“No.”
“Then it sounds like Leonora is making up stories of her own.”
Maree presses her finger into a cookie crumb on the table until pieces of it stick to her skin. “Yeah, maybe.” She uses the very tip of her front teeth to bite a minuscule crumb off her finger, then another.
I hand her a cookie, smile. “Why don’t you eat the crumbs all at once?”
She giggles when she takes the cookie. “Thanks.” She finishes it and wipes her mouth. “Do you think we could go see the reindeer?”
The reindeer belong to a longtime resident of Whittier. Tourists love to take pictures with the animals, and when they get paraded around town, it’s quite the photo op. By winter, they spend much of their time in their pen, which sits across from BTI. I’m not sure how to respond to Maree’s request because my likely answer is no, given my limitations, except I don’t want to tell her no. I look outside. Dusk bruises the sky into deep purples and grays. Winter nights in Alaska are a solid presence—inky, dark, and unyielding. “Now?”
“Sure, yeah, that would be awesome. My dad said I can’t go alone or with other kids ’cause of that bear who won’t go to sleep, but it’s okay if I go with a teacher; plus, you’re so tall that no bear would mess with you anyways.” She springs to her feet. “Let’s go!”
She’s already at the door, Polaroid camera slung around her neck, and my pulse speeds up. It’s too sudden, too quick a change in direction, and I feel myself lose the grip on my thoughts. I’m turning to my notebook when I feel a hand on my arm, and I look down to see the girl, her face calm, staring at me behind cat-eye glasses that are taped in the middle.
“I can take pictures with my camera so you won’t forget, okay? If you have to write everything down, it will be too late. I talk a lot—that’s what Ms. Kiko says—so I can keep you remembering all the way there. Okay, Ms. Claire?”
Her sweetness eases the tension in my forehead.
“We’re going to see the reindeer,” she says with such earnestness I want to touch the dimple on her chin.
Reindeer, reindeer, reindeer. A mantra I repeat. So we’re going outside. I frown when I look at her thin long-sleeved shirt. “Do you have a coat?” From a hook by the door, I grab a sweatshirt. “You can wear this; it looks cold out.”
Reindeer, reindeer, reindeer. I start to walk down the hallway, hesitate. Tate and I always took carrots to them. I hurry to the fridge, pleased to find that I have a couple in the crisper, and hurry back to join the girl in the hallway, who’s wearing one of my sweatshirts, and it’s so big on her small frame that the cuffs brush the floor, giving her the look of a little monkey.
“We’re going to see the reindeer, Ms. Claire.”
“Okay, um—”
She looks down, frowns, unzips the sweatshirt, and pulls a silver piece of duct tape off her shirt, reaffixes it to the outside of the sweatshirt. “There; I’m Maree, in case you already forgot.” She says this with so much earnestness in her upturned face it gives me a pang.
“Thank you, Maree. Now I won’t forget!”
Her lips quirk up at the edges. “So my idea with the pictures was good and stuff, huh?”
“What pictures?”
She laughs so hard her glasses come off. “Holy crap, you’re so funny, Ms. Claire.” She pulls on my sleeve and rushes us to the elevator, pushes the down button repeatedly. “Hurry; let’s go before your memory wears off!”
I chuckle, enjoying the girl’s antics, opting not to correct her language. Her frankness is startling and charming and mostly unexpected. I love it.
Outside, the sun has nearly set, turning the light into moody shades of gray with clouds that hang over the mountains, skirting over bald peaks and rocky crevasses. Wind whips off the water, frigid and stinging. The reindeer pen sits across from BTI, so we don’t have far to go.
The little girl talks all the way, a running commentary on our progress. “We’re in the elevator, Ms. Claire; now we’re in the lobby; now we’re outside and walking down the stairs.” She holds my hand as we go; it’s small but fits perfectly inside my palm. “And I’m Maree, like Mary with a y but with two e’s, ’cause of Anne of Green Gables and . . .” She stops, leans over, hands on her knees, back heaving up and down. “All that talking is taking my breathing away!”
We stand in front of the pen; the reindeer have sequestered themselves around a small shelter to get out of the wind. One turns his head, antlers rising up like a small tree, then eyes the little girl and turns back.
“Aw, damn, I should have grabbed carrots,” she says.
“You should think about the words you use,” I say.
She looks up, gives me a side smile. “You sound just like Ms. Kiko!” Her fingers weave into the fence, bend over the wire, her eyes on the reindeer. “Too bad we don’t have carrots.”
My hand goes to my pocket, and to my delight I pull out a couple of carrots. “Here you go . . .” A total blank. I stare at her, my tongue wanting to say her name, my brain refusing to release it, and my pulse speeds up at the uselessness of my thoughts.
She points to her name tag. “Maree; I’m Maree, and you’re teaching me how to play the guitar and stuff, except today we’re on a field trip to see the reindeer ’cause I asked and you said yes.” She smiles, looking quite pleased with herself.
“Thank you, Maree,” I say, amused by her efforts.
The smallest of the reindeer begins to make his way over to us, his hooves squishing into the muddy earth, antlers rising above his head. Maree hops up and down on her toes, holding the carrot through the fence, teeth chattering in the cold air.
“Here he comes! Oh, he’s so small!” she squeals. “He’s the smallest!” She clicks her tongue, but instead of a sharp sound, it comes out mushy. The reindeer plods over regardless, and Maree jumps up and down, the carrot wiggling in the air. “Here, little baby buddy, here!” He eats it in two bites, leafy green hair and all, and stays still long enough for Maree to pet the velvet tip of his nose. A larger reindeer moves toward us now, ears pricked forward. “Feed the big guy, Ms. Claire!” She struggles to take her camera from her neck while still petting her little buddy. “I’ll take a picture of us.” She tries to hold the camera up and away, another selfie, and I have to keep from laughing at her efforts. Click!
“How about I take one of you?” I say.
She hands me the camera, then stands in between the two reindeer who are lingering at the fence, no doubt hoping for another carrot. Maree holds her arms out on either side and smiles wide. I snap the picture.
“You have long arms; you could do a selfie with both of us in it.”
I kneel beside her and hold the camera out as far as I can. She rests one small hand on my shoulder and leans into me until our faces are side by side. “Cheese!” we both say and I push the button, watch the film slide out. Maree grabs it quick and flaps it back and forth in the air.
“Hey, you did it; you got both of us!” She holds the partially developed picture out, and I can just make out the top half of us, our faces side by side, her head tilted toward me, glasses hanging on to the tip of her nose.
I study the image as it comes into focus, and I’m punctured by how happy I look in the photo, cheek to cheek with this girl who wears a name tag for me, a reindeer nose popping over my shoulder.
She pockets the photos, pulls the camera strap over her neck, then points to the duct tape. “My name is Maree. You took me outside to see the reindeer ’cause I asked. But, um, I think we need to go back inside for our guitar lesson.”
I wink and make a clicking sound. “Still with you, Maree.”
She throws her arms around me, squeezes. “Wow, that’s so great! Maybe your memory is getting better.”
Tears prick my eyes at her efforts to do something I know is impossible. “We’d better go inside—”
“Holy shit!” she says, her eyes wide, finger pointing at something behind me.
I turn and immediately put my body in front of
hers because loping toward us is a huge bear, his fur rippling with each stride he takes. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “That bear should be hibernating,” I whisper.
“That’s why we’re supposed to always take the tunnel.” Maree whispers, too, even though it’s about as loud as her speaking voice. From the corner of my eye, I see the tip of an orange carrot slide past my arm. “Aw, he’s so cute! Poor buddy. Maybe he’s just hungry like the reindeer and ’cause of hibernation and stuff.” She makes the mushy clicking sound again.
I groan and grab the carrot from her hand, shove it into my pocket. The bear halts a few yards from us, and when he sniffs the air, he makes a loud huffing sound that echoes in the stillness. Adrenaline courses through me, electrifying my skin. Beside us, the reindeer have retreated to their pen. “Maree,” I say between clenched teeth, “we are going to walk slowly back to the building. Stay behind me, okay?”
“Okay,” she says in a small, breathless voice.
I reach back and touch her shoulder but continue to keep myself between her and the bear, who is swaying from side to side like he’s deciding on whether to charge or turn and run. Dad pops into my head. From the night he scared the bear, how he stood tall and looked the bear straight in the eyes. He was my hero that day. “Let’s walk nice and slow, and stay behind me.”
The wind picks up, rushes around us, lifts the hair away from my face, and turns my breath shallow from its coldness. When we near BTI, the outside lights surround us, making it harder to see the bear, who lingers in the twilight shadows but stays back, still swaying side to side. The door is within reach, and I yank it open, shoving the girl inside before me, my pulse racing. When it closes behind us, I slump forward, relieved, and turn to see whether the bear has left. Instead, he sits at the bottom of the concrete stairs, so close I can see mud caked around sharp claws and the pointed tips of his ears.
Through the window, I meet his gaze, see my dad in his red boxers on that night in the lobby, standing tall against a bear, remember his solid protectiveness and how sure I was that with Dad, nothing bad would ever happen to me. I press my fingers against the glass, not scared anymore.
“Wow, that was a close call,” the girl whispers beside me. “You’re so brave, Ms. Claire. Just like your dad from that story you tell all the time.”
I look at her sharply, wonder whether I’ve been thinking out loud. “What did you say?”
She squints up at me, wrinkles her nose. “You tell that story a lot ’cause I think it’s one of your favoritist memories. One time Ms. Kiko asked you to tell it to our class. Everyone loved it.”
Outside, the bear turns and sprints away, disappearing into the woods beyond our building and leaving me with my thoughts and a fading sensation that I’m uncomfortable in my own skin. I sit down in one of the chairs in the lobby, hoping the sensation that I’ve lost something will go away because it writhes in my gut, so I close my eyes, rub at my face, and remind myself to breathe.
Someone tugs at my sleeve, and I open my eyes to find a young girl in a brown sweatshirt I’m sure is mine with a silver tag that reads “Maree.” Her eyebrows raise high, and her arms are extended in front of her, palms up, waiting, I assume, for me to speak. When I don’t she sighs and says, “My name is Maree and you’re Ms. Claire, and you’re teaching me how to play the guitar, but first we fed the reindeer ’cept we almost got eaten by a bear until you saved my life by being so tall and brave and smart.” She wipes a hand across her forehead. “Whew, it’s hard work to keep you remembering!”
I stand, surprised when she takes my hand, and we head for the elevator while Maree recounts the story about the bear who nearly ate us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Tuesday, February 19
I wake up with my head against the glass window of—I sit up and take in my surroundings—a pickup truck window. I look beside me and nearly jump out of my skin because Tate Dunn is driving. My hands go to my face, feel my clothes. We could be seventeen or twenty or—no, I’m not seventeen. I’m older and I’m different and—I look closer at Tate—so is he.
Tate looks sideways at me, a comfortable smile playing around his lips, and it eases the twisting in my gut. His hair sticks up on the top like he’s been wearing a hat, but the ebony tresses are just as I remember them, still fill me with the desire to run my fingers through them.
“Have a good n . . . n-ap, Rip Van Winkle?” he says and hands me a note card.
I take it, suck in my top lip. “Rip Van Winkle?”
“Read the note card, Claire.” He concentrates on the road, and his profile magnifies the line of his jaw, makes pleasing lines around his mouth. Oh, he’s so handsome. “Claire,” he laughs. “Read the . . . note card.”
I do. I live in Whittier now and I know about the baby. We went skiing and sometimes I think you use your notebook to keep people out, so I convinced you to leave it at home.
My eyes widen when I look at him. “Why?”
“I w . . . w-want you to trust me with your . . .” His mouth is frozen, lips together, and I wait, so familiar with his stuttering it’s second nature for me. Part of me wants to crumple the note card, throw it at him for suggesting I want to keep people out. But I can sense his nerves in the stuttering, can see that he’s doing this for me. “I want you to experience life instead of having to write every minute down,” he says. “Not all the t . . . t-ime, just some of it.”
I look down to find that I’m in an underlayer of leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt, ski socks pulled up to my knees, winter coat smushed behind me in the seat. The tunnel is up ahead, but we are on the side that leads into Whittier. I sag against the door. “Did we already go?”
“Yes.”
“But I can’t remembe—” As the words leave my mouth, I stop because it hits me that I do in a way. In the tautness of my quads, the ache running up my calves, a lingering coldness in the tips of my toes, the chapped feel of the skin across my cheeks.
“Here.” He hands me a tablet, quickly swipes it open, then instructs me to push play on a video. There I am, top of the mountain, helmet and goggles covering most of my face except my mouth, which is spread into a wide grin. On the video, Tate’s voice booms out, “Having fun?”
I lift my face to the sky, ski poles in the air. “It’s perfect, Tate. Thank you!” Then I push off and fly down the hill.
The camera wobbles violently, and I hear Tate mumble, “Oh . . . shit, she’s f . . . f-ast.”
“I have others from today, that’s just all I had . . . time to upload before we left.”
I play it again, see the look on my face, feel a prickling of warmth run down my back. There’s more. This one from a day of snow machining. I’m on the back, clinging to Tate, and Sefina’s voice calls out, “Grab his ass, Claire!” I throw my head back when I laugh and then give her what I’m assuming is the middle finger in a pair of mittens. The camera shakes with her giggles.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“You’re welcome.”
I read the note card again. “You think I use my notebooks to keep people away?”
He shifts in his seat, sighs. “You can’t write every minute down . . . you know? I know that means you’ll make mistakes or . . . r-epeat yourself, but Claire, you’re amazing to be around. You’re funny and interesting, and I know you hate for others to see you forgetting things, but you are lovely and that hasn’t changed. Besides, your hand hurts all the t . . . t-ime; we all see it.”
I stiffen at the implication that I am on display. “We?”
He gives me a sideways glance. “Me, Ruth, Sefina, Harriet, Alice.”
My face turns to stone. “Mom lives in Whittier?”
“Yes, and she’s sober and g . . . g-ood. She’s better now, Claire. You should be proud of her.”
In my mind I see the way the light spun golden threads in her dark hair right before she left. Still feel the way my heart sliced open. “Why does she deserve that?” I say it quietly, and picture
Tate with fingerprints of bruises across his arms that turned yellow, then green, before they disappeared. Anger rushes hot through my veins at what his father did to him. “Could you ever be proud of your father if he was better?”
“My . . . dad was different than Alice, Claire, and you know that.” He speaks softly but firmly, and my spine curves forward with shame. He’s right. His father was violent and spiteful and spared not a single drop of love for his son.
“I’m sorry.”
“But I did try to understand him.” He eyes my empty hand, looks sheepish. “Okay, you should write this p . . . p-art down so you remember it. I did bring your notebook along, well, kind of. Here.”
He pulls the truck to the side of the road, picks up the tablet in my lap, opens it to a program that has a notebook-paper graphic. He switches dictation on, looks up at me, eyebrows raised. “This way I can t . . . t-alk, but it’s getting recorded in your notebook—well, this version of your . . . notebook, if you like it, or you can always recopy it to your p . . . p-aper one, after you ride home in your horse and buggy, of course.”
A playfulness lights up his eyes, and instead of being upset, I am warmed by his humor. I’ve always recognized my antiquated ways.
He pulls back onto the road, taps the steering wheel while he talks. “It was a few years ago. I came back because I thought that . . . seeing him would heal something in me. And maybe I thought he’d be man enough to say he was sorry.” Tate rubs the stubble on his cheek. “He had n . . . n-othing to say to me except more of the same, and do you know what I did? I started laughing.”
I want to touch his face, put my arms around him, hold him. “Why?” I ask.
“In my head he’d always been a g . . . g-iant, a monster who held all the power. He was a man and I was n . . . n-othing. But I finally saw him for . . . what he truly was.”
“And what was that?”
Memories in the Drift: A Novel Page 20
