All the Lonely People

by Jen Marie Hawkins

  He chuckles. “I appreciate your honesty.”

  I turn on my side to face him and prop my head up with my hand. My heartbeat makes my entire body vibrate. “Can I ask you one?”

  He nods.

  “Truth or lie: What Mons said tonight.”

  A shadow crosses his face. “Which part?”

  “The part about how your secrets will make me not like you.”

  He hesitates. His eyes wander down to my mouth and pause on my lips. Sometimes when Henry and I talk, I think maybe we’re both just lips and eyes and eyes and lips, thinking about kissing all the time. Ever since that one time we did.

  The Beatles begin their studio version of Don’t Let Me Down in the background.

  “Truth,” he finally says.

  Our bodies mirror each other in the dark. A few heartbeats of space separate us. I want to beg him to tell me those secrets, the way I’ve been telling him all of mine.

  “Somehow I doubt I could ever not like you.”

  “Truth or lie,” he whispers. “You want me to kiss you right now.”

  My heart trips over itself. “Truth.”

  He leans in and presses his lips against mine. Warmth, pressure, and electricity simultaneous. I get lost. For once, I don’t think about the past, or the future, or meds or pain or drama, or who I am or who I’m not or what the hell I’m even doing on this planet besides wasting space and oxygen. Every particle that makes me who I am lives in my lips while Henry is kissing me.

  He tastes like peppermint, always peppermint, and it’s my new favorite flavor. His big, warm hands skate gently across the skin on my hips, beneath my nightshirt, pulling me close. I melt into him.

  At some point, minutes or days later, I remember how very temporary this all is.

  The slide is amazing, but the ground is coming. I pull away and sit up.

  Henry opens his eyes. “I’m sorry, did I—”

  I shake my head. “No,” I barely manage.

  “We can stop.” He searches my face. “I didn’t plan that.”

  “I know.” I run a fingertip over his swollen cheek.

  “Stay,” he says, withdrawing his hands. “I’ll keep my promise. Let’s watch the movie.”

  I nod and slide into his shoulder, resting my head in the nook between his neck and collarbone. He laces an arm around my back and I hug his waist, and we watch the Apple rooftop concert until we both fall asleep.

  * * *

  : : : : :

  * * *

  A series of dings wake me up. My eyes flutter open. Henry’s warm body is pressed against my back. His breath is slow and steady on my neck, and his legs are tangled with mine. A solid blue light from the TV casts a hazy glow over the room. I pick up my phone and glance at the time, then text Patrick back, wondering what he’d think if he knew where I am right now.

  Henry shifts in his sleep and turns over, so I roll onto my back and peek over at him. The light from the TV glows around his face. It’s a photogenic face. One that I’ll miss terribly. A sad sort of restlessness breaks loose and swims through me. I’m not looking forward to saying goodbye to him. I grab my phone and snap a picture of him sleeping.

  Caption: too good to be true

  Things might look different to him in the light of day. I have very little time left with him, and I’m afraid of what will happen if I’m still here when he wakes up.

  But I can at least get his spare glasses for him.

  Slowly and quietly, I stand up and tiptoe out of his room.

  * * *

  : : : : :

  * * *

  In the dark room, I rummage around, trying my best not to make noise.

  Some drawers are filled with chemicals, others with old film canisters. I stoop down and open a drawer beneath the negative processor and—aha!—finally spot them on top of a mountain of pictures. When I grab them, some of the pictures fall to the floor.

  As I clean up the mess I made, I notice a photo of Henry and Patrick together. From a few years ago, it looks like. Patrick’s in a soccer uniform. Henry’s wearing a Radiohead tee. They’re huddled together smiling from ear to ear. They look nothing like a couple of brothers who don’t get along.

  The next one on the stack is another of Henry and Patrick—this time younger. Both laughing, draped in towels at the beach.

  I sink to the cold floor and sit cross-legged, then lift a stack of photos out of the drawer. As I flip through, I watch them age backwards. Each picture with both of them tells the same story: brothers and friends.

  I wonder how they could’ve let family drama tear something so obvious apart.

  But of course, as Lexie and Maddie have both separately pointed out, I don’t have siblings. So maybe I know nothing.

  About halfway down the stack, I find one with old tape on it, like it was once in an album. Or hanging on the wall. It’s Patrick holding Felix when he was a tiny little kit. Felix has a gauze wrap around half of his face, and two bandaged paws. As I put it down, though, something niggles at the back of my mind. Something off. I pull the photo closer to my face in the subdued light of the room. It isn’t Patrick holding Felix, because he would’ve been 12 years old when the little fox was rescued. This is a man, not a teenager. He’s looking down, so I can’t see his face. Only the top of his red hair is visible. I study the slope of his neck and shoulders, the way his freckled arms cradle the little fox and disappear beneath his fur. There’s something familiar about him, so it was easy to assume it was Patrick. This must be John. Patrick’s real dad.

  I set the picture down and pick up another. The next one, though, has the same man in it. My hands start to shake. All of a sudden, I’m thrashing in the Thames again, frozen and unable to breathe.

  This picture isn’t of the top of his head.

  A cold sweat starts at the top of my head and moves to my feet like a dynamite fuse.

  This picture has a full body view.

  Henry and Patrick huddle under each of the man’s arms. I see the similarities between Patrick and his father as they stand side by side. They have the same eye color. The same nose. The same cinnamon freckles on their faces and arms. My eyes blur as they stop on the man’s forearm, just above the wrist, where there’s a loopy tattoo.

  It says Jojo.

  The current swallows me whole.

  Chapter 49

  : I Just Don’t Understand :

  I SHOVE THE proof in my backpack but leave the rest of the photos scattered on the darkroom floor.

  Puzzle pieces snap together in my brain.

  I can’t feel my fingers.

  He called me Jojo at the airport, for God’s sake! He gave himself away first thing and I didn’t see it. All this time… All this time! I thought he was the one person I could trust.

  Bile rises in the back of my throat.

  The festival poster… George’s insistence that they’d never heard of Walrus Gumboot. All lies.

  * * *

  He’s younger than me, but in my grade. I was born January 11th of the same year. I do the math. My mother was at the end of her pregnancy with me when Patrick was conceived.

  I remember the story Mama once told me, about how Pop almost didn’t make it home in time for my birth. He’d left for London the day after Christmas to play a few holiday shows, and he made it back the day she went into labor.

  Back in Patrick’s room, I start pulling open drawers, looking for more evidence. Anything. I pull books off shelves and flip through them. I dig inside album sleeves. But I find nothing else. There’s not an ounce of clutter, no shoeboxes under the bed, no hidden answers in his pristine closet.

  I pull out the stack of photos I swiped from the darkroom. Handfuls of photos of Pop—with the boys. With Henry and Patrick’s mother, Julia. With people I don’t know and have never met. He had a longstanding relationship with this family, but he never told me?

  Worse still, they never told me.

  My stomach plummets. I close my eyes. This is just a dream. A re
ally weird dream. I’m going to wake up and everything will be fine. There will be no pictures of Pop in this place. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale.

  I open my eyes again, very much present in the nightmare.

  Then I remember Nigel’s strange behavior. The way he wouldn’t give me anything but vague answers I already had. The way he looked at Henry instead of me. The way he ushered Walter away before he told me anything of substance that night at the Crow. And I know, all at once, that Nigel was in on this secret, too. And I’m going to make him tell me why.

  I grab my bag and dart out the door, taking the steps two at a time all the way to the ground floor. I swing around into the hallway toward the back door as I hear footsteps above. My heart speeds up triple time. I pull on the door and meet resistance, stuck as always. My whole body tears at the knob, the latches, the chain. My breaths quake as I struggle and pull. Above me, footsteps move louder, closer together.

  “Jo?”

  Finally I lift the knob and put my hip into it. The door opens and I dash outside into the moonlit street. I don’t look back to see if he’s behind me. I just run.

  Through the alley, around the corner, down the street. I keep running, past the sparse cars on the otherwise empty street. My breath puffs in little white clouds in front of my face. My legs ache and my lungs burn. I sprint in and out of side streets, convinced that Henry is right behind me the whole time. I don’t look back.

  When I get to Blackfriar’s Crow, the building is locked and the lights are out. I bang on the glass until my hand stings, but nobody comes to the door.

  I collapse onto the sidewalk in front of the Crow. Tears stream down my face. Henry will probably know to look here. Or maybe he won’t look for me at all.

  I’m startled to realize that scares me more.

  I pull out the stack of pictures and go through them again, trying to decipher their ages, do the math. They’re all taken at different places, different stages of his life. The short hair phase, the leather jacket phase, those awful cowboy boots that Mama hated. Every picture tells a different story—the only thing they have in common is that I don’t know the man in them.

  I never really knew him.

  Then there’s one of Pop and Julia, sitting on the stairs at the Fox Den. Felix is propped on his lap. Julia’s legs are kicked up against the wall. She’s smiling so genuinely. She has the same dimples as Henry. She’s beautiful. And I hate her.

  Was he always coming here for her? Did he want to be here instead?

  Did they get to see his body when I didn’t? Were they all there? Are they the people who were called when he was found by a hotel maid? How much of the story I’ve been told about his death is even true? The numbness gives way to boiling jealousy. Then anger.

  Were they having an affair the whole time?

  Suddenly nothing makes sense. Everything I ever thought my life was has been disproven by one big destructive lie. The emptiness I once felt—the one I felt at my lowest—slides over my bones and paralyzes me where I sit. And it’s not the meds this time. It’s me. It was always me.

  Hands shaking, I reach into my backpack and pull out the bag of pill bottles. I take one of the blue ones. For panic. I sit there for a long time, waiting for it to kick in. Shivering in the cold drizzle, but not caring if I freeze. When the bad feelings don’t dissipate, I take another one. And another.

  Then get paranoid I took too much.

  I quickly google the medication side effects on my phone.

  Drowsiness. Lightheadedness. Slurred speech. Auditory hallucinations.

  Maybe hearing Pops’ voice was never real to start with. I stopped hearing it when I quit the meds. My phone rings. I click the green button with a numb finger, press the phone to my ear, but don’t say anything.

  “Please hear me out,” Henry begins.

  “So this was your big secret?” I don’t recognize the sound of my own voice. It’s raspy, tear-drenched.

  Silence on the line for a moment. “Yes. And I wanted to tell you. So many times, I almost—”

  “Oh, bullshit. You’ve had a month!”

  “Where are you right now? Let’s have this conversation face-to-face.”

  I choke on a sob. “You let me trek all over the country, trying to contact his spirit or some shit, for answers you already had.”

  “Please listen to me. He was like family to us. Before. Patrick didn’t know the truth until after he was already gone. We knew about you. He talked about you all the time, Jo.”

  Tears sting my eyes.

  “I knew this wasn’t the best way. But it’s how he wanted us to tell you.”

  “Did you see his body?”

  Henry sighs. “Jo…”

  “So you did.”

  Massive sigh. “Yes.”

  I hang up on him and dial Mama’s number. She answers on the second ring.

  “I need you to tell me the truth.” My voice cracks as a lone car roars past.

  “Josephine? What is that racket? It’s late there… What’s going on?”

  “Tell me the truth about the Pembertons.” A terror-filled silence stretches between us. “Mama?”

  “Where are you right now?”

  And that’s how I know.

  Telling me the truth in my fragile mental state will surely break me, she assumes, and she needs to make sure I’m not standing on a ledge.

  “Honey, it’s a very complicated situation and there are lots of things—”

  “A complicated situation?” I scream. Anger completely possesses me; I’m no longer in control. “You are a liar and I hate you!”

  “Josephine—”

  My other line beeps. Henry. On the other end of the phone, wire hangers clang against the rod in her closet. Zippers move up and down furiously. Then Patrick’s voice in the background—Is everything okay?

  “I’m coming there,” she says to me.

  I hang up on her. Turn off the phone. Behind me, the lock on the door snaps open. I look up. Nigel studies me for a moment through the darkness before he opens the door.

  “My dear, why are you yelling on my doorstep at three in the morning?”

  I wipe my face and clamber to my feet. I open my mouth to tell him I hate him, too. For lying. For knowing Pop better than I did. For being selfish and keeping him from me. But the sadness on his face weakens my resolve and only a whimper squeaks out.

  “Come inside. Let’s have a chat.” He hooks an arm around my shoulder and scoops me inside, twisting the lock behind us.

  Chapter 50

  : Yesterday :

  I OPEN MY eyes on the tweed sofa in Nigel’s office.

  Sitting up, I rub the sleepy, medicinal feeling away from my eyes and push the stale blankets off me. Last night comes back in blips.

  Yesterday, I didn’t know that everyone I care about is untrustworthy.

  I didn’t know my father was an adulterer, my mother was a liar, and the people I’ve grown to care about this summer were hiding significant pieces of my father’s identity from me. What a difference a day makes.

  “Good morning,” Nigel says to me from the other side of his desk. He pours water from a steaming kettle into a teacup and pushes it across the desk to me.

  I can’t remember our entire conversation, only that I cried a lot. And that he apologized a lot. And made a pallet for himself behind the bar so I could sleep on the sofa in his office.

  The letter Pop wrote me is open on the desk next to my teacup. I pick it up, remembering how we read it last night, how I tried to find clues while I fought against the current of exhaustion and drowsiness from the anxiety medication.

  “I want to show you something.” He opens a drawer and pulls out a leather-bound book and hands it to me. “I wanted to show it to you last night, but you were already so upset.”

  I take it from him.

  “It’s a scrapbook my wife made, from the early days of the Crow.”

  There’s at least one picture of Pop on every other page. With the band.
With Nigel. With George. With people I’ve never seen before. Sitting at the bar. He’s so alive in every photo. So saturated with happiness. As I reach the end of the album, there’s one of Pop pointing at an audience member with a face-splitting smile. Julia. They’re so young. The picture tells a story that couldn’t be summarized with a caption. Worth a thousand words and all that.

  “This is why you didn’t show me this when I asked you about pictures before?”

  He nods.

  “Why did everyone lie to me? Didn’t they know I’d find out eventually?”

  Nigel nods. “Of course, my dear. It was always the plan to tell you.”

  My brows pull and it makes my whole face feel weird, being so taut from crying. “When?”

  He clears his throat. “I believe you’d better let George or Henry or your mother tell you that.”

  I stiffen. “I don’t want to talk to anyone else. I’ve read this same letter over and over. For years, Nigel.”

  His face is solemn, drawn downward.

  “None of it sounds like some grand plan to introduce me to his other family. Henry’s lying. I need someone to tell me the truth. Someone. Anyone. You.”

  He drags his hands over his face.

  “Your father was very ill for most of his life. I remember the first time I met him—he’d come into the bar with Julia and some of her other friends—and I could see it in his eyes. He was haunted.”

  “Who are all these people?” I ask, turning the album around to face him. “These people who loved him? All this time I could’ve been talking to them. Finding out about him.”

  A loud banging echoes through the building and familiar voice calls, “Nigel? Open up!”

  My heart starts pounding and I glare at Nigel. “You told him I was here?”

  “I’m sorry, dear.” His eyes soften. “He was very worried about you.”