But what if you ended up in the wrong kind of love? What if you accidentally ended up in the falling kind with someone it would be so gross to fall in love with that you could never tell anyone in the world about it? The kind you’d have to crush down so deep inside yourself that it almost turned your heart into a black hole? The kind you squashed deeper and deeper down, but no matter how far you pushed it, no matter how much you hoped it would suffocate, it never did? Instead, it seemed to inflate, to grow gigantic as time went by, filling every little spare space you had until it was you. You were it. Until everything you ever saw or thought led you back to one person. The person you weren’t supposed to love that way. What if that person was your uncle, and every day you carried that gross thing around with you, thinking that at least nobody knew and, as long as nobody knew, everything would be okay?
I took another deep breath of the coat as the monorail leaned smoothly into a curve, out of India, into Nepal, and I dreamed it was all true. That I was clinging tight to Finn. That the ache had been lifted right out of my belly and been made into something real. That I could open my eyes and see Finn smiling right at me.
Toby had leaned his cheek against the top of my head, and a stream of his tears ran down my forehead and onto my face, trickling over my eyes so it must have looked like I was crying. They fell down my cheek and over my lips. I didn’t know if you could catch AIDS from tears, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t afraid of things like that anymore.
We stayed like that for the rest of the ride, and I wondered if Toby’s dreams were the same as mine. I wondered if he’d been turning me into his one true love.
The monorail pulled back into the station, and neither of us moved. I turned my head to look down the car, wiping my cheek against the rough wool of Toby’s coat. The mother of a family of four was staring at me. I looked straight into her eyes and I saw what we must look like, Toby and me. I saw how wrong we must look, but I didn’t care. I tugged at Toby’s sleeve and we both stood, our arms still tight around each other. Nobody knew our story, I thought. Nobody knew how sad our story was.
We walked out of Asia, back through North America. Back past the wolf exhibit. You could never see any wolves in there. They hid, probably trying to pretend they weren’t in a cage. Probably knowing that they looked just like plain old dogs when they were behind bars. We stood for a while, leaning up against the fence, staring out over that little version of the Great Plains. Opposite the wolf field was a fake totem pole, just about the size of a man. Blue and red paint was chipping off the heads of the eagle, bear, and wolf. I stopped.
“What is it?” Toby said.
“Give me the coat.”
“No. Why?”
“Just please, okay?”
Toby frowned. He had a pleading look on his face, but I stood with my hands on my hips, and after a moment he slowly unbuttoned the coat. When it was all open, he hung his head. I tugged the coat off his shoulders and draped it over my arm. Then I walked over to the totem pole, wrapped the coat around it, buttoned it up so that the eagle’s head poked out of the top. I stood back, tilting my head and squinting.
“Perfect,” I said with a huge smile, but when I looked over at Toby, I saw that he was still standing in the same spot. I saw that there was nothing left of him. He was wearing the same dinosaur-bones T-shirt he’d had on that first time at the apartment, and his arms were covered with dark scabby marks. He stood there in the warm April sunshine, looking like a skinned animal. He stood there with his head down not saying a word.
“They’ll watch over it for us. Right?” I said, pointing to the wolf field.
Toby moved his big hands over his arms like he was holding the pieces of himself together.
“I just thought, maybe we’re supposed to try to, you know, move on,” I said.
Toby glanced up. I thought he’d looked older when I saw him earlier, but now, without the coat, he seemed younger. Shrunk down to nothing. He cocked his head and stared at me with a puzzled expression.
“But where would we move to?”
I didn’t know, and right then I felt so stupid for having said it. I felt like a traitor to Finn. There was Toby, the loyal one, the one who would never move even an inch away from Finn’s ghost. And there was me. The one with the threadbare love. Move on. What a cliché. What an embarrassment. I felt my face go hot. I stared at the coat, which a minute ago seemed like such a clever thing and now looked like something a kid would do. A stupid little kid who had no idea what real love was.
I bowed my head and silently unbuttoned the coat. I threw it over my arm and handed it back to Toby without looking at him.
He slipped the coat back on, and all of a sudden I felt the truth again. Of course Greta was right. There was no “us.” Toby was doing what Finn asked him to do. No more. No less.
In the car, Toby reached across me and opened the glove compartment. He took out my passport and laid it on the dashboard.
“Don’t forget to take this.” He looked away from me when he said it.
The dark-blue book reflected onto the windshield so it looked like there were two passports. Two little reminders of my dumb plan. I picked it up and flicked through the pages. I saw that Toby had peeled the note off my picture, and my half-smiling eleven-year-old face squinted up at me. Stupid stupid stupid. I tossed the passport onto the floor next to my backpack. Then I shoved it away with the toe of my boot.
I turned to Toby. “I know you met Finn in prison.”
For a second he looked confused. Like he hadn’t heard me right. And the truth is, the prison thing didn’t bother me at all. Greta thought it was this big trump card, but I felt just like Nellie in South Pacific. Nellie didn’t care that Emile was a murderer. She could forgive that right away. Like it was nothing. It was the other stuff, the crimes he didn’t even know he’d committed, that she couldn’t get over.
Toby clasped his hands together and gently tapped them against the steering wheel. “You know that, do you?”
I nodded.
“And you’re still here?”
I nodded again.
“And you want to know what I did, right?”
I shrugged.
“There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
“Like I’d really be scared of you,” I said.
Toby gave me a look. Then he stared down the row of parked cars. When he turned back to me, his face was serious. “If I don’t tell you, you’ll imagine all kinds of things, and I don’t want that.” He looked worried. Or maybe trapped. He threw his head into his hands. “Ugh, this is so utterly stupid. This is from another lifetime.”
I didn’t say anything.
“All right. Here it is, then. I was a student at the Royal Academy. For music. On scholarship, of course. No money at all from my parents, who generally tried to pretend I didn’t exist. So I’d busk in tube stations sometimes, and . . . and there was this one night . . .” He let his breath out slow. “This is what I’m trying to tell you. There was this one night, a Saturday, and I was down there, late. There were a bunch of drunken lads, and there I was with no place to go, playing guitar. I even remember what I was playing, because it was this Bach fugue, you know?” I nodded, even though I didn’t think I knew any Bach fugues. “And I was lost in it. Sometimes that’s what it’s like. Sometimes I could forget where I was and just slip away into the playing, adding things to it and playing with it, and it was staving off the cold. But then, out of nowhere, there was a kick right to my ribs. Hard. And I flew backward, trying to hold tight to the guitar because that guitar was from my grandfather, my mother’s father from Spain, and it was all I had then. I knew my body, it could heal up, but the guitar, that I couldn’t replace. There were four of them, big lads, drunk, and one was taking his jacket off and another punched me in the head, and I could hear the train coming. There’d be a thud to my body and then the high scream of the train cutting through the blows. That’s what I remember it like, like that train was calling me. One of them tr
ied to pull the guitar from my hands and then I heard the train again, and all my strength poured into that one thing, that one moment, and I pushed him, June. I pushed that man onto the tracks. I didn’t even know my ankle was broken—I didn’t feel anything. I just plowed right to the edge, shoving and yelling, and he went over. Right onto the tracks, just a few seconds before the train pulled into the station.”
“Did he . . .?”
Toby shook his head. “Both legs.” He looked down and away from me. “So that’s it. That’s why I went to prison. You can decide for yourself if you want to stop visiting me.”
“But it wasn’t your fault,” I said. “They started it.”
He shrugged. “It was a bad thing.”
“But . . . but they stole all those years away from you. They—”
He paused for a long time. Then he said, “But they gave me Finn.”
He said it like maybe it was worth the trade. Like it was something he would do again if he had the choice. Like he would take a man’s legs and give away years of his own freedom if it was the only way. I thought how that was wrong and terrible and beautiful all at the same time.
I was ready for the story to end, but Toby started up again. It didn’t even feel like he was talking to me anymore. It felt more like he was talking just to let the story of him and Finn out into the world. He told me he was twenty-three when he met Finn. That Finn was thirty, in London doing a master’s degree in art, and part of the course was community work. Finn chose this art-in-prisons project, where they ran classes for inmates.
“So it’s his first day and we’re in a classroom. There’s me and then there’s this room full of real criminals. And Finn standing up front. I can see he’s trying not to look lost. He’s scanning the room and I can’t stop watching him, his face, the way he’s biting nervously at the corner of his lip, his perfect little narrow shoulders. And I’m thinking, ‘Look at me. I’m the only one here who matters.’ And the room is starting to get restless. There’s this one wiry cockney wanker—oh, sorry, June. This one guy who shouts up to Finn, ‘Art is for homos,’ and the room goes quiet. Everyone’s waiting to see how this art teacher will play it. I see a smile come up on Finn’s face—you know that smile—and he looks down, trying to hide it, but then he decides not to. He decides to take a risk. He looks the guy straight in the eyes and says, ‘Well, you’re in the right place, then,’ and right away he had the whole room—well, the whole room except for that one guy. Everyone’s laughing, banging on the desks, all sorts. Not me, of course. I sat there quiet, and that’s when he noticed me. I looked at him, trying to tell this man, this stranger, everything with my eyes. He cocked his head just the tiniest bit, and I stared back. For a few frozen seconds we were the only ones in the room, and I took my chance. I had to. I mouthed, Help me, knowing that he’d probably turn his head away, embarrassed. But he didn’t. He kept looking at me. That’s how it started. We wrote letters, and I never missed one of his classes. He would brush by me, casually running his hand against my back. Or he would drop a pencil and touch a finger to my ankle as he stooped to pick it up.” Toby closed his eyes and smiled, like he was going back there. “There was something so electric about it. So dangerous. Those little touches were everything. I lived for them. You can build a whole world around the tiniest of touches. Did you know that? Can you imagine?”
Toby’s eyes had started to water. I wanted to say of course I know that. I know all about tiny things. Proportion. I know all about love that’s too big to stay in a tiny bucket. Splashing out all over the place in the most embarrassing way possible. I didn’t want to hear any more of the story, but I couldn’t help listening. The pain of it almost felt good.
“He saved me, you know? He stayed in England far beyond his visa. He waited for me. He was already known. He was already selling his work for an absolute fortune. He could have gone anywhere, but he waited. For me. The day I got out—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
Toby looked embarrassed. He put his hands up in apology. “I understand,” he said.
“What do you understand?”
“Your feelings for Finn. I’m sorry. It wasn’t sensitive. I’m an ass—”
“What feelings?”
“June—”
“No, tell me what you think. You think I have feelings because I don’t want to hear about you throwing yourself at my uncle after being locked away in prison?”
“June, it’s all right. We know how you felt.” He looked at me intensely when he said it, tipping his head slightly to make sure I understood.
And suddenly, like a brick falling on my head, I did understand. Finn knew. Finn knew and Toby knew. They both knew. Of course Finn would know. He always knew my heart.
I lost all my hearing. My head felt filled with every buzzing creature on the planet. I wanted to turn to wax and melt away. I wanted to erase every wrong cell of my body. It felt so bad to be alive in that moment, I would have done anything to end it. If we weren’t in the Bronx, I would have jumped out of the car and run all the way home.
Instead, I had to sit there right next to Toby for forty-five whole minutes. Forty-five minutes staring out the window, twisting my body as far away as possible. Forty-five minutes that felt like years. Forty-five silent minutes, except for the one moment on the north side of Yonkers when Toby reached out and put a hand on my back and said, “You think I don’t know about wrong love, June? You think I don’t understand embarrassing love?”
Toby parked a block from my house. He gave his usual “If you need anything . . .” spiel. I got out of the car as fast as I could, and when I glanced back in, I saw my passport laying on the floor mat, all muddy from my boots. I looked at it there, a little book made of all my stupidity, and I hoped maybe it would get lost forever.
Toby got out of the car and walked around to my side. I forced myself to act like nothing had happened. Like it was no big deal. I forced myself to look at him with a pasted-on smile. We made plans to meet the next Tuesday. He said he thought he was still okay to drive. I told him to park in the Grand Union parking lot, in the back where it slopes off, where it’s overhung with trees, next to the Goodwill bins. They were just numb words spilling out of my mouth. They didn’t mean anything. I said I’d be there at three-thirty. Toby nodded. That’s what we arranged. That’s exactly the way we left it.
Fifty-Four
There was the smell of cinnamon French toast, and there was my mother humming “Some Enchanted Evening” and the sunshine billowing into my bedroom window and the thump of Greta’s stereo coming through the wall behind my head. There was my father clunking around in the closet at the bottom of the stairs, and there were two chickadees on the branch outside my window. This is how that Saturday started, and I lay in my old, warm bed, smiling because there was no Toby, there were no secrets, there was nothing but home. Nothing but normal things, and that made it feel like it might turn out to be a really good day.
That night was going to be the first performance of South Pacific. Opening night. We all had tickets, and Greta already told us that we were supposed to have flowers sent to her at the school. She told us that usually kids sent each other a carnation and parents sent roses or even a whole bunch of flowers. My mother nodded and told her not to worry.
“Promise you’ll remember, okay?” Greta said.
“Honey, you’ll get flowers. You need to calm down. Stop worrying about everything. You’ll look like a wreck by the time the show starts.” My mother put a hand on Greta’s shoulder and gave it a rub.
I didn’t say it, but the truth was that she already did look like a wreck. Her skin was dry and flaky, and her hair looked coarse instead of shiny and smooth like it usually was. She didn’t even bother to do her fingernails anymore. It looked like she’d been biting them ragged.
My mother smoothed her hand over Greta’s hair.
“You’ll do great. I know you will. Sit down, have some breakfast. You too, Junie.”
S
he brought over great heaping plates of French toast with maple syrup. After wiping down the counters and washing a few dishes, my mother left to go into town, and Greta and I were alone together for the first time since the day she raided my closet. Greta pushed most of the French toast over to one side of her plate, then cut up the one piece that was left. We didn’t say anything to each other. I could have sat right through that whole breakfast without saying a word, but I looked over at Greta cutting her French toast into the tiniest of pieces, I looked at my small, tired sister, and I thought what a big day this was for her.
“So . . . are you, like, nervous?” I said.
At first I thought she was going to ignore me, but then her brow furrowed and she shrugged. “I don’t even want to do it,” she said without looking at me. “I wish I’d never auditioned. I wish I was an extra. Or nothing. I wish I was nothing.”
The kitchen window was open and I could hear the echoey thump of Kenny Gordano dribbling his basketball in his driveway next door.
“You’ll be great.”
She pressed the back of her fork into a piece of French toast. “Maybe I don’t want to be great. Maybe I want to be average. At everything. Maybe I want to be like you.”
“Trust me. You don’t.”
“No, June. You trust me. You know what being great means? It means having a year stolen from your life. There’s a whole extra year in there that’s lost. And, you know, I want my year back. I want second grade. I’m only sixteen. And now . . . now I’m supposed to be leaving home for good? Does that seem right? You know, I used to love South Pacific. It was like this little place in my life where I could just hang out and sing. No pressure or anything. And then next thing you know it turns into this huge chance of a lifetime. Why is everything like that for me? All my life I’ve listened to Mom. Opportunities. Chances. And I don’t want to be ungrateful. I don’t want to miss out, but sometimes I lie in my bed and I look around at my room and I can’t believe I’m not supposed to be a kid anymore. What about that opportunity? Where’s the second chance for that?” Her voice had gone shaky, like she was about to cry. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out one of those tiny bottles of vodka. She didn’t even try to hide it from me, she just opened the top and poured half of it into her orange juice. She drank half the glass, then leaned in to me and said, “I’m not going to Annie, June. I don’t care what I have to do. I won’t go.”
Tell the Wolves I'm Home Page 27
