Catch My Drift

by Genevieve Scott

“Is there a phone we can use there?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Neither of the children had asked her very much about Black River. Lorna wasn’t involved in the talk Alex had with them, though she’d cautioned him against saying he “needed a break from it all,” as he’d told her, worried this kind of language would make the kids feel they were a burden. Alex believed it was healthy for the kids to know that adults are fallible, that sometimes they need redirection, too. His fixation on honesty was frustrating to Lorna. He thought being honest was so virtuous that it released him from having to care about the effect of what he said or did on other people’s feelings.

  The landscape approaching Black River was a stretch of old highway lined with deep ditches. Every mile or so, a cluster of beige doublewides would sprout up like fungus across fields of yellow-brown grass, each lawn scattered with plastic toys, dogs on chains, more support for Bush than Clinton. Not the sort of place that felt ripe for a commune. A brown shingle reading private residence marked the turn that Lorna missed the first time. The road to the centre was narrow and overgrown. Branches pushed and scraped against the station wagon as Lorna, bent nervously over the wheel, drove over two bridges, past a netless tennis court, and then a weathered pioneer-style hut with a sign on the door that said day of rest.

  They arrived at an abrupt clearing of grass surrounded by woods. A spiral path of stones wound its way up to a large converted barn that looked neither old nor new, maybe something from the 1960s. A smaller brown lodge with a sloped roof and wood-shingled porch stood a few feet away.

  Alex had clearly been waiting, and he was out the door as soon as Lorna’s car pulled up. He wore a white nightgown-style garment with flouncy white trousers that fluttered to the grass. His feet were bare, but it wasn’t warm. He looked skinny. Why did Alex get to be so skinny? Lorna felt a surge of envy. Skinny, free place to live, no kids’ guidance counsellor to deal with. How was it fair that Alex got to have all of this?

  Alex folded his hands together and bowed from the waist as Lorna and the kids got out of the car. He approached the kids first, pants swishing. Cara hugged her father but Jed held back, his hands rammed in his pockets. You could hear the river hiss somewhere behind the barn.

  “Why did you grow your hair like that?” Cara asked. Alex’s hair was almost as long as Jed’s now but thinning substantially at the top. Lorna could see the pink dome of his scalp when the wispy strands lifted in the wind.

  Alex ignored the question and put a hand on Jed’s shoulder, pulling him in for a side hug. Lorna envied Alex’s ease in touching Jed. She hadn’t dared touch her son in so long.

  “I gotta piss,” Jed said.

  Alex took the bags Lorna was unloading. Up close he smelled like cloves and something not fresh, maybe lamb stew. “Welcome.” He squeezed Lorna’s upper arm. It made her feel fat.

  Inside the barn, Alex said that BRPC was once a Boy Scout camp that their “mentor,” a man by the name of Neel Joshi, bought in the late 1970s. Neel Joshi — born Neil Johnston from Detroit — had trained in spiritual techniques in India and Nepal. According to Alex, Neel was truly gifted and really committed to his ideals, “not at all like the hacks they profile on 60 Minutes.” Alex spoke quickly as he showed them around. He said that at Black River, people came and went as they pleased. There was no true hierarchy. No forced rules. Everyone fell into harmony in their routines, even in their very personal quest for oneness.

  “So where is everyone?” Jed asked.

  “Meditation,” Alex answered. “All thirty-three.” His eyes went starry, the way they would after three too many drinks. “It’s a beautiful thing. You’ll see.”

  “How does it get paid for?” Lorna asked. “This whole . . . set-up?”

  “There are many different ways of organizing the world,” Alex said, mostly to the children, who didn’t appear to be listening.

  Lorna sighed and gave in. “And what’s this Neel Joshi’s way?”

  “We’re self-maintaining!” Alex grinned broadly.

  “I see.”

  Alex explained that BRPC was sustained by donations as well as revenue from the gift and fresh veg market, which operated out of the little pioneer hut they’d passed on the drive in. Lorna couldn’t come up with any idea of who was stopping to buy gifts. Beyond that, Alex said, the residents ran everything themselves: cooking, cleaning, general maintenance. “Our mentor has built a little ecosystem,” Alex said. “A new order.”

  “Sounds like an egosystem,” Lorna said.

  “You’ll meet Neel,” Alex said. “You’ll see.”

  The barn contained the dining hall, a common room, and the women’s dormitories. Each dorm room had four to six beds, but Lorna and Cara were given a special guest room — just two single beds with blaringly white sheets. A shared bathroom was down a long corridor. Rooms had switches on the wall, but no light bulbs. Alex showed them a drawer with a package of white candles and cheap terra cotta lanterns. Electricity was only connected to the bathrooms, kitchen, and dining hall. “We rise to greet the sun,” Alex explained. Lorna glanced at Jed who was leaning against the doorframe. He generally rose after one in the afternoon. He gave no reaction.

  “Then what?” Cara asked.

  “We do meditation first thing,” Alex said. “Then work practice.”

  “What’s work practice?” Cara asked this in a way that made Lorna smile. She felt proud that Cara seemed to instantly recognize the silliness of the phrase: Do you practise working? Do adults here actually do anything? It was very easy for Lorna to understand what Alex liked about this place. He could go weeks without making a single decision. He didn’t need to open bills or visit the laundromat or negotiate when to see his children. His day was set out for him: meditation, chanting, staying in one place, and thinking endlessly about himself. No pressure to do anything at all.

  “We harvest vegetables, cook, dredge the pond,” he said. What on earth was Alex doing dredging a pond? And cooking? When they all lived together, Alex made french toast with cinnamon on top about four times a year and expected everyone to fall off their chairs with praise. Otherwise he had always been terrible in the kitchen, timidly backing away from any assignment. “You do it all so well,” he’d say to Lorna, as though flattery could conceal his laziness. Any task she gave him, she ended up snatching back.

  “I generally work in the vegetable and gift market,” Alex said, mostly addressing Lorna. “It’s sort of a senior position.” Hadn’t he just told her there was no hierarchy here?

  “Where will Jed work practice?” Cara asked.

  “Everywhere,” Alex said, rubbing Cara’s shoulder and then glancing at Jed a few feet away. “He’s going to feel connected to himself. Feel connected to the people around him. Feel consequences.” Lorna wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t worth the earnest, perplexed look that Alex would put on in return.

  While Alex took Jed across to the men’s lodge, Lorna and Cara dropped their bags off in their room. Lorna wasn’t sure where to start with Cara. She found herself asking, “So what do you think?” in an eerily chipper tone.

  “It’s OK,” Cara said. “I don’t think Jed will like it.”

  “No?” Lorna’s curiosity was painfully intense, but she needed to tread lightly or Cara would clam right up. “Why not?”

  Cara shrugged and stretched out on the bed with her Walkman.

  In the bathroom, Lorna used another suppository. There was no place to throw out the foil wrapping, so she jammed it in her pocket. Through the bathroom window, she saw a sundial in the middle of the lawn. Someone was pinning white clothes to a line that hung heavy and still. She wished she could know what Cara was seeing. She supposed it really wasn’t so menacing, was it? Alex seemed cheerful, happy to see the kids. She headed back to the room, dropping the foil in a plastic bucket in the hall.

  ...

  They all met Neel Joshi at four thirty, before what Alex called the daily sermon, which took place in a room that reminded Lorna of a
church parish hall with its white walls, linoleum floors, and royal blue industrial drapes. Two triangular west-facing windows, like two halves of a sail, let in the last of the day’s light. Men and women were drifting in, also dressed in white, hair mostly long. Ages were mixed, but Lorna, having hit an age where she’d become obsessed with determining the age of others, figured most were in their mid-twenties. Quite a few residents did not look much older than Jed.

  The room hushed as Neel strode in. He was tall and sinewy with a bit of a swagger. He had an olive complexion — though not precisely Indian, she didn’t think — and he looked young, but you could tell he wasn’t really, approaching fifty but possibly older. His hair was much longer and much healthier looking than Alex’s.

  “I’d like you to meet my family,” Alex said, interrupting Neel’s stride. Lorna wasn’t sure whom Alex was addressing, whether “family” referred to her and the kids or to Neel and his disciples. Alex seemed nervous. He was speaking too quickly.

  The man bowed. “Namaste,” he said. His voice was deep and echoing. He smiled at Lorna with perfect white teeth. But there was something reptilian about his face, a jutting prominence in the lower jaw.

  “My son,” Alex said, steering Jed forward. “He will be with us a few days.”

  Neel touched the sleeve of Jed’s shirt. His fingernails were long and curly. “You brought white clothes to wear, Jed?”

  It was amazing. Jed actually looked a little frightened of Neel. “Nope. Sorry,” he said, but he looked away, immediately aware this was not going to fly.

  “No white tracksuit?” Alex asked desperately, as if a white tracksuit was something Jed would ever wear.

  Neel looked down at Jed’s feet. “Slippers? Sandals?”

  Jed shook his head.

  “We dress in harmony here.” Neel looked at Alex. “There’s a five-and-dime twenty miles out of town in the Belmont Plaza. You may go tomorrow.” Then he touched Cara’s chin with his shocking fingernails and carried on to the front of the room.

  Alex turned to Jed. “I told you to bring something white.”

  Jed shrugged.

  “No,” Alex said, looking, actually, very uncentred. “You do not ignore me.”

  Lorna noticed Cara glance at her sideways. Her upper lip was stretched over her teeth; she was either afraid or trying to stop from laughing.

  “Did you hear me?” Alex said.

  “Yeah, got it.” Jed jerked his hair from his eyes and looked up at his father.

  “All right.” Alex looked at them all. “I’m going to sit up near the front.” It was clear from the way he said it that they weren’t to join him.

  Lorna’s butt hurt when she sat on the floor, so she leaned against the back wall at the edge of the room. She watched everyone lay down their mats and settle cross-legged like kindergarteners at story time. Neel looked out over the crowd, scanning the rows in front of him. He approached the front row and bent down to speak into Alex’s ear. Alex stood up, moved back one row, then another, until Neel lowered his hands for Alex to stop and sit down. Was Alex being punished? Humiliated in front of his family because Jed wasn’t wearing white? Lorna felt a scratch of pity in her throat.

  Neel’s hour-long sermon seemed to have something to do with pain. He spoke in balanced sentences, needlessly repeating certain words. “Life is suffering. Suffering is life. Life is not avoidance of suffering.” His voice had a deep, rich quality, and he took long self-important pauses to allow his listeners to absorb the columns of wisdom. Occasionally, though, he would crunch down hard on certain words. Wounds was one of the harsh ones. He said it like it hurt his mouth. “We are born with wounds. Wounds tell of our suffering. Wounds give us courage.” Lorna shifted the weight on her ass.

  Neel extended his palm, holding out something silver. Lorna squinted. Was it a quarter? “Drugs disconnect us from suffering. Disconnect us from our courage,” Neel said. He flicked the thing to his feet; it skittered across the floor with unsatisfying heft. The suppository foil. This, too, was almost certainly connected to Alex’s punishment.

  Neel let out a long, loud breath. “Let us set our attention to today’s closing.”

  Lorna looked at Alex’s back: stiller, straighter than everyone else. Did he want so badly to be teacher’s pet? To be loved? Sometimes friends asked Lorna about Alex. To make a point, she would say things like, “How’s Alex? I wouldn’t know. He’s off being a hippie on some farm.” But even saying this, she still thought she knew. And yet she’d underestimated him. What he’d become involved in. This place wasn’t the hippie colony she imagined. There were no naked, wild-haired children. No blanket tosses or tie-dye. She’d been dreading all that, but this was all so serious, so spartan. Where was the fun in it?

  After a long period of quiet, and with no obvious introduction, Neel started to purr. He sat still, serene to the point of apparent indifference. Like Jed, his eyes were partially closed. Seemingly on some sort of cue, a young man began to drum on the overturned white bin that Lorna had assumed was trash two hours earlier. Accompanied by the beat, Neel shifted into a halting chant. One by one the congregation began to rise and dance. You would have guessed that there were thirty-three separate rhythms occurring at once. Some members swayed, some jiggled in place, some spun round and round with arms open, Sound of Music style. One scrawny young man danced with his chest poking out, his neck extending in and out like a peacock until he fell to the floor and slithered around. And then there was Alex. Spinning in place with his chin tilted up to the window’s last strands of sun. It was the look on Alex’s face that made Lorna turn away in embarrassment. A closed-eyed expression of rapture that seemed like it ought to be private. No, she didn’t really recognize him.

  Jed and Cara seemed bored for most of the bizarre sermon, but now they watched the dancing with rapt attention. Could they still see their father in this dancing, pyjama-wearing man? How sad, how lonely, to witness your father behaving like a nutter. Lorna was never especially close with her own dad, but she’d respected him. At the very least, she’d always wanted to please him. Lorna was glad the kids weren’t killing themselves to win Alex’s affection, but she didn’t want them to dismiss him completely. If there was a part of her that wanted Jed and Cara to see their father’s selfishness here in order to appreciate her own loyalty and steadiness, she regretted it now.

  A girl, no older than twenty, sashayed in front of the three of them. She smiled in a vacant, wide-eyed way, like there was something very beautiful and transcendent going on just inches above their heads.

  “You’re joining us, I hear,” she said to Jed.

  The girl was very pretty. Long blond hair fell into ringlets just past her shoulders. Maybe a little greasy, but the effect was more whimsical than neglected looking. She wore a full white peasant skirt with a tight leotard top. Lorna, and presumably everyone else, could see the dimpled texture of her nipples.

  “Just for a few days,” Lorna cut in. “Visiting his father.”

  “We’ll need a name for you,” she said.

  “Yeah? What’s your name?” Jed was leaning back against the wall, looking up with arms crossed. He was flirting. Lorna hated that he was so sexually at ease. She’d seen condoms at home. Unlike his sister, he made no effort to conceal his rites of passage at the bottom of the garbage bin. In the girls’ bathroom on her visit to the school guidance counsellor, Lorna had been unlucky enough to pee across from a prickly cactus graffitied on a stall door with the caption JK’s got a BIG one! Of course there could be other JKs, but Lorna knew.

  The girl pointed to her chest. “Peony.” She swayed in front of him. “Will you dance with us?”

  “Depends. What’s your real name?” Jed smirked.

  The girl laughed. “You’re so much like Sparrow!”

  ...

  In the half-hour “rest period” before dinner, Jed and Cara went back to their rooms. Lorna followed Alex to the dining room, where he began to set up folding tables for Breaking Bread, the
name they used for dinner at Black River. The smell of cinnamon and ginger drifted in from the kitchen.

  “So this is a day in the life,” Lorna said with forced lightness.

  “It’s incredible, isn’t it? I’m glad you’re seeing this. It’s a hard thing to describe.” Alex wiped his forehead with his wrist, still sweaty from the dancing.

  “So they call you Swallow?”

  “Sparrow,” he said, seriously.

  “Sparrow, OK.”

  “You know, I have to apologize to you, Loo. I wasn’t too sure at first, but I think the routine’s going to be great for Jed.” Alex righted a table and slid a few chairs underneath.

  “You do?” What on earth about the last few hours could have made him feel that way?

  “Routines will change everything. It’s amazingly healing, Lorna. Since I’ve been here, I’ve felt my chaos lift.” He raised his hands slowly, wiggling his fingertips. His nails, she noted, had also grown long. “Everything motivating Jed’s behaviour right now, it’s just cravings and fears. He’ll learn to quiet those influences. Remove those impulses. Just be.”

  “Well,” Lorna said, looking away. “I’ve been thinking about that.” She felt her heartbeat jump up a tick. “I’m not sure this is a good idea anymore.”

  Alex stopped what he was doing.

  “For openers,” Lorna continued. “There’s a woman here trying to sleep with him.”

  “What? No.” Alex laughed, rocking back on his heels.

  “Peony?”

  “Trust me.” Alex chuckled again and shook his head. “Peony will absolutely not try to sleep with Jed.”

  “What makes you so certain? Are you sleeping with her?”

  “Come on, Lorna, no. I just know.”

  “He sleeps with people, in case you’re curious.”

  Alex looked around. A few other helpers were coming in. He motioned for her to follow him to more tables at the back of the room. He spoke quietly. “We sign a contract, Lorna. No one here is having sex.”

  “You’re forbidden from sex?”

  “Well,” Alex said, “it’s terms we agree to. No caffeine, no meat, no alcohol, no sex. Forbidden suggests that we’re forced. We’re not forced to do anything. All of us here, we want to recreate our lives.” He wrinkled his forehead with such sincerity that Lorna had to look away from his face. She thought about all those muscled young bodies swaying to the music. Why weren’t they having sex? Why weren’t they finding apartments, going to college, getting jobs? What would happen to them? Would they just grow old here without ever growing up?