Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  Toby gave a sheepish smile. Then he put on a fake serious face and cleared his throat. “As you head into adulthood, June, you may occasionally encounter oversize exotic beverages of an alcoholic nature. I felt it was my duty to acquaint you with these potentially hazardous drinks.”

  I laughed and gave him a shove in the arm.

  His serious face fell apart. “Plus,” he said, “it was fun, wasn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  And I thought that maybe Toby had figured it out. Maybe that was all Finn wanted us to do. To make each other laugh. Maybe Finn just wanted to think that his two favorite people might sing and smile and stumble around the city like they were having the time of their lives.

  I managed to keep the warm feeling with me for most of the train ride home, but by the time we got to Hawthorne something else started to creep in. The note meant two things. The first, the good one, was that Finn cared. That he loved me enough to make sure Toby looked out for me. But the second thing it meant was that the only reason Toby had spent all that time with me was because of Finn. Because Finn asked him to. It had nothing to do with me. Greta was right. As usual, she had it all figured out.

  Fifty-Two

  AMERICA’S MOST WANTED

  That’s what it said on the cover. The words were in bold black type, spread right across the page. Under them were Greta and me. The portrait. The two of us right in the middle of the cover of Newsweek magazine.

  The article was about art that’s missing or is maybe in people’s private collections without anyone knowing about it. Hidden stuff. Apparently we were only number six. More important were an Andy Warhol painting, a painting from the 1700s showing an important battle in the Revolutionary War, two sculptures, and an American flag that had just twelve stars and was supposed to have been made even before the Betsy Ross one. Then came us.

  I thought it was probably the same picture that they used in The New York Times, because the buttons weren’t there. My T-shirt was plain black.

  There was a picture of each of the top ten missing things and then there were another fifty listed below. A man from the Whitney said he was trying to put together an exhibition called “Lost and Found,” and if he managed to get hold of enough of the stuff on the list, it would be able to go ahead.

  In the article he said, We know about these works only because somebody has written about them or they’ve appeared in a photo or a film at some point. We call them ghost works, because we have only a trace of them, not the real physical object.

  The part about our portrait said mostly the same stuff that was in the Times. The only difference was that they’d interviewed the owner of the gallery where Finn used to show his work. He said that he could not think of a greater tragedy than Finn Weiss ceasing to produce art. I thought that seemed like an exaggeration, but still, I felt proud that someone would say that about Finn.

  It was Beans who brought the magazine in to school and showed it to me. At first I thought of hiding it or throwing it away, but it was Newsweek. There were thousands and thousands of copies all over the country. It was probably already up on the library bulletin board. Someone had probably called the Whitney guy to tell him where we were.

  The article ended with the guy from the Whitney saying he was like a detective. Always on the hunt for missing art. I flipped back to the cover and stared at Greta and me. I thought of that guy searching for us. Trailing us. I realized we wouldn’t be very hard to find, and somehow that scared me. The idea of him knocking on our door made me shudder.

  My mother brought that Newsweek home from work. Two separate people had given her a copy. We all sat around the dinner table. My mother and father and Greta and me. The magazine sat in the middle. There was no crockpot delight that night. Instead, my mother had cooked two boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese. The bright-orange pasta sat on our plates, untouched.

  “I’ve decided to call him,” my mother said.

  My fork fell right out of my hand. For a second it was like the portrait was right there in front of me. The gold painted hair. The little black skull.

  I started to argue, but Greta kicked me hard under the table. She got me right on the anklebone and I had to try hard not to punch her back. I glanced at her, and, even though she still wouldn’t look me in the eye, I could tell she had a plan.

  “The longer we wait,” she said, “the longer we keep it hidden, the more valuable it’ll get. Right? Think about it. Even if he figures out that we have the painting, we don’t have to show it to him. Do we?”

  My parents looked at each other. I saw that they were reading each other, trying to work out the right thing to do.

  “Well,” my father said, “you do have a point, but maybe it’d be good to get it out there. Maybe it’s what Finn would have wanted.”

  “No,” I said. Greta kicked me again, but this time I ignored her. “He wouldn’t have wanted that. He painted it for us.”

  “Honey, an artist’s work belongs to everyone. In a sense.”

  “But it’s my face. Mine and Greta’s. We don’t belong to everybody. Finn made it for us, and I say no.”

  “Just calm down, Junie.” My father was always like that, trying to keep everything peaceful without taking any kind of position.

  I glanced at Greta, who was leaning back in her chair and had her arms crossed over her chest.

  “He’ll probably just want to have a look at it and then we can take it from there,” my mother said. “Nobody’s talking about selling it or even showing it. Let’s take it one step at a time.”

  I looked at Greta again. Right in the eyes. We both knew what we’d done to the portrait. I couldn’t imagine how my mother would react. Or maybe I could. Maybe that was the problem. Across the table, my mother and father were also looking at each other. My mother turned and reached her hand out toward us.

  “Okay. Both of you. Just . . . just quiet. The truth is, I’ve already called him. I spoke with him this afternoon.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “He’s coming up next week to have a look.”

  “But it’s ours. We don’t want . . .” I looked at Greta.

  She smiled. Slow and long. For a few seconds she stayed like that, not saying a word. Then she tossed her head back and looked across the table.

  “Whatever,” she said. “Maybe it’s good. Like you said. Let’s just see what happens next.”

  I didn’t have any words. My mouth was probably hanging open.

  The next day I went straight to the bank after school. Since the day Greta got hold of all the stuff in my closet, I’d made sure to keep my half of the Elizabethan picture and the Book of Days in my backpack. They were in there when I went to see the portrait. It was already getting warm, and I tied my sweater around my waist as I walked slowly through town. Along the way, I stopped at Benedetti’s Deli and got a can of Yoo-hoo and a bag of Doritos.

  Mr. Zimmer wasn’t working at the bank that day, so I had to sign my name for the woman behind the counter to let me go down to the vault. I did my best and I could tell I was getting better, but still the woman, who was young and pretty and tidy in a way I knew I never would be, stared back and forth between the form and the signature. Then she eyed me up and asked me for my address and phone number, until I finally convinced her that I was actually June Elbus.

  It was almost painful to take the portrait out of the box this time. My hope was that the gold in our hair and the skull on Greta’s hand would blend right in. After all, nobody ever seemed to notice Toby’s buttons. That’s what I hoped, but really I knew that wasn’t how it was going to be. You can’t put shiny gold paint on a picture and expect nobody to notice it. I slid the portrait out slowly, with my eyes closed. When I finally looked, I saw that it was even worse than I’d imagined. The gold paint gathered every bit of light in that room and sent it right back to my eyes.

  And there was something new. Greta’s lips, which were a natural color before, were painted bright red. The red wa
s the color of the Campbell’s tomato soup that my mother used to make us for lunch when we were little. Instead of looking triple-pleased with herself, like she did before, now Greta looked like she was frowning. More than frowning, even. With the gold in her hair and the lips, I’d say Greta looked fearsome.

  I leaned in to the painting. I wanted to see Greta’s brushstrokes. I wanted to see them up close. I knew she must have seen what I’d done to our hair. That’s what hit me then. In real life, Greta had been avoiding me as much as she could. She’d barely said a word to me since that day she found my stuff. But here it was almost like we were talking. Like a secret language. This portrait of us holding all the words we never said anymore.

  I took out the half of the Playland picture and propped it up next to the portrait. I looked at the girl in the portrait, that girl who still had Finn, the stupid girl who used to think she was the only one who had him, and I hardly recognized her anymore. I couldn’t begin to imagine her taking care of anyone. Then I looked at the girl in that big Elizabethan getup and I thought the same. I thought they both looked stupid. The kind of girls who couldn’t do anything for anyone. I was glad I didn’t have a mirror with me just then, because I knew I’d see the same thing there. Of course Toby wouldn’t want to go to England with me. Why would he?

  I pressed my back against the wall and slid down to the floor.

  Why would Toby pretend to like me? Why would someone do that?

  Guilt, that’s why.

  No. Nobody knew anything about AIDS when they first got it. That was true. Why would Toby feel guilty?

  And why didn’t he ever mention prison?

  I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  Of course he wouldn’t go to England with you. You never get it, do you? You never get who people are to you. Ben, Beans, Finn, Greta. Why would Toby want to spend that kind of time with you? And then there’s that stupid teapot lid. . . .

  I closed my eyes and whispered the Dies Irae from the Requiem. Over and over I said the Latin words—Dies irae, dies illa, solvet saeclum in favilla—until, after a while, a little bit of the dread fell away.

  I stood in that room and looked at the portrait again. At Greta and me. I dug down deep into the bottom of my backpack and found that jar of gold paint. I imagined Greta in here, coloring her lips, knowing I would see what she’d done, and suddenly I needed her to hear me. I needed her to know I was answering her call. And so instead of trying to cover anything up, I took out my little jar of gold paint, dipped the brush in, and, as careful as I could, I painted each of Greta’s tiny fingernails gold.

  Fifty-Three

  I stood next to Toby on the platform, waiting for the monorail. We were in Wild Asia, at the Bronx Zoo, about to board the Bengali Express, which—next to the Cloisters—is the best way to leave New York without leaving New York.

  The Bronx Zoo is not a sad zoo. It’s huge and filled with trees and open meadows and makes you feel like you aren’t in a city at all. They have it divided up into continents—Africa, Asia, North America—and each part has a feeling like the place it’s supposed to be. The Africa part is all dusty, with hardly any trees, and the ice cream shacks are made to look like little huts. Asia is more lush. There’s bamboo and statues of Indian goddesses and Chinese-looking archways.

  I’d told Toby to pick me up at my house at ten in the morning. It was a school day, but my plan was to get up early and tell my mother I thought I was coming down with the same stomach bug my dad and Greta had. My mother pressed her soft palm against my forehead for just a second before agreeing that I did feel clammy. I crawled back into bed and waited until everyone left, then I got dressed and sat by the window in the living room, watching.

  As usual, it didn’t even occur to Toby that it was strange for me to be getting picked up by him at ten o’clock on a weekday. He stood outside the back door in a bulky gray wool coat, looking really happy to see me.

  “It’s spring,” I said, eyeing the coat.

  Toby seemed embarrassed that I’d brought up the coat and gazed out across the backyard.

  “I’ve been here before, you know,” he said.

  “Really?”

  “The teapot. That postman. It was me. Special delivery.”

  I thought back to that day, and it felt so long ago. It felt impossible that it had been only two months ago.

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “I knew that was you.”

  Toby seemed to be miles away, but he came back to himself then. He smiled. “I thought you did.”

  I’d told him it was my turn to take him somewhere. At first I thought of the Cloisters, but I wasn’t ready to give that away yet. So it was the zoo. Toby said I could drive if I wanted to. He held out the keys.

  “I don’t exactly know how. I don’t have my permit or anything.”

  “I’ll teach you.” Toby lit a cigarette, but he only managed one breath of it before he started coughing. The keys fell from his hand and I picked them up. Before I could hand them back, Toby had slipped into the passenger’s seat. This wasn’t what I had in mind, but I didn’t want to act scared about it, so I opened the driver’s door and sat down. Then I saw the Smurf hand, that little Smurf hand Finn had glued on the gearshift, and I saw my way out.

  “It’s stick shift. There’s no way . . .” I laid the keys on the dashboard.

  Toby was still coughing, but he nodded. He picked up the keys and walked around to the driver’s side.

  We parked in the Bronx River parking lot, which meant that we came in through the North America section. North America was the most convincing. The big trees and grassy fields with deer and bison and wolves looked good. Like some kind of super condensed version of all the American wildlife there’d ever been. Like every kind of thing we’d killed off had been ushered back into the world.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s like Playland. There’s something I want to show you. Not just the animals. Come on.” I turned back. Toby looked old. Older than last time I’d seen him, and I saw that he was trying hard not to walk slow. “Come on,” I said again, pretending not to notice.

  Then, in a big burst of energy, Toby threw his arms out and bolted toward me, laughing. He looked like some kind of crazy animal like that, in that big gray coat. I laughed too and ran ahead. We raced through North America, past the meadows of deer and wolves, past the World of Birds and the World of Darkness, until after a while the woods and meadows gave way to the more exotic shrubbery of the Asia section.

  “Here,” I said, pointing down a flight of stairs lined with bright red and yellow Indian flags.

  Toby leaned up against the railing. He couldn’t seem to stop coughing. His back was bent over like an old man’s. A little dart of panic hit my stomach, because I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea how to help someone who might be really sick. I gave him a lame pat on the back. All the while Toby kept trying to smile between coughs, pretending like he was okay. When he finally caught his breath, I asked if he wanted a drink.

  “No. Let’s go,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  We walked down the stairs. At the bottom we walked past a pen where they had camel rides. The camels were all decked out with lush carpets the colors of cinnamon and paprika and mustard under their saddles. A couple of them were toting around toddlers, but the rest stood there looking bored.

  I pointed to a booth farther down the path. “This way,” I said. “Promise me you’ll like it.”

  He didn’t answer for a second, and I was waiting for him to do what I’d done that day at Playland. To say he couldn’t promise something like that. But he didn’t.

  “I promise,” he said. “Even if I hate it, I promise I’ll like it.”

  I paid for the monorail tickets, and we stood waiting under the thatched grass roof of the platform. At the other end, a bunch of little kids on a school trip were hanging off the low wood guardrail. When the train pulled up, we waited for them to pile in before choosing a quieter car at the other end.

  The
seats in the monorail were set up almost like a small theater: two rows tiered, and instead of facing front and back, they all faced the side of the train, which was entirely open. The ride goes for only twenty minutes or so, but the voice on the intercom makes out like you’re going all around Asia, and if you don’t let yourself look out too far, if you focus on the trees and water just below the train, you can believe it. You can believe those black musk deer are really in the south China hills and the elephants are really roaming over the plains of India.

  The train moved out. Right away we were crossing the muddy Bronx River, and a woman’s voice came over the speakers saying we were in India, crossing the Ganges. I looked over at Toby and saw he was grinning, and I gave him a nod.

  “Don’t look out too far,” I said. “It wrecks it.” Greta always looked out too far. She was always the one who would point out the places where you could see the real Bronx through a gap in the trees.

  On the way back across the Bronx River, the woman would say it was the Yangtze and we would be in China. Now she told us about antelope and tigers and three kinds of deer.

  “Hey,” Toby said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Come here.” Toby patted the spot next to him on the bench, and I scooted over. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in so my face was pressed up against his big coat.

  “Breathe in.”

  I didn’t know what Toby was trying to do at first, but I took a long slow breath of his coat and there, like magic, was Finn. The exact smell of Finn. Not only lavender and orange but other things too. The mild citrus smell of his aftershave. And coffee beans and paint and things I didn’t know the names of but were just part of Finn. I didn’t want to move. I sat nestled against Toby, my head buried tight in his coat. Toby held me and pulled me closer and closer, and I felt in the soft tremble of his shoulders that he was crying. I closed my eyes and it was like I was flying over the Ganges, clinging to Finn. This Finn’s arms gripped me tighter than Finn’s ever had. I thought of all the different kinds of love in the world. I could think of ten without even trying. The way parents love their kid, the way you love a puppy or chocolate ice cream or home or your favorite book or your sister. Or your uncle. There’s those kinds of loves and then there’s the other kind. The falling kind. Husband-and-wife love, girlfriend-and-boyfriend love, the way you love an actor in a movie.