A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

  What will you become? her father asked. A young woman like you, beautiful as the sea, must take stock of her life.

  “I would like scrambled eggs and toast,” Jacqueline said. She hadn’t even picked up the menu, but when the waitress returned and asked again about breakfast, she’d said scrambled eggs and toast. To hell with it, she thought.

  The waitress repeated the order, “Scrambled eggs and toast. More coffee?”

  “Yes, please,” Jacqueline said. “And some water too.”

  The woman turned to go, but Jacqueline stopped her.

  “Wait,” she said. “I’m sorry, but the coffee, is it free? I mean the second pot.”

  “Oh. Yes. Okay,” the woman said as if they’d come to an agreement. “Okay, yes, the coffee is free. The second time.”

  “Okay,” Jacqueline said, embarrassed. “Thank you.”

  “Do not worry.”

  “It’s always better to know,” Jacqueline said, mimicking her father.

  The woman nodded and returned to the kitchen.

  While she waited, Jacqueline tried not to worry. She tried only to wait. She tried to wait without memory. She tried to wait with the light on her table and the upright menu and the salt and the pepper and the ceramic rectangle that held the sugar packets. She wondered what that rectangle was called. A sugar packet holder? She wondered where they were made and how one buys a sugar packet holder. She tried to lose herself in this wondering, but it was no good.

  Her father smiled at her from across the table.

  She and her mother held hands as they walked along the white beach.

  Saifa jumped up and down at the edge of the lagoon.

  The wind blew an umbrella end over end across the sand.

  Jacqueline took a sugar packet between her fingers and shook its contents down.

  The skirts moved like gauze over the back of the orange cat. Saifa held her belly like an object separate from herself. She began to turn to the right. Inch by inch until her shoulder pointed at the house. The orange cat ran its figure eights between Saifa’s legs. Its fur was as bright as fire. There was noise below. Laughter. The boys were calling from down the hill.

  My beautiful girl, her father said. My daughter. His eyes were bright and young. He was handsome and proud. He touched the knot of his tie.

  Look at that girl, her mother said, pointing down the beach, where Saifa, four, five years old, was holding hands with a thin boy in flame-orange trunks too big for his tiny waist.

  Jacqueline looked.

  Look at her, she said and laughed as Saifa threw her arms around the boy’s neck and toppled them both into the shallow water.

  Jacqueline watched the waitress walk out of the restaurant carrying a wooden tray across the terrace.

  “Breakfast,” she said, arranging the food on the table.

  A white plate piled with scrambled eggs. A basket of toast wrapped in blue cloth. Pats of butter wrapped in gold foil. A small bowl of strawberry jam. Fork and knife and spoon rolled in a paper napkin. A glass. A tall bottle of water.

  The waitress arranged these things with delicate care—each object delivered with grace. As if she could feel Jacqueline’s hunger, as if she sensed that this meal was somehow sacred. Jacqueline waited with her hands in her lap, her head slightly bowed, and felt the woman moving around her. She watched the empty coffee pot rise up off the table. She watched another land softly in its place.

  “Coffee. The second time free,” the waitress said.

  Jacqueline turned her head and glanced up. Their eyes met and the woman smiled.

  “Bon appétit.”

  “Thank you,” Jacqueline said and smiled back.

  When the waitress had gone, she began.

  She unwrapped two pats of butter and with the knife scraped them onto the eggs. She added black pepper. She reached into the warm basket, removed a triangle of toast, and buttered it. She added sugar and cream to her cup and poured the hot coffee.

  She laid the napkin across her lap.

  She put a forkful of the eggs onto the toast and then Jacqueline began to eat.

  The immediate pleasure. The feeling of warm food in her mouth, the flavor of the eggs, the overwhelming taste of salt, the faint burn of pepper.

  Everything else had been annihilated. A euphoric obliteration of memory.

  There was only the eating, which she did as slowly as she could—portioning out the eggs and toast, allowing one extra triangle, which, when the eggs were gone, she buttered and topped with jam. When all of it was gone, she drank cup after cup of the hot, sweet coffee, and when that was gone she leaned away from the table and began to drink the cold water.

  She was not ready to stop eating even if her stomach already hurt. She ran her finger across the plate collecting egg yolk and butter and bread crumbs and sucked her finger clean. She bit down lightly on the knife and drew it out of her mouth to collect the remaining jam.

  Already she could feel herself returning. Or memory returning to her. Or her mind. Or whatever it was that came rushing back. Call it memory, she thought. And for a time the act of eating displaced memory. It was like a solid thing in a pool of water and the second you removed it, the water returned. It was always like this. And she began to understand that to live, one must be able to live with memory because memory was the constant. Even for her, even in such a precarious life, when there was danger and uncertainty everywhere, when her immediate life demanded so much of her, still, memory was the constant.

  Jacqueline was barely conscious of the waitress, who had returned to clear away the plates, who may have said something to her, asked her some question.

  She felt the water rushing back to replace the solid object. It was the slow fading away of ecstasy.

  Now she saw the pyramid of oranges on the dresser. The open window. The smell of sex giving way to the smell of the ocean, to everything else that was outside. One thing fading, another thing taking its place. Orgasm giving way to sadness. Joy giving way to gloom.

  Bernard just returned, or about to leave, and Jacqueline always in one place, day after day wishing he’d come back, or wishing he wouldn’t go. And all those days so convinced of some kind of permanence, terrified that this would be her whole dull life—the car to work, the phone calls, the same drinks, the same conversations with the same journalists, the car home, the long, dull nights with her family. Dinners and listening to the radio and her parents arguing or laughing and Saifa doing her homework, feet on Jacqueline’s lap, and all the while Jacqueline wished for him, for the hum of his endless monologues, his hands, and then the quiet of their room.

  She could feel his hand moving from her breast, over her stomach, a solid pressure. This she loved above all—when it was over, once they’d caught their breath, his cool hand fit tightly between her legs, his thick palm pressing as if to soothe her. She thought of it as a kind of bridge between one world and another. She loved to lie in his arms like that. Bernard propped up on his elbow, the sheet drawn to their waists, her eyes closed. She fell asleep that way. Fell through the sadness of another afternoon ended. Fell through the sadness of that inevitable return, and into sleep. Sleep, the last separation, and then in the early evening she would wake and waking was worst of all.

  Jacqueline looked up from the table. There was the bottle of water and her glass. The wind was rising. The squares of light flashed on the table as the flowers moved above her. Her stomach cramped. She stood up, took her bag, and walked as slowly as she could manage toward the restaurant. Inside, it was dark. There were a few tables and at one of them a man with smoothed-back silver hair sat smoking while he entered numbers into an adding machine, the tape unfurling around a yellow mug.

  “Bathroom?” She’d been more abrupt than usual. She’d not included her solicitous smile, not demurred, not bowed her head or fluttered her lashes.

  Without looking up the man gestured with his head away from the kitchen. She found the bathroom down the short hallway, pulled the door closed
, locked it, and sat. She bent over in pain, sick with diarrhea. She began to sweat. She waited for her body.

  At least, she thought, I am here instead of somewhere else. At least there is this toilet. At least the door locks. At least there is paper.

  She waited while everything went out of her. She was consumed by the pain. It stabbed at her. And then, when that subsided, it was dull and round. She stayed bent over, sweating, enduring it, wishing it away.

  Again, as with eating, there was nothing else and when, eventually, it was over, she thought, Pain too is a solid thing. Pain too displaces memory.

  Now, standing at the sink, she was exhausted. She ran warm water over her hands and scrubbed them together, the pink liquid soap turning to lather. She removed her visor and rested it on the toilet tank. She dampened a brown paper towel with hot water and wiped away the cool sweat on the back of her neck, on her forehead. She pressed the hot paper to her closed eyes, to her dry lips.

  And then, finally, she looked at the mirror. She was not so bad off, she thought. Thinner, certainly. Her cheekbones even more pronounced. Her eyes a little hollow perhaps. But all in all she was not the horror she’d begun to imagine. Her hair was a bit longer, which softened her angular face. Her skin was smooth and not entirely dull. Perhaps that was the water, but it didn’t matter. In this mirror anyway, it appeared she was still alive.

  She moved the ChapStick over her lips, leaving a cool burn where the skin had cracked. She wished she had some lotion for her face. Perfume. But she stopped herself before the wishing went on.

  She dried her hands, then ran a finger over the ChapStick and used it around her eyes, over her cheeks. She washed her armpits, left them damp, and opened the door.

  On the terrace she could feel the air moving around her eyes, her lips, her cheeks—the menthol sharpening sensation. The waitress had customers, and from her table, Jacqueline watched her work. Soon the woman came over and put her hand on Jacqueline’s shoulder.

  “You are okay?”

  The gesture was a surprise.

  “Yes, yes,” she said. “I’m fine.”

  “You were gone for long. I thought maybe you were sick.”

  “No, no,” Jacqueline said. “I’m fine. I’m sorry to take so long.”

  “Good then,” the woman said, removing her hand. “I’m glad. Okay. You’d like anything else?”

  “No, thank you. Just the bill.”

  The waitress nodded and placed it facedown on the table.

  “Take your time,” she said.

  It was five for the eggs, two for the toast, two for the water, and there was one fifty more for something else she couldn’t make out. The coffee, she figured. Eleven euros. More than half of what was left. She was a fool.

  She found the twenty and laid it on the table between the bill and the saltshaker.

  Soon the waitress came back.

  “Okay?” she asked.

  “Okay,” Jacqueline said. “This, the one fifty, it’s for the coffee?”

  “No, no. That is the cover. Always a cover in Greece to sit down.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know.”

  “Many people don’t know in the beginning,” the woman said.

  “And the coffee?”

  “Today the coffee is free. Both.”

  Jacqueline looked up and saw the woman’s eyes. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Nothing,” the woman said as she looked away and began to make change. She laid the five on the table and the two coins on top.

  “Thank you,” Jacqueline said. “It was very good.”

  The woman touched her shoulder again. “Have a good day.”

  Jacqueline watched her walk away. Younger than I am, she thought.

  More charity. What was it the woman saw in her face that Jacqueline herself couldn’t see in the bathroom? She needed to identify that element so that she could remove it. Unless, of course, the element was simply her color. No mystery at all. Was being black on this island equivalent to being some kind of refugee? In Spain, she had seen both.

  On the beach in Valencia, she’d watched a tall woman, Sudanese she’d guessed, approach two black American women who were drunk and laughing beneath a broad blue umbrella. When the woman approached with a board of beaded necklaces, the two of them sobered and waved her away.

  She’d thought then, Well, I can be one or I can be the other here. But perhaps the same wasn’t true on this little island. She saw the blanket and its neat rows of sunglasses. She saw the Senegalese man waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Felt his fingernails tearing across her arm.

  She thought of the drunken Spanish man who’d crossed the wide beach in Málaga. Who’d crossed all that sand only to spit on her and kick her in the ribs and scream and scream in his slurred and incomprehensible language. She’d been sitting alone on the sand looking out at the sea, her blanket around her shoulders, and he’d come storming silently from the promenade across the beach expressly to kick her.

  So, if there were something in her face, some mysterious element she could not yet see, she’d have to find and remove it. But if it was simply her skin, then that was another problem and one to be ignored.

  And now, with her stomach still cramping, she capped the water bottle and stood up from the table. She was surprised to find the terrace filled with people. She saw now that the restaurant was attached to a hotel, a narrow white building trimmed with blue.

  She waited for the waitress and when she came out, a plate of food in each hand, Jacqueline waved. The woman raised one of the plates in farewell.

  SHE CAME TO THE BEGINNING of a worn white marble pedestrian street. It was early still, but there were a few tourists out strolling in the morning sunshine. Jacqueline tried to emulate their casual gait. They were unlike the frantic tourists in Fira who came off the cruise ships with only a few hours to spend their money.

  She passed art galleries and restaurants, jewelry stores and cafés, bars and hotels. All of them were quiet, all of them small. There were other, narrower streets that broke off this one, and down them to the left she could see flashes of blue water. She was transfixed by the town. Its polished paths and low buildings, and all its lovely order. She continued on until she came to a wide square, in front of the main church. She sat at one of the benches at the perimeter of the square and watched two men talking and spinning worry beads. Neither seemed to notice her. One of them pushed a hand through his gray hair and spoke. The other laughed and began to cough. Then they both returned to their original postures—upright and the beads spinning around and back, around and back.

  Jacqueline waited.

  She needed to find a place to sleep.

  What had changed? What would change? She could hear her parents, but somehow their voices were farther away. What was left to say? She’d started to bore them.

  To all of it, the same response. Yes, yes, yes, she thought. I know.

  A boy in a bright green T-shirt dribbled a rubber soccer ball in a diagonal across the square.

  Jacqueline thought of the waitress. That was all. The woman raising the plate of food to say good-bye.

  The men spun their worry beads.

  She wondered if she might be like them, if she could spend the rest of her life sitting on this bench watching the days change. The shifting light, the rising and falling wind. Whatever else happened here on this square. She imagined the church doors opening and closing to various services. Funerals. Easter. Weddings. Christmas. She looked up at the unlit streetlamps and imagined the square full of people. She would like to be one of them. A woman on a bench. A woman to greet in the mornings. A nod of the head. A wave in the evenings. She would go to a café and they would give her strong, sweet coffee and milk in a cup and serve it to her on a saucer with a spoon, and they would let her take it to the square because she was honorable and would always return it.

  She might carry her own worry beads to spin over her own right hand. She might kick the ball back to the children. She mi
ght impress them with her skill. Once, with her heel, she could flip a soccer ball from behind, over her head, and have it land in front her. Once, she could juggle it from foot to foot. She was sure she could do those things again. The kids might come to love her. They might know her name and she might know theirs. Some of the bolder young men might flirt with her in the evening wind, beneath the yellow lamplight. One might take her to dinner. Not the most handsome in the square. Someone else, someone calm, someone with tired eyes whose hands were always still. He might come to her, and with one hand push his hair from his forehead. They might drink a bottle of wine together on the terrace of one of these restaurants. He might put his arm around her shoulder as they walked along these smooth marble streets. She might become friends with his mother and sometimes just the two of them might sneak away from the men and sit outside somewhere hidden, where they’d get drunk together and share a cigarette.

  Or perhaps, she thought, I’ll just be here alone. The strange black woman with the worry beads. The woman who stayed while all the other tourists went home. Who refused to leave even after the weather turned bad, the strange woman who stayed, who’s here every night at her bench. That would be all right too. Just to be the woman on the square. The woman who feeds the feral dogs. Who can do that trick with the soccer ball. That would be okay too, she thought. As long as they’d let me bring a cup of coffee into the square, let me sit here with it balancing on a saucer.

  Jacqueline took a breath and stood up. She smiled at the men as she left the square, but they didn’t seem to notice.

  She wandered on along the walkway, going deeper into the village until she saw a blue domed church. She turned down a side street, descended some steps, and stood before it for a while. She waited here watching tourists take photographs of the dome against the sea.

  She thought of going in to find her mother in the cool half-light, but the door was locked, so she continued on to the very far end of the island, where she discovered an old fort, most of it in ruins. She followed some tourists up the steps. She looked off the edge into the unprotected water outside the caldera and beyond that where there were other islands, one fading into another. They were shadows that went on and on and on.