Chapter 5
Damn you, Henry! I thought to myself as I lay in bed that night.
I loved the old man deeply, but he often frustrated me no end. He hadn’t given me an answer. Once again, he’d given me a riddle: I was the wolf. What the hell did that mean? He didn’t bother to explain.
He hadn’t completely dismissed the possibility that it was all about some weakness of my heart, some lurking, underlying physical condition.
But the ER doc had assured me that mild arrhythmia wasn’t a critical situation, or particularly unusual.
And Henry hadn’t seemed too concerned about this possibility either.
It was the “me as wolf” thing that he seemed to lean on most. As I stared up at the ceiling above the bed I share with Rainy, that’s what my unsettled mind kept picking at. I was the wolf?
“If you tell me your heart’s galloping again,” Rainy said in the dark beside me, “I’m taking you back to the emergency room.”
“It’s not my heart. It’s Henry.”
“Ah,” she said in understanding. “You are the wolf.”
“Am I? Do you have any idea what that means?”
Slowly, she slid upright, her back against our headboard, drew her knees to her chest, and hugged them. She didn’t answer immediately. She’s full-blood Anishinaabe and like her great-uncle, Henry Meloux, she often takes a good deal of time to think before responding.
I finally sat up, too. “Well?”
“You do sometimes chew on your own heart,” she eventually offered.
I stared at her. Our room was lit by the light of a waxing moon, and I could see her face clearly. She could see mine as well and that I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
“Look, when I was in college,” she said gently, “I read a poem by Stephen Crane, the guy who wrote The Red Badge of Courage. The poem is about a man eating his own heart. He’s asked if it’s good, and he replies something like ‘It’s bitter, but I like it, because it’s bitter and because it is my heart. ’ ”
“And that means what?”
“Well, I think it means that some folks are harder on themselves than others. They chew on themselves, their hearts, wondering if they’re good enough people.”
“And you think that’s me?”
“You do hold yourself to some pretty high standards.”
“That’s a bad thing?”
“I think it can keep you from forgiving yourself.”
“I’m a Scorpio. I have trouble with forgiveness, period. That tail is always poised to strike.”
“Keep your voice down,” she cautioned. “We don’t want to wake everybody.”
I threw the covers off and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll be fine.”
“Cork—”
“I’ll be fine. Really. Go back to sleep.”
I put on my robe, went downstairs, and into the kitchen.
I stood at the counter, staring over the sink at the night outside, where everything looked coated in ice because of the silver moonlight.
I closed my eyes and tried to feel my heart.
I sensed nothing but the usual slow beat behind the cage of my ribs.
I didn’t feel like it was being fattened so that some monstrous beast could feed on it.
I turned on the light, pulled a carton of milk from the fridge, filled a tumbler, and took a snickerdoodle from the cookie jar.
I sat alone at the kitchen table. Our cookie jar is shaped in the image of Ernie from Sesame Street.
We’ve had it forever. Ernie wears this enigmatic smile that, like the one on the face of the Mona Lisa, can be interpreted in many ways.
“Am I the monster, Ernie?” I asked.
I do this sometimes, talk to Ernie. The look I get in response always depends on my own state of mind, I suppose.
Like Henry, he was silent for a long time.
“I don’t think so” came the reply.
But it didn’t come from Ernie. Rose stepped into the kitchen. She wore a red chenille robe and red slippers, and her hair was a little wild on one side, probably from where her head had lain on her pillow.
“Okay if I join you?” she asked.
“Be my guest.”
She took a cookie as well, replaced the lid, which was Ernie’s head, gave that head a friendly, familiar pat, then joined me at the table.
“Last cookie,” she said. “I’ll make some chocolate chip tomorrow.” She took a bite and studied Ernie. “I used to talk to him, too,” she confessed. “Do you remember when you got him?”
“Of course. A Christmas present from you to the family when the kids were little.”
“Stephen was five and loved Sesame Street,” she said.
“What I didn’t know when I bought Ernie was that I was bringing a friend into the house, maybe the best kind of friend, one who only listened and didn’t offer advice.
” She took another bite of her cookie and eyed our little ceramic companion. “Tonight, he seems sympathetic.”
Which, I understood, was a reflection of Rose’s state of mind. In my experience, she was always sympathetic, maybe had the best heart of anyone I knew.
“It must be troubling,” she said. “This wolf thing.”
“Henry was no help.”
“Maybe he was, but you just don’t understand yet in what way. You told me once that sometimes Henry’s wisdom is like a boomerang. He throws it out there, and it seems to be gone, then suddenly it comes back and hits you.”
“I said that?”
“More than once.”
I sipped my milk and knew she was right. But that didn’t make things any easier at the moment. I was still totally confused. Rose pointed out that I had a mustache of milk on my lip. I wiped it away with the back of my hand.
“I don’t know what we’d have done without you all those years,” I said.
“You and Jo would have muddled through. I always felt like I was the one who was blessed. I didn’t think I’d ever have children of my own, and helping to raise Jenny and Annie and Stephen was a joy.
” She took another bite of her cookie and looked again at Ernie.
“But I was lonely, too. As a woman, I mean. Don’t we all want to be loved?
Then Mal came into my life, and little Luke.
And I feel as if God has graced me in more ways than I can say.
” She reached out and put her hand softly over mine.
“This family has suffered terrible loss. Jo and Annie. I know you’re dead set on this trip into the Boundary Waters, Cork.
I’m praying that we don’t lose you, too. ”
Obviously, they didn’t lose me. I’m here, telling you this story. But that didn’t mean what was to follow would be free from tragedy. In the end, the wolf was destined to feed.