Jim Shepard - Kiss of the Wolf

“What’re you watchin’?” Todd said behind her.

She hit the stop button on the remote like she’d been caught with pornography. The regular programming appeared, a sitcom. He looked at her suspiciously.

“Where’ve you been?” she asked. She’d coached herself on her tone while she waited: casual but concerned. It came out a little higher pitched.

“I told you,” he said. He left the doorway.

She got up and followed him upstairs.

“We went out to eat,” he said, without looking back. Audrey was following her now, too, the three of them trooping up single file. He walked into his room and swung the door half shut behind him. She pushed it open.

“Ma,” he said.

She had her hands on her hips. “You were eating all this time?” she said.

“I was with Bruno.”

“I was worried,” she said. The dog sidled by her into the room and walked over to Todd.

“Because I was late, or because I might tell someone?” he said.

The dog lowered her head and walked back out of the room.

He looked away. Joanie was staring at him. “Don’t you talk to me like that,” she finally said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He turned on the stereo atop his dresser and sat at his desk. There was already a record on the turntable.

She watched the tone arm go up, over, and down. Some music she didn’t recognize started.

“Did you talk about that at all?” she said. “Did he ask you questions about that night?”

“No,” he said.

“Todd.”

“He didn’t. I’d tell you. Okay? I’m as guilty as you are.”

“Todd,” she said, shaking her head.

“I wanna listen to this.”

She stood there. The music was turned way down.

“Where’d you go?” she asked.

“Spada’s.”

She folded her arms. “You were eating all this time?”

He turned up the stereo. She crossed the room to it and hit the cue button. The tone arm lifted.

“Ma,” he said.

“I said, were you eating all this time?”

“I had to wait while he talked to this guy.”

Outside the window, somebody’s starter motor made a grinding noise. “Who?” she asked. She was afraid she already knew.

“Joey Distefano,” he said.

She sat down on his bed. “Todd,” she said. “Listen to me. Something’s going on. I don’t know what.”

“Are you gonna do this every time I go out now?” Todd shouted.

She stared at him, her hands together in her lap. She closed her mouth.

He shook his head and wandered around his room. “Could I have my room?” he said. “Could I have my privacy?”

“Todd,” she said. “This guy and Bruno are trying to find out what happened that night. I’m not sure why.”

“Maybe they just wanna know who killed their friend,” Todd said.

She was shaking. She took a breath. “Something else is going on. You can’t talk to them about it. You understand?”

He went to the window and leaned on his outspread arms and lowered his head.

“ Do you understand? ” she said, raising her voice.

“ Yes. ”

She sat there, unsatisfied. She wanted to let him alone. “You didn’t talk to him about that night at all?”

He started to cry.

She went to him immediately and tried to get an arm around him, but he pulled away. “Okay, honey, okay, I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry, honey,” she said, and backed out of the room. She was in the hall only a second before he shut the door behind her with a bang.

He was gone the next morning when she got up. His bike wasn’t in the garage. She thought about calling Brendan’s house but imagined getting his mother again. The dog apparently had eaten something outside and had thrown it up on the living-room rug, a discreet greenish mess. She spent a half hour cleaning it up.

Her mother called and invited her out to the mall. She didn’t want to go. Nina stopped by, anyway, and talked her into it. For three hours they wandered around. Joanie sniffed her hand occasionally, sure she could smell both the ammonia and the dog barf. They had lunch at Taco Bell. Across the atrium, she spotted Joey Distefano out of uniform, sitting by himself and having an ice cream.

When they got home Todd was still out, but he’d been back. A plastic knife covered with peanut butter was in the sink. Otherwise, he’d cleaned up after himself. Nina asked where he was. Joanie said she didn’t know.

They sat around talking for an hour. Joanie made coffee. Her mother sniffed the air and looked around uncertainly. You could still smell a little of the vomit. She sniffed her coffee cup.

She asked what Joanie was up to tonight. Joanie shook her head, like it wasn’t even worth talking about. She didn’t mention the date with Bruno. She didn’t need to go through that. If her mother called later, let her find out.

Her mother talked about what a pain in the ass her father had been lately. She asked whether Joanie had made any progress with the lawyer about Gary. She meant about instituting divorce proceedings and getting some child support in the meantime. Joanie answered with shrugs and grunts and sat there preoccupied until her mother finally left, saying she had things to do.

Yet she went to the window and watched her mother’s car back into the street and felt nostalgic for her visit. She caught her reflection in the window glass: an unfriendly face, eyes she didn’t recognize.

She made pasta fagioli for Todd and left it on the stove. All he’d have to do was warm it up.

She went upstairs to get ready. She was tired, and defeated by her inability to even decide on what to worry about most. She held her hand in front of her to watch it shake and understood she was also a little excited.

In the shower, she gave the conditioner extra time to work. It seemed to make a difference when she was drying her hair. She used a little mascara on her eyes and Coty Softest Pink on her lips. She decided on the black zip-up with the culottes and the pink flowers. She couldn’t find her shoes.

She was ready by quarter to six. She went downstairs carefully, like the way she looked could be jarred loose.

Todd was sitting in the kitchen. She walked in and sat down opposite him. He looked at her dress and makeup.

“You see the pasta fazool? ” she said.

He nodded. She could feel a bleakness gathering around their day. They sat opposite each other with their hands on the table, like cardplayers without cards.

They heard Bruno’s car pull in. This was what her life with her son had become, she thought: the two of them sitting in the kitchen, waiting for whatever happened next to happen.

Todd’s shirt was dirty. His hair looked like a rat’s nest.

Bruno looked great. He stood just inside the back door, like her date for the prom. She let her eyes work from his feet up, the way movie cameramen tried to be tantalizing. He was wearing a granite-colored Italian sports jacket. He was holding a bouquet of yellow roses in a white paper bag. “They were outta the red,” he said.

“They’re great,” she said, getting up. She pulled a vase out of the cabinet for useless stuff and dumped the roses in it with some water.

“How are you?” Bruno said to Todd. Todd sat there at the table with his back straight and his hands folded, as if to say, I’m good.

“Let’s go,” Bruno said. “We gotta move.”

“Where’re we going?” Joanie asked. She was trying to arrange the flowers.

It turned out they were going to a B.B. King concert in Hartford. Bruno knew somebody who knew somebody, pulled a few strings at the last minute. First they had to go to the dealership and pick up the tickets; the guy was dropping them off there.