Kiss of the Wolf

by Jim Shepard

  “We got a mouse over here,” Sandro said. “You missed the big hunt.”

  “A mouse,” Bruno said. “You oughta get Sewer Mouth over here.” Because Audrey slobbered on him, he called her Sewer Mouth.

  “Bruno, that was too much,” Joanie said. She pointed at the helmet. Todd now had both helmets bumping and clacking together on his lap.

  “It cost a bundle,” Bruno said. “You guys are forever in my debt.”

  He turned to the great-aunt. “How we doin’, Clorinda?” he said in his louder-for-the-folks-in-the-Home voice. “You gettin’ out?”

  “Hah?” Clorinda said.

  “Leave her alone,” Nancy said, but she seemed to be enjoying it.

  “I said, You gettin’ out? Dance?” He danced a little figure across the table with his first two fingers.

  “Ha,” Clorinda said.

  “Nina, siddown,” Sandro said. “The antipasto’s enough.”

  Everyone agreed. She brought over the remaining sausage and peppers, with some garlic bread in a smaller dish. She seemed to feel better once she had them on the table.

  “How’s business, Bruno?” Sandro said. He liked to bait him, for laughs.

  “Don’t talk to me about business,” Bruno said, pouring wine.

  Sandro said he looked like he was doing good. Todd yawned widely. It was pretty late for him already, Joanie thought.

  Hey, do I look at your bankbook?” Bruno said. “What’re you, the IRS?”

  “I thought maybe you could lend me some money,” Sandro said. He winked at Joanie.

  “I’ll lend you this,” Bruno said. His hand was between his legs.

  “Bruno,” Nina said.

  He folded his hands in prayer before him and shook them to show what he had to put up with. “Hey, I’m sorry. Today I had the three lonely guys. The last guy, he wanted to be my friend. He wanted to be with me forever. The guy wants to talk, he wants to relate, he wants to go for long walks in the moonlight, he wants to do everything but buy the fucking car. Pardon my French.”

  He caught Joanie’s eyes before she could throw Nancy a sympathetic look. He always, always anticipated her. Two days after Gary left, she’d suddenly been bedridden at her parents’: couldn’t eat a thing, threw up night and day, sweated like a horse. Bruno called the house. “How’s Joanie?” he asked. “She sick yet?”

  Nancy passed him the garlic bread, and he took it without looking at it. “This guy, I led him all around the lot, we come into my office to talk numbers. He sits down, he goes, ‘Field of Dreams. There’s a great movie.’ I thought, Give me one break. Not this. Not now. Field of Dreams. Dead baseball players hang out in the tall corn. Every so often, bip, there they are again. Back in the tall corn, huh? I’ll tell you what: a guy comes in and tells me he likes that kind of movie, he might as well just spread the inside of his wallet out on my desk. Just spread it all out and say, ‘Take what you want and leave me bus fare.’”

  “I liked Field of Dreams,” Sandro said. “Wasn’t that the one with Robert Redford?”

  “You don’t know,” Bruno said. “Last movie you saw was Pride of the Yankees.”

  They got down to serious eating. The sausages went around the table. People split them so there’d be enough. Bruno got up to go to the bathroom, and when he squeezed by Joanie on the way back, he trailed his fingertips across her shoulder. He was looking at her when he sat down. She raised her chin, worried she looked as ragged and uncomposed as a kid who ran away from home.

  “I like your hair like that, Mrs. Muhlberg,” he said. She had it up, because of the heat.

  “Bruno, you’re something,” Nina said, eating.

  “I like her hair,” he said. He turned his palms up.

  Joanie thought, At least I’m generating interest from somebody. She also liked the minor rebelliousness of the public flirting.

  Before Gary took off, she’d been with Bruno at the funeral of one of Bruno’s friends, Mark Siegler. At the cemetery, they’d ended up on opposite sides of the grave. He’d made faces. She’d shot him a look, and he’d pointed to his crotch and arched his eyebrows.

  “Someone called for you,” Joanie said. “Before.”

  Bruno was instantly alert. “Oh yeah?” he said. “Who?”

  She shrugged. “He didn’t sound happy. He said he’d see you later tonight,” she said.

  Bruno looked at her. He flexed his shoulders to fix his shirt. He nodded.

  They ran out of wine. Sandro stood up to get more.

  “Sandro, get Joey’s homemade,” Nina said. “The one Bruno brought last time.”

  “Which one’s Joey’s?” Sandro said.

  “Look, there are two reds down there right next to each other,” Nina said. She held up two fingers, like a peace sign. “Get this one, not this one.” She tilted her hand to favor each finger.

  Everybody laughed. Joanie looked cross-eyed at Todd. It was a thing they exchanged whenever anyone said something stupid. Sandro put his hand over his eyes.

  “That’s a help, Nin,” Sandro said. “I’ll get this one.” He put his finger in his nose. He squeezed by Joanie, and they heard him going down the cellar stairs.

  “So Todd’s a grown-up now,” Bruno said. His joking had changed. He looked preoccupied. Joanie filed the information: a Bruno weak spot, something to do with the call.

  “Man o’ the house,” Bruno said.

  Todd shrugged.

  “I missed the ceremony,” Bruno said.

  “Dere’re tree bottles down here,” Sandro called from the cellar.

  “Get this one,” Bruno called back without raising his head, holding up his middle finger.

  Joanie got up to go to the bathroom herself, laughing. The phone rang when she passed it, like she’d tripped an alarm.

  She’d forgotten her husband. Todd was upright, alert again. She put her hand on the phone.

  She answered it in front of everyone in the kitchen, turning so they could get maximum coverage. She said hello.

  “Hello? Joanie?” Gary said. There was a sheeting noise behind him. She imagined a booth on an Arctic traffic median, the Alaska pipeline running alongside. Snow. But it was summer in Alaska, too. “Joanie?” Gary said.

  “No,” Joanie said. “This’s Beatrice.” The line was quiet and she knew he was working on that: was he being played with? Meanwhile she enjoyed the reactions from the kitchen.

  He introduced himself. He asked for Todd. Joanie told him to hold on and she passed the phone across the table to her son.

  “Hey, Dad,” Todd said. He had the phone in both hands. “Yeah, she’s crazy.”

  “You’re crazy,” Nina said to her. Joanie made a face.

  She sat back down and took some provolone and bread on her plate, unable to go to the bathroom now without looking like she wanted to be out of the room.

  Todd went over what he got. And the jacket, Joanie thought. “Oh, and Mom got me a jacket,” he said.

  People kept their voices down. Clorinda sat beside Todd with a stiff silence, cutting her capacolla with a knife and fork. Elena murmured to Sandro. Nina looked at the receiver like her grandson was talking to Lee Harvey Oswald. Joanie could see how much it bothered her that the mess had already gotten this normalized. Everyone got away with everything except her family, and this was another example.

  The mouse, she noticed, was on the windowsill.

  Bruno saw it. He touched Sandro’s arm. It was crouching behind a cactus in a green plastic pot. Its back was bent. It apparently hoped it was hidden.

  Todd was still talking to his dad. Sandro got up, nonchalant, to get a drink of water from the sink. He swung a hand at the mouse, a little swing, and it bolted across the counter, across the stove. Its paws made tinny scrabbling sounds on the stove top.

  Sandro banged a hand after it and just missed. All four coils jumped. The mouse threw itself from the counter, little legs splaying in the air. It landed audibly in front of Joanie and reversed direction back past Bruno. He brought o
ne big shoe down—boom—and all the noise stopped. The floor was still reverberating.

  Joanie was afraid to look. Bruno looked at each of them and then down at his foot. He lifted his shoe, slowly, and on the linoleum there was a little curl of a tip of tail, like a gray fingernail.

  “Dad, you should call back,” Todd said. But the party broke up before he did.

  Everyone thanked Nina for having them, and Nina thanked everyone for coming. Joanie and Todd and Bruno helped with the cleanup.

  At the screen door with her mother, Nancy said, “You sticking around, Bruno?” and Bruno said yeah, he was sticking around. Nancy left.

  “Mrs. Mucherino does not like Mr. Mouse,” Bruno said when Nina came back to the sink.

  “I’m not too fond of Mr. Minea, either,” Nina said, taking the dish towel from him.

  “It’s all right, I failed,” Bruno said. “I had him right in my sights—budaboom—I didn’t finish it. I have to live with that.”

  Sandro told him to give the mouse a rest.

  When they were finished, they went out in the driveway and stood around Joanie’s Buick. It was warm and the crickets were loud. Todd loaded his presents in the back. The phone started ringing, but Todd didn’t hear it and no one else brought it up.

  “How’s the car running?” Bruno asked. It was a ritual question, a “do I look out for you or do I look out for you?” question. He’d sold it to them. It was a dark-blue Century wagon. It looked like a hearse. It had an expanse of hood she never really got used to. He gave it to them cheap when it was three years old and had twenty thousand miles on it. Now it had a hundred and the body was dinged up, but it ran, no problem. When her father talked about it, he said, “That automobile doesn’t owe you a penny.” He pronounced it automobile.

  Gary had taken the Mazda with him, so the Buick was it as far as transportation went.

  Joanie told him the car ran great.

  “That automobile doesn’t owe her a penny,” Sandro said.

  “That car was some deal,” Bruno said. He was looking around and down the street, like he was expecting company.

  “I know it,” Joanie said.

  “So, you gonna go home, or what?” Bruno said. “You tired?” She could see faint hopes fading. “You’re probably tired.”

  “Todd’s pretty worn out,” she said.

  “Thanks a lot for the helmet,” Todd said. He’d said good-bye to Nina and Sandro and was already in the car.

  Nina came and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry about the way things turned out,” she said bitterly.

  Joanie told her not to worry and said good-bye. That seemed to make things worse. Sandro followed his wife into the house with a look back at Joanie that said, Thanks a lot.

  They heard banging around, the raspy sound of foil torn from the roll. The crickets started up. Todd was slumped against the headrest and looked already asleep.

  They stood next to the car for a minute, awkward.

  “What was the deal with that call?” Joanie said.

  Bruno shrugged.

  “Looked like it upset you,” she said.

  He snorted.

  She thought, I don’t need this. She hoped something would happen.

  He took her cheek with his fingertips and turned her head and kissed her. She felt a rush of caffeine. She felt her lips after his were gone.

  “Bruno, don’t start,” she said.

  He was looking at her. “Hey, when I start, you’ll know it,” he said. He looked in on Todd, who hadn’t moved. He cupped his hand around the back of her neck. He left.

  She got in the car and started it. She turned on the headlights. The objects down the driveway were flooded with illumination. They promised her something. In the rearview mirror, Bruno’s taillights winked red at the end of the street and disappeared. She left the radio alone. She had, while she sat there, what she thought of as a little religious spasm, like she’d been confronted by objects ready to help her take part in the transformation of her world.

  Todd revived on the way home. Joanie was speeding. She was charged up. She didn’t know why. He shifted around on his seat and retied his sneakers.

  She was heading up 110 to the Merritt Parkway. One-ten ran along the river, with a state park on the other side. It felt like the country. The road was twisty and had no streetlights and she liked it; it never had cops on it this time of night, and she knew it well enough to go fast. Her high beams were on. Even the Buick was leaning on the curves. Presents slid across the backseat.

  When she drove, she set speed contests for herself: Could she make this part of the trip in under ten minutes? Could she make all three of these lights? It was a way of getting from place to place. Her driving had gotten better since Gary left. Todd had taken to riding with his feet up on the dash, bracing himself.

  They jounced along, swooping across curves and lanes. They flashed past something small and dead, with a little foot in the air, near a storm drain. Possum? Raccoon? She caught only a glimpse of it. Todd sighed. She considered various questions—Did you have a good time? Like your presents? What’d your father say?—but didn’t ask any of them.

  “I wonder if Audrey came back,” he said.

  “I’m sure she did,” Joanie said.

  “This’s the longest she stayed away,” he said.

  She didn’t have anything to say to that, so she kept quiet.

  He sat up straight and turned to the backseat and rooted around in his presents. “Looking for your jacket?” she asked ironically.

  He pulled out Nancy’s book. He was peering at it in the dark.

  She turned on the overhead light. She steadied the wheel. “Read me something,” she said.

  “Play the radio,” Todd said.

  “C’mon. Read me something,” she said.

  “Ma.”

  “What is it, just a collection of stories?”

  “It’s all different tales.”

  “What’re they called? Give me some titles,” she said. They went over a bump and the car almost bottomed out. She overcorrected for a curve. Todd gave her a look.

  He flipped around and found the contents page. “‘The Man Wreathed in Seaweed,’” he read. “‘The Man Who Came Out Only at Night.’ ‘Body-without-Soul.’ ‘The Little Girl Sold with the Pears.’”

  “Read me that one,” she said.

  “Ma,” he said.

  “Just a little.”

  He sighed. He rubbed his nose industriously and scratched so she could hear it. He sighed again. “‘Once a man had a pear tree that used to bear four baskets of pears a year. One year, though, it only bore three baskets and a half, while he was supposed to carry four to the king. Seeing no other way out, he put his youngest daughter into the fourth basket and covered her up with pears and leaves.’”

  They passed a pull-off with some parked cars. Teenagers, Joanie thought.

  “Yeah?” she said. Her eyes were on the yellow lines ribboning out and dipping and reappearing in the distance. “Go on.”

  “We shouldn’t drive with the light on like this,” Todd said.

  Joanie made a face at the road ahead and snapped off the overhead light. They were quiet for a few miles.

  As usual, what she wanted to say would make her sound like someone she didn’t want to sound like. So she kept her mouth shut. This was the way she usually felt when he was acting up: reasonable and trampled.

  She turned on the radio and cranked it. “Everybody awake, pal, let’s go,” she said. She felt reckless, the irresponsible mother.

  It was a “classic rock” station. They were halfway through The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Roger Daltrey screamed.

  It charged her up further. She’d been a big Who fan.

  “Aw, jeez,” Todd said, sinking in his seat.

  Lately, up-tempo rock acted on her accelerator, she noticed. “Won’t Get Fooled Again” segued into The Yardbirds’ “Train Kept a-Rollin’,” another all-time favorite. She touched the dial out of
reflex, in appreciation, but didn’t take the volume any higher. The rhythm line galloped her into the song.

  She could see the bridge up ahead and the entrance to the parkway, black water, power lines, little yellow lights doubled off docks on the Milford side.

  A man, a face showing teeth, was there in front of her and took her breath. Wide eyes, a black jacket. She felt an electric spasm of shock. Todd screamed.

  The body seemed to hurl itself out, lunged at her and thudded. The bumper turned him, and he cart-wheeled and hit the roof of the car. She felt the sound in her heart. She heard him carried down the length of the roof, like someone running in heavy boots, and then he was off. Their car careened right and then left and skidded into bushes that splintered and snapped along one side, like gunfire. Todd was bounced into her and she was slung across Todd. The hood flew up. They stopped.

  She was aware that the noise of their shrieks and the braking had died away. The Yardbirds were louder, and into the next chorus. She turned the radio off. There was a whimpering, like someone else was in the car. She turned the engine off, but it continued, shaking and then ticking.

  “Ma, what’d we do?” Todd whispered. She could see his eyes in the darkness. She checked to see if he was all right. She checked to see if she was. They both shook. The car’s ticking wound down.

  She tried to get the courage to open her door. She looked back. The body was off the side of the road. One leg was crossed over the other, like someone had flopped down for a nap near the white line.

  She had to get out. Someone else could come along. The guy could still be alive. She had to help. She had the feeling her life was a movie that just tore—a whole set of concerns, a world, cut away and flapping. She was looking at the whiteness of the screen.

  She had to get up. She had to function. She held the wheel and could feel herself trying to shudder the fear out. It worked a little. She opened the door. Her movements occurred without her full cooperation.

  She crossed the pavement to the body. “Stay there,” she called hoarsely back to the car. Todd hadn’t moved.

  They’d skidded a hundred feet past it. She could see the long helixes of skid marks. She got closer and stopped ten feet or so away. This was cowardice, she knew. She willed him up. If she gave him another second, he’d stir, shake his head like someone surfacing from a dive in the pool. He’d turn to her with a look that would let her know he appreciated what a tight squeak that’d been.