Memories in the Drift

by Payne, Melissa

  “Claire!” Ruth calls.

  I turn away and am heading to the elevators, heart thumping in my ears, when a hand touches my elbow. “Claire.” Ruth again, and her voice is a calm breeze in the storm inside my head.

  This time I stop, let my head hang. “I don’t want him to be gone,” I whisper.

  “I know,” she says. “None of us do.”

  “Why didn’t I know?” I say through my teeth.

  “You’ve been trying to remember. It just upsets you every time. I was going to come and get you, but, well, little Maree brought you instead.” I can hear a softness in her voice when she says the name, see her attention turn to the girl. “And that’s okay, Maree; you did nothing wrong.”

  “Claire.” My mother’s voice. I clench my hands. “Join us,” she says.

  “Why is she here?” I am overcome by an anger I know isn’t fair or right, but it spreads through my body like an infection. “She’s the one who broke his heart.”

  Nobody speaks and the silence lengthens. Mom stands with her feet planted, eyes clear, and it occurs to me that she is not drunk. The thought turns me into a little girl. The one who woke up hopeful every morning that this was the day she’d choose me over alcohol. Her head tilts to the side, and I can see that she wants to say something, and it shatters my illusion because I know that Mom never chooses anyone over alcohol. Ever.

  “You’re right, Claire. I did break his heart and yours and Ruth’s and anybody who ever tried to help me. And you’re right; it’s not fair that I’m here and he’s not.” She sucks in air, eyes bright. “But this memorial is meant to honor him, and I am staying to do exactly that. And so should you.” Her tone is firm, stern, the one I remember when I was scolded for lying as a little girl.

  Ruth straightens her shoulders. “Alice is here because she loved Vance and wanted to be a part of celebrating his life. She has every right to be here.” Ruth takes a step toward me. “And so do you, Claire. I know this is painful and horrible and unexpected. I know it doesn’t fit within your system and that losing him is so big and deep that we all want to disappear inside of it.”

  A roaring inside my head drowns her out. Images flash in a merry-go-round parade of Dad. Holding me when I was little, safe inside his arms; fishing together; the frustrated twist of his lips when he had to meet with the teachers again because of something I’d done; the smile that never dimmed when I graduated. A sob wells too big in my throat, and I can’t let it out, because I don’t think I’ll ever stop crying.

  Ruth grips my elbow. “Some things, Claire.” I see her inhale, and her voice is stronger when she says, “Some people are worth remembering even when it hurts.” She tucks something into my hand. A notecard with a solitary sentence that slices my heart in two. Vance died of a heart attack.

  The truth slams into my body, and my only response is to allow myself to be led into the meeting room, where Ruth sits me in a chair in the front row.

  I am empty. I am numb. I am lost. I read the note card over and over until the room fills with the quiet sniffles and soft voices of my friends and neighbors.

  I don’t know how long we sit there, but I listen while half the town gets up to say something about Vance Hines, how he touched their lives in one way or another. Someone tells the story about the bear. Sefina laughs, recounting the punch Dad landed on her ex-husband’s nose. Hank remembers Dad pulling his drunk self out of a ditch one freezing winter night. Saved my life, Hank says through tears that glisten in his white beard. I am there, I am listening, yet I am frozen, a hard shell surrounding my heart. This loss is new to me alone, and it’s a fresh grief that tears me apart at the seams. I rub at my neck, see Ruth dabbing at her eyes, Kiko nodding at something Hank says, and I am an island among them. This moment will stay with them long after they leave, but mine will ebb into the waters that surround me, leaving me to grieve all over again. The thought rolls into a ball, settles into my stomach. I try to write it all down, but I can’t possibly record everything, especially this immense feeling of loss. This momentary grief.

  Someone sits beside me, leans into me. “I’m so sorry about Vance, Claire.”

  I turn to see Tate, older but with the same green eyes that seem to read my thoughts, and I cry out, surprised he’s here but comforted to share it with him. “He’s dead, Tate.”

  He puts an arm around me, and even though it’s been years since I’ve seen him, touched him, spoken to him, I relax into his embrace because Tate feels like coming home.

  There’s a notebook in his lap, and with his free hand he’s writing furiously.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to record everything for you so you don’t have to write, so you can just sit here and t . . . t-ake it all in and listen to how much everyone loved him. When you w . . . w-ant to remember, it will all be in here.”

  His efforts move me so deeply I feel frozen in his arms. “Thank you,” I whisper.

  He tightens his arm around me. “You’re welcome. And don’t worry,” he whispers. “I w . . . w-on’t miss a thing.”

  My eyes drift to my own notebook, worn and bent, the pages fluffed out from so much use. It is full of desperate scribbles; my fingers throb from so much writing, and I set the pen down, grateful to rest my aching hand.

  I tug at my fingers, repeat a new mantra. Dad is dead. Dad is dead. But I can feel that something has come loose inside, like a plug has been pulled. I shift in my seat, unable to fight a rising hysteria that slithers across my skin. My hands shake. Dad is dead. Dad is dead. With rubbery legs, I push to standing. “What will I do without him?” I ask no one in particular. Kiko, who stands at the front of the room, stops talking, looks at me with such sadness in her eyes I turn away and scan all the faces. Some I know, many I don’t, and it nearly undoes me. I grab on to the back of my chair for support, find Ruth’s face. “When did I see him last?” When she doesn’t answer right away, I reach for my notebook, flip through it, tearing pages in my desperation because I can’t find anything. “Please, tell me when I saw him.” Pitiful, pathetic, everything I don’t want to be, I sound like in this moment.

  “You were with him, Claire. We both were.” It’s my mother’s voice. She stands in front of me. “He wanted to talk to you.” She inhales a ragged breath. “About me and about—”

  “What about you?” My pen presses into the pages, ready to record everything, but Tate stays my hand, holds up a notebook he has already filled with information. My breathing expands and I let the pen fall away to face my mother.

  “He wanted us to be a family again,” she says, and her voice is steady even as I see the tiny trembles in her chin. “I know how hard it is for you to accept, but I’m not the same person you remember. And Vance thought it was time to make that stick, to help all of us figure out a way to be together.” Her eyes travel over my shoulder. “All of us.”

  Ruth puts an arm around Mom and the gesture surprises me. Mom and Ruth were tight once, but she hurt Ruth with her drinking too. “He was proud of Alice, proud of how hard she’s fought to overcome her addiction,” says Ruth. “He wanted you to see that too.” She glances at Mom. “So much has changed, Claire. Vance had a feeling that it was time to put things right—”

  “No, Ruth,” Mom says. “Not now.”

  I’ve stopped listening because I can’t focus on anything other than the fact that Dad is gone. I picture him easily as he is—vibrant in my mind, larger than life—and I can’t attach the idea of him dead, gone forever, to that person. A painful fluttering builds in my chest. “Did I get to say goodbye? Hug him one last time? Did I do anything to help him?” My body shakes. No matter how hard I try to scrape off the layer of gunk that clings to my brain, I remember nothing. The blankness is a giant mouth that steals everything from me.

  “You did all of that, Claire,” Mom says. “He said he was so very proud of you and that only you could have survived and thrived the way you have. He loved you so very much, sweet—”

 
I inhale sharply, the idea that he’s gone fresh pain.

  “Claire,” she says. “You were his world. He loved you and he loved every minute he spent with you.”

  We stand there among everyone, some staring at me in pity, others shifting uncomfortably in their seats, but mostly the room is silent, save for the scribbling of pen on paper that comes from the man at my side. I rub at my arms; a coldness pricks at my bones and I shiver. I will forget. I will have to relive this all over again. I clutch at my chest. Dad is my rock, always there to pick me up when I fall, to protect me when I need it. And now he is gone. My body sags. “How am I going to remember?”

  Ruth takes the notebook from Tate, touches the one gripped in my hands, and gives me a sad smile. “The way you always have. But with all of our help too.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday, February 2

  I wake up screaming from a dream I can’t remember but that has left me in a cold sweat, and I kick the covers off, needing space, air, anything but this claustrophobic feeling that presses against me. Immediately, I see the whiteboard. Dad died of a heart attack on September 21. All that comes out is a broken whimper. I read the journal, which describes my seizure and includes the fact that Dad died of a heart attack. It takes a while for everything to sink in but eventually it does, and the pain ebbs. Today is Saturday, February 2, and I’ve been waking up the exact same way for four months now.

  An ache unfolds across my skull, and I rise unsteadily to my feet. It’s past nine in the morning—late for me to be starting my day but it doesn’t matter. Dad is dead. I didn’t have to read it because I feel the loss of him in the darkness that hovers at the edges of my vision, shrouds my heart.

  There’s a knock at my door, and I hold my breath because for the briefest of moments I think it’s Dad. I read the line again. Dad died of a heart attack on September 21. Remind myself that he is forever gone and try to ignore the worn-out stickiness under my eyelids.

  I pull on sweatpants and a T-shirt and make my way to my desk. I check the dry-erase calendar. Nothing planned for today or for yesterday. My hair clings, limp and greasy, to my face, and hunger pains suggest I haven’t eaten in a while. I move with a sluggish reluctance.

  I look through the peephole and pull back at the face I see because I’m surprised to see her . . . but also I’m not. It’s written on my whiteboard that my mother lives here now.

  “Mom,” I say when I open the door. She stands tall—older, her face more rounded, a healthy pallor to her skin. Sober. And here in Whittier. Yet a thick layer surrounds my heart, making it impossible to feel anything but suspicion and disappointment, and for the first time—or for all I know, the hundredth time—I wish I could feel something more for her. “I don’t want to see you.”

  “I’m coming in, Claire.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve been holed up in there for weeks now and it’s not healthy. I’m making you breakfast, and I’m going to cut your hair. You look like a shaggy dog.”

  I touch my hair; the ends brush long against the sides of my neck. I feel like a shaggy dog, can smell a staleness that tells me I haven’t showered, and I don’t know if it’s that or the weakness that runs through me when I read Dad died of a heart attack on September 21, but I open the door all the way. “Okay,” I say.

  She arches her eyebrows, surprised—I can guess—that I’m letting her in, and walks past me with a cloth bag slung over her shoulder and a pink-and-white polka-dot carrying case held in her arms. I recognize the case. It held her scissors and trimmers and other supplies. When I was eight she let me pull it down from the shelf in the bathroom and open it for the first time. Tate was coming over. I’d told her that his hair had gotten long and had tangles in it that I tried to get out with my fingers at school. His hair smells too. I don’t think his dad makes him shower like you make me, I’d whispered to her like I was telling a secret I shouldn’t, feeling bad because Tate was my friend.

  She’d hugged me. It’s not his fault, Claire bear. Some kids have a hard time at home. Things are tough for little Tate.

  Is that why he’s so skinny? I’d noticed how he ate all his school lunch, but he never looked full.

  Hmmm, she’d said. Maybe we can do something to help.

  I could bring him extra from my lunch! I’d been excited by the idea.

  That’s perfect, sweet girl. You can take him as much as you’d like.

  After that, I’d pack two lunches, one for me and one for Tate, always making sure to put in an extra cookie just for him. It stuck, and until we graduated high school, I always packed an extra lunch just for Tate. I’m warmed by the memory.

  “Do you remember when you had to give Tate a buzz cut?”

  Mom’s laugh smooths the lines from her skin, and for a moment she looks just like the woman I remembered from before the drinking. “Poor kid had dreads.” Her face darkens. “His father was such a mess.”

  It’s a true statement, but it’s ridiculous coming from her, yet instead of feeling angry with her hypocrisy, I snort. “Pot, kettle, Mom?”

  She looks at me, mouth hanging open. “I know. I can’t believe I just said that. I was a mess. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, but whenever we rated you, his dad always came up worse.” I suck in my bottom lip. “At least, that’s what Tate thought. He said there was really no comparison. I disagreed.”

  Mom gives me a look that I think is amused and touched and sad too. She breathes in and blinks a few times too fast. “Okay, then. Go shower and I’ll get breakfast ready.” She sets the case on the table and brings the cloth bag over to the kitchen, starts to pull out eggs and bread and milk, cinnamon and sugar.

  My stomach growls. “Are you making french toast?” It’s such a normal question, such a typical mom kind of effort, that it throws me. She used to make it all the time, and her french toast is fluffy and crispy, with a buttery sweetness so light it doesn’t even need syrup.

  “Oui!” she says, smiling.

  I shower quickly, repeating the same words over and over. Mom is making breakfast. Mom is making breakfast. When I’m done, I quietly settle myself on a stool at the kitchen counter and find that Mom is indeed making breakfast. While she cooks, I watch her, looking for anything that gives her away: a stumble here, a nip from a hidden bottle. Nothing but normal mom behavior and reluctantly I record, She seems different. In a good way. Then add, because I don’t want to give myself false hope, She forgot I don’t like syrup and put it on my french toast.

  After breakfast, she pulls a stool into the middle of my living room floor, places a towel around me, and gently pushes on my shoulders to make sure I’m sitting up straight and even. The familiar routine, her touch and the comfortable quiet between us, is an unexpected balm. I close my eyes, listen to the snip, her even breathing. But the moment lulls me away and before everything fades, I pull a note card from my pocket. Dad died of a heart attack. My chin trembles and I drop my head and slide the card back into my pocket. When I do, Mom pauses, hands on my shoulders, but doesn’t say anything.

  “How long have you lived here?” I ask.

  The snipping stops. “Not long. Just a few weeks before he died.”

  “Were you back together?”

  “In a way we’ve never been apart, because that man refused to give up on me.” Her voice is hoarse.

  My shoulders jerk away from her touch. “You hurt him. I think he was lonely.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but the snip continues, and I think I hear her crying, but I don’t turn around to look. I don’t think I can share in her pain.

  Her phone rings. “Hello? Okay, stay there, I’m coming. Yes, I’m glad you called.” She finishes with my hair, brushes it out, then quickly packs up her things. “I have to go.” She touches my face. “I love you.” I don’t say anything back.

  She leaves behind a lingering aroma of bread and powdered sugar, the tang of orange juice. My fingers run through my hair; it feels fresh and n
ew. I sit on the stool, look out the window. The morning-blue sky is threatened by a distant storm brewing in a roiling mix of gray clouds that skirt the mountaintops. Despite the change outside, an unexpected calm washes over me, and I sit back, buoyed by an irrational surge of hope, and write, She’s different. I think it’s real. Then I shut my notebook and bite my lip. Could she really have changed? I read the note card; my eyes burn when I count how many times I’ve seen the words before me. Hash marks fill the paper. I stand, ready to crawl back under the covers, to sleep, to be anywhere but here in my living room, alone.

  Instead, I force myself to sit down at my desk and make a plan for the day.

  Sometime later, I have changed into jeans and a flannel shirt, and I think this is a major improvement because the structure of clothes against my body feels good, like I’ve lived in sweatpants and T-shirts. My hand automatically slides into the pocket of my shirt, pulls out a note card, and I am gutted. Dad died of a heart attack. I tell myself to breathe past the sob because this information is not new, even if it feels that way.

  I have one activity buzzing on my phone. School Gardens. It’s a Saturday, so I should be able to do the job in solitude, which I feel like I need right now.

  Today, I opt for the stairwell. It’s not always easy to get exercise here, especially with weather that plummets temperatures and dumps snow and rain in huge amounts during the long winter months when the sun refuses to share its light. So even when I was younger, I’d always take whatever opportunity I could to move. I jog down the stairs, listening to faint noises ping and pong against the cement walls of the stairwell. In the lobby I turn toward the exterior doors, intending to get some fresh air on my walk to the school, but a storm swells overhead, suppressing the light and covering the lobby doors in a white veil. I look outside. Gusts of wind slice through the snow, send it plummeting to the ground. I shiver; school tunnel it is, then.