Tell the Wolves I'm Home (47 page)

“I'm Greta Elbus's sister. Mr. Aldshaw was a good friend of my uncle's. I knew him a little.”

He didn't say anything at first. “Okay. Okay then. Well, we were going to hold him here until the morning, but …” He paused, and I could feel him thinking about whether to go on. “Well, your mother, she told us about the AIDS, and, to tell you the truth, everybody wanted to get him out of here as soon as possible.”

“So you just let him go?”

“The guy was burning up. Fever. Like I said, if it wasn't for the AIDS, we would have kept him awhile.”

He kept calling it
the
AIDS, like it was some kind of animal or household appliance.

“Are you saying you let him go?”

“Ambulance. The EMTs picked him up.”

“Do you know where they took him?”

“Not sure. With the AIDS and all, they might have shipped him right to the city.”

“Is there a way I could find out which hospital?”

“Yeah, hold on a sec.” He had a loud voice, and I could hear him calling across the room, then the mumble of someone answering.

“Yeah, Bellevue. In the city. Like I said, probably they took him right down there because of the AIDS.”

“It's AIDS,” I said.

“Yeah. That's what I said.”

“It's AIDS. It's not
the
AIDS.”

“Okay, kid. Whatever you want.”

I called the hospital. I asked for Toby by his real name, which I'd been turning around in my head since Saturday, when I first heard it. Tobias
Aldshaw. It sounded like the name of somebody famous, not the name of an invisible man who had nobody in the world except me.

The hospital told me he was unavailable. They told me his room number was 2763 and that I should call back later.

“What do you mean, ‘unavailable'?” I asked.

“No idea. There's just no answer when I try putting the call through,” the nurse said. “Could be tests. He could be sleeping. Try later.”

“He's okay though? Right? He's still a patient.”

I heard the nurse shuffling through some papers.

“His name's still on the register. Try later.”

My mother had tickets to all the performances of
South Pacific
. My dad and I went to only one, but she wanted to see it as many times as she could. My mother and Greta got back at around nine-thirty and Greta showered and changed. My parents finished watching the ten o'clock news, then went up to bed. I'd been in my room all night, and when I heard my father's snoring kick in, I snuck downstairs.

I dragged the phone out the back door, so I was crouched down under Greta's bedroom window, and I called straight through to Toby's hospital room. I expected it to ring and ring, because after all these days it seemed hard to believe that Toby would really pick up. But he did.

I could hardly hear him at first. His voice was almost gone. He cleared his throat then tried again. “Hello?”

“Toby?”

“June?”

“Oh, Toby, I'm so, so glad—”

“June, I buggered it all up, didn't I? I'm so sorry.”

“
You're
sorry? I dragged you out there and now … Are you okay? You must hate me.”

“June. Of course not.”

“I didn't know where you were. I had no idea what happened to you.”

“I couldn't ring your house. Not after—”

“It was a bad idea. The worst idea. I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Are you sick? What did the police do to you?”

“I'm all right,” he said, but the sound of his voice said something different. He sounded wheezy, like he was trying as hard as he could not to cough. “And you? You and Greta?”

“We're okay. Don't worry about us.” I wrapped and unwrapped the curly phone cord around my finger.

“Good. That's good.”

Then we both went quiet, and I thought that it felt hard to talk to Toby, in a way it never had before.

“When will you be back home?” I asked.

He coughed, and it sounded horrible. All chesty and deep. I listened while he struggled to get his breathing back to normal.

“June, listen, I might not be going back.…”

“Of course you will,” I said, but I was starting to get scared. “I'm in huge trouble right now, but I'll figure something out. I'll come down as soon as I can, okay?”

“June, I'm serious. I might not—”

“Why wouldn't you? Your guitar's there, and your fleas, your little mates, and—”

“June …”

“No, Toby. No. Because I still need to take you to the Cloisters, and then when you're feeling better you can meet Greta properly. You have to. There's no choice.”

“June …”

Toby's voice trailed off and he started to cough again. He kept hacking and hacking, and I heard a nurse saying something to him in the background.

I wanted to tell him all of what had happened over the last few days. I wanted to find more ways to say I was sorry. And I wanted to make us both believe that he would be going home. But I sat out there without saying anything. The moon was a sliver, and there was no breeze at all. I stared out, watching powdery gray moths fluttering up against the patio light.

I felt tears welling up. “Toby?”

But he kept coughing and coughing until I couldn't bear to listen anymore.

“Toby, look, I'm coming. As soon as I can, okay? Just hang on. Please wait.”

“No, June. I'll be fine. I'm being stupid. Don't get yourself into more trouble.”

“Just wait for me, okay? Please?”

When I looked up, Greta was staring down at me from her open window. We looked at each other for a few seconds. I couldn't tell what she was thinking.

“Will you come with me?” I whispered up to her.

She closed the window and breathed out onto the glass. With her finger, she wrote,
yes
into the fog. Without even thinking about it, she'd written it backward, mirror image, so it looked perfect to me.

That night, Greta drove. We waited until after midnight, after our parents would be sound asleep. I wasn't worried about getting into trouble. There was no bigger trouble left to get in. And Toby had nobody. In his world, I, June Elbus, was it, and I was going to put everything right. I was going to undo all the mess I'd gotten him into.

It was a clear, warm night. Greta rolled our dad's car out of the driveway and, like she did with everything, like she always could, she managed to drive as if she'd been doing it for years, even though she'd only just gotten her permit. We drove down the empty Saw Mill Parkway, and Greta pushed in my parents' Simon and Garfunkel cassette. I got out two cigarettes from my bag. I pushed in the car lighter and waited.

“What will you do when you get there?” Greta asked.

“I don't know.”

“You'll be fine.”

I tried to believe her. I tried to believe I had the power to make the story end any way I wanted it to. I pushed the tip of each cigarette against the lighter, then I breathed each one to life.

“Here,” I said, passing one to Greta.

“You know, the smoking. It surprised me.”

“Just something I picked up,” I said, grinning, and I realized that Toby was shining through me so strongly then that for a moment I was almost completely invisible.

Sixty-Four

Up until then, all the times I'd been in the city at night was with Finn. Once he took me to see a special showing of
It's a Wonderful Life
at Radio City Music Hall. Another time we went to
La Bohème
at Lincoln Center. And another time, not too long ago, our whole family met him in the city and we went out for a huge Italian meal for my mother's birthday. The city at night was supposed to have Finn in it. So somehow I thought he might be there. Not really, but so much a part of the night city that I would feel him there. But that wasn't what it felt like. It was just Greta and me standing on the sidewalk in front of the building, me fishing in my pocket for the key on the red ribbon.

We had decided to stop at Finn's apartment first. I wanted to bring Toby a change of clothes. Plus, we realized we had no idea where Bellevue Hospital was.

I imagined the apartment would be a wreck. Worse than last time. I was getting ready to explain it to Greta somehow, to make excuses for Toby, but when I pushed open the door the place was neater than I'd ever seen it. Everything in the right spot. No clothes draped over chairs. No saucers heaped with tea bags and cigarettes. Even the stale smell was gone. The big windows were open a few inches, letting in a breeze that must have been working to freshen the air. I tried not to act too surprised.

“This is weird,” Greta said. “Being here like this.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking that she didn't even know how weird it was, because she hadn't seen the mess the place was just a few weeks ago.

I grabbed a plastic bag from the kitchen and walked down the hall to the bedroom to get some clothes. The door was closed, like it used to be, and I gently pushed it open and walked over to the chest of drawers. Greta followed behind me.

“So this is the private bedroom,” she said.

The bed was made and the cigarette packs were gone from Toby's side table. Greta was about to open the closet, but I put my hand on hers.

“Let's not,” I said. “Okay?”

Greta looked up Bellevue in the phone book. It turned out that it was pretty far downtown and all the way over near the river on the East Side.

“We should go,” I said. I was standing near the door, looking across the living room. I shivered, because it was late and I was tired but also because I had a sudden feeling that it might be the last time I saw that place. But I couldn't let myself focus on that. Greta was walking around, looking at every little thing. Like a detective looking for clues. “Come on,” I said.

We drove all the way down West End Avenue, right past where it turns into 11th Avenue, until we got to 23rd Street. At that time of night, West End was quiet. Almost creepy. And in my father's smooth sedan it felt like we were floating slightly above the city.

By the time we got to Bellevue it was almost two in the morning. Greta pulled up on a side street.

“Go ahead home,” I said.

“You can't go all by yourself.”

“You've already had a show, you must be totally exhausted. Plus you have to tell Mom and Dad where I am. They'll go crazy if we're both missing in the morning.”

She seemed to think about that for a few seconds.

“I want to make sure you get up there first. Then I'll go. Okay?”

I nodded.

I was about to walk right through the big automatic sliding doors, but Greta stopped me. “Look, hospitals don't let anyone visit any time of day or night,” she said. “Just wait.”

Greta pulled me away from the doors, over to the side. She put her hands on both my shoulders and looked at me. And it felt so good. In the middle of that terrible night, there was nothing better than feeling Greta's hands on my shoulders. Having her teach me how to do something the right way. I felt tears pushing their way into my eyes. I felt my legs go soft and weak. Greta squeezed my shoulders.

“Stop,” she said.

I nodded, wiping my face with my sleeve.

“It's all going to work out fine. They'll ask you who you are. If you're a relative.” Greta kept looking at me. Then she neatened up my hair a little bit and looked at me some more. “Okay. This is what you should do. Tell them you're his sister. From England. He called you and said he thought he was in really bad shape. You're the only one he has and you're not sure how much longer he has left. Okay? Put on an accent. Not a stupid one. Try to imitate Toby or something.”

I thought of how Toby talked. Not with the regular English accent, but the kind where all his
u
's sounded like the oo's in
books
.

“What about you?” I said.

“I'll keep an eye on you. Make sure they let you up. Then I'll drive back home.”

“Mom and Dad will kill you. What are you going to tell them?”

“I'll sneak in, and if you're not back by the time they wake up, I'll figure something out. I'll worry about all that. You just go, okay?”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Now, remember, the trick is to walk in like you expect to be let in. Like you belong there. Got it?”

I nodded again and let those big white doors open for me.

Bellevue did not look like the kind of hospital a person would choose to go to if they had any other option. Part of the lobby was having work done on it, and there were roped-off areas with signs that said
EXCUSE OUR APPEARANCE
 … But there was no excuse. Most of the chairs had rips in their orange vinyl seats, and in one corner there was
a bucket under a brown water stain in the ceiling. People were slumped on chairs sleeping. A mother held a toddler bundled up tight in a blanket that looked like it used to be pink. One guy looked like he might have been shot in the arm. He sat there wincing, pressing a brightly patterned beach towel against his upper arm. A TV bolted onto a shelf near the ceiling played an episode of
Columbo
, but there was no sound.