He took his boots off by the door. She was boiling water for tea. Landreaux waved the stethoscope and blood pressure cuff at her, but she told him to put that stuff away. She felt fine. The lodge owned a carpet-shampooing machine, and half her apartment, covered deeply in an ash-blond fiber, needed Landreaux’s care. For the moment, he left the machine and jug of soap parked outside the door. 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.
Landreaux, who as a man believed the tragic lovelorn-teacher story, was solicitous, convinced that she presented a brave face to the world. Today he saw with concern that her face was crashed out, blank, and she was trying to make herself comfortable in her reclining chair. Perhaps she was having an episode because of what he had done.
Don’t even worry about me, she said. This will take a long time to work out, eh? You’re a good boy to come over here and help me at a time like this.
I can’t just sit around, he said, and tried to coax her into an opiate or two.
It makes me loopy.
She peered at him through her bottle-glass-thick lenses, her eyes swimming.
Are you looking forward to having your carpet shampooed? he asked, hearing what he said as ridiculous or maybe pathetic. But she made his awkwardness okay.
It’s amazing what a kick I get out of that, she answered. You go ahead.
He drank the tea and brought in the machine.
Landreaux moved the reclining chair, magazine rack, television, and television stand off the carpet. He put water into the tank, mixed the soap into the water, and began. The machine made purring, bubbling sounds. He moved it back and forth. The sound was low and mesmerizing. Sure enough, Mrs. Peace closed her eyes, beatific, smiling. When he was done, her eyes flipped open and she got up to bustle around the edges of the wet carpet. He put the machine away and sat down to eat the Juneberry coffee cake she’d put out for him. Then she answered a phone call and said that she had to help Elka with her eyedrops. Her slippered feet slapped away down the hall.
When the door shut, Landreaux went into the bathroom. He checked her medicine cabinet as he always did, to make sure that her medications were filled and up-to-date. She was almost out of two, so Landreaux put the bottles on the table. When she came back, he said that he’d go down to the hospital pharmacy and refill them.
Before you go, she said, here. Take a look.
LaRose opened her closet. She had certificates, brittle school reports, clippings of poems, stacks of ancient letters in there, seeking after the first LaRose. Emmaline called her the historical society. At least her photographs were all in albums now, organized by Snow. Mrs. Peace took a big, black, battered round tin from a low shelf. The top was painted with three faded roses. People gave her things with roses on them because of her name, and perhaps the same had been true of her mother, because this tin was quite old. Mrs. Peace kept odd-sized papers in this tin—aphorisms, and newspapers, pictures, stories of dogs, papers in her own writing. The sight of her penmanship, the swirls of her name, filled Landreaux with memories of Emmaline as a girl.
Look at what? he said.
She handed him the poem—a copy of the poem “Invictus.” Generations of her students had memorized it.
Keep it, she said.
I still know it by heart. This is the foul clutch of circumstance, all right, he said.
Fell clutch, she said.
He looked at a piece of grainy Big Chief tablet paper. It was filled with his writing but he did not remember having written it. I will not run away was written on it over and over.
I made you write ten pages just like it, but I only kept this one, she said.
She put her fine-boned little hand on his shoulder. Warmth spread instantly from her fingers.
I will not run away, he said. They sat together holding hands on the couch.
Before he left, Landreaux gave Mrs. Peace the two plastic bottles, and she read the numbers off into the pharmacy telephone line. 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.