Louise Erdrich - LaRose

You tried to do a good thing, said Father Travis. LaRose will understand that. He will come back to you.

Emmaline stopped and looked closely at him.

You sure?

I’m sure, he said, then couldn’t help himself. Neither life, nor angels, nor principalities nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, not height, nor depth, nor any other creature will separate you.

Emmaline looked at him like he was crazy.

It’s a Bible quote.

He looked down at the scraped path. Quoting Romans like a pompous ass. .

LaRose is young, she said, her hungry eyes blurring. They forget if you’re not with them every day.

Nobody could forget you, thought Father Travis. The blurted thought unnerved him; he made himself speak sensibly.

Look, you can retrieve LaRose at any time. Just say you want him back. Peter and Nola have to listen. If not, you can go to Social Services. You are his mother.

Social Services, she said. Huh. Ever heard of rez omerta?

Father Travis abruptly laughed.

Besides, I am Social Services. The crisis school is all a social service. I’d have to get in touch with myself.

What’s wrong with that? said Father Travis.

She shook her head, looked away as she spoke.

You mean I didn’t see it coming? Didn’t know it would be this difficult? Can’t understand why this is unbearable when there is history and tradition, all that, behind what we did?

She rubbed her face with her hands as if to erase something else.

Yes, I wasn’t exactly in touch with myself. Also, there’s Nola. She gets mad at Maggie, I think. What if she treats LaRose that way?

Father Travis was silent. He still heard individual confessions and knew about Nola’s temper.

As they walked back to her car, a sensation he didn’t recognize kept him from offering the usual offhand comment, to seal things off. He stayed silent because he didn’t want to ruin the confiding way she had spoken to him. Emmaline got in the car. Then she pulled her hood back and rolled down her window. She looked up into his face. Her longing for her son was so naked that he seemed to feel it pressing into him. He closed his eyes.

When his eyes were shut, Emmaline saw, he was an ordinary man with weather-raked skin and chapped lips.

She looked away and started up the car. Her tragic thoughts shifted as she drove off, and she remembered laughing until her stomach cramped as Josette and Snow discussed the priest.

He can’t help his eyes, one of them said.

His sex-toy-robot eyes.

Josette and Snow had a thing about male robot/cyborg movie characters. They had an ancient Radio Shack VCR-TV in their room, and picked up old movies for it at yard sales and discount bins. Their collection included Westworld, RoboCop, The Black Hole. They rifled through video sale bins hoping for their favorite, Blade Runner. They’d made drawings of robots and cyborgs — smooth, perfect, doomed for feeling something, maybe like Father Travis.

He’s got replicant eyes!

No shit, Father Travis could be a replicant. Batty!

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe , they intoned together. Attack ships off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate.

Their voices dropped to exhausted rasps.

All those moments will be lost in time. Like tears in rain. Time to die.

They lolled their heads over and Emmaline had cried out, Quit this! She frowned now. Like any mother, it made her uneasy to see her children feign death.

The Iron girls. Snow, Josette. The Iron Maidens. They were junior high volleyball queens, sister BFFs, heart-soul confidantes to each other and advice givers to their brothers. They were tight with their mom, loose with their dad. With their grandma they got bead-happy and could sew for hours. Snow was going to be the tall, intense one who had trouble concentrating on her schoolwork and whom boys only liked as a friend. She was in eighth grade. Josette was going to be the smart one who despaired about her weight but magnetized clumsy desire among boys whom she liked only as friends. She was in grade seven.

Landreaux dropped his daughters in Hoopdance to shop and drove back to take Ottie to dialysis. The girls went straight to the one drugstore. They walked in with a puff of snowy cold. A store clerk with flat dyed red hair and glasses on a chain asked if she could help them.

No thanks, said Josette, and you don’t need to follow us around either. We have money and we’re not going to steal.

The woman pulled her chin down into her neck and kept this odd posture as she turned away and walked to the cash register.

You didn’t have to say that, said Snow.

Maybe I’m too defensive, said Josette, fake-meek. Attached to the drugstore was a gift shop full of decorative flowers and knickknacks, which their mother did not like. But they did. They went through and admired all the ceramic snow babies, the glitter fronds, the stones cut with words. Dream. Love. Live.

Why not Throw? said Josette. How come they don’t have one that just says, Throw?

You don’t get inspiration, do you, said Snow.

That’s not inspiration, that’s mawkish.

Ooooo! Snow licked her finger and made a mark in the air. Vocab word.

They went back to the other section. There was a small selection of windshield scrapers and emergency flashlights, maybe for their dad.

Better things at the hardware store, said Josette.

Let’s test perfumes for Mom.

No, lotion.

You get that. I’ll get perfume.

All of the good perfumes were locked up under the glass counter with the eyeglass lady’s hands resting on it.

Shit, now we’ll have to deal with her, said Josette.

I’m the good one, said Snow. I’ll do the talking.

Josette rolled her eyes and made an oops face.

Snow walked up to the clerk and smiled. How are you today? Snow used a bright inflection. We’re looking for a really nice Christmas present for our mother. Our mom is so special. Snow sighed. She works so hard! What do you suggest?

The woman’s stabbing glare bounced off Josette, who was bent over the glass, scanning. The woman’s hand hovered among the jewel-bright boxes, spray bottles, and plucked up a tester of Jean Naté.

Too white-bread, said Josette.

Snow pointed at Jovan Musk.

That doesn’t smell like Mom. She’s more, I don’t know, clear.

Maybe Charlie, or Blue Jeans?

So casual, though.

They meditated, frowning, on the array.

I wanna get something special. I have my job money, said Snow to the counter lady. Maybe something from a designer or movie star.

The woman displayed a box. White Diamonds. Elizabeth Taylor.

America’s number one fragrance, said the woman, reverent.

Who’s Elizabeth Taylor? asked Josette.

Duh, Cleopatra?

They’d both pondered the cover of the VHS at the video rental.

Plus friends with Michael Jackson?

Oh yeah. Josette sniffed the spray nozzle. Fancy. I like this.

Enjoli, in a hot-pink box, decorated with an embossed golden flower.

But Mom’s not this spicy. I mean, she smells good.

It would clash with Dad’s Old Spice.

So would the Wild Musk?

Maybe Wind Song.

Grandma wears that.

The woman behind the counter brought out an elegant box hiding behind the others. It was a lavendery pinkish box, one of those expensive indeterminate colors. A blackish gray band. The bottle fit firmly in hand, a band of embossed diamond shapes, neatly swirled glass. Eau Sauvage. The woman sprayed a little on a Kleenex, waved the tissue in front of their noses. Waited. The smell was green and dry. Faintly licorice. Maybe a hint of cloud. A trace of fresh-cut wood? Crushed grass. A rare herb in a rare forest. Nothing dark, nothing hungry. Something else, too.