Catch My Drift

by Genevieve Scott

  I’m looking hard at the house. We were happy here, I tell myself. We were happy then. What I want to do is make myself cry. I want to cry like I did when I figured out the Sokolovs were moving in, but I just feel cold and awkward standing here now, staring down this house that Mom never liked in the first place.

  A car slows behind me. I swivel around, but it’s just a guy delivering the Star. The roll of newspaper slams into the fence along the side of the house, making a sprawl of wide green leaves shake. I think I’ll steal the paper as a souvenir from this whole weird morning, the morning after I lost my virginity, but when I get closer to the fence, I notice purplish clumps peeking out between the leaves. Our Mother’s Day grapes. I sink my hands into the vine, grabbing and ripping the fruit and dropping handfuls into the towel.

  When I unlock the door to the apartment, the first thing I see is Dad standing at the kitchen counter. Right away, I know.

  He turns toward me, a mug of coffee in his hands. He looks so tired. “Hey, Cara.” A dry ache tunnels down my throat. I didn’t see Mom yesterday, not all week. Why didn’t I go? The last seven days flash through my brain: not one thing I did instead seems at all important.

  Dad puts down his coffee. My hand is still on the doorknob. I want to walk back out, tap a few times, and try to do this over again.

  “We just got in,” Dad continues. “I tried to call you first . . . ” He crosses to a chair across from the door and folds a grey fleece puddled on the seat, a perfect cigarette burn punched into the cuff. “He got the redeye from Los Angeles.”

  I say this back to myself. He got the redeye from Los Angeles. He got the redeye from Los Angeles.

  “Get some sleep. In a few hours we’ll go see your mom.”

  “Where is she?”

  Dad looks confused. “St. Bart’s. Same as always.”

  I should be relieved, and I guess I am, but it’s like I can’t breathe. I lean back against the door.

  Dad bunches his eyebrows. “You OK, Care Bear?”

  I nod and try to say something halfway normal, but getting the air in is difficult: each sip sounds high-pitched. My jaw wobbles and I bring the towel up to my mouth, letting the grapes dump onto the floor and roll off in every direction.

  Dad takes a step toward me, but I hold my hand up. I don’t want to be touched or even looked at.

  He stops. He must think I’m totally drunk or high or something, but he doesn’t ask where I’ve been or why I’m carrying a ratty towel. “Get some sleep. You’ll feel OK in the morning.” He says this even though it’s already morning. Then he says, “I like your hair.”

  Dad’s footsteps fade down the hallway. I hear him run the tap in Mom’s bathroom, turn on the TV, and lower the volume. You’ll feel OK in the morning, I repeat to myself. Maybe not tomorrow’s morning, maybe not the morning after, but at least this morning. I bend for the grapes, wrapping them gently in the towel to take back to my room. They’re not Herbert, I know, but she should have them.

  A pair of trashed leather sandals sits outside Jed’s door, the soles about ten shades darker than the straps. Maybe he’ll call Lee in the morning and they’ll go get high somewhere. Maybe I’ll go along and smoke with them. Maybe Jed and I will actually hang out now.

  The vertical blinds rattle where I left my bedroom window open. I toss Mom’s green pumps into my bedroom closet and tap it seven times. Outside, I hear the cheep of an automatic car lock and someone calls out the name Rita twice. I slip under the sheets in my clothes, like an exhausted person, but my body is tense and shivery. I get up to close the window and then again to bury my too-loud alarm clock in the closet. I do seven taps of the closet door before getting back into bed each time. Maybe it’s psycho, but isn’t it working?

  The wine gums from St. Bart’s are on the windowsill, and I mash a blackberry gum into my back teeth. I thought I would keep this wrapper forever: the last thing Mom ever gave to me. Now I wonder if that’s a mistake, if I’ll find the wrapper in ten years and just feel awkward again trying to get emotional over something Mom didn’t care much about. But for now I stuff it in the drawer of my bedside table, hidden with my old birthday cards.

  I curl my legs up and try to read the first page of Lee’s book, but the words blur together. I put my face against the page and inhale. A tickly feeling wraps tight around my stomach. I had sex with Jesus.

  Sleep won’t catch on when I close my eyes. I try to do the mental walk-through the old house, but my heart’s not in it.

  When I was a little kid, listening to Jed’s breathing could calm me down. I slide up against the cool stucco wall that Jed and I share, listening for the sound from my brother’s lungs: up and down, in and out, like water boiling softly. I close my eyes again, but my hands on my pillow smell like rubber, and the muffled tick-tocking across the room is so much slower than my heart.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Three chapters have appeared in other publications in different forms. “Wise” was published in White Wall Review, “Ernie Breaks” was published in the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, “Catch My Drift” was published in the New Quarterly.

  My greatest appreciation to all the wonderful women who made this book happen: my editor, Bethany Gibson; my agent, Stephanie Sinclair; and my thesis adviser, Nancy Lee. Cordelia Strube, thank you for giving me the confidence to push beyond the earliest drafts. Emma Richardson, Carly Dunster, and Lindsay Bell — your kindness, hilarious anecdotes, and support helped enormously from beginning to end.

  Thank you also to the many peers who braved early drafts of this manuscript (and early experiments in general) and offered such thoughtful and generous guidance, especially Todd Light and the Imperial gang. I’m especially grateful to my family, particularly my parents, who have stood by my wide-ranging and often unpredictable professional choices, and who understand more than anyone that writing this novel was the right place for me to land. Finally, thank you, Jesse, for always believing in me and in Cara.

  Photo by Jesse Colin Jackson

  Genevieve Scott is a graduate of the University of British Columbia’s Creative Writing MFA. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals in Canada and the United Kingdom, including the New Quarterly, the White Wall Review, and the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, among others. Genevieve Scott grew up in Toronto and currently lives in Southern California with her husband and son. Catch My Drift is her debut novel.