Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  That day at the Cloisters, Finn and I sat on a stone bench in a dark stone corner, and he asked me what I thought happened to people after they died. I shook my head and pretended I hadn’t heard him. I did that with Finn sometimes. Pretended my hearing was fuzzy so he would move closer to me. And he did. That day he slid right up next to me on that bench and put his arm around my shoulder and asked me again.

  “What happens to all this?” he said, looking right into my eyes.

  I shrugged and said I thought nothing happened. I said I thought everything just ended and went black.

  Finn nodded and said, “Me too.”

  If I knew he was talking about himself, I would have made something up. I would have dreamed up a perfect Finn heaven right there on the spot.

  I took Toby’s note to the woods that Saturday morning. Old snow clung to every tree branch, making the whole woods seem precarious, like things might topple any second. I followed the thin icy line of the brook, listening for the wolves. I cupped my hand around my ear and closed my eyes, listening and listening, but there was nothing. Nothing at all.

  I read the note again and again. It was becoming impossible to slip away from the present. Even with Finn’s boots on my feet. Even with the thought of falcons. It felt like the very idea of Toby had the power to keep my thoughts in the here and now.

  I’d been sure I wasn’t going to meet him, absolutely sure, but I was starting to reconsider. What if he knew things? What if I’d been a secret too? What if I could turn up at the train station and be anyone I wanted?

  Sixteen

  Section D, Page 26!

  That’s what Mrs. Jansky wrote on the envelope she stuck in our mailbox that Sunday morning. Inside was The New York Times from the day before. My parents don’t read the Times. They read the New York Post and only on Sundays, so if it wasn’t for nosy Mrs. Jansky the whole portrait article would have gone completely unnoticed by the Elbus family. The painting would have stayed above our fireplace, where it belonged.

  It was Greta who found the envelope and Greta who read the article out to the whole family. She called us all into the living room. I was upstairs getting dressed, because Beans and a whole bunch of her friends were going to the mall and she’d called to see if I wanted to go with them. I was pretty sure my mother had talked to her mother about me. Of course I didn’t want to go, but my mom kept bringing it up, saying it’d be good for me and that you can’t keep friends if you always say no to things. So I called back and said I’d do it, thinking otherwise she’d nag me about it for weeks. And there was something else. The movie theater there had an Oscar season special on Sundays. They did special showings of movies that had won over the past few years. That week they were showing Amadeus, which I’d already seen twice with Finn. That was the reason I said yes.

  Greta had been keeping to herself even more than usual since the night at rehearsal. I wanted to ask her what Mr. Nebowitz had said to her in his office, but I knew there was no point. If she wanted to talk about it she’d do it when she was ready, which would probably be never. Not to me anyway.

  That Saturday morning, Greta stood in front of the portrait, facing us on the couch. It turned out she was right. The portrait did creep out the whole living room. For the most part we all kept out of there as much as possible. Nobody wanted to sit with that portrait. We sat at the kitchen table, or Greta and I went to our rooms. My dad mostly sat in the little home office off the kitchen. As for my mother, she wasn’t much of a sitter, before or after the portrait.

  But on that morning, Greta called us all in there and we sat facing it. Greta stood with her weight shifted all the way to the left and one hand on her hip. In the other hand she held the paper.

  “Okay, Greta, we’re all here. Get on with it. I’ve got paperwork piling up like crazy,” my dad said.

  “Okay. Settle down,” Greta said in an exasperated voice. “It’s no big deal. We’re just . . . famous.”

  “Come on, Greta, show us what you have there.” My mom sat with her legs crossed and tapped one foot impatiently.

  “Okay.” Greta turned the page around so we could all see. There it was. Finn’s portrait. Our portrait. Us. It was in color and took up half the page. Then Greta read.

  “When you haven’t shown a painting in ten years and your name is Finn Weiss, the public is bound to get a little bit curious to catch a glimpse of your latest work. Weiss, who died earlier this month (unconfirmed reports cite the cause of death as AIDS-related)”—Greta’s voice snagged on the word AIDS, but then she read on—“had apparently developed a taste for portraiture, if this recent find is anything to go by. The painting, titled ‘Tell the Wolves I’m Home,’ shows two teenage girls, one light, one dark, with expressions of such startling intimacy it feels as though they can see right into the viewer’s own heart. As though they know the viewer’s own darkest secrets.

  “According to Harriet Barr, editor of Art magazine, Weiss was known for the diversity of his work. ‘Finn Weiss was remarkable in his ability to adapt to any medium. He truly was a renaissance artist in the sense that he produced brilliantly original work in not only oil and acrylic but also in stone, wood, and through more conceptual installation pieces.’

  “What’s baffled critics and fellow artists alike is why, almost ten years ago, Weiss went underground, becoming so reclusive that only his closest friends and family knew where he lived. Some applauded his move out of the limelight, calling it bold. The more cynical opinion is that Weiss’s adoption of the hermit lifestyle was nothing more than an attempt to inflate the value of his own work. Lending credence to this theory is the fact that several older works from the artist’s own collection have fetched high prices when they’ve occasionally appeared at auction.”

  “Okay, Greta, enough now.” My mother reached for the paper. Greta quickly whipped it behind her back.

  I was perched as close to the edge of the couch as I could be, waiting to hear the rest of the story.

  “Let her read it,” I said. “I want to hear.”

  “Go on, Danielle, it’s okay.” My father put a hand on my mother’s knee.

  “It’s not okay,” she said, twisting her leg away. She stood up and walked out of the room. When she was gone, my father nodded at Greta, letting her know it was all right to go on. Greta cleared her throat and tapped her chest. Then she read again.

  “Despite the disagreement about his motives, all can agree that the emergence of this recent portrait offers a glimpse of the kind of work Weiss could have been producing over those ‘missing’ years. Indeed, Barr sees this work as perhaps the greatest piece of his career.

  “A work like this shows an artist fully intellectually and, perhaps more importantly, fully emotionally engaged with his subject. Looking at this painting, there’s a sense that touching the surface could burn your fingertips. That those girls are alive. That they might just bite your hand off if you come too close.”

  The door slammed in the kitchen and I knew my mother had gone out. Greta glanced up, losing her place in the article. She moved her finger around on the page until she found it again.

  “At the moment, the location of the painting is unknown. The slide was submitted anonymously to the Times, and no information other than the artist’s name and the title of the painting was included. . . .”

  Greta’s arm dropped and the paper hung at her side.

  “I don’t like this,” she said.

  “What?” I said.

  “This whole thing. Us, me, in an article about somebody dying of AIDS.”

  “Somebody? It’s Uncle Finn, Greta,” I said.

  “I don’t care who it is. I don’t want a big picture of me hovering over the word AIDS, okay? Is that okay with you?” She chucked the paper onto the coffee table. “I never even wanted anything to do with that portrait, but everyone was all ‘your uncle Finn this, your uncle Finn that.’ Ugh. I could kill him if he weren’t already dead. And he’s famous? Like big-time famous? He never bothere
d to mention that to us.”

  “Settle down. It’s just an article.” My father picked the paper up and folded it smaller and smaller. “Not even a real article. It’s way in the back of the Arts section of The New York Times. Who reads that, huh? People don’t remember stuff like this.”

  “It’s only the biggest newspaper in the country.”

  “It’s not like it says you have AIDS,” I said.

  “Okay. Enough’s enough.” My father tossed the paper into the fireplace and pulled out a lighter. “This thing’s upsetting everyone in the house, and so”—he bent down, flicked the lighter on, and touched the flame to the edge of the paper—“away it goes.”

  Above the tiny fire hung the real portrait. The painted Greta and me watching the real Greta and me watching another copy of ourselves burn away.

  There was nothing I could do. I wasn’t done looking at that article. I hadn’t even read the whole thing yet. I wanted to read more about Finn. About how good he was. About why he stopped doing art. I knew Finn was kind of famous. The way people looked at us when we went into a gallery. The way they’d smile at him, reach out to shake his hand. I understood it, but it wasn’t important to me. He didn’t act famous around me, and I guess I never really thought about how famous he might be.

  Beans and her mom picked me up for the mall right after lunch. I told Beans I didn’t mind sitting up front with her mom. I didn’t want to end up squashed in the backseat between a bunch of girls I hardly knew. When we got to the mall, I told Beans I’d meet her back at the food court later. I lied and said I had to pick something up from Sears for my dad. What I really did was go straight down to the basement level to the movie theater, so I could go see the movie Amadeus by myself. I go to the movies whenever I get the chance, because the movie theater is like the woods. It’s another place that’s like a time machine. Beans didn’t seem to care.

  “Do whatever you want,” she said. “I know you only came because your mom made you.”

  “No . . . I . . .”

  “It’s okay. I get it. Just meet us at the food court at three.”

  Amadeus is one of the best movies ever. Finn liked it as much as I did, but he said that they messed up the whole Requiem story. Nobody thinks Salieri commissioned the Requiem and poisoned Mozart. Still, if Finn was around, we probably would have gone to see it together again that afternoon. Just for the music and to drop into another time and because we were both suckers for movies with tragic endings.

  My mother came home right after I got back from the mall. Just in time to cook dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread. The main topic of dinner conversation was who might have submitted the portrait to the Times. Every time Toby’s name came up, I leaned in closer, eager for any new information. In the end we all pretty much agreed that it must have been Toby. My mother didn’t say anything. She still didn’t want to talk about the article, or Toby, but she seemed to have given up on stopping us from talking about it.

  “It could have been Mr. Trusky,” I said. “He had it overnight.”

  “No way,” Greta said. “Why would Mr. Trusky bother with something like that?”

  “Maybe he just likes art. Maybe he wants to make sure everyone has a chance to see Finn’s work.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I shrugged, but I knew Greta was probably right. Toby was the only one it could have been. Because of the title. None of us had any idea the painting was called “Tell the Wolves I’m Home.” Only Toby might have known something like that.

  “What does that even mean? ‘Tell the Wolves I’m Home’?” Greta asked.

  No one said anything, because none of us had any idea. It was just one more mystery Finn had left us with. One more thing I couldn’t call and ask.

  Seventeen

  I went to the library after school the next day, which turned out not to be the best idea. I thought I would find the article and make a photocopy of it for myself. Then I would go to the woods to read it, maybe twice, maybe a hundred times, maybe more. What I didn’t know was that the copier on the library floor was broken and I’d have to ask someone behind the desk to copy it. If I’d taken it to the upstairs librarian, who didn’t know me, it probably would have been fine, but I was stupid enough to go downstairs to the children’s section. I still loved the children’s section, with all its bright colors and books that are real stories. But it was stupid because the children’s librarian is Mrs. Lester, who’s known me since I was about five, and as soon as she saw the article her face lit up.

  “Oooh, Junie. This is a lovely painting of the two of you.”

  I nodded.

  “You both look so . . . grown up. So wise.”

  I nodded again.

  “And beautiful. Pretty as, well, as a picture.” Mrs. Lester giggled. “We’ve got the big copier down here now. I can get most of this page all on one sheet of paper.”

  “Great,” I said. I must have looked anxious, because Mrs. Lester scuttled off behind the counter double quick. When she came back out, she was holding two copies of the article.

  “Oh, I only need one.”

  “I know, hon’, but we need one for the board.”

  “The board?”

  “The display board. You and Greta are famous. You’re a work of art. It’s nice to have a little bit of local celebrity around here. If you’ve got it—”

  “No. Really, no. We—neither of us likes a lot of attention.”

  “I insist. June, you’ve been discovered. Don’t hide your light and all that.”

  I knew that the only way to prevent Mrs. Lester from hanging up the article would be to tell her that the painting was by my uncle Finn who had just died of AIDS and that my whole family was a little bit touchy about the subject. Hearing the word AIDS would probably be enough for Mrs. Lester, but I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand there and pretend to be embarrassed about Finn.

  I took my copy, folding it so the picture was on the inside, and went back upstairs, into the browns and grays of the main library. I walked to the display board to see if there might be a way to pull the article down once she’d put it up. When nobody was looking. But it was impossible. All the notices were behind a locked glass sliding door.

  I took the copy of the article into the woods. I folded it small so it fit in my coat pocket, and I walked until I could hear the wolves. There wasn’t much more about Finn, just this:

  “This Old Man,” the last painting sold by Weiss and possibly his most well known, is a self-portrait of the artist wearing a baggy woolen jacket over a bare torso. He is holding out an oversized human heart to a pool of crocodiles. Across the artist’s chest is a jaggedly healed scar that reads EMPTY. It’s the sincerity of the gesture that moves the viewer. There is no irony, only the feeling that you are witnessing the very moment before he will release the wet beating thing in his hand and the sense that you have truly received everything this artist has to give. The painting sold for more than $200,000 at auction in 1979. According to Sotheby’s, “Tell the Wolves I’m Home” could fetch upwards of $700,000.

  I guess that should have been a big deal to me, that the painting was worth a fortune, but it wasn’t. We’d never sell it, so it didn’t really matter. What did catch my eye was that there were no buttons. In the paper my T-shirt was plain, just a plain black T-shirt with no buttons at all.

  When I got home, the portrait wasn’t hanging over the mantel anymore. My parents had put the painting back in a black garbage bag and driven it down to the Bank of New York and got them to put it in a vault somewhere in the basement of the bank. I thought of our faces, mine and Greta’s, staring out into that dark vault. And I thought that at least I wasn’t alone in there. Even being with Greta was better than being alone in such a dark dark place.

  Eighteen

  My parents specialize in doing the books for restaurants. That’s why the Elbus family gets free meals in places all over Westchester. We get a table even when there’s a line to get in. I guess that sho
uld make me feel like someone famous, but actually it has the opposite effect. It’s obvious that we’re regular people, so it just looks like we’re jerks who are cutting in front of everyone else. Even Greta thinks it’s embarrassing. And my father. It’s only my mother who likes that little bit of celebrity once in a while.

  Between the funeral and tax season and Greta’s rehearsals, we’d missed my father’s birthday dinner completely. Almost a month had gone by since his birthday. My mother finally put her foot down and said she didn’t care that it was a Tuesday in the middle of tax season. We’d put his birthday dinner off long enough and that was that.

  He chose Gasho of Japan, which was perfect because my parents don’t do its books and also because, if you’re in the right mood, Gasho is a very cool restaurant. The person who started it took apart a whole sixteenth-century farmhouse in Japan, brought all the pieces to America, and rebuilt them and turned the place into a restaurant. The chefs cook on hot grills that are right in the middle of the tables, and in the back there’s a Japanese garden with a stream and arched bridges and benches that nestle in peaceful little corners.

  If you’re in the right mood, it’s a good place to go. But nobody was really in the right mood.

  The thing was, Finn always came out to dinner with us on our birthdays. Always. Sometimes we would go into the city and Finn would arrange it. Other times he would come up here. This was the first birthday he wouldn’t be there. My mother tried to suggest that we ask the Ingrams instead, but nobody thought that was a good idea. Not even Greta.

  “Lookin’ good, girls,” my dad said as we climbed into the van. Greta and I glanced at each other for a second, then we both rolled our eyes.