Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,89
an aisle, going What is it already? to Connelly, going, I’m busy over here!
He has more of an accent than I remembered. Heeeeeere.
He has long hair—almost as long as it was in the pictures I have of him. I guess I’d always thought he would have cut it.
He’s skinnier and more rascally-looking, someone who’s been in trouble all of his life. Under his eye sockets his cheeks are hollow.
He looks nothing like a ranch hand.
Visitor, says Connelly, and tilts his head in my direction.
I’m holding a rake.
Help me, I want to say. It is all I want to say. Help me.
He’s looking at me, waiting.
Can I talk to you for a minute? I ask him, but he doesn’t hear me, and puts a hand to his ear to tell me so. He doesn’t come closer.
I try again. Are you Francis Keller? I ask him.
Who’s axing? he says.
Were you ever, do you know—Charlene Keller?
His face changes, the eyebrows lifting, the head tilting back. Connelly’s watching us both, going back and forth with his eyes.
Holy, says Francis Keller, or Kel, or my father.
He tells Connelly he’ll be back in an hour.
Oh yeah? says Connelly, looking at his watch.
Hang on, says the other Kel, and runs into the back. I prop the rake up against the wall and turn my back to Connelly. I’m having second thoughts about everything. I want to apologize to my ten-year-old self. I want to push this man away violently. I want to jump into his arms and say Daddy, Daddy. I want my mother back.
He comes trotting back out with a denim jacket, then holds the door open for me. I tower over him. I have half a foot on him.
I haven’t been warm in days, and the cold that hits me when we’re outside feels familiar. The other Kel walks to the right and I follow him. He’s two steps ahead and he doesn’t slow down. His denim jacket is so big on him that it swings like a bell around his waist. He lights a cigarette and offers me the pack and a lighter wordlessly, and I take one even though I don’t smoke. Cigarettes.
It looks as though it will warm me.
After twenty yards he says, I always figured.
We keep walking.
How old are you now? he says.
Eighteen, I say.
—Jesus.
Did she send you? he asks.
No, I say, and start to say more—gone, tell him she’s gone—but I can’t do it.
We’re both silent. I pull smoke into my mouth and then my lungs. I let it out slow. He turns a corner and then stops outside a little red door next to a garage. He pauses while we both smoke our cigarettes in silence. He looks at me, squinting, while he inhales.
You shouldn’t smoke, he says. Bad for you.
But he seems like he’s joking. His voice is growly, all smoked out.
He drops the cigarette and grinds it into the sidewalk. I notice his boots, black and scuffed on the toe. Ten years old. More. He could have had them when he lived with us. I try to remember.
He unlocks the door and ushers me in and then follows me, slamming the door hard behind him. We’re in a stairwell that’s almost pitch-black until he switches on an overhead light.
It reeks of garbage and cigarettes in here. It reeks of staleness. Worse than my mother’s house ever did.
This way, he says, and squeezes by me on the stairs, then leads the way up them to the only door, which he opens without unlocking.
G’wan, he says. Sorry about the mess.
It’s one room. A bed in the corner. There are beer cans everywhere. Miller Lite. Tipped over on their sides or stacked on top of one another: on the floor, on the two tables, a couple on windowsills. There’s a little kitchen with a bar separating it from the rest of the room. On the wall, there’s a calendar open to a picture of a bikini-wearing girl on a motorcycle.
It hits me suddenly that he’s young. Just a little older than Pottsy—in his thirties. That my mother too is young. Was.
You want a beer? he says, and I say no.
Good, he says. He walks to the fridge and gets one for himself. He cracks it and tells me I can sit anywhere. I choose a chair that’s tucked into a table in the center of the room. I slouch in it, not knowing where to put my hands.
What should I call you? he asks me. He’s leaning against the bar