LaRose (45 page)

IN MARCH THERE
was the war. Father Travis started to watch the shock and awe, then switched it off. He was trembling inside, couldn’t think. He turned out the lights, knelt beside his bed, and bowed his head onto his folded fists. He tried to pray but his body was enthralled by a sticky, hot, beetling-red rage. The air in the room went thick and whirled with freakish energy. He jumped out of bed, put on his running clothes, and dashed down to a field near
the school and hospital where he could run in circles all night if he wanted. It wasn’t a large field and he’d made only a few circuits when he registered the light in Emmaline’s office.

He told himself he would not, but he found himself going there. He told himself he’d just make sure she wasn’t there, or if she was, that she was safe. He told himself that if she was there, if he glimpsed her, he would immediately leave. But when she came to the door of the empty building, he did not leave. When he stepped in, he knew that she had been expecting him ever since they’d last spoken. Everyone else was home right now watching the war, so he and Emmaline were alone.

She walked straight back to her office and he followed. Once inside, she didn’t close the door. The light was harsh. She sat down at her desk and gestured at the other chair.

They didn’t say anything for nearly five minutes, nor did they look at each other. He listened to her breathe and she listened to him breathe. He shifted slightly, leaned forward. A small, strained gasp escaped her, almost inaudible.

THE RECEPTION ON
Romeo’s TV was so lousy that he was sure Condoleezza had not been consulted on the presentation of the war. There were some green glows. A filthy sky. Wolf Blitzer repeating the words
intense bombardment
and a list of the three thousand types of precisely precise precision weapons guided only to the hardened bunkers of the enemy who ran around waving white sheets in disarray. Complete disarray was happening except for maybe on that hill. They kept talking about the hill where Iraqi intelligence was gathered and how they’d shaved that hill down by a couple of feet. Shaved it? Using missiles, artillery, hit after hit, then what was left? They used napalm to finish off everything alive or that might ever live there. Then the ground troops and the light show. Yet the reassuring news that no homes were being damaged, no collaterals damaged, no buildings even, only ruined tanks and other weaponry
to be found. The fast-breaking-news ticker tape along the bottom said that people were getting beaten away from U.S. embassies all around the world. How useless, thought Romeo. You cannot stop a warlike people from doing what they like to do. Besides, frugality. Those giant flares were probably due to expire next week.

Romeo looked around himself, at his life, at his dinner. He was eating leftover pizza heisted from the hospital fridge. The pepperoni had dried to rigid disks. The cheese was tough. It wasn’t bad, but Romeo wished for digestion’s sake he had procured a vegetable. He had paychecks deposited in his bank account now, but he didn’t like to go to stores. He didn’t like to feel the payment for things coming from himself. What was he saving for?

The same footage, over and over. Why hoard his money? The world could be ending either there, or here.

Why save?

He really didn’t know. The amount of money just kept growing. Perhaps one day Hollis would look at the bank account that shared his name and say something. Maybe he’d think that Romeo wasn’t such a shithead father after all.

That’s what, said Romeo to CNN, that’s who I am saving for. That’s why I am eating this petrified cheese and this tagboard pizza. That’s why I have no sound on my TV.

The war was on at the Iron house. Josette screamed,
Fuckers fuckshit fuckers it’s about the fucking oil!
Hollis was out with friends and came back late. Maybe a little drunk. At the Ravich house only Peter watched. He said that LaRose shouldn’t watch, so Nola went upstairs with him. Maggie was not interested. The dog laid his head on Peter’s leg and closed his eyes under Peter’s hand, mesmerized as the voices droned in self-important excitement.

Suddenly, shoved aside, the dog circled and plopped down with a disoriented groan. Peter paged through the slim directory, dialed.

The man he had punched at Maggie’s volleyball game, Braelyn and Buggy’s father, answered.

Wildstrand here, said the voice.

Hi, said Peter. This is Peter Ravich. Sorry I punched you. Hope your daughter’s okay too.

Peter put the phone down.

Why’d I do that?

He asked the dog. The dog’s brown-black eyes shone with rich appreciation. After a few moments, the phone rang. Peter picked it up.

Wildstrand here. I never meant to touch your wife.

I know it.

Wildstrand hung up this time. Peter let the dog out and in, shut things down on the first floor, checked the doors.

He called up the stairs. There was no answer.

Dusty’s gone, he said.

He bent over and the dog leaned into his arms.

Peter walked up the stairs and found them, each in bed, faces visible in the crack of light from the hallway. LaRose a shadowy lump in the bottom bunk, face buried in the pillow. Maggie with puddles of jeans and underwear on the floor, books splayed, papers, notebooks. Yet on her dresser the bottles of nail polish in strict rainbow array. He stepped into his and Nola’s bedroom. Soap and stale sleep. Nola on her back like a stone queen on a coffin. She didn’t stir as he eased into the bed and settled himself with stealthy care. By morning gravity and his greater weight would roll her down to him, and he would wake with her sleeping in his arms.

EMMALINE PACKED FOR
a conference in Grand Forks. She took nothing more than the usual overnight things—a change of clothes, her makeup case, shoes to walk in if she shopped at Columbia Mall. On the drive there, she could have played the tapes that were in the car—but each album or mix reminded her of other times. She played nothing, and didn’t give herself a problem to think through, either, as she often did on these drives. She just steered herself along. The wind out of the northwest was dry and bitter. Off the dunelike billows along
the ditches, snow blew and sifted across the road. Emmaline only glanced from time to time at the continually vanishing tails of snow. A driver could be hypnotized by their loveliness.

When she reached Grand Forks, she drove straight to the University of North Dakota. She gave her presentation, talked to several colleagues. Soon she excused herself to check into her hotel. She’d taken a room in a generic place across the river where no one from the conference was likely to stay. She gave her information, signed the check-in slip, and went up to her room. She took off her jacket, shoes, and stockings. Then she lay down on the bed. Quickly, she got up. But she was weary and eventually she pulled back the covers and lay down again, still dressed. She curled up on her side and dozed until the phone rang. Her hand hovered until the third ring, but she picked it up and gave him the room number.

She let him in and he closed the door carefully. They stood before each other. He was dressed of course like a normal person. They didn’t speak. After a while she reached out and tugged the arm of his jacket. He took it off. She touched his shirt. He took that off too. Scars webbed his chest and thickened where they disappeared. She waited and he touched her blouse. She undid the little white shell buttons. He pushed the material off her shoulders. She shrugged and it fell. Once that happened, everything was easy and they slipped together like the snow along the way, endlessly rushing across the pitch-black surface of the road.

CHEAP FAMILY PHOTOGRAPHS
were advertised that spring—Saturday morning in the Alco parking lot. Maggie insisted. Peter said it was hokey. They had plenty of photographs. Shelves of framed photographs.

But none are by a trained photographer, said Maggie.

Peter pointed to the lines of school photographs.

All of us, Dad, in one photograph. It will make Mom happy.

She’s okay, isn’t she?

Oh come on, Dad!

Peter hesitated. They hadn’t taken a family photograph since Dusty. Also, he didn’t know if this would be a secret photograph, to keep hidden from Landreaux and Emmaline. Because LaRose would be in the photograph, it would be a symbolic thing. Peter had worked to keep things like this low-key—neither family claiming LaRose overmuch. He was even more careful since Emmaline had temporarily reclaimed LaRose. He said no. But Maggie stared at him in her spooky, smiley, perfect-daughter kind of way.

Will a family photograph make you happy? Peter asked Nola as she entered the room.

We should do it! Maggie threw her arms out to spark her mother. Nola sparked.

Yes! I’d just love a family photograph.

I need a beer, thought Peter.

Lately, Maggie had given him several characters to play: Bumbling Dad, even though he was the handiest man he knew. Wet Blanket Dad, even though he just liked to check in on reality once in a while. Careless Dad Who Lost Things, even though he was beginning to understand that somebody else had long been losing stuff. Maybe he really was Emotionally Lost Dad because he understood that Maggie was taking care of Nola all of the time, in ways he could not define. He couldn’t tell, couldn’t remember what she’d been like before, anyway. So maybe he was Absentminded Dad. And Spaced-Out Dad because he liked to avoid these questions. He was Best Boy Buddy Dad, although LaRose was clearly the character mainly playing Nola’s son. She doted on him. Her eyes followed the fork he ate with. His back when he left the room.

In the case of this picture, however, to make everybody happy, all he had to do was wear his best shirt and smile.

Or maybe a suit, said Maggie. Do you have a suit? We are all dressing up, Dad. You need a suit. You need a tie.

Peter found his wedding suit and tie.

Nola came out in a purple dress with a silver buckle at the waist.
Maggie lowered her head and stared at her mother. Charged ions moved. Nola turned around and went back into their bedroom. What just happened? Peter wondered. He would never see that plum-colored dress again. Nola was now wearing a tan suit, white shirt, black heels. She looked like a flight attendant or a presidential candidate.

You get my vote, he said.

Mom, that outfit begs for those twinkly green earrings, said Maggie. And a scarf! Nola returned to the bedroom.

LaRose did not have a suit, but he did have a dress shirt. Maggie slicked his hair back with water. Nola said he looked like the exceptional boy he was. Everybody beamed. Maggie had on a matching sweater and shell, hot pink, and a short, sassy, eggshell-colored faux leather skirt. She was wearing a white headband and white plastic go-go style but nineties boots that had belonged to her mother. Peter found it disorienting when Maggie wore clothes that he remembered Nola wearing during college, in those years when he took keen notice of her clothing and her in it.

I’m a lucky man, he said, looking them all over and meaning that sincerely.

Nola and Maggie gazed at him indulgently. In their script they often didn’t understand what he was saying but rolled their eyes away from him with the gentle exasperation of two mothers.

With just the right amount of oxy, Romeo looked at things as a movie drama where revenge was justice, saw himself outside of himself, even heard the music, furtive or swelling. And see? Peter was all dressed up in heroic clothing to act his part in a heroic portrait, thought Romeo. But a startling message approached.

Romeo made his way toward Peter Ravich, whom he’d spotted in the Alco parking lot. To keep walking, he had to keep arguing with Landreaux in his head. Still, still! Landreaux had never talked to Romeo about the old times, and was too high and mighty to give Romeo a sign he even cared one shit about the sacrifice that Romeo made, trying to save Landreaux, even to this day. Plus he
was stealing Hollis and Emmaline and all that Romeo should have. Getting away with stealing these because they all believed in a false Landreaux, a saved and sober Landreaux, a Landreaux who could do the worst thing possible and still be loved. That Landreaux must fall.