Memories in the Drift: A Novel

by Melissa Payne

  It’s colder than it looks outside. As soon as the icy air hits my skin, I pull up my gaiter and breathe in and out, waiting as my body adjusts to the drop in temperature. A feeling clings to my skin, spreads through my body in pins and pricks. I am scared or sad or nervous or all three, and I don’t understand why. I walk at a slow, lumbering pace, my legs heavy, shoulders curved like I’m carrying a backpack full of rocks.

  I take my regular path, down Glacier Avenue through the pedestrian tunnel toward the harbor and back again. The streets are empty, businesses shuttered for the winter. I stop at the boardwalk. It’s quiet, the harbor deserted at this time of year, only the boats bobbing up and down in the waves. I inhale fish and salt, exhale a sob.

  What is wrong with me? A strong desire turns me around. I need to see Ruth or Sefina or . . . someone because I don’t want to be alone right now. I reach for my notebook, but my bag is empty and it makes my heart beat faster. Why don’t I have it? I hurry back through the tunnel and down Whittier Street toward the Buckner Building, but today I don’t want to stand in front of that sad place. So I cut through the parking lot by the city offices and head back to BTI. Just as I’m rounding the corner, something catches my eye, and when I turn I see the backside hump of a bear running past the Buckner and into the trees. My eyebrows meet. Food must be scarce if the bears are coming out to eat. Then I see something that stops me. A small figure—a little kid, I’m pretty sure—disappearing behind the building. I hurry up the road. Kids should not go inside that building. It’s dangerous. I should know. Especially now, when the mountain obscures whatever light is offered by the winter sun.

  I set a reminder on my phone. Kid in Buckner Building. Tell them to come out. I notice that my battery is low and hurry up the hill, where I stand at the base of the building.

  I look up. The building has been dying for decades: rotted flooring, ceilings splayed open like festering wounds. It looms above me, all hollow eyes and mold growing in black strands down the sides. “Hello!” I call.

  No answer. My phone buzzes. Kid in Buckner Building. Tell them to come out. “Hey, kid, you can’t be in there. It’s dangerous!” No answer, and I feel a twisting in my gut.

  The windows give away nothing but an opaque blackness that hides whatever is inside, and it occurs to me that I have no flashlight except for the one on my phone. My leg muscles tingle, and I feel the emptiness of my hands, my entire being bound to the fickleness of time and memory. From deep inside I hear what I think is a scream, and my heart races. The Buckner was once called the city under one roof. A city. And a kid is somewhere inside amid half-rotted floors and mold and God knows what else.

  Another cry, I’m sure of it. My body jerks ahead of my brain, and before I know it I’m climbing through a side door by the freight elevator, where the fence pulls away enough to slip through. Once inside I’m met with an iron coldness that spreads across my back, coats my tongue. Panic races a loop inside me. What am I thinking? I send Ruth a quick text. Followed kid into Buckner. Might need help.

  Another buzz from my phone. Kid in Buckner Building. I try to slow my racing pulse. My phone will remind me what I’m doing. I’ll be okay. I won’t forget.

  Another cry, high-pitched and terrified, comes from somewhere in this massive building, and I lurch forward, repeating a mantra, Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside.

  The flashlight on my phone spreads a cone of light that catches on a concrete wall, drags across the walls behind it. In the dark, the building is otherworldly, and the near-constant drip of water echoing inside gives the sensation that it breathes.

  Cans and other trash crunch underfoot, and my breath is smoke in the cold air. I move deeper into the building. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside. Snow piles up against the windows of a room to my right, leaving the middle empty and vast, littered with insulation, rusted pieces of metal, and large chunks of drywall. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside. Where am I? I’m in the Buckner, Buckner, Buckner. I swing my phone flashlight around, and a chill runs down my spine. I think of the night Mom left. How did I ever spend a night alone in here? And what am I doing in here now?

  The phone reminds me. Kid in Buckner Building. The battery is on red. My stomach drops. With a sense of urgency, I swing the light, picking my way through what looks to be one of the long hallways. “Hello!” The idea that my phone could die and I’ll be left in here without a flashlight, without a way to remind myself, makes the hair on my arms stand on end. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside. I clench my hands into fists and keep moving.

  “Hello?” I call, quietly, as though I’m afraid to wake something up that I shouldn’t. My heart beats wildly. “Do you need help?” The building takes my voice, turns it thin. I move down the hallway. “It’s dangerous in here,” I say, stronger this time. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside.

  From within the bowels of the building, I hear a voice echoing down the long hallway. The building is huge, and panic swells, sets my pulse racing. Did I call someone else to help me search for her? I don’t have time to look for the answer, and I need to stay focused. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside. I call out, “Hello? Where are you?” Silence.

  Now I’m in a hallway that extends in long, dark fingers on either side of me. I keep walking, tripping over blocks of wood, metal, and beer cans that hide in the shadows. The walls are littered in graffiti, some funny and cute, others dark and malevolent. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside. When I get to a stairwell, it is covered in snow that piles high, making the steps disappear under a giant white slide. Except for the beam of my flashlight, the blue darkness coils around me, leaves me disoriented, like the space inside this building is infinite and I am small and finite. I keep going, armed with my own voice and the reminder that I say out loud. I’m drawn forward like a magnet.

  I try to climb up the stairs, but my feet keep sliding on the snow. I have no traction. Kid inside, kid inside, kid inside. The futility of trying to find a kid in all this darkness curls around me, and I have to breathe deep to press down a rising panic. The kid could be anywhere. I swing my flashlight around, see nothing. “Hello!” I call and am met with a soft whimper. “Hello!”

  With much difficulty, I climb the snow-covered stairs, past a gaping hole to my right. I swing my flashlight inside. An elevator shaft. Direct the beam down, holding my breath. Empty. Keep climbing to the next level, where I stand at the end of another long hallway, dark rooms on either side, the floor wet, filled with jagged pieces of building material, moss, and mold.

  And then, from somewhere down the massive second-floor hall, I hear a girl. She’s crying and the sound splinters my heart. I keep walking; blood pounds against my skull, and combined with my repeated mantra, my head aches with effort. I ignore the pain and keep moving because I will not leave this building without her.

  Inside a cavernous room, the flashlight sweeps across hanging wires, splintered floors. “Hello?” I call.

  “Ms. Claire?”

  Relief that she knows me. “Yes, that’s me.”

  “It’s me, Maree.” She sobs with what I’m sure is relief. “I’m so scared, Ms. Claire. I dropped my phone, and it cracked and broke, and I can’t see anything.” Her words end in quiet sniffles.

  I walk toward the voice, careful to step around holes in the floor, until I find her huddled in a small ball with her back to the wall, shivering in the darkness. “What in the world are you doing here?”

  Her face is small, heart shaped, and wet from her tears, her nose running. “I-I’m sorry I stole your memory. I’m so sorry.” She cries so hard she’s gulping.

  My chest tightens and I bend my legs, sit beside her on the wet and cold floor, shine the flashlight up so we have light between us. She’s shivering so hard I think I hear her teeth chatter, so I slide my hat over her head, put an arm around her.

  She looks up at me. “Oh,” she chatters. “I’m M-M-Maree and you’re Ms. Claire, and you teach me guitar lessons and give me birthday presents, and I stole your me
mory.” More gulping.

  I don’t try to guess at what she’s talking about because all I know is that we need to leave. “Sh-sh-sh. It’s okay. We can talk later because we need to get out of here. It’s dark and very cold, and it’s not a place for little kids. Okay?”

  Without warning, the flashlight on my phone is extinguished, plunging the two of us into complete darkness. I flinch, my ears loud with the thump of my heart. It’s so dark I can’t see in front of my nose. In the blackness, my fear is a slithering thing that coils around my head, squeezes my thoughts until they make no sense. Where am I?

  Someone grabs my hands, squeezes so tight I think the bones might break. “Ms. Claire?” A little girl’s voice, and hearing it calms me. I am a teacher and I can be strong for this girl.

  “Yes?” In the dark my mind wanders.

  “Can we leave now?”

  “Well, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I smell damp earth.

  A little body nestles close to me. “We’re in the Buckner Building, and your light went out, and I’m Maree and you’re Ms. Claire.”

  “Thank you, Maree,” I say, and my voice trembles. “Listen, Maree, it’s very hard for me to remember why I’m here. Can you keep talking to me?”

  I feel her lay her head against my shoulder. “You want me to be your memory?” she whispers.

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m good at that.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Can you tell me a story, Ms. Claire? I’m scared and I keep seeing things in the dark, so I just want to close my eyes, but I promise I won’t fall asleep, okay?”

  I try to get a deep breath to calm the tremors that rack my body. “Sure, I’ll try.” I search my mind, and the one that comes easy to me is about Dad. So I tell her about the bear that broke into BTI when I was seven.

  She laughs. “I love that story,” she says. “Can you tell me ones about you and my dad? He’s Tate, and you’re best friends.”

  I am dizzy trying to connect the dots, but in the dark, I could be twelve or twenty-five or fifty. I am unbounded by time, floating, and what she says doesn’t make sense, but my childhood memories come to me in the black night—rich in detail, vivid in color—and I latch on to them and talk. I tell her about Tate’s dad. How he was a mean giant and that I had to throw a rock at his head to stop him from being cruel to a little boy. I told her about the bully I glued to his seat. She laughs so hard I feel her body shake in my arms, and in the darkness I remember that I am a teacher. “Wait, how old are you?”

  “Ten.”

  “Don’t throw rocks and don’t glue people to their seats; get an adult to help you instead.” Giving advice, this little bit of normalcy in the terrifying blackness that surrounds us, helps me to breathe a little easier. “Okay?”

  “Okay.” Her voice is small and I hug her close, grateful for the contact. “You sound like Uki,” she says.

  “Who?”

  “Uki. My dad tells me stories about her at bedtime.” I hear her sniffle. “I thought he was telling me stories about my mom, but I was wrong because Uki is brave and strong, and the boy loves her. She sounds like you.”

  A man’s voice booms from somewhere below us, shouting, calling, tinged with a desperation that makes his words stutter and stop. And my pulse races because I know that voice. “C . . . C-laire! Are you . . . h . . . h-ere? M . . . M-aree!”

  “It’s Daddy!” She squeezes my hand. “It’s Tate, your best friend! He lives in Whittier, and he kissed you once. I saw him!”

  I gasp but my chattering teeth make it a vibrating sound.

  He calls again. “Maree! Claire!”

  “Here, we’re here!” I scream until my voice is hoarse. My head pounds, chest hurts, but despite the darkness and the hollow feeling that I’ve forgotten everything important and the girl in the dark who feels like she’s always belonged with me, I smile. Tate, the skinny boy with the thick black hair and the glacier-green eyes who held my hand when my mom left, is here.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  We stand in the lobby of BTI, the girl, Tate, and me. She holds on to his legs, sobbing, and he rubs circles on her back. Then she turns from him to me, and when I kneel down, she wraps her arms around me and squeezes. “Thank you,” she whispers.

  I touch the back of her head, run my hand down her length of soft brown hair, and feel my heart expand when I breathe in, because the moment feels exactly as it should.

  The elevator doors slide open to Ruth and—my eyes widen—Mom. I choke back a sob, try to understand why the sight of her eases the tension that needles my back.

  Tate clears his throat. “I need to take Maree home.” His eyes darken. “Ruth, Alice, I’ll be up as soon as I can.”

  When he and the girl leave, I feel their absence in the tears that well in my eyes. “Mom?” I say. “Ruth?” My muscles shake, threaten to take me down like a tree. They lead me upstairs to my apartment and sit on either side of me on the couch.

  “What happened?” I ask, my teeth still chattering from a cold that lingers beneath my skin. I must have been outside. From the kitchen comes the whistle of a kettle. Ruth rises from the couch, comes back with a mug of tea. I sip it, grateful for the warmth it spreads.

  “Maree is Tate’s daughter,” Ruth says. “They both live in Whittier, and you are very close to them.”

  The information is new, yet I don’t feel totally surprised by it. “Okay.”

  “Maree thought she found out some upsetting information about her mother and ran away.”

  My brain connects two dots. “Maria?”

  Mom squeezes my hand. “Yes, but Maree doesn’t know, and she got it all wrong.”

  Ruth takes the mug of tea from my hands and sets it on the table. It feels like a protective gesture, and I can’t meet her eyes because I think they are about to tell me something, and I’m suddenly nervous. What doesn’t the girl know? I wrap my arms across myself. “What did she get wrong?”

  Ruth and Mom exchange looks, and then Ruth inhales. “Maree is your daughter, Claire.”

  At first I don’t respond, can’t respond, because my face has hardened to stone, and what she says doesn’t connect any dots that make sense. I ball my hands into fists. “Why would you say that, Ruth?” My voice is high-pitched, strained. “My baby died. You know that.”

  Mom touches my arm, squeezes gently. “No, honey. Your baby lived, and she’s Maree.”

  I yank my arm away, push to my feet, and nearly stumble into Ruth. They’re wrong because this is something I know, something I remember, and for some reason they are lying. When I woke up that night, I couldn’t see from the fireworks of pain exploding across my head, and then Dad was there and we were in his truck and then . . . nothing. But she died. I know it because if she had lived, how could I have ever forgotten her? I cover my face with my hands. Why would they lie about this? It’s so cruel. Even now I feel the way her tiny foot pushed against me, straining my skin until I could see the faint shape of a heel sliding underneath. It was otherworldly. It was magical. I pound my palm flat against my head, as if I can shake memories out like coins from a piggy bank. It’s useless. I never got to see her face, hear her cries, cradle her tiny body, or smell her fresh, new skin. I never got the chance to say goodbye. And if I did, those memories drifted away from me and into the vast and empty ocean of all the things I lose, and the only answer that makes sense is that she’s gone.

  “My baby died,” I say through my teeth.

  Mom lowers her eyes, hands clasped in her lap, face twisted at my pain, I think, and suddenly an angry swell rises up from my toes, and I am reminded of the woman she was—broken, weak, and able to walk away from her own daughter. Something I would never do if I had the choice. I can’t look at her anymore.

  Ruth stands, moves into my line of sight. “Listen to me, Claire. Mirabelle lived. That’s Maree’s full name.” Her eyes are wet and I hear a tremble in her voice. It stops me. Ruth is as strong as they come, and I don’t think I’
ve ever seen her cry. “We thought we were going to lose you both, but once they delivered her, your seizure stopped. That little girl is a fighter just like you. She lived, Claire. Mirabelle lived.”

  The room spins and I want to lie down, but I can’t, not yet, because Ruth is lying, and I need her to stop. “How can that be?” I whisper. “What kind of mother forgets her own child?” I scratch at my arms, the person I truly am exposed, vulnerable, pathetic.

  “You couldn’t remember anything after your seizure, sweetheart,” Ruth says. “You assumed that you had lost her.”

  I stand in the middle of the room with my hands held out in front of me as though I can swat her words away. My mother sits on the couch, face streaked in tears, watching but letting Ruth talk.

  “That first year was so terrible for you. We tried to help you remember; we thought that with time, you’d grow used to seeing her. But it only upset you to realize that you couldn’t remember her. Then you started to leave yourself notes that Mirabelle deserved better, that she belonged with a mother who could love her, not one who couldn’t remember she existed, that she belonged with her father. Eventually, you refused to see her anymore, and that’s when you called Tate.”

  Mom looks at me, her eyes reflecting a mixture of sadness and longing. I ask even though I already know, but I think I want to hurt her. “Where were you then, Mom?”

  She meets my stare and doesn’t look away. “That was before I was sober, Claire. I’m so sorry, honey.”

  My legs betray me and I grab for a chair, sit down. My skin is a weighted blanket, and a deep ache settles behind my eyes, around my temples, shoots down my neck and back. I can’t think, my thoughts muddled with images of a baby I never knew existed, of what I have lost, and my hands are fists, pounding into my thighs.

  Ruth approaches, hands out like she wants to stop me. “Claire—”

  “Please leave,” I say.

  “But Claire—” Ruth says.

  “Leave!” My vision dims and I move slowly to my bed, where I see my journal on the pillow. I grab a sticky note, press it onto the cover, and scribble the only words that easily come to mind before I slip under the covers fully clothed, and close my eyes. Mirabelle lived. Mirabelle lived. The truth blooms inside me, blotting out the person I thought I was, replacing it with the one I am. The mother who walked away. I try to hold on to everything because I want to remember even if it hurts so bad I can’t breathe. I don’t want to forget, except I do, bit by bit, until I’m breathing normally and sleep takes the rest.