Tell the Wolves I'm Home

“‘Quiet. Both of you,’ my father said. ‘This is hard enough for your mother.’

It’s hard for me too, I thought, but I didn’t say it. I kept quiet, knowing that the sadness I was feeling was the wrong kind of sadness for a niece. Knowing that Finn wasn’t really mine to be that kind of sad over. Now that he was dead, he belonged to my mother and my grandmother. They were the ones people felt bad for even though it seemed like neither of them were even that close to him. To everyone at Finn’s funeral, I was just the niece. I stared out the car window and understood that I was in a place where nobody knew my heart even a little bit. Nobody had any idea how many minutes of each day I spent thinking about Finn.”

Jealousy in Triangled Relationships is evident early in the novel. At Finn’s funeral, June feels slighted, as she perceives that others do not regard her grief over Finn to be as significant as her mother’s and grandmother’s. She is left out of this triangle in a way that hurts her and will wrestle with the intensity and nature of her feelings for Finn throughout the narrative.

“I didn’t want to think about how Finn got AIDS. It wasn’t my job to think about that. If that guy was really the one who killed Finn, then he must have been Finn’s boyfriend, and if he was Finn’s boyfriend, then why didn’t I know anything about him?”

June cannot reconcile the anger her parents hold toward Toby with the love she knows her mother has for Finn. Because she trusts Finn unquestionably, June is certain that Toby can also be trusted. Still, that Finn has kept Toby a secret from her hurts June and makes her jealous. In the months following Finn’s death, June will begin to unravel some of the secrets about his life.

“None of us could take our eyes off the portrait. My mother put her arms around our waists and eased in between us. I soaked in every brushstroke, every shading of color, every angle and line in that painting. I could feel them wanting to dive into that canvas.”

That Finn is a talented artist becomes increasingly evident as the novel unfolds. The Tell the Wolves I’m Home painting is instantly a means for June to attempt to hold on to Finn, to cling to him through his final endeavor. Even Greta, who insists that she is disturbed by the painting, appears to feel otherwise in this scene; she will later visit the painting at the bank multiple times, like June.

“‘I don’t know, just sometimes…sometimes I think about things like that. What it used to be like.’

I almost told her that it could be like that again. That if she stopped being so mean we could go back to being like we used to be. But I didn’t say it. I wasn’t sure it was true.

So instead I said, ‘Maybe we could try to go there sometime.’

‘Yeah. We could, couldn’t we?’ And right in my belly I felt how much I’d been missing her. The real Greta. The old Greta.”

June’s relationship with Greta has grown distant, and June isn’t sure it can be repaired due to Greta’s treatment of her. As June cares for Greta while she’s drunk, Greta’s words here suggest that she also misses their closeness, and June later learns that Greta feels jealous and left out of the connection that June has with Finn. With Finn gone, the opportunity arises for Greta to rekindle their connection.

“In this sketch, Finn had colored in the negative space, and I saw that it made a shape like looked like a dog’s head. Or no—of course, it was a wolf’s head, tilted up, mouth open and howling. It wasn’t obvious or anything. Negative space was kind of like constellations. The kind of thing that had to be brought to your attention. But the way Finn did it was so skillful. […] So exactly the kind of thing Finn would think of. I touched my finger to the rough pencil lines, and I wished I could let Finn know that I saw what he’d done. That I knew he’d put that secret animal right between Greta and me.”

The hidden image of the wolf speaks to the painting’s title, bringing meaning to an otherwise disparate title. June’s ability to detect the subtleties of Finn’s work makes her feel closer to him, as if these hidden details are for her alone to recognize.

“But the sadness stayed with me. Not only sadness because I wasn’t part of Toby and Finn’s world but also because there were things about Finn that weren’t Finn at all. Now my memory of Finn making the butterfly in the restaurant was all wrong. What if everything I loved about Finn had really come from Toby? Maybe that’s why I felt like I’d known Toby for years and years. Maybe all along Toby had been shining right through Finn.”

As June gets to know Toby better, she becomes frustrated by the aspects of his life that overlap with Finn’s. She views this as an intrusion on her memories of Finn and also a violation of her relationship with Finn, fearing that everything meaningful that was shared between just the two of them could actually be shared between Toby and Finn as well. Her words speak directly to the theme of Jealousy in Triangular Relationships.

“I couldn’t imagine what I would ever need Toby to do for me. I couldn’t imagine that at all.”

Initially, June has no expectation to become friends with Toby, let alone close to him. Her words here are an ironic foreshadowing of the novel’s ending.

“And right then she reminded me of the Greta she used to be. The nine-year-old Greta who would stand waiting for the bus with her arm around seven-year-old me. The Elbus girls. That’s what people called us. Like we didn’t even need separate names. Like we were one solid, unbreakable thing.”

June longs for the renewal of the connection she once had to Greta, even more so now that Finn is gone. The novel provides brief moments of hope that suggest it is indeed possible for them to return to their past selves.

“My mother looked back and forth between Greta and me. She breathed out a long slow sigh. I wanted so much to say something my mother wanted to hear, because then maybe, just maybe, she would somehow turn back into the mother who would never force someone to choose between his boyfriend and his sister.”

June’s mother desperately wants June and Greta to renew the close connection they once had. Their disconnect is reminiscent of the dissent between Danielle and her own sibling, Finn. Here, June hints at the way in which the triangular dynamic causes characters to feel they must choose one member of the triangle over the other and cannot, instead, maintain a strong relationship with both characters individually.

“And right then I felt my heart soften to Toby, because I knew exactly what he meant. I understood how just about anything in the world could remind you of Finn. Trains, or New York City, or plants, or books, or soft sweet black-and-white cookies, or some guy in Central Park playing a polka on the harmonica and the violin at the same time. Things you’d never even seen with Finn could remind you of him, because he was the person you’d want to show. ‘Look at that,’ you’d want to say, because you knew he would find a way to think it was wonderful.”

With time, June comes to identify the traits Toby possesses that drew Finn to him. She recognizes that he feels as she did about Finn, understanding Finn’s uniqueness and wanting his love in return. As they spend time together, the triangular relationship shifts, and a true friendship develops between June and Toby.

“I held the thumbtack in my hand and poked it into my index finger, squeezing until a drop of blood sat there like a tiny jewel. I read Finn’s note one more time, then pressed my finger down hard right in the middle of it.

Finn was right. Toby had nobody. But it was okay. It was all sealed. He had me now.”

The blood promise that June makes commits her to carrying out Finn’s request to care for Toby. She remains committed to this promise, quite literally caring for Toby as he dies. The notion of blood links the reference to The Damaging Effects of Stigma and Misinformation, as blood is a means by which AIDS is transmitted.

“I understood right then that I would never know the real story of Toby’s life. There was no other time. Everything between Toby and me was in the here and now. That’s all there was. The here and now and Finn. No other history, just scraps and the next few months. And, you know, there was something perfect about that. It meant that everything could be put right. Everything could be new and exactly how it should be.”

June habitually longs for the past, whether this manifests itself in her love of the Middle Ages or in her longing to have Finn be alive again. Because Toby, too, will inevitably die, June recognizes that there is no future for him and that their friendship is fleeting. This makes it somehow not so risky or dangerous.

“‘That’s why Finn painted the portrait, you know,’ [Toby] said after a while. ‘He had this idea that if he painted you [and Greta] together like that then you’d always be connected. I don’t know exactly what he was thinking. He wanted to do something because of how things ended up between him and your mother.’”

That Finn was saddened by the rift between himself and his sister is significant because it parallels June’s sadness at the loss of the closeness to her sister. Though Greta insists that Finn’s motivation for the painting is his connection to June, Toby’s words suggest otherwise, indicating that Greta truly had no need to feel jealous of the bond between Finn and June.

“And then I thought something terrible. I thought that if Finn were still alive, Toby and I wouldn’t be friends at all. If Finn hadn’t caught AIDS, I would never even have met Toby. That strange and awful thought swirled around in my buzzy head. Then something else occurred to me. What if it was AIDS that made Finn settle down? What if even before he knew he had it, AIDS was making him slower, pulling him back to his family, making him choose to be my godfather? It was possible that without AIDS I would never have gotten to know Finn or Toby. There would be a big hole filled with nothing in place of all those hours and days I’d spent with them. If I could time-travel, could I be selfless enough to stop Finn from getting AIDS? Even if it meant I would never have him as my friend? I didn’t know. I had no idea how greedy my heart really was.”

As June works through her grief over the loss of Finn, she must also reconcile what she has learned about Finn’s past and the parts of Finn’s inner world she was not privy to. Meeting and befriending Toby makes her realize that Finn’s world was larger than just the time he spent with her, and this—in connection with the novel’s theme of jealousy—is challenging for June to accept at times.

“The note meant two things. The first, the good one, was that Finn cared. That he loved me enough to make sure Toby looked out for me. But the second thing it meant was that the only reason Toby had spent all that time with me was because of Finn. Because Finn asked him to. It had nothing to do with me. Greta was right. As usual, she had it all figured out.”

Ironically, Finn instructs both Toby and June to take care of one another upon his death. In this way, Finn viewed himself as a key element in both of their lives. Still, June is often insecure, uncertain that Toby likes her for who she is.

“I leaned into the painting. I wanted to see Greta’s brushstrokes. I wanted to see them up close. I knew she must have seen what I’d done to our hair. That’s what hit me then. In real life, Greta had been avoiding me as much as she could. She barely said a word to me since that day she found my stuff. But here it was almost like we were talking. Like a secret language. The portrait of us holding all the words we never said anymore.”

In keeping with the theme of The Power of Secrets, this passage references one of the main secrets of the novel: the alterations Greta and June make to the painting. Their actions are not done out of malice but as a means, symbolically, of connecting with the other. It is through this shared secret that Greta and June are ultimately able to reconnect.

“[Greta] rubbed her index finger over each of my fingernails, then she tapped her own and smiled. ‘I like the gold,’ she whispered.

For a second I didn’t understand, but then I did, and it felt strange and explosive to have her mention what we’d done to the portrait right at the kitchen table. I gave her a little smile back, and after a while I whispered, ‘I’m glad,’ and right then, right at that moment, I felt the wall between the world of secrets and the real world start to collapse. I felt the girls from the portrait become us and us becoming them.”

Greta and June’s acknowledgement of the alterations of the painting is a first step toward repairing their friendship. It foreshadows the conversation the sisters will have later that night when they are finally able to talk in a meaningful way about the divide between them. In this way, the portrait has arguably accomplished what Finn intended it to do, just not in the way he expected it to.

“‘Promise,’ [Greta] said again, and this time she squeezed my hand so hard it hurt. So tight it was like it was the only thing saving me from falling. ‘Promise?’

She didn’t let go until I gave a little nod. ‘Okay, I promise,’ I whispered.

Greta stood to leave. She got as far as the doorway, then turned. She didn’t look at me.

‘Toby, he has nobody, right? Right, June? Well, who do you think I have?’”

Though June is determined to take care of Toby, she frequently resents having to take care of Greta. Greta’s words, however, make clear to June that Greta is not a part of a relationship where care is exchanged. Since Toby dies, June’s focus will shift back to Greta.

“After the intermission, I watched Greta do ‘Happy Talk,’ clicking her fingers together like her hands were having a cute little chitchat, and I could feel myself getting angry. It felt like a tightening all through my body. When I looked down, I saw my own hands clenched. Greta thought she could do whatever she wanted, get drunk as anything, and I’d be there to carry her home. She thought after everything she’d done, ruining all my Finn stuff, making me look stupid again and again, that she could rely on me. Well, she couldn’t. This time she’d find that out. I wouldn’t be there to rescue her, and that was that.”

June resents Greta’s assumption that June will care for her. June’s anger toward Greta is fueled by Greta’s cruel actions, including destroying June’s reminders of Finn. Importantly, Greta never causes June to be in trouble with their parents, though this is the intent June expects from Greta’s behavior.

“‘I thought if Finn…if he was dying, then maybe we would go back to how we used to be. How evil is that? How totally evil am I?’ Greta pulled the covers over her head.

‘But you hate me.’

Greta huffed. ‘You’re so, so lucky, June. Why are you so lucky? Look at me.’ She peeked out from the cover, talking through tears. ‘All these years I watched you and Finn. And then you and Toby. How could you do that? How could you possibly choose Toby over me?’”

Here, Greta reveals the jealous feelings she harbored toward Finn because of his close connection to June. Greta sees there being no place for her in the friendship between her sister and uncle and views herself as alone, now that Toby has replaced Finn. Greta is unable to see that her own actions have contributed to the distance between herself and June.

“Then we both started cracking up. We laughed until Greta fell right out of the bed. And then she kept laughing on the floor. I couldn’t even remember the last time we laughed together like that, and I knew that it meant my sister was starting to come back. That somehow Toby had gone out into the woods and brought back Greta for me. He’d brought me back my sister.”

As Greta tells the truth about her jealousy of Finn’s closeness to June—revealing that her motivation for treating June cruelly was not actually a dislike of June—the sisters are able to make amends. The novel ends on an optimistic note, suggesting that the former closeness between Greta and June will be restored.

“Later in the afternoon, the two of us sat on the couch, staring at the portrait.

‘Don’t tell Mom, but I kind of like it,’ Greta whispered.

I nodded. ‘Me too.’

The gold in our hair looked so perfect right then, and I knew we both saw it. We could see the way it made us look like the closest sisters. Girls made of exactly the same stuff.”

Ultimately, Finn’s goal of keeping the bond between June and Greta strong is accomplished via the painting, though likely not in a manner he expected. The painting’s significance, then, is not as a work of art in and of itself—valuable because of Finn’s reputation as a painter—but because it was done out of love by Finn for both girls. Their mother will come to recognize this, as evident when she also adds to the painting.

“That night, Greta drove. We waited until after midnight, after our parents would be sound asleep. I wasn’t worried about getting into trouble. There was no bigger trouble left to get into. And Toby had nobody. In his world, I, June Elbus, was it, and I was going to put everything right. I was going to undo all the mess I’d gotten him into.”

After June avoids punishment for spending time with Toby—and because the “damage” to the painting has been discovered—June no longer has anything to lose. Spending time with Toby is no longer a risk, so she places Toby’s needs first, conveying to him that he is not alone and that she truly cares for him.