“Well, where is he now?” my father asked. “I think we need a word.”
Officer Gellski didn’t answer right away, like he was considering something.
“We have him in the cruiser.” Everyone’s eyes went in the direction of the living room window, the one that overlooked the driveway. Toby was out there. Right outside the house.
My father took a step, but Officer Gellski put out his hand.
“I don’t think now’s the time, Mr. Elbus. We’ll get him down to the station. Let us talk to him first, then maybe in a day or two—”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.
“Go ahead. Quickly,” my mom said. “You’re in this too, June.”
I left the kitchen, and what I wanted to do was run right out the door to Toby. I wanted to apologize over and over again. To say sorry until I was sure he believed me. Until I was sure he knew it was coming from the deepest part of my heart. But I couldn’t do that. I had to keep my head straight.
I snuck away to the cellar as quietly as I could. I got a big white cardboard box, and on the side I wrote, DON’T TELL THEM ANYTHING!!!!!!! with a fat black marker.
You could see the driveway from the living room but also from my bedroom. I tiptoed up the stairs and cleared my windowsill of the fake candles. Then I threw the window wide open.
There was the police car, and there was Toby sitting in the back. His arms were bare, his hair still wet, and even from inside the house I could see that he was shivering. All I wanted to do was walk down the hall and get one of my father’s big coats and wrap Toby up in it. I wanted to pull all the blankets off my bed and run to the car and cover him up so tight that he’d stop shivering on the spot. But I couldn’t. This was all my fault. He was right there and still I couldn’t take care of him. I flicked my light on and off a few times to get his attention, then I pressed the box up to the window. I held it there for a few seconds, hiding my face behind that sign. Then I lowered it.
Toby tipped his head slightly, his thin face framed in the police-car window. Then he looked away, embarrassed or angry with me for getting him into this mess.
They would not be able to charge Toby with anything. Not after everything Greta said. That’s what Officer Gellski told us. He also told us that Toby’s name would be passed on to immigration. He said it looked like Toby was years over his visitation limit.
My parents thanked the cops for bringing Greta home safely and then they both showed them to the door. They watched as the cops walked down the front steps and out to their car.
“I almost feel sorry for the man,” my father said, staring out at the police car.
“I know, but you can’t,” my mother said. “He’s the kind of person who’s bound for problems. Look what he did to Finn. . . .” Her voice was cracking.
“It’ll be okay.” My father put his arm on my mother’s back and they walked upstairs, looking like they’d both been through some kind of epic battle.
Greta had already gone up, leaving me alone downstairs. I wandered from room to room, turning off the lights.
In the living room, I stopped to look at the portrait. There we were. Those same two girls. Illuminated. I thought that it wasn’t that bad. The stuff we’d added. There was beauty in it. There was at least some small beauty in what we’d done.
I flicked the light off and we disappeared.
Fifty-Nine
Upstairs, I brushed my teeth, then sat on the edge of the bathtub, looking at the coat. There it was, dead wolf, all the beautiful scents of Finn washed away. I touched it, lightly at first, petting it with my open hand.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking the coat harder, over and over again.
Even though it was dark and way past midnight, that Saturday would not let itself end. It stayed, keeping me up, making me drag it right into Sunday. I lay in bed, over and over again running through what Greta had done for me. For Toby and me. And then over and over again I thought of Toby and hated myself for the trouble I’d dragged him into. I wondered if they had him all cold and wet, sitting in that small jail cell in the police station in town. The one they made our whole class squash into when we went there on a class trip in fourth grade. “This is where you don’t want to end up, right, kids?” the policeman said. Everyone except Evan Hardy nodded. Evan stood there with his hands on his little-boy hips and said, “Yeah, yeah, I do.” I remember being afraid for him. I remember thinking they might just keep him in there if he kept talking like that. And now it was Toby, and all I wanted to do was run through the streets of town, right to that cell. I wanted to bring him dry clothes, and I wanted to tell him how sorry I was.
I tried pushing it all away. I counted backward from one thousand. I listened to the rhythm of my father’s snoring, trying to breathe in time to it. I opened my curtain and lay on my back. The storm had petered out, and I watched the after-storm clouds whizzing over the moon, covering it, then letting it shine. Then, through all of that, I heard the sound of crying.
I pressed my ear up against the wall next to my bed. The crying went on, then stopped for a while, then started again. Greta was awake.
The lights were off in her room except for the blue heart night-light under the desk. When I nudged her door open, she instantly slouched deeper under her covers and turned to face the far side of the room.
“Can I come in?”
Greta shrugged, and I quietly crawled into her bed, pressing my back against hers. We lay there, saying nothing, our bodies stiff and tense.
“Thanks for saying all that,” I said.
I felt her wiping her eyes against the blanket.
“I shouldn’t have called him. . . . I know you hate him. . . .” I heard my voice cracking.
Greta started to laugh. It wasn’t a happy laugh. More sad and frustrated.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” I felt her shaking her head and I turned. She was sitting up and reaching under the mattress. She pulled out a bottle of some kind of liquor. “Go get some soda from the fridge, okay?”
“What kind?”
“I don’t care, but be quiet.”
I slipped out and came back with a half-full bottle of cream soda and a glass. Greta poured some of the liquor in and then topped it up with the soda.
“Here,” she said, passing me the glass. I took a sip. It was sickly sweet and then there was the heat from the liquor. I handed the glass back, and Greta downed the rest in one gulp. Then we both crawled back under the covers.
“What don’t I get?” I lowered my eyes, in hopes that Greta might answer if I wasn’t staring right at her.
“How lucky you are.” She whispered it, then turned away.
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“Do you know what it’s like to hope for someone to die?”
“I—”
“Did you ever wonder how I knew about Finn being sick way before you did? Even though he was your godfather?”
I thought about it for a second. “No—I mean, you always know everything before me. That’s just how it is.”
Greta pushed closer to me, her small body against my bulky one.
“Do you remember that day when Finn took us out for those frozen hot chocolates at Serendipity? Do you remember that place?”
I nodded. Serendipity was this old-fashioned fancy ice cream parlor on the Upper East Side. Inside, it was dark, with lots of wood, and I remember those huge frozen hot chocolates with loads of whipped cream. Greta and I shared one with two straws.
“This was before he’d even started the portrait. I was your age, or maybe younger. Maybe I was still thirteen, I don’t know. You, Mom, and I were all at Finn’s apartment after Serendipity. I was in the bathroom and I’d left the door open a little, and Mom walked right in and saw me using Finn’s ChapStick. I still remember the look on her face. I remember it like I’m looking at a picture. Terrified. I stood there, frozen, holding the ChapStick, all embarrassed and guilty, and then she slapped it right out of my hand. Hard.
So hard it hurt. She pushed into that tight bathroom and closed the door on the two of us. I didn’t know what was going on. I knew I shouldn’t be using Finn’s stuff, but he always had that lip stuff that smelled like coconut and pineapple. You know? It always smelled so good.”
I did know. I knew exactly the smell she was talking about.
Greta scrunched herself up tighter and tighter as she spoke, until her spine was curved and pointing hard into mine.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I had no idea. And Mom started shouting at me but trying to keep it quiet at the same time. Then all of a sudden she got teary and hugged me. She asked me if that was the first time I’d used Finn’s ChapStick. I told her it was, and she looked relieved, and she hugged me some more. That’s when she told me. About Finn being sick. About AIDS. She told me and she made me promise never to use his stuff ever again. She said I shouldn’t worry about it because it was only once. She said over and over that it would be okay. It was okay, she kept saying, all the time wiping hard at my lips with some toilet paper. I promised her I would never do it again. Do you remember Finn’s lips, June? Do you remember how cracked they always were? How every winter they’d bleed?”
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
“But you know what?”
Greta swiveled her body around so she was looking right at me, so our faces almost touched. I shook my head.
“I wasn’t even scared. When Mom closed the door and went back to the living room, I sat down on the bathroom floor and all I felt was happy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I thought if Finn . . . if he was dying, then maybe we would go back to how we used to be. How evil is that? How totally evil am I?” Greta pulled the covers over her head.
“But you hate me.”
Greta huffed. “You’re so, so lucky, June. Why are you so lucky? Look at me.” She peeked out from the cover, talking through tears. “All these years I watched you and Finn. And then you and Toby. How could you do that? How could you possibly choose Toby over me?”
“But Finn always asked if you wanted to come along. You know he did. You always acted like it was the last thing you wanted to do.”
“Finn always asked—of course he would. But I knew you hoped I’d say no. Don’t even lie. I know you hoped that. It was like a trap. If I came along, you’d resent me. And if I didn’t, well, then I wouldn’t be a part of any of it.”
It was true. Of course she would have seen that.
I reached out for Greta’s hand, but I couldn’t find it. Instead, I gently touched her shoulder. “I didn’t know.”
“Don’t you even remember how we used to be? I kept thinking that you’d find me in the woods and maybe . . . maybe you’d be worried. How could I compete with Finn? How could I be better than Toby? I’m leaving, June. A couple months and I’ll be gone and then . . . I don’t know. What if we end up like Mom and Finn? What if I leave and that’s the end of us? It’s like . . . It just feels like I’m being pulled out to sea. Do you know what I mean? Those days I followed you into the woods, you there playing like a kid. Like a real kid, you know. Like we used to play. I wanted so badly to shout out, ‘Hey, June. I’m here. Look. Let me play too.’”
She turned onto her back, and so did I, both of us staring at the ceiling, under Greta’s white comforter with the rainbows and clouds all over it. The one she’s had since she was ten. My father’s snoring roared through the quiet room. A slice of moonlight shone in from the edge of Greta’s curtains and lit a dusty world globe sitting on her desk.
We talked for hours in the dark. I told her everything that had happened that day. The portrait. How our parents thought it was all my fault. How I let them think that, because it was the right thing to do. The noble thing. Greta told me that she’d been trying to wreck the portrait, but it never seemed to work. The skull and the lips. They kind of made it more beautiful, she said. She said she went down to the vault sometimes and sat there, hoping I’d walk in. That I’d catch her. It was the same with Bloody Mary. She kept trying to mess up, but somehow the more she tried, the better everyone thought she was.
“I saw it,” I said. “I saw you onstage and I knew you were trying to mess up. I was the only one who seemed to see it.”
“I know you’re the only one. That’s the thing. We were orphans together. I knew you’d see me. I kept asking you to those rehearsals, thinking . . . I don’t know.” Her voice caught in the back of her throat. “I don’t want us to be mean anymore.”
“I never wanted to,” I said. And I finally got that it was both of us. It had always been both of us. It was never only Greta. Everything she said was true. After all the years of being best friends, I’d abandoned her. How could I not have seen that? How could I have been so selfish?
Greta slipped out of bed and turned the radio on really low. She had a coat hanger attached to the antenna so she could get WLIR all the way from Long Island. WLIR was the cool radio station, because they played mostly English stuff. That Echo & the Bunnymen song, “The Killing Moon,” was on, and we lay there listening.
“Tell me what happened in the woods,” I said after a while.
“Go to sleep.”
“I’m sorry if Toby scared you,” I whispered. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Greta turned farther away from me so we weren’t touching anymore. It seemed like she wasn’t going to say anything, but then, after a long wait, she cleared her throat.
“I think I scared him more than he scared me,” she said.
“Were you by yourself out there?” I spoke carefully. I knew that any second Greta could disappear into herself.
“I thought it was you at first. Then there was a man’s voice. Really hoarse. He was saying my name, telling me not to be frightened. He didn’t say afraid, he said frightened. That’s when I screamed. And I can scream when I want to. Loud. He stood up, and it looked like he was thinking about running, but then he started mumbling something about Mom and Dad knowing about the portrait. He said you’d sent him. He said he was Finn’s friend. And then everything clicked into place. I tried to scramble up. I shoved the leaves off myself, but it was all mud out there. It was pouring. I slipped. I didn’t want his help, but I had no choice. I could barely keep my eyes open. And then he took his coat off—I remember that. He took his coat off and laid it on the ground and lifted me onto it. And then he told me to go back to sleep. That everything would be all right.”
“He’s not like you think, Greta.”
Then I told her everything I knew about our mother. All the jealousy and sadness. All the meanness that could come out of loving someone too much.
She laughed to herself. Just a little sad puff through her nose.
I closed my eyes and let Depeche Mode and Yaz and the Cure erase everything that had happened. I didn’t want to let my mind go beyond right now, because every time I did I saw Toby’s hapless face in the window of the police car and I couldn’t face that. Not yet.
We lay there quiet for a long time, but I could tell neither of us could sleep. After a while Greta nudged my back.
“What?”
“Did you hear WPLJ banned that stupid George Michael song ‘I Want Your Sex’ because of AIDS?”
I shook my head. “As if listening to that would ever get anyone in the mood.”
Then we both started cracking up. We laughed until Greta fell right out of the bed. And then she kept on laughing on the floor. I couldn’t even remember the last time we laughed together like that, and I knew that it meant my sister was starting to come back. That somehow Toby had gone out into the woods and brought back Greta for me. He’d brought me back my sister.
We listened to more music and drank brandy and cream soda, and we talked and talked, and that Saturday never did end. Not for us. We stayed up until the world started to get light again. Until we saw the pink sunrise over the top of the Gordanos’ freshly trimmed cedar hedge.
Sixty
I ca
lled Toby at five-thirty in the morning on Sunday. Only Greta and I were up. The phone rang and rang and I thought he was probably asleep, so I let it keep going. I let it ring twenty-three times before I finally hung up. I wasn’t really worried, because I figured he was still at the police station. It didn’t feel good to imagine him there, but I wasn’t worried. He just hadn’t gotten home yet.
After all those hours of talking and all the brandy and cream soda, Greta and I finally crashed. We found our way to our own beds and slept until lunchtime, when my mother woke us both up.
She knocked on my door, then eased her head in. The way she looked at me was different than I’d ever seen before. It was like she was looking at someone else. A stranger.
“June,” she said. She said my name in a businesslike way. Calm and with purpose. “Your father and I want to move on from this.”
I heard Toby’s voice in my head—But where would we move to?—and I’m not sure if I disguised the smile that must have rushed across my face.
“June? Are you listening?”
“Yes. Of course I’m listening.”
“Tax season’s over, and after this week South Pacific is done, and we think we should start doing some more family things. Pull together for a while, until you girls seem back to normal. We haven’t been there for you. We know.”
I wanted to say that if she hadn’t made Finn keep Toby a secret, none of this would ever have happened, but I couldn’t. It was my fault. There was no point dragging my mother into it. And, anyway, I understood exactly how she felt. I knew the way lost hopes could be dangerous, how they could turn a person into someone they never thought they’d be.
All day I kept expecting Greta to ignore me or say something snotty or mean. I waited for her to do something that proved that she hadn’t meant any of what she’d said the night before, but she didn’t. When she saw me in the kitchen she smiled. A real, actual, non-snotty smile.