Tell the Wolves I'm Home (50 page)

There wasn't a funeral for Toby. And he didn't want to be buried. He'd told me that once, joking around. “I don't see myself as a grave kind of
bloke,” he said. And I probably told him that I didn't see him as an ash kind of bloke either. Something like that. I don't remember exactly.

All along I'd wondered where Finn's ashes were, and after the hundredth time I asked, my mother finally admitted that she had them. They were in a beautiful polished wood urn that she'd put on the very top shelf of her closet. I imagined her taking that urn out late at night. I imagined her running her palm over the smooth curve of it. I imagined her saying how sorry she was for how unkind she'd been to Toby. Sorry for how everything had turned out. I imagined those things because I needed to. I needed to think everything she'd done was out of love. Because I could understand that. I could forgive it. It made me think that maybe one day I might be able to forgive myself.

Instead of having a real funeral, Toby was cremated, and finally I thought I had a plan. I wanted to give Toby back to Finn. I wanted the crematorium to open Finn's urn and put Toby's ashes in there with his. I expected my mother to argue about it, but she didn't. She said she thought I was right. That it was the least we could do. The least we both could do. And after it was done, I felt that for once I'd gotten something completely right.

When I go to the woods now, I always head out along the brook and go straight to the big maple. I run there, like Toby must have done on that stormy night, then I bend down and crawl on the earth. Because what if there's a clue? What if there's a piece of chunky strawberry bubble gum still bundled up in its waxy wrapper, or a weather-faded matchbook, or a fallen button from somebody's big gray coat? What if buried under all those leaves is me? Not this me, but the girl in a Gunne Sax dress with the back zipper open. The girl with the best boots in the world. What if she's under there? What if she's crying? Because she will be, if I find her. Her tears tell the story of what she knows. That the past, present, and future are just one thing. That there's nowhere to go from here. Home is home is home.

Sixty-Six

We were all sitting in the living room when the doorbell rang. It was a Saturday morning and we were expecting him, the man from the Whitney. My mother stood and looked at all of us.

“I don't want a scene,” she said, turning to stare right at me.

“What?” I said with my best “I would never do that” look.

“No inappropriate comments and no scenes, got it? This whole thing is embarrassing enough.”

I did agree with her on that. It had been embarrassing. Only my mother, Greta, and I were home when the man from the Whitney had come to see the portrait the first time. I think we were all expecting some nice laid-back art person, but he seemed more like someone from the army than someone involved with art. He had a crew cut and wore a white shirt buttoned right up to the top. He carried a black briefcase and like my mother predicted, he thought we were nuts. He told us that he was appalled by what we'd done. He said it three or four times with a deep frown on his face. I could tell that even my mother was intimidated by him, because she forgot to offer him coffee, and she never forgot to be polite. We sat there in the living room while he stared at the portrait. He pulled a clipboard with a yellow legal pad out of his briefcase, and he jotted down a few notes as he analyzed it. Every now and then he took a few steps closer, then back, then left and right, scribbling on the pad all the time.

I wasn't sure if he understood that Greta and I were the ones he was looking at, that we were right there behind him. I wasn't about to point it out to him, but the longer he stared, the more angry I started to feel about it. How dare he look at us like that? What right did he have to tear us apart with his eyes? All those hours Finn spent trying to get us just right. Because he loved us. Because he wanted to do this thing for
us
. All that love didn't mean anything to this Whitney guy. That was obvious. He looked at us like we were specimens. He stared and stared, and suddenly all I wanted to do was protect us. And Finn. I wanted to protect Finn's work.

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.

C
AROL
R
IFKA
B
RUNT'S
work has appeared in several literary journals, including
North American Review
and
The Sun
. In 2006, she was one of three fiction writers who received the New Writing Ventures award, sponsored by the University of East Anglia/Arts Council England, 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 England with her husband and three children.