Souls Dryft Read online

  I turned to read the sign, just as Angry Cell Phone man entered, not a single drop of rain on him. He carried a pile of suits draped over one arm and still shouted into the phone in his other hand. Now I should apologize, but suddenly I was tongue-tied.

  Pictures began flickering through my head like old home movies. There was no sound, just the whirr of the projector. I thought at first they were memories, but they couldn’t be, because he was in them.

  I quickly turned back to the counter, waiting for my suit, my heart beat rattling like hailstones against a window.

  "Are you insane? You could have been killed."

  Suddenly, impossibly, I knew who he was. Until that moment, this man existed only in my mind and on the pages of my manuscript, safely tucked away in that little world of my creation, where I controlled him completely. I knew all his faults and foibles, all his scars. There was nothing he did, or said, until I put ink on paper. Yet there he was, walking boldly through the door of that dry cleaners, turning my reality inside out. His face was one I’d imagined for years—ever since I was thirteen and began writing his story. The real man was just slightly more civilized and smoother about the edges. The dark hair I hadn’t expected, but everything else was just as I wrote it. Now here he came, stepping out of the world I’d created for him and trespassing on mine.

  I could hear my mother, "Don’t be ridiculous, Grace; at your age you should know the difference between fantasy and reality." I’d always suffered from a vivid imagination, which she claimed would get me in trouble one day. I was thirty-two, mind you, still waiting for that sort of trouble.

  My pulse was galloping.

  "If you weren’t wearing a red coat, I wouldn’t have seen you."

  I didn’t respond. If he couldn’t tear himself away from his phone, how did I know he spoke to me? Truthfully, I was far too embarrassed to admit myself at fault.

  "Hey…you! I’m talking to you. I hope you know how lucky you are."

  I was surprised he didn’t add a stern – young lady – to the end of his sentence. Before I could get a word out, he shouted at me again, "If I wasn’t a good driver, you wouldn’t be alive right now. Damn women! Have none of you even a grain of common sense?"

  How quickly I became the symbol of all feminine failings. Evidently he had a problem with women in general and decided to take it out on me.

  "Lucky for you, I’m an excellent driver. But that doesn’t give you the excuse to run out in front of me, twice, like a tiny-brained idiot."

  "Pardon me," I managed finally, "I thought I had a right to cross the road, as a law-abiding, tax-paying—"

  "Yes, I think eight-thirty Friday morning would be fine," he growled into his phone with thin, angry lips. "If you call the office, my secretary can confirm."

  He did it deliberately, I was sure. There was a smug, arrogant gleam in his eye, brilliant as sun bouncing off a fastidiously polished window. Naturally, the next time he spoke, I ignored it. Spending so many hours a day with a bloodthirsty mob of nine and ten year-olds, a person soon learns how to tune out certain layers of discordant noise. I believe he said something about me being an accident waiting to happen, but my suit arrived across the counter in a flurry of smooth plastic and I could have cried with relief. Until I saw the tag attached to the hanger.

  "Due to stains of an unusually resilient nature, this garment has not been cleaned to our standards."

  Staring, mortified by the red letters, printed in BOLD CAPITALS no less, I knew Cell Phone Man saw them too. As I stood there, dripping rainwater and defeat, he swept my hunched, decrepit form with narrowed eyes, no doubt wondering what grisly atrocity I’d committed to cause such heinous staining. And whether or not the authorities should be informed.

  While he passed his suits to the proprietor, I opened my bag to find my purse and several confiscated items rolled free, including three miniatures of vodka, a steak knife, a knuckle duster and the pack of naked lady playing cards. All pried earlier from the grubby, sweaty hands of my nativity shepherds and a stash one might expect in the possession of a prison guard. As each item tumbled out, Cell Phone Man caught it with his free hand, his eyebrows lifting progressively higher. I snatched the x-rated playing cards out of his clutches, and he quickly looked away, but I saw the amused twitch in his cheek. My humiliation was complete.

  He followed me out, unlocking his car over my shoulder with a self-satisfied click of his remote. "Look where you’re going next time," he muttered. I think I heard a "nutcase" there at the end too, somewhere under his breath.

  After the day I’d endured, something inside me snapped. With a million responses from which to choose, I settled on a universal gesture, at which his eyes widened, surprising me with a shot of summery blue in the midst of that gloomy evening. He shook his head, slipping into the snide, warm comfort of his car.

  Months later, as you know already, I would find the receipt for his dry cleaning in my coat pocket, but on that night it was swept up from the counter, along with the pile of contraband, and forgotten.

  In my head, those strange old home movies kept clicking back to life again in little spurts. Sometimes it rewound with people walking backward; sometimes the film rushed forward. Where did it begin? Where did it end? Perhaps it didn’t.

  And this was the night she began whispering in earnest, "Bring him back to me."

  Chapter Two

  "So hey, I thought we might as well get married. If you like."

  Jack was no student of the Grand Romantic Gesture, and I never expected to see him on one knee; however, the manner of this proposal was somewhat lacking. Having heard nothing before the "hey", still fuming over Angry Cell Phone man and mourning my suit, I was caught off guard. Jack often began a conversation somewhere in the middle and I’m sure, half the time, he didn’t even know if I was present. It didn’t particularly matter either way.

  He was on the sofa with his feet up, only the back of his head visible as he watched the evening news. "When we move north together," he added, "it’ll be the perfect opportunity."

  My school was about to close, and I would soon lose my job, but he’d been promoted within his company and transferred to Scotland. He already assumed I’d go with him, and I hadn’t mentioned tomorrow’s interview. I kept putting it off, as I put off a lot of things.

  I sighed, staring at my reflection in the dark, rain-spattered window. I was soaked through, so wet there was no telling where my reflection in the window ended and the rain began. Was that a scar on my chin? I rubbed at it until the mark disappeared.

  "So?" he called out merrily. "What do you think about it, eh? Quick trip to the registry office should be relatively painless."

  How easy it was for him. A person might think Jack never had a solitary bad thing happen to him, never wanted something he couldn’t reach, never knew what it was to be desperately alone in a crowded room. Maybe he didn’t. Unfortunately I was not so resilient to life’s hard knocks. I felt every bump and bruise.

  "Just like that?" I asked quietly, slipping off my wet coat and hanging it over a chair in the kitchen. My eyes strayed to the small drawer by the fridge.

  "Why not? Let’s do it."

  Sometimes, on bad days like today, I opened that little drawer and fumbled into the back of it, past the old wine corks, bag ties and batteries, to find that little black and white photograph of a baby in a womb. I wasn’t supposed to have kept it. Along with all the other things I collected over seven months of waiting, it should have been thrown out so that I didn’t dwell and mourn, but like a shameful, sneaking alcoholic with her last bottle of vodka, I kept it hidden away there. What else did I have left of her? It was a year ago today that I lost her, and there was no grave to visit, no other place to grieve. I was supposed to pick up my life and carry on as if she never existed, because of course she hadn't, not really, not like a fully-functioning being. She still needed me to live and I, apparently, had not been enough. At carrying a child, just like most things attempted, I failed
.

  It didn’t seem as if Jack even remembered now. The baby had never been real to him, as it was to me. He certainly didn’t realize what today was and if I pointed it out, he would tell me I was being mournful and punishing myself. As if I had no right to it.

  No one else ever mentioned it now. The subject was politely avoided, like an embarrassing relative at a party.

  "Grace? Are you listening?"

  The last time he proposed to me was when we found out about the baby. I’d said we should wait, sure he only asked out of a sense of duty, and, frankly, I didn’t want to marry Jack Willingham. He was always "up", happy, an energetic go-getter, which was nice in the beginning, exhausting after two years. I’d always wished I could be more like him, to have a clear direction, a purpose, say what I mean, be forceful, stand up for myself. He was frustrated with me sometimes because he said I wasn’t assertive enough. I knew my entire family were amazed he put up with me this long. "Jack the Lad" my father called him, not very pleasantly. To my mother he was "that Jack person you live with" barely restraining the "in sin"; Marian was simply glad I had a man – any man – in my life, since it meant her parties would be spared an embarrassing straggler.

  Of course, once I lost the baby, the subject of marriage was forgotten.

  Now tonight, of all nights, he brought it up again. Marriage, of course, not the baby. Never the baby.

  My hand was on the drawer, poised to open it quietly and find her again. No. I resisted. Instead I opened the fridge door and found a slice of cheesecake, which I ate in four bites.

  "What’s for dinner?" he shouted. "I’m starving. Thought you’d never get home. Where have you been, by the way? Daydreaming again? Scribbling daft stories in that notebook of yours?"

  There was a bitter draft in that kitchen. I stared at the window and my face, now formed entirely of raindrops, slowly melted down the glass.

  The kitchen vanished, and I was running along a street against the wind. I’d been here before, heard it all before.

  It happened a lot this way. Whenever I wanted out of the world in which I lived, I slipped sideways into her life and replaced my pain with hers.

  Rain got inside my shoes again, and the wind was suddenly so strong it pinned me to the spot, striking me in the gut with a punch to squeeze the breath out of me. Face down, eyes closed, I put my head into the wind, fought against it and walked forward into the pages of my book.

  Chapter Three

  Genny

  1533

  Had I not been such a scrawny wench, consisting— according to my mother-in-law—mostly of bones and mouth, I daresay I might have withstood the force of the gale that blew inland that day, roaring down the narrow alleys with the wrath of Beelzebub, but I could barely keep my feet on the cobbles and, wherever I turned, the wind gave chase. I imagined shiploads of vengeful pirates sailing on the storm, come to wreak havoc upon us. In all likelihood I would be captured and enslaved. It was only natural that they came for me. I was a marked woman. It was the year fifteen hundred and thirty-three. A woman who did not hold her tongue, or do as she was told, spent many hours in the stocks and was generally expected to meet her destiny at the end of a hangman’s rope.

  As I rounded the corner, salty rain blew hard in my face, almost bringing me to a complete halt. Blinded by the storm, I fumbled for the handle, but the door opened of its own accord and, lifted by another strong gust, I was tossed sideways into the house.

  The back of a hard hand swooped down out of the shadows, slapping my cheek, shaking raindrops from my lashes. The little pot of ink, newly purchased with the few coins I’d scraped together, flew from my hands and fell to the flagstones, smashing to pieces. My husband was no taller than me, but had hands like ham hocks, capable of delivering a hefty dose of "redirection" —something, apparently, I often needed.

  Stumbling, finally catching my breath, I saw my book in his other hand. Bound together using any little scraps I could find, it was usually kept hidden away under a loose board in the pantry, but the storm kept Jacob confined to the house that morning and, in a fit of frustrated boredom, he went prying. Whether he read the contents of my book or not, the punishment would be the same. The fact that I wrote at all was bad enough.

  As he explained to me. "The education of a woman causes only discontent and rebellion. A wife’s place is beside her husband and master, to abide by his will and obey his command without question, acknowledging that a man’s understanding, in all matters, is far superior to her own. Her sole purpose is to please her husband, and she must pay heed when he honors her with his counsel."

  Already planning how to acquire more ink, my wandering mind was amended only by another slap, this time with the flat palm of the same hand in a return journey.

  "You waste your time with daydreams and idle scribbling." After one disdainful glance at my book, he tossed it into his fire. "Find useful employment."

  Instantly, I conjured a vision of my braver self— warrior woman and adventurer —stabbing out his eyeballs with a poker, but I doubt this was the employment he had in mind. Alas, my husband’s counsel, like his slaps, went in one ear and out the other. I was a wicked, deceitful woman. Unlucky, cursed, call it what you will. He should have considered that before he married me and then, perhaps, he would not have met such a sudden and sorry end. Yet this is my story, and he is only a very incidental player in it, so we will dispose of him quickly.

  But I get ahead of myself.

  If Jacob will oblige by holding his slaps for a moment, I can tell you how I came to this point in my unremarkable life, not to excuse my behavior, but hopefully explain it.

  Now where to begin? Here perhaps, amid the blood and the screaming. As good a place as any.

  * * * *

  It made the sound of a ripe fruit splitting, but there was no pain beyond the first shock. Lying there in my warm, sticky blood, I listened to the screams and cries shattering over my head. The bird’s nest, after which I climbed on a dare, was safe in my fist, not a single egg broken. Unlike my face. I would never again see my reflection without thinking of that rash, reckless moment when I first reached for something beyond my grasp, blind to the danger.

  I could not have been more than four or five. Carried back to the house where I lived, I made the most of the attention, groaning and wailing. None of it worked on Old Mother Chippchase, however. My guardian from birth, she was never fooled into thinking I might be anything but the most wretched sinner. When they brought me to her, she exclaimed, "O’ course she bounced. The Devil has work fer her yet."

  From that day, the white scar on my chin served as a reminder that I bounced and the Devil had work for me yet. It seemed a long time in coming, however, for nothing exciting happened to me in a great many tiresome years. In the meantime, I was obliged to make use of a vivid imagination. Late at night, illuminated by a single candle stump, I penned the adventures of a reckless pirate, so awful there was surely no redemption for him, or for me—his creator.

  But again, I ramble on and I cannot keep Jacob frozen in time very much longer, his hand poised in the air above me, so I shall hurry through that fatherless, motherless childhood and now we come to the memory of a pantry window, my hand pressed to the leaded glass panes, as I watched the sun through my spread fingers. Sent to the pantry in disgrace, I sat with my hand to the window and touched the cheery warmth of the sun, while Old Mother Chippchase hollered through the pantry door that I should not come out until I apologized. On that day, my rejection of her fish pie, the words I used, combined with its shortly thereafter, speedy, rather spectacular propulsion into the nearest wall, had enraged her beyond the norm.

  "You are a wicked, undeserving girl," she croaked, "born o’ sin and very like to die of it."

  According to her, I survived childhood entirely by the skin of my teeth. A solitary, sour- tongued creature, I was never the sort of child one talked of proudly, or readily exhibited to friends and neighbors. I was, unwisely some might say, left to the
entertainment of my own imagination. Many hours I spent at that little pantry window, watching people come and go, making entire life stories out of a single weary face that passed, creating love affairs, scandals and adventures by the dozen that would have popped Old Mother Chippchase right out of her clogs.

  Her sons were the principal partners in Chippchase, Chippchase, Jowchett and Scroggs, a firm of Yarmouth solicitors, whose clients included my uncle, Baron Deptford, the man who left me in their care, because he could not trouble himself to look after another girl. Old Mother Chippchase agreed to keep me in the beginning, not out of charity, but in expectation that my uncle would repay her handsomely for the favor. As the years passed and the Baron appeared to forget my very existence, this seemed more and more unlikely. Thus her temper against me worsened.

  Once I was no more a child, she feared my uncle might marry me off and then any chance of repayment would fall through her grasping claws for good. As she said, I had lived there every day of my ungrateful life, eaten their food and sucked up their air, so surely they should be repaid. Thus, on the vague promise of a dowry from my uncle, I was married to her younger son, Jacob.

  Aha! Now we come to him and, as promised, we need not consider him for long.

  Jacob was a short, round fellow with bowed legs that would never —as the saying goes— stop a pig in a passage. He had a low forehead, protruding ears and wooden teeth, which I hid from him occasionally, just to raise my spirits. His dull lectures never inspired me to obey him, any more than his sweaty fumblings induced passion, merely horrified amusement, for which I was chastised with slaps and beatings. I was accused of having cursed him into impotence, but apparently the curse did not reach beyond the door of that house.

  The day he died, they laid him out in his mother’s parlor, where I found her weeping and beating her bosom. "My poor boy! See what she has done to you," she wailed.

  His breeches still hung around his bowed knees, which was as far as he got them before he tumbled out of his lover’s bedchamber window, soon after her husband came home unexpectedly. It was lucky, I mused, that as he flew through the air with all his parts a-flapping in the cold wind, no innocent soul had the misfortune to stand directly below.