The People We Keep(13)

I rub my hand down his leg until I get to his knee, then I reach over and hand him his backpack. “I gotta go.”

He’s walking funny again. I stay to make sure he didn’t lock his keys in the house when he went to get the condom. As soon as he opens the door, I honk twice and drive away like my tail’s on fire, kicking up a trail of dust. Rocks hit the underside of the truck like a barrage of bullets from one of those boring war movies my dad used to watch on Sunday afternoons before Irene made him spend the day at church.

Matty left the condom on the floor mat, full and floppy like a jellyfish. I don’t notice it until I’m at the end of Woodland. This isn’t exactly a busy road. I know I won’t get caught, so I open the car door at the stop sign and drop it, praying it will get driven over and dusted up before anyone can see what it is. It leaked on the mat. I search my dad’s pockets for a tissue or a napkin, even a handkerchief, but I don’t find one. I do find a small box in his inside breast pocket—black velvet with a rounded top. The hinges creak when I pull it open. The ring inside has a diamond so big I start to wonder if my dad has any stashed money left anywhere. It’s real too. I scratch it against the window and it leaves a thin etched line. I put the ring box in the left pocket, where he keeps his wallet, as a warning, so he’ll know I know about it. I flip the mat over and wipe it on the carpet underneath. When I flip it the right way again, it looks even cleaner than it was to start.

There are three lights in town and I hit all of them red. Then I get stuck behind Mrs. Ivory, who can’t drive any faster than fifteen miles an hour and probably shouldn’t drive at all. Turns out she’s going to visit my neighbor, Mrs. Varnick, and I’m stuck behind her the whole way home. By the time I pull in the driveway, the clock says 4:57, and before I can even throw it in park, my dad is standing on the steps of the motorhome, holding my guitar by the neck like prize game.

“God damn it, April!” he screams when I get out of the car. “Where the fuck were you?”

“Shopping,” I say, and start unloading my groceries from the back of his truck into a pile on the ground. I don’t look at him. I tighten my jaw and ignore his temper tantrum with a fake smile the way my mom used to. “A growing girl’s gotta eat.”

“I told Irene I was getting out early today. At three thirty,” he says.

I smile again and keep unloading. Don’t say anything. Don’t apologize. The Coke bottles clink against each other when I set that bag down. Otherwise it’s quiet and I can feel it in the air, the way he’s about to explode, like how the teakettle gets extra still just before it boils. The metal steps of the motorhome rattle. Even though I’m not looking, I know he’s starting to shake and I’m sure he’s holding the neck of my guitar hard enough to make his knuckles turn white.

“God damn, April!” he screams, and then there’s an awful crack. Just one. Loud and sharp and it stays in my ears even after it’s done and I know I will hear it for days.

“There, I took something that’s yours. How do you feel about that, April? How do you feel about that?” he says.

I palm the ring box and drop it in the bag with the cheese puffs as I carry it over to my pile. It’s the last bag. The cheese puffs crunch when I set it down. I take his jacket off and drape it on the front seat of his truck.

“Fine,” I say, and toss him his keys.





— Chapter 4 —


I don’t have jack shit to do, so I pace the motorhome singing Should I Stay or Should I Go. The singing starts so low it’s only in my head, but once I get going I’m loud and bouncing around and the whole motorhome shakes.

Since I swiped the ring from my dad a few days ago, I’ve been expecting him to come back for it. The suspense is making me crazy. Anytime I hear a noise—Mrs. Varnick closing her car door, or a tree branch falling, or buckshot—I jump out of my skin and my heart starts up fast like someone hit it with jumper cables. We learned about fight or flight in science class. It’s like your instinct to deal with a situation. I’m not sure what my instinct would be if my dad came for the ring. It’s not even a fair trade. His ring is still in existence. My guitar is a pile of broken wood. I had to cancel my gig at Gary’s Tap Room, but I’m guessing my dad isn’t sitting around thinking that I’m the one who got wronged.

There’s a hole in the carpet on the floor, right by the sink. I kick the edges while I dance, making it a little bigger every time I pass. No extra shifts at the diner, and Matty is grounded because of the other day when one of his neighbors saw us going at it in his driveway. Plus, his parents don’t want him hanging out with a high school dropout.

“Do do do do do do trouble! Da da da da da da double!” I shout more than I sing. I just need noise. I’m doing this move where I shake my butt and then jump and spin around when I see a car through the slats in the blinds. It’s Mrs. Ivory’s big beige Mercury. Sometimes she gets confused when she’s visiting Mrs. Varnick and ends up in our driveway instead. The thing that really gets me is that Mrs. Varnick lives in a double wide. I live in a motorhome. It’s easy to tell the difference.

I go outside and knock on the car window. “Shove over,” I yell. “I’ll drive.” It’s a stone’s throw to Mrs. Varnick’s, but last time Mrs. Ivory almost hit like four trees on the way.