Be Safe I Love You (14 page)

Twenty-three

December 28th, 4 a.m.

The Bag of Nails

I
T WAS HARD
to believe a place could hold an entire life. A town. A building. Everything you’d done or said or wanted or tried was somehow contained in that space, spread out, every surface imperceptibly covered with what’s been lost.

People shouldn’t be so attached to the material world. You think your long habit of living; your words, your breath, your dreams are contained in the places you’ve been or the objects you’ve touched, you think some evidence of you has grown like lichen, crystallized like frost, accumulating over the wide plank boards and the tables and floors, the barstools and glasses and windows and taps, until your transparent presence becomes the place itself. And the place resonates with this charged silence of everything you’d left unsaid or undone. A madrigal from an invisible choir.

But none of that is true. Nothing can contain you. And this is easy to prove. Easy to show. You don’t
need
anything, the very suggestion . . . the very fucking suggestion after all this time, that you need anything from anyone. And this place. You need it least of all.

They don’t see how it is after everything is gone. How you sit and watch and move and think and dream and all the while you are burning; an eternal flame; everyone else’s symbol, your pain.

And at some point it becomes obvious that there’s no other option but to light the way. To show them the fate of every cell; show them what awaits each vulgar object infused with spurious grace.

And there in the rising heat and rush and pop of whole towns delicately changing into white and orange petals thin as a ghost’s tattered shawl, they might at last understand what that vow you took really means.

What it means to be a guardian of freedom.

To deploy, engage, and destroy.

Twenty-four

D
EANA ANSWERED SHANE’S
call on the first ring as the late-morning sun was coming through the window of his boyhood room. She said, “Hi baby, how’s break going?” and he smiled when he heard her voice and lay back on the narrow, spent bed, dehydrated but the aspirin was starting to kick in. He’d left Lauren’s around three and barely slept after that because of sirens in the neighborhood. He’d been waiting for a reasonable hour to call her.

He said, “Tell me about yours, because it’s probably way more fun.”

She laughed. “It’s good. Good. Good. Sooo happy not to have any papers to write, my god. I think I forgot what it’s like to just talk to normal people. I can gladly report I’ve not heard anyone mention poststructuralism, originary censorship, or the discursive limits of sex in over a week.”

He smiled. “Neither have I.”

“My mom says she’s sorry you couldn’t be here,” Deana said. “It’s so pretty. We’re going cross-country skiing later. Oh my god, you should see this: I’m standing at the back door and my nephews are outside building this giant snow thing, they jammed the carrot in too low I swear—it looks like a snowman with a carrot penis.” She started laughing. “Hold on . . .” Her voice got muffled and he heard her calling to her mother, then a chorus of laughs. “Okay, I’m back. I have to get a picture of this. I’ll send it to you in a second. Oh my god . . . so funny. How are things going there?”

“Well . . .” he said, half laughing, “there’s no snow here. It’s been raining all week. Um, I got in kind of a bar fight with one of my uncles, I’ve been drunk for about twenty-four hours, and, uh, Lauren is home from Iraq.”

She paused. “Oh my god, baby,” she said. Then: “Wait. Really?

“Really.”

“Are you okay?”

“I . . . yeah. I guess. I mean, this is how it is here.”

She said nothing for a moment, then finally, compassionately, “You must be so relieved, at least about Lauren. How is she?”

“Not quite herself. She almost shot me accidentally last night, and then we walked around getting drunk.”

She laughed nervously. “Wait, you’re making all this up. C’mon, Shane, stop kidding.”

He said, “I’m not,” and immediately regretted telling her anything because he could hear the tension in her voice now.

“Jesus,” she said. “Are you okay? Why don’t you come here?”

“I’d love to but I need to deal with this stuff.”

“Shane, what stuff? It’s been almost a year since you even talked. For god’s sake, you’ve both been seeing other people for four years now. We’ve been ‘us’ for almost a year.”

He blinked. The only person he was seeing when he closed his eyes was Lauren Clay, and that hadn’t changed. He loved Deana. She was quick and funny and driven. Gracious in the way of people who have been well cared for but not entitled. Not arrogant. He could talk to her for hours, and she was smarter than any person he’d met. When he thought about it he knew he would be with her. There was no question. She was better suited to him. They had the same plans, same goals.

But he could not want her the way he wanted Lauren. That way where there was no need to talk at all. Some preverbal love. A loyalty that had nothing to do with sex that he couldn’t shake if he tried. They were tied.

“It’s not just Lauren,” he said, and his voice broke and his chest ached when he said it. For whatever reason she was no longer the girl he knew, and the thing that bound them was some black Irish nonsense neither of them had yet managed to escape. “I have to be here this week for my mother,” he said, and he was suddenly, horrifyingly aware she was the only thing that stood between him and the path Lauren Clay had taken. His own abilities and his intelligence had barely meant a thing. He knew that he loved Lauren because she had been like his mother, doting on a boy who would soon be too spoiled to realize what she’d done for him. Spoiled and neglected in that way that breeds contempt. Putting her voice aside so she could pay the bills. Keeping her head down, keeping everyone safe. No one had ever suspected there was something wrong with her because she seemed to have it all together, and what could they have done for her anyway? He would not be that boy that carried contempt for another minute.

He said, “I love you, D.” Then he hung up and called his mother at work to tell her the same.

That’s when he found out what had caused last night’s sirens.

“She’s stable,” his mother said. “I think they’re letting visitors in.”

Twenty-five

December 28

L
AUREN WAS TIRED
and rattled and hadn’t slept but she still made it out the door for a run before her father and Danny woke. She’d meant to go for only a few miles, but once she got out there was no real reason to stop. Maybe she would never stop, never be able to get it out of her system. Last night hadn’t helped.

She ran along the river toward the industrial park at a light jog. Entered into the rhythm of her body, her breathing, her heart. Felt light and fast and slightly nervous running without a gun, without a vest, without gear and other sets of eyes nearby.

It was disorienting, not the wide flat enclosed space of the FOB, sand and dust getting into everything, every tiny corner. In winter when it rained the stuff became like wet clay, a heavy mess, weighing them down even more. She thought about the vastness of the space and low fortified concrete buildings. The cold comfort of the bunker and blast walls and looking out beyond the high fence at the expanses of nothing—paranoid when any man or animal wandered into range. The way fear and boredom could become one, could become anger, could become some kind of holy distance. Fear and boredom in the tents and containerized housing units, fear and boredom beneath the floodlights and satellite dishes. And all around them the expanses of gravel and dust-colored, dust-covered vehicles. The towering rigs in the distance. The landscape spread flat around them, here and there a date palm rising out of the distant sand like a solitary element from paradise set down in the middle of hell’s staging ground. She could feel it all as she ran. That sense that they were baking in some slow fire. The smell of diesel fuel and shit and things burning, and inside the CHUs the smell of sweat and soap and Pine-Sol and coffee and the ubiquitous motherfucking never-ending supply of Girl Scout cookies.

She thought about Daryl and Walker.

She thought about how the whole thing had taken less than ten minutes, but now every single detail seemed to have its own lifetime. A fifteen-minute loop for Walker adjusting his glasses. An hour for opening a car door. A whole day for blood. A single sentence spoken thirty days ago that never came to an end.

Dust rose from a road in the distance, a long beige cloud being towed by a short smoke-colored car. It seemed to hover above the ground, its tires invisible. She heard the sound of her own voice shouting “Vehicle.” Looked up at Daryl and Walker. Daryl was on it. Walker had just gotten there a week ago, replaced someone’s kid who’d had his arms and face burned off. Walker was a dumbass fuck and belonged back in Granite Shoals, working at the Cracker Barrel grocery. He raised his rifle but there was no way in hell she was going to let him fire it. That order was not his.

“Haji’s in a very big hurry,” Daryl said to her.

He called out in Arabic over the megaphone, “Stop or you will be shot,” and she raised her rifle. The air rippled in front of her and she kept her eye on the approach, fired the warning that should have halted the car. But nothing.

Walker watched, and she could hear his breathing change in excitement. The high tone of his voice when he spoke made her feel pity and disgust. He said, “Aw, my fucking god, what is this stupid motherfucking piece of shit doing?”

“This guy wants his virgins,” Daryl said calmly. “Sar’n Clay gonna ruin his day if he don’t slow down though, isn’t that right?”

She nodded. “Roger that.” She had a steady bead on the windshield above the steering wheel but couldn’t yet see him. She felt the determination of the driver. He wanted something that was different from what she’d felt before. Daryl’s voice rang out again with the promise the driver would be shot. And the vehicle seemed to pick up speed, as if the warnings were calls to hurry. She ignored the sounds of terror-stricken exuberance coming from Walker.

Adjusted her aim, emptied her lungs. A second took a year to pass and then she fired. A loud pop and tick and the windshield blew out at about the same time as the driver’s-side window. The car sped up, swerved. They hit the ground, bracing for explosives, but the car just smashed against the barricade, scraped and ground against a low concrete reinforcement, the horn blaring. She looked up at her men, felt a manic burst of laughter leave her mouth, then stood again. The car’s wheels were spinning. It was not on fire, but she and Daryl knew that didn’t mean a thing.

•    •    •

When she passed the sign for the Jefferson County Highway Department she realized she’d gone too far and had no memory of getting there. No memory of the road or cars that had passed. No memory of the Black River. She was maybe seven miles from home, the sky was getting light, and she was headed to Burrville in the cold morning air. She felt like she could run another hundred miles but turned back. Cut into the neighborhood at North Massey Street.

When she got home she was soaked with rain and sweat. She ignored the dog because he was dead and then went to stand in the hot shower for a long time, letting it scald her skin so that she could make the call.

•    •    •

Even exhausted and repentant she almost hung up when Meg answered. But she made herself say hello, say she was sorry. She lay across her father’s bed looking up at the stucco ceiling while her mother talked, while her mother said she understood, and that she was sorry too.

“Sorry for what?” Lauren asked.

“Sorry you’re not feeling well.”

Lauren shut her eyes and knew the call was a mistake, but she would get through it for Danny’s sake.

Her mother said, “Honey, you should think about taking a break and going somewhere nice.”

“Like where?”

“Somewhere where you can relax, where you can read and think and see beautiful things.”

Lauren laughed at the thought. It would have been really funny if someone who knew her said this, but hearing it from Meg just made her sad. “Where would that be?” she said simply. “You want me to leave my family now that I’m finally home?”

“I want you to do what you want,” Meg said. “What you actually want. Not something for anybody else.”

“You said you missed me before, but from
when
?” Lauren demanded, changing the subject. “From ten years ago? How could you even miss me because I was in Amarah, when you hadn’t seen me for years before that!” It hurt her throat to say it. She closed her eyes tightly. How could a stranger make her feel like this? Someone who was there before she wore a bra. Someone who had never seen her win a race, who just sent a card when she graduated high school.

“I miss you now,” her mother said. “I do.” Her voice trembled, a distant sound from some place of self-exile, the refrain of one who returns to be unforgiven. She should have known to begin with there is no such thing as a prodigal mother.

“I miss you,” Meg said again. “And I’d like you and Danny to visit.”

“Okay,” Lauren told her, though it was not part of her plan and was never going to be. “Okay,” she said. “All right.”

Twenty-six

L
AUREN HAD GONE
to the car the night
before when she couldn’t sleep, put all of the MREs in the trunk in case they ran
out of food. She stowed her gun beneath the front seat. She brought two cold-weather
sleeping bags, the poncho liners, thermal underwear, wool socks, a new pair of
insulated snow boots, size ten for Danny’s big feet, a case of Clif bars, and a
ten-pack of BIC lighters.

At nine o’clock she put on the Christmas compass bracelet Danny had given
her, woke him, and then went to her father’s room. Jack Clay was ironing his work
shirts and listening to NPR. She had a fleeting but overwhelming urge to order him
to stand up straight. He wore a ragged pair of slippers, boxer shorts, and a frayed
T-shirt he’d had since she was a toddler, the word
ORGANIZE
and a crumbling and faded
image of a big fish about to be eaten by many little fish across the front. The
clean smell of steam and starch hung comfortingly in the air. But the sight of him
up and pressing laundry was almost ridiculous, out of any context she could recall,
as if she’d opened a door into an alternate universe. If she wandered around the
house maybe she’d find herself practicing solos, maybe she was home on break from
conservatory, some diva who sang alone. Maybe her mother was downstairs making
breakfast.

The phone rang; she could hear Bridget’s voice before she got the receiver
to her ear, then nothing but sobbing.

“What is it?” Lauren asked. “Bridget, what’s happened?”

When she said the word “Holly” Lauren felt for a moment like she couldn’t
breathe, like she was about to vomit.

“
What?
” she asked again hoarsely.

“The whole building. It’s barely nothing but ashes,” Bridget said. “My
baby . . .” Then she broke down again and Lauren’s heart raced as she
waited for her to go on. “. . . My baby was in the basement, trapped down
in the basement restocking, and all that liquor upstairs, it practically exploded.
She’s okay,” Bridget added quickly, calming herself by saying it. “She’s alive,
she’s got . . . she inhaled smoke and she got burned. Her clothes
burned, some of her clothes burned to her skin. But she’s all right.”

Her father looked up from his ironing, concerned, attentive.

Lauren did not have to imagine what clothing and skin looked like when
they had melted together. She pressed the phone to her ear and shook her head slowly
as she listened, as though she were refuting the details. Finally she said, “It’s
going to be okay, I’ll be over. I’ll come over now. Soon.”

She hung up and looked at her father. “There was a fire at The Bag of
Nails early this morning, Holly’s at Samaritan.”

“Jesus!” her father said. “Was she hurt?”

Lauren looked away, shook her head. “Smoke inhalation.” Her voice shook
and she made it stop. “Some burns. Bridget says she’ll be out in a couple of days.
I’m going to go over.”

He looked suddenly angry. “That damn place is a firetrap and with everyone
hanging out in the back there, that big pile of recycling . . . God
damn
it, that kid doesn’t need one more thing.” She
wished she could feel what he did.

Lauren said, “I can’t believe she was there that late. She shouldn’t have
been there.” She sat on the edge of his bed and let her focus soften and blur,
stared into some middle nowhere, wallpaper, the closet door, the edge of the ironing
board, like there was no more subject to the shot, someone had set the camera down
while it was still running. She was suddenly very, very tired.

Jack came over and put his arm around her. “Holly’s resilient, babe, she’s
going to be just fine.”

Lauren had seen burn victims, some of them were just fine and some
weren’t. She wanted to focus her gaze again, she wanted to stand, wanted to leave
immediately, take Danny and leave, but her body wasn’t letting her; it needed just
another minute, just a rest, and then she could make it do what she wanted again.
Now more than ever she needed to get out of there.

“Mom called,” she told him. She noticed that she was holding his hand
tightly and let go, straightened her shoulders and looked at his face.

“Did you get a chance to talk?” Jack asked.

“Yeah, I guess. It was fine, whatever,” Lauren said. “When’s the last time
you talked to her?”

“Your mother? A long time ago. She still calls the house phone for Danny,
but we don’t really talk much. Why, does she sound okay?”

“Yeah. I mean she’s fine, she’s herself. She always sounds okay.” Lauren
shrugged. “Anyway, she wants me and Danny to come for a few days and I thought we
could drive there today if you’re good with giving me the car. I could see Holly on
the way too. Get out of this rain for a while, get a couple of quality days with
Danny.”

“Today?” He thought about it for a minute and shrugged. “You know what? I
don’t see why not. You know, in fact, I think that is a very good idea. Your mom’s
really going to be happy to see you. And if you take the car you’ll have some
freedom to come and go if it gets uncomfortable. I’ll ask Peej for a ride this
week.”

Lauren nodded and he smiled and then he looked searchingly at her. “I
don’t want your brother driving, okay? I’m serious. He hasn’t had any experience at
all and it’s winter and in Buffalo it’s really winter right now, so I’m telling you
don’t do it. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said, raised her eyebrows. A civilian guy with a part-time
desk job giving her orders.

He nodded and then looked at her like he had any idea at all who she was.
“Well, this is great. I’ll get you guys some breakfast while you pack.”

“We’re already packed,” she said. “We’ll get breakfast on the way.”

•    •    •

Lauren waited in the car for Danny, turned the key in the ignition when
she saw him hop down the back steps. She was eager to get to the hospital and lay
eyes on Holly, make sure she really was okay.

“Wait,” Jack called. “You got everything?”

“Oh shit, that’s right,” Danny said almost to himself, then ran down the
driveway. As he disappeared into the garage Jack anxiously told Lauren again not to
let him drive.

“I got it,” she said. “I got it.”

“And give Holly my love, tell her I’ll be by to see her after work.”

Lauren felt the cool prickling of shame. She had not protected her friend.

When Danny emerged from the garage with a beat-up red plastic sled, she
popped the trunk so he could jam it on top of the rest of their gear before running
up the steps to give their father another kiss.

“Okay,
now
you got everything?” Jack
asked.

“Oh wait, wait!” Danny crouched down, patted his leg. “Here boy.” He made
kissing sounds. “Here boy, that’s right . . .” He held the car door
open and then patted his leg again, paused for a moment, said, “Good boy.” And then
he shut the door.

Their father shook his head. “Dan, that’s awful,” he said. “That’s not
funny.” He laughed at them. “You guys take good care of each other. And call me
sometime this week.”

“Love you,” they sang to him, and Lauren backed the old gray Nissan out of
the wet weedy driveway. Her father didn’t even notice the new tires she’d had put
on.

As they pulled away she looked up at Jack Clay one more time. He had the
same tired wistful smile he’d always had, but his eyes were different. Looked like
they had when she was a little girl. Like there was nothing in the way now, like he
was wide awake and could see his children driving away from him. Hesitation caught
her somewhere around the shoulders, a hunch that she was doing the wrong thing. For
one brief second she thought of staying, turning the key the other way and unpacking
the car. Instead she waved again and headed out and down Arsenal Street with the
wipers on.

“What happened to Dad?” she asked Danny.

“He went to crying class with PJ.”

She laughed. “Really?”

“That and some low dose of Effexor.”

Something in her froze and she drove silently for a moment, watching the
narrow road, the potholes filled with gray water. She was happy with the new wiper
blades. She went through a mental checklist of what she’d done to make the car safe
for winter. Things her father hadn’t done, of course. He hadn’t gotten snow tires.
No tuneup, there was no blanket in the trunk or flashlight, and the spare kit was
rusted beyond practical use. It looked like all he did with maintaining the car was
forget to put the anti-freeze away and kill their dog.

She fought against the halting tension that seized her when they
approached cross streets. A precariously tilting pile of garbage bags crowned with a
tinseled Christmas tree made her brake abruptly.

Danny looked up. “Was it a squirrel?”

“What?”

“In the road?” he said.

“Oh.” She nodded. “Yeah.”

Finally she asked lightly, “When did he start taking that stuff?”

“I don’t know, a few months after Mom pulled that bullshit about me
moving,” he said. “You must have noticed when we were Skyping.”

She shook her head. “I thought he was acting that way because he didn’t
want to upset me. Why didn’t he start taking it sooner?”

“He didn’t know he was depressed,” Danny said, and looked at her for a
minute deadpan before raising his eyebrows and giving her an exaggerated crazy-eyed
grin.

She exhaled tensely through her teeth. “He’s a psychologist,” she said,
almost to herself.

“That’s why it’s funny,” Danny said. “Also, he doesn’t take it now, he
just needed it for like six months.”

The words hung dully in the air between them. She resisted saying what she
thought because that would cast everything dark between them. But it was as present
as her own body. She’d spent nine years. Nine years of her life as head of household
for what amounted to the common cold. When their mother woke up enough from her
back-to-school party to think she needed a kid, their father suddenly figured out he
had one and should take care of him. Nine years for a thing that could have been
solved in a matter of weeks.

She was too angry to speak. She looked straight ahead and felt Danny
thinking. Turned to catch his eyes but his head was down, his face drawn. Then he
glanced up at her, his cheeks flushed, whatever heavy thought he’d had already gone.
He shook his head and laughed his goofy laugh.

“That’s the funniest part,” he said. As if he could read her mind.

They drove through the grid of narrow side streets that comprised their
neighborhood.

“I have to stop at the hospital first to see Holly,” she told him. “Then
we’ll get going.”

“How is she?” he asked. Then before she could answer he said, “I saw
footage of that fire on the
Daily Times
website, it was
huge. The fire looked much bigger than the building—like taller than the building,
there was a tree on fire next to it. She’s a badass to get herself out of there,
huh?”

“She is,” Lauren said, proud of him for being concerned about Holly, glad
she was taking him the hell out of Watertown, where it clearly wasn’t safe for
anyone.

She held out her palm to him and he slapped it, then turned his hand over
for her. She slapped his hand and then held it, felt how big he was now. Felt his
soft smooth palm and long delicate fingers.

“My kid,” she said, quietly.

•    •    •

When the bus dropped her off at the corner she would walk home and let
herself in, take food out of the freezer, and check on her dad. Then she would walk
over to the after-school program to pick up Danny. She would usually get there
around snack time, when he was eating half an apple with peanut butter on it and
drinking grape juice. He was short and round and his eyes always looked so dark in
contrast to his pale skin. She would sign him out, take his backpack from his cubby,
and they would walk home together.

He’d walk beside her carrying the art project he’d made that day. Some
special thing he’d concocted from the weird generic “crafts” supplies. A
construction-paper tree or a cotton-ball polar bear, elaborate antlers made from
pipe cleaner and pieces of egg carton glued to a paper ring he placed around his
head; a mass of glitter and glue covering a cardboard box that was really a time
machine. And he’d always say, “This is for you.”

“I love it,” she’d say. “Let’s give it to Daddy too.”

“Okay.”

Sometimes if it was cold or he was tired she still picked him up and
carried him. Or if she’d had a bad day, she’d pick him up and hold him close while
she walked and sing whatever she’d been practicing with Troy. Sing the whole way
home.

She’d bring him up to their dad’s room first thing to deliver the work of
art, and their father’s smile would be the best of all.

“Look at this,” he would say. “We have an artist in the family.”

She would make dinner while Danny sat upstairs with their father on the
edge of the bed, telling him stories from school.

After dinner Danny would sit in the hammock and swing and read while she
did homework. And then later in his room they would look at the places they would
go. Places she would take them. She remembered she’d found him a snow globe that
someone in the neighborhood had left in a free box by the side of the road. Inside
was a plastic gingerbread house, and the snow was made from white plastic chips and
silver glitter.

Sometimes before he fell asleep he’d lie on his back looking at it, fall
asleep with it still in his hands.

“That’s the Snow Queen’s house,” he told her once, holding the globe just
above his face.

“She lives in a gingerbread house, not a castle?” Lauren asked absently,
sitting on the floor, her homework in her lap.

“She doesn’t live in a castle anymore,” he said drowsily, giving the globe
a shake and holding it up to his eye as if he were trying to see inside the little
house. “Maybe she just takes away people who want to leave. I think I see a
fireplace inside one of the rooms,” he said.