Lone Wolf A Novel

by Jodi Picoult

  There’s an honesty to the wolf world that is liberating. There’s no diplomacy, no decorum. You tell your enemy you hate him; you show your admiration by confessing the truth. That directness doesn’t work with humans, who are masters of subterfuge. Does this dress make me look fat? Do you really love me? Did you miss me? When a person asks this, she doesn’t want to know the real answer. She wants you to lie to her. After two years of living with wolves, I had forgotten how many lies it takes to build a relationship. I would think of the big beta in Quebec, which I knew would fight to the death to protect me. I trusted him implicitly because he trusted me. But here, among humans, there were so many half-truths and white lies that it was too hard to remember what was real and what wasn’t. It seemed that every time I spoke the truth, Georgie burst into tears; since I no longer knew what I was supposed to say, I stopped speaking entirely.

  I couldn’t stand being inside, because I felt caged. Television hurt my eyes; dinner table conversation was a foreign language. Even just walking into the bathroom in the house and smelling the combined confection of shampoo and soap and deodorant made me so dizzy I had to lean against the wall. I had been in a world where there were four or five basic smells. I had reached a sensory awareness where, when the alpha began to stir in her den, thirty yards away, I knew it, simply because her stretch sent a small puff of clay earth from the underground den through its narrow opening, and that smell was like a red flag among the others of urine, pine, snow, wolf.

  I couldn’t go outside, either, because when I walked down the street other people’s dogs began to bark in their houses or, if they were in the yard, run to confront me. I remember passing a woman riding a horse, which shied and whinnied when it spotted me. Even though I was clean-shaven now and had scrubbed two years of dirt off my skin, I still exuded something raw and natural and predatory. (To this day, I have to walk a twenty-five-yard detour around a horse before it will pass.) You can take the man out of the wild, but you can’t take the wild out of the man.

  So it made sense that the only place I really felt at home was at Redmond’s, in the wolf enclosures. I asked Georgie to drive me over there—I still wasn’t really ready to drive. The animal caretakers there treated me as if I were the Second Coming, but they weren’t the ones I wanted to see. Instead, with a relief that came close to a total breakdown, I let myself into the pen with Wazoli, Sikwla, and Kladen.

  Kladen, the beta, came at me first. When I instinctively ducked and turned my head away from him—acknowledging his dominance—he greeted me by licking all around my face. I realized how easily this nonverbal conversation came to me—so much easier, in fact, than the stilted one I’d had with Georgie on the way over here, about whether or not I’d thought about the future and what I was going to do next. I also realized how much more fluent I’d gotten in the language of the wolf. Things that I had once had to think about while in enclosures with wolves now were a natural response. When Sikwla, the tester wolf, nipped at me, a throaty growl rumbled out of me. When finally, the wary Wazoli—the alpha—approached, I lay down and rolled to offer her my throat and my trust. Best of all, mucking about in the dirt like this, I started to smell like me again, instead of like Head & Shoulders and Dove soap. My hair tie got lost in our play, and my hair, which I’d cut to my shoulders, fanned over my back and became matted with mud.

  These wolves were softer around the edges than my brothers and sisters in Quebec. They were still wild animals, and they still had wild animal instincts, but simply by definition a captive wolf’s life is not as violent as a wild wolf’s life. This would again require an adjustment for me, as I remembered that my role here was not just as a pack member but as a teacher: offering these wolves an enrichment program to make them learn what they were missing by being contained in this wire fencing.

  And now that I’d lived it, who better?

  I had asked one of the caretakers to bring a half of a calf from the abattoir—a celebratory meal. He did, doing only a cursory double take when he saw me crouched between Kladen and Wazoli. I wanted this food because it was a pack food, one that would remind these guys that I belonged to the family. As soon as the calf was dragged into the enclosure and the caretaker had left, the wolves descended. Wazoli went for the organ meat, Kladen the movement meat, and Sikwla the stomach contents and spine. I wedged myself in between Kladen and Sikwla, baring my teeth and curling my tongue to protect the food that was rightfully mine. I lowered my face to the carcass and began to rip off strips of raw flesh, bloodying my face and my hair and snapping at Sikwla when he came too close to my portion.

  I am sure, when I came up for air, I was quite a sight: dirty and bloody, sated, delirious in the companionship of a group of animals that understood me and that I understood. I loped away from the carcass, following Sikwla to the rock where he sometimes dozed.

  Until then I’d forgotten about Georgie. She was standing on the far side of the fence, staring at me with horror. Although I’d done nothing she hadn’t seen before, I don’t think she was reacting to my interaction with the wolves, or my meal with them. I think she just knew, at that moment, she’d lost me for good.

  GEORGIE

  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

  That’s what the wizard says, in The Wizard of Oz. Keep the dog and pony show going so that the eye is drawn to the spectacle, and not to the reality. Of all the questions I get asked about Luke, the most common one is, “What was it like to be married to someone like him?” I suppose people think, based on his television persona, that he is an animal in bed or that he eats his steak raw. The truth would have disappointed them: when Luke was with us, he was perfectly normal. He’d watch ESPN; he’d eat Fritos. He changed lightbulbs and took out the trash. He was ordinary, rather than extraordinary.

  The thing is, when celebrities are born, they aren’t supposed to wallow in the mundane. They are supposed to always be dressed to the nines, step out of limousines, or in Luke’s case, live in the wild. Which meant that, after he returned from Quebec, Luke couldn’t be the husband I needed him to be. That would have detracted from the man everyone else expected him to be.

  But even those who are larger than life have people close to them—people who know that they leave the toilet seat up when they pee, or that they hate peanut butter, or that they crack their knuckles. And those of us who are close know that when the television cameras stop rolling, those legendary figures deflate into people who are simply life-size, people with zits and wrinkles, people with flaws.

  I suppose that when Luke started hiring young girls to be wolf caretakers, it crossed my mind he might be sleeping with them. He wasn’t, after all, sleeping with me. But what I really thought was that he needed an entourage. He needed girls who were so enamored with the man he was on camera and in the news that they believed exactly what they saw. Then, Luke could start to believe it himself.

  So to all those people who want to know what it was like to be married to someone like Luke?

  It was like trying to embrace a shadow.

  It was coming in second place, every time.

  It doesn’t surprise me to find Cara stalking back and forth in front of the window of a conference room. “It’s a lie,” she says, the minute I walk in the door. “He didn’t do those things.”

  Zirconia exchanges a glance with me. Of all those young women who couldn’t see past their hero worship of Luke Warren, the one with the starriest eyes was his own daughter. She loved him simply because he belonged to her, which—if I heard Luke right all those years—made her relationship with him the most similar to one between wolves in a pack.

  “It’s possible your brother was making that up just to rattle you,” Zirconia says, “but I don’t think he’s that smart, frankly.” She looks up at me. “No offense.”

  It’s beginning to fall into place, like a city after an earthquake. Some buildings are still standing; some are irreparable. And of course, there are casualties. I had always wondered at Luke’s
vehement reaction to Edward’s homosexuality—it just didn’t make sense, given everything I knew about Luke—and that was because it never really happened. The only sexual exploits Edward had discussed that night had been his father’s.

  I sit down on the edge of a table, watching my daughter fiercely tread a line back and forth. Her sling hugs her injured arm tight against her body; the other arm is wrapped tightly over it. “Cara,” I sigh, “everyone makes mistakes.”

  I cannot believe that I am apologizing for Luke’s behavior. But—as Edward said—there is no limit to the lengths we’ll go to to protect our family. We will cross oceans, we will swallow pride.

  “He loved us,” Cara says. Her eyes are the color of a bruise, her mouth a wound.

  “He loved you,” I correct. “He still does.” I reach out a hand, trapping her as she passes by. “I know that you ran to your dad when Joe and I were starting a family because you thought he was the safe haven; that with him, you’d be his only family, instead of just one kid out of a bunch. And I know how hard it must be for you to find out that he might not be the hero you thought he was. But whatever he did to me, Cara—that doesn’t change how he feels about you.”

  “Men. You can’t live with them . . . and you can’t legally shoot them,” Zirconia says. “I tossed out my husband eight years ago and got a llama instead. Best decision I ever made.”

  Ignoring her, I turn back to Cara. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t matter if your father isn’t perfect. Because to him, you are.”

  Instead of comforting her, however, those words make Cara burst into tears. She folds herself into my arms. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” I say.

  Gently, I rub her back. Luke used to talk about one of his wolves, which was afraid of storms, how the pup would crawl under his shirt for comfort. But he never took the time to know that his own daughter used to do the same thing. That on nights when lightning cracked the yolk of the moon, nights when Luke was tending to a frightened wolf, Cara would climb into bed with me and wrap her arms around my back, a mollusk riding out the tide.

  “There’s something else you should know,” I say. “Edward left because he wanted to protect you. He thought if he wasn’t here to tell us what he’d seen, you would never have to find out.”

  Cara’s good arm tightens around my neck. “Mom,” she whispers. “I have to—”

  There is a knock on the door, a deputy sheriff announcing that court is about to reconvene. “Cara,” Zirconia says, “do you still want to be the legal guardian for your father?”

  She pulls away from me. “Yes.”

  “Then I need you to get your head back in the game,” Zirconia says bluntly. “I need the court to see that you’re grown-up enough to love your father, no matter what. No matter if he was catting around on your mom, or if he needs to have a diaper changed every three hours, or if he spends the next decade in long-term care.”

  I touch her arm. “Is this really what you want, Cara? It could be years before he recovers. He might never recover. I know your father would want you to go to college, to get a job, to have a family, to be happy. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

  She lifts her chin, her eyes still too bright. “He has a life ahead of him, too,” she says.

  I have told Zirconia and Cara that I am stopping off at the restroom before heading back inside for Cara’s testimony, but instead I find myself walking out the double doors of the courthouse, veering left into the parking lot. I drive the twenty minutes to Beresford Memorial Hospital and take the elevator up to the ICU.

  Luke lies still, with no visible change to his condition, except a bruise around his IV site that has bloomed from purple to a mottled ocher.

  I pull up a chair and stare at him.

  When he came out of the wild, before the reporters showed up and drew him into an orbit of fame, I did my best to help him transition into the human world. I let him sleep for thirty hours straight; I cooked his favorite foods; I scrubbed the dirt that had become caked to his skin off his back. I figured that if I pretended life had returned to normal, maybe he would come to believe it.

  To that end, I dragged him on errands. I took him to pick Cara up at school and I brought him into the bank while I used the ATM. I drove him to the post office, and to the gas station.

  I started to see that women flocked to Luke. Even when he was dozing in the car, I’d come out of the dry cleaner’s to find someone staring at him through the window. At Cara’s school, strange ladies in vans honked until he waved. I made fun of him for it. You’re irresistible, I told him. Just remember me when you acquire your harem.

  I didn’t realize at the time that I was being prophetic. I thought: Who, of all these fawning women, would put up with what I do behind closed doors? A man who could only eat basic grains like farina and oatmeal without getting sick to his stomach, who turned the thermostat down at night until we all woke up shivering; a man whom I had actually found peeing around the perimeter of the backyard?

  One day we went to the grocery store. In the produce aisle, a woman approached with two melons and asked Luke which one he thought was riper. I watched him smile and bend his head to the melons, so that his long hair fell over his face like a curtain. When he picked the fruit in her right hand, she nearly fainted.

  One aisle over, a woman pushing a toddler in her grocery cart asked him to reach a box on the top shelf for her. Luke obliged, stretching to his full height and flexing his shoulders to get the item: denture cream, which I’m quite sure she had no intention of purchasing. It was, at the time, almost entertaining to see all these strangers drawn magnetically to my husband. I assumed it was some kind of reaction to his muscular build, his mane of hair, or some wolf pheromone. They know I can protect them, he said in all seriousness. That’s the attraction.

  But in the Bath & Body aisle, Luke had actually crumbled—he was that dazed and unnerved by the wave of scents that bled through the packaging and assaulted his senses. It’s okay, I told him, and I pulled him upright and led him to a safer space, near the cereal.

  I can’t believe this, he said, burying his face in my shoulder. I can kill a deer with my bare hands, but bubble bath is my kryptonite.

  That’ll change, I promised.

  Georgie, Luke said. Promise me you won’t.

  Now I look down at Luke, in the waxy shell of his own skin, his eyes closed and his mouth slack around the tube that is breathing for him. A god who’s toppled back into mortality.

  I reach for his hand. It’s loose, the skin as dry as leaves. I have to fold it around my own hand, hold it up to my cheek. “You son of a bitch,” I say.

  LUKE

  There is only one thing that could have dragged me away from another wolf family, and that is a human. This one came in the form of a features reporter for the Union Leader, and was accompanied by a photographer. As visitors came to Redmond’s and found me living with the pack, excitement grew—and with it, the number of tourists coming to see me for themselves. Somehow, New Hampshire’s largest paper got wind of it.

  The irony didn’t escape me: this was how Georgie and I had met, too. Once, I’d left the wolves for her. Now, I was going to have to leave them again because of a reporter. Every day there were more—some with television cameras—all clamoring for an interview with the man who’d lived in the wild with wolves. Kladen, Sikwla, and Wazoli were skittish and snappish—and for good reason. They could read loud and clear the signals these people sent: that they wanted something from me, that they were greedy and selfish. In the wild, any of these reporters would have been treated like a predator: brought down by the pack to save one of its members.

  But that devotion to family went both ways, and I knew that I couldn’t let the lives of the wolves be disrupted because of me. So I left the pen, only to be swallowed by the hail of questions and the camera flashes.

  Did you really live in the wild?

  What did you eat?

  Were you scared?r />
  How did you survive a Canadian winter?

  What made you return?

  It was that last question that sent me over the edge, because I didn’t belong here, anymore. And although I would have walked into the woods in a heartbeat and tried to howl to locate my pack again, there was no guarantee that I’d ever find them or that they would take me back.

  Before I’d started sleeping at Redmond’s with the wolves, I had prowled the house late one night and found a light on in my son Edward’s room. He looked up when I opened the door, challenging me with his eyes to ask why he was awake at 3:00 A.M. I didn’t ask because, after all, so was I. Edward was propped against his pillows, reading a book. When I didn’t speak, he held it up. “The Divine Comedy,” he said. “By Dante. I’m reading all about Hell.”

  “I’m living it,” I said.

  “I’m only at the first circle,” Edward told me. “Limbo. It’s not Heaven, and it’s not Hell. It’s the in-between.”

  This was, I realized, my new address.

  I couldn’t be charming. I couldn’t be smart. I could barely remember how to speak, much less how to put into sentences everything I had learned with the wolves. So I did what a wolf does when it finds itself in danger: I got away.

  I ran to Redmond’s. It was five miles in the dark, but that meant nothing to me after Quebec, and it felt good to get my adrenaline pumping. I went up to the trailer at the top of the hill and slammed inside. I locked the door, and then went into the bedroom, and locked that door, too. I was breathing hard, sweating. I could hear the wolves howling for me.

  There’s no point in being able to know everything about wolves if you can’t teach it to the people who need to learn.

  I don’t know how long I stayed in that dark, cramped room, curled in the far corner with my eyes on the door so that I’d know the minute someone was coming. But eventually, I heard muffled voices. And movement. The twitch of a key in a lock.