Be Safe I Love You: A Novel

by Cara Hoffman

  He turned the flashlight off again because he knew it irritated her.

  She looked at him and the corner of her mouth twitched, her face lit only by the fire. She took a breath and then coughed into the cold air, shook her head, and took another slower breath, then closed her eyes as if she were going back to sleep.

  He said, “Please, Low.” And then thought for a moment something must have really happened to her. Maybe she’d been injured and it ruined her voice and she hadn’t told them. Maybe that was why she’d been acting so strange. Lauren had never said no before when he asked her to sing, when anyone asked. It was a free and pretty thing. She sang him to sleep when he was small, and she sang to their father sometimes when she had practiced a song for a long time. She would teach Danny a tune on the way home from school and they would sing it together. She sang alone in her room. Her voice was the sound of their home.

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t remember how it goes,” he lied, and clicked the flashlight back on so that he could see her face. She took another deep breath and closed her eyes.

  She began quietly, but soon her voice rose, light and clear, filling the frozen empty space with sound, high and agile and graceful the way he remembered it.

  Blow, blow, thou winter wind.

  Thou art not so unkind

  As man’s ingratitude.

  Thy tooth is not so keen,

  Because thou art not seen,

  Although thy breath be rude.

  Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

  Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

  Then heigh-ho, the holly.

  This life is most jolly.

  Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,

  That dost not bite so nigh

  As benefits forgot.

  Though thou the waters warp,

  Thy sting is not so sharp

  As friend remembered not.

  Heigh-ho, sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly.

  Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

  Then heigh-ho, the holly.

  This life is most jolly.

  When she was done he felt calm, relieved, his body warm and heavy. His mind was done racing and he slept and dreamt.

  • • •

  Outside the window of the building a woman dressed in white looked in at them, her face covered with a wax mask. Behind her was a shabby white sled made of chipped particle board, tied to a team of little black dogs with curly tails.

  The woman looked through the mask, into the window at him, trying to distract him from seeing his sister getting in the sled. Then she turned and stood—she had only been crouching to look in at him. She was very tall, tall as the building, with long thin legs. In two strides she was back in the sled, and she folded herself up into a crouching position, her back curved and sinister. Lauren sat beside her wearing fatigues and her army shirt, not cold at all, her face blank. He ran out to them but the woman yelled something to the dogs and they began running. The sled heaved and he watched Lauren’s body flop as if she was unconscious. He ran out to help her, to get her off the sled, but the woman pushed her upright in the seat and they raced away silently into the snow.

  • • •

  Lauren watched him sleep, brushed his hair away from his forehead, grateful that he had made her do it; here in the middle of nowhere with Danny at least it was possible, if nowhere else. She checked the fire. She knew they couldn’t really live there long without more wood and kindling. But there was plenty of furniture in the other houses and there was the woods to hike through and gather more fuel. She fed the fire, then pulled her hat down around her ears and pulled her hood up to keep her head warm. She lay down close to Danny, put her arms around him, and felt his chest rise and fall. Sebastian came and curled up to the sleeping bag, tucking himself behind her legs.

  She felt a chill in the core of her stomach for a second as the dog’s body huddled beside them, and she knew someone would have to pay for what she’d done. It seemed unreasonable that it should be any other way. She simply had to make sure it wouldn’t be him. It wouldn’t be Danny who paid, with his black hair and dark eyes and his lanky, barely muscled form.

  Thirty-four

  December 30

  “HELLO, IS LAUREN there?”

  Jack recognized the voice, it was the doctor who’d called earlier in the week.

  “No, I’m sorry, she’s gone to visit her mother.”

  “To whom am I speaking?” the voice inquired.

  “This is Jack Clay, I’m Lauren’s father.”

  “Mr. Clay, your daughter has missed an important appointment which is part of her PDHA, and there is a small but significant chance she could be considered AWOL, which obviously would jeopardize the conditions of her terminal leave and discharge.”

  “I see,” he said calmly, though his heart was suddenly pounding. “Well, she should be back in a few days, I’m sure we could reschedule something. She just got home, you know, she’s been settling in.”

  “Sir, I need to speak frankly with you,” Eileen Klein said. “I don’t normally pursue these matters so rigorously, but I spoke with Lauren the day before she left for home and there are some very problematic discrepancies between her PDHA and military records I was unfortunately not privy to at the time.”

  “Listen,” Jack said, “can she make another appointment or not?”

  “Mr. Clay, your daughter gave some orders that were recently under investigation. She is not in trouble, yet. But based on my evaluation with her and subsequent conversations with those in her unit I believe she is at high risk for recapitulating a violent scenario. Do you know where she is? Is she by herself?”

  Jack said nothing.

  “Mr. Clay, this is important. Do you know where she is?”

  Thirty-five

  Dispatch #1

  Dear Sistopher,

  I got a calendar today at the bank while I was running errands with PJ. There are pages and pages until you come home. How is it going at ‘learn to boss people around school’? Are you good at it?

  I saw a movie yesterday called The Endurance which you would love. It’s about Ernest Shackleton. (Which is a great name for a rich prisoner.) It’s about his expedition on his boat called the Endurance. You probably don’t remember this at all but he was an Irish polar explorer and then he decided to explore the Antarctic. He spent his whole life traveling around by ship and on foot in the frozen parts of the world. Anyway the Endurance got trapped in the ice and so the toughest guys set out on foot for help. His crew was trapped in the frozen ship for TWO YEARS. TWO!!! YEARS!!! and they lived. He went back for them and got everyone out alive.

  Another time his ship went down and he and his crew had to camp out on an ice floe. They were at sea on this big hunk of ice for a week! Camping! I want to do that so bad, Lowey. That’s what I’m going to do when I graduate high school.

  I just thought you would want to know that. I miss you but I’m glad you’re in Washington State bossing people around. PJ says you’re going to be good at your job because you’re a natural and you always watch out for everyone. I miss you, Sistopher. Be safe, I love you,

  —Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton

  Things looked very different in the bright daylight. She awoke before him and got the fire going strong, took out packs of granola and two burrito MREs. She put several bottles of water near the fire so they would thaw, and set a pot of snow by the fire to boil it, then put tea bags directly in the pot to make a dark bitter tea. Give them energy for the day.

  She went outside and climbed back up to the car and surveyed the landscape with her binoculars. They were near the coast, she was sure of it. It was overcast and she didn’t have the visibility she wanted, but she could see there was a steady slope to what she thought was the ocean. And a wider, well-plowed road in the distance.

  She looked over into the pine woods and then back toward where they’d come from. Then pulled a map from b
eneath the driver’s seat and studied it for some time. Satisfied, she ran back down the slope and woke Danny, and they sat before the fire eating the ready-made military food. His face was blank but he looked well rested.

  “Why did you pick singing instead of some other instrument?” he asked her before even saying good morning.

  “It was free,” she said.

  “Isn’t it weird that you were singing all this classical stuff and then you went into the army?” he asked, almost to himself.

  “Why is that weird?”

  “They’re so different.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “They’re not different at all.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I wasn’t like you,” she said. “I didn’t do good at anything you could make money at. Not like I was going to have a career running track or singing, you know?”

  “Why not?”

  She thought about how Troy had taught her to hear properly. Without him she would have been listening to her parents’ records forever or whatever crap was on the radio, iTunes, the boring songs people sing in school chorus. Troy played the music for her that first let her escape, let her leave home and the neighborhood and the town and the world.

  And when the sounds of artillery and mortars and diesel engines, bad southern rock and hip hop, calls to prayer from the mosque, and dogs and officers barking took up space in her head she had the power to hear these things differently. Amidst the hot and dirty noise of war and waiting she had the promise of Arvo Pärt, cold and white and unreachable.

  “Time for pushups,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder.

  He rolled his eyes and she felt the familiar flash of anger. He was so resistant to anything that required the slightest physical discomfort. And he was poor at taking orders.

  “Seriously, Daniel, you gotta get strong.”

  “What the fuck are we doing?” he said.

  She ignored him, got down and did ten and then stopped, did ten more, then ten more. She knew he was competitive enough to at least try. “C’mon, bud. Drop. Don’t be a fucking wimp.”

  He got down next to her and did four, then stopped, struggled to do two more. It was beyond pathetic that a boy his age couldn’t do a full set of pushups. But she knew people could be made to do pushups. Just like they could be made to cook meals and pick children up from school or live in a filthy dust cloud and dismantle other families’ homes.

  “Keep going,” she told him. “It’s early, dude. You can definitely do fifty by the end of the day.” She browbeat him into fifteen and watched the look of genuine pride on his face when he finished. She knew his body must feel good too. Building strength is its own addiction. She high-fived him and then gave his hand a squeeze. Told him she was proud. Situps weren’t a problem and she made him do eighty. Then jumping jacks. Then stretching. It was important to establish a routine. Boys are made for growing muscles, and she would make sure by New Year’s he was doing what he should, would keep going with it. He could have everything she didn’t. He could be smart and strong and free of all the stupid ideas that tie you down, family and nation and god. He could save a life.

  She put out the fire with snow and gathered their gear together in one of the little rooms off the living room. Sebastian shuffled around behind her, sniffing in the corners of the house and sneezing, and she remembered again that he was dead and ignored him.

  “Now we’re going to run,” she said.

  Danny didn’t look at her like she was joking this time.

  “Low, this is stupid,” he said. “Dad’s prolly freaking the fuck out. And I thought we were going to your friend’s house.”

  “I’m sure he thinks we’re in Buffalo and we’re fine. And we are fine, so we don’t need to contact him. You don’t have to be in constant contact with people. You can trust that they are doing well. You can write them letters. You want to write him a letter? He’s getting a week to hang out alone, big deal. When’s the last time that guy had some time to himself?”

  He said nothing. She could tell he liked camping and was overwhelmed by the surroundings. When she got him out into the woods she knew he would understand. He would see the things she saw.

  Thirty-six

  JACK’S VOICE WAS tight with panic when he said Lauren’s name, and PJ shut his office door, pressing the phone to his ear, a welling sense of dread forming in his gut. PJ did not want to hear the information he’d been anticipating for the last two days. She’d been popped for The Bag of Nails, he was sure; they’d arrest her in Buffalo. She’d broken the conditions of her terminal leave and now she would be back in the army, back in an army jail, then court martialed. He gripped the phone and rested his head in his hand, closed his eyes.

  Jack said, “She’s not at Meg’s! I don’t know where they are. Meg didn’t even make specific plans with them. Just knew they were going to arrive sometime this week.”

  “All right,” PJ said, genuinely relieved she had not been arrested. “All right now. Maybe they did some sightseeing and they’re still on their way.”

  Jack told him what Dr. Klein had said, and PJ’s heart began to pound again and now he was sweating as well. He went through it. She would not do something to Danny—this he knew. Or thought he knew. She looked rough when he saw her, like she was still in it. Jesus fucking Christ, how did those motherfuckers at Lewis-McChord let her off base? He blamed himself for not staying with her the other day, but those straight legs at Lewis . . . Nineteen suicides last year, and that boy that came home and put his girlfriend’s head in a box was from Lewis, and that fucker who waterboarded his three-year-old . . .

  PJ took a deep breath and reminded himself that this was Lauren, not some hillbilly on crank. She may have simply decided it was time to get away from family and have a break. It could be that simple. But he thought again of the last time he saw her. He knew what it was like to go from humping through shit and blood one day and then stand on the sidewalk of your hometown the next—and still he didn’t do a fucking thing, he just dropped her home. He saw the pain and determination in her eyes and like a fool he dropped her home.

  “I’m going to call the police,” Jack said.

  “No! Ain’t nobody calling the police just now.” Jack clearly had no sense that his daughter might have done more than lie about where she was going, had no sense what it would mean if she was arrested for arson and kidnapping.

  “Well then, what?” Jack demanded. “What?”

  PJ told him she was far more capable of survival than any of them. What he didn’t say was that she was also far more capable of fucking some shit up than any of them; motivated, efficient, and familiar with sacrifice. He didn’t say that sometimes people take the folks they’re protecting with them when they decide to check out.

  “Gimme an hour,” he said. “I’ll be over in an hour. You and me got this, gonna be okay. We’ll figure out where they got to, we’ll get ahold of them and fly there, turn it into a nice vacation for the whole family.”

  PJ called Holly and Shane, who were no help and raised his fears considerably. She’d fought with Shane and left an eight-thousand-dollar check in Holly’s hospital room, and neither of them would say more about it.

  Other than Shane’s “She’s not herself.”

  PJ said, “Thank you, professor, I think we got that part figured out. Now, she say something to you? Anything? You know I’m not out to get her in trouble, so you tell me.”

  “She, uh . . .” Shane’s voice broke. “She attacked me.”

  PJ nodded impatiently, felt like that boy was going to endure something worse in about a minute unless he started telling him what was going on. He enunciated clearly: “Did she say to you she wanted to go anywhere?”

  “No,” Shane said. “I don’t know. She said she hates it here.”

  Holly told him that Lauren was fine but seemed a little distracted and had several black bands tattooed on her arms. And that’s when PJ started jamming things in his briefcase and grabbe
d his coat.

  He ran into Troy in the hallway coming from group and called him discreetly back into his office for a moment. The man showed no surprise or concern at all that Lauren was gone, just squinted and rubbed his eyes distractedly, as if he were bored. PJ fought the urge to grab him by the shoulders, his terror rising in relation to every one of Troy’s thoughtful pauses.

  “She didn’t mention any plans,” Troy said, his voice crisp and just too slow, too articulate. “But . . . and I know everyone probably already realizes this—she never went anywhere without that little boy when she was at home, did she? It seems like her normal behavior. She would take him anywhere. That’s obvious.”

  “Lauren did not look well when I saw her,” PJ said.

  “Why didn’t you do something then?” Troy asked, and there was no accusation, no anger or malice, just pure, eager curiosity. Like the man was studying him.

  “Damnit, you know how it is,” PJ told him impatiently. Thinking if anyone could understand it would be a man who’d blown his entire career and every penny he’d made, all his recognition as a musician, all his prospects by drinking himself from the Upper East Side into a Bowery rooming house and then, several smoldering bridges and hospitalizations later, down into a church basement in his hometown.

  Troy shook his head. “I don’t,” he said simply. “Well anyway, when she comes back you can tell her I’ve talked to Curtis. You can tell her she needs to have things ready by August.”