Be Safe I Love You: A Novel

by Cara Hoffman

  Holly grabbed Lauren around the waist and squeezed her excitedly at the sound. “It’s you!” she said.

  They followed the music, and there outside the Payless shoe store a group of high schoolers in red blazers stood bright and square shouldered, holding black choir folders. Lauren and Holly stopped walking and stood before them, two in an audience of eight, four of whom had crew cuts and tight shirts. Holly chewed absently on her strawberry licorice, but Lauren was transfixed.

  They were singing “O Holy Night” a cappella and she felt her heart race, remembering the solo. Their attentive faces and round mouths were beautiful. Their voices were filled with a kind of airy richness and innocence. Their voices were sweet and resonant and wholly, sloppily distinguishable from one another, like little sheep stumbling and running side by side. Here and there an individual voice cut distinctly through to lead a section, then dropped back and blended in an attempt to unify the sound.

  The flaws in phrasing and missed entrances and wrong notes were actually lovely. Exciting and funny and interesting, like hearing someone learning how to speak, like watching Danny in the bouncy castle. The harmonies perfect and the disharmonies perfect. Their breathing in unison as if they were one and the real joy on their faces.

  “Fall on your knees!” they commanded in crescendo. “O hear the angel voices!”

  Lauren closed her eyes and inhaled sharply a beat before the solo. A tiny chubby girl with a short bob haircut and bright pink lip gloss sang from where she stood amidst the choir. Her voice full and high and honeyed. Her voice like a golden bell that called Lauren away, out of this place, out of her skin, and far from the fear and waiting. Far from the dust rising in the distance.

  “That’s you,” Holly whispered again beside her.

  Twenty-one

  THE HOUSE PHONE was ringing when she walked in the door with her packages and she was too distracted to remember not to pick it up.

  “I’m so glad to hear your voice!” her mother said, and the only word Lauren could think to respond with was, “Really?”

  “Really.” Meg Clay laughed. “Oh, Sweetie. And I would really love it if you and Danny could come here for a few days. I’m on semester break and we could do some fun things.”

  “Yeah? What kind of fun things are there to do in Buffalo?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. We could go to the philharmonic or we could go to the Allen Street Dress Shop.”

  “I’m sure Dan would love that.”

  “Honey, I thought maybe you would like that.”

  “You put a lot of thought into what I might like.”

  Her mother was quiet and it seemed they were both waiting for Lauren to say the next part of the sentence. So she did: “You must have thought I’d like raising the son you left behind.”

  She listened to her mother exhale but could already tell she wasn’t really upset at all. “Lauren,” she said clearly, with no shame, no hint of unhappiness, “I am very sorry that you were hurt when I moved away.” It was as if Meg was a prisoner who had to periodically restate her crime in public. Lauren hated that she was the one who made her do it, but she couldn’t stop.

  “In the middle of the night,” Lauren finished the sentence. “And stayed away without calling for a year and never checked on us. How long does it take to go to fucking college? Don’t professors make money they can send to their children? And now you think that I am going to talk to you on the phone and go to your house and let you be an influence on my brother.”

  There was a pause and Lauren could picture her mother nodding, again. Could picture the curve of her face and her lipstick, her thin frame, even the word “Meg,” the cute curt name seemed filled with indifference. Lauren knew it did take time to go to college and that Meg had only been an adjunct professor for years, that she had student loans to pay and worked part time at a diner, but still she couldn’t stop herself from saying those things. She hated that Meg was impervious to her words.

  “I love you,” Meg said firmly. “I have always loved you and Danny. But sometimes leaving makes the most sense, does the least damage. Sometimes it’s the better option.”

  Lauren said nothing.

  When Meg asked, “Are you still singing?” Lauren hung up the phone.

  • • •

  Danny woke up at noon and she was standing in his doorway with sweats and sneakers. She’d packed the cold-weather camping supplies, a case of water and water-purifying tablets, thermal underwear, and the best insulated boots she could find for both of them in the trunk of the car. She tossed the running gear on his bed. “Merry Christmas again,” she said, and he smiled sleepily at her, his hair wild looking and face lined from the rumpled sheet.

  She clapped her hands together. “Let’s go, kid.”

  He rolled over and groaned, so she went and sat next to him on the bed.

  “Danny. C’mon, man, for real, let’s go. Time to go for a run.”

  “It’s raining again,” he said sleepily. This was the thing she couldn’t stand. The not listening, not doing what she said when she said it. Lauren had become very used to instant obedience and she liked it. She knew it was different back home, but she didn’t care. It was safer if everyone listened to her.

  “That’s all right, c’mon, we’ll go down by the river. I was just out, it’s not bad.”

  He sat up and leaned against the headboard looking dazed. She knew he’d been awake until three, transfixed in front of the Internet. She wondered if he ever went out or had friends over. He seemed to be in constant contact with them but it was entirely online. Did they do anything outside? Did they tramp through the neighborhood like she did when she was a kid?

  He rubbed his eyes and got out of bed and she high-fived him. “Good man,” she said. “There’s no snow on the ground, we can bring Sebastian.”

  He laughed, and then she remembered the dog was dead and made herself laugh too.

  She waited for him in the living room, stretching on the floor in front of the Christmas tree, and when he came down she handed him a cup of coffee.

  “After this we’ll go out driving.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell yeah, you learn how to drive now and you’ll be ahead of everyone.”

  He looked genuinely excited, and she felt it too, excited and relieved. They headed out the back door and cut through the lots that led to the river. It was barely raining, just a light mist on their faces. She felt amazing moving her body through the cool back streets.

  She could tell as soon as she’d gotten home that Danny was out of shape. He was a strong kid but easily winded, not used to physical exertion. He kept up with her pace but, after just ten blocks, stopped and started walking. He looked exhausted and was shivering from the cold rain. He drew his hands inside his sweatshirt and she became silently furious with her father. With his school. With PJ. With Exxon, Mobil, Shell, Halliburton. And then finally furious with herself, where the feeling found its home and she knew this was entirely her fault. She should have gotten him swimming lessons at the very least. Should have made sure he was playing on a team, found a way to take him to real places, should have taught him how to do things instead of just reading all the time. He’d never been out of the state. He’d never seen the ocean.

  She jogged back and forth beside him while he walked.

  “You’re doing great, man!” She stopped and put her arm around his shoulder. “Let’s just get down by the river and then we’ll go a little slower, okay?”

  He nodded and then stretched up and took a deep breath and began running beside her again. She made sure he could see her smile. Made sure he’d keep running to make her proud. After this they would spend one more day here and then head north to meet Daryl. She’d keep it a surprise, otherwise he’d start looking things up online and then nothing they did would be new. There would be pictures and stupid Web articles and satellite maps and reviews and recommendations and he’d have no reason to use his brain or have the slightest feeling of being
on his own. Thrust into a new experience with all its promise and excitement and danger, he’d be able to become himself. He’d be free.

  Twenty-two

  THAT NIGHT LAUREN woke from the sound of something heavy scraping past the outside sill of her window.

  She was completely alert and silent, took her gun out from beneath the pillow and stood quickly, pressing her back against the wall, waiting. Another thump against the side of the house. She looked to see if Sebastian was there, which would mean she was dreaming and didn’t have to take this so seriously; otherwise she would have to make sure the house and nearby buildings were clear. Sebastian wasn’t in the room.

  Something hit the window with a click. Someone whistled a signal, or part of a song. She lifted the edge of the curtain and could see a figure outside standing in the driveway, looking up.

  She left her room and ducked into the hall, checked Danny’s room, made sure it was clear, shut his door, went downstairs where the lights of the Christmas tree were glowing brightly in the dark, reflecting off the ceiling and bookshelves all around. She cleared the downstairs, the basement laundry room. Near the back door of the kitchen she silently pushed her bare feet into her combat boots. With no sound at all she turned the lock and slipped into the yard. She was fast and light in her boots and sweats, but twice as careful without her Kevlar vest. She wished she had her night-vision gear, willed herself to see in the dark, crept along the driveway, and stood in the shadow of her father’s car. Then she raised her gun and waited. The figure threw what looked like a shoe at her window.

  She aimed at its head, exhaled the air from her lungs, then it turned, revealing Shane’s face. Startled, its hands moved in jerky reflexive motions, lanky arms and elbows raised to protect itself from something that would rip right through it. Dispatch it from one minute to a definitive next, with a flat pop.

  She lowered the gun quickly and jammed it back into her sweatshirt pocket. “You are the stupidest motherfucking human being on the planet,” she said, then took a deep breath and turned away from him, sickened at the idea of his life ending below her window.

  When she looked at him again he was clearly still shaken. He came over and was about to put his arms around her but didn’t. “I’m sorry,” he said, his breath thick with alcohol. “I thought I’d do like old times.”

  She forced herself to keep her hands at her sides because she wanted to grab him. Her muscles ached to make contact. To shove him, to take him down, force him to the ground, get her knee in his back.

  “I thought you’d be up,” he said, and he looked pale and disheveled in the moonlight.

  Lauren nodded. He was right about that. She didn’t experience anything close to sleep anymore. The driveway shone in the glow of the streetlamps, puddles holding the reflection of the pale globes and telephone wires. It wasn’t cold at all.

  “What do you want?” she asked him. And really, what the fuck could he possibly want from her that she could actually give?

  “Just to hang out,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Come on.”

  They cut through the backyard and climbed over the chainlink fence at the dead-end street that ran perpendicular to Arsenal. People’s houses were dark and their yards looked silver when the clouds separated enough to let moonlight reach them.

  He brought a small bottle of whiskey out from his jacket pocket, took a sip, and handed it to her.

  “I didn’t get to say welcome home,” he said as she drank, filled her mouth with the warm burn of cheap alcohol.

  “Are you kidding?” she asked, and let herself smile. “You were my one-man welcome home party.”

  The grass was wet and soaked their shoes as they set out on their regular route, backyards they’d run through in high school, rarely buzzed but often giddy with being together. Something about being the good kids in their class made night adventures so gratifying. They were anthropologists in the land of rotting porches and construction refuse, scientists of the black pinpricked blanket of sky they strode beneath.

  Other kids in their classes came from the Southside and lived in big houses, their dads worked at the hospital or had some important job on base. But she and Shane were different. Back then they were kept safe under the reputation of the Patricks, were determined to do the right thing and be nothing like their burnout neighbors, nothing like their stuck-up classmates. Despite their efforts it hadn’t quite worked out.

  Small differences could have made up for so much, she thought. Shane should have been raised by her gentle dad, who’d have been proud of where he went to school. She should have been raised by his mom because that lady was so practical, had a whole family surviving on what she made as a secretary and part time at the phone bank.

  But they were there now walking along the sidewalk and she was as alert as any animal or soldier could be, holding his hand, and inside her pocket holding her gun. She could clear the whole town tonight if she had to. Make sure it was safe.

  Down at the edge of the Black River they threw rocks and chunks of concrete in the water. Shane picked up plastic bottles and bits of garbage and sticks and made two little boats out of them, poking them out into the current with a long piece of wire he’d found on the ground. She watched as they bobbed along in the rippling water, then took out her gun and sank them with one clean shot and then another.

  When they got home she told him to come inside, and they sat on the low couch in the pretty glow of the Christmas tree and she stretched out and put her head in his lap like she used to. They would read that way sometimes on the weekends. Him sitting up and her lying down, quiet all day. She knew he always got more out of reading than she did. He and Danny were alike that way. She was good at math and music and track but had an awful memory. Shane was good at thinking. Eventually he’d stretch out beside her and they would kiss and touch and sleep.

  He put his hands on her hair and looked into her face, then he took off his glasses and set them on the coffee table. He looked exhausted and confused and sad. She realized she hadn’t even thought about what he’d been doing or studying.

  “How’s school?” she asked.

  “Good,” he said, smiling softly, and she could see just mentioning it made him feel better. “I still love it. I never want to come home.” He said nothing for a while and she could see him thinking, laughing a little to himself. “Do you ever notice how we talk? We have an accent.”

  “Aw shit, you should hear some of the folks coming out of Benning,” she said. “It’s ridiculous. We don’t have one, maybe I talk funny now, but you don’t have one at all.”

  “No.” He said, “I do, believe me. And I can finally hear it. Not as bad as my uncles but it’s there, all the ‘a’s are flat. I use expressions other people never heard before. I don’t think I realized the word ‘pro-bab-ly’ had three syllables and two ‘b’s in it. We might be champions here, babe, but we’re not even well read out there. ”

  “Out fucking where?” she asked, her voice low and filled with disappointment and exhaustion. “Who the fuck cares what some rich kids read before you did? Or how they talk? They don’t even know how to fucking think. They read about someone getting stabbed in Shakespeare or killed in a war or arrested or something, it’s nothing to them. They can’t feel it so they don’t really understand it. How can you care at all what people like that think? They don’t know a thing.”

  He stroked her hair calmly and looked into her eyes, studying her even as he was taking pleasure in touching her. “It’s not about them,” he said easily. “It’s about us and what we can do. They always do the same thing out of callousness or ignorance, I get that, I see it—but we have to do something different, right? You gotta watch the way you think about this stuff, Low. I just heard something pretty similar coming out of Patrick’s mouth earlier.”

  “Aw fuck you, Shane.” Being compared to his uncles was the lowest insult, and he’d never said anything like it before.

  “No, baby,” he said, his voice heavy and l
anguid, “I punched Patrick in the fucking mouth last night for a decision he made thirty years ago that’s still a weight around my mother’s neck. And I was glad I hit him.” He laughed to himself. “Glad. But then I started thinking how I’d never known what he was like before he got back from the Gulf, and all that shit they say about depleted uranium or traumatic stress. I thought maybe he really was going to go back to school but couldn’t make himself do it. I never saw it as clearly as I do now.”

  She was not surprised to hear he’d hit Patrick. That man was decades overdue for a beatdown from his nephew. “That’s probably the nicest thought you’ve ever had about him,” Lauren said. “But let me assure you that guy was cut out to be an asshole. Troy was over there twenty years ago and he’s one of the best educated people I know. It’s Patrick, not the war. Even before he had to go hand out lice combs to POWs or play checkers or whatever the hell they had those fuckers doing back in 1990, he was messed up.”

  Shane said, “Right, no, I know Patrick is a fuckup but just listen to me for a minute, okay? You got the same kind of decision to make. Same as Patrick and same as my mother both. It’s no wonder you’re all I can think about. I must be crazy. School is where we belong. I know this and you don’t yet. For some reason you don’t or won’t get that through your goddamn head. Baby, the worst day there is better than the best day here.”

  She nodded but wanted him to leave. The privilege of talking about good and bad days disgusted her. She didn’t think he knew much about bad days. And she was not about to describe one to him.

  She’d come home to a world of fragile baby animals. Soft inarticulate wide-eyed morons with know-nothing epiphanies and none of them—not one of them—did what she said, which was beginning to grate on her, cut to the heart of how wrong things were. Still, she could accept that these people didn’t know how to lead or follow, but they could at least shut up. If anyone owed her anything for serving in Iraq it was to shut the fuck up.