Louise Erdrich - LaRose

Why so quiet? Landreaux asked, once.

Why talk when Josette’s always talking?

He had a point.

Emmaline still thought about what Father Travis had said. If she wanted to, yes, she could take her son back. She wouldn’t go through the system. With social work files, always sprouting forms in triplicate, anything could happen. But always, instead of taking that step, pushing things that far, Emmaline thought of Nola’s loss, her husband’s responsibility for Dusty’s death, and she did something else. In the last few months she’d scraped bits of money for LaRose into a savings account. At other times she stitched her love into a quilt that she brought to the Ravich house. Emmaline gave the quilt to Nola, who thanked her at the door, folded up the blanket, and put it on the highest shelf of a closet. Also, every couple of weeks, Emmaline couldn’t help herself from making the special soup and frybread that her son favored. She put it on Nola’s doorstep or even into Nola’s hands, hoping that LaRose would taste her love in it. Nola tossed it out. Just before Christmas, Emmaline came back with the moccasins. Left them wrapped with LaRose’s name on them. Nola put the moccasins in a plastic box. Stuffed into that container they waited, and Nola feared them, for their woodsmoke scent held the power of creation.

On those occasions she brought offerings, Emmaline saw that her half sister knew who was in charge. When Nola opened the door, her smile was pasted on lopsided. Sometimes before accepting the food, Nola’s hands clasped and unclasped in distress. Nola’s scrupulous thank-you covered a desperation that made Emmaline turn away. In the car, she put her hand in her pocket and touched a slip of paper upon which she had written You can take him back.

One day, just before Christmas without LaRose, after dropping off the food, she couldn’t leave. Emmaline got out of the pickup and went back to the house. Maybe talk to Nola? Glimpse LaRose? She knocked, but Nola didn’t answer. Emmaline knocked harder, then so hard her knuckles stung. She knew that Nola was somewhere in the house with her son, pretending that the knocks were not Emmaline.

Inside the house, LaRose heard his mother’s voice and knew the smell of that soup which he wouldn’t taste. Nola just kept reading Where the Wild Things Are over and over, until the knocking went away. Nola’s voice was hoarse and thin.

And it was still hot, Nola said, and closed the book. Shall I read it again?

Okay, said LaRose in a tiny voice. A fuzzy wash of draining sadness covered him. He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Is there a bitch gene? said Emmaline, walking in the door after standing outside the Ravich house, knocking.

Snow gave Josette a look and Josette said, Did my mother really say that?

Because if there is, Emmaline went on, my sister got it from her mother, who was renowned as a prime bitch.

The girls stared at Emmaline, frowning in an effort to reject their mother’s talking this way.

Marn was her name. She killed her husband and got away with it. Of course, he was the leader of a cult.

Whoa.

The girls put their hands up.

Crazy talk, Mom, said Josette.

It’s true, though, said Emmaline.

Okay, Mom, but may we remind you that you’re talking about our grandfather? Josette and Snow nodded vigorously.

What you’re saying, Mom, is way too weird. I mean a bitch is one thing, but killing your husband is out of whack. We don’t want that.

So you don’t want truth. What do you want? said Emmaline.

We want our life to get normal, duh, said Josette.

Uneventful, except for good things, said Snow.

Melodrama? That detracts.

Vocabulary words!

The girls smacked hands.

Fine, said Emmaline. I acquiesce.

MACKINNON SPOKE TO the girl in her language, and she hid her muddy face.

All I did was ask her name, he said, throwing up his hands. She refuses to tell me her name. Give her some work to do, Roberts. I can’t stand that lump in the corner.

Wolfred made her help him chop wood. But her movements displayed the fluid grace of her limbs. He showed her how to bake bread. But the firelight reflected up into her face and the heat melted away some of the mud. He reapplied it and tried to teach her to write. She formed the letters easily. But writing displayed her hand, marvelously formed. Finally — she suggested it herself — the girl went off to set snares. She made herself well enough understood. She planned to buy herself back from Mackinnon by selling the furs. He hadn’t paid that much for her. It would not take long, she said.

All this time, because she understood exactly why Wolfred had replaced the grime on her face, she slouched and grimaced, tousled her hair and smeared her features. And she picked up another written letter every day, then words, phrases. She began to sprinkle them in her talk.

For a wild savage, she was certainly intelligent, thought Wolfred. Pretty soon she’s going to take my job. Haha. There was nobody to joke with but himself.

FATHER TRAVIS ANSWERED the telephone, tipped back his chair. When he heard the name of the new bishop of the diocese, he said nothing.

No surprise.

The new bishop, Florian Soreno, would take a hard-line stance toward all the hot-button issues — this was a red state. Father Travis worked in a blue zone. Reservations were blue dots or blots, voting Democrat. The only Republican he could think of, beside himself, was Romeo Puyat. With a new bishop, Father Travis might get a Dominican with a liberation-theology bent because this bishop might want to punish such a priest by sending him to a reservation. Or perhaps a new order would take over entirely — there were so many fundamentalist orders springing up. He rather liked SSPX. Society of Saint Pius the Tenth. He missed Latin Mass and they were big on keeping the Tridentine Mass going. However, the other issues, abortion for instance, left him cold. His father had taught him that women’s business is women’s business. There was yet another possibility — church authorities still played the shell game with their pederast priests.

Getting rid of the last one had been difficult.

He himself might be reassigned, or he might suddenly have a priest here with more authority and seniority to whom he must answer. He might get a swamper for a housemate — a sick priest in the slump of a long depression. Or a whole sack of nuns might be assigned to the convent suddenly, where now it was run by an oblate group of laypersons and used as a retreat and conference center.

Or, sometimes, nothing happened. He could always hope. He looked up at the cracked plaster ceiling of his office. There was a pale-blue line on the ceiling, scraped of carpenter’s chalk. That color. It was as if she had opened a blue door in his mind.

Father Travis pulled on his coat and walked into the brilliant, dry snow. It was the time of hallowed peace. He loved Christmas and Midnight Mass. The glow of candles spiritualized the features of people who drove him nuts. Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light , he would say in his sermon. And then there was that blue door. There was no shame in it, no sense that he was violating his or Landreaux’s or her vows or anything else. He could be happy in his thoughts, couldn’t he? In spite of Matthew? Not his favorite gospel. White wings rustled. He glanced around, filled with an odd joy. Brightness falls from the air.

NOLA MADE THEIR Christmas lavish, but it didn’t help. The lead sinker in her chest was leaking molten lead into her veins, slowly stopping her circulation. Her feet and hands were bone cold. She shivered in layers of fleece, sat next to the woodstove, and drank hot tea all day. Getting out of bed, out of a chair, changing her position, was like moving furniture. She could loosen her limbs only by holding LaRose in her lap every afternoon until he slept. He napped hard and sweetness flowed into Nola. She didn’t move except to rock him back to sleep if he stirred. When he woke, she was reluctant to let him go. Then she pushed herself along and pretended around the children that she was really there instead of in the ground. She could not pretend so well with Peter, but he was obsessed the week after Christmas with what would happen on New Year’s Eve. He’d planned it all out. When the night came, he put his plan into action.