The People We Keep(21)

When I do sleep, I dream about Matty. I’m hanging off a cliff. No rope, no sheets. I forgot my lifeline. He’s reaching for me. My hand can’t meet his. My fingers slip through soil, dirt falling in my face. I wake up screaming, body jolting against the seat like I’m landing hard.

After that, I can’t fall back to sleep. I play a game with myself counting out the minutes, then turning the car on to see what time it actually is.

When I check the clock at 5:32, I’m seven minutes short. I turn the car off, start counting again, but next thing I know I’m waking up and it’s bright and the windows are frosted inside and out. When I check the time, it’s 8:30. I stumble from the car, bundled in blankets and sheets.

The campsite is dirty, littered with gum wrappers and burnt scraps of foil. There’s a half-melted plastic produce container in the rusty fire ring. I walk to the end of the campsite to look down the path and there’s the lake: about as blue as blue gets, banks lined with willow trees. Out a ways from shore, a layer of mist hangs above the water, thick enough to disappear in.

It’s disorienting to see a lake where you didn’t know there was one. I feel that strange false aftershock, like when a car accident almost happens, as if I could have walked into the water in the dark without noticing the cold lapping at my legs.

I cross the dirt road to the bathroom. My toes ache from being jammed in my boots all night. I was convinced something might give me reason to get out of the car and run. It’s weird, the places your brain can go when you can't see what's around you. In the light, there’s nothing scary about this campground. It’s dirty and run down, but everything looks harmless.

The bathroom building smells like a swamp. There’s no heat and it’s not even closed off from outside. A screen just below the ceiling spans the length of each wall. My breath is thick in the air, like the cloud it forms could start to snow. I drop two quarters in the coin box for the shower and undress, hoping that by the time I’m ready to hop in, the water will be warm. Pipes whine and thump. The water is the color of rust and shoots from the showerhead in hard, progressively longer spurts. I stick my hand in to test for heat and it’s like being pierced by a billion frozen pins. It takes a buck fifty in quarters to get the water to lukewarm. I jump in and lather up as fast as possible. My body is covered in goose bumps that don’t go away even when the water turns all the way to burning hot. As soon as I get some good suds going in my hair, the water shuts off completely. Soap in my eyes and I can’t find any more quarters in the change pile on the wooden bench. I throw in two dimes and a nickel, praying it will work, but I lose them to the shower gods. My teeth chatter. I sob. I worry the water will freeze in icicles on my body, so I wrap myself in the sheet and rinse my hair in the bathroom sink while I wait to run out of tears.



* * *



After I settle up with the park ranger for last night, I’m left with a hundred and fifty-eight dollars. If I know anything about money, it’s that it runs out fast. To save gas, I walk to town from the campground. It takes a long time on sore feet, but I don’t have anything else to do and I can’t exactly go blowing money on sightseeing.

The houses on the way are old. Some of them have porches that sag, peeling paint, loose shingles, bedsheets or flags for curtains. But some are freshly painted with fancy wood trim that looks like bicycle spokes.

There’s a dog on the porch of a house with a Grateful Dead flag in the front window. He isn’t leashed. He looks like a pit bull and I start walking faster. I think about crossing the street, but I don’t want him to chase me. I walk an even pace, pretending I’m calm. He barely raises his head to watch me.

The center of town is called Ithaca Commons and it’s blocked off so it’s just for people, not cars. The stores are painted bright colors like a village out of a movie. Like it might not be real.

I’m not sure what I’m looking for. Something cheap to eat, maybe a place to get warm for a while so I can plan my next move. There’s a brick building that has DAIRY painted on the outside even though it’s a bakery. I buy a donut and a cup of coffee from a lady with long white braids and take a seat at a wobbly table by the window.

The people who walk by just look different. They’re wearing a lot of clothes. Layers and layers. Thick hand-knit hats with flaps that cover their ears, or they have hair like they just got out of bed. Corduroy pants cut up the seam and turned into bellbottoms with bright patchwork pieces. There’s a man in a long skirt walking around like he’s nothing out of the ordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it. Freaking dirty hippies, I think, smiling as I try to picture Gary walking around The Commons wearing a flowing skirt and his Harley jacket.

I eat my donut slow, breaking off teeny tiny pieces, chewing them down to mush before I swallow. After I drink half my coffee, I go back to the cream and sugar table and load the cup with cream so it’ll last longer. I eat every last crumb of donut and wait for the final drop of coffee to roll down the seam of the paper cup into my mouth.

“Want a warm up to go?” the lady with the braids asks as I stand up and collect myself. “On the house.” She holds the coffeepot above the counter.

“Thanks.” I walk over with my cup. She takes it from me and pours until it’s full.

“Cold for November,” she says. “Stay warm, sweetie.”