Wolf at the table, p.1
Wolf at the Table, page 1
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2024 by Adam Rapp
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Book interior design by Marie Mundaca
ISBN 978-0-316-43429-4
LCCN 2023952188
E3-20240208-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Americana
PART ONE 1
2
3
4
5
6
PART TWO 7
8
9
PART THREE 10
11
12
13
14
15
PART FOUR 16
17
18
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Adam Rapp
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
Family
AMERICANA
All the houses are red or green,
with bright yellow roofs.
Birds sing full-throated
in the fruit-laden trees.
Shiny cars line the streets.
But when the sea of night
rolls in from the east
to cover the continent,
over the foothills and factories
and the deep rivers
overflowing with rain,
the men and women
sitting in hot rooms
with tightly drawn drapes
turn off their televisions
and pull down the sheets
and lie side by side in silence
wondering who will save them
from death, and why, and what
it is they’re waiting for
if not that, even as an ark,
white as moonlight,
crosses the horizon carrying
the people who escaped a flood
in some distant town.
—Nicholas Christopher
PART ONE
1
ELMIRA, NEW YORK
AUGUST 19, 1951
MYRA LEE
ON A STIFLINGLY HOT early Sunday evening—the third Sunday of August—a young girl in a red-and-white gingham dress sits in the corner booth of Kylie’s Diner and Bakery in downtown Elmira, New York, reading a novel. Her long dark hair is pulled back and away from her face with a simple white ribbon. Her calves and shins are spotted with calamine lotion, where the region’s mosquitoes, notoriously insatiable at this time of year, have had their way with her. Her eyes are on the gray side of hazel—her pupils brimming with wonder—and she rarely blinks while scanning her author’s sentences, which seem to unspool across and down the page like meticulously arranged, magical black thread.
The reader’s name is Myra Lee Larkin and she is in love with the story’s narrator, a restless, opinionated, at times foulmouthed young man named Holden, who, at sixteen, has just run away from his boarding school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania, a fictional town that Myra imagines being located due south of Elmira, just on the other side of the state line. Holden has been expelled and leaves on a Saturday, after a football game with a rival academy, just before Christmas break, rather than on the following Wednesday, the official beginning of winter recess, when his parents are expecting him. After an awkward visit with the only professor whom he felt obliged to bid farewell, Holden takes a train to New York City. As he peers out the window of the eastern Pennsylvania landscape as his train hurtles toward Manhattan, there is the sense that his life will be forever changed. Myra Lee Larkin briefly peers out the small window beside her booth, hoping that her life will someday include similar adventure.
There are three others seated in the small chromium-trimmed diner. Two booths in front of Myra, an old man looks down at a plate of scrambled eggs as if it will provide a solution to the quandary of his life, while in the booth closest to the entrance sits a plump, overly made-up woman whose hair is arranged like a swirling pastry. At the counter slouches a handsome older blond boy smoking a cigarette and drinking a cup of coffee.
Myra holds the book with her thin, pale hands as if clutching a thing that should never be dropped, so transfixed that she isn’t even aware of the black fly buzzing around her food. She’ll often order a grilled cheese sandwich and a malted milk, which she pays for with her weekly allowance. She can always read up to fifteen or twenty pages during her visit to the diner. Myra tries her best not to read too quickly, but sometimes the words start to tumble and the voice of her narrator gallops in her head as if to overwhelm her and she has to force her eyes away from the page to calm herself.
At thirteen, she is the oldest of the six Larkin children and her mother always grants her this free time after the five o’clock Mass as long as she’s home by seven fifteen sharp to help with her baby brother, Archie. Following the service she makes a beeline west toward the little diner in her white saddle shoes, which, after re-soling, will be handed down to her sister Fiona, who will be twelve in October, only sixteen months younger than Myra but two grades behind her in school. Myra can’t flee the church parking lot fast enough. She even holds her breath so she won’t inhale the gravel dust.
Her mother has no idea that her daughter is reading this purportedly scandalous novel, which has been secreted into a makeshift cardboard slot rigged with duct tape to the underside of the table at this booth. The head waitress, Ethel, with her Jean Kent hair and knowing eyes, has become a kind of shepherd to the book’s safekeeping. Last Sunday the corner booth was already occupied by a pair of Irish nuns, who drank cup after cup of coffee, but Ethel made sure to deliver the book to Myra—under the plate containing her usual Grilled Cheese Deluxe—with a conspiratorial wink. Myra always makes sure to tip Ethel at least a quarter.
For the past few weeks, Myra has been composing letters to Holden in her diary. In her looping, careful penmanship she dutifully writes to him about Elmira; about its long winters and insufferable summers and the rotten-egg stink of the Chemung River and her dream of someday going to New York City. She’s even sketched a few pictures for him: her tall mother with her thick nest of black hair and the Larkins’ Siamese cat, Frank, and the bedroom desk where she does her homework (and composes letters to him) and her brother Alec with his crooked bangs and mischievous dark eyes. Myra has never considered herself to be much of an artist, but she likes to draw, and more than that, she likes to share the images of her life with Holden. Although the letters will, of course, never be sent or receive a response, for her they feel as real as anything she’s ever sealed in a stamped envelope and delivered to the post office.
She looks up from her book to find the blond boy from the counter sitting across from her. In the novel, Holden’s train has just pulled into Penn Station and Myra is anxious to know what happens next. She doesn’t want to put the book down but elects to do so out of politeness.
“You gonna eat that?” the boy says, pointing to her grilled cheese sandwich.
Myra hadn’t even noticed him walk over and she’s a little shocked by his sudden proximity. And by his handsomeness. He has light blue eyes and a strong chin and his hair is parted on the side in the style of Montgomery Clift. Myra has never seen this boy before, certainly not at Holy Family Jr. High, at church, or anywhere else in Elmira for that matter. He wears a short-sleeve plaid shirt and tan trousers.
“I’d be happy to help you out,” he offers, still staring at her plate.
She nods and he takes half of the grilled cheese and bites into it. The muscles in his jaws dance and pulse. He breathes noisily through his nose. She pushes her malted milk toward him and he gulps from it. He thanks her and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Unlike other boys his age, who usually have pimples or blemishes where they’ve nicked themselves shaving, his skin is clear.
“What are you reading?” he asks.
Myra shows him the novel’s spine.
“Interesting title,” he says. “What’s it about?”
“This boy who’s running away from his boarding school,” she says. “Well, he actually got kicked out for failing four subjects, but he’s leaving before he’s supposed to. He’s pretty confused but there’s something about him.”
“Everyone’s always running from something,” the boy says. “You live around here?”
“I live over on Maple Avenue,” she says, “which is about a mile and a half from here.”
“I’m not familiar with that part of town,” the boy says. “What’s your name?”
Myra has a momentary instinct to lie and offer one of her sisters’ names but for some reason she can’t. “Myra,” she says, in a voice that sounds strange and far away.
“Pleased to meet you, Myra. I’m Mickey.” He reaches across the table and extends his hand.
She accepts it and they shake in a businesslike manner. His hand is strong and callused and there are little soft blond hairs sprouting along his wrist and forearm. Myra is struck by how safe his hand makes her feel. After retracting hers, she takes a bite out of the other half of the grilled cheese and drinks from the malted milk, just to have something to do.
“I’ll bet you’ve lived in Elmira your whole life,” the boy says. “Ever been anywhere else?”
“I’ve been to the Catskills to visit family,” she says. “Do you travel?”
“Oh, I love traveling,” he says. “I’ve been all over the country. I’ve seen the Grand Canyon, the Mojave Desert, and the Pacific Ocean. I’ve even been to Washington State.”
“Where are you from?”
“I’m originally from a small town in Oklahoma,” he replies, “but I consider myself to be a genuine citizen of the world.”
Ethel appears at the booth. “Your check, honey,” she says. She scribbles on her pad and drops the check on the table. Myra thanks her and opens her pocketbook.
“Yours is over on the counter,” Ethel tells the boy.
“Thank you,” he says.
Ethel stands there, smiling, her arms folded, until he takes the hint, excusing himself and heading back to the counter, where he reaches into his front pocket, produces a few coins, and drops them beside his coffee cup.
“Was he being funny with you?” Ethel quietly asks through the side of her mouth.
“No,” Myra says, “he’s nice.”
The older boy opens the door to exit the diner. “Have a good evening, ladies,” he calls over his shoulder.
A FEW BLOCKS AFTER Myra begins the mile-and-a-half journey home it starts to pour. The crickets were loud on her way into church, and the rain comes as no surprise. The raindrops, as big and round as coins, splat on the sidewalk. Myra shelters under the awning of the Fanny Farmer Candy Store, which is currently closed. She knows she should keep walking or she won’t make it home in time to help her mother with Archie but she stays put, hoping the storm will pass.
Moments later a yellow Chevy Bel Air with whitewall tires and Pennsylvania license plates pulls up beside her. The boy from the diner is at the wheel.
He lowers the window. “Looks like you could use a ride,” he says.
Myra hesitates. Something tightens the bones in her chest. The rain is really coming down now.
“This storm’s only gonna get worse,” the boy says.
The color of his car brings out the blond in his hair. Even in the dim, overcast light his eyes seem so blue.
Myra’s bladder feels weak, as if she could go right there in front of the candy store. “Okay,” she hears herself say. She emerges from under the awning and jogs around to the passenger’s side.
Myra has never gotten this kind of attention from any boy, let alone an older, handsome high school boy. During the seventh grade she would often catch Ralph Namie, a quiet eighth-grader with the unfortunate, unformed face of a scarecrow, staring at her in the cafeteria, but that’s about it. One of her girlfriends, Emily Kerr, has already started messing around with boys. She even talks about going all the way with a high school sophomore named Charles Wilkes. But to Myra that kind of thing still seems a long ways off.
Her new friend drives nonchalantly, with one hand on the wheel and the other in his lap. The Bel Air’s windshield wipers squeal across the glass.
“Where to?” the boy asks.
“Home,” she says, and directs him toward Maple Avenue.
It usually takes her thirty minutes to walk; by car it should take only five or ten. They pass by the houses of Elmira, many of which are thin, two-story, colorless homes jammed together, their flat roofs a bit lopsided. But after a half mile or so they happen upon a series of vast, palatial Victorians with their conical attic dormers and wide lots.
“Are you in high school?” Myra finally asks.
“Me?” the boys replies. “I’m past all that.”
She asks how old he is and he tells her that he’s nineteen. “Are you enrolled in college?” she says.
No, he says, he already has a job.
“Doing what?” she asks.
“I play right field for the New York Yankees,” he says.
“You’re on the Yankees?” Myra practically squawks.
“Scout’s honor,” he says.
She wants to believe him but it just seems so improbable. In the car on the way to church Myra heard about the Yankees’ day game. As the Larkins pulled into the parking lot of St. John the Baptist, the radio announcer was reporting the results.
“Didn’t you have a game today?” she asks.
“We did have a game,” Mickey says. “Got our tails kicked in by the Philadelphia Athletics. Fifteen to one. Right in Yankee Stadium, too, in front of the home crowd. It was downright embarrassing.”
“How did you get up to Elmira so fast?”
“Oh, I’m not with the team right now,” he says.
“Why not?”
“They sent me back down to the minor leagues in July. I fell into a bit of a batting slump so I got demoted. I had to report to their Triple-A affiliate to work the kinks out.”
Myra is simply amazed.
“I love playing the outfield,” he continues. “One of my favorite things to do before a game—before I head into the locker room to put my uniform on—is to take my shoes and socks off and walk barefoot through the grass of Yankee Stadium. They mow it so perfectly and you can feel a softness coming up between your toes. But you can also feel a wildness, too. All the secrets of the earth hidden in the soil.”
Myra imagines him walking through the outfield grass in Yankee Stadium, holding his shoes and socks, the cuffs of his trousers rolled up to his calves.
“I’m s’posed to be in Kansas City but I got a coupla days off so I thought I’d take a drive, clear my head. I love this part of the country.”
Myra directs him to turn left onto Maple Avenue. “It’s only four more blocks,” she says.
They are quiet for the rest of the drive. The rain has thinned but there is a roll of thunder. Myra can’t quite believe she’s getting a ride home from a genuine New York Yankee. Who would believe her? When they arrive at her house the boy pulls the car over on the other side of the street and shifts into park. As the Bel Air idles Myra can feel him looking at her. It’s as if she’s being leered at by an animal and she knows she should be afraid but she feels strangely calm. She’s already late, but not by more than a few minutes. If she were smart she would get out of the car and go inside and help her mother, but she finds herself unwilling to move.
“I like talking to you,” Mickey finally says.
Myra’s cheeks fill with heat.
“Do you like talking to me?” he asks.
“Yes,” she hears herself say.
“Would you like to continue our conversation?” he says.
“Okay,” she replies. “But my mother might come out here if she sees me in your car.”
“Where should we go?” he asks.
She tells him about a nearby park and the boy shifts the car into gear, and five minutes later they enter a large green dotted with trees. He parks under a weeping willow, whose heavy, soaked catkins graze the windshield. After Mickey turns the engine off Myra’s senses sharpen. She can smell the car’s leather upholstery, its rich, nutmeggy calfskin. The cool ozone from the storm slips in through the crack in her window. The rain has settled into a steady simmer.
