The People We Keep(24)

“Don’t think so.” My nose stings. The phone crackles and a voice tells me to deposit ten cents to keep talking. I only have a few pennies in my pocket.

“I have to go,” I say. “No change.”

Margo says, “You call me. Promise you—” before the connection drops.

I keep the phone to my ear for a little while longer and pretend she’s still on the line telling me about the new beer Gary is serving, or how someone accidentally put a tomato on Ida Winton’s sandwich and she freaked out again right in the middle of the diner.

There’s a phone book on a shelf under the booth. I hang up and check for Sawicki, just in case. Find an Alice, a Paul, and a D. Sawick, but no Autumn. I look up her maiden name, but it’s Johnson. There are like seventy million A. Johnsons, and again no Autumn. This is just one phone book in one city. There are millions of phone books and she could be anywhere. She could be married again with a new name, maybe even a new daughter, and it occurs to me that I’ll probably never see her again. Good thing I don’t want to anyway.

On the walk back to the campground, I count out of state license plates to pass the time. Two from Pennsylvania. One from Michigan. Vermont. Texas. New Mexico. Massachusetts. Ithaca College stickers in back windows. I wonder what it would be like to have your mom and dad pack up your car and send you off to college, ship you packages of cookies through the mail. Ask about your grades and threaten to pull your allowance for making C’s. That actually happens to real people. To these people. It isn’t only something you see on TV. These kids aren’t looking for their moms in a phone book.

I pass a driveway with a kit car under a carport, covered in a tarp—the way Gary stored his for winter—and all of a sudden, I realize how I can buy time with Mrs. Ivory’s car.





— Chapter 10 —


I walk around the campground looking for leftover wood to build a fire. I’m all alone and even though I know people just moved on into winter, it feels like the end of the world or a bomb went off and everyone knew to take cover except me.

The things people leave behind are strange. There’s an assortment of forgettable junk: hair clips, condom wrappers, bottle caps, crushed soda cans. But then there are accidentals, things that had people saying “Oh shit!” when they were halfway home. Or maybe they were just missing something, left with a vague idea they’d find it eventually under that pile of mail or in the junk drawer. Eyeglasses, a cheap charm bracelet with greening silver charms (coffee cup, teddy bear, airplane, shooting star, four-leaf clover), a set of keys looped on a soggy rabbit’s foot, a screwdriver with R.S. carved into the sweat-stained wood handle. I wonder if any of the owners were happy to lose their stuff, wallowing in the freedom of leaving it behind, a chance to get glasses that don’t have brown plastic frames.

I find more than enough firewood. At one site, someone left half a bundle when they cleared out. I try to use the cigarette lighter from the car to light it, but the wood sizzles and won’t catch. I eat the rest of the cookies from Irene’s apartment and sit in my car, wrapped in sheets like a mummy to stay warm, waiting for dark.

The sun is at the horizon when my eyes get heavy, and then when I wake up, it’s the darkest dark I’ve ever seen and my hands are so cold I can barely move my fingers. I feel like the cold has seeped into my bones and will never go away.

Margo went through this phase where she believed in visualizing what you want. She had a series of cassette tapes that talked about holding pictures in your mind until they become reality. I try to think warm, picturing a hot sun melting away icicles that are stuck in my bones like pushpins, the melted water dripping into a warm bath, steam opening my pores. I try hard. It’s clear in my mind, but the cold won’t let go.

I fumble around for my flashlight and pull every warm piece of clothing I can from the back seat. Then I head out with R.S.’s screwdriver in my bag, bundled in so many layers I can barely bend my arms at the elbows.

At ten thirty in Little River, things are dying down. Gary’s Tap Room is the one place still open and even the crowd there will start to grumble about getting home. Only hardcore loyals stay until midnight, when Gary closes.

Ithaca is alive. People on porches smoking. Music leaks from open doors. Bob Marley, Grateful Dead, and that Chili Pepper band Matty’s cousin from New York City taped for him off the radio, all swirl together, making a big stew of sound. I have to walk right past the kit car house. I can’t follow through with my plan until everyone goes to bed, so I wander up one street, down the next, looking in lit up living rooms from the sidewalk like I’m window-shopping for people.

There’s a girl perfectly framed in one window, holding a red plastic cup and spinning around. Her long hair flares like a skirt. There’s just enough light from the flickering porch lamp that I can see a guy out there smoking, staring at her through the glass as if she’s magic. She has no idea he’s watching her. She throws one arm into the air and spins faster, finally collapsing on a couch in front of the window. The smoking guy moves away like he doesn’t want to get caught.

In another window, kids crowd around a ping-pong table bouncing a ball into plastic cups. No one has any paddles. I watch until my teeth chatter, then I get moving so I don’t freeze.

Three houses down, the porch is packed with people and as I walk past, a shirtless guy yells, “Hey, you!”