Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

Then I thought there might be something about where my father went after Colorado upstairs in all his stuff in the attic. After he left, my mother and my grandmother piled everything of his that didn’t get thrown out into a big chest with a lid in the attic. So I went up there.

I didn’t even know what I was looking for. A map with a dotted line going from Colorado to some other place? A card from a friend of his saying, If you ever leave your family, come stay with me? Even not knowing what I was looking for, it’s amazing how little I found. A bunch of letters he wrote to my mother a thousand years ago. They were wrapped together with electrical tape! I had the feeling she wasn’t planning on reading them again anytime soon.

Also a photo of him at the beach. I don’t think I was even born yet.

Also at the bottom of the trunk, in a little flat box like you keep Christmas cards in, a satin book that said OUR WEDDING.

I spent the rest of the time I was up there just looking through that. It got light out in the little crappy window covered with cobwebs over the stairs. I found photos of the reception, photos of everyone getting ready. My father looking jokey with two other guys, and a flat metal bottle in his pocket. I found their wedding ceremony they wrote for themselves. With the priest, I guess. Some of the prayers and stuff they didn’t write. The rest of the time I was up there, I read along in their ceremony, trying to figure out which words were my father’s.

Of course she was going to the funeral. She barely knew the family, saw the deceased twice a year, if that: of course she was going to the funeral.

She’d talked her mother out of picking her up. She was going; that was enough. This way she could come and go on her own, and her parents could stay afterward as long as they wanted.

Todd was staying home. He didn’t need to go through that, and not all the kids were going. The official story was that he had a fever.

She’d been up the whole night before. She felt like she was dreaming on her feet. When it got light, she made a pot of coffee, six cups, and drank it all. It didn’t seem to have an effect. She stood in front of the mirror at 7:00 A.M., putting on makeup. She tried to work up a little determination. This was her day to become presentable. To look alive. To start to take control of her life. Her eyes seemed half closed.

She put down her blush applicator. She ran her hands through her hair and pulled it back so tight she Chinesed her eyes.

Todd was snoring upstairs in his bedroom. She wiped her hands on her robe, and long hairs spiraled and floated to the floor. She left everything where it was and went up to check on him.

He was across his bed sideways, his feet and arms hanging off. It was already warm, but she pulled the sheet a little more over him. He turned in his sleep and said in a kind of delirium, “It was Wednesday.”

She looked around the room. He’d taken his posters down. Pieces of Scotch tape spotted the walls. There was a framed magazine photo of a Minnesota Viking, but that was it. The clean clothes she hadn’t folded were in one pile and his dirty clothes were in another. The piles overlapped. There was a map of the western United States taped to the wall by the phone. Colored pins were stuck in various cities. Whether they represented places he thought his father might be or had been, she didn’t know.

She went back downstairs and waited for more energy, or for time to pass. She felt thwarted and useless in her own house. She let the dog out.

She must’ve fallen asleep, or at least into some kind of daze. Hearing the upstairs shower brought her out of it, and she shook off the grogginess by making another, smaller pot of coffee, decaf for Todd. The phone rang.

It was Bruno. He wanted to know if she wanted a ride to the funeral.

She rubbed her eyes for a while before answering. “I don’t,” she said. “I want to be able to leave early.”

“So do I,” he said. “You think I wanna hang around there all day?”

The line was silent. She understood he was waiting her out.

“C’mon,” he said. “We can cheer each other up. You’re ready to go, we’re outta there.”

She leaned against the wall, wedging the receiver between her ear and the plaster. “All right,” she said. “I won’t be ready till the last minute.”

While she spoke she wrote notes to herself on the TO DO pad stuck to the refrigerator:

Coward

Asshole

Liar

“Be over in a hour,” Bruno said. He got off.

Despite the half-makeup job, she thought she’d better shower. Todd was finished and thumping around his room. She took a shower. He’d gotten water everywhere. When she got out, feeling a little better, he was in the kitchen, buttering a bagel. She sat at the kitchen table, her hair still wet, and combed it out. He brought over the two bagel halves and gave her the bottom. Recently he’d started keeping the best part of the food they shared for himself, as if life without his father made him selfish.

He put marmalade on his half. His face was closed off and concentrating, as if he was counting to himself.

She pulled at a knot in her hair. She had a headache. She thought, Is this what it’s going to be like from here on in?

“Do you know where Dad might be now?” he said. His lips were chapped and his wet hair looked like a modified punk haircut.

“You mean what city?” she asked.

“Where he is, what city,” he said. She could hear the weariness in his voice.

“I know as much as you,” she said. “Last I heard, he was heading somewhere in Washington. He never said what city.”

Todd tore off some bagel and chewed while squinting at the kitchen window. It was gray out.

“No guarantee he ever got to Washington,” she said.

A sports merchandising catalogue was on the floor under the window, swollen and frilled from having been rained on. She could see the circled Minnesota Viking helmet from there.

“You thinking of telling him about what happened?” she asked.

He shrugged.

She got up and went into the downstairs bathroom. While she dried her hair and put on makeup, she tried to think of what to say.

When she came out, he was gone.

She put the dishes in the sink. She got dressed.

She heard him in the living room. She stood on one leg, wrestling with the heel of one of her flats, and peeked in.

He sat on the sofa, bending a spoon into odd shapes. He had the TV on. She couldn’t tell what he was watching. It looked like a nature show on rodents. Brown things (beavers? woodchucks?) were rooting around a riverbank.

“You gonna be all right?” she asked. It sounded like she meant, You gonna tell? She felt, suddenly, like an old guard at a tired museum.

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t look up. He had the spoon in an S shape.

She heard Bruno’s car in the driveway. She said she’d be back soon and headed out the door. It looked like rain. She grabbed a folding umbrella leaning against the wall near the dog’s dish.

The dog was sitting there when she opened the door.

“How long was Sewer Mouth out?” Bruno called, getting out of his car. He’d pulled up on the grass next to the garage instead of parking in the driveway. “All night, I hope?”

“I just let her out,” Joanie said. She moved aside to let the dog through and then shut the door behind her.

He watched her walk toward him. “Kid sick?” he asked.

“He’s got a fever,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair. “What’d you park there for?”

“He looks all right,” Bruno said. He gestured up at Todd’s second-floor window. Todd was looking down at them.

She could feel herself blush. “What’re you supposed to see, fever germs?” she asked. “You ready?”