Louise Erdrich - LaRose

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.