The normal, nonsarcastic answer fell sweetly on Nola. She loved Maggie with all of the ripped-up pieces of her heart now. Nola turned to the cutting board and started sawing away at potatoes with a steak knife. Things were disappearing. She was losing things right and left, running out of things, failing to buy things, forgetting. But these matters were not as important as other people seemed to think. They were not crucial. In fact, they didn’t matter at all.
EVERY DAY AFTER the gray dawn or the blue dawn, Hollis stomped sleepily out to the dusty mold-green Mazda with its sagging fender, mashed door. He’d bought this car for six hundred dollars. This car would carry Hollis, Snow, Josette, and Coochy to school in a week. On weekends it carried him off to his first National Guard drills. He and Mike had decided on a delayed-entry program — combat training delayed. School. Drills one weekend a month throughout the year. After graduation, basic combat and advanced individual training. Then he’d get going on his Guard job — maybe combat engineer. He still wasn’t positive. And get the money together for a move, he supposed, although he didn’t still want to. He was happy on the blow-up mattress. Even though his ass touched floor halfway through the night, he loved his sleeping corner. He wanted to keep living with the Irons after he graduated, maybe forever. Besides everything else, Hollis was forever hungry. Emmaline and the girls cooked big, tasty meat-rich stews, thick corn and potato soup, bannocks. Also, that long ago spark of holiday interest in Josette had caught. She had, for real, helped him with his summer read and even written most of his paper. He was the one who had leaned over her shoulder peering at her confident typing. Now a steady glow was his. More than a glow, really. Sometimes, flames.
First day of school. Hollis dressed and schlumped out to the kitchen, where he thought today, maybe, was the day. Maybe he would reveal his mad hopeless love for the mad hopeless glory of Josette.
Always, as soon as he came in the room, she began pouring cereal.
Hey.
Hey.
She was strong, had a wicked jumping overhand volleyball serve, her curves were powerful. She could put a thousand voice-layers into that one morning greeting and so could Hollis. The shadow in her Hey said, I’m into you! They rarely said more than Hey and Hey. But the way it was said would stay with each of them as the day wore on. Their Heys were a pilot light that could possibly flare up if Josette ever took her eyes off the cornflakes falling into her bowl.
If that occurred, Hollis imagined a stare-down in which the animal tension became unbearable. But maybe it wasn’t supposed to happen that he was taken in by good people and he then poached the daughter of the house. Who was younger. So he took his bowl of cornflakes back to the boys’ room, and waited for the girls to call when they were ready for school.
That same morning, Emmaline woke with a clenched heart and could hardly breathe. When? She asked the star quilt hanging on the wall, and then answered herself. Now. LaRose was supposed to go back to the Ravich house, but when Emmaline touched his heavy brown hair she knew for sure. There had to be an end and this was it. From behind the closed door of her bedroom, she called the Ravich number. Peter answered.
I can’t stand it anymore, she said.
Peter felt the heavy sadiron of his heart lurch. He waited but it was stuck on the wrong side of his chest.
Ah, god, please, Emmaline.
I just can’t do it anymore. It was never supposed to go on forever, was it? Her voice began to shudder. She gathered herself, stood straight, tucked her hair behind her ears.
Listen, said Peter, stepping aside to look out the window. School is starting. It will get better.
I’m enrolling him here. With other Indians.
Nola was already up. She was outside fixing up the old chicken coop, painting it. Her thin arm swept back and forth.
Please let’s just keep going for a little while longer. Peter stopped. He was about to beg her for LaRose. That would make him angry. He would become hateful were he driven to that.
Nola’s so much better, he said. She’s finally getting over Dusty. She’s, ah, integrating. Right now she’s painting the chicken coop.
This detail pricked at Emmaline. Painting a chicken coop? Why was that some kind of leap?
Almost three years, she hasn’t talked to me, said Emmaline. We’re sisters. She acts like half sisters aren’t real sisters. She’s my sister and she won’t talk to me. But that’s not even it, not really. I’m enrolling him here, in the reservation school, where his family goes to school. LaRose is with us now.
Oh, Emmaline, said Peter, in an unguarded way that brought Emmaline back because she liked Peter fine; he was solid, and had never hurt anyone. She trusted Peter’s goodness and was sure that in past times he’d kept the lid on Landreaux by just taking his own slow way and leading his friend along the innocent dirt road of a Peter kind of life.
I understand, said Peter, careful. He had to stay in control. He knew enough not to escalate this, not to become emotional. Why don’t you keep him with you a few more days? I’ll explain to Nola.
She won’t understand, said Emmaline.
No.
Still. I am taking him back, said Emmaline. It’s time.
She came out of the bedroom and spoke to the others, who were nearly ready: she told them that she was going to take LaRose to their school.
You’re going to school with your sisters, she said brightly to LaRose. Surprise.
He looked from Snow to Josette, who widened their eyes in a silent message, Mom says. He went back to the boys’ room to get dressed. They were talking out there in the kitchen now. Things were always like this. Although LaRose was used to going where he was supposed to go, and doing what he was supposed to do, sometimes they just threw these big surprises at him.
Coulda told me. Like more than a minute ago, he whispered.
He put on fresh jeans, a clean T-shirt. He smelled his yesterday’s socks, threw them down, and took a pair of Coochy’s from the sock pile.
Peter stood frozen, the phone droning in his hands, gaze fixed on the cipher of a woman out there painting a chicken coop with old white leftover gummy paint. Even though she wouldn’t talk to Emmaline, his wife was better, he thought. Maybe. Maybe men just think women are better if they have sex with us, but even so. A few nights ago she put her hands on him, stroked him without saying one strange word. And they had loved in utter peace. He came back into his body. He could not inhabit himself without her. He had that roughed-up Slav shell and inside a milky tender heart. He had guarded it carefully before Nola. There was nobody else for him but this one woman — he might hate her sometimes, but he would go to hell for her and save her cakes.
Two days later, he tried to have the conversation.
I just don’t like her, Peter, I don’t, because she is a self-righteous bitch.
Why do you say that?
Peter had read magazine articles that advised questions when you wanted to divert a way of thinking in another person. Or you wanted to stall.
Why? he asked again, then ventured. She’s your sister. You could try.
Okay, I’ll tell you why I can’t try. She’s got that program director’s attitude for one thing. Like, here’s Emmaline. Posing at her desk. Wehwehweh. I can listen. Listen with my hands folded and my head cocked. You know? Emmaline puts on her listening mask and behind that mask she’s judging you.
They were outside, at the edge of the yard. Nola ripped up a stalk of grass and put the end in her mouth. She narrowed her eyes and stared out over the horizon, that line at the end of the cornfields, between the sweeping coves of trees.