Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  I didn’t know. It wasn’t a very delicate carving. Not many lines. It wasn’t complicated, but it had a certain feeling. Like you wanted to keep staring at Mary’s face. It could have taken a day or a year to do something like that.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Exactly,” Finn said. “You can’t tell until you get started.”

  “Yeah, well, I still don’t know about it though.”

  “Come on now, Crocodile. Let me do this for you. For you and Greta.” Finn gave me this sad look he could turn on whenever he wanted. And he called me Crocodile, which made me smile inside. “Let’s go sit in the courtyard,” he said. “I brought two cans of iced tea. You can have a think on it.”

  Finn seemed to be in such a good mood that day. It reminded me of the way you feel right after you finish one of those huge jigsaw puzzles, the kind that has thousands of tiny pieces that all look almost the same. That’s the kind of happy he seemed that day.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll meet you out there in a sec.”

  I stayed with the statue for another minute, looking mostly at the headless Jesus and wondering if there was somebody in the world who had his head. Wondering if Jesus and Mary even wanted to be art. I’ll bet they didn’t. Being art seemed like it might be like having a disease. Suddenly you became some kind of specimen to be discussed, analyzed, speculated on. I didn’t need people staring at me, trying to figure out what I was thinking. Look at the bigger girl, the one with the braids. Look how obvious it is that she’s in love with the artist. How sad. How pathetic. I didn’t need that at all.

  Twenty-Six

  The next time I saw Toby, he was waiting for me right outside my school. He was sitting on the hood of the same small blue car I’d seen him get into at the funeral, which I suddenly understood was the same car I used to see parked outside Finn’s building. I always thought it was Finn’s car, because sometimes he’d go down and get things out of the trunk like canvases or, once, a green raincoat.

  When Toby spotted me, he stood up next to the car and started waving his long arms like crazy. Like he was shipwrecked or something. A rush of pins and needles shimmied up my back because, even though I knew how wrong it was, I was kind of thrilled to see that Toby had come looking for me.

  It was a bright, crisp day. The bell had just rung and kids were streaming out the doors. For a second I thought about walking the other way, but I knew I had to get Toby to stop signaling to me. I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if Greta saw him there waving at me like we were best friends or something. I quickly looked down at what I was wearing—my boots from Finn (good), a long black corduroy skirt (iffy), and a maroon sweater that my mother said was three times too big on me (good). I glanced around again and then I jogged over to the car, head down, trying to look as casual as I could.

  When I got to the car, Toby grabbed both my hands in his like we were long lost cousins.

  “June, fantastic. I didn’t realize it might be hard to find you,” he said. “Come on, get in.”

  I stood next to the car for a few seconds, looking it up and down. My head was thinking that I shouldn’t get in a car with this guy who was almost a complete stranger, but my heart was thinking, What if there’s a dropped pencil in there or a stray box of Good & Plentys or a single strand of dirty blond hair or the imprint of the place Finn used to sit? What if there’s a single atom of the air Finn used to breathe in there?

  I was still eyeing the car when Toby climbed in. He reached across the passenger seat, plucked the lock open, and pushed the door open for me. I looked over my shoulder. Kids were coming from every direction, but I couldn’t see anyone who might care what I was doing. And so I threw my backpack onto the floor of the car and climbed in.

  The car smelled of cigarette smoke and berries. Fake strawberries. I saw that it was because Toby was chewing a huge wad of bubble gum. He was wearing a too-small tweed jacket, and underneath it he had on a green T-shirt with big saguaro cactuses printed all over it. I could tell that Finn had made that shirt, and I must have stared at it a little too long, because Toby tugged the jacket close around his body.

  He gave me a sly smile and nodded. “I knew you wouldn’t ring.”

  “Well—”

  “No, no, don’t worry. I understand. I’m just some stranger to you. It’s my fault.”

  I gave Toby the barest narrowing of my eyes. “Well . . . I’m just some stranger to you too, right? So whatever.”

  “Of course you are,” he said. He stared at me for a few seconds, like he was considering telling me more. Then he smiled and twirled his hand in the air. “You’re right. Like you said, ‘Whatever.’”

  Toby reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a chunky piece of gum and offered it to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  He looked out the window.

  “I suppose it was a bad idea. Me coming here.”

  I shrugged. “You’re an adult. You can go wherever you want.”

  I regretted it right away. It was such a little kid thing to say. I waited for Toby to call me on it, but instead he smiled. Then he turned to look at me.

  “And what about you, then?”

  “What about me?”

  “Well, can you go wherever you want?”

  I looked down at my backpack. My heart raced. This whole thing was so far beyond my normal life. Here I was in Finn’s old car with this boyfriend of Finn’s, who everyone in my family seemed to hate. Here I was doing something really, really wrong. But when I looked up, there was Toby’s warm smile, and his brown eyes, and a look that was somehow saying that if I said yes, everything would be okay. But how could that be right? I glanced around the car, and at first I couldn’t see any signs of Finn. I looked across the dashboard and at the steering wheel and on the floor. Then my eye caught the gear shifter, and a smile welled up in my chest. Glued right there, right on top of that gear stick, was a tiny blue hand. The tiny hand of a Smurf. I reached out and laid a finger on top of it. There was a brand-new piece of Finn I’d never seen before. I peeked over at Toby and thought that this must be just the beginning. There must be hundreds of little things like this—thousands, maybe—and Toby was my way in to see them. And so, with the barest tilt of my head, I nodded.

  “Of course I can,” I said. “Why wouldn’t I be able to go wherever I want?”

  Right away, Toby’s smile went up to full beam, and he tapped his hands against the steering wheel like this was the best news he’d had in years. And that felt good, making someone happy. There aren’t many people who get a buzz out of a simple nod of my head.

  Out the window I saw Diane Berger, who I have math with, heading across the parking lot in our direction. I slunk down low in the seat.

  “Look,” I said, “can we go somewhere else?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure.” Toby revved the car up. The tires squealed as he pulled away from the curb, and I slunk down even lower. He laughed. “Oops.”

  We drove right through the middle of town. Past the Lutheran church and 7-Eleven, then out onto Youngstown Road. Toby turned onto the Taconic Parkway heading south.

  “So . . . well . . . I was thinking . . . how about Playland?”

  “Playland? With the rides?” I said.

  “Yeah. But not the rides. There’s something else there.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  The Taconic is a narrow highway and Toby wasn’t a very good driver. He sped the whole way down, driving so close to the guardrail that sometimes I had to close my eyes. I clutched tight to the seat. I had no watch and I had no money. All I had was my backpack, with my geometry book in it and a very short book report on To Kill a Mockingbird, which I got a B+ on.

  A list of questions I wanted to ask Toby started piling up in my head, but when I looked over at him, ready to ask, it struck me how stupid I would sound. I should already know the answers. If I mattered at all, somebody would have told me those things. Then I remember
ed the article I’d sent to Toby, and sitting there in the tight little car with him, I felt embarrassed that I would have done something like that.

  “I’m sorry about that article. It was mean.”

  Toby’s long fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “I just want you to know.”

  I thought about asking what it was like. Exactly. But I didn’t think I wanted to hear the answer. So instead I changed the subject.

  “Was this Finn’s car?”

  I thought this was a pretty easy question, but Toby didn’t answer right away.

  “Well, I suppose Finn did buy it,” he said after a while. “But it was mostly mine. Finn couldn’t drive. Did you not know that?”

  I tried to ignore the did you not know that, even though it felt like a sharp little needle.

  “So you’d drive,” I said. “If the two of you went somewhere together?”

  Toby nodded. “Yeah. Well . . . all right, I don’t technically have an American driving license, but I can drive. You don’t have to worry or anything.”

  “I’m not worried. I’m just asking.”

  I ran my hand over the seat under my legs. Finn had sat right here in this spot. Finn’s fingers might have held on tight to the seat in the exact same place where I was touching. I wanted to open the glove compartment and look inside, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do, so instead I rolled down my window. The sky was so so bright and here I was, driving down the highway with Toby, nobody in the world knowing where I was. I wanted to touch the wind.

  “You’re English, right?” I said.

  I saw Toby answer, but with all the wind I couldn’t hear, so I rolled up my window.

  “What?”

  “Half.”

  “What’s the other half?”

  “My mother, she was Spanish.”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  “Does it?”

  “Your eyes. They’re so dark.”

  “Mongrel eyes.”

  “No,” I said. I looked out the window for a few seconds, then without turning back I said, “I like them.”

  I didn’t know why I said that. I never said things like that. I tugged my sweater over my knees. I glanced over at Toby and caught him smiling, even though I could see he was trying to hide it.

  We switched onto 287, which was wide and not nearly as scary as the Taconic. I loosened my grip on the seat edge. Toby sped up and, without indicating, pulled into the left lane to pass a big supermarket truck.

  “Hey, I brought something for you. Have a look in the back.”

  I twisted around. There, on the seat, was a black folder.

  “This?”

  “Yeah,” he said, glancing away from the road.

  “What is it?”

  “Just look.”

  I opened the folder slowly, cautiously peeling back the cover and readying myself for what might be inside. I saw right away they were sketches. Finn’s sketches. I glanced over at Toby. He smiled and nudged his head toward the folder.

  “Go on,” he said.

  The first page was filled with small pencil drawings of knees. Knees with just a bit of leg above and below them, each one angled in a slightly different direction. There were only a few lines in each of the sketches, but still they were better than anything I could ever do. The next sheet was covered with elbows. Some straight, some bent. Then a mouth. My mouth. That’s what I realized after a couple of seconds. I flipped back to the knees and elbows, and on second viewing it was obvious that these were mine too. Mine and Greta’s. I flipped through the pages faster. There was the hem of Greta’s skirt, a thin edge of my ear poking out from my hair, one of Greta’s dark eyes, the curve of her eyebrow above it. It was all us. Every piece of paper had a little detail from Finn’s portrait. Me and Greta chopped up and shoved into a folder.

  I kept flipping through the pile. I came to a sketch where the space between my arm and Greta’s arm, the shape of the place between us, had been darkened in. The negative space. That’s what Finn called it. He was always trying to get me to understand negative space. And I did. I could understand what he was saying, but it didn’t come naturally to me. I had to be reminded to look for it. To see the stuff that’s there but not there. In this sketch, Finn had colored in the negative space, and I saw that it made a shape that looked like a dog’s head. Or, no—of course, it was a wolf’s head, tilted up, mouth open and howling. It wasn’t obvious or anything. Negative space was kind of like constellations. The kind of thing that had to be brought to your attention. But the way Finn did it was so skillful. It was all in the way Greta’s sleeve draped and the way my shoulder angled in. So perfect. It was almost painful to look at that negative space, because it was so smart. So exactly the kind of thing Finn would think of. I touched my finger to the rough pencil lines, and I wished I could let Finn know that I saw what he’d done. That I knew he’d put that secret animal right between Greta and me.

  I looked over at Toby. He’d popped a Johnny Cash tape in the cassette player and was singing both parts of “Jackson.” For a second, I thought of showing that wolf to him, but then I caught myself. Finn had probably already shown him. It would just be another piece of old news.

  We didn’t say much for the rest of the drive. The car sped past exits for White Plains and Harrison, and even though I’d been past those places hundreds of times, they looked strange and unfamiliar that afternoon. One minute it was a regular school day and I was about to get on the bus home, and the next there I was in the Playland parking lot with a guy in a tweed jacket, chewing strawberry gum.

  Only a few cars were there, and we got a spot right near the entrance. Toby’s jacket was rumpled from the drive, and he smoothed it with both hands. Looking at him out in the open, I thought he looked mostly the same as last time except for maybe his eyes. Maybe his eyes looked a little bit bigger.

  Toby paid for us both, which was good because I didn’t have any money on me. Next to the ticket booth there was a big, noisy fountain. Toby looked at it, then stepped in closer to me, leaning down. “This thing I want to show you, it’s right at the back. Promise me you’ll like it, all right?”

  “I can’t promise that.”

  He smiled. “Of course not. Good answer.”

  We walked down the main path, the one called Knickerbocker Avenue. We went past all the rides I’d been on before with Greta. The swings, that rickety old Dragon Coaster, the Scrambler, the Spider. Greta was always the one who wanted to go on the scariest, fastest stuff they had. I was always the one who got dragged into going on with her, even though it made me sick as anything.

  We kept walking, and even though there was almost nobody at Playland that day, the whole place smelled of popcorn and hot sugar. Like someone was cooking that stuff just for the smell of it. Just so people knew they were supposed to have fun there. We passed a line of skeeball machines and the shooting gallery where there were creepy-looking hillbilly figures that popped up out of barrels. Toby pointed over to a narrower path on the right.

  “Here,” he said. “Finn said you like history, the past and all that, so . . .”

  Again I had the weird realization that Toby knew all kinds of things about me, while I knew next to nothing about him. It didn’t seem fair. Not at all. Every time I thought about it, about Toby and Finn talking behind my back, I felt a hot surge of anger in my chest.

  Toby stopped in front of a booth with the name Images of Yesteryear painted on a sign above. Display boards with sepia-toned photos of people in old-fashioned clothes were spread out on the sidewalk in front of the booth. There were pictures of whole families or sometimes just kids or once in a while there was one with a single man or woman. Some were wearing Wild West stuff. One guy had on a Civil War uniform and sat scowling with a rifle and a Confederate flag across his lap. A woman stood behind her daughter, both of them squeezed into snug Victorian dresses. Some of the pictures really worked, because you couldn’t see that t
he people weren’t from the past. With others it was obvious. Not the haircuts or anything, sometimes it was just a little smirky look that gave it away.

  “So? What do you say?” Toby sounded nervous. Like he’d suddenly realized that this was a weird place to bring me.

  I’d seen photo places like this before, lots of times, but nobody in my family was ever interested in doing it.

  “I don’t come out good in pictures,” I said.

  “Sure you do. I’ve seen that portrait.”

  “That’s different,” I said. And it was. A portrait is a picture where somebody gets to choose what you look like. How they want to see you. A camera catches whichever you happens to be there when it clicks.

  “It won’t be,” he said. He walked around to the other side of the picture board so I couldn’t see him. “If you want,” he said, “we could go together.”

  I shook my head. But then I thought about it. It would definitely make it less embarrassing if it wasn’t just me sitting there like a weirdo by myself. I didn’t even know what time it was, and I had no idea if anyone at home had noticed I was gone, but I suddenly felt like I really wanted to do this thing.

  “Oh, okay. I guess. If you want to.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Okay. Both of us.”

  Toby’s head appeared from over the top of the board.

  “Brilliant,” he said, grinning.

  A woman who was probably in her fifties, with eyeshadow in three different shades of blue, sat on a stool behind the booth. She was reading a copy of People magazine with a picture of Paul Hogan from “Crocodile” Dundee on the cover. When she heard Toby she put down her magazine, creasing it to save her page.

  “Two, please,” Toby said.

  “Two?”

  “Yes, there are two of us who’d like to have our photos done.” Toby gave her the same smile he’d just given me. A kid smile. That’s what I’d call it. The woman looked at Toby, then me. Then she looked harder at Toby, like she was sizing him up, trying to figure something out about him. After a few seconds she seemed to come to a decision. She reached into a drawer and pulled out a price list.