Be Safe I Love You: A Novel Page 16

  Lauren had seen burn victims, some of them were just fine and some weren’t. She wanted to focus her gaze again, she wanted to stand, wanted to leave immediately, take Danny and leave, but her body wasn’t letting her; it needed just another minute, just a rest, and then she could make it do what she wanted again. Now more than ever she needed to get out of there.

  “Mom called,” she told him. She noticed that she was holding his hand tightly and let go, straightened her shoulders and looked at his face.

  “Did you get a chance to talk?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. It was fine, whatever,” Lauren said. “When’s the last time you talked to her?”

  “Your mother? A long time ago. She still calls the house phone for Danny, but we don’t really talk much. Why, does she sound okay?”

  “Yeah. I mean she’s fine, she’s herself. She always sounds okay.” Lauren shrugged. “Anyway, she wants me and Danny to come for a few days and I thought we could drive there today if you’re good with giving me the car. I could see Holly on the way too. Get out of this rain for a while, get a couple of quality days with Danny.”

  “Today?” He thought about it for a minute and shrugged. “You know what? I don’t see why not. You know, in fact, I think that is a very good idea. Your mom’s really going to be happy to see you. And if you take the car you’ll have some freedom to come and go if it gets uncomfortable. I’ll ask Peej for a ride this week.”

  Lauren nodded and he smiled and then he looked searchingly at her. “I don’t want your brother driving, okay? I’m serious. He hasn’t had any experience at all and it’s winter and in Buffalo it’s really winter right now, so I’m telling you don’t do it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she said, raised her eyebrows. A civilian guy with a part-time desk job giving her orders.

  He nodded and then looked at her like he had any idea at all who she was. “Well, this is great. I’ll get you guys some breakfast while you pack.”

  “We’re already packed,” she said. “We’ll get breakfast on the way.”

  • • •

  Lauren waited in the car for Danny, turned the key in the ignition when she saw him hop down the back steps. She was eager to get to the hospital and lay eyes on Holly, make sure she really was okay.

  “Wait,” Jack called. “You got everything?”

  “Oh shit, that’s right,” Danny said almost to himself, then ran down the driveway. As he disappeared into the garage Jack anxiously told Lauren again not to let him drive.

  “I got it,” she said. “I got it.”

  “And give Holly my love, tell her I’ll be by to see her after work.”

  Lauren felt the cool prickling of shame. She had not protected her friend.

  When Danny emerged from the garage with a beat-up red plastic sled, she popped the trunk so he could jam it on top of the rest of their gear before running up the steps to give their father another kiss.

  “Okay, now you got everything?” Jack asked.

  “Oh wait, wait!” Danny crouched down, patted his leg. “Here boy.” He made kissing sounds. “Here boy, that’s right . . .” He held the car door open and then patted his leg again, paused for a moment, said, “Good boy.” And then he shut the door.

  Their father shook his head. “Dan, that’s awful,” he said. “That’s not funny.” He laughed at them. “You guys take good care of each other. And call me sometime this week.”

  “Love you,” they sang to him, and Lauren backed the old gray Nissan out of the wet weedy driveway. Her father didn’t even notice the new tires she’d had put on.

  As they pulled away she looked up at Jack Clay one more time. He had the same tired wistful smile he’d always had, but his eyes were different. Looked like they had when she was a little girl. Like there was nothing in the way now, like he was wide awake and could see his children driving away from him. Hesitation caught her somewhere around the shoulders, a hunch that she was doing the wrong thing. For one brief second she thought of staying, turning the key the other way and unpacking the car. Instead she waved again and headed out and down Arsenal Street with the wipers on.

  “What happened to Dad?” she asked Danny.

  “He went to crying class with PJ.”

  She laughed. “Really?”

  “That and some low dose of Effexor.”

  Something in her froze and she drove silently for a moment, watching the narrow road, the potholes filled with gray water. She was happy with the new wiper blades. She went through a mental checklist of what she’d done to make the car safe for winter. Things her father hadn’t done, of course. He hadn’t gotten snow tires. No tuneup, there was no blanket in the trunk or flashlight, and the spare kit was rusted beyond practical use. It looked like all he did with maintaining the car was forget to put the anti-freeze away and kill their dog.

  She fought against the halting tension that seized her when they approached cross streets. A precariously tilting pile of garbage bags crowned with a tinseled Christmas tree made her brake abruptly.

  Danny looked up. “Was it a squirrel?”

  “What?”

  “In the road?” he said.

  “Oh.” She nodded. “Yeah.”

  Finally she asked lightly, “When did he start taking that stuff?”

  “I don’t know, a few months after Mom pulled that bullshit about me moving,” he said. “You must have noticed when we were Skyping.”

  She shook her head. “I thought he was acting that way because he didn’t want to upset me. Why didn’t he start taking it sooner?”

  “He didn’t know he was depressed,” Danny said, and looked at her for a minute deadpan before raising his eyebrows and giving her an exaggerated crazy-eyed grin.

  She exhaled tensely through her teeth. “He’s a psychologist,” she said, almost to herself.

  “That’s why it’s funny,” Danny said. “Also, he doesn’t take it now, he just needed it for like six months.”

  The words hung dully in the air between them. She resisted saying what she thought because that would cast everything dark between them. But it was as present as her own body. She’d spent nine years. Nine years of her life as head of household for what amounted to the common cold. When their mother woke up enough from her back-to-school party to think she needed a kid, their father suddenly figured out he had one and should take care of him. Nine years for a thing that could have been solved in a matter of weeks.

  She was too angry to speak. She looked straight ahead and felt Danny thinking. Turned to catch his eyes but his head was down, his face drawn. Then he glanced up at her, his cheeks flushed, whatever heavy thought he’d had already gone. He shook his head and laughed his goofy laugh.

  “That’s the funniest part,” he said. As if he could read her mind.

  They drove through the grid of narrow side streets that comprised their neighborhood.

  “I have to stop at the hospital first to see Holly,” she told him. “Then we’ll get going.”

  “How is she?” he asked. Then before she could answer he said, “I saw footage of that fire on the Daily Times website, it was huge. The fire looked much bigger than the building—like taller than the building, there was a tree on fire next to it. She’s a badass to get herself out of there, huh?”

  “She is,” Lauren said, proud of him for being concerned about Holly, glad she was taking him the hell out of Watertown, where it clearly wasn’t safe for anyone.

  She held out her palm to him and he slapped it, then turned his hand over for her. She slapped his hand and then held it, felt how big he was now. Felt his soft smooth palm and long delicate fingers.

  “My kid,” she said, quietly.

  • • •

  When the bus dropped her off at the corner she would walk home and let herself in, take food out of the freezer, and check on her dad. Then she would walk over to the after-school program to pick up Danny. She would usually get there around snack time, when he was eating half an apple with peanut butter on
it and drinking grape juice. He was short and round and his eyes always looked so dark in contrast to his pale skin. She would sign him out, take his backpack from his cubby, and they would walk home together.

  He’d walk beside her carrying the art project he’d made that day. Some special thing he’d concocted from the weird generic “crafts” supplies. A construction-paper tree or a cotton-ball polar bear, elaborate antlers made from pipe cleaner and pieces of egg carton glued to a paper ring he placed around his head; a mass of glitter and glue covering a cardboard box that was really a time machine. And he’d always say, “This is for you.”

  “I love it,” she’d say. “Let’s give it to Daddy too.”

  “Okay.”

  Sometimes if it was cold or he was tired she still picked him up and carried him. Or if she’d had a bad day, she’d pick him up and hold him close while she walked and sing whatever she’d been practicing with Troy. Sing the whole way home.

  She’d bring him up to their dad’s room first thing to deliver the work of art, and their father’s smile would be the best of all.

  “Look at this,” he would say. “We have an artist in the family.”

  She would make dinner while Danny sat upstairs with their father on the edge of the bed, telling him stories from school.

  After dinner Danny would sit in the hammock and swing and read while she did homework. And then later in his room they would look at the places they would go. Places she would take them. She remembered she’d found him a snow globe that someone in the neighborhood had left in a free box by the side of the road. Inside was a plastic gingerbread house, and the snow was made from white plastic chips and silver glitter.

  Sometimes before he fell asleep he’d lie on his back looking at it, fall asleep with it still in his hands.

  “That’s the Snow Queen’s house,” he told her once, holding the globe just above his face.

  “She lives in a gingerbread house, not a castle?” Lauren asked absently, sitting on the floor, her homework in her lap.

  “She doesn’t live in a castle anymore,” he said drowsily, giving the globe a shake and holding it up to his eye as if he were trying to see inside the little house. “Maybe she just takes away people who want to leave. I think I see a fireplace inside one of the rooms,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s the little boy and girl’s house instead,” Lauren said.

  “Yeah, I think you’re right,” he said. “They got it from the Snow Queen when she moved away. She left them this nice house even though everything in it is frozen. She made it so they can’t feel cold and they can go anywhere.”

  Lauren took the globe from his hand and put it on his nightstand, then she pulled the covers up, kissed him on the forehead.

  “They can,” she said, shutting off the light. “They can go anywhere they want.”

  Twenty-seven

  HOLLY WAS ASLEEP when Lauren went in. She had tubes in her nose, her left arm was completely bandaged, and the hair on the left side of her head was short, singed, and brittle, but her face was miraculously fine. A wave of relief washed over Lauren. If there was any more damage it was hidden beneath the sheet.

  She sat beside the bed and touched Holly’s hand lightly. The last time she’d visited her in the hospital was when Grace was born. Amazing Grace, seven pounds and ready to go, holding up her tiny fists, eyes an undetermined alien blue.

  Lauren stayed with Holly all day. They spent it looking at the baby, holding the baby, smelling the baby, making phone calls and working on their social studies homework when the baby was asleep. They were captivated by her terrifying fragility, barely touched their fingers to the soft spot on her skull, which pulsed rhythmically with the beat of her heart.

  If she’d never started working at The Bag of Nails she’d be fine now. There every day with the Patricks, actually thinking Patrick was anyone she should spend time with, anyone who could make a decent mate. Thinking of her friend’s desperation made her sadder than thinking of the fire. Holly hanging on there after everyone had left, looking for one smart person to talk to who hadn’t already judged her. Of course she was lured by the thin charm of the Murphys. Saw something of herself in bookish thugs, in failures. It hurt her to think of Holly seeing Patrick as someone who had drive and freedom, as some rogue intellectual who just needed a little caretaking so he could finally bloom. Someone with whom she could make a life.

  She pulled her wallet and an envelope from her little daypack and wrote a check for eight thousand dollars, sealed it in the envelope, wrote Holly’s name across it, and propped it against a plastic pitcher of water on the bedside table. That ought to get the girl somewhere. Her own place at the very least.

  Lauren stepped out into the hallway, saw Shane approaching, and fought the twin urges to walk past him without talking, to run and hold him. She made herself stand still in front of the room.

  He looked hung over and slightly sick. Walked up close and put his arms around her. She felt the cool wall of the corridor against her back and rested her head against his shoulder.

  “How is she?” he asked.

  Lauren pulled away and held his hands. “She’s asleep. I couldn’t see much, she looks okay.” The fact was she looked completely fine to Lauren. She’d been in a fire. But she had not been inside something made of metal filled with flammable fuel and fortified with artillery while it had exploded. Holly had run from a burning building. It was bad that she didn’t have a job now, bad she’d have scars and be in pain for a while. Lauren did not want her to be in pain. But she was fine.

  She watched him studying her the way he had outside The Bag of Nails and suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion. She didn’t have the heart for it, to stand and be scrutinized. She knew she’d failed to look sufficiently upset. But their friend was alive. The Bag of Nails was gone.

  Things were going to be okay for Holly, but not for her and Shane. He was so used to a good life now he could see surviving a catastrophic fire as bad news. She squeezed his hand and headed through the building filled with people sick with slow diseases, nearly well after accidents. It barely seemed like a hospital at all.

  Twenty-eight

  LAUREN TOLD DANNY to wait in the car, which was fine. He wanted Holly to be all right but there was no way he wanted to see what she looked like after spending the night in a burning building. He also did not want to see other sick people and he was glad Lauren understood.

  He texted Scott and told him he was going to his mom’s for the week, then opened the glove compartment and went through the junk that was in there. Pens, napkins, receipts, the car manual.

  The footage of The Bag of Nails was beautiful but not if you knew Holly was inside. It was a tall fire and he wondered how it had started. Maybe Holly had started it with a cigarette. The place really was an oversized rickety shack. It should have been called the Bag of Bones, not The Bag of Nails, because it looked like some kind of sway-backed living thing. It had a narrow wooden staircase that went up the back from the restaurant to an apartment. Maybe the guy who lived in the apartment had set it on fire. Maybe he was an alcoholic and couldn’t pay his bills and his electricity got cut off and he fell asleep reading by candlelight and the candle got knocked over and so did his whiskey, then his book caught on fire and took the whole building with it. But the guy got out and was now a hobo because he lost everything. One drunken spark between him and the road for life.

  He thought about how fire is like rust. Using oxygen to swallow up the world. Just one hundred thousand years ago people were learning how to use it, how to cook or scare off animals or something, and before that they didn’t even know how to make it, so for them it didn’t exist. He thought about Sebastian being converted from fur and flesh into gray ashes and chunks of bone. How he once had a personality and now he was fertilizing the roots of the pine trees. Sebastian never really got much farther than the yard. Even in death. Should have dumped his ashes in the river so he would be carried away. He loved to lie beneath the pine t
ree, but that’s only because he didn’t have much to compare it to. Danny thought about the remains of dinosaurs, their bodies in the ground turning into oil to be set on fire. The ancient past isn’t gone at all. Dinosaurs are more dangerous now as oil than they ever were when they were flesh and feathers.

  A loud rap at the car window made Danny jerk and scream involuntarily.

  Shane’s uncle Patrick was bent down staring at him—his face close and ugly behind the glass. He tapped again very lightly with one of his knuckles, and Danny rolled the window down.

  Patrick smelled like cigarettes and paper and sweat and fried food. He hadn’t shaved in some time. He was wearing sooty or ink-stained jeans and a grubby red wool jacket. His skin was ruddy, seemed loose and leathery. He looked sad and mean at the same time.

  “Where’s your fucking sister?”

  The snarling anger with which he said it was another shock. But it was also ridiculous that he was asking when they were both there in the hospital parking lot.

  “Visiting Holly,” Danny said, glancing down quickly to make sure his door was locked.

  Patrick wiped a dirty hand over his forehead, rubbed his eyes. He looked dazed. Stood and turned his back to the car, squinting up toward the windows of the hospital as if he were trying to figure out what room she was in.

  Danny didn’t know what else to say, so he began rolling up the window. It was halfway up when Patrick turned back around, stopped it with his hand, looked directly into Danny’s eyes without seeming to see him. As if he were calculating something and needed a place to fix his gaze.

  “She’s dangerous,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Your sister. People like that coming back with more than just stupid ideas in their heads. You send a person to hell you should keep them there, know what I mean? Would you keep a police dog? Would you keep a pit dog as a pet?”

  “Pit bull?” Danny asked. “I—”

  “Two worlds got to be kept separate,” Patrick interrupted. “You do your reading, you’ll see. The one shouldn’t even exist at all, am I right? You know what the Demiurge is?”