Be Safe I Love You: A Novel

by Cara Hoffman

  “You having a TV party with Mom?” he asked her.

  Grace stuck her thumb in her mouth and hunched over his head, still looking at the screen. He swayed back and forth, and she held on to him by wrapping one arm around his forehead. She giggled but still didn’t speak.

  “What’s on?”

  Grace pointed to the television. He took her off his shoulders and held her on his hip, looking into her face

  “What happened to Gracie’s big loud voice?” he asked.

  “She rediscovered her little tasty thumb,” Holly said.

  Grace’s eyes twinkled as Holly said it; she raised her eyebrows and gave Shane a sly look. He sat down on the couch still holding her, but she climbed off his lap and scooted over to a pile of LEGOs beneath the dining-room table.

  He and Holly watched her organizing the plastic bricks into different colored piles. Holly rolled her eyes. “Everything with this girl,” she said. “It’s all got to be just so.”

  He slumped down in the couch and leaned against her, taking her good hand and holding it. “They found who did it,” he said quietly.

  She looked up at him expectantly, felt she might throw up.

  “Troy confessed.”

  “Troy?” she asked hoarsely.

  “I heard it on the radio.”

  “Do you . . .”

  “No, of course not,” he said, lowering his voice even further so as not to disturb Grace. “The first thing they said is the suspect is military: There were boot prints all over the mud, and tracks between the bar and the riverbank. You know what I think.”

  “Yeah, but you’re wrong.” She shook the inhaler, exhaled, then put it in her mouth and breathed in deeply. “And anyway, you were with her all night.”

  “Not all night,” Shane said. “She’s changed.”

  Holly’s mouth tightened; she took a deep breath and shook her head at him, her face telegraphing complete disappointment, a blank, angry, well-practiced tolerance for stupidity.

  “Why would Troy say he did it then?” she asked.

  “I don’t think anyone knows why he does anything. But if he knew who did it, or if he thought it was Lauren or that Lauren might be in trouble he’d—”

  “Shut up,” Holly said, tiredly. “Shut up, I’ve had enough of it.”

  “Has she been in touch with you?”

  “No, but I’ve had enough of it. You know what Troy did in the war?”

  “I had no idea he was in the war.”

  “The first one, the other one,” she said quietly, her voice still rough. “He stood around looking at fires that couldn’t be put out, just like Dave. If it’s him, it’s him. I don’t care. I’m not mad. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Half the town—more than half the town because of Drum is military or ex-military. Jesus, you know that. It could be some kid from Drum, prolly is. Patrick served, Peej served, everybody fucking served except you and me and a bunch of stuck-up pricks.” Her voice had fallen to a whisper and it faltered. He went to the kitchen and got her a glass of water and then sat back down, his thigh touching hers.

  She leaned against him and he put his arm gently around her. “I know you don’t think she’s different now, but honestly—”

  “Different?” Holly interrupted him again. “She’s not different. She’s always been disciplined. Think about it. She’s been protecting every single one of us without relief since we were fifteen. She’s been raising that boy since she was ten on her own, without anyone telling her how to do it. She’s been taking care of weak people her whole life. There’s nothing at all different about her becoming a soldier.”

  “But those aren’t things soldiers do,” Shane said. “Not one of them. She didn’t enlist because it was part of her character, she enlisted because they paid a twenty-thousand-dollar signing bonus. Don’t forget that. Taking care of weak people is not what goes on over there, Holly. She may have done it so she could be the breadwinner at home. But don’t be confused about how that money got made.”

  Holly looked away from him and he laced his fingers through hers more tightly, squeezed her hand, insistent that she listen. He couldn’t be the only one who saw what had happened to Lauren, and he was exhausted to the point of tears by the blank-faced denial her homecoming seemed to elicit. He’d held Lauren and looked into her eyes, had felt the strength of her will to hurt him, seen the rage and frustration when people didn’t do what she said. Holly had to have seen those things too. He knew PJ had, he knew it when they talked.

  But they were supposed to pretend, even now when they had no idea where she was or what she could be doing, even as they lived in the shadow of the base, and heard reports from places like Fallujah, or read about disastrous brutal homecomings, they were supposed to pretend that what she did was some angel’s work in hell.

  Holly looked back at him, defeated and overwhelmed, and there were tears on her face. He kissed her cheek and she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “I know what you’re saying.” She spoke quietly, her mouth close to his ear, her breath ragged. “I hear it. But it’s not her.”

  • • •

  By the time Shane got there the police or someone had already been through the apartment and the door was wide open. Troy’s living room was a cascade of manuscript pages and sheet music, a tumble of white and black that sloped from an old wooden cabinet down along the floor into the tiny kitchen. It was a small place, an efficiency in a remote part of town not far from base. The painted wooden floor was covered by a threadbare Persian rug.

  The room looked like it housed the remains of a bigger, grander life. Walls were hung with gold-framed iconography. Shane recognized Saint Sebastian pierced by arrows; an illustration of the French Gnostic philosopher Amalric of Bena, whose followers were burned before the gates of Paris; a photograph of David Wojnarowicz standing in the street with a cutout mask of Rimbaud’s face over his own. He was fascinated and embarrassed by seeing a very private man’s possessions.

  Shane began to wonder if the police had done this or if it was someone else. If someone had done it in anger, maybe Troy himself.

  There were no photographs of family or friends or regular people. Troy’s desk had also been sufficiently trashed, but his bookcase was left untouched. Shelves and shelves of books on music theory, psychoacoustics, history, art history, theology. Shane began reading the titles, he pored over the books until the light in the room began to fade. Then he saw it, lying there unframed, a five-by-seven photograph of Lauren, thin and pale in a sleeveless black dress, her posture perfect, holding a black folder. She was looking straight into the camera, her hair slightly tangled where it fell about her shoulders. She was wearing PJ’s watchcap, smiling.

  Shane turned the picture over. Neatly printed on the back it said: “Soprano Lauren Clay at 15.” As if it was a shot of another historical figure or religious icon. As if she was a saint.

  Thirty-nine

  IN THE MORNING he got up and collected snow without her asking. They did pushups together before the fire and ate and drank strong tea and then burned all their garbage. She was proud of him. She felt alive again, felt good. The remoteness suited them. The house lodged no history they knew and the landscape seemed undeniably a place where they belonged. It was the dream place. It was the sound of so many voices you could not hear a single one. She looked out again at the frozen expanse drained of color. Blinding as it gleamed beneath the blue sky like the inside of a cloud cut down.

  “What are we going to do today?” he asked. “Are we going to get on the road?”

  “I was thinking we could dismantle one of these houses and build a boat,” she said.

  He stared blankly at her.

  “We’ll need to go to a hardware store and get some supplies.”

  He turned his back to her for a minute, stood completely still.

  “Okay,” he said finally.

  • • •

  They left the house and trekked up the hill to the car. While they walked he began
singing “Winter Wind” distractedly, his boots crunching on the snow like a metronome, as if it were a song for hiking. His voice was a sweet tenor but it was made for laughing, not singing. He crescendoed on “sing heigh-ho, unto the green holly” and inadvertently changed key. The sun was still low in the sky, turning the bottoms of the clouds silvery orange and pink. And the bright snow reflected its glowing and held the forest’s gray shadows; crisp silhouettes of trees as if they were cut into the ice moved when the wind came up, and the dark forms of birds traveled over the white land.

  Their skin stung from the cold where it was exposed, and their breath rose and drifted in pale clouds about them. When they reached the top of the rise Danny stopped singing and seemed almost forlorn, and the snow glittered like crushed glass and the sun cast a golden glow across the landscape.

  The car was covered with a delicate pattern of frost, a lace of white moss, and the doors were frozen shut. They stood pulling on the handles for several minutes until the driver’s door opened—tearing the rubber seal, which was cracked and brittle. She knew there should be more snow there at this time of year. That the roads shouldn’t even be passable. The car should be buried in a snowdrift, the gasoline should be almost frozen. Just like the Black River back home was threatening to flood, not freeze. They should never have been able to get off ON-137. Yet here they were, cold but not dead. No animals had come at night to eat them. No wind blew out their fire. No fire burned their house down with them inside it. They were the very things that warmed the land. Nothing was going to stop them.

  The car turned over with difficulty and she put the heat on and they sat and waited with the engine running while ice retreated across the windshield.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She looked over at him. “I am,” she said calmly. “Are you?”

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly. And she put out her hand for him to hold.

  “Remember you used to sing to me on the way home from school?”

  She smiled. “Of course I do.”

  “That was the weird thing. When you left. Because suddenly there was no sound from you. And then the turntable broke. The house got really quiet when you were gone at first. And then Mom got me the computer so we could talk and I didn’t have to do everything at school.” He was talking really fast, almost talking to himself. “It’s so quiet here,” he said. “It’s too quiet.”

  “It is.” She still didn’t know what was upsetting him.

  “This place feels like the songs you practiced,” he said, and she felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up, knew he had been to that dream place with her—or could at least see it now. Her singing and his vision of trekking across the frozen landscape, eating polar bear meat, they took place in the same world. Something had drawn them both to this frozen ground long before they ever came there.

  She looked through the faint shadow of frost on the windshield at trees in the distance and nodded. He was right. If the landscape was sound it would be high and precise and white. Arvo Pärt had once called his music white light, comprising all colors. And the blending of the melody and the voice he described as one plus one equaling one. That was what she wanted. That was the equation she wanted. But she would settle for one plus one equaling none.

  “I saw so many pictures of places like this,” Danny said. “But being in the place is like hearing the song. It’s not like a picture. I thought it was but it isn’t at all, there’s so much space and air and light.”

  She smiled at what he was saying. It was silent here but the space begged to be heard. Could not be described otherwise. She had taken them somewhere that looked most like what she held on to inside. Sounds no war, no family, no thought could reach. If she was no longer worthy of singing or hearing sacred music she could go to the land that was its mirror and get lost in its reflection.

  He said, “Being here makes me think I’ve never actually been anywhere before. People take vacations on break from school, but we never took vacations. Plus when I was home I just ignored home most of the time. We were there but we weren’t there. ”

  She had nothing to say to comfort his anxiety and he was already gazing out the window again, humming “Winter Wind.” If this was a place he couldn’t ignore that was good. She’d make sure this was a real vacation, and he could see and do great things. She wanted him to be happy. Maybe she could make everything right in the next few days. Either go home, or start over there, find work, and get a place near Daryl’s. Maybe nobody had to pay.

  She looked at him bundled in his coat and boots, a reflective stillness so foreign to him now settled over his face, in his eyes. The car was warm at last and she backed out quite far until the road widened and she could turn around. Just a few more days, she thought. But she could only make him promises in her head. She would take him to the coast and then they would leave. She would teach him how to drive. They would see the land changing. They would break free of the things that tied people up in the spiral of their DNA, and in the demands made by blood. They would live in the future. Because the future is the only safe place to be.

  • • •

  She and Walker gave their casualty reports to Captain Parker. There would be a 15-6 and Parker would be the one to determine if any action would be taken.

  When none was, she’d gotten her first tattoo. A wide black armband. Black blank ink suited her skin just fine. She’d gotten two more bands out of respect and so she wouldn’t forget who she was.

  “You gunna do that every time you gunna end up with long black sleeves,” Captain Parker told her. “Get yerself some pretty flowers like I got.” He looked steadily at her and smiled. Parker had more than pretty flowers on his arms. Green-stemmed tulips and hyacinths and daffodils wound their way up his forearms and biceps through a junkyard of weird signifiers: an Irish harp, a Star Trek insignia, a dragon, a lightning bolt, the eye of Horace, the ace of spades, a Jack Russell terrier, a skull, the equation for the second law of thermodynamics, a Puerto Rican flag, Gandalf smoking a pipe, and a powder-pink heart with the words i love debbie—written inside in the same font, he’d enthusiastically pointed out to her, used for the I Love Lucy show.

  This was the man who made decisions for them. And it was Captain Parker who told her that Camille, Daryl’s wife, had moved back to Canada to live with her parents outside of Hebron.

  “Tat does go nice with yer eye, though,” he said. “Can you see outta that thing?”

  “Yes sir, I can see fine. It’s a burst blood vessel.”

  He grinned. “It’s real sharp.”

  Her right eye was a deep scarlet. When the field doctor first saw it he thought she’d been hit by a chunk of safety glass from the window. But apparently it happened right after the incident, when she and Daryl were back inside the FOB in medical. Waiting.

  Forty

  THEY GOT GAS at the Exxon station, a grubby weathered salt-stained building with Plexiglas windows. Danny went in to pay for the fuel and was gone for ten minutes.

  “What took you?” she asked.

  “I used this amazing new invention called a toilet,” he said. “And soap.”

  The town was farther away than she’d remembered, and they drove past miles of snow-covered nowhere, telephone poles and an occasional billboard flanking the highway. Out in the distance they could see narrow black roads cutting through the landscape and disappearing into pine-covered hills. Danny was full of questions about the region for which she had no answers, just anecdotes from Daryl. Finally he asked her about something she knew a little about.

  “Why was Joan of Arc such a big deal?” he asked.

  “A lotta reasons,” she said. “Because there weren’t women soldiers back then, for one.”

  “But why was she a saint? Was it because she was a soldier or because she thought God was talking to her?”

  “Because she led some battles in the Hundred Years War and she claimed God sent her to do that,” she told him. “After the English bur
ned her at the stake the pope declared her innocent and made her a saint, so she was like a retroactive saint.”

  It was getting too hot in the car with the heat on and their coats and long underwear. She turned it down and opened her window a crack, letting in a sharp gust of icy air and a crisp smell that exhilarated her and made her feel like driving forever, as far north as they could go.

  “So she was executed for fighting the English?”

  “She wasn’t,” Lauren said. “Her official crime was actually dressing like a man.”

  “No way.”

  “Seriously. They put her in a men’s prison instead of a convent where she would have been guarded by nuns, so she had only men for guards. She wore men’s clothes and wouldn’t take off her armor because she didn’t want them to mess with her. And since she wouldn’t put on a dress they charged her with the heresy of cross-dressing, and the penalty for that was death.”

  The road before them was covered with a long patch of ice, and she slowed down.

  Danny laughed. “That’s fucking ridiculous.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It was a lose-lose situation. When she agreed to put the dress on they attacked her and took it away again and gave her only men’s clothes for a second time. When she put the men’s clothes she’d been forbidden to wear back on at their insistence, they charged her with heresy and burned her at the stake.”

  “Jesus,” Danny said.

  “Yeah. Not a good way to go. But the interesting thing is she hallucinated legions of soldiers behind her in battle, and sometimes it was just her and a couple of dudes she knew. She saw visions of saints too.”

  “Like good ol’ Saint Sebastian,” he said. Then he called the dog up into the front seat and put his arms around him, scratched his chest. “Looks like he’s getting a thicker coat because of the cold,” he said, and she laughed and nodded. Then looked away when Sebastian yawned, squinting his eyes and curling his tongue. He’d been sleeping in the back seat where he didn’t exist, but now, sitting with Danny, the dog’s body was clearly visible.