Be Safe I Love You: A Novel Read online

“Is your daughter home?” Lauren asked.

  “Now wait a minute,” Bridget said. “Let me look at you.” Her voice was raw and low, and she spoke at an almost comic clip, like a character in an old crime movie. She stepped back and regarded Lauren, holding her firmly by the shoulders. “I almost don’t believe it. Let me just set eyes on you a little more.”

  “I’m glad to be back,” Lauren said.

  “I bet you are. Holly,” she called. “Get down here!” She turned to Lauren again. “She’s been sleeping. Closed the bar around three last night, poor girl. She’s gotta get up anyways because my shift starts in a few hours and I know you two want girl time.”

  Gracie came running into the kitchen, and Bridget handed her a piece of bacon. “Hey, li’l gal, you know who this is?”

  Grace shook her head.

  “This is Lauren.You remember Lauren? She knew you when you were just a baby.”

  Grace shook her head again and took a bite of bacon.

  Lauren said, “Pleased to meet you,” and held out her hand for Grace to shake.

  The girl looked like Holly. Shrewd, a tiny strategist.

  “Pleased to meet you,” the girl repeated.

  • • •

  At the end of tenth grade Grace’s father still had a name, one that you could hear shouted from the bleachers surrounding the basketball court. Back then the tall languid boy in Hilfiger polos who would soon become Asshole was all about Holly: how funny she was, how street, how cool, such a bad girl, so smart, such a fast runner, how hot, how tough, how sweet, such an angel in her black miniskirt and neon tights, talking all wrong like his parents hated and getting the grades they wished he could get. She was a dangerous new species, not seen on the Southside. He had discovered her.

  Asshole had house parties at his parents’ big place for the whole team. He drove a black VW Golf with a Guinness bumper sticker because that was his brand and he drank nothing else. He was a dumb boy who would go to a good enough college because there was money for it and he loved Holly with the kind of desperation that made it clear he wished he was one of them. Longed for their shitty lives as though living in their neighborhood was a trip to Disneyland. He was delighted and awed by Shane’s stark kitchen and the pictures of his tattooed uncles. You could tell he wished he was missing a mother or father, or better yet that someone had actually died so that he could look damaged and brave and wistful about it.

  Lauren had never liked Asshole very much, and when Holly brought the two-pack pregnancy test over to her house in the afternoon, giddy and scared and laughing at how fucked up it was, Lauren pulled her into the bathroom immediately and shut the door so they wouldn’t disturb Danny.

  She waited while her friend peed on the stick and they set it on the side of the tub and waited some more.

  “That’s got to be wrong,” Lauren said.

  “Right?” Holly agreed.

  “Open the other one,” Lauren told her, filling a glass with water and handing it over for her to drink.

  A couple hours later the other one said the same thing, and they sat together in Lauren’s yellow room hostage to a kind of stunned dreadful excitement.

  “This isn’t going to stop me from doing anything,” Holly said. “We’re still going to get out.”

  Lauren held Holly’s head in her lap while she cried.

  Later the boy would comfort her, would tell her how they were both going to go to school and have a life and raise a baby, but by the time she was showing he’d seen enough.

  Asshole’s fantasy of running with a tough crowd made him a daddy at eighteen, but he lived somewhere else now. His mother babysat sometimes as a favor.

  • • •

  Holly ran down the carpeted stairs wearing a light windbreaker open to reveal a black shirt emblazoned with a pink skull and crossbones. Her hair up in a ponytail, five small silver hoops dangling along the edge of her ear. She picked up Grace and kissed her several times on the cheeks, then put her down and grabbed the car keys off the hook by the back door. Holly kissed Bridget and quietly said thank you.

  “I want to go too!” Grace cried.

  “Sorry, sweet stuff,” Bridget said. “Grammy needs your help with something special.”

  “Please!” she shouted, as the back door slammed shut and Holly grabbed Lauren’s hand and skipped down the stairs and out to her mother’s dented turquoise Kia.

  The car’s interior smelled like candy and ashes and Handi Wipes.

  “It’s fucking sixty degrees out!” Holly shouted, as Lauren squeezed in and made room for her feet amidst the crushed and empty juice boxes that littered the floor of the passenger side.

  “She likes to toss them up over the front seat when she’s done,” Holly explained, throwing some of the boxes into the back, laughing. “You sure you ready for the Salmon Run Mall?”

  Lauren said, “Affirmative, girly-girl, I am a warrior. I am ready for anything. Except for this shit, what is this shit?”

  “Nirvana,” Holly said. “It’s all my mom had in her car. I think we played musical chairs to this album at one of my birthday parties, right?”

  “What’s that guy’s fucking problem?” Lauren asked, leaning forward to eject the CD, and then stopping herself because she knew Holly liked it. “He can’t be serious,” she said.

  Holly pulled out into traffic and then flipped the visor down and a pack of Newports fell into her lap. She punched in the lighter and offered the pack to Lauren, who took two and lit them. The seamlessness, the autonomic actions were a comfort. Life was made up of millions of small repetitive motions and words, and the repetition alone built a human being; loading a magazine, slipping the ceramic plate into your vest, over your chest, routine, reflexive, comforting.

  It was a pleasure to smoke, a bad-kid thing she could rarely do in high school because of training. Lauren leaned back and listened to the end of Kurt Cobain’s mordant whining, then clicked over to WJNY where strings were playing. Warm undertones like a human voice, a precision and competence that made her feel more relaxed, like someone knew what the hell they were doing. Holly laughed, shook her head, tapped her cigarette against the ashtray. “I was thinking about what a freak you were about music just yesterday,” she said. “Freak!” she screamed, like she used to in fourth grade. “Oh my god, you’re really HOME!” Holly took her hands off the wheel and waved them around and they both screamed out the windows.

  “Oh my god, dude, I’m sorry, but this crap isn’t any better than Nirvana,” Holly said. She pulled onto the freeway and Lauren broke into a sweat, leaned away from the door. She felt naked without a radio and her gear, and visibility was bad in the light fog. They were goners. She wished she were drunk or believed in God. Some benevolent God that had created her in his image; had spared her so she could buy shit at the mall and get in fights. She thought of Troy singing My soul doth magnify the Lord and felt she understood the words for the first time. All year she’d been magnifying the Lord, reflecting back something that didn’t exist, becoming stronger and richer and emptier. Troy was wrong: They were powerful words. A true prayer.

  Holly gave her a funny look. “I know this road,” she said. “It’s safe. Hey, check it out.” She put the cigarette in the corner of her mouth and began talking; this was how she made fun of her stepdad, Dave, who would hold a butt in the side of his mouth until it was practically all ash.

  “So,” Holly said in muffled stoic tone. “You got them parts ordered over from Nichols?”

  “Yep. Yep,” Lauren said, less tense, laughing a little. “S’posed to was they’d be here ’bout Wednesday.”

  “ ’Fraid I can’t do much ’til then, then,” Holly said, making the cigarette bob comically as she spoke. “You want me you know where to find me. Ain’t had much work in what, oh, six, seven, maybe thirty-seven weeks . . .”

  “Nope. Not much,” Lauren said, then she broke into her own voice again. “Man, that’s so fucking weird that your mom ever married him,” she said. “Isn’
t it?”

  Holly nodded. “You know he was in the same unit as Troy?”

  “That can’t be right,” Lauren said. “Troy is like a fucking genius.”

  Holly said, “Troy is a genius? Oh, wait. Are you joking?”

  “No. Troy is a genius.”

  Holly raised her eyebrows and said slowly, “Dave was in the same unit with Troy in Kuwait, and he said Troy is a retard.”

  “That doesn’t even make sense,” Lauren said.

  “You know he is.”

  Lauren shook her head.

  “Well, whatever,” Holly said, “him and Dave go way back and Dave said he was retarded.”

  “Right.” Lauren nodded slowly. “Dave said.”

  “What do you think of Patrick?” Holly asked, changing the subject.

  “Which one?”

  “Patrick,” Holly said, laughing out a cloud of smoke.

  Lauren did not like the sound of this question. “I think he’s a forty-five-year-old alcoholic who still gets in fistfights, lives in a rooming house, pretends he reads books by reading their introductions, spends all his money the day he gets it, and eats and does laundry at his sister’s house.”

  “But he’s still good-looking, right? Strong from lifting all those bundles all day,” she said hopefully. “The ladies want to get with him.”

  “But they don’t want to stay with him. Have you ever seen the inside of his place? It’s horrifying, smells like mold, stacks of papers everywhere, always a few dozen empty bottles on the floor. And all this incredibly pretentious shit hanging all over the walls, framed photos of guys playing chess, pictures of philosophers he ripped off the backs of books and thumbtacked up around his bed, it’s fucking bizarre.”

  She could see by the embarrassed, knowing resignation on Holly’s face that her friend had indeed seen the inside of Patrick’s room.

  Lauren opened her mouth to say something and then just shrugged.

  “Ahh!” Holly shouted, pointing at her and laughing so Lauren could see the vein sticking out in her forehead. “I’m just fucking with you,” Holly said. “Seriously, oh my god, your face!” She tossed her cigarette out the window. “Anyway. Speaking of Troy,” she said. “My mom ran into your dad at the Tops and he told her you were prolly going to be going to music school.”

  “He’s fucking delusional,” Lauren said. “Danny’s got five more years of school left here.”

  “No, he said you were going to music school.”

  “I heard what you said,” Lauren told her.

  • • •

  The Salmon Run Mall comprised vacant cavernous spaces, weird half-empty shops that sold only seasonal stuff, and three different dollar stores. It seemed to have shrunk while she was away. But what hadn’t changed was the soldiers walking around; plain faces and tight bodies in jeans and their army T-shirts, some of them wearing camo. Sitting at tables in the food court, standing in the arcade, like high-school kids, which is what they were maybe just months ago. Soldiers were a familiar feature of growing up in Watertown, and she’d always thought of them as older, rugged, dedicated people. Now they looked hopelessly green, vacant and restless and bland like physical manifestations of the mall itself. She stood and watched them as Holly waited in line for coffee and thought about the FOB. About all the cheaply constructed structures that were built to warehouse people like her all over the world. Places to store them like meat and send them out like butchers; neat, efficient, working-class folks who served the demands of a hungry population and over time would get used to the smell of blood.

  Holly came back with their coffees and they sat on a bench outside the bookstore.

  “It’s great your dad’s back at work, huh? You can prolly spend a lot more money.”

  “Yeah, I dunno how much he’s actually bringing in. But there’s groceries at least.”

  “He must be making a lot of money being a therapist.”

  Lauren laughed.

  “They make a lot of money, right? It costs so much to go to them,” Holly said.

  “He’s at a clinic with a sliding scale so you can pay like five bucks if you need to.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. You’ve never gone to counseling?”

  “Why would I do that?” Holly asked, looking at Lauren with a perfectly blank expression. She waited until Lauren was about to say something and then burst out laughing again, the sound echoing in the empty hollow space.

  They headed to Claire’s Boutique, where everything was pink and sparkling and easy for middle-school girls to pocket. Lauren bought a pile of barrettes and hair clips and bracelets for Gracie, and whatever else Holly said she liked, even if Holly said, Don’t get it. They went to the sporting goods store where Lauren bought things for Danny. Sweats and sneakers and shirts and more cold-weather gear.

  They went to Bon-Ton and tried on dresses. Calling to one another from behind the flimsy white doors of the fitting rooms.

  Holly chatted with the women who worked there, she moved easily about the store, browsing through the racks. She bought a pair of red corduroy overalls for Grace.

  • • •

  Lauren thought about how everyone was something else back home and she needed to slip back into another skin to walk among them. She thought about Sue Godwin and Danielle Apelt, the soldiers she lived with in Amarah. She thought about how Danielle re-upped after her husband was laid off. How when they were not out on patrol or searches, or at the checkpoint, they just hung in the containerized housing unit and everything was pullups and Skype and shitty movies. She’d heard so much about Danielle’s kids she felt like she’d yelled at their teachers and taken them to visit Gettysburg herself, grounded them for smoking pot, bought them soccer cleats halfway through the year because their feet kept getting so goddamn big. They heard one another talking to their moms and dads and kids and boyfriends and sisters and brothers and husbands, and they heard each other never once mentioning the details of the day. She remembered Sue Godwin pale and still shaken from an IED that didn’t miss the truck in front of her, nodding as she listened to her aunt talk about getting a new grill for the deck and how they were going to make pork bellies when she got home. She thought about what they might be doing now. Sue was back in Beal City, Michigan. Danielle had another year. Daryl was home.

  He’d described the place so well she felt like she knew it. Said when he was done in Iraq they were going to Canada, to Camille’s parents, build a house nearby with his combat pay, and he would work on a rig or logging just long enough to make real money. Lauren listened to the way he talked about Camille and their boy. She seemed like such a good mother. Exactly the kind of mother you’d want. And she’d put up with Daryl, living in the States and down south too—and now they were finally going to get to be where she wanted—where they both wanted, up north where things are beautiful and untouched and still a little wild. He’d grinned as he described it, popping the last of a Thank U Berry Munch Girl Scout cookie into his mouth.

  “These Girl Scouts are some bloodthirsty, supporting-the-troops motherfuckers, aren’t they?” he said earnestly, offering her one. “We run outta chow here we’ll prolly still have the energy to keep on killing ’cause of Peanut Butter Patties and Savannah Smiles.”

  “Speaking of killing, you pick up that lanyard for your pistol yet? As I may have mentioned every single fucking day for the last three and a half weeks, that weapon needs to be attached.”

  “Oh, we’ve become very attached.”

  She said, “Do it, motherfucker. I’m not the one getting shit if that thing goes missing.”

  “You dressing me down, Sar’n?” He looked into her eyes long enough for them to feel it. These looks could feed you for a week.

  “Ah. Anyway,” Daryl said, his voice suddenly hoarse, quieter, “what was I saying? Oh yeah, oil’s the big employer up north too, which is good. I don’t know if by the time I get through here I’ll want to work on those rigs, or blow them sky high.”

 
Lauren smiled. “You’ll be well prepared to do either,” she said.

  He nodded, his face sweet and earnest. “That’s right, Sar’n Clay, it’s all about options.”

  There was a pop and sirens. Then flares went up over the CHU and the dark outside was suddenly brighter than day.

  She said, “Move, soldier.” And followed him out and down.

  • • •

  After-Christmas shoppers were walking though the mall with bored vacant faces, carrying bags of things they were returning or hurrying to buy even more, compelled by postholiday sales, pushed to spend by boredom. Lauren recognized the military wives from Fort Drum too. Some of them with their guys and some alone. The mall was like an ethereal plane between war and commerce and real life where they could take shelter. They were shadows of themselves, meandering the food court, the hungry left-behind wives accumulating some comforting pounds, trying to put flesh on a feeling of not being there at all.

  Holly stood and talked to a pregnant woman for a few minutes, laughing and nodding knowingly. She touched the woman’s stomach and Lauren felt herself recoil, nearly gag. She looked away. Her friend could do all the simple stuff that didn’t seem so simple anymore.

  When Holly came into the dressing room to see what Lauren was trying on, she seemed shocked, said, “I didn’t know you had those tattoos.”

  Lauren had gone with Sue Godwin to get the second and third one. Godwin got the badge of their unit and an Irish harp. She missed Godwin. She remembered dressing to go out, the way they sealed one another into their armor, how she snapped the neck protector on to Godwin’s vest. Even under seventy pounds of gear there were gaps at the sides and at their armpits, at their waists. There were places small as a grace note from which they could be dispatched.

  Lauren looked down at her arms quickly, then shrugged. “Yeah,” she told Holly. “I got these about a month ago.”

  “They’re kinda ugly,” Holly said. She pulled a Twizzlers out of her jacket pocket and handed it to Lauren, saying, “Eat this,” then she stuck one in her own mouth.

  As they walked with their bags down the wide tiled thoroughfare of shops and abandoned spaces headed for the parking lot, they heard the first chords of the carolers.