The People We Keep

by Allison Larkin

  I, April,

  ate an entire plate of chili cheese fries at a diner

  on Rt. 9 at three in the morning.

  It’s the first thing I’ve eaten in days.

  This will not end well.

  I, April,

  think red maple leaves against grey skies are some kind of sweet magic.

  You should go to Vermont, Carly.

  You’d love it.

  I never send my confessions. Almost never. After I write one, I keep it in my pocket, thinking when I round up an envelope and a stamp I’ll tuck it in the mail. But the next time I do laundry I add the note to the mess of napkins and receipts hidden under the lining of my guitar case. As long as I keep writing to Carly, I get to believe that maybe someday I’ll see her again. Maybe I’ll really tell her everything. She was my first true friend, and I haven’t met anyone like her since. You don’t get over someone like that.

  This time my confession starts:

  I, April,

  am so stupid.

  * * *

  Even though it’s safe and bright and shiny at the park, it still takes everything I have to open the car door, to not feel like someone will attack me the moment my feet hit the pavement, to not look at my tires and think about bones cracking.

  The pay phone has that same rubbery plastic smell from last night. I worry that maybe it’s stuck in my nose, that it’s the only thing I’ll ever smell now.

  I call Cole to tell him I can’t go to Red Bank this time. I don’t tell him why, just that something came up.

  “I’ll miss you, sweet stuff,” he says, his voice carrying the weight of too many cigarettes and late nights.

  “Miss you too,” I say, and there’s a sharp sadness in my chest for the missed chance to walk through Marine Park with Cole after the gig I was supposed to play. He always hums riffs at me like a challenge and I make up words to go along. We watch the sunrise over the Navesink River and then we get breakfast sandwiches from the deli on Broad Street and record songs in his basement until we can’t stay awake anymore. It’s one of my favorite ways to spend time. I know it’s a long shot that Ray will follow me, that he even could, but I feel like I have a target on my back. I told him where I was going. I broke a rule. I broke so many rules.

  I make more phone calls and drive to New York City instead.

  — Chapter 33 —

  I scan the restaurant. He isn’t here yet. I try to sneak out before anyone notices me, but the host comes over and hustles me to a table by the window.

  Now he’ll see me before I see him, unless I stare out the window and try to catch him walking down Bedford Street, but that would look desperate. I rustle through the contents of my bag, wishing I had a day planner or a fancy purse—something classy to play with while I wait. My messy hair and long skirt are starting to look more street urchin than free spirit, and I’m surprised the host put me right up front in the window. I am not what this restaurant is trying to advertise. Everyone else is in a dark suit or done up in an outfit that looks like it came off a mannequin in a department store. Even though I tried to straighten up in the car, I look like I came from the bottom of a laundry hamper. My thrift store peacoat has a hole in the elbow.

  Matthew suggested this place. “You’ll love it. Fantastic paninis,” he’d said on the phone. I wasn’t sure which word sounded weirder coming out of his mouth, fantastic or paninis, but I just needed to hear his voice.

  I take a CD out of my bag and decide I’ll sign it for him in advance, but then he walks in wearing a brown leather jacket. Sparkling sunglasses and shiny watch throwing light everywhere. His old life must seem ridiculous to him now. I bet he never goes deer hunting. I bet the things he used to want feel like a bad dream he had once. He’s not Matty anymore.

  I shove the CD back in my bag and stand. My thigh hits the table. Water spills on crisp paper placemats. Ice and silverware clink.

  “God, April, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” he says, like he’s reading a script. His sunglasses are still on, so I can’t see how sore his eyes really are. He hangs his jacket over the back of the empty chair and meets me at the side of the table.

  “Matthew,” I say, showing my acceptance of his new self. I reach up to hug him and hope I don’t smell too sweaty. I hope I don’t smell like burning rubber.

  He wraps his arms around me and they bulge against my ribs. He used to be all skin and bones; now his chest is tight and hard, like hugging a mannequin. A belt buckle digs into my stomach. His thin black sweater is soft and smells new. It’s perfectly pressed, without a speck of lint.

  “You look great,” I say. It sounds pathetic. Too adoring. Needy. Obvious. People are staring at us. Him. People are staring at him. Not me. Now I know why the host sat me in the window. Matty made the reservation.

  “You!” Matthew holds me by the arms and looks me over. His jeans are perfectly pressed too. “Wow.”

  In the reflection of his sunglasses, my hair is more frizzy than curly. I wonder if his wow is like saying someone looks like a picture but leaving out what kind of picture they look like. I wanted to feel safe when I saw him. I wanted seeing him to feel like home, in the way normal people feel about home. The safe place you’re supposed to be from. But it just makes me nervous, how different he is.

  We sit. His chair is in the sun, and I worry he might not ever take his sunglasses off. Then he does, and he’s Matty again, eyes so pale they’re almost yellow. And looking at him starts to quiet my nerves.

  After school, when we’d draw pictures of each other with his little sister’s crayons, the one I used to color his eyes was called raw sienna.

  My bag is on the table. I go to move it, but before I can, he grabs the CD that’s poking out.

  “Wow, this isn’t…” He flips it over and touches the picture of my face. “Ape! That’s fantastic.” He opens the jewel case and stares at the disc. “Can I have it?”

  “Of course,” I say softly. I look at the table and scratch my fingernail on the placemat, leaving a rippled scar on the wet paper. Three of the songs are about leaving him and I know it won’t take him long to figure that out.

  He looks at my wrist. I see him notice the finger marks that are starting to bruise. I wait for him to say something, my hand frozen mid-scratch, wet paper stuck under my fingernail.

  “You know, I’m friends with the music director,” he says, clearing his throat, “on the show.”

  I pull my sleeve over my hand. It’s easier that way. It’s not like I want to talk about it.

  He closes the jewel case and looks at my picture, the one Cole took on the beach in Asbury Park, then he looks back at me, like he’s seeing if it all adds up. “I’ll slip this to him and see if we can get it on the show.”

  I hate the idea of my songs scoring a fight between a woman who has come back from the dead and her lover (who’s really the evil twin of the man she thinks he is), but I could use the money.

  “Take another one then.” I dig through my purse and hand him a second CD. “You should have one too.”

  The waiter comes around and asks if we’re ready. I haven’t even opened my menu. “I always get the same thing here,” Matty says, smiling, big and crooked, like he used to. He orders a sandwich called The Bowery Basil.

  “I’ll have that too,” I say to keep things simple.

  “It’s so good to see a real person.” He stares at me with a warm kind of wonder, like the fact that I left him has been forgotten.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s good to see you.”

  His eyes rest on my nose and stay there even after I lower my head, trying to make eye contact again.

  “When’d you get this?” He taps my nose with his index finger.

  “Right after—” I breathe in through my nostrils and feel the post of the tiny silver stud touch my septum. “Right after I left,” I say. My napkin is still wrapped around the utensils. I unroll it, place it in my lap.

  I have this picture in my head of Matty coming hom
e from school, sitting on the sagging yellow plaid couch in the living room, re-reading the letter I left on his pillow. I can picture it so clearly even though I wasn’t there. Afternoon sunlight through the brown slatted blinds making lines on his face and the wood-paneled walls. He reads it and puts his head in his hands, and in my mind he stays just like that. He never gets up. He never moves. He never moves on. He doesn’t get discovered in the mall on a trip to Minnesota to visit his aunt. He doesn’t win a Daytime Emmy. He’s not one of the most beautiful people. He’s just Matty and he keeps his head in his hands, the promise ring he gave me hooked on his little finger. He stays on that couch. Waiting for me to come back for him.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, looking up at Matthew.

  “No.” He smiles his benevolent hero smile. I think they’ve given him new teeth. “You were right. We had to get out of there.”

  There’s a big difference, I think, between leaving by yourself in an old Mercury with a fistful of tip money and being whisked away in first class by a fairy godmother casting director. Before he was discovered, his dreams were only as big as a double wide and a job at the factory, a child bride to make him venison burgers, finally being old enough to buy beer. The waiter comes with our food, saving me before I say something snotty.

  There are different colored sauces swirled on the plates, grill marks on the bread, and green beans in some sort of dressing, stacked like pick-up sticks on the side.

  Matthew eats the green beans but leaves his sandwich. His movements are mechanical: take a bite, rest fork on plate, chew, wipe mouth, sip water, wipe condensation on napkin, pick up fork, start again. The stack of beans dwindles slowly. I wonder if someone taught him how to eat. I remember him devouring an entire foot-long sub in nanoseconds, eruptions of shredded lettuce spewing all over the couch.

  I try to leave my sandwich too, but I’m hungry. I haven’t eaten more than a street pretzel since I got into New York, and with the exception of a sandwich at the coffeehouse, my meals lately have mostly consisted of Slim Jims and corn nuts. I pull my sleeve over my wrist under the table every time I put my fork down.

  “I went home a few weeks ago,” he says between green beans. “I did a signing at the Big M. Crazy. It was mobbed.”

  “The women of Little River do love their soaps.”

  “Brandy Baker was there, waiting in line for an autograph.”

  “Seriously?”

  Brandine Baker was head cheerleader and class president, and after being in school with her since kindergarten, she called me June at the homecoming dance when she wanted to borrow my hair spray.

  “Man, she peaked in high school.” He laughs and holds his arms out from his sides to show me how she’s gotten fat.

  “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “She’s already had two kids.”

  We would’ve too, I think, and I’m not sure if that would be good or bad anymore. “I hope nobody thinks I peaked in high school,” I say.

  “You haven’t peaked yet,” he says, his yellow eyes squinting in the sunlight.

  I know he means it as a compliment, but I think I could find an insult in it if I wanted to.

  Two women with lots of shopping bags get very close to our table on their way out. “It is him,” one whispers loudly to the other.

  Matthew looks up and smiles at them, flashing pearly porcelain teeth.

  The women scurry out in a mess of rustling shopping bags and sighs.

  Now even the businessmen are staring at us, trying to figure out what the fuss is about.

  The last bite of my sandwich is too big. I hate chewing with everyone watching our table. I take a sip of water and try to wash it all down. The bread is dry and scratches my throat.

  The waiter takes our plates—mine scraped clean, Matthew’s with his untouched sandwich—and asks if he can bring us anything else. It’s all I can do not to ask for that sandwich wrapped up to go. The looks I would get are only slightly sharper than the hunger I never seem to chase away.

  “Just the check,” Matthew says.

  I want to ask our waiter to pull up two extra chairs, one for the me I thought I’d be if I married Matty, and one for the me I really could have been if I had.

  One is pregnant and sweaty, strands of peroxide blond hair sticking to her flushed face, wearing a smocked maternity dress from Sally Ann’s over stretchy stirrup pants. A gold ring jammed on her swelling finger; tiny diamonds in a clump, trying to look like one decent-size one.

  The other me is smooth. A glossy brown bob cut to fall in her face so she can push it away. Impossibly white teeth, the snaggly one finally fixed. A big square diamond on a platinum band. Her black dress skims her sculpted figure, without a trace of lint or panty lines. Her underwear comes wrapped in tissue paper, not plastic, and always matches her bra. She wears sky-high heels that cost more than my guitar.

  For a moment, I think that I’d happily swap lives with either girl. Either version of me would be easier than this one.

  A woman appears at the edge of our table, two decades older than us at least. Hands shaking, the slightest hint of tears in her sharp brown eyes.

  “Do you mind?” she asks, handing Matthew a pen and a scrap of paper from her purse.

  “Of course,” he says, flashing those brilliant teeth.

  “To Mary Jo, jay oh.” There’s a breathless quiver in her voice, like she’s just been blessed. “My sister. Oh! She’s never going to believe I met you.”

  I watch him sign like it’s just one more autograph and realize that if I’d stayed, neither of those other versions of me would have happened. If I hadn’t been the one to go first, Matty would have left me. He’d still be Matthew now, and he wouldn’t have brought me along.

  The woman leaves. The waiter brings us the check.

  “I have bad news,” Matthew says, handing the waiter his credit card without looking at the bill. “I can’t make it to your show tonight.”

  It’s not my show, just a set at a coffeehouse. It was last minute, hardly even pays, but I don’t tell him that. I don’t want him to know I’m less than what he thinks I am. That we’re even further apart than it seems.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says. “It’s a publicity thing. It’s in my contract. I tried.”

  “It’s okay,” I say, nodding. “I understand.”

  “But I was thinking—do you have a place to stay?” He gives me his crooked Matty smile again.

  I let myself imagine going home with him. The strawberry birthmark on his thigh and expensive sheets. I let myself think he wants me back.

  Then he says, “I don’t have a guest room, but the couch is really comfortable.” Because really, who wants some bruised up girl who smells like corn nuts in their bed?

  “Yeah, I do.” I take my napkin off my lap and fold it up next to my plate. “Have a place to stay.”

  He looks mildly disappointed, but not as much as I wish he did. I’m not what I used to be to him. I never will be again. He will never be my home.

  The waiter brings his card and the receipt in a little black book. Matthew adds the tip, signs it with a squiggle and shuts the book with a slap. “It was great to see you, Ape. Really.” He stands and grabs the CDs. “I’ve got a costume fitting in fifteen, so I got to run.”

  He kisses me on both cheeks, pulls me in for another hug. “The next time you’re in town…”

  “Of course.” My throat tightens. I don’t want to let go, but he pulls away. I blink and look up at the ceiling so my eyes don’t drip. “Of course.” I give him the biggest smile I can.

  The whole restaurant is watching. He kisses my forehead, grabs his jacket and dashes out the door.

  Before I leave, I go into the bathroom to clean up for my set. I avoid making eye contact with myself in the mirror and concentrate on smoothing my hair. When I come out of the bathroom, no one watches me leave.

  * * *

  I blow town right after I play my set. Don’t even stay to sign CDs, just sneak out the b
ack. It was a tough crowd and my music didn’t fit. Everyone else’s songs were edgy, less melodic. Leaving my car parked in the city costs way more than I’d ever make in CD sales. I know when to cut my losses.

  I drive until I hit Scranton and find a motel off 81. I push the dresser against the door and keep the television on all night, scraping words into the backs of motel postcards with a ballpoint pen that’s almost out of ink.

  I, April,

  want too much and never get enough.

  Slowly, I twist the words. Twist the power. It turns into a song.

  I don’t want you

  To fall back into me

  And I don’t want to want you,

  ’Cause it’s so easy

  I want your love

  I want you to want me

  Make a choice in my direction,

  But don’t fall into me

  I press my fingers into the strings on my guitar, without strumming, because it’s late and I can’t risk getting kicked out of the motel. I work chords to the edge of blisters. Hum so softly it may just be in my mind. More words push through.

  I don’t want to close my eyes, but eventually I can’t fight it anymore.

  * * *

  The sliver of light through the motel curtains is already strong by the time I wake up. I call the front desk to ask for late checkout and shower with water so hot I feel like my skin could disintegrate and take the bruises with it.

  When I’m done, I sit on the bed in my wet towel and flip channels on the television until I find the right one. There’s Matthew. Stuck in a bomb shelter with a woman in a frilly red dress. I guess she’s about our age, but she looks so much more mature than I do. I don’t watch often, and I haven’t seen her before, but clearly she’s meant to be Matty’s new love interest, even though his character is engaged to Sandra’s daughter. I catch them just as he’s reaching for a ration can on a storage shelf behind her. It looks like they’re about to kiss, but then they cut to a scene where Sandra is reading her sister’s will.