Free Excerpt

Drifting
by Stephanie Gertler
Publisher: E P Dutton
Published: September 2003

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Chapter 1

Claire's footsteps echoed as she walked across the planked blue-gray floor of the veranda, her pink cotton robe trailing behind her. Her hair was gathered on top of her head in a mother-of-pearl clasp, stray wisps of pale blond framing her high cheekbones. She set her coffee mug on a glass table, rubbing away a frosted circular remnant of someone's drink with her fingertip; her deep-set eyes faced downward, pools of transparent blue mist.

She sat too stiffly in the cushioned wicker chair, the newspaper folded in her lap, and gazed out the salt-sprayed window. The beach in the distance was strangely stilled by the early autumn morning. The sand appeared dark, littered with pine needles. She listened to the pine needles hitting the flat roof outside their bedroom window the sleepless night before as they tapped the shingles like steel pin drops. A flurry of leaves suddenly twirled like a pinwheel in a vortex of wind and she turned her head to see a blue-and-white-striped awning loosen from an upstairs dormer. The American flag hanging over the front porch twisted around itself like a Chinese yo-yo. Purple and pink asters, their blooms nearly finished now, strained in one final effort toward the September morning sun that struggled through the clouds.

Stella came and sat beside her, tail wagging low; her eyes, clouded with marbled blue cataracts, gazed up at Claire. Claire patted the dog's flank, so lost in thought that she startled when Eli came into the room.

"Good morning, ladies," he said, placing his steaming mug next to Claire's and scratching Stella behind the ears. He touched Claire's arm. "Penny for your thoughts."

Claire smiled at her husband. "Hi," she said, as he leaned over to kiss her. "You smell like mint."

"New soap," he said. "Is that good?"

She nodded and focused her glance on his hands. His fingers curled around the mug of coffee as he brought it to his lips. His hands were mapped with dark spots but still strong. Large hands that had held their babies, covered their infants' heads, and enveloped her the times she thought she might break in half if not for their salvation. She remembered watching once while he delivered a foal. How deftly he took the foal from its mother, holding it as if it were made of fine blown glass. How he looked when he knelt beside the mare, his breath coming in short precise inhalations, perspiration glistening on his forehead as she brushed away an errant lock of hair that had fallen in his eyes. She thought as she sat across from him now how odd it was that his dark hair was streaked with silver and wondered when it turned and why she hadn't seen it happen. He was wearing black jeans and a plaid shirt rolled to his elbows; a frayed white T-shirt peeked out at the notch of his neck.

"There's a rip in your shirt," she said tenderly. "At the collar. I can sew it. I've been neglecting you, haven't I?"

Eli shook his head and fingered the tear. "It's not worth fixing," he said. "I'll toss it later. How's Stella this morning?"

"Not so great," Claire said, stroking the golden retriever's back. "She's having trouble lately up and down the stairs."

"Her depth perception's gone," Eli said, lifting the dog's chin, studying her eyes.

"I think she misses the kids. It's too quiet around here."

"It always feels quiet Monday mornings after the guests have gone," Eli said. "Especially this time of year."

Claire lifted her head and looked into his eyes. She wanted to tell him that it wasn't just the quiet of a Monday morning. It wasn't just the time of year. This was different from every autumn morning they'd known for the last twenty-two years. Didn't he hear the absence of Jonah's blaring stereo and rattling of old pipes as Natalie ran a shower so steamy that vapors seeped under the bathroom door and wafted into the hallway? Normally, Claire would have been dressed by now, clearing the breakfast dishes, shooing Natalie out the door after kissing her slightly damp hair, breathing in her scent of rose water and cherry lip balm.

It was a scorching-hot August day three weeks before when she hugged Natalie outside her freshman dormitory. The moment she knew would come all summer long. She could still taste the precise moment when she folded her daughter into her arms and held her motionless, bittersweet tears moistening Natalie's cheeks.

"Mom!" Natalie said. "You promised you wouldn't cry."

"I'm not," Claire said, forcing a smile.

Natalie turned to her father. "Dad, do something!"

"It's a mother's prerogative," he said, laughing. "She's held up real well until now."

"You're going to be just fine," Claire said, smiling through glistening eyes, her breath held visibly. She stroked her daughter's cheek and tucked the loose strands of hair behind her ear.

"Who are you trying to convince?" Natalie teased.

"Remember to take your vitamins, okay? I bought you the ones with iron. . . ."

"Mom," Natalie protested. "Enough. I'm a big girl."

"Yes, you are," Claire said tenderly. "Sometimes I forget."

Natalie turned to her father. "Help her, okay, Dad? She's all yours now."

"I'll call you tonight," Claire said, hugging her daughter one more time.

Eli placed his arm around Claire's waist and steered her from the steps of the ivy-covered dormitory, his arm staying around her although she turned at least a dozen times to wave as they walked down the path and over the crest of the hill to their truck. Natalie stood until they were gone from sight. It was all Claire could do not to run back and take Natalie home. Wait! the voice inside her cried. I'm not finished yet. Did I tell you everything you need to know? Teach you everything I've learned over the years? How can I leave you now?

Eli held Claire's hand in the truck. Blasts of hot air from the air-conditioning vents made her breath feel shorter than it was.

"You okay?" he asked, squeezing her hand. "It's going to be okay."

Claire covered her mouth with her hand and began to cry. "I don't know what's the matter with me."

Eli pulled her to him. "You're a mother," he said, drawing her closer to him, pressing his lips to the side of her head.

"Part of me just isn't quite ready to let her go, that's all."

"She's like a kite. She's so ready to fly," he said gently. "You're just letting out the string."

Natalie called that night to say she was fine. To reassure her mother that she'd found the cafeteria and to tell about her roommate from California who brought a microwave.

"You know, you packed enough Q-tips and Band-Aids for the whole university," Natalie said, laughing. "I could start a cottage industry."

"Well, you never know. . . ."

"I love you, Mom."

I love you, Mom. The suffixed phrase came so easily to her children though Claire had never uttered it herself. She thought of the times Natalie raced out the door on a crisp fall morning, sweater tied around her waist, dangling beneath her coat, or Jonah darted back inside to retrieve something he'd forgotten. I love you, Mom! he, too, would cry unabashedly. "I love you, too!" Claire would call as they ran for the bus, her words carrying on the wind for eternity, bouncing back to her like echoes in a cave.

"You're usually dressed by now," Eli said, watching her stare away from him again, wondering what she expected to find beyond his eyes. "No patients today?"

"I have some reports to write for DSS. Another week before sessions begin again."

"That's a late start for you."

"Not really. Schools just opened today," she said.

Eli stood behind her now, resting his hands on her shoulders, the two of them staring at the rocky beach, the red-and-white lighthouse motionless in the distance as though it were painted on the horizon.

"Remember when the kids would ask if they swam as far as they could, where they'd end up?" she asked. "Jonah always said they'd be in Barcelona. Where on earth did he get that from? Barcelona?"

She pictured Jonah and Natalie as they fished from the jetty, matching hooded gray sweatshirts, their skinny stick legs streaked with sunburn, protruding beneath baggy shorts. How was it possible they were on their own now? Wasn't it just yesterday that they wore backpacks bigger than they were and she double-knotted their shoelaces? Jonah. He graduated from college the May before and now was at veterinary school in Ohio, Eli's alma mater. He had left the week before Natalie, the black Chevy Blazer packed to the brim, his muscular, suntanned arm frozen in a wave through the open window. I love you, Mom, trailing behind him as he called from the window and drove away.

Claire reached behind her and pressed her husband's hands with her fingertips. "Summer always ends so fast once Labor Day comes," she said.

There was a distinct chill in the air. A breeze blew through an open jalousie and suddenly made her shiver. The few remaining sailboats were anchored in the small marina, rocking to and fro, their masts tinkling like bells. Jonah was ten and Natalie was six when they bought the Inn at Drifting-"Eight-guest-room gem on Dune Beach" in Drifting, Connecticut, as the brochure described it. "Delightful living room with stone fireplace and adjoining bar area. Elegant dining for fifty." The Inn looked like something out of storybook-an old ramshackle Victorian painted a pale periwinkle blue perched on a bluff overlooking the Atlantic.

"I never get tired of this view," Claire said.

Eli bent down and kissed his wife's cheek. "You used to say that about the Jersey side of the Hudson."

Claire was about to answer when she heard the school bus come to a screeching halt. She pictured the children as they climbed clumsily up the wide steps, the door shutting with a screech, the bus chugging down the street leaving a stream of exhaust in its wake.

"Seven-twenty," she said knowingly as the sound of the wheels became distant.

Eli kissed the top of her head. "What are you thinking lately? Tell me."

She turned to look up at him, her lips parted, her eyebrows raised ever so slightly. "Nothing. You know. Natalie. Jonah."

"No," Eli said, shaking his head. "It's more than that."

"Wait a minute. Who's the psychologist, you or me?"

"I speak as a husband, Dr. Cherney."

"Nothing's going on. It's just that all this is so new to me. You know, with the kids away . . . I'm still learning to separate, that's all," she said, brushing imaginary specks from her robe.

"Baloney."

"You make me so damn mad sometimes, Eli Bishop," she said, looking up at him, her eyes fiery.

"I do, do I? How's that?"

"Because you're like some kind of mind reader or something."

"Comes from spending my days with animals."

"Well, whatever it is, it's annoying," she said with a laugh.

"So, are you going to come clean or not?"

"You have to leave. Go!" she said, giving him a playful shove.

"I have a few minutes," he said, looking at his watch. "Spill."

She stretched her arms over her head and relaxed her body. "It's complicated, Eli," she said, blowing out a puff of breath.

"What is?"

"I tell you what-we'll talk tonight. I promise."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. It's just with the kids gone I have all this time to think all of a sudden."

"So that's good. . . ."

"It's good," she said hesitantly, taking his hand.

"But?"

"But I'm thinking about my mother, Eli," she said, swallowing hard. "How do you leave a baby?" She inhaled deeply. "I'm a little too old for this, aren't I?"

"No, you're not too old for this, Claire," he said.

She put up her hand to pull the hair back from her face. "I've got to get myself going. And you're going to be late."

"I don't care," Eli said. "Talk to me."

"I can't just yet. I have to think things through some more." She looked up at him. "Listen, I'll be fine. Resilient's my middle name. You know me. . . ."

He bent down and kissed her. "Very well," he said. "I know you very well."

Chapter 2

Claire listened as Eli's footsteps crossed the floor of the veranda. As he opened and closed the door to his pickup, to the rattle of the engine turning over, and the shush of the tires fading on the damp pavement as the truck rounded the corner and drove down the winding road. She stood, tightened the tie on her robe, and heard the whisper of her every breath. She cranked the jalousie until the window was sealed and took one last look at the ocean in what now seemed an even stiller morning as a soft rain came down. She picked up her coffee mug along with Eli's, tucked the still unread newspaper under her arm, and walked into the kitchen, placing the mugs in the dishwasher. She let go an audible sigh and looked around her. It all appeared too pristine and unfamiliar. The counters were sponged and clean, no crumbs from breakfast toast. A container of warm orange juice wasn't sitting next to a stick of melting butter, a jar of warm jam. There were no dishes piled in the sink. There was the distinct feeling that no one was home. It was the same feeling she had had when she walked into Jack's apartment the Monday morning after he died. She shut her eyes and remembered the way Eli steadied her hand as she placed the key in Jack's door, how the fresh scent of lemon oil and ammonia assaulted her senses and reminded her of being a girl on those still-cool spring afternoons in Manhattan when they'd finished what Jack called their spring cleansing.

At first she'd been alarmed at the orderliness of Jack's apartment, wondering if he knew the end was near and hadn't wanted to burden her, but then she realized that it was spring. He must have spent Saturday afternoon the week before filing his papers and straightening the lace antimacassars on the backs of the armchairs and polishing the beveled mirrors and old glass doorknobs. She could hear his soft voice, etched with the trace of a Russian accent, telling her that April was the month for renewal. Spring ahead! he shouted as Claire dusted and polished and threw away old magazines and newspapers, stopping only to make sandwiches of liverwurst and spicy mustard on thick slices of black bread.

Jack's friend Vince had called at midnight that Saturday night. The Spring Ahead Saturday when they'd traditionally done the cleansing when she was a child. The night the clocks were to be set forward. If only she could have turned them back.

Vince said they'd been playing bocci at Farabutto as they did every Saturday night, eating linguini with red clam sauce and drinking Chianti, when Jack had the stroke. Vince was sitting in the hospital lobby with his head in his hands by the time Claire and Eli got there with three-year-old Jonah in tow. They still lived in Eli's four-flight walk-up on West Fourth Street back then. Vince said that if it was any consolation at all, Jack had been laughing. They were placing bets and flirting with the hat-check girl and remembering the first time that Vince took Jack to play bocci. And then, in the middle of the laughter, Jack collapsed. He hung on for five days. The first stroke left him with a mild paralysis in his right arm and a droop at the side of his mouth that slurred his speech and made him difficult to understand. But it was mild, the doctors said. Claire spent those five days at Jack's bedside, interpreting Jack's halting, stifled words, trying to read the desperation in his eyes. She stayed, unwavering, save an hour here and there where she went home to Jonah and Eli came and took her place. It was the second stroke on the fifth day that felled Jack. The second stroke came out of the blue as she sat by his bedside. He gasped, gripped her hand and died. Quietly. Silently. Almost elegantly. The way Jack did everything. So typical for Jack to make dying appear as effortless as living.

"Dear Jack, Today is a beautiful day," Claire wrote in the letter she tried to read at his funeral. The first of many letters she subsequently wrote to him over the years and slid into the back of her dressing table drawer. "If I listen carefully I can hear the strains of the balalaika and the poetry of Pushkin. Today is a beautiful day and I will drink a cup of Postum and pretend that it is coffee and you are sitting beside me as you did for every morning of my childhood. But how can today be a beautiful day, Jack? How is it possible as I stand here and feel the warm spring sun that any of the days can be beautiful without you? . . ."

Every day of her childhood, Jack had awakened her with the words "Today is a beautiful day." It didn't matter if the day was gray or raining or windy or cold. Jack always said it was beautiful. Each day, he said, was filled with the details of living. You have to watch each detail carefully and appreciate every nuance, every sense that otherwise might pass you by. He would sit on the edge of her bed as he awakened her, reciting a poem in Russian, laughing when he fumbled the words, saying his one regret was that he never taught her his language and was beginning to forget it himself. The endless parade of cars with their headlights shimmering drove up the parkway to the cemetery. Jack's coffin lay in an open grave shaded by a charcoal tent under a cloudless turquoise sky. Dozens of mourners stood in a horseshoe configuration behind the three rows of not enough folding chairs. Claire and Eli took their places in the front row beside Jack's sister, Helen; Jonah curled up on Claire's lap. She'd handed Jonah to Eli when she rose to read the letter. From the corner of her eye, she saw Aunt Helen twist an embroidered handkerchief, dampened from tears, in her thin, veined porcelain hands. She heard Vince blow his nose like a trumpet and gazed at the sea of saddened faces, many of whom she recognized, but strangers as well whom she later discovered all knew Jack. Customers from the pharmacy Jack owned on the Upper West Side of Manhattan for thirty-five years, waiters from Farabutto, owners from neighboring shops along Broadway. And then, while she was reading, trying to celebrate her father's life rather than mourn him, she heard Jonah's small voice ask, "Where's Pa?" Her shoulders heaved and she bent from the waist, doubling over as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Eli waited to see if she might recover on her own, but then he handed Jonah to Aunt Helen and went to Claire. He braced her against his chest with one arm and took the letter in the other. He barely got through the letter himself, stopping at intervals to swallow his own tears and those he wept for her. He placed his lips against the side of his wife's head when he finished and closed his eyes, a tear escaping down his cheek despite his efforts.

The stroke was the first and last thing that ever stopped Jack Cherney. Aunt Helen told her that even after Ursula left, Jack didn't stop for a moment. He fumbled with diaper pins and learned to tie hair ribbons and fasten sashes on organza dresses. He took Claire to the playground on Sundays and sat at the sandbox with the mothers. Yet Claire always called him Jack. Daddy was too generic. Her friends called their fathers Daddy. Jack was different. The other fathers came home at night and the mothers put dinner on the table. Jack came home at night and taught Claire to cook while he taught himself, scalding his fingers as he fumbled with hot pots and laughing at mistimed meals that landed them at the corner deli. He laundered and ironed and went to PTA meetings and doctor appointments and stood outside fitting rooms at Best & Company while she tried on dresses. Calling him Daddy wouldn't have felt right. He was Jack. He was everything.

Ursula, Sulie as everyone called her, was fifteen years younger than Jack. Dark and exotic, Sulie swore she was left on her parents' doorstep by gypsies. How was it possible, Sulie would ask haughtily, that someone the likes of her could be born to people as simple as Frank and Maria Terenzi? A tailor and a housekeeper? There was no other explanation, Sulie insisted. She must have been left by gypsies.

Sulie was cast as Dunyasha in The Cherry Orchard at a tiny theater over on Avenue A when she and Jack met. Jack loved Chekhov but he went back four times to The Cherry Orchard because he couldn't take his eyes off nineteen-year-old Ursula Terenzi. The fourth time, he waited for her by the stage door with a bouquet of yellow sweetheart roses and a note asking if she'd have coffee with him. Six months later they were married and ten months later, Claire was born. And two days before Claire's second birthday, early in the morning, Sulie left. She'd called Helen right after Jack left for the pharmacy.

"My agent called last night. I got an audition," Sulie said. "Can you come and mind the baby? I'll only be a couple of hours." The baby. She rarely referred to Claire by name.

Claire was in her playpen and a damp diaper when Helen arrived. Sulie was waiting at the door. A small suitcase was by her side, a new black-and-white herringbone coat from Peck and Peck draped over her arm, a pair of red velvet gloves in her hand. She wore black wool narrow-fitting trousers and a black mock turtleneck sweater adorned with a single strand of Venetian beads. Her thick black hair was twisted in a single braid down her back, a bright red lipstick outlined her full heart-shaped mouth. Helen said Sulie was clearly eager to leave, kissing Claire the way she would have kissed her any other morning when Helen stayed and Sulie went to the grocery or the post office or the hairdresser. A perfunctory kiss that barely grazed the child's feathery blond hair and left the faintest trace of red on the side of her forehead where her lips barely touched Claire's skin.

"Why the valise?' Helen asked, gesturing to the weathered brown leather bag.

"Costume changes," Sulie said without blinking.

When Jack came home that evening, Sulie still had not returned. Helen met Jack at the door.

"You're still here?" Jack asked. "Where's Sulie?"

Helen made a brave attempt to be casual. "Those auditions always take longer than planned," she said with a shrug. "Come, I made pot roast. The way you like it with the cloves."

"What about Max?"

Helen waved her hand. "His brother's in town. Come, have your supper."

But Jack barely touched his meal. He rocked Claire to sleep and tucked her into the crib as Helen cleared the dishes. And after Claire was sleeping, he told Helen that Sulie left them. He knew before he checked the medicine cabinet or noticed that her silver-plated brush and comb were gone from the ceramic cachepot on the bathroom shelf and her cake of Castile soap was missing from its porcelain cradle. He told Helen that he knew when he had awakened that morning. It was a feeling he had in his gut as he watched Sulie braid her hair with great precision, refusing to catch his glance in the mirror. He knew before he'd looked on the shelf of the bedroom closet just after the dinner he'd labored to chew and forced himself to swallow and saw that Sulie's old brown leather suitcase was missing.

"Why didn't you tell me she had a valise with her?" Jack asked accusingly.

"She said it was costume changes."

"And you believed her?"

"Yes. No. Oh, Jack, she is so young." Helen dropped her voice to a whisper and clasped her hands as though in prayer, shaking them toward Jack. "Too young for you."

Jack closed his eyes and pressed his lips together.

"You couldn't have stopped her, Jack," Helen said.

"I know," he said. "I know." He covered his mouth with his hands, held his head back and spoke through his fingers. "Where could she have gone? Where?"

The following day, Sulie's note arrived at the pharmacy. It said she was sorry that she had to leave but her star was calling. She'd boarded a Greyhound bus and headed west. She would phone them at some point. Wife and mother were the only roles she could not play with any realism, the note read. They were simply not part of her repertoire. Jack read the note at the cluttered wooden table in the back of the pharmacy where he sat and ate lunch. He read it twice, disbelieving at first despite the strong instinct he felt the morning she left, then angry as he crumpled the paper in his hand and placed it in a large glass ashtray. He struck a match on the heel of his shoe and set it afire, watching as it turned from orange to black and disintegrated into ash. He was furious, but with himself. Sulie was barely ready for marriage, let alone ready for a baby. Jack recalled the panic on her face when she told him she was pregnant and yet Jack was certain that once she saw the baby, held its tender pink flesh in her arms, she would soften. She never did. She never cradled her baby girl. Refused to nurse her. Reluctantly answered Claire's cries in the middle of the night. She was, Jack said in later years, like an animal trapped in a cage. He excused her. It wasn't her fault, he said. It was youth. And besides, she was far too spirited for the mundane, ironically the quality that made him fall in love with her. It was Eli to whom Jack made this confession. Jack and Eli sat at the Formica-and-chrome dinette in the kitchen of Jack's apartment, an icy bottle of vodka between them. Claire was in the living room nursing Jonah, strains of Judy Collins drowning out the conversation that wafted in broken tones, high and low octaves, from the kitchen.

"You understand," Jack said, his eyes imploring as though he was begging for Sulie's exoneration. "You've cared for horses. Sulie was like a wild mare. Some of them simply can't be tamed."

"And Claire? Did Claire cry for her? Ask for her?" Eli questioned.

"She never asked for her," Jack said, leaning toward Eli, placing his hand on Eli's forearm, speaking in a hushed tone. "Once, maybe just once in the beginning. It was as though Claire never noticed she was gone."

"Claire never mentions her," Eli said. "Once maybe. Years ago."

"Leave it," Jack said. "It's best this way."

"I'm not sure," Eli said thoughtfully. He was about to say some more when Jack spoke.

"She will talk when she's ready," Jack said firmly.

"Has Claire asked you questions? Has she spoken with you? Ever?" Eli persisted.

But Jack never answered him. He stroked his chin between his thumb and index finger and poured another vodka.

Sulie's parents were heartbroken and not a year after she all but disappeared, they returned to Rapallo, the small Italian fishing village where they'd grown up and married twenty-five years before. They needed simplicity, they said. Life in America had become too complex. There was too much freedom. It was, they said, what ruined their Ursula. What made her a handful throughout her life: wearing false eyelashes and running around with a wild crowd and forsaking the Church for the theater. They'd come here for her, they said. Now that they lost her, they were going home.

For the first seven years of Claire's life, Sulie called on Claire's birthday or a day later and sent postcards from places with storybook names like Angel, Arkansas and Cakebread, Missouri.

"Look, my darling," Jack would say, waving a postcard in front of Claire. "Your mother is becoming quite the actress. She might even be a movie star one day." And Claire would take the picture, look closely, and wonder what to make of this stranger who had borne her. She would smile and nod her head, hand back the photograph to Jack, and then there would be silence until one of them changed to an easier subject or Jack reached into the pocket of his white pharmacy smock and extracted a candy bar or a small cake of soap carved like a rose. "Ah! I nearly forgot!" he would exclaim. "I have a treat for my sweet!"

In the beginning, Sulie sent a black-and-white picture of herself standing in front of a theater's block-lettered marquis where it said "Introducing Ursula Terenzi" or a head shot with her neck tilted backwards, chin turned up, thick black hair cascading down her shoulders, lips parted provocatively. But then the postcards and the calls just stopped.

It wasn't until her thirteenth birthday that Claire had the courage to take Sulie's pictures from the mantel. She'd planned it all day. She'd thought about it with such determination she was sent to the principal's office for not paying attention in class. Jack was still at the pharmacy when she got home. She walked over to the mantel and with not even a caress or last look of longing, she piled her mother's photographs in her arms like schoolbooks. She toyed with the idea of saving the frames and then decided to toss them, silvered frames and all, watching as they tumbled in what appeared to be slow motion and soundless clamor despite the tumult into the inferno.

"Where are your mother's photographs?" Jack asked when he came home from work that evening carrying a bouquet of yellow tulips and a box of Barton's chocolate truffles for Claire.

"Away," she said softly. "I put them away."

"Where? Where did you put them?" Jack asked, looking around the room. "Claire?"

"The incinerator," Claire said, barely blinking, pronouncing each syllable as though it were a separate word.

"The incinerator? Why? Why would you do that?"

"I don't want her pictures anymore," Claire said, holding back tears she'd held back all day long or perhaps for nearly thirteen years. "I don't want to look at them."

"You didn't have to burn them," Jack said, thinking of the note he'd burned in the ashtray nearly a dozen years before.

"I don't care."

"She's still your mother."

"I'm thirteen now. Things happen to girls when they're thirteen, you know," she said, her head hanging down. "A mother's supposed to be here for certain things. I have no mother. Mothers don't leave their children."

"No, they don't," Jack answered, the words barely escaping his throat.

She lifted her eyes to her father. "We don't even cross her mind, can't you see that? She hasn't sent a letter in years. She never calls anymore. Not even on my birthday."

"And what about . . . what about your womanhood?" Jack asked self-consciously. "Aunt Helen could help you."

"She lives too far away. Besides, I figured it out myself," she said, blushing. "The same way I bought my own bras." She swallowed hard and looked her father in the eyes. "Jack, sometimes I sing myself to sleep at night. I've done that since I'm really little. I sing from The King and I and it comforts me." Her eyes overflowed now. Her voice lowered. "There are times that I wonder what it would be like if I had a . . . and I can't fall asleep and the light from the street lamp keeps me awake . . . and I just can't understand how she could've left."

"I hear you singing. I hear you. I think you sing because you are happy," he said, sitting down on the sofa, placing his hands on his knees and shaking his head side to side. "What should we do, Claire?" He looked at her in her black velvet skirt and white satin blouse. "You look very much the teenager now. Thirteen! A young woman. I can't believe it."

"We should go to Farabutto and have our birthday dinner. And we should stop waiting for letters and stop making believe. Stop pretending." And then, drawing herself up as tall as she could, she said, "And maybe you should stop thinking about her."

Jack nodded his head, slapped his hands on his knees and stood up. "You are right, Claire. But you should know that she left me, she didn't leave you."

"She left us, Jack," Claire said. "Both of us. But I am happy." She smiled at him. "You're enough for me, Jack." It was the last time they spoke of Sulie but just the other day she wrote a letter to Sulie as well, shoved in the back of the nightstand drawer next to Jack's. A letter asking why.

She missed Jack terribly. Since the day he died eighteen years before there wasn't a night she didn't fall asleep without him in her prayers. In her memories. But lately, she missed Jack even more. She longed to tell him how she felt with both Natalie and Jonah away now. How the house seemed so empty. How the last of her touchstones had incinerated like the pictures so many years before. How whatever uncertainty she'd felt the night her baby girl came into the world had dissolved the minute the nurse placed her in her arms. She'd mothered Jack and then Eli and Jonah but the notion of mothering a daughter was daunting until the moment she held Natalie's slippery flesh naked next to her chest. But more, perhaps, she wanted to ask him about Sulie. She wanted to know how a mother could leave her child. She wanted to know the depth of Sulie's demons.

Perhaps Jack had taught her too well to mind the details. Details distressed her now. She bought milk in quarts. No more bulky gallons. Two apples, two pears, four bananas. There was no large bowl of fruit on the kitchen counter that was eaten overnight. No chips, no salsa, none of what Natalie called the snacky foods. There were two loads of laundry each week instead of each day. Claire's shampoo was where it was supposed to be with the cap on and her hairbrush and comb remained where they belonged. The basketball sat nearly deflated in the corner of the garage. The car wasn't low on gas. Even Stella's cloudy eyes and slow gait marked the passing of time with finality and silent pronouncement that an era was over. All the details that had once distracted her so reliably were gone. Now there was far too much time to ponder what never existed.

She dried the coffee mugs and hung them on the hooks in the cabinet. Fixed the tie on the lace curtain that hung across the kitchen window, lingering as she watched the frothy waves roll up the shore. It felt like yesterday that they'd moved to Drifting. Natalie was conceived the night before they moved, a poignant nine months after Jack died. They had considered moving into Jack's apartment but Claire said it would always feel empty to her. Aunt Helen and Uncle Max had retired to South Carolina when she was ten years old. There was nothing to keep her in the city anymore. Cherney's Pharmacy was sold to the young man who'd been Jack's assistant, and just seeing the old block-lettered sign come down and the new one, STANLEY DRUGS AND COSMETICS, go up in a garish hot-pink neon script, tore Claire apart. Eli had never been one for Manhattan anyway. She knew he had stayed for her and for Jack although Eli insisted it wasn't so.

It was pure serendipity that Doc Wilson's ad announcing the sale of his country veterinary practice had been in the journal. They drove up to Drifting one Sunday in late December and not three weeks later were packed and ready to move. They didn't go to Doc Wilson's right away. They drove down Main Street and parked in the empty lot near the beach. The public baths were closed for the winter, their doors battened down with padlocks. The unadorned flagpoles were bare sheaths of metal, their canvas straps slapped by the wind. They pushed Jonah's stroller along the boardwalk and felt the cool salt spray sting their cheeks and wondered aloud if it would be possible to live in a town as tiny as the postcards that lined the shuttered beachfront kiosks. Yet both knew there was no question when Mrs. Wilson opened the door to the small animal hospital on Olivia Street and led them up the bare wooden stairs to the small cozy apartment above. Doc Wilson was dozing in a worn corduroy armchair, his steel-rimmed half glasses perched crookedly on the bridge of his nose, an overweight black Labrador and a mottled dachshund sleeping by his side.

"Martin! Martin! Wake up! That young man who's going to take over the practice is here!" Mrs. Wilson proclaimed as though it was a fait accompli.

Claire knew they were meant to be in Drifting from the moment Mrs. Wilson took her on what she called the grand tour of the tiny apartment. She peered into every cupboard lined meticulously with gingham-checked paper, every drawer filled with neat rows of worn scratched cutlery and small wire baskets neatly holding oddly paired items-corks, string, safety pins, vegetable peelers, bent paper clips. Mrs. Wilson showed her the four-burner stove with the double oven, telling her proudly about the meals she'd cooked for her three children, how the top oven baked Rome apples far better than the lower oven but the lower one never failed to roast the perfect chicken. And later, when Claire and Eli were back at the boardwalk, sitting across from one another at a picnic table, steaming coffee warming their hands while Jonah slept bundled in the stroller, Eli asked, "Can you do this? Can you live in this town?"

She nodded yes. "Can you?"

"It's easy for me. I'm just a small-town boy. You grew up in the city. No shops and department stores and ethnic markets? No Central Park?"

"I can live anywhere as long as I'm with you," she said.

It hadn't been easy to get Jonah to sleep the night before the move. Even Maggie, their old springer spaniel, paced the apartment. Eli said that children and animals have similar instincts. That both Jonah and Maggie had a sense of something changing. They'd tried to explain the notion of moving to Jonah but he remained baffled by the empty cabinets and cardboard boxes filled with his toys and books piled high in the living room. He tossed and turned in his bed as he had for the last several days while they packed, coming out every ten minutes or so, perspiring and weepy, rubbing his red-rimmed eyes. Claire convinced him to drink a cup of warm milk and honey. "It's what Pa gave me when I was little and couldn't sleep. It's like a magic potion, Jonah. You'll see." Claire often mentioned Pa, never wanting Jack to slip from Jonah's young memory.

Claire rocked Jonah while he drank the elixir from the sippy cup, his eyes growing heavy until he could no longer resist. Eli took him from Claire's arms and laid him on his bed, tucking his plaid blanket with the frayed satin trim under his chin. He kissed the boy on his forehead and tiptoed from the room, leaving Maggie curled at the foot of his bed. They waited to see if he would stay sleeping, wrapping the last of the dishes and glasses in newspaper while they listened for his pajama-slippered footsteps.

"Don't wrap those yet," Eli said, taking two wineglasses about to be rolled in newspaper from Claire's hands. "Let's finish last night's wine."

They made love on a down comforter amid the boxes that night, whispering as Jonah slept. The whispers led to Natalie.

Claire looked at the children's graduation pictures on her dresser next to their baby pictures. Jonah was fair-haired and blue-eyed like Jack and herself but had Eli's strapping build. She smiled to herself. How was it possible that her seven-pound baby boy was suddenly taller than his six-foot-one father? Natalie was petite like Claire and dark-haired like Eli although Natalie had a caramel to her skin and a drama in her dark eyes that were unmistakably Sulie, traits that Claire recalled from the pictures that once sat on the mantel. No question, Sulie was beautiful. Natalie once asked if there were any pictures of her grandmother.

"Granny's picture is in the living room," Claire answered, puzzled. "On the piano."

"No," Natalie said softly. "Your mother."

Claire felt herself bristle. "I have none."

"Mom? Do you remember her at all?" Natalie prodded.

"No," Claire said, shaking her head. "I was way too young when she left."

"Why did she leave?"

"Because she was way too young," Claire said quietly.

"Who told you?"

"Aunt Helen mostly. And Jack."

"Was she pretty?"

"Very pretty," Claire said thoughtfully. "Beautiful, really."

"You remember?"

"No. Just from old pictures."

"Where are they? I thought you said you don't have any."

"I don't," she said. "I threw them away a long time ago."

"Do you ever wonder, Mom? I mean, do you ever wonder where she is or want to find her or anything?"

"I did." Claire sighed. "After you were born. Jack was gone and I thought about her pretty intensely for a while. I think it was because you were you, you know, a girl. I wondered how her pregnancy was with me . . . you know, things like that."

"So?"

"So what?"

"So maybe you should try to find her. People do things like that nowadays. Like kids who are adopted and stuff."

"I know," Claire said. "It's just that I don't know what I'd do with her if I found her. If she said she was sorry I don't know that I could forgive her. And if she wasn't sorry then I think I might feel as if she left me all over again."

A stack of papers long overdue for the Department of Social Services sat on the chair in the corner of the room. She showered and towel-dried her hair, pulled on faded jeans and a worn baby blue Oxford shirt that Eli had discarded, and gathered the papers under her arm. She turned off the lamp, closed the bedroom window and headed downstairs.

The glass door in the small lobby was frosted with fog. The drizzle had become a heavy rain. Claire's office was in what had once been the old barn behind the inn. A short hop down the path, but she surely needed an umbrella even to run the short distance. The frosted glass obscured the man standing outside. She was about to take her umbrella from the brass stand when the front door opened. The man's umbrella appeared first as he pushed open the door. One of the spokes jutted out and water dripped onto the floor as he struggled to close it. He looked at her apologetically. In his late forties, maybe early fifties, he was powerfully built with steel-blue eyes and sandy-colored hair. His khaki trousers were wrinkled and one of his white shirttails hung visibly beneath his tweed jacket, a corner of one lapel turned up.

"Sorry," he said. "The wind turned it inside out."

She pushed a small metal trash can over to him. "Here. You can put it here," she said. "Can I help you?"

"I'd like to check in," the man said, placing the umbrella in the trash can.

"I don't believe we have any reservations."

"What do you mean?" he asked. "Are there no vacancies?"

"Oh, no. Plenty of vacancies," she said, thinking he had an oddly stilted way of speaking. "It's just that I don't recall taking any reservations for today."

"I never made one," he said, slightly flustered. "I just assumed there would be a room."

"We always have rooms this time of year," she said. "How long will you be staying?"

"A few days. Maybe more. A week, perhaps," he said. "I'm not quite sure."

"A week?" She felt herself become nervous. He was obviously uncomfortable.

"Is that all right?"

"We usually don't have such long stays off-season," she said, looking around, wishing someone else was there. "We're really semiclosed. Are you by yourself?"

"My daughter's with me. She's in the car."

"Your daughter," Claire stated with a nod. She took exception to men who traveled with their "daughters" during the week. May-December romances where the men and their "daughters" took separate rooms and the couple went to great pains to make the "daughter's" room appear slept in. "Well, we have room seven with an ocean view and king-size bed. That's forty-five for the night. And then we have room five with a garden view and queen-size bed and that's forty."

"Is that with breakfast?"

"We don't serve breakfast once the season is over," she said stiffly, wishing she had said they were closed altogether.

"I see," he said. "That's fine, but do you have a room with twins or two doubles? My daughter's used to sleeping in her own bed. She's only seven."

"Seven?" Claire's mouth fell open. "Oh, for goodness sake. When you said you were with your daughter . . . ''

The man gave a slow smile and appeared to relax. "Ah, you thought I had a companion, as they say. Nothing that exciting, I'm afraid. Just a dad taking his little girl for a long-promised vacation at the shore. I've been promising her the beach all summer but work got in the way." He reached behind him and tucked in his shirt. "Her school starts next week."

"Our schools started today," Claire said.

"You have children?"

"Two. They're in college now, though."

"Kayla-my daughter-goes to private school," he said. "We don't start until next week."

"Well, we have room eight with twin beds and an ocean view," she said. She pushed the leather-cushioned registration card in front of him. "That's forty. If you would just sign here and give me a credit card . . . ''

"I'd rather pay cash, if you don't mind," he said. "One thing I can't stand is getting the bill a month later. Spoils everything. I can pay in advance if you like."

"A two-night deposit will do just fine and then we'll take it from there. As I said, our dining room is closed but there are some cute lunch places in town and a couple up the road in Meadville."

"What about breakfast? I'm afraid Kayla's going to wake up starving. She had cereal early this morning but she mostly played with it."

"There's a coffee shop in town. Gus's," Claire said, handing him the room key. "Here you go. Top of the stairs. Fourth door on the right. Room eight." She glanced at the registration form. Nicholas Pierce, 88 Central Park West, New York City. "Welcome to the Inn at Drifting, Mr. Pierce. I see you're from the Upper West Side. I grew up there and my husband and I used to live in Greenwich Village."

"Ah, urban transplants," he said. "I've thought about getting out many times myself but you get so ensconced, you know? Are you the owner?"

"My husband and myself," she said. "I'm Claire. Claire Cherney."

"Pleased to meet you," the man said, extending his hand. "Nick Pierce."

"I can help you with your bags, if you like. Cora, our housekeeper, will be in around ten. Anything you need or need to know, just ask her. Pillows. Extra blankets. Directions. . . . '' She reached for her umbrella. "Just make sure you get everything by noon. Cora leaves early off-season."

"You might want to take a rain jacket as well," he said. "It's really coming down."

Claire took a fleece-lined slicker from the brass coatrack to the side of the desk. She was slipping her arm into the sleeve when he walked over. "If I may," he said, holding the empty sleeve to her arm.

Her breath caught in her throat. Jack always said that-if I may. He made a ceremony out of helping her on with her coat. If I may, M'Lady, he would say. "Thank you," she said, wondering if he heard her heart skip.

"Dreadful weather, isn't it?" Nicholas said. "I certainly hope it clears."

He held the door for her as they walked outside but then he stopped in his tracks. The rear passenger door of his blue Taurus sedan was open. He ran to the car and looked inside. "Kayla!" he called. "Oh, God. Kayla!" He turned to Claire. "She's gone!"

Claire's eyes widened as she looked around her. "I'm sure she awakened and just went to explore. Maybe she walked down to the beach. . . . ''

"No, you don't understand-"

"Mr. Pierce, please, I'm sure she's fine," she interrupted him, trying to calm him. "She can't have gone far. Kids can never wait to see the ocean. The beach is just down those steps over-"

"You don't understand," he said, biting each word. The color had drained from his cheeks. His hands were shaking. "Kayla is blind. She's blind."

And so it was, until that September morning, life in Drifting had gone along with a flow as certain as the tides that went in and out every day with the pull of the moon.

-Reprinted from Drifting by Stephanie Gertler by permission of Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA). Copyright © Stephanie Gertler, 2003. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

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