Be Safe I Love You (12 page)

Nineteen

D
ARYL GREEN WAS
familiar to Lauren from the minute she met him on base. Green was not a complainer. He was a quiet, respectful and very funny man. The two of them were late to the party, he and Lauren. They’d each spent time Stateside taking courses and they occasionally got shit about it, her more than Daryl. But they weren’t rich kids, weren’t from the Citadel, nobody had pulled any strings for them; that’s just the way it worked because of timing and training and for Lauren twice getting placed with a unit that was rotating back.

It was also about skill. You had a particular aptitude, you got sent to a particular school. She was glad for it. Lauren was an NCO at twenty-one, a fine shot, on track for career if she wanted it, making significantly more money than when she enlisted. And Green could speak Arabic and Farsi.

He was good and sharp and reading every second of downtime he had. By the time she met him he was on his second tour, had subscriptions to
Dissent, The Nation, Counterpunch, Foreign Affairs,
and was talking about
moving to Canada
to live with his wife’s family, getting a good job up north and then applying to law school when he got out. He was a far cry from the good old boy his parents had raised, but the accent and the love of guns remained.

It was the surge that changed things for Daryl. And it was the surge that he talked about, sometimes all he could talk about during their long nights on the FOB. Listening to him break things down was refreshing. She had no arguments with his ideas and kept the things he said to herself. He was glad to be there at Garryowen. Creeping the streets of someone else’s destroyed city was not a thing he wanted to do. Getting out and going after the people who came up with that strategy was. Daryl was a warrior. And as far as justice and protecting his fellow soldiers was concerned, he had long-term plans.

“You fucking Green?” Godwin had asked her one evening when she got back from guard duty.

“Daryl’s married,” she said simply.

“Not my question,” Godwin said. “That boy is so fine. You don’t want beauty like that to go to waste, do you?”

She hadn’t thought about it. He was short, broad shouldered, all his features like straight lines. Thin lips, square jaw, eyebrows flat above his almond-shaped eyes. A roman nose. Everything about him even and level.

Lauren shrugged.

“You guys got some secret,” Godwin said. “Everyone can see it.”

Twenty

T
HE SMELL OF
coffee and the thick
smoky overlay of bacon grease greeted Lauren as she stepped into Holly’s house.
Grace was sitting on the living-room floor in front of the television, cutting
pieces of leftover wrapping paper into strips and taping them to the table legs. She
was wearing pink footie pajamas. Holly’s mother, Bridget, was so happy to see Lauren
she got up and squeezed her tight, rocking her back and forth in her arms. Lauren
smiled and put her arms around Bridget, rested her head on her bony shoulder.

“Is your daughter home?” Lauren asked.

“Now wait a minute,” Bridget said. “Let me look at you.” Her voice was raw
and low, and she spoke at an almost comic clip, like a character in an old crime
movie. She stepped back and regarded Lauren, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “I
almost don’t believe it. Let me just set eyes on you a little more.”

“I’m glad to be back,” Lauren said.

“I
bet
you are. Holly,” she called. “Get down
here!” She turned to Lauren again. “She’s been sleeping. Closed the bar around three
last night, poor girl. She’s gotta get up anyways because my shift starts in a few
hours and I know you two want girl time.”

Gracie came running into the kitchen, and Bridget handed her a piece of
bacon. “Hey, li’l gal, you know who this is?”

Grace shook her head.

“This is Lauren.You remember Lauren? She knew you when you were just a
baby.”

Grace shook her head again and took a bite of bacon.

Lauren said, “Pleased to meet you,” and held out her hand for Grace to
shake.

The girl looked like Holly. Shrewd, a tiny strategist.

“Pleased to meet you,” the girl repeated.

•    •    •

At the end of tenth grade Grace’s father still had a name, one that you
could hear shouted from the bleachers surrounding the basketball court. Back then
the tall languid boy in Hilfiger polos who would soon become Asshole was all about
Holly: how funny she was, how street, how cool, such a bad girl, so smart, such a
fast runner, how hot, how tough, how sweet, such an angel in her black miniskirt and
neon tights, talking all wrong like his parents hated and getting the grades they
wished he could get. She was a dangerous new species, not seen on the Southside. He
had discovered her.

Asshole had house parties at his parents’ big place for the whole team. He
drove a black VW Golf with a Guinness bumper sticker because that was his brand and
he drank nothing else. He was a dumb boy who would go to a good enough college
because there was money for it and he loved Holly with the kind of desperation that
made it clear he wished he was one of them. Longed for their shitty lives as though
living in their neighborhood was a trip to Disneyland. He was delighted and awed by
Shane’s stark kitchen and the pictures of his tattooed uncles. You could tell he
wished he was missing a mother or father, or better yet that someone had actually
died so that he could look damaged and brave and wistful about it.

Lauren had never liked Asshole very much, and when Holly brought the
two-pack pregnancy test over to her house in the afternoon, giddy and scared and
laughing at how fucked up it was, Lauren pulled her into the bathroom immediately
and shut the door so they wouldn’t disturb Danny.

She waited while her friend peed on the stick and they set it on the side
of the tub and waited some more.

“That’s got to be wrong,” Lauren said.

“Right?” Holly agreed.

“Open the other one,” Lauren told her, filling a glass with water and
handing it over for her to drink.

A couple hours later the other one said the same thing, and they sat
together in Lauren’s yellow room hostage to a kind of stunned dreadful excitement.

“This isn’t going to stop me from doing anything,” Holly said. “We’re
still going to get out.”

Lauren held Holly’s head in her lap while she cried.

Later the boy would comfort her, would tell her how they were both going
to go to school and have a life and raise a baby, but by the time she was showing
he’d seen enough.

Asshole’s fantasy of running with a tough crowd made him a daddy at
eighteen, but he lived somewhere else now. His mother babysat sometimes as a
favor.

•    •    •

Holly ran down the carpeted stairs wearing a light windbreaker open to
reveal a black shirt emblazoned with a pink skull and crossbones. Her hair up in a
ponytail, five small silver hoops dangling along the edge of her ear. She picked up
Grace and kissed her several times on the cheeks, then put her down and grabbed the
car keys off the hook by the back door. Holly kissed Bridget and quietly said thank
you.

“I want to go too!” Grace cried.

“Sorry, sweet stuff,” Bridget said. “Grammy needs your help with something
special.”

“Please!” she shouted, as the back door slammed shut and Holly grabbed
Lauren’s hand and skipped down the stairs and out to her mother’s dented turquoise
Kia.

The car’s interior smelled like candy and ashes and Handi Wipes.

“It’s fucking sixty degrees out!” Holly shouted, as Lauren squeezed in and
made room for her feet amidst the crushed and empty juice boxes that littered the
floor of the passenger side.

“She likes to toss them up over the front seat when she’s done,” Holly
explained, throwing some of the boxes into the back, laughing. “You sure you ready
for the Salmon Run Mall?”

Lauren said, “Affirmative, girly-girl, I am a warrior. I am ready for
anything. Except for this shit, what
is
this shit?”

“Nirvana,” Holly said. “It’s all my mom had in her car. I think we played
musical chairs to this album at one of my birthday parties, right?”

“What’s that guy’s fucking problem?” Lauren asked, leaning forward to
eject the CD, and then stopping herself because she knew Holly liked it. “He can’t
be serious,” she said.

Holly pulled out into traffic and then flipped the visor down and a pack
of Newports fell into her lap. She punched in the lighter and offered the pack to
Lauren, who took two and lit them. The seamlessness, the autonomic actions were a
comfort. Life was made up of millions of small repetitive motions and words, and the
repetition alone built a human being; loading a magazine, slipping the ceramic plate
into your vest, over your chest, routine, reflexive, comforting.

It was a pleasure to smoke, a bad-kid thing she could rarely do in high
school because of training. Lauren leaned back and listened to the end of Kurt
Cobain’s mordant whining, then clicked over to WJNY where strings were playing. Warm
undertones like a human voice, a precision and competence that made her feel more
relaxed, like someone knew what the hell they were doing. Holly laughed, shook her
head, tapped her cigarette against the ashtray. “I was thinking about what a freak
you were about music just yesterday,” she said. “Freak!” she screamed, like she used
to in fourth grade. “Oh my god, you’re really HOME!” Holly took her hands off the
wheel and waved them around and they both screamed out the windows.

“Oh my god, dude, I’m sorry, but this crap isn’t any better than Nirvana,”
Holly said. She pulled onto the freeway and Lauren broke into a sweat, leaned away
from the door. She felt naked without a radio and her gear, and visibility was bad
in the light fog. They were goners. She wished she were drunk or believed in God.
Some benevolent God that had created her in his image; had spared her so she could
buy shit at the mall and get in fights. She thought of Troy singing
My soul doth magnify the Lord
and felt she understood the
words for the first time. All year she’d been magnifying the Lord, reflecting back
something that didn’t exist, becoming stronger and richer and emptier. Troy was
wrong: They were powerful words. A true prayer.

Holly gave her a funny look. “I know this road,” she said. “It’s safe.
Hey, check it out.” She put the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and began
talking; this was how she made fun of her stepdad, Dave, who would hold a butt in
the side of his mouth until it was practically all ash.

“So,” Holly said in muffled stoic tone. “You got them parts ordered over
from Nichols?”

“Yep. Yep,” Lauren said, less tense, laughing a little. “S’posed to was
they’d be here ’bout Wednesday.”

“ ’Fraid I can’t do much ’til then, then,” Holly said, making the
cigarette bob comically as she spoke. “You want me you know where to find me. Ain’t
had much work in what, oh, six, seven, maybe thirty-seven
weeks . . .”

“Nope. Not much,” Lauren said, then she broke into her own voice again.
“Man, that’s so fucking weird that your mom ever married him,” she said. “Isn’t
it?”

Holly nodded. “You know he was in the same unit as Troy?”

“That can’t be right,” Lauren said. “Troy is like a fucking genius.”

Holly said, “
Troy
is a genius? Oh, wait. Are
you joking?”

“No. Troy is a genius.”

Holly raised her eyebrows and said slowly, “Dave was in the same unit with
Troy in Kuwait, and he said Troy is a retard.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Lauren said.

“You
know
he is.”

Lauren shook her head.

“Well, whatever,” Holly said, “him and Dave go way back and Dave said he
was retarded.”

“Right.” Lauren nodded slowly. “
Dave
said.”

“What do you think of Patrick?” Holly asked, changing the subject.

“Which one?”

“
Patrick
,” Holly said, laughing out a cloud of
smoke.

Lauren did not like the sound of this question. “I think he’s a
forty-five-year-old alcoholic who still gets in fistfights, lives in a rooming
house, pretends he reads books by reading their introductions, spends all his money
the day he gets it, and eats and does laundry at his sister’s house.”

“But he’s still good-looking, right? Strong from lifting all those bundles
all day,” she said hopefully. “The ladies want to get with him.”

“But they don’t want to stay with him. Have you ever seen the inside of
his place? It’s horrifying, smells like mold, stacks of papers everywhere, always a
few dozen empty bottles on the floor. And all this incredibly pretentious shit
hanging all over the walls, framed photos of guys playing chess, pictures of
philosophers he ripped off the backs of books and thumbtacked up around his bed,
it’s fucking bizarre.”

She could see by the embarrassed, knowing resignation on Holly’s face that
her friend had indeed seen the inside of Patrick’s room.

Lauren opened her mouth to say something and then just shrugged.

“Ahh!” Holly shouted, pointing at her and laughing so Lauren could see the
vein sticking out in her forehead. “I’m just fucking with you,” Holly said.
“Seriously, oh my god, your face!” She tossed her cigarette out the window. “Anyway.
Speaking of Troy,” she said. “My mom ran into your dad at the Tops and he told her
you were prolly going to be going to music school.”

“He’s fucking delusional,” Lauren said. “Danny’s got five more years of
school left here.”

“No, he said
you
were going to music
school.”

“I heard what you said,” Lauren told her.

•    •    •

The Salmon Run Mall comprised vacant cavernous spaces, weird half-empty
shops that sold only seasonal stuff, and three different dollar stores. It seemed to
have shrunk while she was away. But what hadn’t changed was the soldiers walking
around; plain faces and tight bodies in jeans and their army T-shirts, some of them
wearing camo. Sitting at tables in the food court, standing in the arcade, like
high-school kids, which is what they were maybe just months ago. Soldiers were a
familiar feature of growing up in Watertown, and she’d always thought of them as
older, rugged, dedicated people. Now they looked hopelessly green, vacant and
restless and bland like physical manifestations of the mall itself. She stood and
watched them as Holly waited in line for coffee and thought about the FOB. About all
the cheaply constructed structures that were built to warehouse people like her all
over the world. Places to store them like meat and send them out like butchers;
neat, efficient, working-class folks who served the demands of a hungry population
and over time would get used to the smell of blood.

Holly came back with their coffees and they sat on a bench outside the
bookstore.

“It’s great your dad’s back at work, huh? You can prolly spend a lot more
money.”

“Yeah, I dunno how much he’s actually bringing in. But there’s groceries
at least.”

“He must be making a lot of money being a therapist.”

Lauren laughed.

“They make a lot of money, right? It costs so much to go to them,” Holly
said.

“He’s at a clinic with a sliding scale so you can pay like five bucks if
you need to.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah. You’ve never gone to counseling?”

“Why would I do that?” Holly asked, looking at Lauren with a perfectly
blank expression. She waited until Lauren was about to say something and then burst
out laughing again, the sound echoing in the empty hollow space.

They headed to Claire’s Boutique, where everything was pink and sparkling
and easy for middle-school girls to pocket. Lauren bought a pile of barrettes and
hair clips and bracelets for Gracie, and whatever else Holly said she liked, even if
Holly said, Don’t get it. They went to the sporting goods store where Lauren bought
things for Danny. Sweats and sneakers and shirts and more cold-weather gear.

They went to Bon-Ton and tried on dresses. Calling to one another from
behind the flimsy white doors of the fitting rooms.

Holly chatted with the women who worked there, she moved easily about the
store, browsing through the racks. She bought a pair of red corduroy overalls for
Grace.

•    •    •