The People We Keep(23)

I can’t fill out half the form. I don’t have an address. I don’t have a phone. I don’t even know which street the campground is on. I write my name, and then, under work experience, I write Waitress, Margo’s Diner, Little River, NY, 1990–94. It’s the only thing about me that’s still true.





— Chapter 9 —


There are two more nights before the campground closes. I think maybe I should pull a few numbers from the roommate ads on the bulletin board, but who’s going to take in some girl with nothing but a car full of crap and a dwindling wad of crumpled dollar bills to her name?

I wander around town looking in store windows, hoping an answer will come to me. Just outside The Commons there’s a tall brick building that reminds me of my high school and would seem just as menacing, except there’s a guitar store on the first floor with a big shiny window to show off the beautiful curves of rows of guitars hanging on the walls.

I’m not used to seeing stores for just one specific thing you wouldn’t starve without. Even the auto parts store in Little River sells livestock feed and canned goods too. It feels like I’m starving without a guitar. If I still had mine, I wouldn’t notice the cold in the campground and I wouldn’t feel hungry right now. I could play until my fingers throbbed and then walk around with fresh indents in my calluses to help me remember that the world can disappear and I can float in sound and breath and nothing else has to matter.

There’s a twelve-string acoustic hanging front and center in the window. The finish looks silky, not shiny like mine was, and I can tell even through the glass that it would feel nice to hold. Set into the neck are pearly bits carved into flowers and leaves and a squawking bird. A white paper price tag hangs from one of the tuning pegs, spinning in an air current, not easy to see. I don’t know how much a guitar costs, but I know I don’t have guitar money. My dad bought the one he gave me when he was seventeen. When I was a kid, before it was mine, every time he lifted that guitar from the case, he’d strum it and smile. “That’s why you spring for the big guns, Ape. That’s why.” He saved summer construction job money for two years to buy it. I step closer to the window, tip my head, squint hard, and manage to see $1,849 handwritten in pencil before the tag spins away again. If I added up all the money I’ve made in my whole life, I don’t think it would be eighteen hundred and forty-nine dollars.

A man with a bushy black beard walks up to the guitar and waves at me through the window. “Come in! Come in!” His voice is booming, even though it’s muffled by the glass.

I turn away, pretend I haven’t seen him. Walk fast, head down, as if just looking was a crime. Like my need for that guitar could ooze through my skin and melt the sidewalk. I rub my thumb and ring finger together to feel the callus that will wear away soon. When it’s gone, there won’t be anything about me that’s special anymore.

My face hurts from the cold. I press my palm to my nose to warm it, but my hands are freezing too. I walk to Woolworth’s and order a pretzel and a cup of hot water at the lunch counter so I can thaw out before I walk back to the campground. I eat the pretzel slowly, taking tiny bites, chewing carefully. It reminds me of Margo. I lick my thumb and use it to pick up the big white chunks of salt left on the paper plate. After I get every last one, I pick a quarter from the change on the counter, leave the rest for tip.

I call from the pay phone outside. She picks up on the first ring.

“Margo’s Diner, today’s special is chili con carne.”

I don’t make a sound.

“Where are you?” she asks.

“Can’t say.”

“Hon, you can trust me.”

“You can’t feel bad about not telling people what you don’t know anyway,” I say, because I’ve seen the toll it takes on her when she can’t tell the truth about important things.

“You’re safe? Ten fingers, ten toes? Not sleeping on the street?”

“I’m fine.” There’s a row of chewed up gum along the top of the phone. The wads are different sizes, but they’re lined up perfectly. Pink, white, green, yellow, blue. I wonder who put them there—if it was one person or a group effort.

Margo sighs like there’s air leaking from her tires. “You’re making me prematurely grey, girlie,” she says.

I don’t know how Margo would ever know if she does go grey. She’s been dyeing her hair Cinnamon Red Hot for as long as I’ve known her. But I still feel bad. I can picture the worry crease she gets between her eyebrows before one of her sick headaches sets in.

“Did you talk to him?” I ask.

“Haven’t worn him down all the way yet.” She sighs. “He says if you bring the car back by the weekend he won’t file a report. Bought you a little time, at least.”

“You know I won’t be back by the weekend.”

“Gary’s gonna talk to him. Thinks it’s a man-to-man thing. Gary’s pulling for you too, you know. Says if he had a daughter he wouldn’t give her reason to run off in the first place.”

“Thanks.”

“Saw that Matty Spencer. He made me promise if I talked to you I would say to call.”

My heart beats crazy when I think about Matty. I don’t say anything.

“He’s walking around like someone pumped his puppy full of buckshot,” Margo says, clucking her tongue. She starts to say something, but stops and takes a deep breath instead. “You won’t call him, will you?”