Be Safe I Love You: A Novel

by Cara Hoffman

  “Hey buddy, check this out.” She walked over and handed him the binoculars, and it distracted him as she’d hoped. “Don’t worry about the phone—we probably don’t have reception out here anyway. Just stop a minute, see where we are.”

  He took the binoculars from her and looked down at the ring of houses.

  “I thought we were stopping at Daryl’s,” he said. “Where are we?”

  “We’re almost there. I think that over there is the John Dark Basin,” she said.

  “The what?” He looked dazed and cold, and she reflexively pulled his hood up and tied it tightly at his chin.

  “The Jeanne d’Arc Basin. The edge of the earth and the ice around here. Remember we were talking about maps? All this stuff around here broke apart, it used to be Pangaea, right? Now there are these faults and rifts and ocean and continents.”

  The sky was already turning violet over the rounded tree-lined hillsides in the west. The place was more beautiful and distant than she’d hoped it would be, colder than it had felt in her dreams. As if sacred music had become a place, found a material form. She felt her heart pound with something other than the instinctual chemical flood of being a hunted, hunting animal, the grounded yet soaring feeling that comes from using your body to sing. She smiled and filled her lungs with the cold clean air. The things that take your breath, she thought, don’t have to take your life.

  Danny stood beside her, transfixed. “It’s fucking amazing. It’s amazing!” he said, and her heart soared to hear him, so pleased with his reaction, so happy she’d taken him away. “Let’s go check it out down there.”

  She got the sled out of the car and set it at the edge of the slope. Danny sat in the front and she sat behind him, rested her head on his back. She listened to his heartbeat. She resisted the urge to put her fingers on his wrist and feel his pulse.

  “Wait,” he said, his eyes sparkling darkly. “Get Sebastian.”

  “Oh,” she said, “here.” She leaned over and handed him a block of air. “Hold him in the front. Hold him tight or he’ll jump.”

  Then she pushed them over the edge of the crest and down the slope.

  • • •

  The flimsy plastic sled flew and she leaned out over Danny’s shoulder so the icy snow would sting and whip her face. She held him tightly around the waist and they screamed together, racing down into the beautiful vespertine ruin.

  They drifted to a stop near a circle of wood and stone houses and the scattered rubble of what had clearly been outbuildings or smaller bungalows. The doors were blown wide open, hanging on hinges. Roofs caved in or partially caved in. A whole building leaned precariously, frozen in midcollapse, a drunk in the midst of a slow-motion tumble. The structures looked empty but she needed to make sure no one else was down there. The sky was turning a deeper smoky purple in the west and the horizon glowed orange.

  “You want to stay with the sled or clear these buildings with me?”

  “Clear them from what?” Danny asked. “Dust?”

  She squinted at him in annoyance, then went into the largest of the houses. The place was gutted. And also very familiar, a dreamlike slip in time into someone’s wrecked and vacant home, the landscape of soldiering, but frozen and free from the guilty terror of patrol. The remains of broken furniture piled in the stone fireplace. The floor was made of wide weathered planks that sloped toward the hearth as if the weight of the chimney was sinking the house. She walked briskly and quietly through the one-story building. The roof had caved in over the kitchen, and the room was filled with drifting snow that clung to long-disconnected light fixtures and switches. Perfect piles of luminous snow that had been shaped by wind, and curved like ripples in sand, or the subtle rise and hollow of a man’s chest, crested over the floors. In a small room off the kitchen a pile of ragged blankets and wooden crates lay strewn across the floor. An old gas refrigerator and a basin with a single faucet stood untouched beneath slanting and partially rotted cabinetry, the doors open, revealing faded shelf paper patterned with cherries and lemons. The house was a ruined palace of ice at once exhilarating and calming.

  After walking through the first house, she made Danny come with her so she could show him the proper way to walk safely and with authority through a stranger’s broken home.

  The rest of the houses were in a similar state, though one was littered with beer cans and the burnt-out remains of a fire in the center of the main room. The place was too remote to have become a hobo outpost, she thought, and probably served as a good resting spot for hunters or some variety of hermetic adventure seeker. December was not high season for this resort.

  “I wish I had my phone to take pictures of this,” he said.

  “You’ll just have to remember it.”

  “We should come back here in the summer,” he said, “if we could ever find it again.”

  “We can just stay until summer,” she said, opening the door of a pantry filled with dust and cobweb-covered Mason jars.

  He picked up a brittle mold-darkened newspaper from a stack beside a collapsed fireplace, the print illegible, the headlines written in French.

  • • •

  She chose the building with the straightest chimney, its roof and walls still intact, and she brought the broken wood from the larger house and set it inside the hearth.

  “We can stay here tonight,” she said.

  Danny laughed because he thought she was joking and she laughed because she wasn’t, and it would be funny when he figured that out. But when he looked at her with sudden panic, it hurt to know she’d caused his fear.

  “I thought we were going to visit your friend,” he said.

  “We are,” Lauren told him. “But not tonight. We better hike up and get the ponchos and MREs before it gets dark—oh, and the sleeping bags, and we’ll bring that pile of papers from the other house.”

  He looked shocked.

  “I got two subzero sleeping bags in case we’d need them,” she told him.

  “Why would we need subzero sleeping bags at Mom’s?” he asked.

  She said, “I dunno, bud. Sometimes you need stuff. It’s always better to be prepared. It’s a good thing I brought them, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to stay here. The bags are high tech but the poncho liner would be good even if we were in Siberia.”

  He stared at her, his eyes narrowing in confusion, a flicker of the kind of tantrum a younger kid might throw.

  She turned away from him, held the sled on top of her head, began walking up the hillside, and he followed her. There was nothing else he could do. The temperature was falling and they were lucky there wasn’t much wind. She’d bring down as much gear as they could carry. Make sure they stayed warm.

  It was silent and the snow beneath their boots was deep, a crisp powder over several layers of freeze. They crunched along and she felt elevated. Relieved to be away, where it was desolate. But no risk of insurgents, no IEDs, no heat, no sand, no dust, and the air so cold and clean. The white slope played tricks of perspective with their eyes, an Escher drawing headed up or headed down. Looking straight on you could see it either way.

  Danny helped her pile their supplies on the sled, and then they walked down holding it between them, sturdy and efficient on the slope in new boots. Above the sky was a vast, deepening blue. Snow stretched out around them flat and white, and behind them to the west lay a tall pine woods, with snow-covered trees. She was sure they were near the coast. She would take him out there, to the pristine and rocky edge of the continent. And show him what he needed to see.

  • • •

  The house she chose for setting up camp was made of cobblestone and was at the center of the ring of crumbling buildings. She built a fire, then collected snow, melted it in a small aluminum pot, boiled it and put in two tea bags. Lauren poured the tea into the mugs she’d brought and they sat close together on the floor in front of the fire, warming their mittened hands and sipping it, bundled side by side in hooded sweatshirts and coats, wrap
ped in sleeping bags and silver poncho liners that reflected the glow of the flames. She thought for one brief moment about The Bag of Nails, pleased to imagine it swallowed up, gone.

  “Snow tea,” Danny said, his voice a tentative tremulous noise between excited and afraid. She was happy to give him something completely new. Bring him to a place where he’d have to be brave. Have to learn to be on his own. He walked cautiously around the building, looked out the windows at the dimming sky.

  “Are we going to freeze to death?” he asked, suddenly entirely scared again.

  “No way, dude. Are you kidding? We got a nice fire going and we have the right gear and know how to use it. We are not even going to be cold.”

  It was cold, though. It was freezing.

  “I don’t know how to use any of it,” he said.

  “Yes you do, Bud, you read about it, and you’re smart. You’re gonna pick this stuff up in a hurry. Besides, you’re the arctic expert. Right, Shackleton?”

  He looked at her blankly. She wondered if his fingers were numb inside his gloves, took out two gel handwarmers, popped them to activate the chemicals, and slipped them inside the top of his Swedish mittens.

  “People are stronger than you think,” she told him. “We’ll look for a motel tomorrow if we need to. But I’m sure we can do this. Maybe we’ll like it a lot. We’re probably so badass we don’t need a motel.”

  He shivered and brought his mittens up to his face and held them there. She moved closer and put her arm around him, sipped her tea. “There are dozens of handwarmers in the trunk,” she said. “If you were in danger of freezing—which you will not be, because we also have dozens of lighters and a place to make a fire, but if you were . . .”

  “I know what to do for hypothermia,” Danny said, impatiently. “The problem is, when hypothermia starts you don’t know what to do anymore because it affects your brain.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t believe we’re here.” He sounded truly astonished. He had the tense and tentative look of a boy trying not to show fear and discomfort that she had seen so often. She respected this. There was strength there and strength to be gained in watching a person cope. Getting used to something real when all there had been before was the dream of it—the imaginary you in the imaginary place. Here they were, alone and far away at night in the snow, with just the things they brought. So many feelings rush in to fill the silences in times like these, bump up against the desire for old habits and diversions.

  She remembered the sensation well. The fact of your animal being is exposed when you are solitary, unsure, terrified. It’s almost a cellular desire, a surge in every aspect of your being to live no matter what that living was going to be like. She wanted to regain that feeling, the instinct to stay alive at all costs.

  He was quiet in the firelight, the world they knew receding.

  “We should really call Dad,” he said.

  “We’ll get ahold of him tomorrow,” she assured him.

  “You think there are animals out there?” he asked.

  “I think there probably are.”

  “Stuff like bears and shit?” He said it really fast, as if getting the words out of his mouth would get the thought out of his head. He sounded pained, embarrassed at needing to be reassured.

  “I don’t think we gotta worry too much,” she said. “Unless some wolves come and try to steal you so they can raise you as one of their own.”

  “That already happened,” he said. Then he gave a little nervous howl, it boomed and echoed in the empty room, and he took a deep breath and then coughed from the shock of the cold air. She watched him closely, his confidence growing and receding. Making noise to feel brave, to occupy the place. “That already happened,” he said again. “I was raised by Sebastian.”

  As uncomfortable as Danny would be this one night, he would be twice as confident in the morning and he’d understand. The place relaxed her, the long-standing emptiness of it. She was happy to get Danny away from staring at a screen, filling his ears with noise. Living through his fucking phone. He’d be afraid to begin with and then he would be better than ever.

  She was already better. No cars, no familiar faces, no dust rising, and with any luck no dreams.

  It was as though what happened in Amarah shattered all the terror that existed and sent it out into the world in particles and fragments. A mirror bursting into sand and dust, the fear traveled and imbedded itself, hid in everyday objects, blinded people, muffled or enhanced sounds. She was either never or always afraid after that last time. And she knew now the difference between never and always was small. Never and always are separated by a wasp’s waist, a small sliver of safety glass, one bead of sweat; separated by the seven seconds it takes to exhale the air from your lungs, to make your body as still as the corpse you are about to create.

  Thirty-three

  LAUREN DIDN’T DREAM the first night they slept in the hollow of abandoned houses. But Danny did for her. More alert than he’d ever felt, he watched his breath rising, a white cloud above his cold face. He was warm, zipped into the sleeping bag and poncho liner, but still frightened of freezing, of animals or people, or, god knows, some combination of the two; a fur-covered thing, invincibly smart, stalking around beneath the stars, upright and able to look in on them. He knew a lot about animals and he was embarrassed to be so afraid of them.

  He watched Lauren, bundled and awake and tending the fire. There was always something about how she moved—like her body had an authority, an ability that made it possible for her not to worry. You didn’t worry if you could run twenty miles, if you were coordinated, if you knew how to fight—you weren’t concerned about things in the same way other people were. She had a kind of physical alertness that he knew he didn’t have. Maybe he missed it genetically and all his agility, all his speed was in his mind. He thought the body must have its own kind of intelligence, one he missed when he missed Little League and swim lessons and soccer and everything else people did instead of go to after-school and go home and then read next to the record player or in his room.

  Danny knew his sister’s steadiness well. The sources of his own steadiness were at his desk and in his head, and it was already dark and now was the first time he realized that the stuff he liked to do was very flat. On a screen or on paper and they didn’t technically exist in the real world at all—or they did but you didn’t; you were watching or reading about them. The real world was his sister melting snow and boiling water for them and the smell of woodsmoke and the sound of wind. It was the rough wool of the Swedish mittens she’d bought him, keeping his hands warm. And the boots. The real world was crisp and metallic with cold, and silent in a way that brought songs or images to his mind and played them in disturbing repetitive loops.

  In his head Lady Gaga’s voice would not stop singing that stupid radio song p-p-p-p-poker face p-p-pokerface. The stuttered “p”s like chattering teeth. A song he had no interest in, hated, and now it wouldn’t leave, the same few words over and over, giving him some stupid obvious message. Maybe she brought him out here to empty him of this noise. Maybe it was all pouring out of him now into the emptiness.

  And where was his phone? If he could just talk to another person or get online or check the news or chat. He could update his status to Arctic or Firestarter. And he could tell people where they were.

  He lay on his side and watched her with his hat pulled down over his ears, clutching the crank flashlight she’d given him for Christmas “in case he needed it.” Then he shone it on Lauren, and the shadows of strange objects in the room appeared behind her. She looked bulky from the coat and the layers of thermal underwear but somehow still agile. He studied her for the things that were familiar because there were new things about her, new behaviors, and he didn’t know if these things were permanent.

  “Can you sing something?” he asked. It was so quiet. And the building so empty. It had good acoustics. She would like that. She used to sing in the bathroom because of the ac
oustics. She used to sing in church with Troy. She’d brought him there and he played with LEGOs in the choir loft while she practiced.

  She squinted in the glare of his flashlight and put her hand in front of her face. “Like what?”

  “Anything.”

  She shook her head a little and looked away. Maybe this was how she was different.

  “I can’t sing right now,” she said. “Turn that flashlight off.”

  “Um, okay.” He turned it off and waited a second, then clicked it back on. “How about now?”

  “C’mon, Furious.” She sounded tired.

  “Or . . .” he said, turning it off, waiting again, looking up at the ceiling, then turning it back on. “Now?”

  She was still quiet. The sound of the fire hissing and popping made it seem even more silent.

  “Sing ‘Winter Wind,’ ” he told her. The fire had made him very warm and sleepy and he could suddenly recall the arias and solos she used to practice. “The Black Swan,” “Fair Robin I Loved,” “Lucia’s Aria,” “Ave Maria,” “To This We’ve Come.”

  He remembered her voice sounded like chimes when she first started singing and that later it was different, fuller. And then later she only sang choir songs. He thought about colors while she sang, silver and orange, and it changed the air in the room. On very high notes he could feel the sound buzzing against the windows in the choir loft or in their living room. He could feel it in his chest as if he were singing too, an enormous vibrant ringing; a thing so present and invisible at the same time. At home when she was doing chores she would sing phrases from the same songs very quietly but it still sounded clear like chimes.