Tell the Wolves I'm Home (24 page)

“If you know why, then why would you want to make me do it?”

“Because one way to stop things from feeling so raw is to blanket over the memories. If we go to Horn and Hardart, then it'll be like throwing a thin blanket over the other times you were there with Finn.
Each time you go, a fresh memory will lay on top, until your times there with Finn will be muffled under it all. Do you see?”

“Some other day.”

“And the Cloisters. The same thing with the Cloisters …”

It was like she couldn't hear me. The Cloisters? The idea of going to the Cloisters with my mother was so completely wrong. That birchwood Mary eyeing me up, all those tight stone corners that could hold a word for centuries. All the thickest, woolliest blankets in the world couldn't cover the ghosts of Finn and me in that place.

“Can we just not talk about it?” I asked.

“June, it's been over a month now.”

I leaned back in my seat. I closed my eyes, crossed my arms over my chest, and let my breath out slow. When I opened my eyes again, I looked at my mother.

“Tell me a story about you and Finn. When you were kids. One story, and I'll go to Horn and Hardart.”

“Oh, June …” But I could tell she was already thinking about being a kid. I could tell that she wouldn't be able to help talking about it.

My mother ended up telling me about the beach on Cape Cod where she and Finn used to go on vacation when they were kids. I was pretty sure it was the same beach Toby told me about. The difference was that my mother could really tell a story. She told me how my grandparents would sleep late and how she and Finn would run across the street to the beach by themselves as soon as the sun came up. How the sky would glow the warm pink of fevered cheeks at sunrise, and how they'd have the whole beach to themselves. Like it was another time, she said. She said they'd turn the world upside down. Pretending sand was cloud and sea was sky. She told me about how Finn once found a horseshoe crab the size of a watermelon and how they'd dared each other to help it back into the water.

“It was prehistoric, June. It was like something right out of a movie.”

I could tell she was there. She was right back there in that pink sky summer with Finn.

“And then what?”

My mother smiled. “Then Finn flipped it over on its back with his foot and lifted it up like a big cooking pot and carried it to the water.”

The train trundled on through White Plains and Fordham, past the school in Harlem that had no windows and the 125th Street station that I'd never gotten off at. After that, it slipped into the dark mazy tunnels that wind their way under Manhattan into Grand Central.

“Why did Finn stop painting?” I said, without looking at her.

All the windows had turned into mirrors in those dark tunnels, and when I looked up I saw my mother's reflection watching me. Her face had hardened, and the way the light hit the windows made it look like she was a painting. In the window she was just bright lips and eyes, with no texture to her skin at all.

“Toby,” she said.

“Toby?”

“I hold that man personally responsible for destroying Finn's life.”

“He can't be that bad. Finn wasn't stupid. He wouldn't let someone force him to stop painting.”

My mother crossed her arms over her chest. It seemed like a long time that she sat there, saying nothing.

“He has a past, June. Do you understand? This Toby, he's not all innocence and light. One day you'll understand this better than you do now. Love conquers all, right? Family, art, you name it. Finn was in love with Toby, and that meant nothing else mattered to him anymore.”

Nothing else mattered. I didn't matter
.

“Well, how come I never knew about him?”

“Because I didn't want you or Greta to have anything to do with that man. Finn knew that was the deal. If he wanted a relationship with his nieces, he would have to keep Toby out of it. You can't just take up with a derelict and expect everyone around you to be fine and dandy with it. You can't have everything. That's something Finn never understood.”

I didn't understand either. Why couldn't you have everything?

“You made him choose?” I asked. She turned away. She wasn't going to answer. “You …” I couldn't believe she would do something like that. It didn't seem like anything I'd ever seen her do. It made me actually feel sorry for Toby.

“Enough. I've had enough of this talk.”

“But—”

“Really, June,” she said, “I'm the one who should be sad. He was my little brother. I was the one who took care of him when we were kids. Do you know what it's like to have a father in the military? Do you? Moving base to base. I was in charge of making sure Finn was okay. I was expected to look after him. Me, June. I simply will not allow you to continue moping around the way you've been. It's out of all proportion. This feeling-sorry-for-yourself business. I'm the one who should be a mess, June. I'm the one who lost a brother.” She pressed her palms against her eyes. “You think I don't know what it is you're listening to up there in your room every night? You think I don't know it's the
Requiem
? Who do you think showed that music to Finn? He's not the only one who knows about beautiful things.”

She angled herself toward the aisle and her face disappeared from the window. I pressed mine closer so I could see outside. The walls of the tunnels were covered with so much dirt, it was almost like fur. I thought those tunnels were the kind of places wolves might live. I thought they were like the vessels of the human heart.

In the end we didn't go to Horn & Hardart for lunch. We got what we needed at Macy's, then had a slice of pizza at the train station before heading back home.

When we got home, we found out that even though Greta spent all of the seventy-five dollars my mother gave her, all she came home with was one pair of Guess jeans, which weren't even on sale, and about twenty of those black rubber bracelets from a vendor on 34th Street.

My mother looked wrung out.

“It's not like they're all for me,” Greta said. “Some of these are for June.” Greta pulled a few of the bracelets off her arm and thrust them out to me.

“They are?” I said.

My mother looked back and forth between Greta and me. She breathed out a long slow sigh. I wanted so much to say something my mother wanted to hear, because then maybe, just maybe, she would somehow turn back into the mother who would never force someone to choose between his boyfriend and his sister.

Before I even fully thought it through, I chirped out, “I'm helping
with the play tomorrow.” Greta and my mother both turned to look at me. “Greta said they could use a hand with some of the backstage stuff.”

“That's great, June.” My mother nodded at me. I glanced over at Greta and saw that she was smiling. A real, honest smile.

“And Friendly's after. Okay?” Greta said it in this chirpy voice that sounded fake to me but seemed to please my mother.

“That's great, girls.” My mother looked at both of us and cracked a smile. Then she looked just at me. “That's the way, Junie.”

I nodded, and maybe I stared a little too long. Maybe I needed to get a good look at this version of my mother.

“Okay, now how about you both head upstairs for a while? I'll get dinner going.”

In my room, I slid the stretchy bracelets over my hands. On Greta they hung loose and dangly. On me they sat snug, like the orthopedic wrist brace my grandfather had when he fell off the ride-on mower. One by one, I worked them back off my wrist and laid them on my desk. Then I put them in the back of my closet with the teapot. Those bracelets were the first thing Greta had given me in three years, and even though I was pretty sure she gave them to me only to get in less trouble, I still wanted to keep them safe.

Thirty-Six

I don't break promises. If I say I'll do something, I mean it. I'd told Toby I would see him again, so that's what I did. I didn't need him to come get me. I decided to go on Monday, because I had gym last period on Mondays. Even though I'd never cut a class before, never even thought about cutting a class before, I went right up to Mr. Bingman, laid my hand on my belly, and started to tell him I was having girl trouble. Everyone knew that trick with Mr. Bingman, and before I'd even finished my spiel, he had his pen out, scribbling a pass.

As I walked out of the gym, I counted the thwacks of basketballs as they hit the smooth floor, I took deep breaths of the sweaty air, and I kept a straight face. Even if I walked slow as anything, I'd still have plenty of time to get the 2:43 into the city.

“June. Brilliant,” Toby said when I buzzed up, and it sounded like he really meant it. I decided to walk up instead of taking the elevator. I wanted time to prepare before I saw the apartment again.
Toby has nobody. Toby has nobody
. That's what I kept telling myself.

As soon as I walked in, I saw that the apartment had started to look different. Finnless. There were three or four dirty plates stacked up on the coffee table. The ashtray, which was a molded bowl Finn had made out of blacktop (tarmac, Toby had called it last time, rolling his eyes and smiling), was full, and the shades were pulled down over the big windows.

Toby stood there in this rumpled maroon corduroy jacket with that same dinosaur-bones T-shirt under it. He saw me glancing at the windows, and he strode over and snapped open the shades.

“There,” he said. “That's better, right? Sit down.”

Toby sat on the blue couch and I sat opposite him on the brown one. He'd made a pot of tea and we each had a cigarette, which I managed to smoke without coughing once. Toby had a small bottle of brandy and he poured a glug of it into his cup. He held it out to me, but I shook my head. I tried not to look around the apartment too much. I didn't want Toby to think I was trying to guess whose stuff was whose, but I couldn't help it. For the last few days I'd been steeling myself. I wanted to be able to look around and feel like it didn't matter that half the stuff there wasn't Finn's.
Toby has nobody
, I told myself again.

“Those are nice boots.” Toby nudged his head toward my feet.

“They're from Finn,” I said, a little too quickly. Then I angled myself so my skirt covered my feet.

There were a few seconds of awkward silence, then out of nowhere Toby started talking in a fake reporter's voice. Using a weird accent and pretending to hold a microphone out to me.

“So tell me, Miss Elbus, what fascinates you about the Middle Ages?”

I crossed my arms over my chest and gave him a look.

“No. Really,” he said in his normal voice. “I want to know.”

It was the kind of question that made me go completely dumb. I almost thought about pretending I hadn't heard it, but I knew he'd try again. My brain flicked past all the possible answers. Castles; knights; dark, candlelit nights; Gregorian chants; and dresses that came right down to your feet. Books that had to be copied out by hand and decorated by monks in the most beautiful colors. Books that were illuminated so they glowed.

“Maybe … I don't know … Maybe it's just that people didn't know everything then. There were things people had never seen before. Places nobody had ever been. You could make up a story and people would believe it. You could believe in dragons and saints. You could look around at plants and think that maybe they could save your life.”

I'd been staring at the rug the whole time, because I had a feeling
I wasn't making any sense and Toby might be laughing at me. But when I glanced up, I saw that he wasn't. He was nodding.

“I like that,” he said.

“Really?” I watched Toby to see if he really meant it and, when I was convinced that he did, I went on. “And, well, also maybe it seems like it would be okay not to be perfect. Nobody was perfect back then. Just about everyone was defective, and most people had no choice except to stay that way.”

Toby sat there nodding. He had his hand resting on his knee and I saw how callused his fingers were. “But it was also filthy and dark and there were rats and plague …”

“I guess.” I looked down, thinking. Then I looked up at Toby and smiled. “So not so different from New York, then.”

Toby laughed. “Good point.” He nodded to himself again, like he was mulling something over. “Except … well, except that we have AIDS instead of the plague.”

It was the first time I'd heard Toby say that word.
AIDS
. He glanced away from me when he said it.

“They're not the same.”

“Well, not exactly, but—”

“Not at all. You couldn't help it if the plague got you. It was nobody's fault. It just happened. Nobody was to blame.” The words shot from my mouth before I had a chance to stop them.

Toby started twisting a loose thread at the edge of his jacket pocket. I thought about apologizing, but I didn't.