The Salt House

by Lisa Duffy

  I thought back to the days I couldn’t manage to get out of bed. My mother had dropped everything and basically moved in, taking over the daily care of the girls—cooking, shopping, cleaning. Had I thanked her? Was there even a way to say thank you for that? I reached over and squeezed her fingers.

  “I don’t know what I would’ve have done without you,” I said. And it was the truth.

  “Well, like I said. I’ll be here for a few more weeks. And then I do have to get back.”

  I thought of the argument the night before with Jack. The weight of it sat heavy on my chest.

  I took a deep breath. “I need to figure out some stuff before you leave.”

  My mother looked up from her tea.

  “Just things. You know. That I want to do. Before you leave.”

  We were quiet then. I knew if I said the word ashes, if the word even stayed too long in my mind, I would start crying.

  And I didn’t want to start crying on another random morning out of the blue.

  My eyes filled, though, and I swallowed hard to keep the tears from spilling over.

  My mother reached out and put her hand over mine. “I know,” she said.

  “I know you do,” I said, grateful for her support.

  She sighed. “No. I mean I really know. I wasn’t going to mention it, but I’m no good at that. I took a bath last night, which I never do . . . but I have all these bath salts Roger keeps sending me piling up in the bathroom. Anyway, apparently there’s a heat vent in the bathroom that connects to your bedroom.”

  “So you heard us arguing about—” I waved my hand for her to finish so I wouldn’t have to say it.

  “About spreading her ashes. Yes. I heard a little before I managed to get a towel on and get out of the bathroom to give you privacy. I’m not trying to interfere. I’m not. It’s just . . . if I can help, is all.”

  I nodded, a knot in my throat. “I know Jack’s ready. And he has every right to be. It’s been a year. I get that. It’s just . . . hard.”

  “I know it is,” my mother acknowledged. She started to say something, then paused and brushed a crumb off the table.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Have you talked about the Salt House?”

  “Talk? No. It’s another thing we fight about.”

  “Well, you’ll be ready when you’re ready.”

  “I wish it were that easy, Mom. I wish I could name one single thing between me and Jack that was easy right now.”

  “Well, you know what they say. Falling in love is the easy part. It’s staying in love that requires work.”

  She stood up, squeezed my shoulder, and went to the sink to take the rollers out of her hair, leaving me to ponder this nugget of wisdom.

  There seemed to be nothing that couldn’t be solved by one of her quotes. Half the time, it was simply annoying. The other half, she was right.

  I watched her at the sink now, letting my mind wander back to a time when it had been easier between me and Jack.

  I’d met him more than twenty years ago on the same dock he fished out of now.

  I’d taken a job as a reporter for the Sun Herald after college. One of the first pieces I was assigned was to write a profile on a Maine fisherman. My editor suggested I head east as far as Lubec, to get someone authentic. I assured him Alden had plenty of those.

  My research was limited to a trip to the Wharf Rat. I knew that some of the lobstermen who worked out of Calm Cove had a drink before heading home.

  Sure enough, Big Jim and Little Jim, a father-and-son duo, were sitting at the bar. After three rounds, and my repeated assurances that I was a local, they invited me to tag along.

  I met them at dawn the next morning, and they looked as though they hadn’t gone home from the bar the night before. Smoke swirled around the cigarettes hanging from their lips; the round button top of a stainless flask peeked out of Big Jim’s flannel chest pocket.

  “Here’s your Lois Lane,” Big Jim said to his son, pointing to me standing above them on the wharf.

  Big Jim hadn’t seemed too keen on my coming out with them. He’d barely looked my way the entire time we’d sat at the bar. Little Jim had been the one to invite me. He was a scrawny guy with small eyes that darted to and from my face when I talked. Now, he looked a little too pleased to see me.

  I noticed a guy on a lobster boat on the other side of the wharf. He wore a flannel shirt under orange bib pants. His dark hair was damp and combed. He was drinking a cup of coffee, and his boat was immaculate, the hull gleaming and bright even from where I stood thirty yards away.

  “Who’s that?” I asked.

  Little Jim looked over his shoulder. “Who? Kelly?”

  I looked at him, and he scowled. “Ah, you don’t want him.”

  “Is he a lobsterman?” I asked.

  Big Jim came up behind us and spit a large ball of phlegm into the water, where it floated away like a giant oyster.

  Little Jim put his arm around my shoulder, the stench of fish making my breath catch. “Come with us. We’re more fun.”

  “My grandmother’s more fun,” Big Jim sneered, a half grin forming on his lips, only the second time I’d heard him speak.

  “And she’s fuckin’dead!” Little Jim added, punching my arm like we were old buddies.

  “You know what? I’m not feeling so good,” I lied. “Go on without me. I’ll catch you tomorrow.”

  Little Jim looked disappointed, but Big Jim shrugged and went back to loading traps on to the stern.

  I walked back toward the gangplank and waited until the Jims had their engine running before I took a quick turn and walked over to the coffee guy. He was coiling a rope, the muscles on either side of his neck straining when he made the last loop, tightening the circle.

  “Morning,” I said.

  He looked over at me, returned the greeting, and bent down, storing the rope in a crate that was neatly packed.

  The deck was wet, freshly hosed. Nothing looked out of place. His boat was cleaner than my kitchen.

  I waited until he stood to introduce myself and explain that I wanted to do a special-interest piece on the life of a lobsterman. He said something about an oxymoron, and I laughed—a silly, almost hysterical noise—because he was standing a foot away from me, his dark eyes staring at me so directly that I thought of retreating, tracing my steps back to the darting side-glances of Little Jim.

  But he was looking at me, waiting for me to continue.

  “I was going to go with them.” I pointed to the boat motoring out. “But they’re kind of, um . . .”

  He followed my finger with his eyes and held up a hand when Big Jim waved to him. “Kind of what?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Rough, I guess.”

  “They’re good guys.” I heard something in his voice, as though I’d overstepped.

  “They said you weren’t any fun.”

  “That so,” he said.

  “Well, no. That’s not exactly true. What they said is that their grandmother who is dead is more fun.”

  “Is?”

  “Present tense. She is dead and is still more fun.”

  “Ah.”

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  He took a sip of his coffee. “Maybe they’re necrophiliacs,” he offered.

  “Good word,” I said, impressed.

  “You know us rough lobstermen. When our knuckles aren’t dragging on the ground, occasionally, we read a book.” His tone was light, but he didn’t smile when he said it. My face colored.

  “So can I interview you?” I asked.

  “Today’s not good,” he said, turning away from me, placing his coffee in the cup holder by the steering wheel.

  “Okay. How about tomorrow, then?”

  “Not good either.”

  “Look, you can just say no if you don’t want to do the interview.”

  “Okay, then no. Your best bet was those two.” He pointed at Big Jim and Little Jim, their filthy boat now a sp
eck on the horizon.

  “Can you throw me that line?” He pointed to the cleat on the dock and started the engine. I knelt down, unwound the rope, and held it out.

  “Throw it.” He gestured to the back of the boat, and I tossed the line where it landed with a thud. He put a hand in the air as a good-bye, the same wave he’d given the Jims. I watched as he motored away.

  Up on the wharf, a guy holding a clipboard waited while I walked up the gangplank.

  “That went well, huh?” He looked amused, a light in his eyes.

  “What?”

  “I’m Boon,” he said, offering his hand, “his friend.” He nodded to the boat growing smaller in the distance.

  “Oh,” I said, shaking his hand. “I asked if I could interview him.”

  “I know.” He flicked his head at the bar next to him. “Our buddy owns the place. We were there.”

  “Where?”

  “At the Rat. Yesterday. Kelly and I were there.”

  “No you weren’t. I was the only one in there besides the two guys I was sitting with at the bar.”

  “We were in the kitchen, through the server window at the bar. You couldn’t see us, but we could see you.”

  I felt my face grow hot, and then something occurred to me. “Could you hear me too?”

  He grinned. “We weren’t eavesdropping. I promise. I only noticed you because Kel couldn’t get his jaw off the floor. I don’t think he blinked once.”

  I looked at him sideways. “Well, why didn’t he come out and say hello.”

  “I told him to. He said you were out of his league.”

  “Funny way of showing it,” I said.

  “It’s not personal. Besides those two characters, you’re not going to find anyone willing to talk about fishing. Not from around here, at least.”

  “I didn’t know there was a code of silence. Why the secrecy?”

  “Territory, trap placement, fishing routes . . . it’s what makes some guys haul a big catch, and some guys come home empty-handed. Anyone making a living at it isn’t going to want that printed in the local paper.”

  “And the Jims? What’s with them?”

  “A pretty girl is what’s with them,” he said, and my face went red. “Hell, I saw Kelly considering it. And that says a lot.”

  I felt foolish now, remembering how sure of myself I’d been coming to the dock.

  “Come back tonight,” Boon said. He had one of those faces that seemed to be perpetually smiling, his mouth pulling up at the corners, as if life was one big joke and he was the only one who knew the punch line. “I’ll make sure he’s there,” he promised. “He may not answer any questions, but at least you can say you spent time with a local lobsterman.”

  “No way,” I said. “I’m not going to chase him for an interview.” Even though I knew that I would, that my interest in him had surpassed an interview.

  “Okay, then. Where can he find you?”

  “Why do you care so much?”

  “Because he’s my buddy,” he offered.

  I gave him a doubtful look.

  “And he’s a good guy,” he continued, “who sometimes gets in his own way.”

  The bag on my shoulder was getting heavy. I nodded in a dismissive way.

  “And he rarely looks at anyone the way he looked at you.”

  I tilted my head sideways. “That’s a line.”

  He held up his hands. “Swear to God.”

  “Rarely?”

  “As in never,” he said, then squinted one eye. “Well, not never. He looked that way when we were in sixth grade and Gina Marie, my brother’s girlfriend, got drunk and taught us how to shotgun a beer without using her hands. Come on. Just tell me a place tonight. Give him one chance. If you don’t like him, at least you’ll get a free dinner.”

  I considered it. What did I have to lose?

  “Fine. Orphelia’s. Seven o’clock.”

  “Orphelia’s?”

  Orphelia’s was not only one of the best restaurants in town. It was also the most expensive.

  “I don’t know if he owns a tie.”

  “Well,” I said, “if buying a tie is a deal breaker, then tell him not to show up anyway.”

  But Jack had shown up. I was sitting at the bar when he walked in wearing a blue blazer, a white shirt open at the neck, and no tie.

  There were two women sitting next to me drinking martinis. I saw them glance at the hostess stand, and when they saw him, one woman quietly growled to the other.

  He saw me, walked over, and sat next to me. I felt the women behind me staring at him over my shoulder.

  “Boon said if you showed up, I should ask you to marry me on the spot.”

  “You don’t even know my name,” I said.

  “It’s Hope.”

  “I meant my last name.”

  “I know what I want it to be,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Kelly.”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “Do you always use lines like that?”

  He grinned. “No. But Boon said by all means, don’t be you. Be charming. So I’m taking his advice.”

  “So this is you charming.”

  “This is me charming.”

  “Where’s your tie?” I asked. “Your friend said you’d have to buy one.”

  “Boon says a lot of things that aren’t true. I own ties. I just don’t like wearing them.”

  “So Boon says things that aren’t true?”

  “All the time.”

  “So when he said you couldn’t stop looking at me the other night . . . that was a lie?”

  “It was a lie.”

  “Oh,” I said, feeling my face flush.

  “I wasn’t looking at you. I was ogling you.”

  “Is this the real you or the charming you?”

  “Come out with me tomorrow and find out,” he said.

  We’d made it through the afternoon before our first kiss. We stayed below deck until the sun went down. He never hauled one trap, and I never asked him one question about being a lobsterman.

  A year later, I became Hope Kelly.

  “Earth to Hope,” my mother said, waving her hands at me from the sink. “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Oh, sorry, Mom. I was just . . . daydreaming. Start again.”

  “I was saying that I was thinking about something the other day. Something I don’t think I ever told you.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, blinking, not wanting to come out of the memory of me and Jack on the boat.

  “I used to stutter when I was younger. Not a bad stutter, but enough to make me not want to talk. Mostly only with the Y words, but still, you’d be surprised at how many words start with the letter Y. You, for instance.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. “When did it stop?” I’d never heard my mother stutter. Not even once.

  “Yesterday,” she said, her eyes roaming the ceiling. “Yellow, year, yes. That was a doozy, the yes. I’m lucky my head’s not wobbly on my neck after all the nodding I did. Anything to keep from saying yes. The way I’d go on forever, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya. Like that S was just running away from my tongue, torturing me.”

  “Mom.”

  Her gaze came down from the ceiling, and she squinted, bringing me into focus. “Oh. Sorry. Anyway, this went on for some time . . . they didn’t do the stuff they do now to help kids, and my mother used to interrupt me, finish my sentences. She was trying to help, but you know, that doesn’t help.”

  “I imagine not,” I said, glancing at the clock on the wall. I was going to be late getting Kat to camp. “So you stuttered . . .”

  “So the year I turned ten, the school decided to put on a play. The Wizard of Oz. Which was exciting as it was, but then the PTO got involved, and someone’s husband was on the board of selectmen, and somehow it was decided that the play would be held on the enormous stage at the town hall, the biggest one in three counties, and tickets would be sold to the public. Well, I wanted to be
Dorothy, of course, but I was terrified of auditioning for the part because of my stutter. So your grandfather spent hours with me going over the script. Hours and hours we practiced. I still stuttered on some words, but he convinced me that I’d always regret it if I didn’t at least try. Hardest thing I ever did, but I went to that audition.”

  “That was brave.”

  “Yes, it was. Wasn’t it?”

  “Did you get the part?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Jennifer Ann Maloney got it. I didn’t even audition because Ms. Waters pulled me aside the minute I got there and said she’d heard me in chorus and didn’t I have the prettiest voice! That’s what she said. I’ll never forget her saying that. She asked me if I wanted a singing part in the lullaby league. I almost fell over with shock. Of course, I said yes, because you don’t say no to a compliment like that. And the lullaby league . . . turns out they had the most beautiful costumes in the play. And we got to dance, well, it was just hopping from foot to foot, but in that costume, it seemed like ballet.”

  “Did you stutter onstage?” I asked.

  “I never stuttered when I sang,” she said blankly.

  I cleared my throat. “And the stutter stopped when?”

  “I don’t know. It just sort of went away. Strange.”

  I waited for her to continue, but she reached up to her head, felt one of the rollers, and looked at the clock.

  “I’m going to look like an ancient Shirley Temple if I don’t get the rest of these rollers out.” She bent over the sink, pulled a roller from her head, and placed it on the dish towel.

  “Okay. Tell me. What’s the connection between you stuttering when you were younger and spreading the ashes?”

  “It’s not a direct one,” she said. “But I know you think spreading her ashes is going to be hard. And, I thought I’d tell you about something that I did that was difficult as well.”

  She glanced up, a curl flopping over one eye. “I guess my point is that sometimes in life what you think is going to happen is nothing like what actually happens.”

  “It was a lovely story, Mom. Thank you for sharing.”

  “I did love that play,” she told me from inside the sink.

  Ten minutes later, I was on the floor of my bedroom, one flip-flop in hand while reaching for the other under the bed, when I heard singing coming from the heat vent that was level with my head. I heard a toilet flush, and then my mother’s voice singing over and over: We represent the Lullaby League, the Lullaby League, the Lullaby League. And in the name of the Lullaby League, we wish to welcome you to Munchkinland.