by Cara Hoffman
He stood with them for a minute, waiting for it to let up. They handed the spirit to him and he took a quick convivial sip and passed it back. One of the men pulled a pouch of TOP from the pocket of his spattered sweatshirt and rolled a cigarette; he had damp, shoulder-length gray hair and his hands were wide and rough, the nails bit down to the nub.
They passed the cigarette between their callused fingers, taking in the sound of the rain and running gutters and watching the weight and burst of relentless drops on the cracked black asphalt. They were calm in the failing light and had no particular place to go. Troy remembered when his days were like that too, after he was home, after he’d spent eighteen months doing nothing but watching the soaring fires of the Kuwaiti fields, following the same futile orders every day without exception, spending his evenings trying to scald and scrub the thick viscous black from his skin and listening to conversations that were humiliatingly stupid to even acknowledge. He’d never liked those men. Any of them. Never liked the smell; some evil distillation of every human error collectively rising and burning. But there was a sound to it. A tone, a rushing hiss, a vibration. The power of the world coming undone.
Troy took the cigarette that was offered him and cupped his hands around the lighter, protecting the flame.
Twelve
LAUREN WALKED ALONG the edge of the road in the gutter, the headlights from the passing cars casting her shadow before her, a backlit rising form that grew and fell over and over. She’d seriously fucked things up with Shane but she wasn’t about to let him get close to the thing she brought home that lived inside her skin. And she needed to protect herself, make sure she didn’t get soft.
Someday he’d be smart enough to realize she was protecting him too. Keeping him from falling victim to some lie about second chances and homecoming, some fairy tale that was unbecoming of him. She respected him too much for that.
One of the first things she’d learned down range, a revelatory disappointment, was how soldiers loved fairy tales. This shouldn’t have been surprising, the superstition, the irrationality and the romance of it all. A war story is as gruesome as it is a sentimental protective lie. The stations of the cross. And with all the rush of risk, the high of novelty and foreignness, how do you not love the people you fight beside? How do you not hate them? Your body does it all for you, it’s risk’s tidy trick. Almost every soldier she knew was waiting to bleed out their life for the contents of a castle. For the promise they would be loved or be a hero. The false idea that there was something bigger, something more, that there was a reason. But not Shane. He was no soldier.
Shane was a person she chose and could continue to choose, not a body picked for her by fear and proximity. She didn’t think she would ever want anyone the way she wanted him. The shape of his forehead at his temple. The slightest indentation, almost a dimple, at the left corner of his mouth, the curve and swell at the edge of his lip. And then his breath, the sweet perfect smell and taste of him. There was always his height and weight and pace that no one could match. And his delicate way. No one was at once so hard and so soft as Shane Murphy, so fast without being rash or incautious. So focused. No one wore his flaws with such clear aggressive confidence the way Shane did.
He was never the kind of boy who would be caught and impaled on a hedge of thorns, waiting while some cursed person murmured in her sleep. No matter what he said to her, no matter how he felt about her, she knew he would not be lingering around for some spell to be broken. The sooner he understood that she was really gone, the better for both of them.
She had things to do. She had people to take care of. That’s how it was in the real world. How it had always been.
• • •
It was small things at first. Light bulbs burning out and going unreplaced. Narrow, almost translucent slivers of soap, toothpaste tubes flattened paper thin. But they were all fixable, really. Light bulbs can be unscrewed from fixtures at other people’s houses, taken from storage closets or reading lamps at the public library; toilet paper can be lifted from the girls’ room at school, stowed in a backpack; toothpaste tubes can be cut open and scraped clean with a toothbrush. Or there’s baking soda and salt, that works too. Needles and thread can be stolen from the home ec room; packets of ketchup, creamer, sugar, salt and pepper, plastic silverware, piles of napkins can all be lifted from the cafeteria.
The incidentals for an entire household can be obtained through stealth, an underground economy, items paid for in good grades and track medals and All State choir.
Food was a different story though. She could make money babysitting and she could get money from her dad, but she needed to get to a store that wasn’t a 7-Eleven.
“Dammit, babygirl,” PJ said one evening when he pulled up beside her on the dark road to town. “I told you to call me. I don’t want to see you walking five miles two ways this late in the evening.”
“I usually run on the way here,” she said, then got into the car and set the bag on the floor by her feet. “It’s giving me muscles.”
“All right, that’s true enough though, that’s true,” he said, and she rolled her eyes because she didn’t need him humoring her.
“What you got there? Puffed rice? That’s some good stuff. You ever eat that frozen orange juice right out the container with a spoon? It’s not bad.”
She laughed as he eyed the rest of her groceries. “Oh hell yeah, they musta had that ten-for-two-dollar ramen. You like the shrimp flavor one? That’s my favorite.”
She nodded. “And you get the frozen broccoli and mixed vegetables.”
“Yep.” He smiled. They said, “It’s perfect,” in unison.
“What about meat? You got meat?”
She nodded. “Ground beef, also oatmeal, beans, peanut butter.”
“That’s all good protein,” he said, put out his hand for her to slap. “This girl’s got muscles and a brain.”
She nodded, then cut to the chase. “Peej, can you teach me how to drive?”
“I can,” he said, laughing.
“No, but will you?”
“I told you, just call me,” he said. “I’m happy to take you around.” He looked at her for a minute while they were stopped at the light. Then he said, “Next year okay?”
“What if something happens?”
“You have my damn phone number.”
She shook her head in frustration. “What if the phone gets cut off?”
“And what? The phone gets cut off, you have an emergency, you get in the car and drive and the pigs—excuse me—the police officer pulls you over and then what? You’re not a grownup, little Low. Why d’you think I call you ‘babygirl’?”
“Uh . . . ’cause you call everyone who doesn’t have a penis ‘babygirl’? I heard you call my gramma ‘babygirl’ like the year before she died.”
He looked at her and they started laughing hard. Then she reached into the grocery bag and got out a pack of bubble gum, unwrapped it, and handed him a piece.
“What’s this? Hubba Bubba? You go through all that Hubba Bubba I bought you last week?”
She popped the square into her mouth and winced slightly, shaking her head. “New flavor,” she explained, chewing. “Sour apple.”
PJ put the gum in his mouth and smiled. They drove on quietly together, blowing bubbles.
He came in with her and filled the tea kettle. Danny was sitting in the hammock in the living room, reading Harriet the Spy, eating peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon, and listening to one of their father’s Charlie Parker albums. Lauren tossed him a piece of gum and he said, “Thanks, Lowey.” She went to the kitchen to put groceries away and cooked the beef because its sell-by date was yesterday. She was hungry and had to keep herself from making too much food because of it. It helped to have a wad of gum in her mouth.
When the teapot whistled she turned it off and went into the living room to ask PJ if he wanted milk in it, but there was only Danny, swinging his feet to “Now’s the Time.”
>
“Where’s Peej?”
Danny looked up and smiled at her distractedly, his thoughts still in the book; and she felt good because of how cozy he was and because he got to do cool things like sit in the hammock and swing. His homework was laid out on the aquarium table already done, and there was a pile of records nearby, which he had probably already listened to. He was wearing her old track sweatshirt with their last name on it. He was such a cool kid.
“He went upstairs to Dad,” Danny said, still smiling.
“Oh shit.”
“What?” He looked at her anxiously and she said, “Nothing, I just forgot something.” She didn’t want Danny to ever feel her worries. Still she bounded up the stairs two and three at a time, hoping to protect her father.
It was too late. When she got to the room the door was open and PJ was standing inside with her dad and she could feel his shock without even looking at him. She did not want anyone to go in there. When anyone else saw Jack, saw his room, it was as if she were forced to see it for the first time through their eyes. It had been a few weeks since Peej had been over and she did not want to feel that dank, trapped feeling of deteriorating things.
“Hi, Daddy,” she said, standing in the doorway.
He looked up at her and smiled and tears welled in his eyes. He put out his hand to her.
She came over and kissed him on the head. The room was stuffy, smelled bad. Like laundry, sweat, sheets that had been unwashed for too long. Milk that had been left standing. Breath through tears and a mouth of unbrushed teeth.
“You just wake up?” she asked.
“Mmhm,” he said drowsily, and his eyes stopped focusing on her and his expression turned blank with thought, then he took a couple of deep shaky breaths. Tears ran down his face. Another thought surfaced, a memory, something urgent that made him hold her hand tighter.
“Sweetheart, did you get your brother from after-school yet?”
She nodded. It was already seven o’clock. “Sure did.”
PJ was sitting on the side of the bed, surveying the room, and she tried not to look at the places his eyes rested. Like on Jack’s robe, which he hadn’t taken off in a month.
“I’m just going to get a few more minutes of rest,” her father said.
“Okay, Dad. Sleep tight.” She wiped the tears from his cheek and gave him another kiss. “It’s going to be okay,” she said. She could tell it was, actually; this was better than the nights he kept them up crying.
There were good days and bad days and PJ didn’t know enough to tell them apart, and it annoyed her that he was sitting there staring around the room, sitting there doing nothing. They were fine. She’d gotten the paperwork for food stamps and filled it out. And as soon as there was another good day she and Jack would go to the DSS and get their benefit cards, and then when he was feeling better he’d go back to work. He told her early on, when his eyes first began to have that glazed look, that he was having a hard time but that it was “situational” and that conditions like this are self-limiting. “They go away,” he told her. “One way or another.”
Back downstairs she set out plates and silverware and put the beef, ketchup, taco shells, and lettuce on the table with glasses of water for her and Peej and a glass of milk for Danny. Then she called, “Dinner! Hey Dan, put on some dinner music.” She heard him hop down from the hammock and the slight scratch of the needle on the album as he took it off. Then the sound of David Bowie’s voice. He was such a cool kid.
She piled food on Danny’s plate, asked him if he had brought his laundry down to the basement, and then they both held their spoons like microphones and sang “Smiling and waving and looking so fine!” along with the music.
“What’s this?” PJ asked as he came back into the kitchen. “We got some rock stars come for dinner. What happened to Birdie?”
“Birdie’s reading music,” Danny said. “Bowie’s dinner music.”
“Who decided that?” Peej asked.
“I did,” Danny said. “Duh.”
“Don’t say ‘duh’ to Uncle P,” Lauren told him.
“All right then.” PJ clapped his hands together, looked at Lauren. “Aw, damn, baby G. I love tacos just like this,” he said. “But I ate before I picked you up. I can’t eat another bite.”
Danny smiled as he said it and reached quickly for another handful of lettuce. She felt relieved and instantly more hungry, tried not to sound it when she said, “Oh, that’s too bad.”
He patted her on the back. “Okay, I’m unna be over tomorrow, have some stuff for you children. Then you and me gonna take the car out.”
She looked up at him and suddenly felt exhausted. Some tension broke enough for her to fall asleep right there. She exhaled and wiped her mouth, nodded.
He bent down and hugged Danny and kissed him on the top of his head. He said, “You listen to sister, my little man.”
Then PJ put out his hand for Lauren to slap. “Lock up when I leave,” he told her. He looked around the kitchen, nodded to himself, rested his hand on her shoulder for a moment. She could feel he didn’t want to go.
“We’re good,” she told him, nodding. And they had been good. Bellies filling up, Bowie on the turntable. After this she’d read some chapters out loud to Danny. “We got it, Peej.” She smiled up at him because there was nothing else to do. “You have a good night.”
• • •
He saw her beneath the fluorescent lights in the checkout line of the Super Duper where he was buying cigarettes after work. She was wet and shivering with an armful of groceries; her nose was running, and she wiped it on the back of her coat sleeve. Her eyes were glassy and her hair a sopping mess. She stood looking out the front window, not noticing that he was there. She looked like she hadn’t slept since he’d last seen her.
PJ walked closer and cleared his throat and she still didn’t respond.
“It’s nice out there, huh?” he asked. Then watched her eyes focus in recognition, saw a moment of calculation before her face broke into a smile, she shook her head.
“It’s a winter wonderland,” she said.
The girl had always been good at this, doing what was expected, appearing as though everything was fine as long as she knew you were looking at her. And for so long things had been fine. Her grades, her music, her tough sweetness with little Danny. She’d managed. Lauren kept things together. Girl was his champion.
PJ said, “Just this morning in my window box, I swear to god, some crocus buds poking their little heads up, thinking it’s spring.”
She smiled again as she put her groceries on the counter.
“What’s this?” he asked. “You fall in the river? You buying milk and bread, but it looks like you should be buying a damn life raft.”
She nodded tiredly. Paid for the food, took the plastic bag. They walked together toward the door.
“You got things squared away?” he asked her. “I ask because I been seeing a lot of stop-loss action lately, not because I think you can’t handle your own affairs.” This was partially true. The government had been extending active duty service for soldiers in this war like nobody’s business. Five men in his vet group had gotten sent back after being home for just a few months and thinking it was over. He’d never seen anything like it. The way they would keep taking them back until they came home in pieces or not at all.
She shrugged.“I’m not worried about getting sent back.”
“Ain’t nobody care if you’re worried. That’s a situation that happens whether you worry about it or not. Point is to know where you stand with your contract so you don’t get surprised.”
“Nothing’s gonna surprise me,” she said blankly. Then she shrugged again. When she looked up at him he could feel it all, the weight of bodies and mistakes, invisibly shouldered but pulling her down. “Besides, we’re not going to be over there forever,” she said. “Eventually there won’t be a war to get sent back to.”
He looked down his face at her, curled his lip in
amused disappointment, and said nothing for a minute. “You’re wrong there, babygirl. There is always going to be a war to send us back to. You know that. C’mon, lemme give you a ride home, groceries are gonna get wet.”
She followed him out to the parking lot.
“Troy’s been coming to my group over at the Nabe,” he said, pulling his jacket out to cover the cigarette he was lighting.
“What for?”
“We’re open to everyone who served.” He looked over at her. “You been in touch with Curtis since you been home?”
She shook her head.
“That deal still stand or what? Hey, buckle up, I don’t wanna get a fine.”
She said, “I’m not your daughter.”
“Nah,” he said. “You’re my goddaughter, what’s your point?”
“I can take care of things,” she said. She stared through the windshield, hunching down whenever they got even an inch closer to the curb; at one point he watched her reflexively slam her foot into the floor. She began to reach for the wheel and stopped herself.
“I know that’s true,” he said easily, making the car warm with his voice. He could feel her surveying the rainy street, feel her eyes scanning it. He knew what it was to be her right now, the way the street itself was some kind of trap. He remembered being terrified and paranoid of walking through doors even after he got home. The sense that he might trip a wire and end up impaled remained with him long after the war. He still occasionally dreamed that his foot had been caught in a punji trap. He watched her fight against everything her muscles were ready to do so that she would appear normal.
She nodded curtly. “So what’s wrong with Troy?”
“Nothing’s wrong with him.” He laughed. “You don’t gotta be fucked up to come to my group.”
“But it sure helps,” she said, finishing his sentence.