Tell the Wolves I'm Home

by Carol Rifka Brunt

  I stood up. “Have you seen enough?” I asked. I had my hands on my hips. I expected that my mother would tell me to be polite. To be patient. I looked over at her and, instead of seeming annoyed at my rudeness, she stood up as well.

  “Yes,” she said, nodding. “I think that’s enough.”

  Then Greta stood too, but she didn’t say anything.

  The Whitney guy looked at us slowly, one at a time, and I wondered if he went through his whole life that way, appraising everything he saw. After a while, he gave a slight nod.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s discuss our options.” He pointed at a chair. “May I?”

  “Of course,” my mother said.

  We all sat down and listened.

  He told us again what a shame it was that so much damage had been “inflicted.” He used words like travesty and abomination, and it didn’t take long for all the boldness we’d felt a few minutes before to completely evaporate. After he seemed sure we understood the magnitude of what we’d done, he told us he thought a good restorer would be able to clean it all off.

  “It won’t be an inexpensive task,” he said, “but it’s necessary, and I think you should all feel relieved that it will at least be possible.”

  We nodded, and after some negotiation we agreed to let him take the painting with him to the museum. He told us we should have it back within the month.

  Then he left, and usually this would have been the kind of moment all our stifled feelings exploded, the moment we all burst out laughing. But there was a big empty space on the wall, which somehow made it seem not very funny at all.

  Now he was on the other side of our front door again, this time with the portrait in his hands.

  “Okay, I promise,” I told my mother. “I won’t say a thing.”

  The man looked the same as last time. I imagined a closet full of crisp white shirts. After some pleasantries and coffee, which my mother remembered this time, he laid the portrait down on the kitchen table. It was bundled in layers and layers of bubble wrap, and I thought about how he would probably keel right over and die if he saw the way all those paintings in Finn’s basement were kept. The way they were unwrapped and all stacked on top of one another. I smiled at that thought, because he would never know. Nobody would. Ever.

  My father was there too this time, and we all watched as the man peeled back the tape and unrolled the wrap.

  “I think you’ll find the restoration work to be top quality,” he said.

  And there it was. Everything we’d done—the buttons, the skull, the lips, the illuminated hair and fingernails—all of it was gone. The painting was back to the way Finn left it.

  Almost. I noticed that the two things my mother had added—the necklace and the ring—were still there. That’s how good she was. She was so good that even an art expert couldn’t tell her painting apart from Finn’s. She’d be part of that portrait forever. I watched my mother as she looked at the painting, but she didn’t give anything away. I thought of trying to catch her eye, so she’d know I understood what she’d done, but I decided not to. Everyone needs to think they have secrets.

  My parents were nodding and Greta looked relieved. I was the only one who seemed to think there was something sad about losing all that stuff. But I didn’t say it. It was the kind of thing I didn’t think anybody would understand. Plus, I’d promised my mother I wouldn’t make a scene.

  My parents thanked the man again and again, and even though he nodded, I could tell it was killing him to have to leave the portrait with stupid people like us. But that’s what he had to do.

  And so the portrait was hung above our mantel. Back where it belonged. At first, anytime one of us walked by it we would look, but after a while it faded into the background of our house. Of our lives.

  But the thing is, even with all the restoration, all the erasing, I could still read that painting. I’m the only one who knows about the wolf, and I’m the only one who knows that if the light hits the canvas just right, if it’s deep-orange end-of-the-day light and it comes through the window from the side at just the right angle, and if you know what you’re looking for, if you know exactly the right place to look, you can still see the five black buttons. Not the way they were, not clumsy and thick, but more like shadows. Like small eclipsed moons, floating over my heart.

  Author’s Note

  It warms my heart that most of the time the facts of the world have fit my story just right. But on those occasions where they haven’t, I’ve taken the liberty of tailoring them—as gently as possible—to suit.

  Acknowledgments

  I have been graced from the very start with readers skilled in combining honesty and encouragement in perfect balance. Many thanks to these readers and their words of wisdom: Sarah Crow, Sondra Friedman, Julia Wherrell, Jerry Horsman, Clive Mitchell, and Clare Blake.

  Thank you to Mollie Glick for ushering Wolves into the wider world in the best possible way. I couldn’t have asked for any better. Many thanks also to everyone else at Foundry, particularly Katie Hamblin and Stéphanie Abou, and to Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein.

  My greatest appreciation to my editor Jen Smith. Thank you for your always insightful, always kind, and always thoughtful reads and for pushing me that final mile. Thank you also to everyone else at Dial Press: Susan Kamil, Hannah Elnan, Kathleen Murphy Lord, and everyone else who has worked or will work on this book.

  Thanks to Jenny Geras at Pan Macmillan. How lucky am I to get two fantastic editors working on my book? Thank you also to Jeremy Trevathan, Ellen Wood, Michelle Kirk, Chloe Healy, and the whole Macmillan team, whose enthusiasm makes my heart flutter.

  Thanks to everyone at New Writing Partnership, particularly Kate Pullinger and Candida Clark, for selecting me for the fantastic New Writing Ventures Award. I still think dreamily of that Ventures year. And thanks to Judith Murray, whose early feedback made me ask all the right questions about this book.

  Thank you to Arts Council England for awarding me a generous grant to write the first draft of Wolves.

  Many thanks and much love to family and friends near and far who have always been there in so many ways: Mom, Dad, Wendy and Josh, Cindi, Shirley, Kristin, Lynne, Dilys, Mike, Steven, and Irene.

  A respectful nod to the ghost of Ged Stewart.

  And, most of all, with love to Chris, steadfast and ever tolerant. You never doubted that this would all turn out well. I couldn’t have done it without you.

  Tell the Wolves I’m Home

  Carol Rifka Brunt’s work has appeared in several literary journals. In 2006 she was one of three fiction writers selected for the New Writing Partnership’s New Writing Ventures award and in 2007, she received a generous Arts Council grant to write Tell the Wolves I’m Home, her first novel. Originally from New York, she currently lives in Devon with her husband and three children.

  First published in the United States by The Dial Press, an imprint of The Random House

  Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York 2012

  First published in the UK 2012 by Macmillan

  This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-1361-1 EPUB

  Copyright © Carol Silverman 2012

  The right of Carol Silverman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publica
tion may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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