LaRose (36 page)

Guess I have to say the whole situation’s stable now, but goddamn, said Landreaux to Ottie, who smiled at him with dim eyes. Landreaux had the pipe bowl in his hands, but he couldn’t get calm.

I shouldn’t swear while I’m working on this pipe, he said. Randall says it might get offended. The pipe’s supposed to be treated like a grandma or a grandpa.

You’re too reverential, all that. Grandpa Pipe won’t get pissed off, said Ottie. Grandpas take pity. Plus this isn’t really a sacred object yet. Has to be blessed.

True, said Landreaux.

Swear away, said Ottie.

Sorry, said Landreaux to Ottie. Sometimes it gets to me all over again.

Ottie knew that Landreaux could get on a jag.

Hey, I wonder.

Ottie groped to change the subject.

When did you and Emmaline first meet?

He surprised himself. Maybe it was an unusual thing for one guy to ask another. They had him all plumbed up like a toilet. Dying so slowly was boring.

So?

At a funeral, said Landreaux. It was Eddieboy’s funeral, her uncle. During the wake, while Eddieboy lay there looking his best, Emmaline got up and spoke for him. The things she remembered: like this raccoon he tamed that sat on his head like a hat. The way he let kids be his workout weights, lifting them up and down on his arms. The green plastic shoes. These things brought him alive, you know?

I remember Eddieboy.

People were smiling and nodding at Emmaline’s memories like you’re smiling and nodding, said Landreaux. Eddieboy’s morning Schlitz—and he never drank at any other time. Those Hawaiian shirts. How he used to go
yabadabadoo
at the end of jokes. I watched Emmaline and thought that someone who could raise those mental pictures at a sad time and make people smile was a good person. Plus, a looker.

For sure, said Ottie. I bet the feast was good for Eddieboy.

Potato salad, macaroni shells. Ambrosia. Of course we ate together, then I left. I was working in Grand Forks as a night clerk. I’d got her address and I wrote her every night on Motel 6 letterhead paper. She kept all my letters.

I wrote Bap too! What’d you say in your letters?

Landreaux was smiling now.

I would die for her, eat dust, walk the burning desert, that kind of thing. Maybe I said I would drink her bathtub water. I hope not.

Ottie still looked expectant, so Landreaux went on.

Oh well, you know. We tried each other out, I guess. No, it was more like we disappeared into each other for a while. Vanished out of the ordinary world. To be honest, for a while we drank hard, drugged some. Then got sober. We wanted a baby, then Snow was born tiny and we had to lean on each other to make sure our baby lived. Emmaline was in school. We made it through that. Earlier in this time we got Hollis. Along came Josette. Eight pounds! We came back here and got into the traditions, to stay sober at first, then to bless our family. We went deeper into it, got married traditional before the kids, got married by Father Travis way after. Coochy came along, then LaRose. One thing had led to another in a good way until . . .

Don’t skip ahead, said Ottie. You lucked out with Emmaline, but maybe it wasn’t just luck. You’re a good man, too.

Ottie had perked up during Landreaux’s story, but now a powerful wave of fatigue hit him. Abruptly, he fell asleep; the air whistled between his lips. Landreaux fixed a travel pillow around Ottie’s neck so that he could sleep comfortably in his chair. The past was stirred up in Landreaux. It had been a long time since he’d thought of the way he and Emmaline were in the beginning. Even to remember, now, both hurt and pleasured his mind.

Up until Emmaline, he had been living in his sleep. Dozing on his feet yet doing a thousand things. And then she had roughly shaken him and when he dared look into her eyes he saw: together they were awake. She began to inhabit him. He felt too much. Had strange thoughts. If she left him, he would go blind. Deaf. Forget how to talk and breathe. When they argued, he turned to air. His atoms, molecules, whatever he was made of, started drifting apart. He could feel
himself losing solidity. How had she done this? Sometimes at night, when she left the bed and he was anchored in half-consciousness, he couldn’t move. Terror built in him, a panicky, anxious, stifling misery that abated only when he felt her stirring about beside him again. If Emmaline had not loved him steadily in return he would have died of the experience of falling in love. It was like he had been born in a cave, raised as a wolf child or a monkey with a bottle strapped on a wire for a mother. To feel was nearly too much to bear.

Landreaux thought about the Fentanyl patches kept in the back of the bathroom drawer. They were for Ottie’s unhealable stumps.

Sit tight, said Landreaux to himself.

He gripped the pipe bowl and watched his knuckles whiten until the need, the need, the need passed down a level, which was the dangerous moment when he would think he had conquered the need but that sly part of him could bypass the conviction. The desire, the shame, the fear that stopped his breath was settling. He had been infected with feelings and his body held them like a live virus. But he could turn them off, go to sleep again, find safety in a self-compelled oblivion. He put the stone to his forehead until he felt safe. He took a deep breath. That erratic thing in him had settled down. He talked it down some more.

Now, you stay there. Leave me alone, he told it.

Landreaux handled the pipestone lovingly. It was the blood of the ancestors through which Emmaline and his children existed in this precarious world.

MAGGIE WALKED LAROSE
back to his brothers and sisters on an October weekend. The radiant leaves had blown off quickly the night before, and stuck to the bottoms of their shoes. Maggie stayed on at the Iron house to do homework with the girls, and because she was invited to their beauty spa. Josette and Snow were going to turn their kitchen into a relaxing world of skin and hair regimens.

The treatments could be assembled out of the pantry and
refrigerator. Sugar facial. Salt exfoliation for the feet. Cinnamon and honey lip exfoliation. Egg-white facial that would tighten your skin. Cucumber eye mask. Frozen tea bag eye mask. Lemon hair rinse. Mayonnaise hair moisturizing treatment. They decided that they were going to do that one first.

Snow set a jar of mayo on the table along with a roll of plastic wrap. She poured a quarter cup of oil into a bowl. Maggie sat down in a kitchen chair, a towel over her shoulders, and Snow massaged mayonnaise and canola oil into the crown of Maggie’s head, then down each strand of hair. Maggie wanted to laugh. The smell was annoying but Snow’s massage felt so good that she fizzed up inside. She closed her eyes and sealed her lips. It would be weird to laugh. Snow wound the plastic wrap around and around Maggie’s head. She tucked the ends tight, then wrapped a towel tightly over the plastic into a turban.

Now you can go sit in Dad’s recliner and Josette will do the frozen tea bag treatment on your eyes, and the salt exfoliation on your feet. After that, Josette’s going to do the mayo treatment on my hair, then we all do the egg-white face mask.

I want one too, said Emmaline when she saw the girls painting the egg whites onto their faces, and onto LaRose. They lay on the couch, or on towels on the floor. They listened to the radio while waiting for the egg white to dry. As it dried, it started pulling on their skin.

Can you feel it?

I can, said Maggie, her eyes shut beneath the melting Lipton tea bags.

Kinda hurts, said Josette after a moment.

That’s because it’s stimulating your collagen.

Emmaline sat up. Can I take it off now?

Maggie took the tea bags off her eyes. Mine’s dry.

Ow! Don’t smile, said Josette. But she laughed. The dried egg white on Snow’s face had cracked in a web of tiny lines.

Get it off!

They washed off the egg white and admired the smoothness of one another’s skin. They unwound the turbans, washed their hair, and couldn’t get the mayonnaise out. Maggie looked into the mirror and saw that the tea had left raccoon marks around her eyes. Within the stains, her eyes gleamed as if with fever. She looked mysteriously ill. She examined the porcelain finish on her cheeks.

Wow, said Emmaline. My face is all dried out. It feels like my skin is going to fall off.

Me too, said LaRose.

She stared into the mirror and started rubbing Oil of Olay onto her forehead.

Now the manicures!

Josette brought out a tray of nail enamels.

I’m leaving for town to get Coochy. Do your homework, said Emmaline to the girls. And this egg-white mask? I think it aged me ten years. Her skin was still tight and strange.

I’m going with you, said LaRose.

You’re from the olden days, said Josette suddenly, bending over to hug LaRose. You got an old spirit.

Just that egg white, said LaRose.

Know what he said? You guys, know what he said? He said what we used for TV in the olden time was stories.

Come on, said Emmaline.

No, really, he said that!

I mean come on—let’s go.

Maggie and Snow jumped in the car and got a ride into town. They wanted to buy cinnamon for the lip treatment, and they had to get more shampoo.

We smell like freakin’ sandwiches, said Snow.

Whose idea was this, the mayo?

Mine.

Really?

Actually, Josette’s, but she’s sensitive, you know?

Maggie hadn’t thought of Josette as the sensitive one.

My mom’s sensitive, said Maggie, and wished she hadn’t. Anyway, they were both sitting in the backseat of the car, where Emmaline couldn’t hear. Snow was silent, but Maggie could tell she was thinking of what to say. After a while, Snow spoke.

Your mom, she’s okay. I mean, she’s done pretty well, don’t you think, considering?

Mom’s hard to deal with, said Maggie. She stopped herself from chipping at her new nail color. Pale sky blue.

Snow didn’t tell her how she and Josette had recoiled from that witchy vibe Nola had given off those first years. She said that Josette liked how Nola planted flowers.

She’s into that, said Maggie.

Snow’s approval of something that her mother did had a strange effect on Maggie. Her stomach seemed to float inside her body. Yet there was a jealous itch in her brain. She looked at Snow, at the elegant way she held her mayonnaise-smelling head, the slim flex of her shoulders, the perfectly layered T-shirts. She needed Snow to understand.

My mother actually doesn’t like me, you know, said Maggie. She loves LaRose.

Snow’s eyebrows drew together, her lips parted; she stared into Maggie’s face. Just when Maggie was about to shoot her mouth off, say something tough, swear to stop what she saw in Snow’s eyes might turn to pity, Snow reached an arm around Maggie’s shoulders and said, Oh shit, baby-girl, we gotta stick together. Look.

Nicking her head toward the front seat, she shaped her face to indicate LaRose and Emmaline.

He doesn’t even have to call shotgun anymore, said Snow. Guess who’s always stuck in the backseat whenever Mom’s got time with LaRose?

Maggie stuttered; it was like an unexpected present thrust into her hands.

I never knew.

It’s a fact of life, said Snow. We call her out on it all the time. She doesn’t get it. Hollis and Coochy, they’re tight. And we got each other, me, Josette. And, hey.

She rocked Maggie toward her comically.

We got you covered too.

After they left, Josette started prying up the packed powdery dirt beside the front steps of their house. The rest of the yard was damp, but this part stayed dry because of the overhang of the roof. Maybe it wasn’t the best place to plant because of that, but her vision demanded fulfillment. Her parents had no feel for gardening, for home beautification. They were focused on the human side of things—medical, social, humanitarian, and all that. But over the past year, whenever she had picked up LaRose, Josette had seen how Nola got some new flower to bloom every week or so. They weren’t just ordinary flowers, and Josette didn’t know their names. Somehow they bloomed one right after the other, all summer and even into fall. Between these unusual plants were the constant marigolds and petunias, which she did know. Nola was growing vegetables out back of her house, too, climbing vines that twined up chicken wire. Rows of plants were set off by straw paths where the chickens pecked. It all looked to Josette like a magazine house. Of course, Nola had a part-time job only. Anyway not like her mother. Emmaline’s job was endless. Josette would take charge.

Yesterday, she had brought home seeds and some tiny, droopy marigolds from the grocery store. They were in a bin marked
FREE
. This was her vision. There would be colorful bursts of flowers beside the door to their house instead of a junked bicycle and rusted scooter that could not be used by a kid on a gravel road. Those things, she had hauled back into the woods.

The dirt, though, was not like the dirt at Maggie’s house. It was filled with tiny rocks and the color was gray. The water just turned it to soup.

Dirt’s dirt, right?