Be Safe I Love You (3 page)

Three

T
HE TREE WAS
fat and had long soft
needles and smelled so good she wanted to eat it. It was carefully decorated with
familiar baubles; a white ball with tiny red hearts, pine cones spray-painted gold,
a gingerbread house. A delicate string of glass cranberries wrapped around the tree
and multicolored lights glowed against the ceiling and across the white carpet,
which was littered with crumpled red and green and white wrapping paper. She was
happy to see there’d been presents this morning. She’d sent them money last month so
they could get what they needed for Christmas. And aside from the fact that there
was no dog to eat the paper or monopolize part of the couch, and that the dust on
the bookcases made it clear they hadn’t been touched since she left, it was as cozy
as that house had ever been.

She set her dish on the coffee table and ran quickly up to her room to
change her clothes and pull gifts from her duffel. Suddenly the gentleness, the ease
of her family and the shock of seeing her room made her feel uneasy, like she was
returning from a place that was outside of time. Shane’s body had made her feel that
way too. She stood in her room trembling, sat on her bed for a moment and breathed.
She took off her boots and fatigues and slipped her arms and legs into Danny’s warm
clothes like they were a disguise. She was home alive, in one piece and in this
moment fighting a desire to wash her eyes out with lye.

The duffel offered some distraction. She’d bought her father a classic
black and white kafiyah, the traditional head scarf guys like him always associated
with radicalism and “people’s resistance.”

She’d bought a SEAL pup knife for Danny. Now that she’d seen how much he’d
grown she wished she’d gotten him the full-size knife. She also got him Swedish
mittens with liners, a first-aid kit, six silver emergency survival blankets,
waterproof matches, a box of twelve sure-pak MREs, a mess kit, a flask, a compass,
and a crank flashlight that didn’t require batteries.

Danny was a scholar in disaster—the coming ice age, to be specific.
Something he’d fallen in love with in third grade after watching a documentary on
the Discovery Channel in the school library. It had been hilarious and beautiful to
listen to him, a skinny, four-foot-tall kid lecturing on what happened to the woolly
mammoth and what would inevitably happen to humanity. But even in third grade, the
prevailing wisdom pointed to global warming, not ice age, and so Danny’s research on
topics like hypothermia, treating frostbite, and snowshoeing gave way to reading
about impending disaster from floods and droughts. Still, he was never as captivated
by these things as he’d been with glaciers. Never stood in her doorway at one in the
morning worried about a heat wave. Never rattled on the way he had back when
mammoths roamed his imagination, and he was compelled to describe the creeping ice
and the darkening sky. Or stand in the kitchen, his gaze distant and glassy, as he
detailed William Parry’s fearless expedition to the North Pole.

•    •    •

She brought the armload of presents down to the living room and set them
around the tree, then settled into the beat-up futon couch to eat.

Danny handed her a little box wrapped in glossy paper with a picture of a
sea lion on it. Inside was a silver bracelet with a working compass for a charm. She
laughed as she put it on and then handed him a brown paper bag, which he opened to
find a red and black military compass attached to a lanyard. He put it around his
neck and high-fived her.

“Great minds . . .” their father said, and he handed her a
slim rectangle wrapped in white and covered with silver script reading
PEACE ON EARTH
.

She tore the paper: It was Robert Frost’s
North of
Boston
; she flipped to the poem “Mending Wall
,”
her favorite, and smiled at her father, felt the book crack as she opened the
stiff new binding and slumped lower on the couch to get lost in it again. Jack went
to the closet, retrieved an old plaid blanket and put it over her lap, then handed
her the mug from the table so she could drink and read. It was a gesture from so
long ago, she didn’t know if it had ever happened before. A gesture from a ghost’s
life.

“Open more presents!” she shouted, and she threw the green plastic bag
covered with Arabic script to her father. He slid the kafiyah out, held up the
checkered square of woven tasseled fabric, the tag still hanging from the side. She
reached out and snapped off the cardboard sticker. He pretended not to notice.
“Whoah!” her father smiled, “this is pretty cool.”

“Put it on!” she told him. “That’s going to look great with the red
sweater.” And for a moment, when she saw her father’s smiling face she was happy
like she’d never been down range.

Danny opened his pile of boxes and bags, laughing in delight and holding
up each new thing for their father to see. He put on the mittens and then flipped
the tops down so he could use his fingers to send a text message. Then he cranked
the flashlight, waiting for his phone to buzz in reply. He sent another message and
opened one of the silver blankets, putting it around his shoulders like a cape,
studied his new knife.

After everything was opened they were content together around the tree,
not saying much of anything. Their father sat cross-legged on the floor in front of
the couch, his new head scarf wrapped around his neck and face. Danny opened one of
the MREs and read the contents of the sealed packs: pork ribs, pound cake, and grape
drink. He sent another text message. Lauren watched him, saw how his mannerisms had
changed, saw how they fit now in his bigger body, how the culture of middle school,
the urgency of connections had overtaken him. Even today with her home, sitting
right in front of him.

“Well, Low,” her father said, “maybe we should sing some Christmas carols,
huh?”

She smiled at him, shook her head no, then turned away before she had to
see his disappointment.

Danny’s phone buzzed again and he flipped it open.

“Are you in chorus?” she asked Danny. It was obvious he wasn’t doing any
sports, so maybe he was singing and hadn’t mentioned it in his dispatches.

“There is no chorus,” he said distractedly, still looking down at his
phone.

“Really?”

“No chorus, no art classes,” Danny said.

And her father nodded in confirmation. “No budget, no tax base,” he
said.

Danny put his phone away and then looked through the MREs again with a
satisfied grin.

“Those things have a ten-year shelf life!” Lauren told him excitedly. “The
vegetarian lasagna is actually pretty good.”

Then he looked right at her. “This is what I always wanted,” he said,
entirely serious.

“That’s why I got them.”

Danny cut the pound cake with his new knife and handed a piece to his
father, who lowered the scarf to take a bite, and then they heard PJ’s voice calling
from the kitchen.

“I didn’t even hear the door,” Danny mumbled through a mouthful of
cake.

“Oh, he’s stealthy,” Lauren whispered sarcastically.

“Peej,” Jack called. “We got a surprise.”

They heard his boots in the hall and then he ducked his head around the
corner and raised his eyebrows, looking at all of them sitting together happy,
relaxed. He was genuinely shocked to see Lauren, started laughing hard, then held
out his arms to her. His beard was nearly white, and the sides of his uneven afro
had gone smoky gray and almost silver. He smelled like coffee. She stood and hugged
him, and rested her cheek against his chest until the sound of his heartbeat made
her step back.

“Yeah! Oh yeah! This is our soldier,” he said, clapping her on the back.
“Boom. There she is. Just. Like. That. That’s right.” He looked down at Jack Clay,
who again had tears in his eyes, and nodded. “That’s all right. Good time to cry.
This is what we humans do.”

Then he squeezed Lauren’s shoulder, leaned down to speak quietly into her
ear. “Please tell me you got that head rag from somebody still breathing.”

She laughed for real for the first time since she’d landed, and her father
asked PJ, “What do you think of our girl?”

“What I always think,” he said. “Beautiful. Needs her hair combed.” Then,
“What’s all this? C rations? Oh shit. That brings me back.”

“They’re MREs,” Danny corrected him.

“Nah, we had the C rats,” PJ said. “What’s that, a SEAL?”

“SEAL pup,” Danny told him, brandishing his new knife. “Wait, check this
out.” He shined the flashlight in PJ’s face and PJ squinted, put up his hand.

“Yeah! Okay, I can see it. Sister’s making sure everybody safe and
prepared,” he said. “That’s cool.”

“It’s chill,” Danny corrected him.

“Nah,” PJ said, “it’s cool. Just like you got MREs and we got C rats.” He
sat down on the futon and folded his hands behind his head. Jack passed him a piece
of military-issue pound cake and he ate it, nodding at Lauren. “When d’you get
Stateside, baby G?” he asked her with a mouth full of cake.

“Couple of days ago,” she said.

He furrowed his brow for a second, then looked at her and nodded. “Now,
you need to worry about stop-loss or what? They gonna send you right back or are you
good to go?”

“No sir. I am on terminal leave.” She smiled as she said it. “Got
outprocessed at Lewis. I’m telling you I could not wait to get that shit done. I was
so ready to hand my stuff over. I got in and out of the PDHA in less than two hours,
man, packed up my gear, and that’s that.” She laughed. “That is fucking that.”

“What’s ‘PDHA’?” Danny asked.

“You get a physical and they ask you a bunch of questions,” she said.

“Like what?”

“A bunch of screwy shit.”

“Like, are you going to go to the mall and shoot people when you get home?
Do you plan on becoming a drug addict and robbing pharmacies? Have you ever eaten a
baby?” Her father and PJ gave Danny a look but she laughed.

“Yeah. Yeah,” she said, in a quick deadpan, “stuff like that.”

“You tell me all about it later,” PJ said, and she nodded, but that was
the last thing she would be doing. She would not be wasting one more second talking
about acts that shouldn’t be described and couldn’t be undone.

“We’ll go out for coffee,” he said. “Don’t want to bore the old man.”

Jack laughed. “Would you listen to this guy, two years older than me, and
he’s calling me ‘the old man.’ ”

The phone rang and Danny jumped up to answer it, the silver emergency
blanket still wrapped around his shoulders. She heard him telling a joke, then
talking about her being home, and then he called to her. “Lauren, Mom!”

“Who?”

He laughed. But she sat and took another bite of her sandwich. Did not get
up to get the phone. PJ and Jack looked at her expectantly.

“Lauren,” Danny called again from the kitchen.

“Tell her I’ll call when I get settled in,” she said. But she knew she
wouldn’t.

She could hear the soothing sound of rain, a relentless hushing on
concrete and quick hollow taps against the windows and metal gutters. The glow of
the Christmas lights played over the walls and ceiling. She snapped on the lamp
beside the couch and sank beneath the rough wool blanket that smelled faintly of
dog, opened her new book, and began to read, shielding her face from scrutiny behind
the cover.

She’d made it home. If things could have gone differently, if she could
have had any other life she wanted no reminding now. Her mother’s voice was the last
sound she wanted to hear.

Dispatch #134

Dear Sistopher,

How’s your vacation in Desertown going? I’ve been trying to get a second to write you, but our Internet connection is unreliable out here in the middle of Watertown, and I have to keep morale up, otherwise I won’t be able to rely on Sebastian to bring you this message. When he gets there please feed him some socks and send him home. My class is planting a hydroponic victory garden, which should help some with all the rationing. Pip-pip, what? We’re growing sugar cane, and tobacco, and whiskey, and ladies stockings, and other things that have been hard to get. Like intelligent conversation.

You must be really sick of all the surfing and sailing and guy supermodels by now. Maybe you could come home or I could come visit you and get a little bit of the good life.

Dad seems okay. (This part is serious. He really does.) He’s talking about getting an office in PJ’s building and he’s gotten a few calls for clients. (I’m not kidding, people are actually calling him to get help with their problems.) OMG, WTF, LOL, ETC . . . ETC . . .

Don’t wear yourself out at the spa.

Be safe I love you,

Daniel Clay

Four

T
HE BOOKS WERE
there but it was like
someone else’s room. Some girl she could barely remember. A girl who had painted
everything yellow, including the ceiling. Who had hung blue curtains. What seemed
like a sophisticated idea when she was seventeen now felt claustrophobic. Childish.
The shelves that were not filled with books housed trophies and pictures. A
photograph of Danny as a baby wrapped in a blanket in her arms, while she looked
eagerly up into the camera. A picture of her and Holly before prom. They’d bought
their dresses together at T.J. Maxx. Holly’s was yellow and shiny, and Holly’s
mother babysat that night so they could go out. Holly didn’t drink because she was
still nursing, but Lauren and Shane had a bottle of schnapps and Uncle Patrick’s
station wagon—which was still filled with newspapers Patrick hadn’t delivered. They
sat in the parking lot behind the gym and drank quickly right from the bottle. The
air was warm, and she remembered the sweet burning feeling in her throat from the
liquor. Holly laughing at them, showing them a new picture of Grace. They stooped
over her flip phone as it glowed in the clear night, squinting at her standing up in
her crib, four tiny white teeth visible in a smile that took up her entire face. It
was just the three of them together at prom because Asshole had already broken up
with Holly. But they were happy and they drank to getting out of school.

They shared Shane for the slow dances and watched the girls from their
neighborhood leaning drunkenly against boys from Fort Drum whom they’d brought as
their dates, boys who’d already graduated high school back in their hometowns and
looked interchangeable in their high and tight crew cuts. They were fun and good
dancers, had fine bodies and exchanged ironic knowing grins. She remembered how much
she loved Shane’s way in contrast to them. How proud she was of him that night. He’d
just heard from Swarthmore and they were paying for part of it and for the rest he
took loans. Lauren would be finding out within the next week about school too, and
they were exuberant that night. It was their last party and you could see it in the
photograph. You could see how happy they were, because they were almost gone.

Lauren looked at the other pictures in the room. More unsettling proof. A
face she’d once had and would not be getting back. Here is what you were and what
you won’t be again. Here are people you loved in funny clothes and different-fitting
skin; there she was at graduation with Danny wearing her cap. And there as a little
girl standing on her father’s shoulders at a music festival, tents in the
background, trees and a long green lawn—flowers painted on her cheeks, one of her
front teeth missing and the one beside it half grown in. In the photograph Jack
looked relaxed. Happy. His wavy unruly hair down to his shoulders and a string of
green, black and yellow beads hanging around his neck. He looked younger than she
could remember him ever looking.

Somehow at this moment the idea of keeping or even taking photographs
seemed to her grotesque and clinical, like evidence gathering.

She sat on the bed and let her focus soften, blur. Rain was hitting the
bedroom window, and downstairs the refrigerator hummed. From across the hall she
could hear the staccato tones of Danny’s phone receiving and sending text messages
and the bright
ping
of incoming chat on his computer.
Every sound seemed heightened, an annoying intrusion on her concentration, though
she had no idea what she was concentrating on. When Danny was little he used to fall
asleep singing to himself, songs from the radio or songs he’d heard her practicing.
Now the house was filled with sharp noises and distracting unnerving clicks, not the
languid sounds of living.

She unpacked the rest of her gear, setting it on the bed. Opened a fake
leather box and looked at the cheap metal chunk inside, the ribbon, the pin like a
trinket from Claire’s Boutique at the mall. Everyone likes jewelry. But no one likes
to think about what the army has in common with a group of middle-school girls. If
Sebastian were alive she would have pinned it to his collar. She snapped the box
shut and put it in the bottom of her top drawer, took out her cosmetic bag, took out
her pistol, wrapped it up in a T-shirt, and stowed it under her pillow. Finally she
turned the duffel upside down and let whatever was left fall to the floor. Socks,
pens, an envelope full of paperwork signed by Captain Parker when the 15-6 happened
back at the FOB, and a single sheet of lined paper with the words
Daryl Green
written on it, and beneath that
Camille Bartolette, 2149 Lake Darling Road, Hebron,
Canada
. She held the paper and it made the world quiet. Her thumbs on either
side of his firmly printed script. “This is where we’ll be for sure,” he said.
“We’ll go out ice fishing when you come. We’ll get good work out there. We can build
a motherfucking snow skyscraper and then knock it down with remote-control
planes.”

The phone rang and stopped and then her father called her name.

“I’m not home,” she yelled. Then pressed her fingers into her ears in case
he had something else to tell her.

•    •    •

She didn’t remember taking a shower and coming back to the room, but she
must have because she was lying on her back now wearing an olive tank top and
sweats. Her hair was wet; the soapy smell of her own clean skin hovered around her.
Jack was at her door, dressed in pajama pants, his hair whiter than it should have
been. He smiled and sat on the edge of her bed. If he was alarmed by the number of
tattoos she’d gotten in Iraq he didn’t show it. Only a deep calm kindness, a
patience and respect radiated from him. It was, right then, as if he was her dad
from the picture. The dad who could carry her weight on his shoulders.

“I’m just taking the laundry down. You need any done?”

“No thanks.”

“That was someone named Dr. Klein who called earlier,” he said.

“What did she want?” It felt hot in the room, and her clothes were
uncomfortable, itchy.

“She wanted you to give her a call,” he said. “I left the number by the
phone. You still don’t have a cell?”

She shook her head. “Nah, I’m an analog gal, you know that.” Cell phones
were expensive and she’d rather save the money or spend it on Danny.

He held her chin and smiled, his eyes clear and calm. She turned to the
side, worried he’d start crying if he looked at her long enough. But he didn’t. He
just smiled.

“Uncle P.’s really happy you’re home. Said he’s got someone to talk to
now.”

“Like PJ ever had trouble talking,” she said.

“Oh, I know it,” Jack said. “More trouble to get him to stop. But I
remember when PJ came home. It was hard for him. He had a tough time hanging out
again. Wouldn’t take off his jump boots, for one thing. He wore those damn boots
everywhere. That fool would wear them swimming. He’d be there in his American flag
bathing suit and army boots. I mean, come on.”

She laughed.

“Believe it,” Jack said, nodding. “There was a time when he was walking
around—I should say
stalking around
the neighborhood
like some kind of angry, I don’t know what you’d call it, angry . . .
one of those guys from a kung fu movie. He wore the boots and he always wore this
black headband and Wayfarer glasses. Ridiculous.”

“Oh my god.” She laughed. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“All before you were born. But he was really a different guy.”

“You hippies were a bad influence on him, I guess. Now he’s hugging
everyone and eating vegetables and shit like that. He won’t do anything the army way
now.”

“You bet. You bet we influenced him.”

“That’s just ’cause he was worn down,” she said, suddenly annoyed at her
father’s ignorance, disgusted at how bad it must have been for Peej. The
insufficient boot camp they gave people back then, getting sent over with a bunch of
fucking unprepared civilians, coming back and having no job and being a criminal in
your own heart at twenty.

“It was harder
for those guys back then,” she
said. “They didn’t have the training we do. Different army. They were more
susceptible to your bullshit. They weren’t as squared away as we are now.”

He laughed, shrugged. “Yeah, maybe so,” he said. “I just want you to know
if you need to talk I am right here, sweetheart. I really am.”

She nodded at the sentiment. Looked at his guileless face.

“PJ said there’s a group of folks that came home who meet over at his
space in the Neighborhood House,” her father told her. “Couple times a week.”

“That’s called AA, Dad.”

He laughed. “Wise guy. You and your brother, the two of you, I swear.
Seriously, Low. They seem like nice folks if you ever want to go over there.”

He got up and kissed the top of her head, said, “I’ll see you in the
morning.” But she held his hand and was frightened at the thought of falling asleep
in her old bed.

Jack sat back down beside her and didn’t say anything. She was afraid of
insomnia or something worse. Her thoughts turned to Daryl up there in the cold, not
being able to sleep either. Spending the night with visions of rising dust and black
rigs in their heads. A shared dream viewed through crosshairs, heard through the
sound of blood rushing in their ears.

Her father patted her hand and said, “Everyone has jet lag after a long
trip, babe. Everyone feels a little wired and out of sorts when there’s a
transition.” He looked relieved to be sitting with her, so confident that it was
really her, confident for both of them, and his words brought her back to herself
for a second. So what if she dreamt, or laid awake? At least she knew what was
happening, knew what it was called. The significance of nightmares was not lost on
Lauren; she knew all about the scenes that repeat themselves, the feelings of
“hypervigilance.” And that’s why none of it would get her. She knew what was coming
and she knew how it would end. And, after all, hypervigilance was not such a bad
thing. It helped you understand. You in your yellow room; you with your good grades,
and your pretty voice, and your chores all done, you are not special. You are not
inviolate.

Lauren was familiar with vigilance because she’d felt it for most of her
life; been gifted with the ability to read the air in a room, a hair out of place, a
single sentence for the wealth of information beneath it. For the premonition it
will give you. The sound of the lipstick case snapping shut, a bag being zipped, a
throat being cleared, the clink of a light chain against the mirror at 4
A.M
. These are just some of the
little things that mean you might be a soldier one day.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she said, squeezing her father’s hand. And
made herself believe it.

•    •    •

In the dream she was running with Danny in the snow. The sky was blue,
the sun was shining, the air was clear. Large snowflakes were falling, tall pine
trees rose up all around them. Danny’s face was flushed and rosy, his breath visible
in the cold pouring from his mouth and nostrils as he ran. His face made her smile.
Made her remember his little hands and arms and shoulders, his baby fat, his happy
face. She thought about how he talked so fast she had to tell him to slow down.
Lauren looked past his shoulder into the distance, and powdery gusts of snow rose
like dust on a road. Something was traveling toward them, fast and erratic. No, she
said. She slapped herself in the face, Daryl and Walker weren’t there. It was just
her and Danny. So it was a dream. But she could hear the sound of a helicopter.

Just to be on the safe side she raised her rifle, made sure she could see
the target clearly through the scope. She needed to do it differently this time so
things would work out right. She took a breath, pointed the gun down at her feet,
determined not to do it. But gusts of snow still rose. There was no way to know who
was in the car. She couldn’t risk it, not with Danny there. In one perfect motion
she raised her rifle, spotted the mark, pulled the trigger, and then before the pop
and shatter, before the silence and the relentless empty din that rushed to fill it,
she broke through the surface of the dream sweating, gasping.

The room was dark and still and Sebastian was curled beside her, tucked in
behind her knees where he always slept. He looked better than when she’d left. His
fur caught the dim light and she could see that he still had the soft brown
undercoat he’d had as a puppy. His eyes were shining. Deep black and compassionate.
So black the pupils looked lighter. It was a relief to see him, and she reached down
to touch him. Let him lick her hand, then closed her eyes for a few more minutes
while her heart beat against her chest.

When she opened her eyes again it was to a yellow ceiling. The reading
lamp was still on and she felt hungry. Got up and sat with her feet hanging off the
side of the bed. The red numbers on the digital clock read 333 and she looked away
in case it was a bad omen. She felt like crying and for a moment was gripped by a
cold terror that Danny was lying in his room dead. The rain beat heavily down
outside and she was frightened that she’d awakened again into another dream.