Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  My mother brought along the portrait Finn had painted of the two of us, because she thought it might be a nice thing to put up somewhere to show the kind of man Finn had been, but when we got to the parking lot of the funeral home she changed her mind.

  “He’s here,” she said. Her voice was a strange combination of anger and panic.

  My father parked the car and looked out the window. “Where?”

  “Right there, can’t you see him? On his own, on the side there.”

  My father nodded, and I looked too. There was a man sitting hunched on a low brick wall. A tall skinny guy who reminded me of Ichabod Crane from “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

  “Who is it?” I asked, pointing out the window.

  My mother and father both turned to look at me in the backseat. Greta elbowed me in the ribs and said, “Shut up,” in her meanest voice.

  “You shut up,” I said.

  “I’m not the one asking stupid questions.” She straightened her glasses, then looked away.

  “Quiet. Both of you,” my father said. “This is hard enough for your mother.”

  It’s hard for me too, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I kept quiet, knowing that the sadness I was feeling was the wrong kind of sadness for a niece. Knowing that Finn wasn’t really mine to be that kind of sad over. Now that he was dead, he belonged to my mother and my grandmother. They were the ones people felt bad for even though it seemed like neither of them were even that close to him. To everyone at Finn’s funeral, I was just the niece. I stared out the car window and understood that I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit. Nobody had any idea how many minutes of each day I spent thinking about Finn, and, thankfully, nobody had any idea exactly what kind of thoughts they were.

  My mother had arranged for the funeral to be held at a funeral home in our town instead of in the city, where all of Finn’s friends lived. There was no argument about it. It felt like she was trying to gather him up. Like she was trying to keep Finn all to herself.

  My father looked over at my mother. “So, should I leave it in the trunk?”

  She nodded, her lips pressed together tight. “Just leave it.”

  In the end it had been my dad who drove down to the city to pick up the portrait the day after Finn died. He went at night, and none of us offered to go with him. My mother had a key to the apartment, which Finn had threaded onto a piece of red silk ribbon. We’d had that key for years, but I’m not sure anybody had ever used it. My mother always said it was a “just in case” kind of thing. Something Finn wanted us to have.

  My dad didn’t get home until late that night. He banged the door coming in, and even I overheard him and my mother talking.

  “Was he there?” she said.

  “Danni—”

  “Was he?”

  “Of course he was there.”

  I thought I could hear my mother crying then.

  “God. Just thinking about him . . . You’d think things would turn out a little bit fair. Just a little bit.”

  “Shhhh. Danni, you have to let it go.”

  “I won’t. I can’t.” There was quiet, then, “Well, where is it anyway? You did get it, right?”

  He must have nodded, because the painting was on the table in a black garbage bag the next morning. I was the first one up and I found it there looking like nothing special. I circled the table once, then reached out to touch the bag. I pressed my nose against the outside, searching for a scent of Finn’s, but there was nothing. I opened the bag and stuck my head inside, breathing in deep, but the chemical plastic smell smothered anything that might have been wound up in the canvas. I closed my eyes and breathed harder, slower, tightening the bag around my neck.

  “Hey, dorkus.” I felt a slap land hard across my back. Greta. I pulled free from the bag.

  “I won’t stop you if you want to end it all, just let us keep the painting, okay? It’s gross enough without another dead-body story all over it.”

  Dead body. Finn was a dead body.

  “Girls?” My mother stood halfway down the stairs, pulling her pink quilted robe around herself. She squinted at us through sleepy eyes. “You’re not messing around with that painting, are you?”

  We both shook our heads. Then Greta smiled.

  “One of us has been trying to commit suicide with the garbage bag, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “Shut up, Greta,” I said, but she couldn’t. She could never shut up.

  “Found her down here with her head halfway in that bag.”

  My mother came over and hugged me so tight I thought she might suffocate me. Then she held me away from her.

  “I know how you felt about Finn, and I want you to know, Junie, anytime, anytime you need to talk—”

  “I was not trying to kill myself.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “You don’t have to say anything. We’re all here. Me, your father, Greta. We all love you.” Behind my mother, Greta goggled her eyes at me and mimed hanging herself with a noose.

  There was no point arguing, so I just nodded and sat down at the table.

  My mother picked up the plastic bag and took it upstairs. She said we needed a break from the portrait for a while and that she was putting it someplace safe. That was the last I saw of it until the day of the funeral.

  Now we walked up the path toward the front door, Greta and I falling behind our parents. My father stopped and put a hand on my mother’s arm.

  “Go on ahead,” he said, pointing up toward the front steps. “Go find your mother. See how she is.”

  My mother nodded. She was wearing her nice black wool coat over a narrow black skirt with a dark gray blouse, and she had on a little black hat with a veil. She looked good, like she always did. It was snowing lightly, and the snowflakes kept landing and sitting on the top of her hat for a few seconds before they melted into the black felt.

  My grandmother was in the entrance hall, talking to someone I didn’t know. She was nothing like my mother, but that was the story of the Weiss side of the family. It seemed like Finn and my mother had looked at their parents and decided that, no matter what, they did not want to turn out like them. So there’s Grandpa Weiss, who was a big army guy, and then there’s Finn, who went off to become an artist. And there’s Grandma Weiss, who spent her whole life cooking meals and ironing clothes and getting her hair done for Grandpa Weiss, and then along comes my mother, who would pay anything not to have to iron or cook real food, who cropped her hair short so she wouldn’t have to worry about doing anything with it. If the trend continues with Greta and me, that would mean neither of us would ever want to work in an office, which so far was true for me. If things went my way, I would be working at a renaissance fair as a falconer. I wouldn’t have to worry about climbing career ladders or getting promotions, because falconry’s not like that. Either you’re a falconer or you’re not. Either the birds come back to you or they fly away.

  My father waited until my mother walked into the funeral parlor. Then he turned to the two of us. I noticed a thin strip of bristle along his jawline, where he’d missed shaving, and I noticed that his brow was constantly furrowed that day. Like a juggler who had to concentrate too hard to keep all the balls in the air. He didn’t seem sad about Finn dying. If anything, I thought, he acted like it was a relief.

  “I want you two to tell me if you see that man come in, okay?”

  We both nodded.

  “For your mother’s and your grandmother’s sake, got it?”

  We nodded again.

  “Good girls. I know this is rough, and you’re both doing a great job.” He squeezed my shoulder, then Greta’s. “Things will settle down after this, okay?” We nodded once more. He looked at us for another second, then turned to jog up to the open front door.

  Greta and I stood there on the ice-crusted front path. Sometimes it felt really obvious that I was taller than Greta even though she was older than me. I leaned in to her and nodded my he
ad toward the man.

  “Who is he anyway?” I whispered. I was almost certain she wasn’t going to tell me, and I was right. She said nothing, just gestured for me to walk down the path toward where he stood. I glanced up and saw that he was staring right at me. Not at Greta. Only me. He leaned forward like he was about to stand up, like he thought I was coming over to greet him. I was about to turn and walk back the other way, but Greta laid a hand on my arm and pulled me on. We walked until we were maybe a room’s length away from the man. Then Greta stopped, waited a second, and cleared her throat.

  “He’s one of those people who weren’t invited to this funeral,” she said, loud enough for him to hear.

  I looked over at the man who a second ago had seemed to be trying to catch my eye, but now he’d looked away. He’d plunged his hands into his pockets and was staring down at the sidewalk.

  “What’d you say that for?”

  “I’m not telling you a thing,” she said.

  The reason Greta knows things that I don’t is because she spies. There are places in our house where you can hear everything. I hate those places, but Greta loves them. Her favorite is the downstairs bathroom because hardly anybody uses it, so nobody remembers someone is in there. Even if you are noticed, you can shout out, “Just a minute,” before unlocking the door to let someone in. By that time you’ve heard everything.

  I don’t like to overhear things, because, in my experience, things your parents are keeping quiet about are things you don’t want to know. It doesn’t feel good to know that your grandparents are getting separated because your grandfather lost his temper and gave your grandmother a slap across the face after fifty-two years of being married with no problems at all. It doesn’t feel good to know ahead of time what you’ll be getting for Christmas or birthdays so that you have to act surprised even though you’re a terrible liar. It doesn’t feel good to know that your teacher told your mother at a conference that you’re an average student in math and English and that you should be happy with that.

  Greta raced ahead to the door of the funeral home. When she got there, she stopped and turned around.

  “On second thought,” she said in a loud clear voice. “On second thought, I will tell you.” She wiped melted snow off her cheek with the back of her hand.

  I felt cold and sick. It was always the same with Greta’s information. I wanted to know, but I was scared to know. I gave her the very slightest tip of my head.

  She pointed to the man and said, “He’s the guy who killed Uncle Finn.”

  I twisted my head back to look at him, but he’d already turned to go. All I saw was a tall skinny man crouching to get into his small blue car.

  I sat in the front row during the funeral service, trying to listen to all the nice things people had to say about Finn. It was stuffy in that room, and dim, and the chairs were the kind that forced you to sit up straighter than you wanted to. Greta didn’t sit up front with us. She said she wanted to sit in the back row, and when I turned to glance at her I saw that her head was down, her hands were over her ears, and her eyes were closed. Not just closed but squeezed tight, like she was trying to shut the whole thing out. For a second I thought she might have even been crying, but that didn’t seem likely.

  My mother gave a short speech about Finn and her as kids. About what a good brother he’d been. Everything she said was vague, like the details might stab her if they got too sharp. After my mother, a cousin from Pennsylvania said a few words. Then the funeral director babbled on for a little while. I tried to listen, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the man outside.

  I didn’t want to think about how Finn got AIDS. It wasn’t my job to think about that. If that guy was really the one who killed Finn, then he must have been Finn’s boyfriend, and if he was Finn’s boyfriend, then why didn’t I know anything about him? And how did Greta know? If she’d known Finn had a secret boyfriend, she would have taunted me about it. She never missed an opportunity to let me know I knew less than she did. So there were two possibilities. Either she just found out about this guy or none of it was true.

  I decided to believe the second one. It’s hard to do that, to decide to believe one thing over another. Usually a mind makes itself up on its own. But I forced myself, because the idea that Finn would keep such a big secret from me made me want to throw up.

  The service ended and everyone filed out of the building. A few people stopped to talk in the entry hall, but I went straight out the door and tried to find the little blue car. There was no sign of it. Or the man. The snow had started to come down harder, turning the streets and lawns white and perfect. I zipped my coat up as high as it would go, then I looked down the road in both directions, but there was nothing to see. He was gone.

  Seven

  After a snowstorm is one of the best times to be in the woods, because all the empty beer and soda cans and candy wrappers disappear, and you don’t have to try as hard to be in another time. Plus there’s just something beautiful about walking on snow that nobody else has walked on. It makes you believe you’re special, even though you know you’re not.

  I was wearing this pair of orange mittens that Greta had knitted for me when she was in the knitting club in fifth grade. They were huge and sloppy and the thumbs were in the middle instead of on the edges. I didn’t bother with the Gunne Sax dress, but I did change into my medieval boots. It wasn’t actually all that cold, and I walked in farther than I usually did, across the little brook that ran along the bottom of the hill and then up the hill on the other side of it. I tried not to think about Finn and all the secrets he might have kept from me. I tried to keep my mind on the story I was telling myself, where I was the only one strong enough to hunt for my village and I had to trek across the snow to track deer. Girls weren’t supposed to hunt, so I had to tie my hair up and pretend to be a boy. That’s the kind of story it was.

  There was a layer of old frozen snow under the fresh stuff, and for every step I took up the hill I slipped down a bit. By the time I finally got to the top, I sat down, exhausted. It was all quiet and I let my eyes fall closed. For a second I saw Finn’s face and I smiled, pressing my eyes closed harder, hoping to keep him there. But the picture disappeared. I let myself tip backward so I was lying flat out in the snow, looking up at the twisted patterns the bare tree branches made against the gray sky. After the land settled around my body, everything was still, and even though I tried to keep my brain in the Middle Ages, Finn kept sneaking into my head. I wished he’d been buried instead of cremated, because then I could take off my gloves and press my palms to the ground and know that he was there somewhere. That through all those molecules of frozen dirt there was still a connection. Then the guy from outside the funeral home came into my thoughts, and I felt a blush of stupidity. Of course someone as amazing as Finn would have a boyfriend. Why wouldn’t he? This must have been the guy who’d called that day. The English guy who knew my name. The guy who was calling from Finn’s apartment. He was actually in Finn’s apartment. With my uncle Finn. A hot tear ran down my cheek.

  Then, into the silence, over the top of everything, came a long, sad howl. For a second it felt like the sound had come from inside me. Like the world had taken everything I was feeling and turned it into sound.

  By the time I sat up, there were two howls. Dogs maybe. Coyotes or wolves. The howls weren’t steady. Both of them had a kind of cracked-voice sound to them, and they were staggered. One would start, then a few seconds later the second one would come in. Then more. Three or four. I listened hard, trying to hear how far away they were, but it was like the sound was everywhere. Near and far. Wrapped around the trees and the clouds. The howls grew louder, and a picture of a big lunging gray wolf with tons of matted fur popped into my mind. For a single dumb moment it really did feel like I was in the woods in the Middle Ages, when wolves could take away babies or eat a person whole.

  “I’m not afraid,” I called out across the hills. Then I ran, stumbling and tripping. I
misjudged the jump and plunged one boot into the brook, then scrambled up the other side, grabbing on to thin saplings, steadying myself. A few minutes later I came out of the woods, into the school parking lot. Almost all the cars were gone and I stood there for a minute, doubled over, catching my breath.

  “Shoot,” I said, looking down at my right hand. I kicked at the big pile of dirty plowed snow at the edge of the parking lot. One of the mittens Greta had made me was gone.

  Eight

  “Do you want to go to a party?”

  Greta wasn’t smiling when she asked me. She wasn’t even looking at me. She was bent over her dresser as I walked past the door to her room on my way down for breakfast.

  I was sure I’d heard her wrong, so I stopped and waited for her to say something else. I must have looked like an idiot standing there in the hallway with my mouth hanging open.

  Greta turned and eyed me up and down.

  “Par-ty,” she said, enunciating every syllable and exaggerating her lip movements. “Do. You. Want. To. Go.”

  I stepped into her room, which still had the same white furniture it had when she was seven and the same pink walls with that thin strip of Holly Hobby wallpaper across the top. From the way the room was decorated, someone who didn’t know anything about Greta would think a nice little girl lived there. I sat on the edge of her bed.

  “What kind of party?”

  “The good kind.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Greta knows that for me there are no good parties. I’m okay with one or two people, but more than that and I turn into a naked mole rat. That’s what being shy feels like. Like my skin is too thin, the light too bright. Like the best place I could possibly be is in a tunnel far under the cool, dark earth. Someone asks me a question and I stare at them, empty-faced, my brain jammed up with how hard I’m trying to find something interesting to say. And in the end, all I can do is nod or shrug, because the light of their eyes looking at me, waiting for me, is just too much to take. And then it’s over and there’s one more person in the world who thinks I’m a complete and total waste of space.