LaRose

by Louise Erdrich

Watch him, he said. You gotta watch him, Emmaline.

Awan’s daughter hesitated and then nearly said the same thing as Zack. You gotta watch him. Emmaline told herself it was because they loved Landreaux, but later on she knew that was only part of

He closed his eyes, gripped their hands tighter. Went dizzy. He was sick of praying over the car accident victims, sick of adding buckle your seat belts to the end of every sermon, sick of so many other early deaths, ready himself to fall down on the floor.

Two days before, he had done the same for Peter, though not Nola, whose eyes had been dry with hate.

In his life on the reservation, Father Travis had seen how some people would try their best but the worst would still happen.

Landreaux and Emmaline Iron came to the funeral, sat in the back pew, melted out the side door before the small white casket was carried down the aisle.

Landreaux thought of her at eighteen, Emmaline Peace, how in the beginning of their years that look of hers, if she grinned, meant they were going to go crazy together. He was six years older. They did some wild stuff then. It was confessed but not done with. They had this streak together, had to sober up in tandem. So she knew right now what was pulling him.

He made fierce attempts to send himself back in time and die before he went into the woods. But each time he closed his eyes the boy was still ruined in the leaves.

She went outside and found him in the sweat lodge curled in tarps, the bottle still in its bag.

Oh boy, she said, a handle of Old Crow. You were really going to blast off.

Right about then, she had her own thoughts. She understood his thoughts. She stopped, stared sickly at the fire, at the earth. She whispered no. She tried to leave, but could not, and her face as she set back to work streaked over wetly.

His parents sang to the beings they had invited to help them, and they sang to their ancestors—the ones so far back their names were lost. As for the ones whose names they remembered, the names that ended with iban for passed on, or in the spirit world, those were more complicated. Those were the reason both Landreaux and Emmaline were holding hands tightly, throwing their medicines onto the glowing rocks, then crying out with gulping cries. No, said Emmaline. She growled and showed her teeth. I’ll kill you first. No.

They had resisted using the name LaRose until their last child was born. It was a name both innocent and powerful, and had belonged to the family’s healers. They had decided not to use it, but it was as though LaRose had come into the world with that name.

When he returned, Mink was gone and the girl was inside the post, slumped in the corner underneath a new blanket, head down, so still she seemed dead.

THAT NIGHT, LAROSE slept between his mother and his father. He remembered that night. He remembered the next night. He did not remember what happened in between.

She ran from the kitchen and shoved Peter in the chest. It had been a calm morning. But that was over now. She told him to make them get the hell off their property and he told her that he would. He stroked her shoulder. She pulled violently away. The black crack between them seemed to reach down forever now. He had not found the bottom yet. He was afraid of what was happening to her, but it wasn’t in him to be angry when he answered the door—anger was too small—besides, he and Landreaux were friends, better friends than the two half sisters, and the instinct of that friendship was still with him. Landreaux and Emmaline had their boy with them, completely unlike but like Dusty because of the way a five-year-old is—that inquisitiveness, that confidence, that trust.

Immediately LaRose looked up at Peter, then peered eagerly into the front room. Where’s Dusty? Peter’s face was swollen, charged with exhaustion, but he managed to answer, Dusty’s not here anymore. LaRose turned aside in disappointment, then he pointed to the toy box shoved into a corner and said, Can I play? Nola had no words in her.

When the boys played together, Maggie had bossed them, made them play servant if she was a king or dogs if she was queen of the beasts. Now she didn’t know what to do. Not just in playing but in her regular life. They didn’t want her back in school yet. If she cried, her mother cried louder. If she didn’t cry, her mother said she was a coldhearted little animal. So she just watched LaRose from the carpeted steps while he played with Dusty’s toys. As Maggie watched, her stare hardened. She gripped the spindles like jail bars. Dusty was not there to defend his toys, to share them only if he wanted, to be in charge of the pink-orange dinosaur, the favored flame-black Hot Wheels, the miniature monster trucks. She wanted to storm down and throw stuff everywhere. Kick LaRose. But she was already in trouble for teacher sassing and supposed to be locked in her room.

this rudeness was how he expressed the jolts of electric sorrow and unlikeness of how he was feeling.

Our son will be your son now.

It’s the old way, said Landreaux. He said it very quickly, got the words out yet again. There was a lot more to their decision, but he could no longer speak. Emmaline glanced at her half sister, whom she disliked. She stuffed back any sound, glanced up and saw Maggie crouched on the stairs. The girl’s angry doll face punched at her. I have to get out of here, she thought. She stepped forward with an abrupt jerk, placed her hand on her child’s head, kissed him. LaRose patted her face, deep in play. Later, Mom, he said, copying his older brothers. No, said Peter again, gesturing, no. This can’t be. Take . . . Then he looked at Nola and saw that her face had broken open. All the softness was flowing out. And the greed, too, a desperate grasping that leaned her windingly toward the child.

LaRose spooned up the soup with slow care. He buttered his own bread clumsily. He had good table manners, thought Nola. His presence was both comforting and unnerving. He was Dusty and the opposite of Dusty. Roils of confusion struck Peter. The shock, he thought. I’m still in shock. The boy drew him with his quiet self-possession, his curiosity, but when Peter felt himself responding he was pierced with a sense of disloyalty. He told himself Dusty wouldn’t care, couldn’t care. He also realized that Nola was allowing herself to be helped somehow, but whether it was that she accepted this unspeakable gift as beauty, or whether she believed the child’s absence over time would leak the lifeblood from Landreaux’s heart, he couldn’t tell.

Both decided they couldn’t put him to sleep in Dusty’s bed. Besides that, twice LaRose had asked about his mother and accepted their explanations. The third time, however, he’d hung his head and cried, gasping. He’d never been away from his mother. There was his rending bewilderment. Maggie stroked his hair, gave him toys, distracted him. It seemed Maggie could soothe him.

Peter kissed them both, murmured, turned out the lights. Closing the door, he felt like he was going crazy, but the grief was different. The grief was all mixed up.

At first, the shivers LaRose had been holding back were so delicate they hardly made it from his body. But soon he shook in wide, rolling waves, and tears came too. Maggie lay next to him in the bed, feeling his misery, which made her own misery stop her heart.

What are you crying for, baby? she said. LaRose began to sob, low and profound. Maggie felt blackness surge up in her. You want Mom-mee? Mom-mee? She’s gone. She and your daddy left you here to be my brother like Dusty was. But I don’t want you.

As she said this Maggie felt the blackness turn to water. She crawled down to find LaRose. He was curled in a ball, in the corner, with his scroungy stuffed creature, silent. She touched his back. He was cold and stiff. She dragged out her camping bag and slipped it over them both. She curled around him, warming him. I do want you, she whispered in fear.

THEY SLEPT ON the floor last night, said Nola. I told Maggie it had to stop. If you want the ground, I’ll ground you. She sassed me. Okay, I said. You’re grounded to your room. You won’t be going outside. He’s crying again. I don’t know what to do.

A few minutes later, he caught Nola pushing Maggie’s head, almost into her bowl of oatmeal. Maggie resisted. When Nola saw Peter, she took her hand off Maggie’s neck as if nothing had happened.

Peter thought his wife would begin to heal once this was resolved. He thought it was time to take LaRose home. But he wanted Nola to say so. Instead, she invented plans.

I’ll make LaRose a cake every day, she thought, if he’ll only stop crying, if he’ll cling to me like Dusty did, if he’ll only be my son, the only son I will ever have.

Some stubborn long-standing resentment had kept Nola from telling Peter that her periods had stopped shortly after Dusty, and the doctor couldn’t tell her why. Peter hadn’t noticed the change, but then, she had always been secretive about her body.

Because her half sister understood her so well, Nola would turn from her, afraid of her, and harden herself against Emmaline.

Generations of students had loved her as a teacher and were aware of no vice, yet Mrs. Peace claimed that she wasn’t entirely wholesome. She had a checkered past, she liked to say, though she had at last remained faithful to the memory of Emmaline’s father, Billy Peace. It was reverently said that she had tried to throw herself into his grave. He had actually been cremated, but no one remembered. Billy Peace was also Nola’s father. Nobody really knew how many wives had married Billy, or what had gone on in that cultish compound of his decades ago. Billy’s children and now grandchildren kept turning up and were usually added to the tribal rolls.

Though she still had an occasional attack, LaRose’s enigmatic pain had nearly vanished after the death of Billy Peace. Neuralgia, full-body migraine, osteoporosis, spinal problems, lupus, sciatica, bone cancer, phantom limb syndrome though she had her limbs—these diagnoses had come and gone. Her medical file was a foot high. She knew, of course, why the pains had left her at that time, rarely returning. Billy had been cruel, self-loving, and clever. His love had been a burden no different from hate. Sometimes his ironies still sneaked at her from the spirit world. People thought she had been faithful to his memory because she had abjectly adored Billy Peace. She let them say what they wanted. Actually, he had taught her what she needed to know about men. She needed no further instruction.

She gave Landreaux the bottles to put back in the medicine cabinet. These weren’t the ones he cared about, she knew. It was true, also, that he hadn’t taken any of those other ones for a while. Unlike many of her friends, she kept careful count of the pills in her bottles. Old people were such an easy source.

Life stops for nothing, even what I done, said Landreaux, and his saying it like that, taking it on, calmed Bap. She called into the other room.

Landreaux knew they’d been discussing him and that Bap was staying so she could tell her relatives how Landreaux behaved. What signs he showed. Emmaline said it would be tough going back to work. The story would be around him for the rest of his life. He would live in the story. He couldn’t change it. Even LaRose won’t change it, she said.

When they came out to the kitchen, there were blueberry pancakes with fake maple syrup, cooked up with powdered commodity eggs. Landreaux could taste the familiar flat chemically dry eggish quality and the aspartame over the maple. It was good.

Maybe I shouldn’t say nothing. Keep my trap shut? Nah, said Landreaux. Emmaline was her cousin. You’re family, he said. Emmaline’s real strong, said Bap. Real strong, said Landreaux. His head began to buzz. I wanna establish a fund, you know? When they get better, when our families get more healed.

Me, said Ottie, I know this is a sad time. But when I go, I want my fund to be a high-heels fund for reservation ladies. I sure like it when Bappy dresses up for me and does her thing. I’d like to see a few more ladies make that click sound when they walk. Drives me fucken wild.

Landreaux didn’t say he’d tested Ottie’s sugar when he smelled the pancakes, knowing the carbs would spike Ottie’s blood up no matter how much fake sweetener Bap threw at the problem.

He and Ottie were in the car, wheelchair folded in the trunk, before Landreaux realized he’d escaped without really answering Bap’s question about how they were dealing. Ottie had deflected that line of inquiry with his high-heels death fund.

That would be on my diet, said Ottie. I’ll trade you some a them pills you like.

I guess it ain’t something you get over, though. You keep on going through it. Over and over,

later. I don’t need that stuff. But he did, ever so bad.

His eyes flicked when he saw Romeo, but he did not acknowledge his old classmate. The reasons for hating each other went back to their childhood’s brutal end. The two had stopped talking back in boarding school. And then there was the time Romeo had tried to murder Landreaux in his sleep. That was in their early twenties, and it just happened that Landreaux had been in possession of a lot of money that one night. As the money was the main corrupting influence, Romeo was hurt that Landreaux still mistrusted him over the botched knifing. These days, at least, Romeo wasn’t after his old schoolmate’s life.

These days, anyway, the main thing was that Romeo just wanted Landreaux to share and share alike. As a personal caregiver well-known at the hospital, surely Landreaux had lots of access to prescription painkillers. Why not make his old friend a little happier? Take away his agonies? Yes, Romeo had his own prescription, but it just was not OxyContin and sometimes he had to sell his lesser stuff to pay for the really good stuff. Like Fentanyl. He had been trying to buy a patch somewhere.

Landreaux was touched, in a sad way, to find his old schoolmate stealing his gas. He had long ago decided that whatever Romeo or anyone else did to him resulting from his hell days he had coming. So he said nothing, except I gotta go. My mozzarella sticks are getting cold.

AFTER THE FIRST weeks, LaRose tried to stop crying, around Nola at least. Maggie told him the facts again, why he was there. His parents had told him, but he still didn’t get it. He had to hear it again and again.