During the next ten years, Emmaline had lived there with her mother. When there were too many children and Emmaline had her degree, Mrs. Peace had moved into the Elders Lodge. From her small bedroom, where Emmaline and Landreaux now slept, a door led into the bathroom. Josette and Snow took long baths there and did their complex beauty routines, sending their brothers to the old outhouse when they banged on the door.
The kitchen and living room, the oldest parts of the house, still bore the fifties wallpaper. It rippled under layers of paint—first dark green, then light green, then a blue-gray color chosen by Snow. It was never approved of by Josette, so she got her way with the bargain wallpaper in their shared bedroom—bouquets of lavender flowers tied up with floating white ribbons. Nobody had ever thought about the paint in the boys’ room—it was ancient red papered over with ripped posters of Ninja Turtles, Sitting Bull, Batman, Tupac, Chief Little Shell, Destiny’s Child, and The Sixth Sense.
Back during the eighties the entire house had levitated. Jacked up, set on top of a cinder-block foundation, it was freed of creeping rot and damp. It became a real house then, with a narrow crawl space under. When Emmaline married Landreaux, he built a small deck to formalize the front entrance—a landing big enough for two lawn chairs and a flowerpot that sprouted grass. Once this was accomplished, the house looked suddenly like many houses and Landreaux imagined the two of them getting old there, sitting on that deck, watching the occasional car pass through a rift in the trees beside the road, waiting for their children, then their grandchildren, to exit the school bus and climb toward the house through the grassy wildflowered ditch, across the strip of beat-down weeds, or now, in winter, up the plowed frozen gravel.
It will be all right. We will get old here together after all.
This was Landreaux’s thought the first time Peter dropped off LaRose. They would be together through spring and summer into the dog days, when the house heated through, and the old logs deep inside gave off the earthen scent of loam.
Landreaux opened the door and LaRose ran straight past him, clutching his stuffed creature, shouting for his mom. Landreaux turned back to wave good-bye, but Peter had quickly swung back out onto the road. Landreaux closed the aluminum storm door and then pushed the wooden door shut behind it. To see LaRose and Emmaline fly together would hurt, so he bent over by the mud rug and took a long time pairing up the scattered shoes and setting them in lines. When he finally came to them, his long arms dangling, they were talking about how to use the potato peeler.
LaRose sat down at the table by the window, in feeble winter sunlight. The edges of the storm window were thick with frost. Steam had frozen in gray fuzz upon the sides and sills. He peeled the potato skin away from himself, bit by skimpy bit, onto a plastic plate. Emmaline shook chunks of meat in a bag with flour, then pinched up each chunk and dropped it carefully into hot grease. The cast-iron skillet was smooth and light from fifty years of hard use. Her mother had left it.
Landreaux sat across the table and opened out the rest of the newspaper. The rustling it made caused him to notice his hands were lightly trembling.
Snow and Josette pushed through the door first. Willard and Hollis were hauling all of the gym bags. Everything scattered into piles at the door. The girls ran to LaRose and grabbed him, knelt by the kitchen chair dramatically weeping. The older boys slapped LaRose’s palm.
We saved your bunk for you, man, said Hollis.
Yeah, I tried to sleep there and he slammed me off onto the floor, said Coochy. It’s all yours now.
He’s sleeping here! Here in his own house! Josette moaned.
You knew that, said Snow.
LaRose smoothed their hair as they competition-wept.
Mii’iw, said Landreaux.
The sisters sniffed and looked redeemed, like a light had been restored inside of them. They were so happy they didn’t know how to show it without seeming fake. The girls sat down to do the carrots.
You’re cutting too fat.
No, I’m not. Look at the potatoes.
Proportion, Josette.
Don’t be oblique.
They had acquired a list of SAT words from a teacher who liked them both. Most teachers liked them because they studied. They were relieved to finish out their volleyball season. The games were an hour, two hours away. They took all night. So did Hollis’s and Willard’s basketball games. Landreaux and Emmaline took turns driving them because the bus added on the hours. Besides, they made their children study in the car in the backseat with a flashlight. How did they know to do this? They had learned from Emmaline’s mother. This sort of devotion was not from Landreaux’s side. His parents had been alcoholics with short lives.