The People We Keep(16)

When my father was twenty or so, he played guitar at a coffeehouse in Syracuse if he was between carpentry jobs. He’d play for a free meal and whatever people would put in his tip jar. “You can’t be proud when people will feed you,” he’d say. They both told me the story when they were together. They each had their own part, like it was a play, but he’d never tell any of it after she left, so I don’t remember everything. I wish I did.

The people at the coffeehouse liked him and he always got a good crowd. He didn’t write much, so it was mostly covers, but he played the covers other people didn’t. James Taylor was huge, but he never played Fire and Rain. He’d do the obscure stuff, so people thought he wrote the songs himself because they’d never heard them—Ella, Nat, Fats Waller. Maybe some Dylan B-sides.

He’d been playing all night when my mom walked in with a group of friends. They were talking and laughing and he couldn’t stop watching her from the makeshift stage. She wore a short red dress with tall brown boots and when she smiled it was big and the room got brighter and he felt like the world was a better place.

She would chime in, back when they were happy; she would say that she walked in with a group of friends to get coffee. After that they were supposed to meet some boys somebody knew. They were talking, not paying attention to the music, but then my mother heard my father singing Autumn Leaves. She’d never heard the song before.

“He sang my name,” she’d say, and wink at him. “So, I started watching to figure out if I knew him. I didn’t, but by the end of the song I decided I wanted to.” She would sing the whole song when she told the story—the tale of a left behind lover who remembers his love when the leaves change color and fall from the trees. Her voice was thin, but pretty.

So that’s how they met, because of some stupid song. But he lived in Little River and she lived in Syracuse and her parents expected her to marry a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut. “What did I want with a husband who was always jumping around on the moon?” she’d say.

He didn’t have a lot of money, so one night when he missed her so much he couldn’t stand it anymore, he drove up to Buffalo to ask his grandfather for his grandmother’s ring. He had it engraved with a line from their song the very next day and drove all the way to Syracuse in the middle of a snowstorm to ask her to marry him, right in front of her father. And when she said yes, but her father said absolutely not, she said that Jesus was a carpenter and that was good enough for her. So they had a little wedding that no one on her side came to and Autumn Leaves was their first dance.

Part of the problem with wedding songs is that people don’t listen to the words enough. With my parents, it was like the song decided it. They never had a fighting chance.

I roll the ring around in my hands. If I turn it the right way, all I can read of the lyrics is When Autumn leaves.





— Chapter 5 —


“We should just go,” I say to Matty. We’re hanging out in his uncle’s deer blind since I’m not allowed at his house anymore and I try to avoid him ever spending time at the motorhome.

“Go where?” he says, blowing into his hands. The blind was a better place to hang in the summer.

“Does it matter?” I jump around to stay warm. “Anywhere. Not here.”

“What’s so bad about here?” He pulls a sloppy hand-rolled cigarette from behind his ear and lights it, coughing. This smoking thing is new. He picked it up from Mark Conrad and now he thinks he’s a badass. I don’t smoke, but his parents will blame me when they find out. They blame me for everything. His mother stopped liking me after mine left. As if me and my dad had a disease her family could catch.

“What’s so great about here?” I say. “We’re dying on the vine, Matty. There’s a whole world out there.”

“What’s got into you, Ape?” He makes a fish mouth when he exhales. Mark Conrad can blow smoke rings, but Matty’s come out like sad little clouds.

I fan the smoke from my face. “Don’t call me Ape.”

“It’s just getting good, you know? I’m almost done with school. We’re almost there.”

“I won’t be done with school.”

“It’s not like it matters. You’ll get a new guitar. You can play at Gary’s until we get married.” He picks a piece of tobacco off his tongue and looks at it. “Not like I want my wife playing in a bar, right?” He starts to laugh, but it turns into a cough. “After that, you can stay with the kids and I’ll bring home the venison.”

The deer hunting obsession is getting way worse. I’m guessing Mark Conrad does that too.

“What if I still want to play at Gary’s when we’re married?” I say, twisting my promise ring around my finger with my thumb.

“Ape—” I give him a look and he quickly adds “—rul. That’s not what married girls do.”

“So what, am I supposed to join bible study and make potluck in my crockpot?”

“Potluck isn’t something you make,” he says, shaking his head like he’s old and wise and I’m so foolish. “You make jello or stew.” He stubs his cigarette out on the bench and slides to the floor. “Come here.” He spreads his legs out. I sit between them and he wraps his arms around me. “It’s gonna be good.” Cold seeps through my jeans. Matty kisses my ear. Whispers like he’s trying to get a baby to stop crying, “You’ll love it. I promise.”