Catch My Drift

by Genevieve Scott

  Mom shifts in her bed. “You and your brother used to love to plant things. I thought you’d grow up to care about gardening.”

  Our supposed obsession with plants lasted exactly one spring when Jed was trying to get a Scout badge in agriculture. We saved our apple seeds and plum pits all winter and tried to grow fruit in the yard. Nothing ever worked, probably because Mom’s fruit was genetically engineered Frankenfood from the Discount Ranch. That same year, though, Dad came home with a paper pack of grape seeds on Mother’s Day, and we planted them in the hard strip of earth that ran along the fence out front. Dad said the grapes would be leaping up the fence by fall, but nothing grew. Still, thinking about those seeds, my little hands in that gritty, cold earth, opens up a tender spot below my ribs. It’s probably dumb, but I wish Mom liked our old house.

  “You can bring Herbert here if you won’t miss him,” Mom says.

  I organize the suits in my hand. “Yeah, maybe. I usually come straight from school though, so . . . ”

  “Just a thought.”

  “OK.” I can hear the noise of the Golden Girls blaring in from the room next door. Mom used to call it the crazy old lady show. It’s an episode I’ve seen before where the four grannies go to Hollywood to star on a game show. Mom will never be an old lady. Like a true old lady. I know a lot of people say that they never want to be old. They say things like, “Kill me before I get that old!” But come on, would they seriously rather be Mom?

  “How’s your Dad?” she asks again.

  “The same.”

  “Any roles?”

  “Doubt it.” What I really want to do ask is, “Why do you care? Why would you think about Dad when you have barely any time left to think about anything?” I could win the game if I take her discard, but I don’t.

  Mom spreads her hand out in front of me. “Gin.”

  “Cool.”

  Mom side-eyes me like she knows I let her win. “You know,” she says, sweeping the cards back into a pile. “You really don’t need to come here every day.”

  “I don’t come every day.”

  “You have a life.” Mom knows exactly what kind of life I have: come home from school, microwave some popcorn, listen to Ash on the phone. She hasn’t been gone that long. “Your friends are important. And I realize this isn’t exactly a whale of a time.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Fine!” Mom chuckles. “Remember when that was your answer for everything. Clear the table — fine! There’s a stain on your shirt — fine!”

  She tries to shuffle the cards, but her fingers are too stiff and it looks awful. I take the cards from her.

  “Your life should be better than fine,” she says. “Have you thought about that Montreal exchange thingy?”

  “No.”

  “I wish you would. Are you still good at French?”

  “Oui.”

  I actually have thought about Montreal, but those kids leave in a couple months, and I’m not about to just take off. Does Mom realize I actually care what happens to her?

  “I’m very proud of you,” she says. “Learning another language so well. I always wanted to do that.”

  I can see Mom’s trying to make me feel good about myself today, but I don’t know why exactly. “I’m not that good,” I say.

  “I bet I couldn’t learn it.”

  “Les cartes.” I hold up the deck and start dealing a new hand. We’re technically playing, but every few minutes her eyelids close for a long moment. When she opens them again, she sort of fakes like the closing never happened, and it’s hard to watch someone pretend something like that for too long. I figure now that she probably wasn’t reading that book before I showed up. It was just a show, maybe entirely for me.

  By the time I put the cards away and have my jacket on, Mom’s actually asleep. I kiss her on the forehead, which feels cool and waxy. I don’t think I have ever kissed my mother when she was sleeping. I wonder how old she is in her dream.

  The next time I hear from Lee it’s after two o’clock in the morning. Dad and I get the phone at the same time and, of course, we both think it’s about Mom. I’m tapping the closet already when Lee says in his slow, rolling way, “Sketchum?”

  “Jed?” I can hear the hope in Dad’s voice even though Lee sounds nothing like Jed.

  “No, Dad. It’s for me.”

  “It’s late,” Dad says. I know he’s disappointed because this wouldn’t normally bother him. He totally prides himself on being cool about things like late night phone calls, not that I’ve ever gotten one before.

  “Can you just please get off?”

  Once we hear the click, Lee asks, “Does Jed still have my Trans-X album?” He’s talking loud for late at night, like maybe he’s drunk.

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “French-Canadian synth-pop? Jesus. You’re sleeping so close to one of the world’s best singles, and you don’t even know it.”

  “I thought you were into Ancient Greek music.” For some reason, it’s easier to act cool and sarcastic in the dark, on the phone.

  “Can you check? I really feel like listening to it.”

  “You want me to look now?”

  “If it’s all the same to you.”

  I lay the receiver on my pillow.

  I haven’t been in Jed’s room in six months or more. I expect it to be messy, but Mom must have cleaned up because the bed is made and the CDs have been put away in neat lines on his bookshelf. Only Herbert looks terrible, just like I thought: gnarled and brittle, like some cheesy hand coming up out of the earth. I can barely look. Suggesting I bring him over is pretty much the only thing Mom’s asked from me since she got sick.

  On the carpet by Jed’s shelf, I notice an old Band-Aid — the small circular kind Mom used to have on her arm after blood draws, a brown dot in the center of the gauze. I imagine Mom with her annoyingly slow, careful movements, coming in here every day with the watering can, trying to keep Herbert going. What did she think the last time she was in here? Did she think of it at as the last time? Did she lie down on Jed’s bed and smell his pillow? Did she lie down on mine? The idea is too much and I have to close my eyes for a second.

  I’m expecting Lee to have fallen asleep or hung up or something, but he’s still on the phone when I come back. “Yep. I have it.”

  “Can you put it on?”

  “Right now?”

  “Jesus.”

  I slide the CD into my stereo and sit next to it, cross-legged on the carpet. My life is so different than it was last year. I’m on the phone with a guy at two thirty a.m.

  The music has this bright, fast sound — it’s artificial-seeming, like fireworks — not at all like the stuff I’ve heard Lee play before. “Why is this so urgent?”

  Lee exhales like this is the world’s most boring question. “French people just do shit cooler,” he says. “They’re ahead. If I want to get gigs in Montreal, I gotta make some changes.”

  “Isn’t this pretty unrecent?”

  “Timeless, Sketchum. You should hear the French version.”

  “I speak French, you know.” I squish the sides of Mom’s Band-Aid together.

  “Yeah? Good for you. You want to teach me?”

  I open and close the CD cover, wondering if Lee’s question is real. “Are you going to help me find Jed?”

  There’s a long pause on the line. “Look, I talked to a buddy who knows P.”

  My heart speeds up. “What did he say?”

  “Jed’s not with her. They say he’s on a ranch somewhere.”

  I wind the phone around my wrist. “In California?”

  “I assume.”

  “A ranch? That’s pretty hard to picture.”

  “Is it? I don’t know what else to tell you.”

  We don’t have much to say after that. I agree to return Lee’s CDs tomorrow and we hang up. I fall asleep wondering how long he knew all this about Jed and P and the ranch and why he waited to tell me.

 
...

  I start going to Lee’s house pretty often after school. I tell Dad I’m visiting Mom, or sometimes tutoring, which is sort of true because Lee did ask me to teach him French. Dad reminds me that Mom was his tutor ten thousand years ago.

  “Don’t you think it’s sort of weird to be having all these memories about Mom when you’re about to get married to someone else?” We’re sitting on the balcony eating subs on dirty plastic furniture. If the point of Dad being here is to look after me, he’s definitely failing in the cooking and cleaning departments.

  Dad crosses one leg over the other and his pant leg lifts up so that I can see his neon sock. The words “Best Dad” are printed around the ankle. I know the socks didn’t come from Jed or me.

  “Lots of things make me think of your mom,” he says. “The smell of chlorine on a hot day will do it.”

  “Romantic.”

  He cracks his fingers all nervous-seeming. “What about you, Care Bear? What are some of your nice memories?”

  It’s hard to watch him. It’s like he just finished a book on talking to kids about death. “I’m good.”

  “See her today?”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “Did you?”

  “Look,” Dad says. “Your mother will always have a place in my heart.” I think of Dad’s heart like an apartment building. Shari and her girls, Juli and Lesley-Ann, have the penthouse.

  It’s like Dad knows what I’m thinking because he says, “Given any thought to coming out to Barrie this weekend?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Shari would love to see you. We’re taking the girls to an indoor water park.”

  “Yeah, no.” Running after Shari’s kids in my bathing suit in front of Dad and Shari is pretty much the worst Saturday I can imagine.

  “All right.” Dad turns and looks out at the elementary school across the street. “Your choice.” It’s kind of surprising Mom ever had the guts to kick Dad out. When he’s disappointed, he’s so helpless and pouty. I don’t think I could take it.

  “Thanks for asking,” I say.

  After a moment, Dad goes, “Your bedroom in Barrie is always there for you. You know that Care Bear, right?”

  “Uh huh.” My bedroom in Barrie is just the guest room. Shari’s sewing machine and a dozen garbage bags of her fabrics are in there. The truth is it’s just too late for Dad to bring me into the penthouse now. When Mom dies, I’ll be like Lee. Rattle around in my own space.

  I have no idea how to teach French, but it turns out Lee actually wants to learn. When I go over there, he and I start by putting labels on things in the living room: le Guitar, la chaise, la poupée russe. The sketch of the eyes becomes le dessin fucked. We listen to some Trans-X and then to his mom’s Serge Gainsbourg records, and after a while he rolls a joint and we smoke it. Pot makes my lungs itch, but it also makes me less nervous, makes everything around me feel less sharp and easier to blend into. I learn some things about Lee’s family, like that his brother Ben weighs nearly three hundred pounds now. Apparently the guy just draws and eats and almost never says anything. Lee’s Dad is a dentistry professor; he lives somewhere close to the brother and takes care of him. His mom’s pretty checked out of that whole situation, and possibly every situation, but we don’t talk about her much. We don’t talk about Jed, either.

  The second time I come over for tutoring, I bring a French movie from VideoLab. Then I just start doing that every few days. I know French movies are meant to be sort of sexual, so I deliberately go for ones that look innocent, like the one about a little kid who grew up in the wild without human contact. That turns out to be a good one for Lee because there’s more acting than talking to follow along with. He gets twitchier than normal during the violent parts, and I wonder if he’s thinking of his brother. I try other movies with kids, because maybe they’re easier to understand, but it feels kind of depressing watching G movies and smoking up at the same time.

  Once I misjudge the description and accidentally pick a movie with no real plot and a very long scene of a grimacing man doing it to a redheaded woman from behind. The man makes low grunting sounds and just keeps whomping the woman back and forth, her mouth in this big wide O. Lee and I watch the whole scene with Fever between us. When I get up to go to the bathroom, my underwear is damp.

  I get the sense from Lee that our French lessons are a secret, though I don’t know who exactly decided that. Lee’s always taking off afterward to meet friends or to play music somewhere, but he never invites me to come along. I don’t tell Ash or Lacey about him either: there’d be too much explaining, and Ash would find a way to make me feel dumb about it.

  On Thanksgiving weekend, Dad goes back to Barrie. He wants me to come, of course, but Ash got a flyer for a warehouse dance party downtown. Someone from another high school rented the place, and there’s going to be kegs and bands and stuff. I tell him I promised Mom I would spend most of the weekend with her.

  Ash wants to dye her hair platinum blond for the party, so we go to CanPharm after school for Nice’n’Easy. I act casual when we see Lee across the store. I want him to hug me in front of Ash the way he hugged the girl at Drifter’s that night, but he doesn’t do anything except watch us come toward him.

  “What’s happening, ladies?” His voice is different than normal, more smiley.

  “We’re just getting some shit for a party tomorrow,” I say. For some reason I’m embarrassed to look him in the eye.

  “Legal shit? Sudafed’s down there. Mix it with espresso or a can of Jolt.”

  “We want hair dye,” Ash says. She can’t be left out of a conversation. It’s weird that she doesn’t just automatically know that Lee probably thinks hair dye is girly and superficial.

  Lee looks at her. “Why? Your hair’s awesome the way it is.”

  Ash blushes and I don’t like the way his eyes move over her dumb denim dress that she knows makes her look exactly like Jennifer Aniston.

  “Whose party?” he asks.

  “Warehouse dance thing,” Ash says. Lee looks at me. He angles his head like really? “You should come,” Ash says, bold now that Lee actually talked to her. She glances at me: see what I can do.

  “Not my scene.” Lee glances at the pharmacy counter. “But if you want better provisions — Ritalin, Diazepam, 3s — she has my number.” He nods vaguely in my direction.

  “We’ll definitely do that,” Ash says.

  Ash decides not to buy any dye at all. I get a box of some house brand described as “Rousse Mouse” with a picture of a redhead with giant tits on the box.

  When we leave CanPharm, Ash is giddy about her one-second conversation with Lee. I want to tell her that she doesn’t know anything, that Lee gave me a pink book — a book just for me about some Greek god — and that we talk on the phone late at night. I don’t, though. It feels like Ash could just make the power of it all disappear. Ash asks me over to her place as we’re leaving, but I tell her I have to visit Mom because it’s Thanksgiving weekend. She gives me this big hug at the door and is all, “Awwww. I hope your Mom’s OKeeee!” It’s just a show for Lee, so that she’ll seem like a sweet person. When I hug her back, she steps away. “You’re, like, the weirdest hugger,” she says. “Someone needs to teach you how to hug.”

  Instead of the hospital, I just kind of find myself in front of Lee’s house. His shift isn’t over for another two hours, but the kitchen door is always unlocked. I let myself in and take the last beer from the fridge. Fever hops down from the counter and weaves around my shins.

  The living room is a mess like always. I clear Lee’s guitar and music binders off the beanbag chair for a place to sit. Fever marches around my legs and then curls himself into my lap. Everything feels hushed and kind of eerie. I can’t see the eye picture behind me, but I feel it staring.

  A bowl of crusted cereal sits next to me on a stack of about fifty music magazines. I pick one up and flip through shots of sweaty guys playing guitar. An article on Rush is folded over, but I get
bored after the first couple of paragraphs. Jed still gets magazines like this in the mail. No one reads them, but no one throws them away, either.

  On the bookshelf, I can’t tell which kid in the tennis photo is Lee. Both boys wear blue shorts with white stripes and white T-shirts and have the same stubby Prince tennis racquet. The tennis court behind them is busy with kids, all out of focus. I wish I knew Lee when we were little. I think it must mean something that we both played tennis and that we both have messed up brothers.

  I press play on the tape deck and bob my head to the low beat, watching my reflection in the window across, sipping the beer. I’m acting like someone’s spying on me and finding out that I’m this super chill girl. I’m acting like the person I want to be: cooler.

  Fever, so warm on my legs, purrs deeply, and I realize he’s asleep. The sunlight tilts through the blinds onto my face and my eyelids get heavy. I put down the magazine and curl up on the beanbag, too.

  It’s the bang of the kitchen door that wakes me up. Fever hops down from my lap, and I hear Lee greet him in the kitchen: “Hey, Johnny Fever. Hey, kitty cat.” His backpack smacks down on the floor. “You hungry?” The cupboard doors open and slam closed. The electric can opener whirrs. “There you go, guy.” If Lee and I lived together in this house, this is what every day would sound like. The fridge opens and closes and I hear Lee gulping. Then his footsteps start toward the living room.

  Milk sloshes out the top of Lee’s glass and onto the wood floor when he sees me. His shirt is off and his naked pale chest is a smatter of freckles.

  “Scared you this time!” I say.

  Lee’s face goes from frightened to kind of stony. “Jesus, Ketchum. What are you doing here?”

  “You drink milk?”

  “What?”

  The photo is still next to me on the beanbag. “I thought we could play tennis.”

  “I thought you were going to the hospital.” He disperses the spilt milk with his foot on the floor.

  I sit up slightly, feeling a little too low with him standing over me. “I used to be a junior champion. Or almost. Did you know that?” I really do want to play tennis now. It would be good to be out in sharp air, just to pound the ball back and forth. “Do you have a racquet some place? Actually, we’ll need two,” I say.