So Much Pretty (33 page)

“Yeah.”

I watched the kids ride up onto the loading dock. There was a click, and the static of the scanner stopped, and I felt the icy bottle against my neck, looked up to see him smiling down at me, Cutting, wearing a T-shirt and his blue uniform pants. I took the beer from him and leaned my head on his stomach for a minute and he put his palm against my ear.

“Thanks, baby,” I said.

“Dinner’s ready.”

I stood and linked my fingers into the belt loop of his pants and we touched the lips of our bottles together, then spilled a drop on the floor, in honor of the dead.

Epilogue

Alice

SALTON SEA, CALIFORNIA, APRIL 14, 2015

I
DIDN’T HAVE THE
balance I thought I did before we moved here. I was strong and my timing was good. But I did not have what Theo gives me.

The mystery of Theo is how present he is. A counterweight. He’s not meant to let go or walk away. He is too slow to do what I did, too grounded to walk away. We could not be happy now if he had left me in the mud to swim some fantasy of connecting rivers, trying to slip my way here unseen and alone.

Under this beach and under this salt, there is a city, the remains of concrete, a sidewalk. Rising out of the sand and extending into the distance are partially strung telephone poles, lining streets that don’t exist. This is the ghost grid. This is all the power that is left to light our trailer and to light our way down to the water.

When we have a child, we will tell her about this concrete beneath the sand. That beneath the beach, there are paving stones. We will show her that it’s real. That it’s part of a world that couldn’t last. A world that finally got flipped right side up. We’ll walk together beside the water and read together in the evenings. We will plant a new garden. And when night comes down upon us and up all around us, we will be there. Wide awake to greet it.

Acknowledgments

Thanks most of all to Eli Ben-Yaacov, whose love, intelligence, and sense of humor made it possible for me to write. Infinite solidarity and gratitude to Annia Ciezadlo, who was there when the story broke. I am very lucky to have my editor, Sarah Knight, and agent, Rebecca Friedman, two of the smartest, toughest girls I know. I’m indebted to my friends Annie and Harley Campbell for taking me in and predicting the future, to Rebecca Barry for her friendship and close reading, and to the radical saints; Joseph Schmidbauer, Rachel Pollack, Jan Clausen, Charles Hale, and Matthew Borrelli. Thanks to Daniel Stackman and Jacob Kotler for unplugging their amp, putting down their drumsticks, and leaving my apartment. Thanks to Glenn Hoffman. And to Mick Kubiak, Ann Godwin, Michelle Novak, Alexandra Underhill, Steve Friedman, Derek Owens, Jamie Newman, Mike Brutvan, Alexis Santi, Alexis Kahn, Cecelia Kristof, Ami Ben-Yaacov, John Fuchs, Jon Frankel, Jaime Bailey, Emily Goldman, Sonia Simioni, Candace Welch, Lisa Ford, Bruce Need, Cody Cook, Ellen Klein, Milagros Cartagena, Storn Cook, Spencer Sunshine, and Miranda Rice. I want to acknowledge my family, especially my mother, father, stepfather, and brother John, for always believing in my work.

Turn the page for an excerpt of
Be Safe I Love You
by Cara Hoffman

Part One

Prologue

January 6

Jeanne d’Arc Basin, Northern Canada

S
HE HAD BEEN
naked for less than ten seconds when the snow began to feel hot. Her body, pale and lean and strong, biceps and thighs banded with black tattoos, lay basking against the glacial ice; a snow angel overcome by shadows and lights, calm and awed in whatever seconds remained.

The tower scaffolding from the rig flickered, and she could barely make out where the dark stacks cut into the white sky. Just shapes and brightness. And she thought of a silent shower of frozen sparks. And the
shhh
and
hush
of sand and desert blindness; how it was here too in the snow where everything shone. Where everything refracted and blazed and brought the world back to the simple material of itself, of its beauty. This was all she had ever wanted.

It was his breath she saw first, then the red of his tongue and gums and black fur. He panted and cantered painfully, lifting his frozen paws and wincing, and then he bowed and pushed his face against hers. She felt the impossible heat of his tongue against her skin. The condensation from his breath had crystallized into tiny bits of ice surrounding his muzzle. He huddled down and curled his small warm body beside her, and she slipped her numb fingers beneath his collar, rested her cheek against him.

The lights of the rig burned and bled to white, and before she closed her eyes, she could see the dunes out in the distance. Placid and silent and stretching on forever.

One

December 25

Watertown, NY

N
O ONE WAS
waiting at the airport for Lauren Clay because she had told no one she was coming home. She called a cab from the car rental at the front desk and then waited by the luggage claim for her duffel, which was more than half full of presents for her father and brother; things she’d bought at the FOB PX and things she’d bought out in the street, in the cramped and sweltering little market just outside the forward operating base where she’d been stationed for the last nine months. She checked her watch, readjusted the bobby pins in her hair. And thought about the promise of relief that would come from doing everyday things like washing dishes, gazing out the window at kids playing by the duplex next door, taking Danny to the movies or going through the
National Geographic
with him, or ordering Chinese food and sitting by her dad while he watched TV and slept.

She couldn’t wait for them to open presents, to surprise her brother. Sebastian had been one of those surprises, and the look on Danny’s face when he saw the dog made up for a lot, maybe everything. Sebastian’s fur was still brown and as soft as a rabbit’s when she brought him home years ago. He had ears like a kitten’s and his eyes were shiny and black and alert. He looked like a baby wolf and lived in a cardboard box in her room. Sebastian was the sweet helpless thing she wanted Danny to raise. Something he could train. Somewhere good to focus his attention. The kind of thing she knew could save a life.

The dog lived in their house for two days before they showed him to their father and he wasn’t angry. He sat up in bed and held the puppy and laughed. And Sebastian snorted and licked him, fell over and rolled around, chewed on his knuckles with his needle-sharp teeth. His belly was round and taut and pale pink. Jack Clay held the dog and looked into its face.

“He’s a nice pup,” Jack said, smiling, pulling his hair back from his shoulders so the dog wouldn’t nip at it. “He’s a good boy,” he said in babytalk. And then Danny picked up the dog and cradled him. And she felt good because they were happy and she was getting their lives in order. She was getting things done.

Lauren hadn’t thought of Sebastian since getting Danny’s letter, but now in the calm and safety of the terminal she found his memory was the first to vividly greet her, to lead her thoughts to the neighborhood and the house she hadn’t seen in two years.

The dog had followed Danny around, sat on his lap, and, when he got bigger, accompanied them on treks through back lots and out along the river where he would hunt squirrels and swim and snap his teeth at the water. He was a strange-looking animal, and the woman who sold him to Lauren said he was a schipperke mix, told her they were bred to be miniature watchdogs and made the grandiose claim that during World War II schipperkes were used to deliver messages between Resistance hideouts. She and Danny tried to train him to do it, tying notes to his collar to carry between their rooms, but he tore them off and raced through the house dangling the shredded wet paper in his teeth, his head held high. When he got excited he galloped back and forth between their rooms growling, gums drawn back, teeth a gleaming white crescent amidst his fur.

She looked around the terminal and smiled. She had nothing that could replace Sebastian in her duffel, but she’d made it home, cruised right by what could have become a month’s worth of useless talk back on post, and made it home for the holiday. And now she had a week of relaxing before she headed out to finish things up. Meet Daryl, tie up loose ends.

Christmas music played from speakers mounted near the cameras beside the baggage claim. Beyond the sliding-glass doors rain baptized those who ran from the curb to meet their friends and relatives in the roped-off lobby beneath a faded blue and white sign reading simply:
ARRIVALS.
They came in dripping, disheveled, their faces shining or makeup running as they embraced and balanced packages and bags. People regarded her in her uniform; her black hair pulled up into a bun, her dark eyes and deeply tanned face. If she weren’t in desert camo, if she were wearing a light jacket and high boots over skinny jeans, she could be returning home from school in California, or be some rich girl coming home after a year studying abroad in Greece or Africa.

She was back but didn’t feel so far away from Iraq. Home was closer to the wider world than she had realized as a girl. Watertown was a base town, the home of Fort Drum, and the place reverberated with its presence. She felt it now more than ever, bodies training and bodies deploying and the vast interconnected system of sleepy faraway places that housed and built soldiers to send out. They were everywhere. And from every lonely FOB or smoldering rubble-strewn corridor, she could feel their readiness now as if they were one.

When her bag arrived she slung it over her shoulder and walked out into the freezing rain to wait. She was giddy from the freedom and the space and the strangeness of returning. The streets were black and slick and reflected the yellow lights flanking the entryway, and the hiss and hush of cars speeding past made her anxious to get going. When the cab arrived she surprised herself by giving the driver Shane’s address. Shane, who she’d stopped emailing months ago. Shane, who hadn’t received a paper letter from her since the first mad lonely and exhausted weeks she’d been away. Her most recent, most consistent correspondence was with Danny. His dispatches. The full report and at least a page of jokes every time.

The last letter made her laugh out loud and when Daryl asked, “What?” she got to say, “My dog died.” Lauren loved that kid. She loved Daryl too because he was smart and did things right but not too right. He liked hearing Danny’s letters. And when he showed her pictures of his kid they were always action shots: the kid doing a head stand, jumping off the top step of the porch, standing on the seat of his tricycle in little red cowboy boots holding a long spindly stick. The kid was a daredevil, had a buzz cut like his dad and the same sweet face. Daryl’d had him when he was nineteen, and, like Lauren, enlisted so he could provide better for his family. Daryl got it. There was no explanation needed between them.

Shane she wasn’t so sure about. His letters were serious and obsessed with the future. Graduate school, cities, traveling, and always “when you come home . . .” Something made her stop emailing and she didn’t know what. When she thought about it all she could come up with was ancient history, a thing he’d said back when she decided not to go to school. Like everyone else he’d been genuinely surprised. She was in most of his classes, studied with him. They’d sat in the library together beneath the fluorescent lights, heads down, his glasses glinting, reflecting the pages they were reading, their feet touching beneath the table. Shane had gone to her recitals, he knew who she was. But his words were an echo of the same stupid question she’d heard from all her teachers, and she was still amazed anyone had the balls to ask her. Amazed she had to clarify yet again how dinner gets on the table.

He said: “Half the fucking kids from this neighborhood are doing the army ’cause they can’t get into college. And after all the bullshit you went through you’re going to send yourself to the same place as those white-trash fuckwads.”

It meant nothing to her at the time. She’d actually laughed about it. Knew she was right, Shane was wrong. But later, dust covered and weighted down and baking in the heat, with every pothole on what wasn’t really a road making her shoulders and back work for her living, sitting just two feet from some brand- new killer who couldn’t shut the fuck up on the day’s journey back to the FOB, she would long for a reprieve. She would try for the music in her head but sometimes she just got Shane’s voice, and those were always the words he was saying. One more reason on a very long list you shouldn’t have anything to do with the Murphys. Because they’re smart enough to know not to say a thing, but they’re always mean enough to say it anyway.

The Murphys were Shane and his mother and the big crucifix in the kitchen and his three bald and blue-eyed uncles, Patrick and two others, whose arms were branded with terse gothic directives in black ink. They came together every Sunday dinner and at one time every one of them could have gone to college like Shane but they opted for bartending, carpentry, and the occasional visit to County instead. They were men so indistinct from one another Shane referred to them collectively as “the Patricks.” He couldn’t stand a thing about them and neither could Lauren. Whatever they were, Shane wasn’t. But he couldn’t escape the fact that they’d helped raise him, given him the confidence and wit to live in the body of a thin, soft-featured, almost pretty man. And he’d inherited their look—the bright, expansive calm that assured you he was paying close attention, assured you that Shane Murphy, slight and myopic and often hidden behind a book, was not the kind of boy who experienced fear, was in fact capable of anything.

Lauren knew his drive to change and escape and how the specter of becoming his uncles had ridden his heels all the way to the lush gardens of Swarthmore. She loved him, had loved him since tenth grade. But it didn’t matter. She’d never had the luxury of taking off like he’d had, never even indulged in the fantasy for too long. She had to take care of Danny and make sure they were ahead several mortgage payments, make sure there was money in the bank. And enlisting was a good plan overall. She didn’t just get smart in basic, she got strong. And when people came home for break with their freshman fifteen, and drug stories, and gross soft, self-centered plans, she saw them for what they were—and so did Shane, and he respected her.