Part 9 (1/2)

Keel never came in. Instead, my old man showed up at my tables. He was tanked.

”What should I get you, beer or coffee?” I said.

He thought for a second, then waved his hand in the air. ”Get me coffee. I had enough to drink.”

When I came back to the table with two cups of coffee, my dad said, ”Were you busy tonight?”

”Usual dinner crowd,” I said, and sat down. I put my elbows on the table and held my coffee cup up between both my hands. My dad sat back in his chair and curled one hand around his cup. He spent so much time outside his skin was deep red. I thought his eyes looked like cool water in all that fire.

”Jesus Christ,” he said. ”This place is a G.o.dd.a.m.n hole.”

I didn't think he came in just to insult my workplace, but I didn't know what he was doing there. Then I figured he just wanted to talk, because he said, ”Yeah, s.h.i.+t, Vangie, I admire you coming back here night after night. It's not easy coming back to a place you hate. Jesus Christ, I know that.”

”It's all right,” I said. ”It's a job.”

”Are you doing all right, Vangie?”

”What do you mean?”

”I mean are you doing all right? Are you okay here?”

I panicked for a second, because I thought maybe he somehow knew something about Kevin Keel, but then I looked at his face and saw he didn't know anything. He was looped and he wanted to talk. That was all.

”I'm all right, Dad. I'm doing all right.”

”Well, I never see you anymore.”

”I'm okay.”

”Truck running good?”

”The truck's fine.”

I tried to meet his eyes so I could nod at him, but he just kept staring off. He got like that sometimes when he drank. Forlorn. I'd been seeing the look for years.

”You don't have to worry about me,” I told him.

”Ah, the h.e.l.l,” he said. ”I don't have anything better to do.”

For a little while I let myself wonder what it would be like to have a father I could talk to, but I stopped myself. Still, there was something about my dad that I couldn't deny. A lot of times when I was little, he was the one who came to find me hiding under the bed after I got yelled at by my mom. If I was crying, he'd tell me to stop, since it made my blue eyes all red. I didn't know how he knew something was wrong with me that night, but he did. It meant something to me just to have him sitting there.

My dad and I sat together a little longer, not talking but just sitting. When I started to get customers again, my dad stood up, left me a five-dollar tip for his cup of coffee, and said, You take care, honey. Then he was gone.

AFTER THAT one night, I never went back to Dreisbach's. Whatever else I had to live through, I did not have to go through dreading Kevin Keel every day. Dreisbach's was a good job, though, and I hated to see it go begging, so I called June up and told her to apply.

”They'll need someone right away,” I said. ”They'd be too big, but I could give you my uniforms.”

”What happened?”

”It's a long story,” I said. ”What do you think? Do you think you want the job?”

”It's got to be better than sewing s.h.i.+rt collars,” June said. ”But what are you going to do? Are you sure you want to quit?”

”I already quit,” I said. ”It's done. I'm going to hire on at the orchard.”

I didn't say anything to her about Kevin, and I knew I wouldn't. I didn't want her to know how I'd drawn our lives together in a circle, hers and his and mine. I did tell her about how long Del was going to be in detox.

”You shouldn't be alone,” she said. ”Come out and stay over. Ray and Luke are in Potter County all next weekend.”

”I don't know. I don't think so.”

”Oh, come on. We'll get stoned. It'll be like the old days.”

I told her I'd come out if I could, and then I hung up the phone. All I wanted to do was sleep, but when I did try to sleep, I could not stop hearing Keel's voice.

Good p.u.s.s.y doesn't just lie there.

Is it sore?

I'm almost done.

I could not get those words out of my mind, and I decided June was right-I should not be alone. Even though she was in some ways the last person I wanted to see, because she was connected to Kevin, she was still my best friend. So I made a promise to myself that no matter what I felt like when the day came, I would go and spend time with her. It seemed worth a few lies to keep her friends.h.i.+p and not have her know what I'd done.

That night I could not sleep, so I got up and went down to the kitchen. I didn't know what to do with myself. I played a couple of hands of solitaire, which seemed like the kind of thing a person should do if they were up late and couldn't sleep. But it didn't interest me, and after a while I stopped and just sat instead, playing with the salt and pepper shakers. I hadn't moved anything on the table since Del left. There was a grocery list he'd made for me for the next time I went shopping so I wouldn't forget the foods he liked. The list was all written in his bad spelling: frys or tots, hamburger, lunch meet, cap crunch, corn, razors and shave cream, min. steak, ravioly. The list was written on the back of an old note from him that said dont do dishes I'll do when I get up. At the time, I'd done what the note asked and left the dirty dishes for him-and then ended up was.h.i.+ng them all a few days later when they were still sitting in the sink and starting to stink.

I both liked and didn't like seeing the list and the note. I liked seeing them because they were proof that Del had been here, that we had shared some sort of life, and I didn't like them because they made me wonder if he was coming back. In any case, seeing his handwriting made me feel alone.

Dels bone-handled knife also lay on the table. He carried it almost all the time, and I wondered why he hadn't taken it with him the night he disappeared. No matter how many times I saw that knife on the table or fished it out of Del's pocket before I washed his jeans, it always surprised me, and it always made me wonder. When Del carried it, did he think he would need to use it, or was it the kind of thing that just having it with you meant you surely would not need it? Did he believe he could use it against a person? Even if I'd had a knife when I was with Kevin Keel, I didn't know if I would have been able to use it.

The knife scared me, but I picked it up and released the catch-careful because the last thing I wanted was a gash in my hand and more physical pain. I studied the blade and the handle a long time. I tried holding it different ways and felt the weight of it against my fingers. Then I pressed the blade back down with the palm of my hand against the blunt side until I could latch it again.

I knew so little about Del. I knew what his face and body looked like, I knew what his voice sounded like, I knew how he screwed and I knew how he slept, but I knew nothing about him. I knew a few things, yes-how much he hated his old man, that he liked to draw and hated to hunt-but that was all. If I ever asked him what he was like when he was little, he'd say, ”I don't know. A regular kid. I don't remember.” Whenever he did tell me some kind of story, it was about a time he stole something or got in trouble. I knew nothing of how he got to be the person he was with me.

But I didn't know how I got to be the person I was, either.

19.

AT Parmelee Orchard, I didn't need to fill out an application or have an interview-the place hired anyone who showed up in the orchard yard. Anyone crazy enough to pick over a ton of pears a day for minimum wage could have a job.

When my dad found out what I was doing, he said, ”Jesus Christ, Vangie, that kind of work'll break your back if you do it all your life.”

”I'm not going to do it all my life.”