Lone Wolf A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  Then there’s the tester wolf, who’s very wary and suspicious, who doesn’t trust anyone he meets. He’s always scouting for change, for something new, and he’ll be hiding out at every corner to make sure that, when and if it happens, he’s there to alert the alpha. His skittishness is integral to the safety of the pack. And he’s the quality-control guy, too. If someone in the pack doesn’t seem to be pulling his weight, the tester will create a situation where the other wolf has to prove his mettle—like picking a fight with the enforcer, for example. If that beta can’t knock him to the ground, he doesn’t deserve to be the beta wolf anymore.

  The diffuser wolf has been called many names through the years, from the Cinderella wolf to the omega. Though at first he was thought to be a scapegoat and at the bottom of the hierarchy, we know now that the diffuser plays a key role in the pack. Like the little, geeky lawyer to the mob who provides comic relief and knows how to keep all these other strong personalities calm, the diffuser throws himself headlong into all the intrapack bickering. If two animals are fighting, the diffuser will jump between them and will clown around, until suddenly the two angry wolves have taken their emotions down a notch. Everyone gets on with his job, and no one gets hurt. Far from being the Cinderella figure that always gets the short end of the stick, the diffuser holds the critical position of peacemaker. Without him the pack couldn’t function; they’d be at war with each other all the time.

  Say what you will about the Mafia, but it works because everyone has a specific role to play. They all do what they do for the greater good of the organization. They’d willingly die for each other.

  The other reason a wolf pack is like the Mafia?

  Because, for both groups, there is nothing more important than family.

  EDWARD

  You’d be surprised how easy it is to stand out in a city of nine million people. But then again, I’m a farang. You can see it in my unofficial teacher’s uniform—shirt and tie—in my blond hair, which shines like a beacon in a sea of black.

  Today I have my small group of students working on conversational English. They’ve been paired, and they are going to present a conversation between a shopkeeper and a customer. “Do I have any volunteers?” I ask.

  Crickets.

  The Thai people are pathologically shy. Combine that with a reluctance to lose face by giving a wrong answer, and it makes for a painfully long class. Usually I ask the students to work on exercises in small groups, and then I move around and check their progress. But for days like today, when I’m grading on participation, speaking up in public is a necessary evil. “Jao,” I say to a man in my class. “You own a pet store, and you want to convince Jaidee to buy a pet.” I turn to a second man. “Jaidee, you do not want to buy that pet. Let’s hear your conversation.”

  They stand up, clutching their papers. “This dog is recommended,” Jao begins.

  “I have one already,” Jaidee replies.

  “Good job!” I encourage. “Jao, give him a reason why he should buy your dog.”

  “This dog is alive,” Jao adds.

  Jaidee shrugs. “Not everyone wants a pet that is alive.”

  Well, not all days are successes.

  I collect the homework from the students before they file out of the classroom, suddenly animated and chattering in a language I am still learning after six years. Apsara, a grandmother of four, hands me her assignment: a persuasive essay. I look down at the title: “Eat Vegetarians for a Healthy Diet.”

  “Sit on it, Ajarn Edward,” Apsara says happily. Before coming to language school, she tried to learn English from watching Happy Days episodes. I don’t have the heart to tell her that’s not a respectful expression.

  I’ve been teaching English for six years now, in a language school that’s in the center of the biggest mall I’ve ever seen in my life, about twenty minutes by taxi outside of Bangkok. I fell into the job by accident—after backpacking through Thailand and taking odd jobs to make enough baht to feed myself, I found myself tending bar at age eighteen, in Patpong. It was one of Thailand’s famous ladyboy shows, with katoeys—transvestites who fooled even me—and I’d been trying to collect enough cash to leave the city. One of the other bartenders was an expat from Ireland, and he supplemented his income by teaching at the American Language Institute. They were always looking for qualified teachers, he said. When I told him I wasn’t really qualified, he laughed. “You speak English, don’t you?” he said.

  I make 45,000 baht teaching, now. I have my own apartment. I’ve had the obligatory flings with Thai natives and I’ve gone out drinking with other expats at Nana Plaza. And I’ve learned a lot. You don’t touch anyone on the head because it’s the highest part of the body—literally, and spiritually. You don’t cross your legs on the skytrain because doing so exposes the sole of your shoe to the person sitting across from you—and the bottoms of your feet are literally and spiritually unclean. You might as well be giving the other person the finger. You don’t shake hands, you wai—by putting your hands in front of you like you’re praying, with the tips of your index fingers touching your nose. The higher the hands are, and the lower your bow, the more respect you’re showing. A wai can be used for greeting, apology, gratitude.

  You’ve got to admire a culture that uses a single gesture to say both thank you and I’m sorry.

  Every time I start to get sick of living here, or get the feeling that nothing ever changes, I take a step back and remind myself that I’m just visiting. That Thai culture and beliefs have been around a lot longer than I have. That what one person sees as a difference of opinion can be, to the other person, a sign of great disrespect.

  I kind of wish I knew back then what I know now.

  There really isn’t an easy way to get to Koh Chang. It’s 315 kilometers by bus from Bangkok, and even after you get to Trat, in the eastern provinces, you have to take a songtaew to one of the three piers. Ao Thammachat is the best one—it only takes twenty minutes by ferry to reach the island. Lam Ngob is the worst—the fishing boats that have been converted into ferries can take over an hour to make the crossing.

  It may seem ridiculous to come all this distance when I only have two days off from the language institute, but it’s worth it. Sometimes Bangkok is suffocating, and I need to hang out in a place that isn’t wall-to-wall people. I chalk it up to my upbringing in a part of New England that is still two hours away from the nearest mall. After sleeping last night at a cheap guesthouse, I’ve spent this morning trying to find my way to Khlong Nueng, the tallest waterfall on the island. And now, just when I am sweating and thirsty and ready to quit, the biggest boulder I’ve ever seen blocks the path. Gritting my teeth, I get a foothold and begin to climb over it. My boots slip on the rock, and I scrape my knee, and I’m already worried about how I’m going to climb back over from the other side—but I won’t let myself give up.

  With a grunt, I reach the top of the boulder and then slide down the far side. I land with a soft thud and glance up to see the most beautiful rush of water, frothing and sparkling and filling the ravine. I strip to my boxers and wade in, the clear pool lapping against my chest. I duck under the spray. Then I crawl out and lie on my back, letting the sun dry my skin.

  Since I’ve come to Thailand, I’ve had hundreds of moments like this, when I run across something so incredible that I want to show it to someone else. The problem is, when you make the choice to be a loner, you lose that privilege. So I do what I’ve done for the past six years: I take out my cell phone, and I snap a picture of the waterfall. I’m never in these pictures, needless to say. And I don’t know who I’ll ever show them to, given that I’ve had cartons of milk that have lasted longer than most of my relationships. But I keep that digital album anyway—from the first spirit house I saw in Thailand, intricate and laden with offerings, to the arrangement of wooden penises at the Chao Mae Tuptim Shrine, to the creepy conjoined babies floating in formaldehyde in the Forensic Science Museum near Wat Arun.

  I
am holding the phone in my hand, looking at these pictures, when it starts to vibrate. I check the display to see who’s calling—expecting a friend who wants to invite me out for a beer, or my boss at the institute asking me to cover for another teacher, or maybe the flight attendant I met last weekend at the Blue Ice Bar. It’s always struck me as amusing that the cellular service in Nowhere, Thailand, is still better than in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

  Out of area.

  “Hello?” I hold the phone up to my ear.

  “Edward,” my mother says. “You have to come home.”

  It takes a full twenty-four hours to get back to the States and to rent a car (something I wasn’t old enough to do when I left) and drive all the way to Beresford, NH. You’d think I’d be falling asleep, but I’m too nervous for that. In the first place, I haven’t driven in six years, and that requires my full concentration. In the second place, I am replaying what I’ve already been told—by my mother, and by the neurosurgeon who did emergency surgery on my father.

  His truck crashed into a tree.

  He and Cara were found outside the vehicle.

  Cara shattered her shoulder.

  My father was unresponsive, with an enlarged right pupil. He wasn’t breathing on his own very well. The EMTs called it a diffuse traumatic brain injury.

  My mother called me when I first landed. Cara was out of her surgery; she was on painkillers and sleeping. The police had come by to interview Cara, but my mother had sent them away. She had stayed at the hospital last night. Her voice sounded like a string that was fraying.

  I’m not going to lie: I’ve thought about what it would be like, if I ever came back. I imagined a party at our house, and my mom would bake my favorite cake (carrot ginger) and Cara would make me a sculpture out of Popsicle sticks with the words “#1 Bro” on the lid. Of course, my mom doesn’t live there anymore, and Cara’s way too old for Popsicle stick arts and crafts.

  Probably you noticed that, in my fantasy victory lap, my father was not part of the picture.

  After all this time in a city, Beresford feels like a ghost town. There are people around, for sure, but there’s so much uninhabited space that it makes me dizzy. The tallest building here is three stories. From every angle, you can see mountains.

  I park in the outside lot at the hospital and jog inside—I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, which isn’t really appropriate for a New England winter, but I don’t even own those sorts of clothes anymore. The volunteer who’s manning the front desk looks like a marshmallow—plump, soft, powdered. I ask for Cara Warren’s room, for two reasons. First, it’s where my mother will be. And second, I need a minute before I face my father again.

  Cara’s on the fourth floor, in room 430. I wait for the elevator doors to close (again, when was the last time I was ever alone in an elevator?) and take deep breaths. In the hallway, I walk past the nurses with my head ducked and push open the door that has Cara’s name on a chart outside.

  There’s a woman sleeping in the hospital bed.

  She has long, dark hair and a bruise on her temple, a butterfly bandage. Her arm is wrapped up in a cocoon against her body. She has one foot kicked out from the blanket, and there is purple polish on her toes.

  She’s not my little sister anymore. She’s not little, period.

  I’m so busy staring at her that at first I don’t even notice my mother in the corner. She stands up, her hand covering her mouth. “Edward?” she whispers.

  When I left, I was already taller than my mother. But now, I have filled out. I’m bigger, stronger. Like him.

  She folds me into an embrace. Heart origami. That’s what she used to call it when we were small, and she’d open her arms and wait for us to run inside. The words feel like a splinter in my mind; I can feel them rubbing the wrong way even as I do what she is expecting and hug her back. It’s a funny thing, how—no matter how much bigger I am than my mother—she still is the one holding me, instead of the other way around.

  I feel like Gulliver on Lilliput, too overgrown for my own memories. My mother wipes at her eyes. “I can’t believe you’re actually here.”

  It doesn’t seem right to mention that I wouldn’t be here, not by a long shot, if my sister and father weren’t in the hospital. “How is she?” I ask, nodding toward Cara.

  “In an OxyContin haze,” my mother says. “She’s still in a lot of pain after the surgery.”

  “She looks . . . different.”

  “So do you.”

  We all do, I guess. There are lines on my mother’s face I never noticed before, or maybe they weren’t there. As for my father—well, it’s hard for me to imagine him changing at all.

  “I guess I should go find Dad,” I say.

  My mother picks up her purse—a tote bag with the pictures of two half-Asian children on it. The twins, I guess. It’s weird to think I have siblings I have never met. “All right,” she says.

  Right now, the last thing I want to do is be alone. To be the grown-up. But something makes me put my hand on her shoulder to stop her. “You don’t have to come with me,” I tell her. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I can see that,” she says, staring at me. Her words are too soft, like they’re wrapped in flannel.

  I know what she’s thinking: that she missed so much. Dropping me off at college. Attending my graduation. Hearing about my first job, my first love. Helping me decorate my first apartment.

  “Cara might wake up and need you,” I say, to ease the blow.

  My mother falters, but only for a moment. “You’ll come back?” she asks.

  I nod. Even though that’s exactly what I swore I’d never do.

  At some point in my life, I thought about being a doctor. I liked the sterility of the profession, the order. The fact that if you could read the clues, you would be able to find the problem, and fix it.

  Unfortunately, to be a doctor you also have to take biology, and the first time I held a scalpel to a fetal pig I fainted dead away.

  The truth was, I wasn’t much of a scientist. In high school I lost myself in books, which turned out to be a good thing, since that’s how I furthered my studies once I left home. I’ve read more of the classics, I bet, than most college graduates. But I also know the stuff they never teach in lectures—like: avoid the upstairs bars on Patpong Road, because they’re run by thugs; or pick a massage shop with a glass front where you can see the business inside, or you’ll wind up with a “happy ending” you weren’t looking for. I may not have a degree, but I certainly got an education.

  Yet, in the family waiting room with Dr. Saint-Clare, I feel stupid. Inadequate. As if I cannot string together all the information he’s providing.

  “Your father suffered a diffuse traumatic brain injury,” he tells me. “When the paramedics brought him in here, he had an enlarged right pupil and was unresponsive. There was a laceration on his forehead, and he couldn’t move his left side. His breathing was labored, so he’d been intubated by the EMTs. When I was called in, I saw that he had a bilateral periorbital edema—”

  “A bi-what?”

  “Swelling,” the surgeon translates. “Around the eyes. We repeated the Glasgow Coma Scale test he’d been given at the site of the accident, and he scored a five. We performed an emergency CT scan and found a temporal lobe hematoma, a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and intraventricular hemorrhage.” He glances up at my face. “Basically, we saw blood. All around the brain and in the ventricles of the brain—which is indicative of a serious trauma. We put him on Mannitol to reduce some of the pressure in the cranium, and immediately took him into surgery to remove the clot in the temporal lobe and the anterior part of the temporal lobe of his brain.”

  My jaw drops. “You took out some of his brain?”

  “We relieved the pressure on the brain that would have otherwise killed him,” the doctor corrects. “The temporal lobectomy will affect some of his memories, but not all. It doesn’t affect the areas of speech or motor or perso
nality.”

  They had taken away some of my father’s memories. Ones of his beloved wolves? Or ones of us? Which would he miss?

  “So did it work? The surgery?”

  “Your father’s pupil is reactive again, and the clot’s removed. However, the swelling and the hematoma produced an incipient herniation—basically, a shift of structures from one compartment of the brain to another, which put pressure on the brain stem and created little hemorrhages there.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “The pressure in his skull is down,” the doctor says, “but he still hasn’t awakened, there’s no response to stimulation, and he isn’t breathing on his own. We repeated a CT scan and can see that those hemorrhages in the medulla and the pons are a little larger than they were on the initial scan—and that’s why he hasn’t regained consciousness, and is still on a ventilator.”

  I feel like I am swimming in corn syrup, like the words I want to use are rolling off my tongue in an indecipherable language. “But is he going to be okay?” I ask, which is really the only question necessary.

  The surgeon clasps his hands together. “We’re still letting the dust settle right now . . .”

  But. There’s a but, I can hear it.

  “Those lesions we’re seeing affect the part of the brain stem that controls breathing and consciousness. He may never get off that ventilator,” Dr. Saint-Clare says flatly. “He may never wake up.”

  When I was sixteen and had just gotten my driver’s license, I went to a party and stayed out past my curfew. I parked down the block and tiptoed across the grass, easing the door open in the hope that I could get away with this infraction. But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw my father sleeping in the recliner in the living room, and I knew I was doomed. My father always said that when he was out in the wild with the wolves, he never really slept. You had to stay semiconscious, one proverbial eye always open, to know if you were going to be attacked.

  Sure enough, the minute I crossed the threshold he was out of that chair and in my face. He didn’t say a word, just waited for me to speak for myself.