The Wolf and the Book

Trigger Warning: Substance abuse, abuse.

It was a dreary Sunday in March. A day full of grey and minutes that zigged instead of zagged. Nix could feel the weight of this Sunday pressing her down, pinning her soul making a shadow that pooled at her feet. Her shadow had weight, this she could feel. This shadow wanted to be free of the weight of this particular Sunday. Or for Nix to sink within to their hiding place she spent so many Sundays hiding from the Wolf.

But this Sunday had more weight than most. The figure the Wolf called her mother was to be honored today in a ceremony of life. This meant she had passed away in that far away place Nix imagined to be beautiful, endless blue water and white sandy beaches filled with warmth and laughter. Hawaii, the island of this said mother's dreams. Nix did not remember her as a mother. More of a shadow that smelled of lavender and spent days migrating from one perch to the next with a worn copy of Children in the Attic.

Nix had no emotion to spend on today. Today was the day her favorite author released her new book. This was a joyous day that would give her the tools to survive at least two more weeks of living with the Wolf.

Though it be unfair, this had to wait for the sidequest of the ceremony to play out its cards.

The weight she could not carry was not lost on the Wolf. He huffed and he puffed as he chased a fifth of Southern Comfort down. And when she thought for sure he had nothing left to puff with, he smoked a pack of Pall Mall unfiltered leaving a trail of smoke as he paced the living room rug.

"You will wear the black dress," the Wolf said without looking at her. His voice had that thickness to it. The Southern Comfort thickness. Not slurred, the Wolf did not slur. Just thick like the words had to crawl through something spoiled to get out.

Nix nodded. She had already planned on the black dress. Not because the Wolf told her to but because it was the fastest thing to put on and take off and the faster this day ended the faster she could get to the bookstore.

The ceremony was at two. The bookstore closed at seven.

The Wolf wanted the day over too. This they had in common, this one thing that looked like agreement but was not agreement. The Wolf wanted the ceremony done so the bottles could breathe in the open. So the sad face could come off and the real face could drink and drink and drink.

He did not grieve her. He grieved the leash he had lost. Nix understood this the way children understand gravity. Not through lessons but through falling.

The drive to the church was quiet the way a held breath is quiet. The Wolf drove with one hand and held a cigarette with the other and the smoke curled out through the cracked window like something trying to leave. Nix watched it go and wished she could follow.

The church was small and white and full of people Nix did not know. They looked at the Wolf with those pitying eyes that did not know what they were pitying. They knew the costume. The sad man left behind. He shook hands and said "thank you for coming" and said it again and again until the words went hollow.

Nix sat in the second row because the Wolf told her to. She looked at the program they handed her at the door. Her mother's name in a font trying too hard. Beneath it, two dates. The whole of a life between two small numbers.

A woman spoke at the podium about kindness and light. Nix counted the ceiling tiles. There were forty-seven. The Wolf cried during the hymn. Someone placed a hand on his shoulder and he covered it with his own and this was the performance, this was the Wolf at his finest. Nix thought about the book. The crack of a new spine and the smell of ink and paper. Other people had words for this feeling. Safety, maybe. Nix just knew it as the only quiet place left.

After the ceremony came the gathering. People filled the house and their voices stacked on top of each other and the noise pressed at Nix from every direction. She made herself small. She was good at this, the making of herself into nothing.

The clock read four thirty. Two and a half hours.

The Wolf found his rhythm the way he always did. A glass in one hand and stories in the other, stories about the shadow woman that smelled of invention. The people ate them whole. They fed him back with pity and he grew fat on it, glass after glass, "she was lucky to have you" after "she was lucky to have you."

Nix slipped out the back door at five fifteen. The air had teeth to it, cold and March-sharp. She walked the six blocks to the bookstore with her hands deep in her coat pockets and her breath making small ghosts that disappeared before they could become anything.

The bookstore smelled the way it was supposed to smell. Warm and bright and full of the nothing that is actually everything. The book sat on the display table near the front. She picked it up and held it close. This was two weeks. Maybe three if she rationed the chapters. Someone else's world while the Wolf filled the house with smoke and the stink of his particular brand of victory.

She paid with coins from a sock beneath her mattress. The woman at the register smiled and said "good choice" and Nix almost smiled back.

The walk home was slower. She held the book against her chest like armor even though nothing could stop what was coming, only delay it. The Wolf would be deep in his cups by now. He would not notice the light under her door. A Wolf well fed does not hunt.

It had given them both what they wanted. His tasted like Southern Comfort and sounded like laughter too loud and too empty. Hers tasted like ink and paper and silence.

The Wolf wanted the day to end so he could stop pretending to be sad.

Nix wanted the day to end so she could stop pretending to be brave.