Tell the Wolves I'm Home (41 page)

I reached down into my pocket and pulled it out. I had actually thought of leaving it in my room, but that seemed like a dumb plan. I held it up and my mother watched me tuck it back in my pocket.

“Okay,” she said. “Go on. Out the door.”

“I don't think the bank is even open on Saturdays, is it?”

“Of course it is. They've been open 'til one on Saturdays for at least a year. Now, get yourself in the car. We're running late.”

My mother shaded her eyes with her open hand as she backed out of the driveway. It was a warm day, probably the hottest of the year so far, and the car was stifling. I kept my eyes on the van's digital clock right in the middle of the dashboard—12:17.

It was the quickest drive into town I'd ever been on. Every light on the way was green, and there was hardly any traffic at all.

“Here, June. Run these in for me.” My mother pulled into one of the drop-off spots in front of the post office and handed me a stack of envelopes. “They're all stamped, except for this heavy one.” She handed
me a dollar and told me to have them weigh it before dropping them all in the box.

I glanced at the clock—12:29.

“Make it quick.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said, and jumped out of the van. I ran into the post office like I was trying my hardest to be fast, but once I was in there I slowed right down. I slipped behind the door and stood, waiting, then snuck back out and went next door to the pharmacy.

When you have a watch, time is like a swimming pool. There are edges and sides. Without a watch, time is like the ocean. Sloppy and vast. I didn't have a watch. So I had to guess how long I'd been standing there next to the display of decongestants. After what I thought was about ten minutes, I slipped into the post office and joined the end of the line. It didn't feel particularly good to do this to my mother, making her wait out there, getting angrier and angrier, but I thought it was my only chance. If I could push us past one o'clock …

When I finally went back out, my mother was not in the van. The doors were unlocked, so I got in and waited. The clock said 12:42. Not as late as I'd hoped, and I considered jumping back out. But then my mother came marching toward me. The van was parked so the sun shone right down on the windshield, and I had to squint to see her. Her arms were folded across her chest and her whole body was stiff as she marched diagonally across the street. When she got in she didn't say a word to me.

We parked behind the bank. The clock said 12:49.

I used to think that if I could time-travel just once, I'd go back to the Middle Ages. Then I thought I would time-travel to the day Finn met Toby, so I could save Finn's life. Now I think I would go back to 12:49 on Saturday, April 25, 1987. I would go to exactly the moment when my mother and I stood in the bank parking lot. Then, I would run or faint or snatch the key from my pocket and hurl it into the scrubby weeds. I'd do whatever I had to do to stop us from going into the bank that day. But there is no time travel, so I had no idea how the rest of the day would go, and instead of running away, I walked in silence to the front door of the bank and went in.

Mr. Zimmer was there, and he led us straight downstairs.

“How's Dennis doing?” my mother asked.

“Can't complain, really,” he said. “Big into music these days.”

“June, you could ask Dennis over for a visit sometime, couldn't you?”

“I guess,” I said, only because his father was standing right there.

Mr. Zimmer opened room number two and lowered the box onto the floor.

“All righty,” he said. He looked at his watch. “We close in … well, we're about to close now, so—”

“I guess we'll have to leave it until next week,” I said, in a voice that was probably a bit too pleased.

My mother flashed me a stern look.

“We need to take it with us anyway, Dave. So I guess we'll just have to skip the viewing session.”

My mother started to walk out with the whole box.

“I'm afraid we can't let the box itself go out. You'll have to take the painting.”

“Oh,” my mother said, and then I saw her give Mr. Zimmer the same sad look that Finn could put on. The very same sad look he'd given me when he was trying to get me to agree to the portrait in the first place. She put on a little half smile and I could see Mr. Zimmer changing his mind, right there in front of us.

“Oh, what the hey,” he said. “I've known you for years.”

“Thanks, Dave. It's just,” she lowered her voice, “well, it's quite valuable.”

“Of course,” he said. “Get it back when you can.”

And so we rode home with the portrait in the backseat, and the whole way I couldn't stop wishing for miracles. I imagined that somehow the painting might swallow up everything we'd added to it. I called on the ghost of Finn with my mind, staring at the sun until I couldn't get rid of the black spots on my eyes, thinking if there was a ghost Finn he could slip his vaporous self right into that box and erase everything we'd done. I looked out between the trees and across the
front yards of strangers. I looked under cars and up at the bright blue sky, like the answer to everything might be there, but there was nothing. Only shadow and bright. Shadow and bright, over and over again.

I went straight to my room when we got back. I closed my door and put the
Requiem
on really loud and waited for whatever was going to happen. Ever since that day on the train when my mother said she was the one who'd shown Finn the
Requiem
, it felt weird to play it. Like it was some kind of conversation between Finn and my mother, like it was Finn trying to say that he still remembered everything that had been between the two of them. I hated playing it after that. I didn't like being used like that. But I couldn't help myself. I'd been aching to hear it again, and that afternoon I gave in. I pulled out the card I was making for my mother. I'd drawn the outlines of butterflies, colored each one in, and delicately put glitter in just the right places on their wings. I opened my case of colored pencils and took out three shades of blue. Then I started furiously coloring in the sky. So hard I thought I might go right through the construction paper. And for a moment I believed that even if time travel was impossible, doing kid stuff might have the power to slow time down. Stop it just long enough to make everything okay.

Fifty-Five

There was thunder. Way off somewhere. I'd fallen asleep, and when I woke up that's what I heard. Other than that, the house was quiet. My alarm clock said four-thirty. When I peeked out my window, I saw that the sky had turned darker and that both cars were in the driveway. I had to check, because day-sleeping is like that. When you wake up, you feel like you could be anywhere.

I moved quietly through my room, then out my door to the top of the stairs. I stood there for a while, hoping I might somehow hear whether my parents had seen the portrait yet. Would they have woken me up if they'd seen it? Dragged me right out of bed?

I tiptoed down the stairs, listening. No TV. No radio. No lawn mower or food processor. Not even the flicking of pages. When my feet hit the floor at the bottom, I stopped again, barely breathing, trying to sense where my parents were. Trying to catch a glimpse of the safety-deposit box. Nothing.

I popped my head into the kitchen, which was empty, and then into the living room.

There it was. The portrait. Out of the box, propped up on the mantel. There was still no sign of my parents, which felt strange. Just the portrait and me, alone in that room. No magic had erased what we'd done. Our hair glowed gold, making us look like girls from a story. Girls who knew everything there was to know. Greta's lips were even redder, even more pouty than I remembered them. The skull on her
hand was more obvious, and her nails looked like the claws of some kind of mythical cat. Even the buttons, which used to be almost invisible, seemed intense. Bright and dazzling compared to the stuff Finn had done. It was almost like we'd made Finn invisible with all our clumsy brushstrokes.

Then there were footsteps on the stairs. Soft. Slippered. My mother's feet. I sat on the couch, facing the portrait. Waiting. I heard her go into the kitchen and open the fridge. I heard a cabinet open, the sound of a glass against the counter. A drink poured. I heard thunder again, still low and far away. Then the swish of my mother's slippered feet came toward the living room until I could see the shadow of her in the doorway. She was in her bathrobe. Clean white terry cloth.

“I know,” I said before she could start.

She walked over to the sideboard and put her glass down. She didn't even bother to use a coaster. “I'm not sure you do know, June. I'm not sure you know even the most basic rights and wrongs anymore.” She cinched the tie on her robe tighter and walked slowly over to the portrait. With her eyes she traced along the strands of our illuminated hair, lingering for a moment on Greta. “What upsets your father and me most—more than the fact that this painting will have lost at least half a million,
half a million
, dollars in value because of your childish acts—is that you seem to have particularly gone out of your way to deface your sister.”

“How do you know it was all me? Why am I always the one to blame?”

My mother huffed and shook her head. “Greta's been so busy with that play, do you really think I'm going to believe that she would have time, would want to spend her time, going to the bank to deface a valuable piece of art? That's the difference between you and Greta. She has better things to do. She gets involved in clubs, activities. She has friends. But you? You slump around in that room of yours—”

“I thought Finn might like it.”

All the anger slipped from my mother's face then. Her brow furrowed and she looked scared. Like she might cry. “What's happening to you, Junie? Huh?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Your uncle made that painting for you and your sister. The last painting he ever made. Did you even read the articles? In the
Times
, in
Newsweek
? Do you understand who Finn was? And you come along, a fourteen-year-old girl, thinking you can improve on his work?”

The kitchen door opened and slammed shut. My father came into the living room in torn sweatpants, his gardening hat, and muddy hands, which he was holding away from his body. He looked from my mother to me, then lifted his hands. “I'll just wash up, then be right down.”

“Do you see? Look at your father. He works more than full-time, plays golf, and still has time for gardening on the weekend. And Greta. And me. We all find ways to stay busy. From now on your time will be booked. I'm signing you up for after-school activities every day of the week, and I'll be checking if you've been attending. We haven't kept you involved enough. Too much time on your own. Too much time filled with nonsense. I see that now.”

There were many things I could have said about keeping busy. About filling your life up with stupid clubs and sports and plays where people start singing for no reason at all. But I didn't. Of course I didn't say a word.

My mother kept going. “And on top of that, you're grounded. Anything outside of supervised, structured activities is off limits to you until we can see some improvement.”

The implications of this flashed through my mind. Toby came to me first. Then, after a few seconds, Greta.

“I told Greta I'd be at the cast party.”

“You will not be going to any party of any kind tonight. Do you understand?” My mother threw her hands up. “It's like you really don't understand the magnitude of what you've done here.”

“But I promised her …”

My father came back into the room. He'd changed into fresh clothes. “She'll get along just fine without you,” he said.

“What you don't realize is that you've hurt yourself more than anyone else. That man, the one from the Whitney, he said if the painting
all checked out he'd be willing to offer ten thousand dollars to include the painting in an exhibit. And do you know what we were planning to do with that money? Do you?”