History of Wolves(22)

Patra didn’t look at all like herself. Her lips were pink as earthworms under rocks, wrinkling up under lipstick. Blush glittered on her cheeks, giving her the look of the Karens, of girls despising themselves in mirrors—scratching open pimples, then sealing up the wounds with foundation. She looked both older and younger at once. A kid dressing up, or a middle-aged lady trying too hard to look young.

“Listen,” she went on. “I didn’t have your mom’s number. I went through the whole house this morning, but couldn’t remember where I wrote it down. The thing is Leo’s coming today. Paul and I were planning to meet his plane in Duluth. We were going to drive there together, but Paul’s—”

“But Paul’s—” I wanted to help her out. I wanted, by instinct, to finish the sentences that gave her trouble. To ease her load, to do her dirty work. “Paul’s—”

“Fine. He’s sleeping in. He’s actually still at home—”

“Alone?” That made her eyes change, a gleam coming over them.

“Come with me,” she begged. “Just for the day. Just while I’m away, stay with him.”

I had a take-home trig test to finish, a big blowndown branch I’d promised to chop up. My dad was on the lake even now catching walleye I would need to clean before nightfall. I knew, though, that I’d do what Patra asked. Here she was, after all, gripping the wheel of her car so tight her veins popped up in her hands. From the corner of my eye, I could see my mother coming around the hilltop path where she’d been hanging laundry. I told Patra, “Hold on.”

“I can come in, talk to your mom.” She turned off the engine, started to open the door. I could hear the dogs’ chains rumbling across the dirt, the flap-flap of the tarp on the front door in the wind.

“Hold on!” I told her. I must have yelled, because she put two hands up. In surrender.

“Okay.”

I saw my mother squint over at the car, once, before she went inside.

I followed her in.


*


The sunlit room swirled with sooty dust. My mother was folding laundry on the kitchen table, a great pile of sun-crisp clothes in a crazy jumble. “That the girl from across the lake? The one you’ve been spending so much time with?” She had a proppedup look on her face, hopeful and suspicious both. Her long dark hair latched to the staticky sheets as she folded rectangles in half, then in half again.

“Yeah.”

She nodded, not meeting my eyes. For years she’d said she wanted me to be more like other kids my age. She’d always told my dad that she wanted me to spend less time on the shed, have more regular girl experiences. So here I was, satisfying her. She said: “She’s nice then?” But she meant: She’s not from around here, right? Because at the same time, I think, my mother always wanted me to have loftier ambitions than the local girls, to be just a little superior to them.

“Yeah.”

“Good. Then have fun.” She went to the shelf over the sink, opened an old mason jar, fingered four crumpled dollar bills from her stash. She wrinkled her nose at me when I waved her away. “I’m serious.”

“Mom—” The bills felt soft as cloth in my hand. They didn’t feel like money.

“It’s important.” She was smiling knowingly now.

I had a flutter in the back of my throat. A warning. “What is?”

“Having a little adventure.”

“Mom.” I didn’t like how she put that. Like she knew what I was up to when she didn’t, and wouldn’t ask. Like I’d run off to the casino, get high, go off the rails on her four fucking dollars. Like she wanted me to. “I’m just telling you I’ll do the fish tomorrow, okay? I’m telling you to tell Dad, all right?”

She tossed me my blue flannel from her pile, still warm from the sun, still smelling of detergent and cedar. “Go.” She went back to folding. “I’m not going to pry. I’m not going to ask you what she’s doing up here alone with that kid. On one long vacation. Go on and be free.”


In the car, Patra drove with one foot on the gas pedal and one foot on the brake. The whole car shuddered as it ground through gears, then shot forward in rapid bursts. She was trying to rub a spot off her skirt as she drove, and she was listing more instructions than usual: give him two glasses of water before he eats, four crackers at three, tuna on toast at five. I listened but didn’t reply. I was busy thinking about the bills in my pocket, about the mason jar of money on the shelf above the sink. I was thinking about the fishing lures we’d made to sell but never did, the jars of jam we’d filled to peddle at the diner on weekends, the clothes my mother folded that were made from other clothes.

When I stayed silent, Patra’s eyes flicked over to me then back to the road.

“This okay with your mom?”

“Is Patra your real name?” I felt like accusing her of something. I don’t know why. I was suddenly angry at her niceness. And I was angry at the skirt beneath the spot she was rubbing with her finger, at its byzantine floweriness.

She was surprised. “No, actually. I’m Cleopatra, my whole life Cleo for short. Why?”

I snuck a peek at her. One black beaded earring lay flattened across her cheek like a slug. “No reason.”

“After I met Leo, I changed it. Who could be named Leo and Cleo?” She sounded defensive. “In what world would that work?”