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.
I dress and braid my hair and when I look back at the television, there he is with that woman again. He didn’t kiss her. Not yet. The one little candle that’s been lighting the room so brightly will burn out soon. They can’t find another. She’s afraid of the dark. “That’s because you’ve never been in the dark with me,” he says, and gives her that crooked Matty smile. The one that used to be mine. And it looks so real. Maybe it is and their chemistry goes beyond the camera and the lights and the makeup. Maybe she’s why he offered me his couch. Or maybe that smile was never mine to begin with, and I was just as charmed by him as everyone else. He’s not my Matty anymore. Maybe he never really was.
* * *
I leave my sweater in the motel. My navy blue cotton roll neck. Even though it’s sweater weather and I could use more layers, it feels good to let it go, leave it draped on the dingy flowered armchair in the corner of the room. I throw it at the chair a few times, until it falls just so and looks like maybe I forgot it. The right cuff is unraveling from getting caught in my guitar strings. I’ll never have to fix it, sneaking yarn from the inside seam to bind the sleeve. Robbing Peter to pay Paul.
I give the sweater a half wave and a sympathetic smile before I close the door.
— Chapter 34 —
No matter how many miles I put in, I can’t get myself back to normal. The bruises on my wrist are yellowing, but I can’t bury the fear. Can’t forget the bump and Ray’s scream, the feeling of bones cracking under the car. It’s there every time I give it space in my head.
I don’t listen to the radio. The people who talk between songs sound too real. It makes me lonely. The tape deck is busted. I drive, listening to the sound of the tires on the pavement. They’re too soft. I can hear the way they stick to the road. It reminds me of being a kid, pressing my cheek to an inner tube, the kind that are really from old truck tires. I remember the smell of rubber baking in the sun, and the way it sounded when I tapped my finger on it. Ping, ping. A metallic, inflated echo. I loved that sound even more than I loved the way the river felt creeping up the fibers of my bathing suit, making the colors darker, until all of it was wet.
* * *
I drive up to Binghamton. There’s a dive bar on Main Street that lets me play whenever I roll into town. Arnie has an old PA that’s usually collecting dust in the corner, so if I want to set it all up, he’s happy to charge a cover and give me a cut. The PA pops and hisses, and it’s full of distortion, but the crowd is mostly college kids and they’re usually too drunk and horny to care if I don’t sound perfect. The drunk kids are pretty good about buying my CDs. And they like to sing along with me if I play a song they know. It’s nice, really, to have fans, to see familiar faces in a crowd sometimes. I need that right now, I think.