Catch My Drift

by Genevieve Scott

  “No, but—”

  “All I’m saying is that Girl Friday is not a serious job.”

  Lorna flinched. “Girl Friday?”

  “Or whatever. It’s a dead end.”

  Something had happened. It was so obvious.

  “I understand,” Lorna said. She stood to meet Lizbeth at eye level. “We’ll make this your last day.”

  “I’m glad to stay the next two weeks. I don’t want to put anyone out.”

  “You already said that, and you’re not,” Lorna said. “We’ll make sure you’re paid. I’ll put out a memo.”

  Lorna shook the girl’s small, sweaty hand.

  ...

  Shortly after five, after Lizbeth and most everyone had cleared out, Lorna found Ian in his office. She held her notebook tight to her chest and tapped lightly on his half-opened door. Ian put his pencil down on a stack of paper. Lorna took a quiet step inside. “I had the talk with Lizbeth.”

  “I caught a word with her as well.” Ian arched his shoulders and rolled them back. “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”

  Lorna put her hands on the back of a leather chair across from Ian. “She said she thinks it’ll be difficult to move up here.”

  “And what did you say to that?”

  Lorna stared out at the lake. It had been humid all week, but today was the stickiest, the stillest. Only one small green sailboat stood on the water, and it was fixed in place. Square in the middle of Ian’s windowpane. “She thinks it’s difficult here for women. Specifically.”

  Ian looked at her. “But you were promoted, weren’t you? Did you bring that up?”

  Lorna tightened her grip on the back of the chair. “Did anything happen, Ian?”

  “What sort of thing?”

  Lorna gave him a sharp look. “You know.”

  Ian chuckled. “I do know one thing. You won’t miss her.”

  “I hardly knew her.”

  “But you didn’t like her. She knew it; I knew it.”

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Lorna wondered if this was what it was like to be a participant in Ian’s focus groups. This was squeezing blood from a stone. “I mean she was a bit . . . ” Lorna let that trail off.

  “You could have been nurturing. Taken her under your wing.”

  Lorna dug the back of her left heel into the carpet. “I think she got plenty of attention from you.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Everyone saw it.”

  “What, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, Ian. Anything is possible at this point.”

  “Jesus, Lorna.” Ian stood up from his desk. “We had a talk once. Of everyone here, I would have least expected this kind of an accusation from you.”

  “If I’m wrong then I apologize.” Lorna’s voice was rickety.

  “You’re wrong,” Ian said.

  Lorna didn’t apologize.

  Ian picked up a toothpick then put it down again. “Lizbeth was clever, hard-working, ambitious. You felt threatened and she paid for that.”

  “So I made her quit?”

  “You made her quit.”

  “That’s a laugh!”

  It was the oddest choice of phrase. Loudmouthed yet old fashioned. The kind of phrase Lorna associated with people like Ian’s wife. She tried to think of another rebuttal, but right there, at the edge of Ian’s brown leather writing pad, was a glob of spit. Her spit. Bubbly and shaped like an exclamation mark. He was looking at it, too. And now that they were both looking, it felt impossible to look away.

  Ian slid his finger over the drop of saliva. He studied his moistened index for a long moment before slipping his hand into his pocket. Lorna looked quickly back at the lake.

  “Look,” Ian said after a moment. “Let’s drop it. I’m sorry.”

  Lorna nodded but didn’t look. She was not sure which thing he was apologizing for. Sleeping with Lizbeth? Accusing Lorna of insufficient nurturing? Touching her saliva?

  Lorna heard Ian’s footsteps move past her. Dignified of him, she thought, to leave and give her a minute. But he stopped moving before he reached the door. “Christ, Lorna. I want . . . ” His hand was on her shoulder, pressure from his fingertips on her skin.

  Lorna kept on looking at the window. The green sailboat was no longer in the middle of the pane; it had been moving, just very slowly.

  “Lorna. I . . . ”

  Lorna closed her eyes. She smelled mint-flavoured toothpicks. Maybe there never were any rumours. She felt a shudder deep down and tried not to think of how she looked to Ian with her eyes closed. If she opened them, she would need to say something, give him a certain kind of look. It was too risky; any small thing and he could change his mind. Better just to stay like this, do nothing but wait. Wait for his hands on her face, the scrape of his stubble, the crude knock of teeth.

  Catch My Drift

  Summer, 1991

  A parasite is in the lake algae. Heike says the neighbourhood kids are breaking out in itchy red bumps. From the end of our dock, with my toes curled over, I can see the electric green blooms sway underwater. There is no point in being up here if we can’t swim. I dip my tennis racquet into the lake and swirl the green muck around the racquet’s face and neck.

  The cottage belonged to my dad’s parents once, and he spent all summer here when he was a kid. When I was little, we came up here, too: Mom, Dad, Jed, and me. But after Mom kicked Dad out, no one visited for a long, long time. You can tell because it smells like a wet phonebook inside. Dad moved in after losing his job at the bank a couple of months ago.

  The lunchtime sun feels like needles at the back of my neck. I get this idea that I’m going to throw myself off the dock and into the algae, the green slime sucking against my mouth like hair in the drain. I step back from the edge and try to think of something happy. Even when it’s daylight and the sun is out, even when I’m supposed to be having a good time on vacation, sometimes I get this scared feeling in my chest, same as when I hear a bang in the middle of the night. It’s a little like the hell-thoughts I used to get, but there’s no words attached. It’s just a bad feeling that tunnels right through me. I try to knock the algae off the racquet, but it clings. I fling the racquet and watch it twirl onto the shore. I don’t care what happens to it. No one will play tennis with me here, and the walls of the cottage are too uneven to bounce against.

  The planks on the dock dip under my steps, so I walk carefully, balancing my weight and holding my arms out to the sides. Step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back. Step on a line and you’ll break your mother’s spine. I’m looking down so it takes me a moment to notice the boy grabbing my racquet, putting his hand right into the foam that rolls off the lake onto the shore. He looks my age but paler and bonier in a pair of orange swim trunks. His skin is covered in pink bumps.

  “Don’t touch,” I say. “It has algae.”

  “I just want to borrow it.” He jerks his long blond bangs off his forehead.

  “What for?”

  “Just wait.”

  I squint up at the yellow cottage to see if anyone’s watching. Heike’s busy pinning laundry up on the line outside. She’s a recorder teacher from Germany who parks her camper van in the cottage driveway and uses all our stuff. She wears dresses with jeans underneath and has hairy armpits. Dad calls her “my friend Heike.”

  There’s nothing else going on, so I follow the boy down the beach, trying to count the spots on his back, but there are so many and some of them are smeared together. We walk until we get to the spot that people call the lighthouse. There’s no real house, just a pile of reeds and rocks around a silver pole with blue and orange lights on top.

  The boy digs his foot into the wet sand. “What’s your name?” he says.

  “What’s yours?”

  “Simon.” He flicks the sand at the rocks. “See that?”

  A pale grey snake, thick as a fire hose, is twisted up against the rocks.

  “Is it alive?”

  “That’s
why I need this.” He holds up the racquet.

  “We should leave it alone.”

  Crouching, Simon goes right up to the snake, the racquet held out. He shovels it up and flips it over, splitting its skin like a rotten banana. A million white worms pour out from the middle; more worms than I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

  I kick sand at it. “Sick!”

  “We can’t just cover it up. Say a dog comes and eats it.”

  “Do dogs eat snakes?”

  “Eel,” he says. He scratches a spot on his arm then licks his finger and scrubs the sore with spit. “I’ll get a box from my house.”

  I don’t know what we’ll do with a box, but I stay while he jogs back, watching the worms spray across the sand like a spilled box of Minute Rice. I wait a long time but the scared feeling comes back, prickling up through my armpits. I draw seven X’s with my toe in the sand. I want to go tap the rocks at the bottom of the lighthouse, but I’m trying not to tap stuff anymore. I read a story in Teen Day about kids who have this disease that makes them wash their hands a hundred times a day or turn the lights on and off all night. One girl wouldn’t leave the house until she drew a perfect O, so she just kept drawing and drawing until she went completely crazy and had to get locked away in some hospital. I don’t want to get that disease.

  The worms can’t hurt you, I tell myself without tapping. They’re teeny weeny, and the eel is dead. But I can feel my heartbeat in both sides of my neck, and when the wind swishes the reeds, making the sound of one thousand knives, I take off down the beach.

  Heike’s making beet burgers for dinner. I sit on the counter while she chops the curled root tails and peels the dark skin so the beets bleed over her hands. It flashes into my head that the beet juice is real blood, that I stabbed Heike without really meaning to do it. I hop off the counter and move as far across the kitchen as possible.

  Heike says, “That boy? He has the disease.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You like him?” Heike smiles down at her stupid beets.

  “I just met him.”

  Jed pulls a hot dog out of the microwave. He won’t eat Heike’s beet burgers. “We don’t care about the water disease,” he says. “And just so you know, Cara’s best friend Sam Grossman is Jewish.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Dad says.

  Jed looks at me and rolls his eyes.

  We eat out on the picnic table and barely talk. Dad asks what we did all day and I tell him nothing, there’s nothing to do.

  Jed says, “Hey, Heike? Can I call you Hike-a-mountain?”

  Heike winks at Dad. “How’s your joke going? Call me how you want, just don’t call me late for dinner?” She makes a snorting noise.

  “Oh my god,” Jed says. He looks at Dad and me, smirking. “She actually laughed at that?”

  “Your joke wasn’t any better,” Dad says, prying the cap off a beer.

  Heike lets out a big breath and then smiles at everyone with cigarette teeth. “Who wants dessert?”

  The cake she brings out looks like a yellow sponge and tastes like alcohol. I mash mine with my fork until it coats the bottom of my plate.

  “Cara, you’re thirteen years old. Don’t play with your food for god’s sake,” Dad says.

  “Is it supposed to be soaking wet?” This makes Jed laugh.

  Heike smiles again. “This is special German cake.”

  “Is it made from ground up Jewish people?” Jed’s cake is pushed aside and he’s chipping at the table with the end of his knife.

  “Jed!” Dad says. “What is with you?”

  Heike puts her hand on Dad’s hairy arm. “Perhaps Jed is wanting to discuss the war?”

  “That’s not what this is about.” Dad glares at Jed and me. He picks up his fork and makes a big loop and one of those stupid cereal commercial Mmm faces as he pops the cake into his mouth. He puts his arm around Heike’s shoulders when he’s done chewing.

  “I knew it!” Jed gets up from the table, a red stain spreading down the middle of his face. “She is your girlfriend.”

  Dad pulls his arm back. “Jed,” he says.

  “Your girlfriend’s cake sucks the bag.” He turns and heads toward the porch.

  Heike pulls the cake pan to her chest. A lump slides in her neck. Dad doesn’t yell or even get up. He puts his hand on Heike’s. “Ignore him.”

  Why would Dad tell Heike to ignore us? We’re the ones who are supposed to be here. I untangle myself from the bench and join Jed on the porch. Jed and I were always friends at the lake, and it looks like Dad and Heike are going to be their own team.

  “See that?” Jed says now, his eyes narrow, practically spitting at the porch screen. “Laughing at her own jokes again.” Heike’s turned away from us, facing the breakwater. Dad’s hand is between her shoulders. The fabric of her dress stretches with each tug of breath.

  At breakfast Dad tries to be all cheery again. “Hotter than Hades,” he says. “Who wants to go for a dip?” I look at him with slitted don’t-be-stupid eyes. We’re not supposed to go in the lake. Jed doesn’t answer like usual. He has a wall of cereal boxes set up all around his place at the table.

  “Cara’ll come to the pool with me,” Dad says. He slams his hands together like goody gumdrops. Dad used to make fun of people who went to the pool when there’s a whole lake to swim in. “Why swim in a toilet?” he’d say. This year he makes the pool sound like Disneyland.

  The pool is packed with kids and the concrete already burns at ten in the morning. Other girls my age sit in little groups without any parents. Dad and I lay our towels down and then Dad goes, “It’s been real!” and cannonballs into the deep end, splashing two teenage girls in bright bikinis. One of them says, “Manners much?” while he’s still underwater. I lean back on my towel and let the sun push down on my face, wishing I were somebody else — and anywhere else but here.

  When Dad surfaces, he waves from the middle of the pool, showing off his clumpy deodorant. “Come on, Care Bear!” he says.

  The girls look over at me. One of them whispers to the other and they both laugh and paddle their toes, their nail polish shining underwater.

  Dad heaves himself out of the pool making all sorts of embarrassing grunts. “Too sophisticated to go swimming, eh?”

  “Why swim in a toilet?”

  He stands over me and the cold drops of water are ice hitting my skin. “Heike’s very concerned about the lake,” he says. “She’s a brainiac on plant biology. Not worth the argument, if you catch my drift.”

  Mom and Dad thought it was worth it to argue about everything. Where to park the car, when to clear the dishes, how to cut an onion.

  “By the way,” Dad says, streaking suntan lotion all over his face, “is Jed always this cheesed off?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, what does he like to do?”

  “Watch the Simpsons. Tetris.”

  Over in the shallow end, a teenaged girl has her legs wrapped around a boy’s waist, and one of her bathing suit straps floats down by her elbow so that you can practically see her boob. Dad squints at her too, which is embarrassing. I wonder if he notices that I have boobs starting. The last time we went to a pool together, he could still throw me across the water. I pull at the towel to cover up my chest; boobs are weird for dads to see.

  “My friend Heike bothers him.” Dad nods, frowning.

  “I guess.”

  “Why don’t you let Heike give you a recorder lesson?”

  I scrunch up my nose and draw a hangman with my finger in the wet drops on the deck. “Is she going to be here all week?”

  “The thing is, Cara,” Dad says, propping himself up with an elbow. “The thing is, it can be lonely up here without you guys. Heike’s good company.”

  “Better company than Mom?”

  Dad makes a click-click sound with his mouth like he’s trying to get a horse going. “That’s a complicated question, Care Bear,” he says. “Things cha
nge.”

  I think about Mom alone in our ugly apartment building. It’s idiotic for things to change and for everything to end up worse. Heike is a way worse girlfriend than Mom. She doesn’t even shave.

  Dad pulls a cigarette out from his sports bag and lights a match.

  “I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke here.”

  “I mean, not everything changes,” he says, shaking out the flame. “I love you and Jed more than anyone.”

  “Do you love Heike?” I trace five spaces into the concrete for her name.

  “Come on.” He narrows his eyes as he sucks the cigarette.

  “Well?”

  He pats my knee. “Don’t worry about that too much, all right?”

  Clouds move overhead and the jiggling blobs of sunlight fade all at once on the pool. Kids in the water are laughing, splashing, spitting. I get that scared feeling again. What if someone poisoned the pool? What if I poisoned the pool somehow and I don’t even know it? I open and close the locker pin on my towel seven times. “Dad, do you ever think things you don’t want to think about?”

  But Dad’s not looking at me. His attention is on the girls at the edge of the pool. The one in a purple bikini is speaking to him: “Got an extra butt?”

  “Sure do,” Dad says even though she’s fifteen, max. He slides over and lights her cigarette while she dips her blond head. “Don’t tell on me,” he whispers. The girls giggle, which makes Dad smile all crinkle eyed. I wipe out my drawing and roll onto my other side.

  The couple in the shallow end of the pool is still going at it; they don’t care that everyone is staring. Then I see this sunburnt fat guy come crashing down the ladder and charge toward them shouting “Fuck!” and “Bitch!” Everyone goes crazy in the shallow end, scrambling to get out of the way. The fatty wraps his arms around the other guy’s neck while the girl kicks herself free and staggers up the pool steps with her strap still down, her pink and white boob just hanging there. I check if Dad’s looking, but he’s watching the boys.

  The lifeguard blows his whistle over and over but the boys don’t stop. The fatty has the first guy by the bangs and punches him in the face. Now there’s blood. Blood all over the guy’s face and dripping into the pool.