Memories in the Drift: A Novel

by Melissa Payne

  The view of the harbor is clear; the clouds have thinned, and a pale-blue sky peeks out from between wisps of white and pink cotton. Steam rises from a coffee mug on my desk, infusing the air with an earthy aroma of spice and berries. I take a sip and savor the rich flavor. For a few moments, I relax, let the caffeine move through my body, waking me up at the same time that the sun stretches yellow fingertips of light across the spiky tips of pine trees.

  Pinned to a small bulletin board beside my desk is a note. The one that Tate left me before he left Whittier. I’m sorry. I love you. It still hurts to read it, because when he left, I felt like I’d lost a part of me. Eventually, I came to understand why he did. His dad’s abuse was a suffocating shadow that trailed Tate wherever he went. He had to leave in order to find out who he was. But I was sure he’d come back, and when he didn’t, it hurt even more.

  After I threw the rock at his dad, Tate and I were hardly ever separated. And when my mom began drinking, we understood each other in a way that welded that connection into an unbreakable bond. Thinking about him now allows other memories to drift to the surface, earlier ones that move through my head in a warm procession, and I smile. When we were kids, skipping rocks at the fishing cove, making bowls out of the spring mud and filling them with leaves and rocks, pretending to have dinner together in our own apartment. As young teens after a bike ride, sitting on a rock side by side, our thighs barely touching, his finger running down my arm until my fist unfurled, and he slipped his hand into mine. Playing basketball in the school gym, our competition always fierce. The feel of his lips against mine, his body long and lean and a perfect match to my own. The way he hugged me like he’d never let me go. Then come the ones that leave me cold. The blackness of the bruised and swelling skin around his eye on that last morning at the Buckner Building. The salty taste of tears and the lemon tang of the tea Ruth fixed me when he was gone.

  And then the last memory I have of him. At my master’s graduation, seven years after he left Whittier. The pinpricks of electricity that coursed through my skin when I saw him—tall, handsome, there. A bubbling of hope that pushed into my heart. He was back! Everything would work out after all. Except this time I was the one who left, hurried, picking up my scattered clothes, wiping the mascara that had bled down my face, because this time I understood the truth. We had nothing in common anymore.

  With a sigh, I set the cup down and turn to my work, picking up my notebook for September and laying it open. From a desk drawer I pull out a fresh notebook. On the cover of the new journal, I affix a yellow label, which is the color I’ve assigned to this year, and below that an orange label, which is the color I’ve assigned to the month of October. I have piles of notebooks, color coded by year, then month, then numbered by volume if there are multiple notebooks per month. The pages of September are worn from use, a black ring from where I must have set my coffee cup down on the page. I’m careful as I read over the month, making sure I move forward any information, dates, or notes to myself that seem important into the October notebook.

  There’s a line about teaching guitar lessons that lifts my eyebrows. What in the world made me come up with that kind of idea? Already a memory rises, unbidden. Mom across from me on the floor, a cheap guitar balanced in her lap, the instructional book opened in front of her. Okay, Claire bear, it says here that every guitar player should start with these eight chords. And today’s lesson focuses on two of those chords. A wrinkle formed between her eyes when she looked at me. You’re missing something. I sat cross-legged, my elbows resting on my legs, head in my hands, just watching. She was beautiful. Dark hair shiny and thick. Skin glowing and smooth, and the way she looked at me, like I was the most important kid in the whole world. Dad had always told me that when he first saw her, he felt knocked in the gut. It felt that way being her daughter, too, before alcohol took over.

  She smiled at me, touched the dimple in my chin with her thumb. I know what’s missing. Go look on your bed.

  I’d scrambled to my feet and raced to my bedroom, squealing when I saw what rested on my pillow. A small guitar. And even better, it was purple. My favorite color.

  I returned to the living room, beaming, and took my place on the floor across from her, hugging the guitar to my chest. I love it!

  She’d touched my face, her eyes bright, and when she spoke her voice was thick. I love you, Claire.

  I shake my head, wait for the burn in my eyes to fade. I wish these memories didn’t still hurt. Haven’t I shed enough tears for her?

  I breathe in and return to my job, relieved to see I’d crossed the idea out completely. I nod, agreeing with myself. It’s a bad idea. But the next note is like a slap across my cheek. Mom lives in Whittier, and Ruth knows but didn’t tell me. I flip backward through the month. Does Dad know? He must have told me at some point. He would never keep that from me.

  I tilt my head when I see the page for September 21. It’s been almost entirely marked out with black marker. Nearly an entire day gone. I flip forward from there, stop, my hands hovering over the pages. There are blacked-out sentences on every day since. I suck in my bottom lip. A sadness coils around my heart. Am I this determined to reject her so completely? I feel a twinge of guilt at the idea and an anxiousness that creeps across my skull. I hate that I can’t remember.

  I sit back in my chair, thinking about Mom and Dad. The way she fell apart was like watching a beautiful flower wilt and die, gradual and painful to witness. She’d been a magnet of genuine warmth that made everyone around her feel important to her in some irreplaceable way. But once she got used to being numbed by vodka, nobody was enough. She was always worse when Dad was driving for long stretches of time, like he was a lifeboat she clung to, falling back into the water as soon as he left.

  I didn’t realize how bad things had gotten until one morning when I was twelve. I’d had a terrible nightmare that my mother had lost her way in a storm and slipped into the harbor and drowned. I woke up in a cold sweat, scared, frantic. She wasn’t in her bed; it looked like she’d never come home. I was crying, hardly able to catch my breath. Tate had met me in the lobby. She’s dead, Tate. She’s dead. The dream was fresh, fueling a panic I couldn’t control, because I think deep down I knew that I was losing her. We got to the outside doors and Tate stopped suddenly, flinging one arm back as though to keep me from moving past. Get R . . . R-uth, he’d said. Instead, I’d pushed past him and gasped. A woman huddled on the concrete step outside, arms wrapped around the metal post like she was holding on against a hurricane-force wind. I pushed through the doors, and the cold wind stole my breath when I knelt beside her. Her head hung down, hair falling in tangled clumps around her face, and she smelled. Like alcohol and body odor.

  I’d pressed my arms into my stomach, thinking I might puke. Mom?

  She’d lifted up her face and stared at me with bloodshot eyes. Oh, hi, Claire bear. She said it like we’d accidentally run into each other at the harbor. Like she wasn’t hurting me over and over. Like I was nothing at all. The remnants of my dream vanished, taking with them my fear, and suddenly I was filled with an anger that burned. My hands balled into fists. What’s wrong with you! Why can’t you stop? I hate you so much!

  Her body shook like my words were bullets piercing her skin. I’d screamed until my voice was hoarse and I was crying, and Tate led me away and upstairs to my apartment, and then Ruth was there, my head in her lap, a cool washcloth on my forehead.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and when I reach for it, a note card slides out and falls to the floor. There’s a date on one side. Friday, September 21. I pick up the card, flip it over, and find a note to me, short but to the point, and the words dance and blur and whip themselves into a frenzy that rushes to my head in painful stabs. The note card falls from my hand when the desk vibrates with an alarm for Jazzercise. I jump to turn it off, elbowing my coffee cup, which topples over, spreading coffee across the card, my notebook, and phone. I grab the notebook and hurry for a paper towe
l, biting my lip. I could lose an entire month of memories because of a stupid accident.

  A few pages are damp and a three-by-five note card is a sopping brown mess, but for the most part, it doesn’t look too bad. Relieved that the damage is minimal, I throw the note card in the trash, wipe off the notebook, and check my phone. I’m going to be late for Jazzercise, and not surprisingly, Ruth hates when people come in late. Says it throws off her whole dance game.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  At first, Ruth and Jazzercise don’t appear to go hand in hand until you see her leg kicks and spins, which destroy every preconceived notion anyone ever has about sour-faced Ruth from the post office. She holds the class in the school gym, which is located a short distance behind BTI and is accessible by a pedestrian tunnel that connects the two buildings or by a very quick walk outside. We use the tunnel for days when snow pushes up and over our doors, or when the wind slices through the air with gusts capable of taking little ones off their feet. With the nice weather, I decide to walk outside. Fresh air is something I don’t take lightly.

  I get there just as Ruth’s voice booms from the front of the room. “Line up, ladies. Oh, Claire, you’ve decided to join us. Good. There’s a spot by Sefina.”

  I take my spot, unsure why I’m finding it hard to get a deep breath.

  A light touch on my arm. “Are you okay, Claire?” Sefina’s face is soft with concern.

  I think about her question and give the best answer I can. “I don’t know. I feel sad, I think, but I don’t know why.” I’m confused and feeling exceptionally vulnerable, which is probably why I decide to take a leap and ask, “Do you?”

  Her mouth drops open, and she pulls back, eyes darting over my shoulder. I turn, see Ruth, who is talking to my mother. The muscles in my legs go weak. Now I know why I feel this way. “What is she doing here?” I say through clenched teeth.

  “She lives here now, Claire.” Sefina speaks low, calm. “You know this but I think it’s been hard for you to accept. She’s different, though, I promise. But I don’t think that’s why you’re—”

  Music booms from a large speaker, drowning out whatever else she was going to say. I turn to see my mother has gone, and Ruth is at the front of the room. “Let’s stop the chatter, ladies, and work up a sweat instead. I know I need to. Anyone else?”

  The few half-hearted woo-hoos that float around the room are quickly drowned out by Sefina’s exuberant “Hell to the yeah!” shout that earns her a pressed-lips look from Ruth. I laugh and begin to move, and soon the music and my own exertions drown out my breathing, Sefina’s grunts, and, most especially, my thoughts. I’ve done Jazzercise for so long that I don’t need to think in here. I can just do, so the time passes and I enjoy the physical effort without the added job of having to think too hard.

  “And five, six, seven, eight, now rock lunge, ladies! Side to side. There you go. Pump your elbows. Sefina!” Ruth admonishes. “I said pump your elbows, not dance like a chicken. Heel hop! Squeeze those legs. Heel, together, heel, together. That’s better, Ann Marie. Maybe next time wear your hearing aids so you can stay on the beat. I said, next time—oh, forget it!”

  I smile. Ruth is still Ruth, even as a Jazzercise instructor.

  “Chassé, ladies!”

  I fly across the room, my legs moving without me. It’s a glorious feeling. I never took dance as a kid; it was too expensive and too far away, but I think I would have been good at it.

  Sefina huffs and puffs by my side, her face mottled and shiny from sweat. “You’re killing the chassé today, Claire.”

  I smile and keep moving. For all her long-limbed gracefulness, Sefina can’t dance without tripping over her own feet or mine. But my gangly six-foot frame moves with a shocking lightness. I’m not smug about it, but I am, well, proud. I love the feeling I get when I dance. My parents must have loved it, too, because my early memories of their marriage include impromptu dancing in the kitchen, the lobby, the parking lot, anywhere a moment overtook them, and I’d look up to see Dad swinging my mom around like she weighed nothing, her head thrown back and her tinkling laughter mixing into the air around us. The memory hits me with such force I nearly stumble in my chassé, but I recover, and when the music crescendos, I hit every move in time with the beat, nearly crashing into Sefina on my return across the room. She’s given up, and she lands in a sweaty heap on the gym floor, one hand raised in surrender. “Cheater. You’ve been practicing without me, haven’t you?”

  I shrug. I have no idea. “You know that even if I have, it wouldn’t make a difference.”

  “Likely excuse,” she groans.

  “Sefina,” comes Ruth’s stern voice. “Get up! This is dance class, not mat Pilates. We still have our cooldown.”

  Sefina blows out a forceful breath that lifts a chunk of hair out of her eyes and pushes to her feet, giving me an evil-eye glare before joining the rest of us in our cooldown. I laugh. When it comes to most things, Sefina and I have always been a competitive duo, whether it’s racing to the end of a trail run on snowshoes or catching the first fish of the morning or floating across the gym floor in a chassé. It’s a consistency I can rely on.

  After class, I quickly find my cell phone, and it’s buzzing with a reminder. Mom lives in Whittier now, and Ruth knows but didn’t tell you. My fingers curl until I’m gripping the phone so hard it hurts. Ruth is obviously protecting Mom, and it stings to read that. I need to talk to Dad. Find out if he knows, because there’s no way he wouldn’t tell me. Quickly, I add it to my reminders and set an alarm. I can stop by his office now.

  Sefina joins me and leans against the wall, glances Ruth’s way. “She’s crazy, like a Jazzercise dictator.” She turns, eyes the bag already on my shoulder, and raises her eyebrows. “Where are you off to so fast? You’re still coming over for lunch today, right?”

  I check my phone calendar. “Yes, it’s right here.” Unlike her dancing, Sefina’s cooking is excellent, and my mouth already waters from whatever she’s planning to fix. “See you then.”

  Outside, the weather is nicer today, so the kids are on the playground. Their shouts and laughter bounce between the walls of the school and BTI, and the sound lifts my spirits. I feel a tap on my shoulder. Ruth.

  “Hi, Ruth,” I say.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Standing outside talking to you.”

  “Funny. I mean where are you headed now?”

  I open my mouth to tell her, but there’s a blankness in my brain, an unknowing I can’t move past. It turns my breathing shallow, this floating in a sea of un-knowledge. My fingers dig into my palms. I hate it. On my screen are words that sharpen into arrows, stick in my chest. Mom lives in Whittier now, and Ruth knows but didn’t tell you. There’s a heated prickling in my cheeks, and I can’t meet Ruth’s eyes.

  “Oh, Claire.”

  I look up to find her staring at the screen. Is that pity in her tone? I straighten my shoulders, meet her gaze. The deep lines around her mouth smooth with a softness in her eyes.

  I hold up the phone. “Does he know yet?” When she doesn’t reply right away, I scan my notebook, but I haven’t moved anything forward from September that indicates anyone told me. Frustration at how little I know simmers together with the idea that Ruth would keep something like this from me. I look up, unable to mask my disappointment or a sense of betrayal. Ruth knows how I feel about my mother. “Why, Ruth?”

  She breathes out a heavy sigh. “She’s sober, Claire, and she has been for years. But don’t look at me like that. Vance wanted her back here. He’s the one who insisted she come home.”

  I recoil. Dad wants her back? “I don’t believe you,” I say, my lips tight around the words.

  Ruth blinks. “It’s true, Claire. Maybe he knew something, I don’t know, but he loves you and he loves her, and he wants you all to be together again. And I know that all you remember are her failures.” Ruth blinks again, hard, fast. “But she’s better, I swear to you.” She points to my notebo
ok and her hand shakes, I think from emotion. It surprises me. “And that’s something you need to write down until it sticks, because we’re all too old to keep lying to ourselves.”

  My pen shakes over the page and my eyes blur. “So she gets to come home, and suddenly she’s the good guy? After everything she did, Ruth? How is that fair?”

  Ruth studies me for a long moment. Then she touches my face, and I nearly jerk back, shocked by her gentleness. “It’s not, Claire. But most of life isn’t. Especially yours. We just need to make the most of whatever we’re given.” It’s classic Ruth. She never sugarcoats and she can always sense when I’m coming undone and says exactly what I need to hear to stop my emotional descent. She’s been that person for me since my mom first started drinking. There must have been a well-worn path in the hallway between Ruth’s apartment and my own when I was a kid. She was the first door I knocked on when Mom wouldn’t get out of bed, the first number I dialed when the vodka bottles collected in the bathroom trash, and the person to ground me when I was fourteen and got caught smoking pot with Tate in the school bathroom. She invited me to dinners, brought over breakfast, and helped Mom shower when she couldn’t walk a straight line. All those years, I was never alone when Dad went on the road, because I always had Ruth.

  “Claire,” she says, evenly and with little emotion. “Look at me.”

  “Yes?” My voice is an airless squeak.

  “Your mom is sober, she lives in Whittier, and she loves you. Nobody is trying to keep anything from you. Okay?”

  A cool breeze wraps around me, and a wave of goose bumps raises my skin. There is so much information: on my phone, in my notebook, from Ruth, from the way my heart beats too fast and I can’t connect the dots, can’t clear my head enough to think. My phone buzzes. Mom lives in Whittier, and Ruth knows but didn’t tell you. I back away from Ruth, fueled by a longing to see Dad and a need to get away from her.