Lone Wolf Read online

  Apparently I am the only person in my office who has never heard of the ward, Luke Warren. He is famous, or at least as famous as a naturalist can be. He had a television show on a cable network that showcased his work with wolf packs, but I only listen to the news and to PBS. It is La-a (pronounced Ladasha, which leads me to wonder if she's as frustrated by her moniker as I am by my own) who drops the book off on my desk this morning. "Helen," she says, "thought you might like this. Hank left it behind when he moved out, the pig."

  Who knew that Luke Warren was not only a television personality and wildlife conservationist but also an author? I run my hand over the raised foil lettering of the title of this autobiography. LONE WOLF, it reads. ONE MAN'S JOURNEY INTO THE WILD. "I'll give it back when I'm done," I promise.

  La-a shrugs. "It's Hank's. Which means you can burn it as far as I'm concerned." She touches the cover of the book, with its photo of Luke Warren being smothered in kisses by a presumably wild animal. "Sad though. That someone could go so fast from this"--she moves her hand to the dark case folder--"to this."

  Most of the wards I've worked with have not published autobiographies and do not have YouTube footage of themselves in their prime at work. In this, it is easier to get a sense of who Luke Warren was before his accident. I pick up the book and read the first paragraph:

  What I get asked all the time is: How could you do it? How could you possibly walk away from civilization, from a family, and go live in the forests of Canada with a pack of wild wolves? How could you give up hot showers, coffee, human contact, conversation, two years of your children's lives?

  When I become someone's guardian, even in a temporary position, I try to slip under that person's skin, to find something within myself that's similar to him. You would think that a forty-eight-year-old single woman with a monochromatic wardrobe and a manner so quiet that librarians ask her to speak up might not be able to relate to a man like Luke Warren, but the connection I feel is immediate, and intense.

  Luke Warren would have been deliriously happy to shed his human skin and become a bona fide wolf.

  And like him, I've spent my whole life wishing I were someone I'm not.

  My mother's name on her birth certificate is Crystal Chandra Leer. She worked at the Cat's Meow Gentlemen's Club as their star attraction until, amid a night of tequila and moonlight, the bartender seduced her in the stockroom on top of boxes of Absolut and Jose Cuervo. He was long gone by the time I was born, and my mother raised me by herself, supporting us by hosting home parties to sell sex toys instead of Tupperware. Unlike other mothers, mine had hair bleached so white that it looked like moonlight. She wore high heels, even on Sundays. She didn't own a piece of clothing that did not incorporate lace.

  I stopped having friends over after my mother told them during a sleepover party that when I was a baby, I was so colicky the only thing that could calm me down was tucking a vibrator along the side of my baby car seat. From that day on I made it my mission to be the antithesis of my mother. I refused to wear makeup and dressed in shapeless, washed-out clothing. I studied incessantly, so that I had the highest GPA in my graduating class. I never dated. Teachers who met my mother at open school night would say, with amazement, that we didn't seem related at all, which was exactly how I liked it.

  Now, my mother lives in Scottsdale with her husband, a retired gynecologist who, for Christmas, bought her a powder-pink convertible with the vanity license plate 38DD. For my last birthday she sent me a Sephora gift card, which I regifted on Secretary's Day.

  I am sure that my mother didn't mean to hurt me by putting my birth father's last name on my birth certificate. I'm equally sure that she thought my name was a cute play on words and not a moniker fit for a drag queen.

  Let's just say this: whatever your response is when I introduce myself to you . . . I've heard it all before.

  "I'm here to see Luke Warren," I say to the ICU nurse manning the main desk.

  "And you are?"

  "Helen Bedd," I reply, primly.

  She smirks. "Well, good for you, sister."

  "I spoke to one of your colleagues yesterday? I'm from the Office of Public Guardian." I wait while she finds me on a list.

  "He's 12B, on the left," the nurse says. "I think his son might be in with him."

  That, of course, is what I'm counting on.

  I am struck, when I first walk into the room, by the resemblance between father and son. You'd have to know Luke Warren from before his accident, of course, but this young man curled like a question mark in the corner looks exactly like the man on the cover of the book in my bag, albeit with a much more metrosexual haircut. "You must be Edward," I say.

  He looks me up and down with bloodshot, wary eyes. "If you're with the hospital counsel, you can't make me leave," he says, immediately on the offensive.

  "I'm not with the hospital," I tell him. "My name's Helen Bedd, and I'm the temporary guardian for your father."

  It is as if an entire opera plays across his features: the opening salvo of surprise, a crescendo of mistrust, then an aria of realization--I am the one who will be presenting my findings to the judge on Thursday. He cautiously stands up. "Hi," he says.

  "I'm sorry to intrude on your private time with your father," I tell him, and for the first time I really look at the man in the hospital bed. He is like every other ward I've worked with: a husk, an object at rest. My job isn't to see him the way he is now, though. It's to figure out who he used to be, and think the way he would have thought. "When you have a moment, though, I'd like to speak with you."

  Edward frowns. "Maybe I should call my lawyer."

  "I'm not going to talk to you about any of the criminal matters of the past few days," I promise. "That's not my concern, if that's what's worrying you. All I care about is what's going to happen to your father."

  He looks over at the hospital bed. "It's already happened," he says quietly. Behind Luke Warren, something beeps, and a nurse comes through the door. She lifts a full bag of urine that's been collecting on the side of the bed. Edward averts his eyes.

  "You know," I say, "I could use a cup of coffee."

  We sit at a table near the window in the hospital cafeteria. "I imagine this is incredibly hard for you. Not just because of what happened to your father, but because you've been away from home, too."

  Edward folds his hands around his coffee cup. "Well," he admits, "it wasn't the way I thought I'd come back here."

  "When did you leave?"

  "When I was eighteen," Edward says.

  "So as soon as you could fly the coop, you did."

  "No. I mean, no one ever would have suspected that of me. I was a straight-A kid, I'd applied to half a dozen colleges, and I pretty much just got up one morning and walked away from home."

  "That sounds like a radical decision," I reply.

  "I couldn't live there anymore." He hesitates. "My father and I . . . didn't see eye to eye."

  "So you left because you didn't get along?"

  Edward laughs mirthlessly. "You could say that."

  "It must have been quite an argument, if it made you angry enough to leave your home."

  "I was angry long before that," Edward admits. "He ruined my childhood. He left for two years to go live with a pack of wolves, for God's sake. He used to say all the time that if he could have, he would have chosen to never interact with humans again." Edward glances up at me. "When you're a teenager and you hear your dad saying that to a television crew, believe me, it doesn't exactly make you feel warm and fuzzy inside."

  "Where have you been all this time?"

  "Thailand. I teach ESL there." Edward shakes his head. "Taught ESL."

  "So you've moved back here permanently?"

  "I honestly don't know where I'll wind up," he says. "But I've made my way before. I'll do it again."

  "You must want to get back to your own life," I suggest.

  He narrows his eyes. "Not enough to kill my father, if that's what you're thinking."