The People We Keep(10)
“How long?”
“Week or so.”
“And you didn’t ever wait for me to get home or leave a note?”
“Come on, Ape. I already got Irene on my case.”
“Whatever. You got to go now. I’m writing for my gig.”
“It’s my motorhome.” He gets up and walks into the bedroom at the back and slides the accordion door shut.
I use a piece of notebook paper to pick up his callus and throw it in the garbage.
* * *
My dad won the motorhome from Molly Walker in a poker game. It wasn’t even high stakes.
On the outside, Molly seemed pretty damn close to perfect. She was in church every Sunday and sewed costumes for all the pageants and school plays. On Christmas she’d drive the three hours to Syracuse to volunteer at a soup kitchen. She had sweatshirts for every holiday, even Arbor Day, and put a coordinated flag on her front porch too. And she won first place in the Fourth of July bake-off every year (except for an unfortunate experiment with crepes three years back). Molly tried so hard to be perfect, but she wasn’t, and everyone knew it. All that other stuff—the sewing, the volunteer work—was a cover up, like penance to make up for the fact that she would bet on anything. Margo always said Molly would bet on which way the toilet water would swish down or how long it would take for the stoplight to change. She’d bet on Little League games, how many fish her husband, Hank, would catch on his next fishing trip, or which of the Newton kids would crack their head open skateboarding. She had bets of every size going all over town, and then there were the poker games. If Molly could round up a full table, they’d go through a whole weekend, and by Sunday night everyone would be propped on their fists, looking like hell, hopped up on coffee boiled down to syrup. At the end of those games there was a massive rearranging of who owned what and who wasn’t talking to who. Sometimes property lines changed.
Molly almost always ended up on top, until the losing streak. It started with a bet on the Gary’s Tap Room bowling team, which seemed like a slam dunk, but Gary spent the day before in Buffalo gorging himself on Chinese food. His fingers swelled so bad they got stuck in the bowling ball and his team tanked the tournament. After that, Molly couldn’t seem to get anything right.
The problem was, losing didn’t slow her down any. She’d stop for a few days or a week, but then she’d start up again, and lose just as bad. And since it’s impossible to hide anything in Little River, everyone knew about it.
One time, Margo had a two-for-one coupon and brought us a whole bag of name-brand cheese puffs and they were the best thing I’d ever tasted. My dad and I ate a few handfuls, and then he went out on a job. I put the bag away on top of the fridge, closed up with a twist tie, but I just kept thinking about those cheese puffs. I couldn’t pay attention to the TV. I didn’t even want to leaf through Margo’s hand-me-down catalogs. All I could do was think about those cheese puffs. I went back again and again. At first I closed the bag up after every handful, but then I just gave up and went whole hog. I ate until the bag was empty and the roof of my mouth had strings of skin peeling off. I even turned the bag upside down and poured every last bit of cheese powder in my mouth. I think that’s the way Molly Walker felt about gambling. When she wasn’t doing it, she just couldn’t think about anything else. And when she was all out of every other last thing to gamble, she bet the motorhome.
Most of the men in town wouldn’t play with her anymore, either out of pity for poor Hank Walker or because they didn’t like to gamble with a woman to begin with. My dad didn’t have any problem gambling with a woman and he flat out didn’t like Hank Walker, so he and Molly sat at our kitchen table playing five-card until it was so late it was morning again. Molly bet Hank’s tackle box. Dad bet his wrench set. Molly bet her winter coat and said she’d cut it down for me too. Dad bet his snow tires. Molly bet tuna casseroles every Friday for six months. Dad bet shoveling her roof all winter. Molly bet something in a low voice that made Dad blush. Dad bet his next paycheck. Molly bet the motorhome and called it a see and raise. Dad said since it didn’t even have a motor it was just a see and since it was so late he wanted to call it, and that’s how we got the motorhome.
Hank left Molly the next day. Took his tackle box before Dad could claim it. Dad got the idea that we could live in this motorless motorhome while he built a real house. “I just need to get us a spread of land,” he kept saying. I pictured someone taking a knife and spreading land out in front of us like peanut butter on a slice of bread.
The spread he finally found was at the dead end of a dirt road at the very edge of town. He bought it from Mrs. Varnick when her husband died. It was cheap for a reason. Seven acres without a good spot to build a house. There were outcroppings of bedrock and no easy place to lay pipes. Pine trees everywhere. It took my dad a year to clear brush and boulders and dig a well, two more to get a foundation in, but then he met Irene and the boy and stopped caring about making sure we got “our piece of the pie.” The foundation filled in like a swimming pool, drawing swarms of mosquitoes and a humongous snapping turtle. Then my dad stopped coming home altogether.
* * *
I try to write for almost an hour, but the only good rhyme for lies is skies, and I don’t want to give my dad the satisfaction. I hear him snoring from the bedroom, this honk-sheeeee noise that sounds like a cartoon. His Carhartt work jacket is wadded up in the booth and I know his truck keys and wallet will be in the inside pocket. I put his jacket on and decide to go stock up on groceries.