Lone Wolf

Joe faces me. “Did you and your father ever have a conversation about what he’d want to do if he became incapacitated, Edward?”

“Yes,” I say. “Once.”

“Can you tell us about it?”

“When I was fifteen, my father decided to go into the forests of Quebec and try to live with wild wolves. No one had ever done anything like it before. Biologists had tracked wolf corridors along the St. Lawrence River, so he figured he would try to intercept them, and then infiltrate a pack. He’d gotten a few captive packs earlier in his career to accept him, and this was a natural extension, he thought. But it also meant living on his own during a Canadian winter without any shelter or food.”

“Was your father concerned about his welfare?”

“No. He was just doing what he felt like he had to do-for him, it really was a calling. My mom didn’t see it quite the same way. She felt like he was running out on her and leaving her with two kids. She was certain he was going to die. She thought it was irresponsible and insane, and that he’d come to his senses and decide to stay home, where he belonged… except he didn’t.”

My mother is stone-still in her seat in the front row, her eyes cast down onto her lap. Her hands are clenched together. “The night before he left, my father called me into his office. He had two glasses and a bottle of whisky on his desk, and he told me I should have a drink, because I was going to be the man of the house now.”

The alcohol feels like fire; I cough and my eyes water and I think I might die right there, but he pats my back and tells me to breathe. I wipe my face with the bottom of my shirt and swear that I will never, in a million years, drink that crap again. When my vision clears, I notice something on the desk that wasn’t there before. It’s a piece of paper.

“Do you recognize this document?” Joe asks.

And there it is again, wrinkled and torn at one edge, the letter I found wedged in the file cabinet. He enters it into evidence and then asks me to read it out loud. I do, but it’s my father’s voice I hear in my head.

And then, my own reply: What if I make the wrong choice?

“Is that your signature at the bottom of the page?” Joe asks.

“Yes.”

“And is that your father’s signature?”

“Yes.”

“In the past nine years did your father ever advise you that he was revoking this medical power of attorney?”

“Objection!” Cara’s lawyer stands up. “This note isn’t a valid legal medical power of attorney.”

“Overruled,” the judge mutters. He tears at his hair again. It’s a wonder he’s not bald by now, actually.

In some parallel universe, Cara and I would laugh over that.

“We never talked about it again. And one day, he came home from Quebec, and that was that.”

“When did you remember this contract?”

“When I was going through his papers at his home a few days ago, trying to find the number of the caretaker who stays with the wolves up at Redmond’s. It was caught in the back of a file cabinet.”

“When you were going through your father’s papers,” Joe says, “did you find any other powers of attorney?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“How about a will? Or an insurance policy?”

“No will,” I reply, “but I did find an insurance policy.”

“Can you tell the court who was the beneficiary of his insurance, in the unfortunate circumstance of his death?”

“My sister,” I say. “Cara.”

Her jaw drops, and I realize this is something my father never told her.

“Were you a beneficiary, too?”

“No.”

When I’d found the policy, in a file with the title to his truck and his passport, I had read it from cover to cover. I’d played the mind game, wondering if he’d taken me off the policy after I left, or if he’d only purchased the plan once I was gone.

“Were you surprised?”

“Not really.”

“Were you angry?”

I lift my chin. “I’ve been making my own way for six years. I don’t need his money.”

“So this whole initiative you’ve undertaken to become your father’s guardian and make a decision about his future medical care-it isn’t motivated by any pecuniary gain?”

“I won’t get a cent from my father’s death, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Edward,” Joe says, “what do you think your father would want to happen now?”

“Objection,” Zirconia Notch argues. “It’s a personal opinion.”

“That’s true, Counselor,” the judge agrees, “but it’s also what I need to hear.”

I take a deep breath. “I’ve talked to the doctors and I’ve asked a hundred questions. I know my father’s not coming back. He used to tell me about sick wolves, which would just start starving themselves because they knew they were dragging the pack behind, and they’d stay on the outskirts until they got weak enough to lie down and die. Not because they didn’t want to live, or get well again, but because, in this condition, they were putting everyone they loved at a disadvantage. My dad would be the first to tell you he thinks like a wolf. And a wolf would put the pack above everything else.”

When I’m brave enough to look at Cara, it feels like I’ve been run through with a sword. Her eyes are swimming, her shoulders are shaking with the effort to hold herself together. “I’m sorry, Cara,” I say directly to her. “I love him, too. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. And I wish I could tell you he’ll get better, but he won’t. He’d tell you that it’s his time. That for the family to move on, he has to go.”

“That’s not true,” Cara bites out. “None of it. He wouldn’t leave me behind. And you don’t love him. You never did.”

“Ms. Notch, control your client,” the judge says.

“Cara,” her lawyer murmurs, “we’ll have our turn.”

Joe faces me. “Your sister clearly has a different opinion. Why is that?”

“Because she feels guilty. She was in the accident, too. She’s better, and he’s not. I’m not saying it’s her fault- just that she’s too close to the situation to be able to make a decision.”

“Some might say you were too far away to make a decision,” Joe counters.

I nod. “I know. But there’s one thing I’ve realized since I’ve been here. You think, when you leave, that everything stops. That the world is frozen and waiting for you. But nothing stands still. Buildings get torn down. People get into accidents. Little girls grow up.” I turn to Cara. “When you were little, you used to go to the town pool in the summer and do belly flops off the diving board. You wanted me to grade you, like they did at the Olympics. Half the time I was busy reading and I’d just make up a number, and if it was too low, you’d beg me for an instant replay. The thing is, when you get older, there are no instant replays. You either get it right or you screw it up and you have to live with what you’ve done. I hadn’t seen my father in six years and I always thought that, eventually, we’d talk. I thought he’d say he was sorry or maybe I would, but it would be like those Hallmark movies where everything gets tied up nice and neat in the end. I can’t get back those six years, yet at any moment I could have been the one to pick up the phone and call my father and say, Hi, it’s me.” I reach into my pocket, feel that slip of fortune. “He trusted me once, when I was fifteen. I want him to know that, no matter what, even though I left, he can still trust me. I want him to know I’m sorry things worked out the way they did between us. I may never get a chance to tell him that to his face. This is the only way I know how.”

Suddenly I remember what happened afterward in his office, when I signed the contract. The pen rolled out of my hand as if it had burned my fingers. My father picked up the whisky I’d left in my glass and drained it. You, he said, are an old soul. You’ll do better at this than I ever did.

I held on to that compliment, that treasure, the way an oyster cradles a pearl, completely forgetting the pain that made it possible.