The People We Keep

by Allison Larkin

  I didn’t tell him that I’ve never had a Christmas tree. Margo always invited me over when she decorated hers: a vintage aluminum one with pink lights, and feather ornaments that all came from the same set and match perfectly. I tell him about Margo’s tree like it was really mine. Like I belonged at her place.

  And I certainly don’t tell him about the first time I walked in the door of my dad’s new place with Irene and there was a Christmas tree right there in the middle of the living room with lights and ugly ornaments the boy made and a star way up top, so close to the ceiling that my dad was the only one who could have hung it there. When I saw the tree, I could see the whole situation of it in my mind—them singing and decorating, being warm and family and all that crap. It’s not like I wanted to spend an afternoon listening to Irene coo about the boy hanging painted pinecones all over the tree while a Buck Owens Christmas album played on repeat in the background. It’s just that I couldn’t help but remember all the times my dad told me we couldn’t have a tree because it was a waste of money or a waste of trees or there was no point in giving a fuck anyway.

  So when we’re eating breakfast before work and Adam says we should go get a tree, I just smile and say, “Sounds great,” and tell him I’ll pick up some cider on the way home. Because it sounds like a normal thing to do, and the eggnog Margo always had when we decorated her tree used to sit in my stomach like a brick for hours.

  Later, Adam comes into the cafe and has lunch with me over at the corner table, pretending we’re just friends, like always, because it’s easier. I’m used to hiding the things I really want anyway.

  “So,” Adam says, “I’d like to spend Christmas with you. If you want to.”

  We spent Thanksgiving together, but mostly we ignored that it was Thanksgiving, because it was all new and awkward. I worked at Decadence that morning and brought home turkey sandwiches and we watched a couple movies on TV. But even though it’s not like I had anywhere else to go for Christmas, this feels official. With plans and a tree and making a fuss.

  “Yeah,” I say, staring into my bowl of beef barley soup, making work of picking out all the carrots. “I mean, we’re already getting a tree.”

  I actually like carrots, but building a pile of them on the side of my coffee saucer is easier than having to look in Adam’s eyes. I could scare him with how much I want. Everything good could slip away, like when I used to try to bring sand home from the playground in my tightly closed fist.

  * * *

  Around four o’clock, Adam’s client, Anna, comes in by herself. I’m replacing the register tape, so I say, “I’ll be right with you.”

  Anna sighs like having to wait is the biggest inconvenience of her entire life. And, of course, because everyone else who changes the tape smashes the roll of paper in without paying attention, the slot you have to feed the paper through is beat up and bent and the process kind of reminds me of the open heart surgery Matty and I watched on TV after his dad put up the satellite dish. My first three tries fail and I have to go get scissors to cut the paper to a point and try again.

  Bodie comes out for a refill on his hot chocolate. His fingers are black, which means he’s been in the kitchen sketching instead of washing dishes. When he sees Anna, he tucks the red stirrer straw he’s always chewing behind his ear, leans on the counter so he’s totally in her face, and says, “Can I help you?” in this completely gross fake-manly voice.

  “Half-caff skim latte with sugar-free vanilla, please,” she says.

  Bodie stares at her perfectly painted Valentine mouth and bites his bottom lip. “Large?”

  “Small.”

  He wipes his charcoal fingers on his jeans and makes her a medium, looking over to smile at her more than he’s watching what he’s doing. I worry he’ll burn himself again, like he did last week when some girl with blond dreadlocks and big boobs whispered her order in his ear like it was a secret only he could know.

  When Bodie hands Anna her drink, he makes sure their fingers touch and says, “Two twenty-five” which is what a small costs.

  She hands him a five, but I’m still working on the register tape. I’ve almost got it, but some of the paper is bunched on one side, so I have to use a knife to finish jamming it through.

  “Oh, keep the change,” she says, like it’s no big deal to pay more than twice what she’s been charged. All I have left to do is close the register lid, so she wouldn’t have to wait more than two seconds.

  “Thanks,” Bodie says. He grabs a pencil from under the counter. “Hey, do you think I could give you a call some—” but she’s already out the door.

  I almost feel bad for him, but then he says, “Pilgrim, can you make me a hot chocolate? You make them better than me,” like I’m supposed to swoon. Like he still believes in the power of his charm, even after he got shut down.

  When I make his hot chocolate, I kind of hate myself.

  On the way home, when I stop at the drugstore to buy a tube of dark red lipstick, I hate myself a little bit more. But when I get home, put the lipstick on, and study my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I love the way my lips look like a Valentine and I can’t stop staring.

  After I get the lipstick perfect, I pull my hair back in one big twisty braid that falls over my shoulder, because Adam told me once that it looks pretty that way. And it does. I don’t look like the old April anymore. I look like maybe I could really fit here. Like this is the place where my life gets to start, and maybe I’m ready for it.

  I hear Adam’s footsteps on the stairs and my heart bangs around in my chest in a good way.

  “Lucy, I’m ho-ome,” Adam calls as he opens the door.

  I stand my lipstick tube up on the shelf Adam cleared for me in the medicine cabinet and run out to meet him.

  “Hey,” he says, hugging my waist. He spins me around and kisses my neck. “Ready to get a tree?”

  “Yeah.” I kiss him back, and my lips leave a big red smudge on his face. He doesn’t wipe it off.

  * * *

  Adam drives us out of the city through wide-open farmland where the sky looks big and the land is just arching out in front of us. He turns down a dirt road lined with short, fat pine trees and parks in front of a rickety white farmhouse.

  “Stay here,” he says, “I’ll be right back.”

  He leaves the car running for me so the heat’s still on, sprints up the porch steps.

  A tall, skinny guy with curly hair down his back comes around from the side of the house, an axe slung over his shoulder. He’s wearing a green elf hat.

  “Hey, man!” I can hear Adam say. The guy puts his arm around Adam and they hug, bumping shoulders and shaking hands at the same time. Adam slaps some cash into the guy’s hand, and the guy passes his axe to Adam. They walk to the far end of the porch and the guy points to the field of trees on the side of the house. Adam nods. They shake hands again.

  Adam gets back in the car, resting the axe carefully on the back seat. “Okay. Billy says the trees on the far end of the lot are the best.”

  “I like his hat,” I say.

  Adam laughs. He drives us further down the bumpy dirt road until we can’t see the farmhouse anymore and it’s just me and him and this miniature forest, like we’re in a fairy tale. It’s starting to snow, even though there are hardly any clouds. We walk around, holding hands, looking at trees from every angle as if we’re making the most important of decisions.

  When my teeth start to chatter, Adam takes his hat off and drops it on my head. “You can wait in the car if you want,” he says.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  He kisses me, and then we decide that the tree we’re kissing in front of should be our tree, even though it’s a little sparse on one side.

  “Are you sure?” Adam says.

  I nod. “It’s part of our history now.”

  Adam walks to the car and comes back with the axe. It’s that time of night just before it gets dark when the light is orange, and everything looks brighter
, and seeing him chopping at our Christmas tree, looking golden, his breath forming clouds, makes me wish I took pictures or painted or had some way of keeping all of this in my mind exactly as it is so I’ll never forget.

  * * *

  When we get home, Adam cuts the rope on the car and we haul the tree up the stairs together. It’s heavy and we’re clumsy and the needles scratch my hands, but it smells like a whole entire forest right in our stairwell. We get to the top of the stairs and then realize we should have unlocked the door to the apartment first. Adam put the keys back in his pocket after he unlocked the downstairs door.

  “You got it for a sec?” Adam asks.

  “Sure,” I say. He lets go to dig for the keys. The tree is too heavy. My hands slip and it slides down the stairs until the trunk hits the wall with a thud.

  “Shit,” I say.

  Adam laughs. He opens the door to the apartment and then runs down the stairs to grab the tree, carrying it back up all by himself like it’s not even heavy.

  “I dented the wall.” I point to the trunk-shaped gash. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Hey,” Adam says, “it’s part of our history.”

  * * *

  We don’t have a stand, so we put the tree in a bucket of rocks and Adam moves it around the living room looking for the perfect spot.

  “A little to the right,” I tell him, and he scoots the tree, shuffling his feet along the floor. “No, left.” He shuffles back. “No. Maybe if you turn it just a little and then move it to the right?”

  “Are you seeing how long you can get me to move this tree around the living room?” Adam asks, grinning.

  “Yes.” I run away from him and jump on the futon like it’s base and I’m safe as long as I’m touching it.

  Adam puts the tree down and charges at me, laughing. He picks me up by the waist and swings me around. “What am I gonna do with you, huh?” he says.

  “Love me?” I say. We haven’t said the L-word since he said he thought he might love me the other day at the falls. We’ve avoided it. But then I just blurt it out, what I want most, like those are the only words that make sense.

  “I already do,” he says, and puts me down. He takes his hat off my head and looks at me. “I love you, April. I completely and totally love you.”

  “I love you too,” I say, and they are the biggest words I’ve ever said.

  Adam scoops me up in his arms and carries me into the bedroom, and when he lays me down on the bed and kisses me, it’s totally different from all the other times we’ve kissed. He grabs my hair in his hands, and there’s an urgent feeling between us that hasn’t been there before.

  This time when he goes into the bathroom, he doesn’t run the water, and he doesn’t stay in there. He comes back with a condom. And when we do it, it’s better than everything that led up to it. It feels like more than sex. Like I finally get it—all of it—understand what the fuss is about. It’s about him holding me tightly, my skin pressed against his skin and the way he kisses my neck, how he whispers, “I love you, April,” over and over again, and it all turns into something big and powerful and so much more than just two little people in a bed.

  “This,” Adam says, when it’s over, “is the most right I’ve ever felt.” His cheeks are damp against mine, and I think it’s just sweat, but then he sniffles and it sounds like he’s crying.

  “What?” I ask, without knowing what I’m really asking. I don’t know the right question or if there even is a question. But I know it’s the most right I’ve ever felt too, and I don’t want to cry. I want him to be happy with me.

  “Can I tell you something?” he says.

  “Yes.”

  “When I was fourteen, I slept with my stepmother.”

  “Oh.”

  “I mean, she made me. And then she held it over my head that it happened. That she could tell my dad at any moment and he would send me away. So I didn’t tell him and I couldn’t stop her. But then he found out. He caught us.”

  “Is that when you were homeless?” I ask.

  I can feel Adam nod his head.

  “I slept in the park or hid in the library. He didn’t even care until a cop caught me sleeping on a bus bench and brought me home. Then he sent me to live with my grandparents and told them it was because he wanted me in that school district.” There’s a super-long silence, but I can tell Adam isn’t waiting for me to say something, he’s trying to find his words. “My dad didn’t even leave her. Like I was the fault. I was the problem. Even though I was fourteen. He’s still married to her, I think. I don’t know for sure, but he didn’t leave her when it happened.”

  “What about your mom?” I ask.

  “She’s an alcoholic. I guess my dad felt like it was easier to pay her alimony so she could sit in her condo and drink herself to death. You know, instead of getting her help or caring.”

  I hug him tight like somehow it could fix things.

  “In college once,” he says, “I told one of my friends. We were up late drinking and I couldn’t get it out of my head, what happened, so I told him, because maybe it would make me feel better for someone to know. But he was all, ‘Dude! Older chicks!’ like it was something I’d chosen to do. It was the worst feeling, to have my friend not get that it wasn’t a good thing, that I was just a kid. So I never told anyone else.”

  I squeeze him tighter.

  “That’s why I took so long to—for us to—”

  I kiss him so he doesn’t have to say it. “It’s okay. It’s nice that we waited.”

  “I think I’m conditioned to feel like if I have sex, something bad is going to happen. Like it’s just wrong no matter what. Scars only fade to a certain point, you know?”

  I think about the nail mark in my foot and how you can barely see it, but it’s still there and always will be.

  “Then, with you, all of a sudden, it just felt right,” he says. “It feels like being with you is the best thing I can do.”

  I wipe his cheeks and kiss them and kiss his nose and smooth his hair off his forehead, because I don’t know what to say. I don’t want him to hurt anymore.

  “Millie, my ex,” Adam says, “she left because she needed more. She said I was weird about sex. Closed off to her. I just—It never stopped feeling wrong. And I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t make myself say the words, you know?”

  I nod, because I can’t say any words. I will never be able to tell him how old I am. There’s no point we’ll come to where he’s so in love and happy that it won’t matter. There isn’t a far-off day when I’m really nineteen and this will be a funny story. He won’t ever see what we just did as being any better than what his stepmom made him do, even though he’s given me things I didn’t know enough to want before.

  “I don’t blame Millie for leaving.” His face looks a little funny when he says it, a softness in his eyes, and I think maybe he does blame her some, even though he doesn’t want to. “Now, with you, I realize that it’s better she left. She needed someone who could be honest with her about who they are, and I couldn’t be. Not with her. With you—it’s like you accept me and I don’t even have to ask you to. I don’t have to defend myself. Millie always came out of the gate with something that was wrong with me. You can’t be yourself in defense mode. You know?”

  And I wish I didn’t know. I wish I didn’t have anything to defend. So here’s what I decide: Nothing before this matters. It all starts now so I can give Adam everything.

  * * *

  I wake up to Adam leaning on his elbow, watching me sleep, and it makes me smile. I’m all of a sudden a person who gets to be loved so much that even when I’m sleeping someone is interested in me. He brushes the hair out of my face and says, “Hey there,” and gives me a kiss I feel all the way to my toes. The fact that we have to get up and go to work seems cruel.

  We do pre-coffee coffee, get dressed, and shuffle out of the apartment. It feels like everything is fake, but in a good way. Like better than real. Happily ever aft
er and kind of like a dream and then I get to work and Adam stands in line for his post-coffee coffee and I’m behind the counter and I feel this longing for him. I want everyone else to fade to black so it can just be me and Adam in his apartment and that’s all there is in the world.

  When Adam gets his coffee and has to leave, I miss him. Like actually feel that tug in my chest, even though I know I’ll see him tonight. It’s Wednesday, so we’re ordering pizza from The Nines and watching 90210. I love the way we have different days for different things. But even knowing what I’m looking forward to doesn’t stop the tightness in my chest when I watch him walk out the door.

  — Chapter 23 —

  I remember Mark Conrad telling Matty how to chalk his license. I didn’t listen too carefully, because it was Mark Conrad, and he always had plans for ways to get booze, or get into a nightclub in Buffalo, or score weed from some guy who knows some guy who knows his cousin, but none of it ever actually happened. Mark always wussed out and blamed it on circumstance, like his cousin was scared straight, or they don’t sell the right colored pencils to chalk a license in Little River, or that nightclub was lame anyway. But I remember the basics of what he said—how you had to have white, black, and red colored pencils, and use a twisted-up piece of paper towel to blend things. Thankfully, since I’m only trying to be nineteen, I don’t have to worry about the UNDER 21 label on my license. For that, Mark claimed to have some cut and splice trick with special tape and melting the outside plastic, but I doubt it was something he’d actually tried.

  When Bodie is outside smoking, I call out, “Break!” to Carly, swipe Bodie’s leather pencil case from the messenger bag he leaves on a hook in the kitchen, and run upstairs to the storage room.

  The light sucks. I have to lean over a box of coffee stirrers to work on a shelf by the window and it puts me at this weird angle where it’s hard to keep my hand steady. But I don’t have to change much—just shape the eight in 1978 to a five on the birthday and issued dates, white out the J for junior license, and then I’m nineteen. When I start working on it, the stuff about the blending and the paper towel makes sense. I focus really small, the way I do when I’m putting on eyeliner, thinking about where I want the pencil to go, and then my hand just does it, one tiny speck at a time. I feel so lucky that as sloppy as Bodie is, he’s kind of anal about his art supplies. All his pencils are perfectly sharpened.