn’t want to think of my mother that way. It made me feel sorry for her.
“Hey,” I said, trying to lighten things up. “Who asked Matilda to go a-waltzing?”
“What’s that?”
“Trivial Pursuit. It’s a question. I’m testing you.”
“Oh, no. Tests aren’t my strong point. Let me see . . .” He started humming the song at first, but then he began to sing. It was all out of tune, and I put my hand over my mouth to stop laughing. It was hard to believe someone could make such beautiful music with a guitar and be so awful at singing. “A jolly swagman. That’s it, isn’t it?”
Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel Page 20