Catch My Drift Read online

  After a while, the chubby narrator from Jed’s class says, “But even after everything seemed hopeless, that night, in a humble manger, the Lord Jesus Christ was born.” A spotlight shines on Mary and Joseph. They huddle under a papier mâché ledge, surrounded by kindergarten cows and sheep. Everyone is smiling at the doll in Mary’s arms, the kind with a cloth middle and dangly plastic limbs. It’s definitely supposed to be a girl. Angela wraps it up in a white tea towel and looks at the shepherds coming her way. There is a silence where I was supposed to say, “O come, let us adore him!”

  It’s almost Jed’s part. I pick up my gift for Jesus: a shoebox, spray-painted gold and silver. My hands are shaky. Someone must have opened the door because a blast of cold air eats right through my gown. A spotlight moves to stage left and Melchior gives me a hard kick in the ankle. “Go!”

  I stride toward the manger. “We are the three kings,” I say, trying my best to sound like a boy. “Of Oriental.” I lay the gift down by Jesus and then pull my arms back into my sleeves. Jesus is warm and bundled up inside the manger. Lucky Jesus.

  The lights dim and a group of long-haired teenagers play “What Child is This?” on guitars. Cindy Springgay sings a solo. Tonight she is wearing a red velvet top that laces up with a bow at the front. I can see the naked bulge of each tit from where I’m standing. I heard she got sent home from school last month for wearing white jeans with handprints drawn on the butt and the words: “Dan M. Only.”

  Joseph holds Jesus up for the crowd to see, and the audience laughs when the tea towel slips right off. Mom and Jed are in the fourth row, but neither one of them is laughing. Instead of watching this, I wonder what Mom would be doing right now if she never had Jed and me. I know she used to be a swimmer. Maybe she’d be going to Seoul this summer.

  The lights come on again at the end of the song. That’s when I see Dad, standing at the side door, his hair wet and pressed flat against his forehead. He is holding a bundle of blue sheets. He looks lost and I wonder how long he’s been there. I can’t tell if he recognizes me.

  After the play is over, there are star-shaped cookies and chocolate milk for us in the church basement, but we don’t stay. Mom grabs her jacket and heads straight for the exit where Dad is standing.

  “You walked here?”

  Dad nods.

  “Christ, Alex.”

  Mom heads toward the doors and Dad wraps the blue sheets around my shoulders.

  “Guess you didn’t need these,” he says.

  “That’s OK. Did you see me?”

  “’Course, Wise Lady,” he says. “You any smarter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But what happened to you, Jedi?”

  Jed doesn’t answer. He kicks a pile of slush, the same grey as his scrubbed face.

  “Forget it, Alex,” Mom says.

  On the drive home, “Silent Night” comes on the radio. I can see a bump in Mom’s cheek from where she’s mashing her teeth. The song was her dad’s favourite. Usually she says so whenever it comes on, but tonight no one says anything at all.

  Raindrops freckle my window and I hold my hand up to the cold glass, following the trails of water with my fingers. At a stoplight, a woman in the next lane looks over. I like that she just sees a regular family on Christmas Eve. She must think I’m waving because she smiles and waves back. The heater purrs its hot breath, and for the first time in hours, I feel warm. I lean my head against the window and close my eyes. I am surrounded, huddled-in, just like Jesus.

  Anything

  Winter, 1988

  Lorna didn’t want to go to Derek Wiggins’s party, but she was making an effort. According to Alex, part of their “whole problem” — they never called it anything else, always their “whole problem” — may have had something to do with Lorna’s incuriosity about his work. Alex said he loved his new job in the credit department of a large bank, felt valuable in it, and really wanted Lorna to be proud of him. Lorna thought it was whiny of Alex to need her to be interested in his work. But going out, getting dressed up: she saw how it could be good for them.

  Derek Wiggins’s townhouse was in a new, cheap-looking complex near the entertainment district. Lorna had dropped the kids off once in December when Alex was staying there a few weeks, but tonight was her first time inside.

  Derek answered the door and threw a thick arm over Alex’s shoulder. “What’s happening, brother?” He was a puffy, pinkish guy, maybe twenty-five, dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt that said “Co-ed Naked Surfing.” He had one of those very low voices that made talking sound like it hurt.

  Lorna handed Derek a bottle of Merlot. From what she could see past him, guests were drinking beer from clear plastic cups.

  “Keg’s on the balcony,” Derek said, leading the way to the living room. He turned, holding the bottle of wine like a club. “Or want me to crack this?”

  “Beer’s fine. Thank you, Derek.” Lorna forced a smile.

  “Coats go up in the spare,” Derek said. “Ketch knows the way.”

  Lorna followed Alex through the living room and up the stairs, watching as he waved hello to young women in short dresses and very high heels, guys wearing running shoes and T-shirts like Derek’s. Alex frequently talked about work “buddies,” and Lorna pictured squash-playing men in their forties with belly laughs and vigorous handshakes. It was a hopeful image, she realized now, because this was a crowd of twenty-somethings. People at the beginning of their careers were young.

  “They call you Ketch?” Lorna asked at the top of the stairs.

  “Oh, yeah. Didn’t tell you that one.” Alex grinned and pushed open a door with the word Gynecology stencilled to the outside.

  So this was the spare. This was where Alex had spent the three weeks before Christmas. There was a small TV and a collapsed futon covered in jackets. The two windows were stacked high with empty beer cans. A movie poster for Porky’s Revenge! brought a splash of colour to primer-white walls.

  Alex chucked his coat on the bed and rolled up his sleeves, ready for action. Someone had cranked the music, and Lorna felt the vibrations through her stockinged feet. The theme of the party was Stupid Cupid. Lorna had no idea what the dress code for Stupid Cupid was, but her black slacks, cream-coloured blouse and beige stockings now made her feel like someone’s mother. She’d agonized over what to wear but evidently with the wrong crowd in mind.

  Lorna thought about the young, dancing bodies downstairs and it occurred to her, then, that these young people might know — very likely did know — about Jenny. Back when Alex’s colleagues were older and thicker-necked in Lorna’s imagination, she felt safe assuming that what happened between Alex and Jenny was discreet and carefully carried out. But why wouldn’t Jenny have told these gals downstairs what she and Alex were up to? Girls killing time in a career, yearning for office gossip over lunch at Romeo’s Pizza. And surely Derek knew. What evidence was there that Mr. Porky’s Revenge would keep it to himself?

  Coat still on, Lorna turned to Alex. “Who here knows?”

  He looked around dramatically. “What?”

  Lorna squinted. “Does everyone know? About half?”

  “Oh,” Alex said. “You’re talking about . . . ?”

  “For Christ’s sake.”

  “Nobody.” Like a child, he crossed his heart. “I promise. Everyone’s dying to meet you, Loo.”

  Downstairs, Alex got them each a cup of beer. Lorna sipped hers at the end of a corduroy couch, a wild fern partially obscuring her. Across the room, a couple of boys listened to Alex as he fanned a Stones album in the air, the one with the pink cake on the cover. Lorna could see that Alex was the old-but-cool guy, “Ketch.” She squinted at his rosacea-tinted face and receding hairline. If they were strangers, would she find him attractive?

  The last time Lorna asked herself that question was after surprising him at a ski resort cafeteria in 1975. From a guy in his drama department, she’d learned that he was not in Hollywood after all but worki
ng as a chairlift operator two hours north of the city. In the second week of December, she drove out in Debbie’s Datsun to tell him she was pregnant.

  Lorna picked cinnamon hearts out of a bowl and crunched them into her back teeth. Someone had made an effort at party decorations: a clothesline of red and white panties, a mirror covered in lipstick kisses, pink balloons inflated to various levels, nipple markings drawn on the tops. Lorna angled her head to look at herself in the mirror. Her chin and forehead were oily and red. Her hair, smooth enough in her own house, now seemed to poke up on top like a daddy-long-legs. She no longer had the hair of youth, she just had to admit it. At thirty-two, dressing for a night out could make Lorna feel quite young, even cute, but this party, these people, were destroying that feeling.

  Girls had joined the group around Alex now. The one standing closest to him was baby-fattish with a wide, eager face. As far as Lorna knew, which perhaps wasn’t much anymore, she was not Alex’s type. The other girl — darker skinned, short dress, big breasts — was more of a concern, but a skinny boy kept a hesitant hand perched at the small of her back.

  Lorna scanned the other faces in the room. What if Jenny were here? Alex said she was only a summer student, but if these were her friends, she could show up, couldn’t she? Lorna had never seen Jenny, but she didn’t picture a beauty. What beauty with her whole life ahead of her, earning a degree in business, would want a married thirty-two-year-old with two kids and, let’s face what was becoming clear, a twenty-one-year-old’s job?

  When Lorna found Jenny’s notes in October, the worst part was not that they existed but how they existed. Over fifty pink Post-its piled neatly in Alex’s old cigar box at the top of his closet. Notes written in open bubbly script, the Ws like buttocks, the kind of penmanship that girls Cara’s age worked really hard to cultivate. Lorna had opened the cigar box in search of a prop for Jed, who was downstairs at the time, preparing a history skit with three girls from his class. He was playing Winston Churchill and the girls were his “secretaries.” The first note Lorna opened said only, “Thanx for the Mmmuffin!” Lorna knelt in the closet, fingers cold and shaking. She moved only when she smelled frozen pizza burning in the oven.

  Finding the notes did not produce the kind of shock Lorna might have expected. In some deep, stomachy way, Lorna already knew. Never once did she consider that she’d misunderstood what the notes implied. She’d seen the looks Alex gave himself in the bathroom mirror as he dressed for work — the smirky, slitty-eyed looks she’d seen on men her age in the windows of the Irish pubs around her office. For months, maybe even years, she’d had a kind of awareness that Alex wasn’t faithful. But it was like being aware of the smell of rot somewhere in the house that was persistent yet mild enough to put off looking for. Why search for something you don’t quite have the energy to fix? It wasn’t laziness exactly, but maybe related. The hardest part about finding the notes was that now she knew, and she had to do something.

  Lorna didn’t confront Alex right away. She didn’t know how. If she were hysterical or even weepy, maybe it would have been easier. But she was just tired. She didn’t tell friends. Friends would be outraged. Adultery wasn’t the sort of thing women tolerated quietly anymore. You were supposed to scream and sue, and then, with the passage of time, become some kind of one-woman entrepreneur. It was exhausting. Lorna didn’t want to pack her bags; she didn’t want to yell or get advice. She wanted time to think about it. Later, there would be more time.

  So Lorna slept, it seemed, for a month. She woke for work. She woke for Alex’s birthday, serving ice cream cake and posing for family photos in the wet autumn leaves. Cara had an operation for her lazy eye, and Lorna slept and slept while Alex sat up in a rocking chair in Cara’s bedroom. She slept while Alex joined a fitness club, getting himself in tip-top shape for, no doubt, more betrayal. But as time passed, Lorna knew less and less what to do. She wondered what the point was in doing anything at all. So he’d had sex with someone else, possibly many someone else’s. Big deal. They rarely had sex anyway. After a few weeks, it was as if she had forgotten.

  But eventually the subject did come up on a drizzly Sunday afternoon in November when the kids were both out. Alex had promised to fix the dishwasher but announced he needed to head out for a few hours first to help a buddy install his winter tires. Lorna didn’t believe in unnamed buddies. Unexpectedly, she burst into tears. Even more unexpectedly, so did he. In the low light of the kitchen, he told her that his “thing” with Jenny was over, but Lorna had the distinct impression that he was only at that moment deciding this. Alex explained that Jenny had been a summer student at the bank and “things just got a little chummy.” He admitted that he was on his way to see Jenny now because she was home from college for the weekend, and he wanted to end things “like a man.” He said this so solemnly it made Lorna laugh. Did he think this earned him points? Ending it like a man? She imagined him picking the girl up around the corner from her parents’ house, driving her out to the beach or somewhere terrible, telling her he needed to rein it in while she cried onto his new bicep.

  Lorna drained her cup of beer and watched the semi-circle of guests widening around Alex. He seemed to be in performance mode, scratching his head, making his stunned Marty face. Jenny’s generation was only about ten years old when Alex played Marty on Dog Daze. These were Alex’s long-lost adoring fans. The show was taken off the air before they could outgrow it and see how truly dreadful it was.

  Alex put on his breaky, teenage voice. “Doggonit, Harv! Why do you gotta have the last word?” This was the standing line that preceded the show’s ending credits, always followed by a cheerful bark, which someone in the group now supplied.

  Back when Alex was living in Derek’s spare, Lorna found Cara watching a ten a.m. rerun of Dog Daze while she was home sick from school. On the third day of Cara’s sore throat, Lorna realized she was faking sick in order to watch her father. She phoned Alex and invited him for Christmas. Just three days.

  Derek appeared in the group now with a tray of Dixie cups clumped with red Jell-O. He passed them around to Alex and his little circle.

  “Stayin’ out of trouble?” Derek called to Alex.

  “Tryin’ my best, man.”

  “That’s a load of crapola!” Derek toasted Alex with his Jell-O cup.

  After seeing the job in the paper, it was Lorna who’d suggested Alex apply to the bank. At the time, he was working the graveyard shift for a cable customer service line, keeping his daytime free for auditions. In the years since Dog Daze, he’d been cast in a hardware store commercial and an in-flight safety video. Suggesting daytime work hurt Alex’s feelings, but he agreed to try it on for a few months. Somehow it stuck. Earlier that evening, Alex told Lorna he hadn’t connected with a group like this in a long time.

  Lorna rose to collect her Jell-O cup, but Derek was already crossing the room. She moved over to Alex’s circle and put a hand on his arm. He turned to her, grinning, but his eyes didn’t seem to settle on her face.

  The darker girl was talking. “I’m definitely going to see Jim Morrison’s grave. That’s like number one.”

  “That’s really amazing,” Alex said.

  “He’s, like, a god.”

  “His death was kind of . . . senseless,” Lorna said, feeling herself redden with this entrée to conversation. The girl looked at Lorna blankly. Nobody seemed like they were dying to meet her at all.

  “This is Kavita,” Alex said. “Kavita’s leaving our team in Jan to bum around Europe.”

  “Oh,” Lorna said. She wasn’t sure if she should say her own name or wait for Alex. “On your own, or . . . ?”

  Lorna wondered how Alex fucked a girl this age. Not why, but how? Certainly not in the adamant, purposeful way he fucked her on Boxing Day. Fucking with the determined expression of someone moving a piano across a room.

  “Yeah,” Kavita said. “I have friends, like, all over though.”

  “Goddamn,” Alex said, grinning into
his cup. “I’m jealous.” When had Alex ever wanted to go to Europe? Did he have any clue what he’d do there?

  “You should come!” Kavita exclaimed, smacking a hand over her tits. “Kiera and Mo are coming for a week, too. We’re meeting up in San Sebastian.” She nodded, thrilled with her own idea. “Because Mo knows a guy who basically owns a hostel.”

  What did it mean to basically own something?

  Alex laughed. He didn’t say no. He didn’t turn to Lorna and wink and say, “What do you think, hon?” He just grinned again and licked the bottom of his Jell-O cup.

  Not sure what else to do, Lorna smiled idiotically at Kavita, too.

  “Five days just for the playa!” Kavita shook out her hair. “I totally need that.”

  Alex chuckled as though she’d said something hilarious. “Man,” he said. “I’d give anything to be your age again. Seriously, anything.”

  “Yeah,” Kavita said. Clearly she also thought it was stupendous to be her age.

  Alex held up his cup. He looked only at Kavita. “Who needs another dose?”

  “I’m going to go find the Ladies,” Lorna said.

  On her way up the stairs, Lorna passed a couple in black, hands entangled, lips and chests pressed together. She had to cough to get them to move. Was that the sort of thing Alex did with Jenny? Press her up against a wall? Lorna tried to think of the last time she’d been pressed to a wall. It was quite possible that the answer was never.

  The upstairs bathroom was small with a stained shower curtain and a nappy peach cover on the toilet seat. Lorna filled her plastic cup with water and gulped it down. Behind her, in the mirror, she could see a shelf of products lining the tub and recognized Alex’s special brand of psoriasis shampoo. That shampoo cost seven dollars a bottle. She turned and put it in her purse, wondering what else of his was still here. He’d packed a shockingly large suitcase when she asked him to go. She hadn’t specified a time frame, imagining about a week or so of punishment to start, but the suitcase showed he was thinking longer. At first this disturbed and frightened Lorna, but in time she adjusted to his absence. She came to like the added quiet, how clean she could keep the kitchen and bathrooms. She joined an adult swim club at the community centre and began racing with a co-ed (non-naked) house league. Her times were laughable, but it gave her something else to focus on. She felt proud of her adaptability. Jed and Cara didn’t like it, but it was hardly torture: half of their friends at school had divorced or separated parents. Plus she and Alex weren’t even married; the detangling would be simple enough, though it wouldn’t be easy.