The People We Keep(19)

When I back down the driveway, I run over a plate or a cereal bowl. Something fragile. I feel it snap under the weight of the car.



* * *



The lights are on at Matty’s house, but no one’s home. I watch for a minute from outside to be sure. His mom leaves the kitchen light on all the time so it looks like they’re home, because she never locks the door. I let myself in, sprint through the living room like lightning, and tiptoe up the creaky steps to Matty’s bedroom.

I lie on his bed one last time and look at the glow-in-the-dark solar system stickers on his ceiling. The lights are on, but I can still see the stars because I know they’re there, pale yellow against off-white. We stuck them up together, standing on his bed, mattress jiggling under our feet. At first we tried to do constellations, but we only got as far as Orion before we gave up and started plastering stars and planets everywhere. We bonked heads and Matty fell backward, pretending it knocked him out. When I leaned over to see if he was okay, he pulled me down too. That was the first time he kissed me.

I curl the blanket over my body and breathe in Matty. I start to feel like I could stay in this bed. I could wait here for him and get married and learn how to make venison burgers and kiss his mom’s ass until she likes me. I roll up the other side of the blanket into a cocoon. I could go to church and make potluck or bring potluck or whatever the hell you do with potluck. I could return the car. I could finish high school. I could be that person, the one who stays. The one who makes good on things. But then I think about inertia. That whole body at rest thing. I think about how wives don’t play guitar in bars and double dating with Mark Conrad for all eternity. Matty coming home with a six-pack every night, covered in factory grease. I think about Molly Walker and all those holiday sweatshirts. If I stay, I will always be a body at rest. And I can’t even make regular hamburgers.

I get up and root around, pull Matty’s favorite sweater from the pile of clothes on the closet floor. His navy blue cotton roll neck. Thick and warm, and it smells like he does when he’s just gotten out of the shower. I pull it on and lean over the bed to kiss his pillow. Like the kiss will be there waiting for him when he gets home, and he’ll know it’s there. I leave the note I wrote him on top of the kiss, the pearl promise ring he gave me tucked in the folded paper. My eyes sting. I pinch myself hard on the fleshy part under my thumb, like my mom used to do when she was crying and wanted to hide it.

Matty’s house looks smaller when I back down the driveway. Smaller and sad. All lit up; warm and inviting and no one home to enjoy it.

By the time I get to the highway, I’m flat out sobbing. I get myself together and wipe my face on my sleeve, but then I realize it’s really Matty’s sleeve and start all over. I wish I’d left him more, but I just couldn’t write it. All the note says is: Matty, I have to go. I’m sorry. Love Always, April. I wrote it on the last page of Where the Wild Things Are. That’s the part where Max finally comes back home and the food his mom made is waiting for him, because even though he was acting like a horrible kid she still loves him enough to make him dinner.



* * *



I’ve never driven on the interstate, only the back roads that snake around Little River. My knuckles go white and my palms sweat every time a truck passes, but it seems like the fastest way to get distance. Irene was nice enough to leave me with a little more than half a tank of gas, but by the time I get to the Waterloo exit, I’m three hours in and running low. I don’t know where the next rest stop is, so I exit, pay the toll with coins Irene left perfectly organized in the change compartment, and find a gas station.

I have a hundred and seventy-eight dollars saved up from work. Tip money and the little extra Margo started throwing me on top of my shift. When I pull out the wad of ones and fives to pay for gas, I realize I didn’t say goodbye to Margo. I call from the pay phone outside, sure she’s staying at Gary’s and I’ll get the machine. But then she picks up and says hello, and she knows it’s me even though I don’t say anything back.

“Oh, girlie,” she says, her voice blurred and watery. “What did you do?”





— Chapter 7 —


Ithaca, NY

I decide to spend the night in the parking lot of the Wilson Farms gas station just off the interstate, so I can get going and get gone as soon as I wake up. I park around back, out of sight, but cops keep pulling in. There’s a clear view of the cars when they enter the parking lot, but then they drive toward the front of the building and I can’t see them anymore. Three in an hour and I can’t get to sleep. I know they wouldn’t notice me unless they were looking, and they probably aren’t looking yet. They’re most likely stopping for donuts or coffee or cigarettes, but every time a car door slams I jump three feet out of my skin and can’t settle down until way after they leave.

Cop car number four pulls in and enough is enough. If I’m not going to sleep, I may as well move. It’s safer anyhow.

On the way back toward the interstate, there’s a sign that says ITHACA and that it’s forty-one miles from here. I’m not looking forward to getting back on I-90, and don’t know where I’m going other than away, so Ithaca is as good a destination as any.

A few months back Gary drove down to Ithaca to meet with some guys starting a brewery. He loved the beer. Came back with as many kegs as he could fit in his truck, but he sat at the counter at Margo’s Diner and complained about Ithaca through his whole dinner. Soup, salad, meatloaf, coffee, and lemon meringue pie, mouth full and everything. He couldn’t stop talking about how much Ithaca pissed him off.