The People We Keep

by Allison Larkin

  Adam never asked me to move in exactly. He just kept offering me spaces for my things. My clothes are hanging in his closet, which was half-empty anyway, like the girl before me left that space and Adam never even thought of spreading his clothes out to the other side. My toothbrush lives in the cup on the edge of the bathroom sink with his. A few of the mugs from Margo’s Diner are in the cabinet with his nice mugs and he uses them like he doesn’t even mind the chipped rims. I wish I had someone to ask if this is how it happens. It’s the kind of thing I’d ask Margo if I could.

  I didn’t even know my dad knew Irene before he stopped coming home. So I certainly don’t know if she asked him to stay or he just stopped leaving. Matty and I were going to get married before we got a place together, and even though, deep down, I didn’t want to marry Matty, at least there was some kind of order to that plan. With Adam, I feel like there’s something I’m missing and I don’t even know where to find it.

  Sometimes, when Adam has a couple beers, we fool around on the futon in the living room that’s always folded up like a couch now. I sleep with him in his bed. But we don’t have sex ever, and we don’t do much more in bed than kiss good night.

  Once Matty and I started messing around, all he ever wanted to do was have sex. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if he heard a word I said, but it’s like he was addicted to me and that mattered more than the kids who teased him about his weirdo girlfriend or his mom picking at him to find someone better. It mattered more than when I bruised his ego with a joke or turned him down when I didn’t want his grabby hands on my body. I knew I had this power over him, and I liked it.

  Adam hears every word I say, but he has to be drunk to want me and even then, he can always stop. The fooling around part with Adam is better than sex was with Matty, but I worry it means that this isn’t going to last, and I want it to. More than just because I want a place to stay, but because I like being with Adam. I like talking to him. I like the way we have patterns, that things are the same most of the time.

  At night, when Adam turns the light off, we confess things to each other. Stupid stuff, mostly. Adam says he’s afraid of clowns. I tell him about the way starlings flocked in bare tree branches in the winter in Little River, so many that they looked like leaves, and when they up and flew away all at once, it would make me scared for reasons I don’t know how to say. I tell him like it was years ago. Not weeks.

  We lie there, staring at the ceiling, looking for shapes in cracks we can just barely see in the street light that leaks through the blinds. Sides touching, holding hands, like Matty and I used to when we watched clouds as kids.

  Adam tells me that he slept with a blankie until he was twelve. I say that I used to sing Whitney Houston into a pencil at the top of my lungs. He cops to liking Air Supply. I tell him about the pink puke sneakers I had from the time I threw up in Margo’s car. I don’t tell him why I puked, just that my dad didn’t see the need to buy me new shoes. But even that feels like I’m saying a little too much, because I have to be so careful about the whens.

  There’s a part of me that wants Adam to know everything, like if I told him, my life could start from that moment and nothing before would count. It wouldn’t even leave a stain. But if he knew everything, he wouldn’t like me anymore. He couldn’t. The catch in all of it is that if he knew and didn’t care, he couldn’t be the Adam I want him to be. Either way I’d lose him.

  Eventually his grip on my hand gets softer. “What are you thinking about?” he asks in his slow, sleepy voice. He likes to talk until the very last moment before he falls asleep.

  “A tree frog,” I say. “What are you thinking about?”

  “Donuts,” he says, and then he’s done for the day, breathing softly through his mouth.

  In the dim light, I watch Adam drift away, the vee between his eyebrows softening until it disappears, and I wonder what it must be like to be one of those people who sleep soundly and wake up rested.

  They say you spend like half your life asleep, but I think I’ve been awake for most of it. I wonder if I’ll ever stop waking up at the slightest little noise, thinking it could be my mom sneaking back home to take me with her. I wonder if sleeping is something I could ever learn to do.

  — Chapter 20 —

  I call Margo on Sundays at two o’clock from the pay phone outside of Woolworth’s. It’s my deal with her. She says someone needs to keep track of me. She says I can call collect, but I don’t. I take a roll of dimes with me. Last time I called, we used up the whole roll and I couldn’t stop shivering for hours afterward.

  I don’t want to use the phone at Adam’s or at work. I don’t think anyone is tracking the call. It’s not like I’m someone important, like in those movies where a kid goes missing and men in black suits with fancy equipment swoop in and take over the family room to wait for phone calls and ransom notes. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t taken Irene’s car or trashed the motorhome, my dad wouldn’t have even noticed or cared that I left. And I don’t only sort of believe that in a feeling sorry for myself way. I know it’s the truth and I think it’s better to call a spade a spade. But I use the pay phone just in case, so there’s no chance anyone in Little River could ever find out about Adam. And I don’t mention him to Margo. I just tell her I have a room in a boardinghouse, even though I’m not sure if boardinghouses are a real thing that still exist. I ended up confessing I was in Ithaca, but I tell her that I’m probably going to switch to a better place soon, so there’s no point in giving her my address. I think she knows I’m telling tales but worries if she pushes too hard, I won’t call again.

  “Oh, thank god, girlie,” she says when she picks up the phone. “I thought you might not call.”

  “I said I would. I always do.”

  “I know.” Her voice sounds worn. “But I always worry.”

  “Well, knock it off,” I tell her, trying to laugh. “You’ll give yourself wrinkles.”

  I wait for Margo to laugh and tell me I’m too much or say that when God made me he made a mistake and gave me too many funny bones. She doesn’t.

  She sighs. “Gary finally talked to your father. He says as long as you’ve found a place to live and you’re working and he doesn’t have to support you anymore, he can’t see any point in making you bring the car back and you may as well keep it.”

  I feel like someone just knocked all the wind out of me. I grab on to the side of the phone booth with my bare hand. The metal is freezing cold, but I’m worried I’ll fall over if I let go, like maybe my knees have forgotten how to be knees. The relief about the car, about not having to go back, that freedom isn’t as sweet as I thought it would be. “So, I guess he figures I’d cost him an old Mercury’s worth of groceries between now and when I turn eighteen.”

  “I thought this is what you wanted,” Margo says.

  “It is.” There’s a new piece of gum on top of the phone. It’s neon yellow. It’s still wet. I wonder what flavor it was. “But you know.”

  “I do. I know, sweets.”

  The phone clicks and the recording tells me to add more change.

  “I should go,” I say, even though I still have a ton of dimes.

  “April,” she says. She almost never says my name.

  “What?”

  “Your dad got hurt.”

  “I’m not even sure he has feelings,” I say.

  “They let him out of the hospital this morning.”

  I drop a dime in to get the recording to shut up. “What do you mean?”

  “Gary, when he went to talk to your dad, he took a couple friends and some of them had opinions about things.”

  “Me?”

  “You, Irene Bartkowski, a few other things. Gary didn’t realize there was bad blood there. But Chuck, you know, he’s Gary’s bartender, he was friends with Joe Bartkowski. He has opinions about why Joe left.”

  “So he hurt my dad?”

  “Gary says things just escalated. Fast. But he got in the middle and took your dad
to the ER. It’s a few broken ribs.”

  “And he’s okay?”

  “Right as rain, safe as houses,” she says. “Gary drove him home. Ribs hurt, but they’ll heal. And knowing your dad, he’s happy for the pain pills.”

  “Bonus.” I want to pull the gum off the top of the phone. I want it gone. I have to concentrate hard on not touching it. It’s like this urge.

  “I didn’t want to hide the truth from you, but I don’t want you to worry. It’s men being stupid. You know how they are.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I do.”

  “Next Sunday,” she says.

  “Next Sunday.”

  “Stay safe, sweetie pie.”

  “Margo,” I say.

  “Yeah.”

  “Love you.”

  “Oh, girlie, you know I love you too.”

  The recording kicks in again asking for more change. I let the phone disconnect.

  * * *

  I go into Woolworth’s and use the rest of my dimes to buy a card for my dad. I grab the first one that says Get Well. It has a picture of a mouse in a hospital gown that’s open in the back so everyone can see his tail. I don’t know what to write, so I just sign my name. I think about addressing it to Margo, because I know she’d understand and do something so the postmark is unreadable, but then I decide to send it right to my father. He paid for his freedom with a Mercury Sable. He’s not coming to look for me. I buy a stamp from customer service and stick the card in the blue mailbox outside the store.

  * * *

  Later, when Adam falls asleep, I sneak out of the apartment, walk to the house with the kit car in the driveway, and return the license plates. Adam wakes up when I climb back into bed.

  “You smell like cold,” he says in his foggy sleep voice, and cuddles up to me.

  “Cold isn’t a smell,” I whisper, kissing his forehead. “You’re sleeping.”

  He doesn’t say anything else. His breathing goes back to loud and metered. Under the covers, I find his feet to warm mine.

  — Chapter 21 —

  One of the spoiled college bitches Carly is always complaining about actually shows up for her shift in the afternoon. So I get to leave at what normal time would be if the other people who worked at the cafe made a habit of showing up for their shifts. It’s weird. I’ve been picking up everyone’s slack since I got here, so when I get to actually leave at the end of only one shift, I feel like I’m playing hooky. There’s suddenly this part of the day I haven’t seen in a very long time. There are infinite possibilities. The air feels different.

  I walk back to Adam’s apartment. The college kids who rent the places downstairs must be at class or sleeping. It is so quiet. I decide I’ll sit in the sunlight and put my feet up and read. Maybe if I work my way through Adam’s books I’ll have things to talk about that are far from who I used to be.

  I get myself a Coke from the fridge and stand on the couch in my socks to look at Adam’s books. But instead of choosing one, I stare at the picture of Adam from college, really look at the other guys this time. I wonder where they ended up, because since I’ve been here, none of them have called. Adam hasn’t done more than go to euchre with a few other townies. And even though he smiles at me all the time, it’s a few degrees faded from his smile in the picture, and you can tell he wasn’t quite happy then. I wonder if maybe all you do is meet people and lose them and your smile fades the further you go because you have to carry the space they leave. Maybe it all just turns into old pictures on a bookshelf, engraved rings, memories of sticking stars to a ceiling, and maybe the space gets bigger and heavier every year.

  I use the phone number Adam left on the fridge and call him at his office.

  “Yo,” he says when he picks up.

  “Um, it’s me,” I say. “April.”

  “I know,” he says. “Caller ID. I don’t usually say ‘yo’ when I pick up my phone.”

  “I’m home early,” I tell him. “Just thought I’d let you know.” It reminds me of when I lived over the Wash ’n Fold and I had to call my dad after I got home and locked the door behind me. That was when he worked at the electric company, before he got fired. When he had a work number I could call.

  “Hey, I’m just grading papers,” Adam says. “I can work on them later. Want me to come home? We can go do something. See the falls, maybe.”

  I say, “Yes, I’d like you to come home,” and the words don’t feel as strange to me as I’d expect.

  * * *

  Adam picks me up and says we’re going to Tackonick Falls, but when we get there somehow Tackonick is actually the way Taughannock is pronounced.

  I like the way Adam looks when he’s driving—his hat pulled back further than usual, a few curls peeking out around his forehead, the scratched wire-rimmed glasses he only wears in the car sit slightly crooked on his nose. I like the way he focuses on the road completely, as if I’m precious cargo and he’s being very, very careful.

  He parks and we walk on a crushed stone path along a creek. I hear the rush of water from the falls long before we see it. The creek is close to dry and the water that’s left is almost completely frozen. When we get closer to the falls the boulders in the creekbed are glazed with ice, thick and white like frozen milk. None of it looks real. The cliffs are so high and it’s hard to tell what’s frozen and what’s moving water. I blink and think maybe when I open my eyes I’ll just be looking at a plain old creek in plain old woods, but the falls are still there, like someone painted a huge picture and left it for us. My eyelashes are heavy with snowy droplets, and everything looks blurry and bright and misty. My teeth chatter.

  “It’s too soon, isn’t it?” Adam says as he wraps me in his arms. Somehow he’s still so very warm. I hug him back. “But…” He wipes mist off my cheek. “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

  He kisses me before I can say anything, which is good, because I don’t know what I should say.

  * * *

  We stop at Wegmans just outside of town and buy food for dinner. Not the quick kind of dinners we usually have. Adam buys tiny round steaks that get wrapped up in paper at the meat counter, asparagus, big fat egg noodles, and real garlic, not the chopped stuff in the jar Dale used at Margo’s.

  Adam stops at the liquor store on the way home and leaves the car running for me while he goes in to buy a bottle of wine. And I’m nervous because I know something is different about this, but I’ll never be different enough to not have lied to him.

  * * *

  Adam sets me up in the living room with the TV remote and a glass of wine and the bottle just in case. He tells me I get to be a lady of leisure while he makes dinner. I flip channels for a while, but TV chatter is a reminder of my old life. It makes me feel like a bag of coffee spilled in the dirt and I realize I’d rather listen to the rhythm of Adam chopping things in the kitchen, the clink of pots and pans, and the sound of water boiling. I drink my wine and pour some more and think about how these are the sounds of what a home is supposed to be. This is what most people grow up to. I lie on the futon with my hair falling over the side to the floor and watch the way the light changes as the sun sets, and the smell of garlic gets warmer and fuller, and I think of it all like a song, with words I can’t quite hear yet. I hold my hands like I have a guitar and pretend I’m strumming to try to focus the words in my head. Something about deception, something about perception, and something about home and love boiling in the kitchen and light turning to dark on the ceiling.

  “What are you doing?” Adam says.

  I jump to my feet, my imaginary guitar falling to the floor.

  “There’s something you don’t know about me,” I say, and instantly I wish I could catch all those words and push them back in my mouth like they never happened.

  “That you’ve had too much wine?” Adam says, kissing me on the forehead.

  I steady myself on the arm of the futon. “It’s that… it’s that… I’m, I-I play guitar.”

  “Air gu
itar?”

  “Real guitar,” I say. “I don’t have one anymore. But I did play. And it’s just, it’s important. It’s the most important, and you didn’t even know.”

  “Well, thank you for telling me.” Adam smiles in the way that makes his eyes crinkle.

  “Thank you for being somebody I could tell,” I say, and my eyes well up.

  “Hey, hey,” Adam says, wrapping his arms around me. “It’s okay. Someday you’ll tell me all of it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We all have our weepy wine nights,” he says. “It’s what makes us human.”

  “I thought it was opposable thumbs,” I say. It’s the one thing I remember from science class. I like the word opposable.

  “That too,” he says. “Thumbs and the ability to get weepy out of nowhere when we have too much wine. Those are the two things that make us human.”

  * * *

  After dinner, when we lie in bed together, I help Adam form chords with his fingers. We sing Air Supply songs to the ceiling and strum our imaginary guitars until our voices get sleepy and hoarse.

  — Chapter 22 —

  In my head all morning, I celebrate my one-month anniversary of being at Adam’s place. While I’m taking orders and making espressos, there are lyrics about home and the sound of coffeepots gurgling and beers in the fridge (that I finally have the courage to take) swimming in my mind, trying to put themselves together. Four whole weeks, and it’s almost Christmas, and I’ve bought him a present—a record player I found at a thrift store, some Dylan records, a best of Simon & Garfunkel, and an Air Supply LP—and tonight after I’m done with work, we’re going to get an actual Christmas tree of our very own and decorate it with strings of popcorn and make stars out of egg cartons and glitter, because Adam can’t believe I’ve never made an egg carton star.