The Drifter

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by Christine Lennon


  “This place is freaking me out,” whispered Gavin into Betsy’s ear. They were standing on the periphery of the crowd, hanging back so far that Betsy could convince herself they were watching the service on a screen, like it was happening to someone else.

  There was a small tent over the freshly excavated earth, and a circle of grieving friends and family that extended about twenty feet in every direction around it. Betsy and Gavin couldn’t hear a word of the service until one of Ginny’s cousins, a bartender and occasional busker in Tallahassee who Nana Jean referred to as an “aspiring musician,” took out a guitar and played “Life Without You” by Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had also died on August 27th, the same day as Ginny. Betsy felt weirdly angry that more people in the world would remember that day in honor of him and not the most important person in her world. As the heavy raindrops started to fall, umbrellas shot up one by one, slowly at first, and then in a flurry, like popping corn. Some were tasteful, somber, and black, like you see in the movie-version of funerals, and others were Florida-style, large and garish, awning striped, emblazoned with the crests of country clubs across the state, and pulled from golf bags when the sky loomed ominous and dark.

  The smell of rain was intense in the cemetery. The drops fell to the already damp earth, which was dense with decaying plants. Betsy hardly noticed she was wet until there was a low, distant growl of thunder, and Gavin touched her arm and motioned for them to leave. Then she felt someone grab her other wrist.

  “There you are,” said Caroline, who was holding an umbrella large enough to cover the two of them, but Betsy kept her distance.

  “Hey,” Betsy said, still hiding behind her sunglasses.

  “I assume you spoke to the police? I know that they were looking for you,” said Caroline.

  “I did. I got your message. I called Officer Mendes and went in to answer his questions yesterday,” Betsy said, praying her inquiry would end there.

  BETSY AND GAVIN drove back from New Orleans immediately after they saw the story in the paper, after her conversation with Kathy, but Betsy was in shock, not quite believing what she had heard. They found Ginny and the other victim on the same morning, though the woman had been dead for three days. They went to Nana Jean’s first, then back to Gavin’s house for a bottle of emergency Valium in his medicine cabinet. Then they went straight to the police station. They had settled on a story. Betsy left the party at Weird Bobby’s house after her fight with Mack, walked across campus, found a bike, and was riding toward Ginny’s apartment. She didn’t know Ginny had left the sorority house. As far as Betsy knew, Ginny and Caroline were staying the night there. Betsy was disoriented and scared after her argument with her ex-boyfriend, Mack, and wasn’t sure why she wanted to go to that apartment instead of her own. She thought it would be more comfortable. Gavin left the party to come look for her, and spotted her on 16th Street, down the block from Williamsburg Village. Betsy ditched the bike she was riding, jumped in his car, and they made a plan to get out of town, to go visit a couple of Gavin’s friends and get away from the chaos on campus. It made sense. It was clear that Betsy was not a suspect, and after a half hour of simple questions about her whereabouts, Betsy was free to go. The detectives had their hands full, trying to catch a murderer, and Betsy, who was barely responsive, wasn’t much help. She apologized for stealing the bike and offered to repay the owner, if he or she ever came forward to report it stolen.

  “SO THAT’S IT. That’s all you have to say to me?” said Caroline.

  “What do you want me to say?” said Betsy. “I can barely breathe. You can stand up in front of a church full of people and talk about her, and I can’t get through a single sentence without sobbing.”

  “Do you think that makes me miss her less? Do you think I’m some kind of awful, insensitive person because I’m not a mess like you?” Caroline said.

  Viv walked over and placed a hand on Betsy’s shoulder.

  “Caroline, that’s enough,” she said. “It’s clear that you and Betsy are grieving. Ginny was important to both of you. You can help each other through this, you know. You need to help each other.”

  “I . . . I can’t,” said Betsy, and she rushed back to Gavin’s car to make the short drive to Nana Jean’s house. The wide porch that Betsy remembered so fondly was filled with people huddled in small groups, talking in low whispers. They found a corner of the dining room, ignoring a table full of Jell-O salads, casseroles, and a spiral cut ham. The day was far from over. Betsy’s mom, Kathy, was driving up to Ocala for the day to offer her condolences to Ginny’s family, and Betsy would have to introduce her to Gavin, which she was dreading. Betsy’s face was wet again with tears which, like the rain, had started to come down in big, round drops that rolled heavily down her face, dripped off of her chin, and fell to the floor.

  CHAPTER 12

  THRIFT STORE CHRONICLES

  November 17, 1990

  Betsy stood in front of the bakery case at Publix, surveying the brightly lit confections constructed from perfect, squat circles of bleached flour, spackled smooth with whipped powdered sugar and shortening, and edged in puffy, colorful trim. In five days, she would be twenty-one. That seemed like a good enough reason to buy a slice of cake, which she planned to eat in the grocery store parking lot before she returned to work as the sole employee of Timeless Treasures, a vintage store, or junk shop, depending on whom you asked, down the street from her mom’s house in Venice.

  Outside of the freezing store, Betsy popped open the plastic clamshell package and scooped off a swipe of frosting with a weak plastic fork. She placed the airy sweetness—with just the right dash of salt—on her tongue, and all of the bleakness of that place disappeared. She walked slowly through the parking lot, dodging cars driven by ancient drivers barely tall enough to peer over the steering wheels of their white sedans, savoring every crumb. While she waited for the light to turn at the crosswalk, she looked around her and realized that she was the only person on the sidewalk who was actually on foot. Everyone else had wheels: rollators, walkers, electric Amigos. Betsy knew that selling the possessions of long-dead people, surrounded by the practically dying, was no way to be almost-twenty-one. For the moment, at least she had cake.

  When she arrived at the door there was a woman outside waiting, impatiently, for Betsy to return from her lunch break, five minutes late. Betsy forced a smile. The woman glanced at her watch, then at the sign Betsy had taped to the window, which said Back at 1:00. Betsy opened the door and flicked on the light switch.

  “It’s just me today. Sally’s picking up some new inventory from an estate in Sarasota,” said Betsy, feeling that an explanation was more necessary than an apology. She resumed her spot on a tall stool behind the giant, 1960s cash register and pulled out a spiral notebook to continue the letter to Gavin she’d started writing that morning. Her schoolwork, which she was submitting by correspondence, was almost finished for the semester. She had two more papers to write before she was a college graduate, but the long letters she wrote to Gavin, sometimes as many as three a week, were her last ties to Gainesville. She read a few lines on the page to remember where she left off.

  If you thought I was already a high-achieving pen pal, just wait. I’m going to be the correspondent to shame all other correspondents. I’m going to own that mailman, or mailperson (mail supervisor?) now that Ole Sally, my boss, has declared my Walkman headphones unprofessional. She has also claimed that my reading habit is distracting me from my work, and the customers get the wrong impression about my dedication to selling a bunch of secondhand shit. Or I should say customer, singular, because exactly one person has walked through the door so far today. So One Hundred Years of Solitude will have to wait until I’m home, in solitude, which I suppose is for the best. And the good people of Venice, Florida, who want to come sort through the belongings of the recently deceased, a pastime sometimes referred to as “thrifting,” will now see me scribbling in this spiral notebook and think that I am an industr
ious employee making some kind of inventory list. When in reality I will be scribbling total bullshit, which I will then put in an envelope with your address on it.

  Betsy searched the desk and her pockets for the black felt pen she had been using, but when she couldn’t find it, she relented and used a blue one, even though the sight of gummy, blue ballpoint ink on lined paper made her a little queasy.

  Hey, sorry for the pen change. I can already tell that you’re blown away by my fancy stationery. It’s going to be Mead spiral notebooks for me from now on because I am saving my scheckels (sp? shechles? shekels?) for something amazing. A M A Z I N G! Like, bubble-letter poster amazing. More on that later.

  The good news is that today is Saturday and so I have the day off tomorrow. The bad news is that tomorrow is Sunday so my mom will probably read the classifieds, aloud, again. Kathy continues to scour the St. Petersburg Times in search of my life’s purpose. You’d think she would just be happy that the dark days are over. I finally got out of bed. I’m wearing something other than pajamas and I’m out the door by ten. But no. Last week she announced that First Union was hiring tellers, but she was hiding behind the paper like it was some kind of shield when she said it. When I laughed at the prospect, she launched into another one of her lectures about goals. She reminded me that I wanted to be an art teacher when I was in third grade. Who doesn’t want to be an art teacher when they’re nine? Except you? And look how those dreams of being the Incredible Hulk turned out for you? At least she vowed never to mention the flight attendant thing again. She said, “Oh, clearly that’s beneath you.” And when I pointed out that, technically, it was above me (pointing to the sky for emphasis), she chucked her toast at my head. Doesn’t she know how terribly unpopular a sky waitress with crippling depression is?

  The lone customer in the shop, who now appeared to be perpetually, chronically irritated, cleared her throat to get Betsy’s attention and held up a teacup.

  Hold on. There’s a teacup emergency.

  “May I help you?” Betsy asked.

  “I have a question,” the woman said. “This teacup is missing its saucer.”

  “That’s technically a statement, not a question, but you’re right,” said Betsy. “It is missing a saucer. That’s why we’re selling it on the half-price table for fifty cents.”

  Betsy picked up her pen and got back to the letter.

  I have to do something extreme, Gavin. I don’t have a choice. I know that I only have $820 and I’m still afraid to leave my house after dark, but I have to get out of here. My mom has a morbid collection of newspaper clippings that she keeps in a folder on her desk in the kitchen. (I had no idea how Goth she was.) But there are no new details. Caroline called once but I can’t call her back. She’s still pissed at me for spacing out at the funeral. But you know I couldn’t deal. Have you seen her? I know I’m always desperate for details. Sorry. I just ate a piece of Publix cake for lunch and now I am crashing, hard, from the sugar. I hope this letter makes it to you before you get here. I have big plans for the big 2–1. We’ll go to Sharky’s on the pier and I will buy you a shot every time a Jimmy Buffett song plays. It’s going to be huge. Then, I’ve got two more papers to write and I’m done. I’ll get my diploma by mail. How’s that for a major college graduation flameout? My professors don’t know how to deal with me when I call, you know the emotionally fragile girl who lost her best friend thing. So I’ve just been plowing through the work and sending it in. This semester might be my best shot at straight A’s, right? Right? It’s a pity party but I’m putting on my best dress and going. My mom wants to see me graduate, the whole cap and gown thing, but I am not ready to go back. Not even by next month. I know that the killer is gone, and that no one else died after Ginny. But what if he comes back? Until they catch this guy, I won’t be able to sleep. And Gainesville? I’m not going back. I’m getting as far away from that place as possible.

  The customer left without buying anything, and the wooden door slammed behind her with a jangle from cheap wind chimes.

  That brings me back to that amazing thing I mentioned before: I’m moving to New York. At least, I want to move to New York. And I want you to come with me. Maybe we can figure out the careers we’ve dreamed about all of our lives together? Are you in?

  Betsy paused for a moment, considering what she was proposing. She wouldn’t have the nerve to say it over the phone or ask him in person, so this was the only way.

  I’m actually totally, deadly serious.

  Anyway, sorry for the novella. Pretty soon I’ll have to start springing for a second stamp. Write me, please! I need to know that people are out there among the living, buying things that are new or newish, not stuck among the half-dead, wondering how to feel alive again.

  Lots of love,

  Betsy

  CHAPTER 13

  THE BIG PLAN

  December 31, 1990

  Betsy sat cross-legged on the spot of the warped, sloping floor nearest the radiator. Everyone else in the apartment, the ten other stragglers who chose to ring in 1991 downing cheap whiskey in the railroad apartment of Gavin’s high school friend Ari on 3rd Street and Avenue B, were complaining about the heat. The harsh, dusty warmth blasting from the paint-encrusted tangle of pipes felt just fine to Betsy. Even a few inches away from it she was shivering, and tempted to dig her coat out of the pile on Ari’s bed to wear indoors. Only the fear of being mocked by Ari’s friends, all fellow NYU students who were, collectively, quick-witted and cynical in a way that Betsy found incredibly intimidating, kept her from doing it. She was afraid to open her mouth, to utter anything at all that might reveal that she was the hick they all assumed she was, and would rather lose a toe or two to frostbite than admit she was freezing in that airless tomb of a room. She’d first noticed she was cold in South Carolina, the day before yesterday. Or was it yesterday? She couldn’t remember. They stopped at a gas station so she could use the pay phone and she hadn’t been warm since.

  Betsy was outside of Charleston before she worked up the nerve to call her mom to announce that she and Gavin were moving to New York. She had rehearsed her short speech across the eastern edge of Georgia and for a few excruciating minutes her mom listened to it in silence. It wasn’t until Betsy got to the part about calling with an address when she got settled that she was interrupted.

  “You don’t even have a warm coat,” Kathy said. “Where in God’s name are you going to live?”

  “Gavin’s got a friend in the East Village,” she said. “We’ll stay with her until we can find a place. Once I get a job.”

  Betsy pictured her scowling in the silence on the other end of the line.

  “I got that leopard coat at the shop, you know with the big collar,” she said, wondering why she was talking to her mom about lapels on a pay phone in the parking lot of a Waffle House off of the highway. “I can buy another one. Some gloves, you know, the usual.”

  “You know that I can’t help you right now,” said Kathy, sounding smaller, more distant than the five hundred miles between them. “If you’re stuck, you’re stuck. I won’t be able to bail you out.”

  Betsy couldn’t remember the last time she’d asked her mother for help, or even the last time she had told her the truth. She knew she would judge her. She knew she would use the exact tone that was vibrating through the receiver. Betsy pictured her mom standing in the tiny Venice kitchen, a kettle taking forever to boil on the electric stovetop, that low wall of 1980s-era glass blocks behind her that distorted anything you saw through it. She had never been able to talk to her mom about the ugly stuff, the complicated, gritty side of her life that would have made her look like a failure. The fact that Betsy was moving to New York to live with her boyfriend was not information Kathy would share with pride.

  “I know,” she said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “You’re too scared to go back to Gainesville, but you’ll move to New York on a dare? With a boy you barely know? That’s taking care of you
rself? Betsy, I just don’t understand you.”

  “He’s an adult, Mom, not a boy. I’m twenty-one years old. How old were you when you got married, anyway? Twenty-two? You can’t call the shots for me anymore,” she said, shaking with nerves and rage. New York seemed less terrifying because there was enough noise and plenty of distractions to drown out whatever was in her head, like New Orleans. Maybe there were killers there, but Betsy was convinced it would be easier to spot them or to hide from them. There were other threats back home that her mother wouldn’t understand, and Betsy couldn’t explain.

  Their plan had been hatched after Thanksgiving. Betsy floated the idea in one of her letters, and had been shocked when Gavin asked to hear more about her fantasy life “up north.” In the long, rambling letters they’d exchanged during the months she’d spent in Venice, they’d constructed the Big Plan, though all it really amounted to was a rough departure date, a AAA TripTik with driving directions from Jacksonville to Manhattan, and a forced invitation to sleep on someone’s lumpy pullout sofa. There was a part of Betsy that never imagined either of them had the guts to pull the trigger.

  By mid-December, she had mailed her final papers, stored a couple of boxes with her belongings in the back of her closet, stashed her warmest clothes in a duffel bag, and boarded a bus to Jacksonville. She told her mom that she was spending Christmas vacation with Gavin’s family and then she’d decide what was next after that. Kathy stood in the parking lot of the bus station with her arms folded, certain her daughter was making a mistake of some kind but unable to pinpoint exactly why.

 

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