Be Safe I Love You: A Novel Read online

  Shane’s gentleness was wasted on her, was incommensurate to the task of holding the person she had become: a thief who was greedily breathing and walking and seeing and fucking and eating, greedily laughing at her brother’s jokes, greedily washing the dishes, or strolling through the mall with her friend. It was all for her, and none for them, the folks that don’t come home. None for them ever again.

  He stroked her arm, his face against her neck. She struggled not to give in to his languid way. He said very quietly into her ear, “I don’t claim to understand what it’s like,” and she breathed in the warm sweet scent of him and absently laced her fingers through his while he kissed her softly on the neck, put his lips so lightly against hers. She felt her throat close, thought again of the people who came back and the people who didn’t, and how she had no right to cry. Beneath the colored lights of the Christmas tree in the dim, musty, book-lined living room she held sweet Shane Murphy’s hand for what she hoped would be the very last time.

  Twenty-three

  December 28th, 4 a.m.

  The Bag of Nails

  IT WAS HARD to believe a place could hold an entire life. A town. A building. Everything you’d done or said or wanted or tried was somehow contained in that space, spread out, every surface imperceptibly covered with what’s been lost.

  People shouldn’t be so attached to the material world. You think your long habit of living; your words, your breath, your dreams are contained in the places you’ve been or the objects you’ve touched, you think some evidence of you has grown like lichen, crystallized like frost, accumulating over the wide plank boards and the tables and floors, the barstools and glasses and windows and taps, until your transparent presence becomes the place itself. And the place resonates with this charged silence of everything you’d left unsaid or undone. A madrigal from an invisible choir.

  But none of that is true. Nothing can contain you. And this is easy to prove. Easy to show. You don’t need anything, the very suggestion . . . the very fucking suggestion after all this time, that you need anything from anyone. And this place. You need it least of all.

  They don’t see how it is after everything is gone. How you sit and watch and move and think and dream and all the while you are burning; an eternal flame; everyone else’s symbol, your pain.

  And at some point it becomes obvious that there’s no other option but to light the way. To show them the fate of every cell; show them what awaits each vulgar object infused with spurious grace.

  And there in the rising heat and rush and pop of whole towns delicately changing into white and orange petals thin as a ghost’s tattered shawl, they might at last understand what that vow you took really means.

  What it means to be a guardian of freedom.

  To deploy, engage, and destroy.

  Twenty-four

  DEANA ANSWERED SHANE’S call on the first ring as the late-morning sun was coming through the window of his boyhood room. She said, “Hi baby, how’s break going?” and he smiled when he heard her voice and lay back on the narrow, spent bed, dehydrated but the aspirin was starting to kick in. He’d left Lauren’s around three and barely slept after that because of sirens in the neighborhood. He’d been waiting for a reasonable hour to call her.

  He said, “Tell me about yours, because it’s probably way more fun.”

  She laughed. “It’s good. Good. Good. Sooo happy not to have any papers to write, my god. I think I forgot what it’s like to just talk to normal people. I can gladly report I’ve not heard anyone mention poststructuralism, originary censorship, or the discursive limits of sex in over a week.”

  He smiled. “Neither have I.”

  “My mom says she’s sorry you couldn’t be here,” Deana said. “It’s so pretty. We’re going cross-country skiing later. Oh my god, you should see this: I’m standing at the back door and my nephews are outside building this giant snow thing, they jammed the carrot in too low I swear—it looks like a snowman with a carrot penis.” She started laughing. “Hold on . . .” Her voice got muffled and he heard her calling to her mother, then a chorus of laughs. “Okay, I’m back. I have to get a picture of this. I’ll send it to you in a second. Oh my god . . . so funny. How are things going there?”

  “Well . . .” he said, half laughing, “there’s no snow here. It’s been raining all week. Um, I got in kind of a bar fight with one of my uncles, I’ve been drunk for about twenty-four hours, and, uh, Lauren is home from Iraq.”

  She paused. “Oh my god, baby,” she said. Then: “Wait. Really?

  “Really.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I . . . yeah. I guess. I mean, this is how it is here.”

  She said nothing for a moment, then finally, compassionately, “You must be so relieved, at least about Lauren. How is she?”

  “Not quite herself. She almost shot me accidentally last night, and then we walked around getting drunk.”

  She laughed nervously. “Wait, you’re making all this up. C’mon, Shane, stop kidding.”

  He said, “I’m not,” and immediately regretted telling her anything because he could hear the tension in her voice now.

  “Jesus,” she said. “Are you okay? Why don’t you come here?”

  “I’d love to but I need to deal with this stuff.”

  “Shane, what stuff? It’s been almost a year since you even talked. For god’s sake, you’ve both been seeing other people for four years now. We’ve been ‘us’ for almost a year.”

  He blinked. The only person he was seeing when he closed his eyes was Lauren Clay, and that hadn’t changed. He loved Deana. She was quick and funny and driven. Gracious in the way of people who have been well cared for but not entitled. Not arrogant. He could talk to her for hours, and she was smarter than any person he’d met. When he thought about it he knew he would be with her. There was no question. She was better suited to him. They had the same plans, same goals.

  But he could not want her the way he wanted Lauren. That way where there was no need to talk at all. Some preverbal love. A loyalty that had nothing to do with sex that he couldn’t shake if he tried. They were tied.

  “It’s not just Lauren,” he said, and his voice broke and his chest ached when he said it. For whatever reason she was no longer the girl he knew, and the thing that bound them was some black Irish nonsense neither of them had yet managed to escape. “I have to be here this week for my mother,” he said, and he was suddenly, horrifyingly aware she was the only thing that stood between him and the path Lauren Clay had taken. His own abilities and his intelligence had barely meant a thing. He knew that he loved Lauren because she had been like his mother, doting on a boy who would soon be too spoiled to realize what she’d done for him. Spoiled and neglected in that way that breeds contempt. Putting her voice aside so she could pay the bills. Keeping her head down, keeping everyone safe. No one had ever suspected there was something wrong with her because she seemed to have it all together, and what could they have done for her anyway? He would not be that boy that carried contempt for another minute.

  He said, “I love you, D.” Then he hung up and called his mother at work to tell her the same.

  That’s when he found out what had caused last night’s sirens.

  “She’s stable,” his mother said. “I think they’re letting visitors in.”

  Twenty-five

  December 28

  LAUREN WAS TIRED and rattled and hadn’t slept but she still made it out the door for a run before her father and Danny woke. She’d meant to go for only a few miles, but once she got out there was no real reason to stop. Maybe she would never stop, never be able to get it out of her system. Last night hadn’t helped.

  She ran along the river toward the industrial park at a light jog. Entered into the rhythm of her body, her breathing, her heart. Felt light and fast and slightly nervous running without a gun, without a vest, without gear and other sets of eyes nearby.

  It was disorienting, not the wide flat enclosed space of
the FOB, sand and dust getting into everything, every tiny corner. In winter when it rained the stuff became like wet clay, a heavy mess, weighing them down even more. She thought about the vastness of the space and low fortified concrete buildings. The cold comfort of the bunker and blast walls and looking out beyond the high fence at the expanses of nothing—paranoid when any man or animal wandered into range. The way fear and boredom could become one, could become anger, could become some kind of holy distance. Fear and boredom in the tents and containerized housing units, fear and boredom beneath the floodlights and satellite dishes. And all around them the expanses of gravel and dust-colored, dust-covered vehicles. The towering rigs in the distance. The landscape spread flat around them, here and there a date palm rising out of the distant sand like a solitary element from paradise set down in the middle of hell’s staging ground. She could feel it all as she ran. That sense that they were baking in some slow fire. The smell of diesel fuel and shit and things burning, and inside the CHUs the smell of sweat and soap and Pine-Sol and coffee and the ubiquitous motherfucking never-ending supply of Girl Scout cookies.

  She thought about Daryl and Walker.

  She thought about how the whole thing had taken less than ten minutes, but now every single detail seemed to have its own lifetime. A fifteen-minute loop for Walker adjusting his glasses. An hour for opening a car door. A whole day for blood. A single sentence spoken thirty days ago that never came to an end.

  Dust rose from a road in the distance, a long beige cloud being towed by a short smoke-colored car. It seemed to hover above the ground, its tires invisible. She heard the sound of her own voice shouting “Vehicle.” Looked up at Daryl and Walker. Daryl was on it. Walker had just gotten there a week ago, replaced someone’s kid who’d had his arms and face burned off. Walker was a dumbass fuck and belonged back in Granite Shoals, working at the Cracker Barrel grocery. He raised his rifle but there was no way in hell she was going to let him fire it. That order was not his.

  “Haji’s in a very big hurry,” Daryl said to her.

  He called out in Arabic over the megaphone, “Stop or you will be shot,” and she raised her rifle. The air rippled in front of her and she kept her eye on the approach, fired the warning that should have halted the car. But nothing.

  Walker watched, and she could hear his breathing change in excitement. The high tone of his voice when he spoke made her feel pity and disgust. He said, “Aw, my fucking god, what is this stupid motherfucking piece of shit doing?”

  “This guy wants his virgins,” Daryl said calmly. “Sar’n Clay gonna ruin his day if he don’t slow down though, isn’t that right?”

  She nodded. “Roger that.” She had a steady bead on the windshield above the steering wheel but couldn’t yet see him. She felt the determination of the driver. He wanted something that was different from what she’d felt before. Daryl’s voice rang out again with the promise the driver would be shot. And the vehicle seemed to pick up speed, as if the warnings were calls to hurry. She ignored the sounds of terror-stricken exuberance coming from Walker.

  Adjusted her aim, emptied her lungs. A second took a year to pass and then she fired. A loud pop and tick and the windshield blew out at about the same time as the driver’s-side window. The car sped up, swerved. They hit the ground, bracing for explosives, but the car just smashed against the barricade, scraped and ground against a low concrete reinforcement, the horn blaring. She looked up at her men, felt a manic burst of laughter leave her mouth, then stood again. The car’s wheels were spinning. It was not on fire, but she and Daryl knew that didn’t mean a thing.

  • • •

  When she passed the sign for the Jefferson County Highway Department she realized she’d gone too far and had no memory of getting there. No memory of the road or cars that had passed. No memory of the Black River. She was maybe seven miles from home, the sky was getting light, and she was headed to Burrville in the cold morning air. She felt like she could run another hundred miles but turned back. Cut into the neighborhood at North Massey Street.

  When she got home she was soaked with rain and sweat. She ignored the dog because he was dead and then went to stand in the hot shower for a long time, letting it scald her skin so that she could make the call.

  • • •

  Even exhausted and repentant she almost hung up when Meg answered. But she made herself say hello, say she was sorry. She lay across her father’s bed looking up at the stucco ceiling while her mother talked, while her mother said she understood, and that she was sorry too.

  “Sorry for what?” Lauren asked.

  “Sorry you’re not feeling well.”

  Lauren shut her eyes and knew the call was a mistake, but she would get through it for Danny’s sake.

  Her mother said, “Honey, you should think about taking a break and going somewhere nice.”

  “Like where?”

  “Somewhere where you can relax, where you can read and think and see beautiful things.”

  Lauren laughed at the thought. It would have been really funny if someone who knew her said this, but hearing it from Meg just made her sad. “Where would that be?” she said simply. “You want me to leave my family now that I’m finally home?”

  “I want you to do what you want,” Meg said. “What you actually want. Not something for anybody else.”

  “You said you missed me before, but from when?” Lauren demanded, changing the subject. “From ten years ago? How could you even miss me because I was in Amarah, when you hadn’t seen me for years before that!” It hurt her throat to say it. She closed her eyes tightly. How could a stranger make her feel like this? Someone who was there before she wore a bra. Someone who had never seen her win a race, who just sent a card when she graduated high school.

  “I miss you now,” her mother said. “I do.” Her voice trembled, a distant sound from some place of self-exile, the refrain of one who returns to be unforgiven. She should have known to begin with there is no such thing as a prodigal mother.

  “I miss you,” Meg said again. “And I’d like you and Danny to visit.”

  “Okay,” Lauren told her, though it was not part of her plan and was never going to be. “Okay,” she said. “All right.”

  Twenty-six

  LAUREN HAD GONE to the car the night before when she couldn’t sleep, put all of the MREs in the trunk in case they ran out of food. She stowed her gun beneath the front seat. She brought two cold-weather sleeping bags, the poncho liners, thermal underwear, wool socks, a new pair of insulated snow boots, size ten for Danny’s big feet, a case of Clif bars, and a ten-pack of BIC lighters.

  At nine o’clock she put on the Christmas compass bracelet Danny had given her, woke him, and then went to her father’s room. Jack Clay was ironing his work shirts and listening to NPR. She had a fleeting but overwhelming urge to order him to stand up straight. He wore a ragged pair of slippers, boxer shorts, and a frayed T-shirt he’d had since she was a toddler, the word ORGANIZE and a crumbling and faded image of a big fish about to be eaten by many little fish across the front. The clean smell of steam and starch hung comfortingly in the air. But the sight of him up and pressing laundry was almost ridiculous, out of any context she could recall, as if she’d opened a door into an alternate universe. If she wandered around the house maybe she’d find herself practicing solos, maybe she was home on break from conservatory, some diva who sang alone. Maybe her mother was downstairs making breakfast.

  The phone rang; she could hear Bridget’s voice before she got the receiver to her ear, then nothing but sobbing.

  “What is it?” Lauren asked. “Bridget, what’s happened?”

  When she said the word “Holly” Lauren felt for a moment like she couldn’t breathe, like she was about to vomit.

  “What?” she asked again hoarsely.

  “The whole building. It’s barely nothing but ashes,” Bridget said. “My baby . . .” Then she broke down again and Lauren’s heart raced as she waited for her to go on. “.
. . My baby was in the basement, trapped down in the basement restocking, and all that liquor upstairs, it practically exploded. She’s okay,” Bridget added quickly, calming herself by saying it. “She’s alive, she’s got . . . she inhaled smoke and she got burned. Her clothes burned, some of her clothes burned to her skin. But she’s all right.”

  Her father looked up from his ironing, concerned, attentive.

  Lauren did not have to imagine what clothing and skin looked like when they had melted together. She pressed the phone to her ear and shook her head slowly as she listened, as though she were refuting the details. Finally she said, “It’s going to be okay, I’ll be over. I’ll come over now. Soon.”

  She hung up and looked at her father. “There was a fire at The Bag of Nails early this morning, Holly’s at Samaritan.”

  “Jesus!” her father said. “Was she hurt?”

  Lauren looked away, shook her head. “Smoke inhalation.” Her voice shook and she made it stop. “Some burns. Bridget says she’ll be out in a couple of days. I’m going to go over.”

  He looked suddenly angry. “That damn place is a firetrap and with everyone hanging out in the back there, that big pile of recycling . . . God damn it, that kid doesn’t need one more thing.” She wished she could feel what he did.

  Lauren said, “I can’t believe she was there that late. She shouldn’t have been there.” She sat on the edge of his bed and let her focus soften and blur, stared into some middle nowhere, wallpaper, the closet door, the edge of the ironing board, like there was no more subject to the shot, someone had set the camera down while it was still running. She was suddenly very, very tired.

  Jack came over and put his arm around her. “Holly’s resilient, babe, she’s going to be just fine.”