Lone Wolf Read online

  When Cara was just a year old, we stopped at a McDonald's on the way home from one of Edward's Little League games. While I was busy opening up jars of baby food and digging in my purse for a bib, Cara reached from her high chair to Edward's Happy Meal place mat and started happily gumming a French fry. "What about her baby food?" Edward asked.

  "Well," I replied. "I guess she isn't a baby anymore."

  He considered this. "Is she still Cara?"

  Turn around, and the people you thought you knew might change. Your little boy might now live half a world away. Your beautiful daughter might be sneaking out at night. Your ex-husband might be dying by degrees. This is the reason that dancers learn, early on, how to spot while doing pirouettes: we all want to be able to find the place where we started.

  Cara pushes away her dinner tray with her good hand and starts flipping through the television channels with the remote control. "There's nothing on."

  It is five o'clock; all the networks are airing local evening broadcasts. "The news isn't nothing," I tell her. I look up at the screen, set on the station where I used to work. The anchor is a girl in her twenties who has too much eye makeup on. If I had stuck with broadcast journalism, I'd be a producer now. Someone who stayed behind the camera, who didn't have to worry about zits and gray roots and five extra pounds.

  "In a stunning victory," the anchor is saying, "Daniel Boyle, the Grafton County attorney, has won a contentious trial that some say is a ringing victory for conservatives in the state. Judge Martin Crenstable ruled today that Merilee Swift, the pregnant woman who suffered an aneurysm in December, will be kept on life support for another six months, until her baby is delivered at full term. Boyle chose to prosecute the case himself when the woman's husband and parents asked the hospital to turn off Merilee Swift's respirator."

  "Pig," I say under my breath. "He wouldn't have blinked twice at the parents' request if it wasn't an election year."

  The screen cuts to a courthouse-steps interview with Danny Boy, as he likes to be called, himself. "I'm proud to be the guardian of the smallest victims, the ones without voices," he says. "A life is a life. And I know if Ms. Swift could speak, she'd want to know her baby's being taken care of."

  "For the love of God," I murmur, and I grab the remote away from Cara. I flip to the next channel, and my mouth drops open.

  A picture of Luke, grinning as one of his wolves licks his face, fills the screen over the anchor's shoulder. "WMUR has learned that Luke Warren, the naturalist and conservationist who made a name for himself by living in the wild with a pack of wolves, is in critical condition after a motor vehicle accident. Warren will be remembered for his cable television show, which detailed his experiences with wolves at New Hampshire's own Redmond's Trading Post--"

  I push the button on the remote, and the screen goes black. "They'll say whatever they can to get viewers to watch," I tell her. "We don't have to listen."

  Cara turns her face against the pillow. "They're talking about him like he's already dead," she says.

  It is ridiculous to think that after six years of my being continents away from Edward, he's now just a floor below where I'm sitting, and we're still separated.

  I don't have to tell any mother what it's like to have a son leave. It happens a multitude of natural ways--summer camp, college, marriage, career. It feels as if the fabric you're made of has a hole in its center all of a sudden, yet whatever weave you use to fix it is sure to be a hatchet job. I don't believe any parent moves gracefully into the acceptance that a child doesn't need her anymore, but I was blindsided by the truth. Edward left when he was just eighteen, when he was still applying to colleges for the following year. I thought I'd have another six months to figure out how to surgically extract him from the pattern of my life, smiling all the while, so that he didn't think I was anything less than thrilled for his good fortune. But Edward never went to college. Instead, one awful morning, he left me a note and vanished, which is maybe why it felt as if I'd been shelled by a cannon.

  I don't want to leave Cara alone, so I wait until she falls asleep again before I go to the ICU. Edward sits in a chair with his head bowed to his hands as if he's praying. I wait, not wanting to disturb him, and then realize he's dozed off.

  It gives me a chance to look more carefully at Luke. The last time I'd been down here, with Cara and the social worker, I'd been more attuned to my daughter's reaction than I was to forming one of my own.

  I've always thought of Luke as a verb. Something in motion, rather than at rest. Seeing him this still reminds me of times I used to will myself to wake up before he did, so that I could study him: the sculpted curve of his ear, the golden horizon of his jaw, the iridescent scars on his hands and neck that he'd accumulated over the years.

  I must make some kind of noise in the back of my throat, because suddenly Edward is awake and staring at me. "I'm sorry," I say, but I'm not sure to whom I'm apologizing.

  "It's weird, right?" Edward gets up and stands beside me. He smells like a man, I realize. Like Old Spice deodorant and shaving cream. "I keep thinking he's just asleep."

  I slide my arm around my son's waist, hug him closer. "I wanted to come down earlier, but . . ."

  "Cara," he says.

  I face Edward. "She didn't know you were here."

  He smiles crookedly. "Hence the warm reception."

  "She's not thinking clearly right now."

  Edward smirks. "Oh, she's clearly thinking I'm an asshole." He shakes his head. "And I'm kind of thinking she might be right."

  I look at Luke. He's not conscious, but it feels strange to be talking like this in front of him. "I need a cup of coffee," I say, and Edward follows me down the hall to a family lounge. It is a tired, sad little room with gray walls and no windows. There is a coffeemaker in the corner, and an honor box where you can pay a dollar per cup. There are two couches and a few extra chairs, some ancient magazines, a box of battered toys.

  I brew one of the Keurig singles for Edward while he sinks down on a couch. "Your sister may not realize it, but she needs you."

  "I'm not staying," Edward says immediately. "I'm out of here, as soon as . . ."

  He doesn't finish his sentence. I don't finish it for him.

  "I feel like a fraud. There's a part of me that knows I have to be in that room and talk to his doctors because I'm his son, right, and that's what sons do. But there's another part of me that knows I haven't been his son for a long time and that the last person he'd want to see if he opened his eyes was me."

  The coffee spits out of the machine in one final hiss. I realize I have no idea how Edward takes his coffee. Once, I could have told you any detail about this boy of mine--where the scar on the back of his neck came from, where he had birthmarks, which spots of him were ticklish, whether he slept on his back or his stomach. What else do I no longer know about my own child?

  "You came home when I asked," I say simply, handing him the coffee, black. "That was the right thing to do."

  Edward runs his finger around the rim of the paper cup. "Mom," he says. "What if."

  I sit down beside him. "What if what?"

  "You know."

  Hope and reality lie in inverse proportions, inside the walls of a hospital. Edward doesn't have to spell out what he's talking about; it's what I've worked so hard to keep from allowing myself to think. Doubt is like dye. Once it spreads into the fabric of excuses you've woven, you'll never get rid of the stain.

  There is a lot I'd like to say to Edward. That this isn't fair; that this isn't right. After all Luke's done, all those times he could have died of hypothermia or an attack from a wild animal or a hundred other horrific natural disasters, it seems humiliating to think of him being felled by something as mundane as a car accident.

  But instead I say, "Let's not talk about that yet."

  "I'm out of my league here, Ma."

  "Anyone would be." I rub my temples. "Just keep gathering the information the doctors give you. So that when Cara