Kiss of the Wolf

by Jim Shepard

  While she spoke she wrote notes to herself on the TO DO pad stuck to the refrigerator:

  Coward

  Asshole

  Liar

  “Be over in a hour,” Bruno said. He got off.

  Despite the half-makeup job, she thought she’d better shower. Todd was finished and thumping around his room. She took a shower. He’d gotten water everywhere. When she got out, feeling a little better, he was in the kitchen, buttering a bagel. She sat at the kitchen table, her hair still wet, and combed it out. He brought over the two bagel halves and gave her the bottom. Recently he’d started keeping the best part of the food they shared for himself, as if life without his father made him selfish.

  He put marmalade on his half. His face was closed off and concentrating, as if he was counting to himself.

  She pulled at a knot in her hair. She had a headache. She thought, Is this what it’s going to be like from here on in?

  “Do you know where Dad might be now?” he said. His lips were chapped and his wet hair looked like a modified punk haircut.

  “You mean what city?” she asked.

  “Where he is, what city,” he said. She could hear the weariness in his voice.

  “I know as much as you,” she said. “Last I heard, he was heading somewhere in Washington. He never said what city.”

  Todd tore off some bagel and chewed while squinting at the kitchen window. It was gray out.

  “No guarantee he ever got to Washington,” she said.

  A sports merchandising catalogue was on the floor under the window, swollen and frilled from having been rained on. She could see the circled Minnesota Viking helmet from there.

  “You thinking of telling him about what happened?” she asked.

  He shrugged.

  She got up and went into the downstairs bathroom. While she dried her hair and put on makeup, she tried to think of what to say.

  When she came out, he was gone.

  She put the dishes in the sink. She got dressed.

  She heard him in the living room. She stood on one leg, wrestling with the heel of one of her flats, and peeked in.

  He sat on the sofa, bending a spoon into odd shapes. He had the TV on. She couldn’t tell what he was watching. It looked like a nature show on rodents. Brown things (beavers? woodchucks?) were rooting around a riverbank.

  “You gonna be all right?” she asked. It sounded like she meant, You gonna tell? She felt, suddenly, like an old guard at a tired museum.

  “Yeah,” he said. He didn’t look up. He had the spoon in an S shape.

  She heard Bruno’s car in the driveway. She said she’d be back soon and headed out the door. It looked like rain. She grabbed a folding umbrella leaning against the wall near the dog’s dish.

  The dog was sitting there when she opened the door.

  “How long was Sewer Mouth out?” Bruno called, getting out of his car. He’d pulled up on the grass next to the garage instead of parking in the driveway. “All night, I hope?”

  “I just let her out,” Joanie said. She moved aside to let the dog through and then shut the door behind her.

  He watched her walk toward him. “Kid sick?” he asked.

  “He’s got a fever,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair. “What’d you park there for?”

  “He looks all right,” Bruno said. He gestured up at Todd’s second-floor window. Todd was looking down at them.

  She could feel herself blush. “What’re you supposed to see, fever germs?” she asked. “You ready?”

  “You look like you got a fever yourself,” he said.

  She came around the back of his car and opened the passenger door.

  “Can we take your car?” he asked. “Mine’s fucked up.”

  “Why? How?” She hung on the door handle like there was a strong wind.

  “How do I know how? It stalled four times comin’ over here. Is there a problem?”

  “No problem,” she said. She turned toward the garage. She felt as if she could not sound, or be, less convincing.

  She edged past all the junk inside the garage on the driver’s side and opened the door.

  Bruno was still outside.

  “Well, let’s go,” she said.

  “Back it out,” he said. “What am I, gonna squeeze by all that shit?”

  She tried to keep her eyes away from the front fender. She got in. All the coffee she’d had came back now, thrumming around inside her. She started the car. It died. She started it again. It died again.

  “What is it, going around from car to car? Pop the hood,” Bruno said. He came into the garage and edged down the passenger side, his hands on the car body, leaning away from the wall to protect his suit. Shovels and hoes hung on nails, blades outward.

  Please please please, she thought. She twisted the ignition once more. The engine turned over.

  Bruno stopped, then opened the passenger door as far as he could and wedged his way in.

  “Jesus God,” he said as a general complaint. She murmured in agreement.

  She backed down the driveway, a little fast, she thought. She slowed for the main street. Bruno sighed.

  “Things are getting worse and worse,” she said. She wasn’t even sure how she’d explain the comment if he asked.

  “Tell me,” he agreed.

  She was sweating. She rolled down the window. She thought about where she’d park at the church to hide the front end.

  “So how you been?” Bruno asked. He put his arm across the seat and spread out. He loosened his collar. “You been okay?”

  “I been okay,” Joanie said. She peered ahead like the visibility was bad.

  “You talk to the police yet?” he asked.

  She took a curve a little wide and overcorrected. “Talk to the police?” she said. “Why would I talk to the police?”

  He shrugged and looked back at the road. “Just wondering,” he said.

  They passed a sign on the side of a parked panel truck: REMEMBER: BEHIND A ROLLING BALL COMES A RUNNING CHILD. It was illustrated with one of those moment-before-the-disaster tableaux: a kid, a red ball, a nonalert motorist.

  “J’ou go home One-ten the night of the confirmation party?” he asked.

  She looked over at him. He was looking out the window. “I mighta,” she said. Her underarms were instantly wet. She was sweating at her hairline, too. “I think I did,” she said.

  “Yeah, I told the police that,” he said. He was still looking out the window. They headed up onto the Devon bridge, and he was looking upriver toward the I-95 overpass. “They’ll probably come talk to you pretty soon.”

  It took her a minute to get hold of herself. She stopped at a light on the other side of the bridge and put her turn signal on. “Thanks a lot,” she said. “Just what I need.”

  “Yeah. Really,” he said.

  They got going again. She didn’t know whether to ask questions or not.

  “Hot in here,” Bruno said.

  She reached awkwardly behind her with one hand and cranked the back window down as best she could. Her arm hurt from the angle and the vehemence of her cranking.

  They rode along. She couldn’t decide what to say.

  “You see anything that night, driving home?” Bruno asked. “A car? Anything?”

  She made a show of thinking about it. “No, I didn’t,” she said.

  He made a “that’s-too-bad” face.

  “Do they think he was robbed, or something?” she blurted. She had no idea if what she was saying was disastrous, but she had to say something. “Did they find anything missing?”

  “Actually, they did,” Bruno said. “A lotta money.”

  She looked over at him, both hands on the wheel.

  “Keep your eyes on the road,” he said.

  “He was robbed?” she asked. She couldn’t keep the shock out of her voice.

  “And you know what?” Bruno said wistfully. “It wasn’t his money.”

  “It wasn’t his money?” she a
sked. “Whose was it?”

  “The people whose money it was?” Bruno said. “Very unhappy. Very property-oriented, and very unhappy.”

  “Whose money was it? How do you know all this?” Joanie asked.

  “Whoa, take it easy,” Bruno said. “What’s the problem?”

  She tried to quiet herself down. They stopped again, at a stop sign. She released the steering wheel and flexed her hands. “How much money was it?” she asked.

  “This is stuff you’re better off not knowing,” he said. He looked back over the hood of the car like that was the end of that. “It’s clear.”

  She drove through the intersection.

  She didn’t know what to do. She had to do something. She had to say something. Did somebody think she robbed this guy? Did he? Was somebody going to come after her for that?

  Say something, she thought. You must look like the guiltiest person on earth.

  “Be good to get back to church, huh?” she joked. Oh, God, she thought.

  “I can’t go to church, because I’m a cripple,” Bruno said. He watched Spada’s Blue Goose Restaurant go by on the left and seemed to check out the cars in the parking lot. “Instead I go to bars.”

  “You look okay to me,” Joanie said.

  “My goodness is crippled,” Bruno said. “My soul is crippled.”

  The funeral was at Our Lady of Peace. They were coming into Lordship. They passed Avco-Lycoming, and then Sikorsky Airport.

  Bruno sang about being a traveling man all over the world. He had his arm along the door and his hand on the side mirror.

  “Ricky Nelson?” Joanie asked.

  “Ricky fucking Nelson,” Bruno said.

  They drove past Rose Park, which had no roses in it. The church was across the street. A guy in raggy long pants and a filthy ORLANDO: WATCH US GROW! sweat shirt was urinating behind a narrow tree. It was a pretty small park; he was exposed on just about all four sides.

  “Look at that,” Bruno said. “I don’t think he ever got it out.”

  “Speaking of that,” Joanie said, trying for something like banter, “you gonna behave yourself at this funeral?”

  “My ass,” Bruno said.

  She stopped at the corner and turned into the church parking lot. The place was jammed. There was a spot right up front, but she passed on it. She wanted someplace where she could nose the car’s bumper up against a wall.

  “What was wrong with that?” Bruno asked.

  “Didn’t think I’d fit,” she said.

  “What’re you driving here, the USS Iowa?” he asked.

  They circled the back of the church. He made a noise between his lips, like a tire losing air. They turned a corner. It was beginning to look as if there might not be another spot.

  “Lotta people here,” she murmured. He didn’t answer.

  “The car’s still in good shape,” he said.

  They turned another corner. She was driving slowly, hoping the funeral would end before they parked.

  “C’mon, c’mon,” Bruno said. “Grab that other spot and let’s go. Somebody else probably already got it.”

  She accelerated a little. She had to go back out onto the street to circle the building completely. She stopped and put her turn signal on.

  “How was it, talking to the police?” she said. “That scares me.”

  He snorted.

  They pulled into traffic and circled around. “It’s still there,” Bruno said. “Let’s go. Grab it.”

  She turned back into the lot and eased into the space. She had about three feet of clearance on either side. Bruno looked at her.

  “I didn’t think I’d fit,” she said.

  Their front end faced the church doors. When Bruno got out she said, “Bruno,” to stop him where he was. She circled around to the back of the car. “Look at this.”

  “What?” he said. He waited and then walked around to meet her. “What? What’m I looking at?”

  “You think I’m gonna lose this license plate?” she asked. “The bolts are all rusted.”

  He lowered his chin to his chest and looked at her.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. She hooked his arm and led him down her side of the car. “You’ll be my escort.”

  She tried not to pull when she got past the bumper. He put his hand on the small of her back. “So when’re you gonna ask me out again?” she said.

  She could feel his eyes on her. She kept hers on the church doors. “Today,” he said. “Very soon.”

  At the entrance she let his arm go and held the door for him. Once he was inside, she glanced back at the car. You could see the dents from there. What she was going to do on the way out, she had no idea.

  She followed him into the entryway. Her eyes took a minute adjusting. It sounded like things were just starting. The late arrivals in front of them were dipping two or three fingers into the holy-water font and making the sign of the cross before heading to the pews.

  She could tell him she’d hit something. But then why hadn’t she mentioned it before?

  He’d never go for it. She had to get past this and get it fixed before he saw it.

  The church was packed. Everyone was standing for the opening hymn. Bruno pointed out her parents in the last row on the right. They shoved in next to them, nodding their hellos. Her father leaned forward so he could make eye contact and gave her a big smile, as if trying to cheer her up. What did she look like?

  She ended up between Bruno and a woman with a newborn baby. The baby opened its eyes wide and closed them. Joanie smiled at the mother, and the mother rolled her eyes.

  It started to rain. They could hear it.

  Was he playing with her? Had he figured something out? She stood and sat and knelt at everybody else’s cue. Could Todd have told him? What was this thing with the money?

  “Where’s Todd?” Nina whispered.

  “Fever,” Joanie said.

  Nina gave her a look.

  Just tell, she thought. It was an accident.

  She had to go to the police.

  A wind blew through her from some central point. It was just fear of embarrassment that had done all this.

  She put her face in her hands.

  Someone looking at her would have thought it was grief for Tommy.

  When the service was over, they held up at the entryway to talk to Nina and Sandro. Bruno was four feet from the front doors and from seeing her car, and was clearly anxious to get going.

  A lot of people were standing around, pulling up collars and buttoning jackets. It was still raining.

  “We’re gonna go out the other way,” Sandro said. “We’re all the way around the back.”

  “You going to the grave?” Nina asked.

  “Yeah,” Joanie said, though they hadn’t talked about it. “Could we get a ride with you? No sense taking two cars.”

  Sandro pointed. “Then we gotta bring you back here.”

  “Is that such a problem?” Joanie asked.

  “She’s having some people over, afterwards,” Nina said, meaning Mrs. Monteleone.

  “Well, we could go over there with you, too,” Joanie said. “And then you could drop us off here.”

  Bruno put both hands up, palms out. “Whatever,” he said.

  “Sure, fine,” Sandro said. “Let’s go.”

  They headed back through the church against the flow, relief blooming in Joanie all the way down the aisle.

  The burial was horrible. It was raining, and people slipped around on the soapy soil near the grave. Sandro almost went down. Somebody in the group behind her was holding an umbrella half over her so that no matter how she moved, the water seemed to be draining down her neck. The priest did everything with thick, sad gestures that took so long that even Nina, shooing mosquitoes with a handkerchief, started to get impatient. It started to really pour. By the time they got back to the car to head for the Monteleones’ they were soaked.

  “I didn’t see Tommy Senior there,” Nina said as they headed
out of the cemetery. “You see Tommy Senior there?”

  Nobody answered. Joanie imagined him still at home in his robe, too broken up to go to his own son’s funeral.

  They didn’t see him at the house, either. They poked around saying hello to some people and introducing themselves to others. Bruno exchanged looks with two guys standing near the TV and nodded. He didn’t introduce them.

  He followed Joanie into the kitchen. Mrs. Monteleone was supposed to be relaxing, but she was doing a lot of the work. She flexed an ice-cube tray, spread her hand across the top, and turned it over. The cubes fell out onto the floor.

  One sister, in from Jersey, escorted her from the room. Another sister picked up the ice.

  Bruno was shaking out his suit. He looked like he’d been hosed.

  “Fucking day,” he said quietly to Joanie, flapping his sleeves. “You want something to eat?”

  She looked over at one of the platters. “What is it?” she asked.

  “It’s Italian, it’s meat, and it’s free,” he said. “That’s all you gotta know.”

  She looked around the kitchen and couldn’t believe she was back here again. “You know what?” she said. “I don’t think I can take this anymore. I’m gonna go out for like a walk or something.”

  “It’s raining,” Bruno said.

  She stood up and ran her palms over her wet hair. “Yeah, well,” she said.

  It turned out the back porch had a little overhang you could sit under and not get drenched. The front porch was out because that was the way everyone was coming and going.

  “You go ’head out there,” Bruno said, once she was already outside. “I’ll bring some coffee or something. You want coffee? Warm you up.”

  She said coffee’d be great. She sat on the top step so the door had enough clearance to open without hitting her back. The toes of her shoes were in the rain. She had her elbows on her knees and her hands rubbed her arms.

  Bruno came back out with two cups of coffee rattling and tipping on saucers. He held the door with his foot. She took one from him. He’d put cream in hers and added an apricot cookie on the saucer.

  He sat next to her. “Get close,” he said. They moved together so at least that side would be warm.

  “Was that Tommy Senior’s brother, with the thing? The harelip?” Joanie asked. “He looked real sad.”