by Cara Hoffman
Afterward they didn’t talk about these fires. About how they were learning to be patient with fear. How there was no such thing as undoing, and that putting out a flame didn’t mean it hadn’t burned.
• • •
By the time she got out of the car at Shane’s she felt like she was floating, still watching herself from outside. She ran up the narrow back stairs and pounded on the door while cold rain cooled her face and hair. It was lovely after all the dust and heat, after the feeling of ash in the air settling on skin; the hot granulated ground turned to powder kicked up and blown against lips, into her mouth and nose and anyplace sweat-soaked and exposed, whipping in a sharp crackling static against her glasses and the heavy ceramic plate strapped high and tight across her breasts, there to protect the soft flesh of organs beneath her rib cage and to keep the estuaries of blood inside of her, instead of bursting and pouring over the dry ground.
Rain was a relief. To shiver a luxury. That feeling of hovering not so strange beneath the gray diffuse light of the quiet Watertown sky, low close clouds and no smoke, no sound, no sun beating and burning her flat. She waited, looking around the small, square muddy plots of land that made up the back yards of the neighborhood. Kids next door had spray-painted a marijuana leaf on the plywood backboard of their garage basketball hoop, and plastic toys were strewn across their driveway, left there before the snow—or brought out now in this false spring.
The yellow checkered curtain covering the back window moved, and Shane’s face stared blankly for a moment while she smiled. Then he gasped and shouted her name and the chain slid, the lock clicked, the door swung open, and he rushed out onto the narrow concrete step to hold her, bent down around her, squeezed her, and she pushed herself against him to feel all of his body and so she wouldn’t see surprise or sadness on his face. She closed her eyes, kissed him on the mouth and he held her tight to his chest, crushed their thighs together, and she felt his warm skin, the flood of pleasure and joy and safety to be in his arms. He put his hands on her shoulders, her arms, her back, as if making sure she was all there. Then she stood on his long feet and walked him backward, until they were in the low-ceilinged kitchen.
“Is your mother home?”
He laughed. “No. She’s over at Patrick’s.”
“Can I have some?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows slowly and grinned at her. “Sure,” he whispered, then put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back so he could look into her face, look for something, some explanation. She met his eyes and smiled because he was so pretty and because she didn’t want to worry him.
He said, “You know, I’ve been calling your dad for the past six months to find out if you’re okay.”
“Did you find out?” she asked, and he made a short breathy sound and stared at her, his eyes wet and shining with relief. He hadn’t changed, didn’t look a day older than when they were in high school. Still had those beautiful teeth, the flushed and hollow cheeks and full lips and long straight nose, his wavy messy hair and his little wire-rimmed glasses; the white T-shirt and stupid sweater vest, the way he filled out his jeans, all the things that gave her that hollow hungry feeling in her stomach and constricted her breath.
He looked overwhelmed and like he was trying to be careful with her, but that wasn’t what she wanted at all. She moved close to him again and inhaled his scent. Put her hands at the base of his spine. Feeling his body made the hair on her neck stand up, made her heart restless. She wanted to bite him through his shirt, she wanted a mouthful of his skin. When her hands touched his belt she could feel his breathing change.
“Well?”
He was trembling slightly when he picked her up and she wrapped her legs around him. He walked quickly upstairs, slammed his bedroom door open with her back and kept walking until he pressed her into the metal-framed twin bed that creaked and cradled their weight. He put his lips on her. She tasted him, held his face, his head, her hands in his hair.
“You’ve been haunting these sheets,” he whispered against her cheek. She didn’t want him to talk. She grabbed his shirt and pulled it over his head and was crushed at once by how beautiful his chest was. How familiar and gentle. His long thin torso, smooth skin and the subtle ripple of muscle, a body like water, no knots that rose or cuts in flesh. No tattoos. Not frozen solid beneath the skin of his stomach and chest, but strong and supple. He touched her with his soft hands, his long fingers on her face and in her hair, and his smell was so clean, unspoiled. He unbuttoned her camouflage top, pulled up the T-shirt beneath, tore at her pants, and then stood before the bed looking down at her.
“Take this off,” he said, “take all of this off, please. Take it off.”
Her body had changed. Her skin was tanned, taut, her shoulders and back, her hips. And she could feel just how different she was built now that he was seeing her, touching her. Her stomach and legs, everything like an animal now. She felt his desire for her war body, almost curiosity at her hardness, and then she watched his face as he saw the rest of the tattoos, saw his look of distress and then hunger. He ran his fingers over her arms and legs, and she felt the difference between her inked and bare skin, the desensitized numbness of the black bands on her shoulders, biceps, forearms, thighs. His strength and delicacy and smell were overwhelming and everything he was doing was beyond familiar. A taste she’d forgotten she loved drew her into her body, and then out into nothing but breath upon breath.
When it was over her head was clear and she got up and put her clothes back on. Left her hair unpinned and hanging tangled around her shoulders. Shane smiled and she looked at his relaxed face, his high and hollow cheeks, lips swollen from kissing. Lauren heard the sound of the rain on the windows, felt the gutted, senseless floating feeling again, and she wanted to be outside with cold water on her face.
He asked, “What are you doing tomorrow?”
She bent down to lace up her boots and felt no air in her lungs with which to answer him. Couldn’t make her voice work. Felt that if she spoke at all some understanding she had with herself, a thing with its own logic and language would come undone. She took a breath and found her camo shirt buried in the blankets at the foot of the bed, looked at him again, at his long legs, the curve of muscle and vein at his hip bones, and smiled.
“I have to be back to Swarthmore by next Thursday,” he told her. “Otherwise I’m around. I could even put off going for maybe another week.” He said eagerly, “Maybe we could go somewhere.”
She didn’t say anything—kissed him on the cheek and began walking downstairs. After a few seconds Shane got up and followed her in his bare feet, buttoning his jeans as he walked.
“Lauren, baby,” he said, and his voice was placid and gentle like his body. “Are you okay?”
She looked at his face and did not like what she saw: the concern and confusion and, worst of all, the pale light of his eyes searching her.
“You okay?” he asked her again, holding the back of her hand against his lips as she stood at the door.
She gave him a quick nod, smiled. She needed to get outside. “I’m good,” she told him as she walked down the back steps. “I’m good.”
Two
THE CLAYS LIVED in a bungalow-style building that crouched between a small, unkempt lot plastered with mottled-yellow leaves and a row of identical duplexes. Steam rose from a vent near the back door, and Lauren could smell dryer sheets, laundry being done. The walk from Shane’s had left her body feeling refreshed and strong, her joints loose and humming. Now she had a clear head to think about what she’d have to do at home.
She stepped up to the back door and pushed it open, instinctively putting her hand down to stop Sebastian from jumping, then remembered he was gone. To hear the door creak and no barking felt like missing a step. His round blue dishes were not on the floor beside the closet, but his leash and collar hung on a hook by the coat rack, along with Danny’s jacket, her father’s plaid scarf and puffy coat. It smelled like ho
me; a damp autumnal smell of leaves, musty old books, and some kind of citrus cleaner, or maybe someone had been eating an orange. Things she forgot existed made her smile in recognition. Wallpaper, linoleum, the vintage microwave with the analog clock on the front. She was shocked at how clean the kitchen was, dropped her bag in the corner and took a few tentative steps toward the living room.
“Hello?” her father called, and the sound of his voice caught in her chest and made her want to laugh, suddenly calm and giddy at once. She heard the squeak of the ottoman being pushed away from the couch but kept quiet, stood grinning by the kitchen table, waiting for him to lay eyes on her, excited to see his face after so long.
Jack Clay walked into the hall, his hair pulled back into a shaggy gray ponytail. He opened his mouth and shook his head, blinked quickly, then smiled. He was wearing faded jeans and beat-up slippers and a red sweater that looked brand new. His chest expanded and he held his breath, his face at first confused; and then, filled with relief, with joy, he stretched out his arms and then, overcome, began crying.
“Dad,” she said tenderly. He rushed into the kitchen to hug her, choked with emotion and laughing. He looked well.
“Dad,” she said again, patting him on the back. He kissed her on the cheeks. “Oh my girl,” he said, and his voice was hoarse. “It’s my girl.” She squeezed him tight and rested her head on his shoulder, then heard the race of Danny’s footsteps pounding heavily down the stairs and he burst into the room—six inches taller—he hadn’t been kidding, as tall as she was now.
Danny threw his arms around her and their father, and he rocked them back and forth. Jack let go so that he could give his sister a proper embrace. “Whooooo!” Danny yelled. He high-fived her. Then hugged her again. She rested her head against his shoulder and they stood that way close to tears. He still felt like a baby to her. Taller and thinner but no muscles. She pulled back to look at him. His once round face was now longer and defined, making their resemblance clear, the dark hair and eyes and something in the expression. Some abiding tough sweetness.
“The two of you,” Jack said, wiping his eyes, the smile still there. “Look at you.”
Danny picked her up and walked in a little circle around the kitchen, humming some cartoonish victory song. And their father started laughing, really laughing from his gut, a sound they both loved.
“When did you get here?” Jack asked. “You didn’t walk all the way from the airport, did you? We’d have picked you up!”
She and Danny stood side by side, arms around each other’s shoulders, leaning into one another, a force now twice as strong as yesterday, smiling indulgently at him.
“I took a cab.”
“Oh sweetheart, you’re soaking wet,” he said, shaking his head. “Danny, run down and get your sister some clothes.”
Danny headed down to the basement, and she heard the hollow clang of the dryer door. A sound that proved she was home. That this was real. She had left the FOB, left Amarah. She had not dreamed this. She and Sue Godwin and Specialist Gibbons had driven to the airbase where they’d boarded a flight that had taken them back to the States. Less than three days ago, hours ago really, she’d been out on patrol. Now she was standing in the kitchen. Done with it. All of it.
“Look at you,” Jack said to her. “Look at you.” She worried he would start crying again, but instead he turned to the refrigerator and pulled out several deli bags: ham and turkey and cheese, then mustard and vegetables. He set them on the table, then went to the sink to peel carrots, fill the tea kettle. Lauren was surprised to see how relaxed he looked, how the refrigerator was stocked. For a moment she was afraid she was dreaming.
Danny shut the basement door, handed her an old plaid shirt and a pair of his Levi’s, and she held them, watching their father. She glanced at Danny incredulously, and he gave a quick nod in their father’s direction, smiled. “Dad’s been making a mean turkey pita lately,” he said.
His phone buzzed and he pulled it from the front pocket of his jeans, read the text and clicked back a quick reply with his thumbs.
Something seemed wrong, a little too well organized, too normal. Why had her father been up and in the living room when she arrived? “Did you guys know I was coming home?” she asked, hungrily watching her father make sandwiches, marveling once more at the amount of food in the house.
“We knew you were coming home this month,” Jack said, his eyes filling with tears again. “Because you said December but I was beginning to think it wasn’t going to happen. There was bad news yesterday and I knew you weren’t in Fedaliya, but I never really believed we knew where you were or what you were doing.” He said this last part bitterly, glanced up at her for just a second.
“I was in the same place for the last nine months, Dad.”
“Clown College,” Danny said, finishing the sentence in her same earnest tone.
Lauren burst out laughing and their father shot him a disapproving look. Danny smiled to himself and she could see him as he was at eight, back when the comfort of their secret world unfurled around him.
• • •
When Danny was little she would bring him piles of National Geographics she’d got at the library sale and they would sit together for hours cutting out pictures: giraffes, single-sailed boats, churches made out of bones. And, thanks to his foresight, eating raisins and crackers and salami and drinking warm juice. Danny had made his closet into a kind of pantry. In case of emergencies, he said. One more way he was smarter than she was. Better prepared.
They papered every wall of his room with photographs of different places. To make a whole new landscape. National Geographic provided them with a bigger, more interesting world to replace the one they’d been born into. Cherry blossoms and Eskimos and animals from the Galápagos. Houses on stilts and miles of lush forests and people with strange faces and beautiful crazy clothes. Our whole life is out there, she told him, looking into his dark eyes, and we will get to it. Nothing that happens here is real.
She shook the memory off and breathed in the intoxicating smell of home. Things had been hard for a while, but she should be happy. Compared to where she’d just come from, they’d had riches. Their childhood was fine. It didn’t matter what happened before when they were small or when their dad wasn’t well, they were fine. They were safe.
When she thought about all the freedom they’d had it came to her as a pile of books. Flannery O’Connor, Vonnegut, Ivan Illich, Carl Jung, Joan Didion, and the autobiography of Lenny Bruce. Textbooks on family therapy and early childhood education, instructions on how to administer and grade IQ tests, and the not so incongruous combination of Samuel Beckett, R.D. Laing, and Baba Ram Dass. The house was full of shelves and shelves of poetry and stacks of albums that had been abandoned like the relics of some conquered tribe. And they were alone to discover it all, free to read the gentle prose and listen to Charlie Parker and David Bowie and the Beatles, forage in the cupboards for canned soup and drink from mugs sporting the Cornell seal like urchins squirreling away the still-useful items from some ruin.
Every corner of their house had a worn-out paperback or library-sale classic waiting to be read and she craved them now—the feel of the bindings, the yellowed pages, the hours alone lying on the living-room floor with Danny, their feet propped against the wall, reading.
Eventually they rearranged all the furniture, reorganized cupboards, screwed the frayed outdoor hammock into the living-room ceiling so it could be a swing. They’d also replaced the bottom of the glass-top table with an old aquarium they’d found in a free box on the street and bought two large goldfish for three dollars to live in it. She and Danny had thought this was a huge improvement, but their father’s friend PJ came over one afternoon and put the table back together because they hadn’t been cleaning the fish tank; he looked alarmed by what they’d done to the ceiling but just shook his head. She didn’t want to know what he’d think of her now that she was back from Amarah.
Like the ima
ges of fires, or songs she had practiced, these memories amassed over decades were now dwarfed by things that had taken seconds or, depending on your perspective, centuries to unfold.
Her father smiled and touched her cheek. He handed her a plate piled with sandwiches and vegetables and a steaming mug of black tea with milk and sugar.
He said, “Welcome home, Angel.”
She took the cup without touching the handle so it would burn her hand.
Three
THE 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.”