Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  “I’ll help you. We’ll figure something out. Tell Mom you changed your mind or something.”

  Greta finished off her juice and laughed. “Yeah. Right. Whatever. So, are you coming?” she asked. “Tonight?”

  “Of course I’m coming. I have a ticket.”

  “Not the play. After. The cast party.” The combination of everything she’d said and the vodka and the matter-of-fact way she’d just asked me to the cast party left me stunned. I sat there staring at her.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “No. No, I’m not. I’m asking you.”

  “You spy on me in the woods. You go into my closet. Destroy all my private stuff—irreplaceable stuff. And then you sit there like I’d actually consider going to a party with you again? I mean, I feel bad about the whole overachiever thing, but—”

  “But Ben—you know, maybe . . .”

  “Ben went off with Tina Yarwood. You said so yourself. Remember?”

  “Oh,” she said, suddenly looking sad. “Yeah.”

  “I’m not part of the cast or crew, and—” I cut myself off. Why should I explain?

  Greta didn’t say anything for a few seconds. She gently set her fork down on the edge of her plate. “You still go to see him?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “You know who.”

  “Why should I tell you anything? You sit there . . . You sit there like we’re best friends or something. Inviting me to parties, always in my business. Well, I’ve had enough. The. End.” I twisted my chair to face away from Greta. Upstairs, my father was singing “Younger Than Springtime” in his booming voice.

  “Two words, June. Ryan. White. Okay?”

  “Yeah, whatever, Greta.”

  “Just think about it.”

  I turned to face Greta again. “What about Ryan White?”

  All I knew was that Ryan White was some kid somewhere in the Midwest, who’d caught AIDS from a blood transfusion.

  “Someone shot a bullet through his house. People canceled their newspapers because they didn’t want him delivering them. Paper, June. They thought they would catch AIDS from paper.”

  “So what? I’m not afraid. Toby has nobody, okay? And to me—unlike to some people—that actually matters. So just stay away from me. If you hate me so much, if you hate Toby, why didn’t you take the opportunity to get us in trouble when you had the chance?” I was almost shouting at Greta, but at the same time I was feeling sorry for her. Here was this person who wasn’t a big sister at all anymore. Drinking vodka at breakfast?

  Greta didn’t say anything. She slurped the last sip of her orange juice, then stacked her glass on top of her plate and started to stand. She stayed like that for a few seconds, then she put her plate back on the table and sat down again. Her eyes were wet, and she reached out and took my hand in hers. She rubbed her index finger over each of my fingernails, then she tapped her own and smiled. “I like the gold,” she whispered.

  For a second I didn’t understand, but then I did, and it felt strange and explosive to have her mention what we’d done to the portrait right at the kitchen table. I gave her a little smile back, and after a while I whispered, “I’m glad,” and right then, right at that moment, I felt the wall between the world of secrets and the real world start to collapse. I felt the girls from the portrait becoming us and us becoming them, and I felt my eyes welling up. I nodded hard. “I’m really, really glad.”

  We sat there, quiet. Kenny’s basketball kept thumping, and I wanted to go out there and grab that ball away from him and throw it right over the top of the Gordanos’ cedar hedge.

  “I shouldn’t have gone in your closet.”

  “Why did you have to spill everything out? You could have just—”

  “I know.”

  I looked at Greta’s plate. All the French toast was still there. “You should eat something.”

  She shrugged. “So . . . will you come? Tonight? To the cast party? We’ll talk, okay? You’re the only one . . .”

  We looked at each other. It was like she hadn’t heard a word I’d been saying.

  “Why can’t you talk to me now?”

  She shook her head.

  “Same place,” she said, and she looked at me long enough to make sure I understood that she meant the woods. “Promise me, June.”

  “No.”

  “Promise,” she said again, and this time she squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. So tight it was like it was the only thing saving her from falling. “Promise?”

  She didn’t let go until I gave a little nod. “Okay. I promise,” I whispered.

  Greta stood to leave. She got as far as the doorway, then turned. She didn’t look at me.

  “Toby, he has nobody, right? Right, June? Well, who do you think I have?”

  Then, before I could say anything, she was gone.

  My father had his golf bag slung over one shoulder when he came into the kitchen. This was at about ten-thirty, an hour after breakfast. I was washing the dishes because I told my mother I would. My father grinned at me as he leaned his golf bag up against the refrigerator. “I’ve got it, June Bug. This year I’ve finally got it.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Mother’s Day’s only two weeks away. We’re all going to the champagne brunch at Gasho. Reservations are made.”

  “Good job, Dad,” I said. I hadn’t even remembered Mother’s Day. Usually I was really good at stuff like that. Greta and I used to go out into the backyard and pick flowers and try to cook scrambled eggs.

  “She’s had a rough year. Let’s make this a good one for her, okay?”

  “Yeah, good idea.” And maybe it was a good idea. Maybe if I tried to see my mother exactly the way I used to see her—hard working, smart, kind—I could forget what I knew.

  “Greta,” he shouted. “Let’s go.” Mr. Nebowitz wanted all the cast and crew at the school by noon, and my father had said he’d drop her on his way to golf. After a couple of minutes, she came down the stairs with a big bag of stuff she needed for the show.

  “See you later,” she said to me as they went out the door.

  After they left, the house was empty, and even though Mother’s Day was two weeks away, I went up to my room and started to make my mother a card. Like I used to. With construction paper and markers and colored pencils and glitter. And right then it was almost impossible to believe that there was a whole other me, who drank Volcano Bowls and smoked cigarettes and took care of people who used to be strangers.

  About a half hour later my mother knocked on my door.

  “Honey?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come out here a second.”

  I stashed my card-making stuff under a few books and stuck my head out the door.

  “Yeah?”

  “You can come with me into town.”

  “Why?”

  “We need to stop at the bank. Bring your deposit box key.”

  The panic must have been all over my face, because my mother smiled and said, “Don’t worry, we’re not selling it or anything. The man from the Whitney, he’s coming to see it on Thursday evening, and I won’t have time to pick it up during the week.”

  “I’m kind of busy.”

  “June.”

  “I’m working on something. A project.”

  “Just get the key and get dressed, okay?”

  I started to close the door, then popped my head back out. “I could get it for you. On Monday,” I called after her. I didn’t know what I would do on Monday, but it would give me time.

  “Stop this, June. There’s nothing to worry about. I expect you downstairs in fifteen minutes, and that’s that.”

  I got dressed as slowly as I could, trying to think of some kind of plan. I thought if Greta was there she’d know what to do, but maybe not. Maybe even she couldn’t get us out of this one.

  In the kitchen, my mother was leafing through papers in her purse.

  “The car’s open. You do have the key, r
ight? I honestly wouldn’t put it past you to leave it behind.”

  I nodded.

  “Show me, then.”

  “Mom—”

  “I’m sorry, June, but you’re making it very hard for me to trust you this morning.”

  “Well, maybe I’m finding it hard to trust you too,” I said.

  “June, I have no idea what’s gotten into you, but I want to see that key.”

  I reached down into my pocket and pulled it out. I had actually thought of leaving it in my room, but that seemed like a dumb plan. I held it up and my mother watched me tuck it back in my pocket.

  “Okay,” she said. “Go on. Out the door.”

  “I don’t think the bank is even open on Saturdays, is it?”

  “Of course it is. They’ve been open ’til one on Saturdays for at least a year. Now, get yourself in the car. We’re running late.”

  My mother shaded her eyes with her open hand as she backed out of the driveway. It was a warm day, probably the hottest of the year so far, and the car was stifling. I kept my eyes on the van’s digital clock right in the middle of the dashboard—12:17.

  It was the quickest drive into town I’d ever been on. Every light on the way was green, and there was hardly any traffic at all.

  “Here, June. Run these in for me.” My mother pulled into one of the drop-off spots in front of the post office and handed me a stack of envelopes. “They’re all stamped, except for this heavy one.” She handed me a dollar and told me to have them weigh it before dropping them all in the box.

  I glanced at the clock—12:29.

  “Make it quick.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, and jumped out of the van. I ran into the post office like I was trying my hardest to be fast, but once I was in there I slowed right down. I slipped behind the door and stood, waiting, then snuck back out and went next door to the pharmacy.

  When you have a watch, time is like a swimming pool. There are edges and sides. Without a watch, time is like the ocean. Sloppy and vast. I didn’t have a watch. So I had to guess how long I’d been standing there next to the display of decongestants. After what I thought was about ten minutes, I slipped into the post office and joined the end of the line. It didn’t feel particularly good to do this to my mother, making her wait out there, getting angrier and angrier, but I thought it was my only chance. If I could push us past one o’clock . . .

  When I finally went back out, my mother was not in the van. The doors were unlocked, so I got in and waited. The clock said 12:42. Not as late as I’d hoped, and I considered jumping back out. But then my mother came marching toward me. The van was parked so the sun shone right down on the windshield, and I had to squint to see her. Her arms were folded across her chest and her whole body was stiff as she marched diagonally across the street. When she got in she didn’t say a word to me.

  We parked behind the bank. The clock said 12:49.

  I used to think that if I could time-travel just once, I’d go back to the Middle Ages. Then I thought I would time-travel to the day Finn met Toby, so I could save Finn’s life. Now I think I would go back to 12:49 on Saturday, April 25, 1987. I would go to exactly the moment when my mother and I stood in the bank parking lot. Then, I would run or faint or snatch the key from my pocket and hurl it into the scrubby weeds. I’d do whatever I had to do to stop us from going into the bank that day. But there is no time travel, so I had no idea how the rest of the day would go, and instead of running away, I walked in silence to the front door of the bank and went in.

  Mr. Zimmer was there, and he led us straight downstairs.

  “How’s Dennis doing?” my mother asked.

  “Can’t complain, really,” he said. “Big into music these days.”

  “June, you could ask Dennis over for a visit sometime, couldn’t you?”

  “I guess,” I said, only because his father was standing right there.

  Mr. Zimmer opened room number two and lowered the box onto the floor.

  “All righty,” he said. He looked at his watch. “We close in . . . well, we’re about to close now, so—”

  “I guess we’ll have to leave it until next week,” I said, in a voice that was probably a bit too pleased.

  My mother flashed me a stern look.

  “We need to take it with us anyway, Dave. So I guess we’ll just have to skip the viewing session.”

  My mother started to walk out with the whole box.

  “I’m afraid we can’t let the box itself go out. You’ll have to take the painting.”

  “Oh,” my mother said, and then I saw her give Mr. Zimmer the same sad look that Finn could put on. The very same sad look he’d given me when he was trying to get me to agree to the portrait in the first place. She put on a little half smile and I could see Mr. Zimmer changing his mind, right there in front of us.

  “Oh, what the hey,” he said. “I’ve known you for years.”

  “Thanks, Dave. It’s just,” she lowered her voice, “well, it’s quite valuable.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Get it back when you can.”

  And so we rode home with the portrait in the backseat, and the whole way I couldn’t stop wishing for miracles. I imagined that somehow the painting might swallow up everything we’d added to it. I called on the ghost of Finn with my mind, staring at the sun until I couldn’t get rid of the black spots on my eyes, thinking if there was a ghost Finn he could slip his vaporous self right into that box and erase everything we’d done. I looked out between the trees and across the front yards of strangers. I looked under cars and up at the bright blue sky, like the answer to everything might be there, but there was nothing. Only shadow and bright. Shadow and bright, over and over again.

  I went straight to my room when we got back. I closed my door and put the Requiem on really loud and waited for whatever was going to happen. Ever since that day on the train when my mother said she was the one who’d shown Finn the Requiem, it felt weird to play it. Like it was some kind of conversation between Finn and my mother, like it was Finn trying to say that he still remembered everything that had been between the two of them. I hated playing it after that. I didn’t like being used like that. But I couldn’t help myself. I’d been aching to hear it again, and that afternoon I gave in. I pulled out the card I was making for my mother. I’d drawn the outlines of butterflies, colored each one in, and delicately put glitter in just the right places on their wings. I opened my case of colored pencils and took out three shades of blue. Then I started furiously coloring in the sky. So hard I thought I might go right through the construction paper. And for a moment I believed that even if time travel was impossible, doing kid stuff might have the power to slow time down. Stop it just long enough to make everything okay.

  Fifty-Five

  There was thunder. Way off somewhere. I’d fallen asleep, and when I woke up that’s what I heard. Other than that, the house was quiet. My alarm clock said four-thirty. When I peeked out my window, I saw that the sky had turned darker and that both cars were in the driveway. I had to check, because day-sleeping is like that. When you wake up, you feel like you could be anywhere.

  I moved quietly through my room, then out my door to the top of the stairs. I stood there for a while, hoping I might somehow hear whether my parents had seen the portrait yet. Would they have woken me up if they’d seen it? Dragged me right out of bed?

  I tiptoed down the stairs, listening. No TV. No radio. No lawn mower or food processor. Not even the flicking of pages. When my feet hit the floor at the bottom, I stopped again, barely breathing, trying to sense where my parents were. Trying to catch a glimpse of the safety-deposit box. Nothing.

  I popped my head into the kitchen, which was empty, and then into the living room.

  There it was. The portrait. Out of the box, propped up on the mantel. There was still no sign of my parents, which felt strange. Just the portrait and me, alone in that room. No magic had erased what we’d done. Our hair glowed gold, making us look like girls
from a story. Girls who knew everything there was to know. Greta’s lips were even redder, even more pouty than I remembered them. The skull on her hand was more obvious, and her nails looked like the claws of some kind of mythical cat. Even the buttons, which used to be almost invisible, seemed intense. Bright and dazzling compared to the stuff Finn had done. It was almost like we’d made Finn invisible with all our clumsy brushstrokes.

  Then there were footsteps on the stairs. Soft. Slippered. My mother’s feet. I sat on the couch, facing the portrait. Waiting. I heard her go into the kitchen and open the fridge. I heard a cabinet open, the sound of a glass against the counter. A drink poured. I heard thunder again, still low and far away. Then the swish of my mother’s slippered feet came toward the living room until I could see the shadow of her in the doorway. She was in her bathrobe. Clean white terry cloth.

  “I know,” I said before she could start.

  She walked over to the sideboard and put her glass down. She didn’t even bother to use a coaster. “I’m not sure you do know, June. I’m not sure you know even the most basic rights and wrongs anymore.” She cinched the tie on her robe tighter and walked slowly over to the portrait. With her eyes she traced along the strands of our illuminated hair, lingering for a moment on Greta. “What upsets your father and me most—more than the fact that this painting will have lost at least half a million, half a million, dollars in value because of your childish acts—is that you seem to have particularly gone out of your way to deface your sister.”