Fifty-Seven
As the night went on and I sat awake in my room, listening to the growl of thunder, I couldn’t stop myself from worrying about Greta. What if she was already passed out, deep under the cover of leaves? What if she drank so much she couldn’t wake up? I’d seen that kind of thing on the news. What if she’d taken something else? Drugs or something I couldn’t even imagine? And what if there was lightning? What if lightning came and twisted its way down that tall maple tree in the woods? What if it shot right down to the ground, right to Greta’s skull? My thoughts kept spinning out. She said she’d find a way not to do Annie. What did she mean? What if she tried to do something to herself? I didn’t want to care, but somehow, like always, I did. She was wired into my heart. Twisted and kinked and threaded right through.
It was the first flicker of real lightning that made me panic. I thought of the rain that would come soon. Heavy, drenching. How the ground around Greta might dissolve into mud. How the river might rise and flood if the rain was hard and fast enough. I imagined Greta floating away. And the wolves. What if the wolves were there? What if they were real? And what if they were hungry? I thought of that look on her face when we were talking about invisible mermaids. Like a little kid. Even if the wolves were only coyotes, they could take Greta and tear her to pieces.
The eleven o’clock news was on, and then came Saturday Night Live, which my parents watched because they thought it was still funny. Every few minutes my dad would call up to me, waiting to hear me call back. I knew my parents thought I might sneak out. And maybe I would have if I wasn’t such a coward.
Instead, I walked down the hallway, past Greta’s closed door, past the bathroom, and into my parents’ bedroom. Their bed was always made and stretched tight, so I slunk down on the fuzzy beige carpet next to the night table on my father’s side of the bed. I lifted the phone receiver off the cradle, and slowly, taking my time over every number, I dialed Finn’s apartment. It rang twice, then three times, and for a moment I thought Toby might not be there or he might not want to pick up. I held the receiver to my ear and decided I’d give him six rings before I hung up. He picked up on the fifth.
“Toby?” I said.
“June? It’s late. Are you all right?”
I didn’t say anything at first. It felt awkward to talk to him after last time. Nothing had changed for him, but for me everything had. I’d become transparent, naked. The girl with the see-through heart. The stupidest girl in the world. A pulse of anger shot through my body.
“You know how we’re supposed to be there for each other? If we need anything?”
“Of course. Of course I know. What is it? Are you all right, June?”
“I’m okay. It’s not me. It’s Greta.”
“Greta? What’s happened?”
“I’m scared. I don’t know. I’m grounded. I can’t get her home. I . . .” My voice was rising higher and higher, the words rushing out.
“June?” my father called up from the living room.
“It’s okay.” I yelled back down, trying to sound calm and happy. “Just singing to myself. It’s okay.”
“Shhh. Slowly,” Toby said.
“Okay.” I let out a long breath. “Okay.”
I told him about the parties again, and Greta, and how I’d found her the last two times.
“She was waiting for me there. And she’ll be there again tonight. I know she will. She said she wanted to talk. And she had no idea I’d be grounded or anything. There’s lightning out there, and thunder. She was already drunk in the play. She was completely wasted. I could tell. There’s more, but there’s no time.”
“Why are you grounded? It isn’t me, is it?”
“No, no. Later, okay? Just this now.”
“All right, all right.”
“So where is she? Exactly.”
“Remember where you parked when you picked me up at the school that time? That day we went to Playland? Remember how that parking lot wrapped around to the back of the school?”
He did, and from there I described exactly where to cut into the woods. How to follow the river and find the maple where Greta would be. I told him once, and then he asked me to tell it to him all over again, twice.
“You’ll need a flashlight, okay?”
Toby didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “June?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I’m a bit concerned. I’m probably—I’m bound to frighten Greta, aren’t I? She doesn’t know me. Your family . . . well, they hate me. You know that. I don’t know . . .”
“Well, if you don’t want to . . . I mean, you said anything, and first you say we can’t go to England and now . . .” It made me feel bad to play on his guilt like that. And I wish I hadn’t done it, but I did. It’s the truth. I made him feel as guilty as I could.
“All right. Okay, then.”
“If she wakes up, tell her I sent you. Tell her this, specifically, and she’ll believe you: Tell her our parents saw the portrait, okay? Tell her I was grounded because of the portrait and I called you to get her. She might not even wake up. In that case, just get her outside our door. Park down the road a little. I’ll keep checking the back door. I’ll bring her inside. It’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know about this, June.”
“Don’t worry, Toby. Don’t be afraid.”
He didn’t say anything. Then he sighed. “Okay. All right. I’ll go. For you.”
“You will?” And I realized I was surprised. Maybe I’d been testing him. Maybe I expected him to fail.
“For you. Don’t worry. I don’t want you to worry. I’ll be there soon.”
I hung up, and right away I felt a shiver hit every part of my skin at once. I should have just told my parents. I should have just let Greta get in trouble. I sat there on my parents’ bedroom floor, letting what I’d done sink in. Then I grabbed the receiver back up and dialed the number again. My fingers fumbled, and when I finally got the number right it didn’t even matter. The phone rang and rang. Toby had already left. I can’t say what I would have said if he’d been there. Would I have begged him not to go? I don’t know. I don’t know my heart that well. All I knew was that Toby’s promises were good. He’d dropped everything, just like that, and came when I called.
Downstairs, my parents were laughing at Saturday Night Live, and I slipped into the living room. My mother was all cozy in pink sweatpants and a huge oversize sweatshirt. They were on the couch, and her head was leaned up against my dad’s shoulder. I sat cross-legged in the recliner.
Dennis Miller was on the show, doing that comedy news thing he did. Both my parents were laughing at some stupid joke about Gary Hart. A commercial came on and I looked over at them.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
My mother glanced over at my father. Then she looked at me for a long time, her lips pressed together tight. Her face hard. Finally, she seemed to lighten a little bit and she nodded her head very slightly. “It’s good to hear you say that, June.”
“I mean it. Really. I am sorry.”
My mother patted the spot next to her on the couch, and I slid off the vinyl recliner and snuggled up next to her in a way I hadn’t done for years. It felt warm and good.
When the commercials were done, Saturday Night Live came back on and there was a sketch with Jon Lovitz about a package-delivery service called Einstein Express, where, because of Einstein’s theories about the space-time continuum, packages could actually arrive before they were sent out. It was a good idea but, like most stuff on that show, the skit wasn’t all that funny.
But I didn’t care. This day would be over soon, and my mother’s shoulder was soft and the couch was soft and Suzanne Vega had come on and she was singing “Luka,” about that sad boy who lived on the second floor, and it was soft and soothing and just right.
The minutes seemed to pass in slow motion that night. My mother’s body shook when she laughed, just like Finn’s, and my father snored lightly.
After Saturday Night Live, my parents went up to bed and I went into the kitchen to watch for Toby at the back door. Everything would work out fine. Of course it would. That’s what I told myself. I would thank Toby for doing this for me and everything would be back to normal. The rain pounded the kitchen window and I stared into the darkness of our backyard, at the skeletal shadow of the swing set, at the rhododendron bushes whipping around in the storm. I stood there for a long time, staring out, waiting for the shadow of Toby to arrive.
Then the front doorbell rang.
Fifty-Eight
The two policemen stood in the doorway. I knew one was Officer Gellski. He’d been coming to our school once a year since I was in kindergarten, to tell us about stranger danger and the third rail and bike safety. He was older than my parents. The other one was young.
Between the two of them, looking small, was Greta. She stood stiff, staring down at the ground. She was still in her grass skirt, her Bloody Mary costume, and she was soaked. Her hair was plastered with mud and leaves, her face filthy with smeared stage makeup. The rain pounded down behind the three of them, but my father just stood there, one hand on the edge of the door, and stared.
“Greta—what on earth?” he whispered. “Is she okay?”
“May we?” Officer Gellski asked.
“Yes. Yes, of course. Come in.” My father opened the door wider and the three of them stepped into the front hallway. The younger cop looked down at his muddy shoes, then over to my mother.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, shaking her head. “Come into the kitchen. In here.”
The police walked ahead. Greta hung back. My father put his arm around her and guided her into the kitchen. He pulled a chair out for Greta and sat her down. The two policemen made the kitchen seem tiny. Their navy uniforms and their bulky pistols made everything in our house seem flimsy.
“Take a seat,” my mother said to them.
“It’s okay. We’re fine standing,” Officer Gellski said, forcing a smile. The younger cop held out a plastic bag.
“Your daughter’s coat,” he said. “It was soaked.”
She took the bag from him and held it out, away from her body.
“Throw it in the bathtub, please, June,” she said without looking at me.
I’d been standing in the kitchen doorway, and I went over to my mother and took the bag. I walked as close to Greta as I could, nudging her arm as I went past, trying to get her eyes. But she wouldn’t look at me. Not even for a second.
“June, move it,” my mother said. “It’s dripping all over the floor.”
As I left the room, I heard both my parents frantically questioning the two cops about Greta. All I could think of was Toby. What had happened to Toby? Did this mean he hadn’t made it to Greta? Was he lost in the woods? Was he too late? Would he spend all night out there searching for her, trying to keep his promise to me? I ran up the stairs two at a time, then flipped the light on and dumped the coat out of the bag and into the tub.
I barely looked at it at first, eager to get back downstairs, but as my hand reached for the light switch, I turned. The coat wasn’t black. Greta’s coat was black. I stared at the wet lump in the bathtub for a few seconds, not quite registering what I saw. It wasn’t Greta’s coat in the tub. Slumped in the bottom of the bathtub like some kind of dead animal was a big gray coat. Finn’s coat. Toby’s coat. The one he’d worn to the zoo.
I ran down the stairs two at a time.
“Tell us what’s going on,” my mother was saying.
I stood in the doorway watching. Trying to catch Greta’s eye.
“Well, first of all, we think Greta’s just fine,” Officer Gellski said.
“Where did you find her?” she said, wringing her hands together.
“Behind the school, Mrs. Elbus. In the woods. Kids throw parties back there sometimes. We like to keep an eye on it.” He stretched his arms out across the kitchen counter. “It looks like she’s had a bit too much to drink. Partying a little too hard, that kind of thing, but we’re not too worried about that right now.”
Look at me, Greta. Look at me. I was thinking at Greta as hard as I could, but still nothing.
“You’re not?” my father said.
The young cop kept shifting his weight from left foot to right. He seemed uncomfortable, like he had no real job to do now that he’d handed the coat over.
“No. That’s not what’s worrying us right now,” Officer Gellski said.
“Well, what is it, then?”
“There was a man, Mr. Elbus.”
My stomach felt like it had turned to stone. Heavy and cold and too much for my body to hold. Look at me, Greta. Please look at me.
My father’s voice sounded alarmed now, louder, higher pitched. “A man? What kind of man?”
Then Officer Gellski described exactly what they saw. He said he and the young cop were sitting in the cruiser in the school parking lot. Some people who lived on the street had called in, complaining of noise, which, he said, was not unusual for a Saturday night. What was a little bit different was that the neighbor had reported a scream. Not only the usual party noise, but also a girl screaming. So the two of them were sitting in the cruiser with the headlights off, watching, looking for any movement in and out of the woods. Anything to indicate that there was a party.
“We got out of the car, about to walk in a ways, and it started raining. Hard. We looked at each other, thinking that it wasn’t worth getting soaked over. The rain was bound to get everyone out of there anyway.”
My thoughts were wild. All over the place.
“We were about to leave. I’d just turned the key in the ignition, just switched on the lights.” Officer Gellski mimed starting the car up. “We were backing out. The car was facing the woods so the lights were shining right into the trees, lighting the whole place up, and that’s when he came out.”
“I don’t understand,” my father said.
The younger cop stepped forward. “The man in question was coming out of the woods, holding your daughter, Mr. Elbus.” He put his arms out in front of him, like he was holding firewood, demonstrating.
“To tell you the truth, at first we thought he was holding a dog or something. A dead dog.” Gellski held up a hand. “No offense.”
“It was that big coat,” said the young cop.
As Gellski described what had happened, I could see the whole thing in my mind. Toby, like that lanky Ichabod Crane, running through the woods, cold and wet, cradling the bundled-up Greta. Charging along, faster and faster, his good heart pounding. I could see him so clearly, trying to do right by me, by Finn, his eyes squinting as he stumbled out of the woods, shocked by the headlights aimed right at him. Clutching Greta tighter, both of them drenched.
“We put the two of them in the back of the car, cuffed the man. We haven’t been able to get a word. From either of them.”
“The man,” my mother said, looking between the cops and Greta. “Greta, who is this man? What are they talking about? The cast party was at the Reeds’, wasn’t it? I don’t . . .”
My father pulled a chair out and my mother sat down, looking defeated. I edged into the room, pulled a glass from the cabinet and filled it with water.
Greta didn’t answer, and my mother turned back to the two cops.
I walked over to Greta and knelt, handing her the glass. From down low, I peered up into her face. As the adults kept talking, I looked right into her eyes until I forced her to look back. For those few seconds, once our eyes met, it was like we were the only two people in the room. I put a hand on her arm, and with everything in me I tried to make her understand that it was all me. That none of this was Toby’s fault. My eyes were begging her to save him. I would forgive every awful thing she’d ever done to me for this. For this one thing. I kept staring, waiting for some sign from her. But I saw nothing. It was Greta who could read people, not me. After a few seconds, she took a long slow sip of the water and turned away.
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��The man’s name is Tobias Aldshaw. Does that mean anything to you?”
My mother and father looked at each other like they’d just been told Martians had landed in the backyard.
“Toby?” my mother said.
“So you know the man?” said Officer Gellski.
“Well . . .”
“There’s something else,” Gellski said.
Something else? Was Toby drunk? Had he been drinking when I made him drive out?
Gellski reached inside the chest pocket of his shirt.
“We found this in his back pocket.” He tossed a small navy-blue book on the table, and everyone stared. I gasped, then put my hand over my mouth. My passport. The confusion on my parents’ faces was so deep by that point, I thought it might stay there forever. My mother picked up the passport and flipped to the picture page. She stared at it for a moment, then she looked at me. I stood, but looked away.
“June? This is June’s passport. This is starting to really scare me,” my mother said, turning to my father. “I don’t understand . . .”
I saw everything then. I saw how deep the trap was that Toby was in. If nobody said anything, if it looked like he was here on his own, like a crazy person, with my passport, with Greta, he’d get arrested. And maybe even more. Prison? Sent back to England? But if I did tell them everything—if they all knew he’d been meeting up with me, meeting alone with a fourteen-year-old girl in the city—I didn’t know what would happen. To either of us.
“Greta,” I said, under all the adult voices.
She turned slowly and looked at me over her shoulder. She seemed older than sixteen, in a haggard way, and so tired I couldn’t imagine how she was still sitting upright.
Please, I mouthed.
Tell the Wolves I'm Home: A Novel Page 30