The forest seems to be thinning a little, and ahead of me there’s a road, surely connected to the cabin’s long driveway but heading in the opposite direction from Edison and Seattle. The road looks like an unnatural dark river winding out of the green and I find myself following it.
I walk past faded mailboxes and driveways that lead to places I can’t see, though I guess, by the state of their mailboxes, they’re probably summerhouses or cabins much like the Gardners’. The sun is biting by the road, away from the tree canopies that act as parasols. Spring is stretching out her arms and reaching into summer. I scratch my shoulder and wish for shorts and sandals rather than jeans and sneakers.
Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl’s hair let loose from a braid. In front there’s a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties’ gardens, and my nonna’s when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs—dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It’s wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size.
The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory—playing in Aunty Rosa’s yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies’. I am humming to myself. Happy to be close to Papa, close to adult conversation, while Bella plays elsewhere—probably with the boys, probably tearing a sleeve, her shoes kicked off. I turn over leaves and find ladybugs as the cousin speaks to Papa in that rolling, secret, family-only language. “Brava carusa,” she’s saying, looking at me. “Good girl.” Brava carusa, brava carusa, brava carusa—I add it to the tune I’m humming. Two feathers, now characters in my hands, climbing a vine. Sisters. One white feather and one brown with spots. “Brava carusa,” the cousin says of me, and then something else about Bella that has my Papa frowning and which I now can’t remember.
“Hello?”
It’s a sweet voice, full of melody, startling me out of my daydreaming. A woman by the door of the house, cradling a mug. She lifts her hand.
“Oh, hi,” I say. “Sorry . . .”
Her hair is red, as red as a pepper at the roots, and then curling and fading to a luminous dark orange at the frayed tips. A bee lands on her, crawls along a strand of hair, then flies away, disappointed she’s not the flower it expected. She wears harem-style pants, black with bright splashes of color, and a singlet top.
She steps towards me, her feet bare. “I’m Merriem.”
“Francesca . . . Frankie,” I offer in return. “Sorry, I was just walking and . . .”
She waves away my apology and comes to stand near me, both of us staring at her tomato plants. Her cheeks are round and smooth, covered with freckles.
“I finished all my harvesting yesterday so it would be done by the third quarter, and today I’m at a bit of a loose end,” she says with a shrug, then tips her mug at me. “Want a cup of tea?”
“Oh, no, I should be . . .” I gesture back towards the forest.
“You’re staying in the Gardner cabin.”
“Yes. How did you—”
She thumbs towards one of the driveways I passed. “Jack Whittaker.”
“Jack?”
“Looks after the place. Looks after a lot of places around here.”
“Oh, I thought he must. He has a daughter?”
“Huia. You’ve met her?”
I nod.
“She’s a forest sprite, that one. Probably on a first-name basis with most of the animals and birds and bugs in there. You’re not a Gardner, are you?”
She studies me curiously. I shake my head. Could have been, I think.
“Jack says you were playing a little hide-and-seek yesterday?”
“Oh, well . . . no . . .” I start to explain unsuccessfully.
“It’s a good place for a bit of hide-and-seek,” Merriem says wistfully. “That’s what got me out this way. Didn’t think I’d be here long and then . . . sixteen years.” She gestures to the house. “It’s the garden that keeps me here. Verdant little temptress.”
She laughs and it’s loud and deep, almost a man’s laugh. The kind of laugh that could set a whole room full of people laughing. We look back at her vegetable garden.
“I’ve just had to cut a lot of my asparagus and scapes, of course, sorrel. . . . Yesterday was a dry sign, Leo, and I was running out of moon.” My face must be blank because she adds, “Vegetables harvest better in the third and fourth quarters of the moon.”
“Oh.”
“It’s the rhubarb that’s the worst. Even I’m getting sick of eating rhubarb. Come winter I’ll be thinking about it again. I’m going to turn into rhubarb one of these days.”
I find myself smiling. She has a calming way about her, despite the wild hair and the singsongy voice. She’s at ease with herself.
“I can talk about gardening all day,” she says. “It gets like that, you know?”
There’s not a single potted plant in our apartment, but I nod.
“I lived in Rome a while—long story—but I even managed to garden there . . . on a four-foot-square terrace,” she says proudly.
“My family’s from Italy.”
“Whereabouts?”
“Mama’s family was from Calabria, Papa’s are from Sicily. But my parents met here, in the States.”
I think of my family, all together at a feast for one of the festivals. They speak in Sicilian dialect with the older generation, or to swear, and in Italian with the Calabresi or other American-Italian friends. English for Alex, of course. We’re a mixed bunch—diverse as orphans, thick as thieves.
“Like Cyndi Lauper,” Merriem says.
“She’s Italian?”
“Her mother’s Sicilian.”
“I didn’t know that.”
I think of Bella and me, an infinitely long time ago, hopping around to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” ponytails bouncing, TV and stereo remotes as microphones.
“A lot of Italians garden using moon charts like I do,” Merriem says. “You’d think it wouldn’t sit so well with the Catholic side of things, but it seems to. Food must be too important to get messed up in religion.”
“We love our food. That’s no myth.”
“It works. I get tomatoes that are as big as footballs.” Merriem winks at me. “Besides, it’s not as kooky as it seems. The sun and the moon make the tides, and the tides affect water. What do plants need most? Or seeds, I should say. Moisture. Right at the surface of the soil where they can use it best. There are also tides in the air, lunar winds, and even earth tides—the soil rising and falling inches in a day.”
“Really?”
“Yup. It’s old stuff. Planting calendars have been around for centuries. Waxing moons and waning moons are good for different things, and when you put that together with the signs you can figure just the right date for planting. Or picking.”
When Merriem smiles her freckled cheeks rise up and her eyes almost disappear, like vanishing moons themselves. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, her limbs lean and her back straight, graceful and yet full of latent energy.
“It’s a waning moon now,” she says. “Could you tell? It’s pretty black at night. Can take some getting used to when you’re accustomed to regular light switches and all the rest.”
I nod, thinking of our little apartment with every comfort and convenience. At the cabin everything takes a lot more effort—cooking, washing, going to the bathroom.
“Makes you realize just how much
of a human hand there is in every single thing we do, everything we touch. We’ve made living so easy it’s hard to know who’s in control. Nature or us? Sure feels like us.”
“Not here,” I say.
She nods. “No, not out here in the forest. Here we’re in God’s palm.”
It’s something Papa or the aunties would say. The thought makes me shiver a little: how limited the control we have over the things that matter is. My generation expects the world to yield to our command, to do as we bid it. How naive we are.
* * *
I walk back to the cabin through the dappled light and duff that smells both sweet and rotting. I’m carrying a basket filled with spears of asparagus and two big jars of pretty, pink, stewed rhubarb.
Coming along the path the other way is a woman, looking at her feet as she walks. She’s wearing jeans, a big shirt, and sneakers that were white once. She has a hat over the top of long blond hair. When she lifts her head and sees me she stops walking. I must have startled her; she looks pale.
“Hi,” I say. She seems familiar. “I’m—”
“Frankie,” she says.
“Frankie, right.” I stare at her a little longer. Her eyes are light and grayish blue, her eyelashes a collection of blond and brown, like pieces of sand. “Sorry . . . Do I . . .?”
“Summer,” she says. Her voice is tight. She clears her throat. “Summer Harrison. I’m just on my way to Merriem’s.”
“Oh, you know Merriem, okay.” We stare at each other a moment longer. I feel like I ought to know who she is. “Well . . .”
She steps off the path to allow me past, then says, “Are you staying here?”
I turn. “Yes. Well . . . for a while.”
“For a while,” she echoes. It makes me feel a bit disoriented.
“Maybe I’ll see you around?” I say.
“Yeah. Bye, Frankie.”
Chapter Six
• • • •
When I get to the cabin, there’s someone else new, a man, waiting. He’s tall, his shoulders broad but slumped a little, his skin tanned. He’s fingering a piece of paper folded lengthways, and he clears his throat as I approach. I walk more slowly.
“Francesca?”
I press the basket closer to me. “Yes?”
“Jack.” He holds out his hand.
I look at it but don’t take it. He pulls it back, frowns, scratches his head. His hair is black and coarse with just a few grays. It reminds me of the coat of an old dog belonging to a relative in Sicily: Aragosta, they called him; Lobster. He’s probably dead now.
“I work for the Gardners,” Jack explains.
I blink at him. His eyelashes are dark and long. His voice has an accent I can’t quite place, but I know he’s not American. “You’re Huia’s father.”
Then I remember Huia telling me her name came from New Zealand. A distant cousin of Papa’s once told me that if you drilled down through Italy, through the center of the world, you would come out in New Zealand. I’d never forgotten that. The cousin had a straggly mustache that was long at the edges of his lips and he was too lean for an Italian man, especially a Sicilian; the aunties always said you couldn’t trust a man who wasn’t well fed. Years later I found out that what he’d told me wasn’t true. It’s Spain that’s supposedly opposite New Zealand on the globe.
Jack nods.
“Merriem told me,” I confess.
“You’ve met Merriem already?” He glances at the basket. “Oh, the rhubarb. It’s good.”
I say nothing, and try to step around him but he’s in my path.
“Sorry, I have to . . .” He waves the piece of paper like a little flag. When I don’t take it, he places it in the basket. “From . . . ah . . . the Gardners.”
“What is it?”
He looks uncomfortable. “They . . . they might put the property up for sale.”
“Sorry?”
“The cabin. They’re thinking of selling it. Maybe.”
“Selling . . . What? No, they can’t.”
Jack shifts his weight from one foot to the other. He’s wearing khaki shorts that are frayed at the hem. My aunty could fix those for you, I think, then remember the beading on my wedding dress.
“It’s Errol Gardner’s cabin. It’s been in the family for generations,” I say instead, confused.
“Yeah. I don’t really know if they want to . . .” Jack gives a small sigh. “Sorry.” He moves out of my way.
“I don’t understand.”
He points at the letter, white as a gull’s wing in my basket of green asparagus arrowheads. “They don’t want you to stay,” he says softly. “I don’t . . . I mean, it’s my job, so I have to . . .” He shakes his head, seems to shore himself up, but then all he says, again, is, “Sorry.”
“Sorry,” I repeat dumbly.
Jack nods his head in a good-bye. I stare at his back as he strides away.
Attention: Ms. Francesca Caputo
Re: Request to vacate property
Dear Ms. Caputo,
Please be advised that my clients, Mr. and Mrs. Marshall Gardner, owners of property “Gardner Cabin,” Flinders Way via Chuckanut Drive, WA 98232, have informed me that consent has not been granted for your occupation of their property. They kindly request your swift vacation. Should you not vacate the property in a timely manner, trespassing procedures will ensue.
Sincerely,
J Whittaker
Property Caretaker
I stare at the dark type and the logo in the top right-hand corner: a tree in a circle, the roots and branches reaching out, a tiny bird in a central fork of the branches.
Trespassing procedures.
I stand in the dim light of the cabin with the fresh, grassy smell of asparagus and dust all around and find myself shivering, though it’s not much cooler inside than out.
Swift vacation.
The word vacation has me remembering the envelope in our apartment, on the narrow hall table. The one with plane tickets inside.
I drop the letter on the table and take the jar of rhubarb over to the counter by the window, lift a spoon from the drawer, and unscrew the jar lid. I dip it into the contents of the jar. Pretty and pink, like a jewel, the color of hibiscus. The color of the bikini I was going to pack. Into the suitcases the Gardners bought us as an engagement present. As I bring the spoon to my mouth, my ring sparkles like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
* * *
“Merry Christmas, Francesca.” Mrs. Gardner kissed my left cheek and passed me a glass of eggnog.
“Merry Christmas. Thank you.”
She’d given me a gift of tea towels and a mug with a print of a flower on the side. Alex and I bought her wineglasses. As I held the eggnog in its cut-crystal tumbler I knew we’d made the wrong choice. Our glasses weren’t crystal and Barbara Gardner surely owned dozens of wineglasses.
The eggnog was strong and caught in my throat. I automatically looked around for Alex but he’d gone into the kitchen. Daniel was in a lounge chair, flicking through a book we’d given him, the biography of a famous hockey player. Mr. Gardner had a glass of whiskey in his hand and was leaning back in his favorite chair, his eyes closed. Neither of them paid us any attention.
Mrs. Gardner leaned in. “Do you have eggnog with your family?”
“Oh, no.”
“I imagine there are a few more people than this.”
I nodded. Our Christmases were big and loud and chaotic. Except during grace when we gave thanks for the feast. For that children were dragged onto laps and shushed and gossiping ceased. But not for very long.
“Just our little four. Mustn’t be very exciting for you,” Mrs. Gardner added.
“Oh, no, it’s . . . lovely,” I said. “Quiet.”
She gave me an odd smile.
“I mean peaceful.”
Elvis was singing Christmas carols in the background, his voice deep and quavering.
“Hmmm,” she said in reply.
There was a full glass
of eggnog on the silver tray between us.
“For Alex?” I asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll take it to him.”
“Thank you.”
I took a big breath as I stepped out of the pants. Perhaps I could tip my eggnog down the kitchen sink and pretend I’d drunk it. I was used to sips of moscato or rosolio di arancia, nothing as thick and muddy as eggnog. In this house I felt horribly homesick, even though I was minutes from home and I’d been with all my family for Christmas Eve. Aunty Connie scolding Aunty Rosa for not slicing the vegetables exactly as Nonna used to; Aunty Rosa scolding me for not keeping my nails tidy; both of them whispering about Bella when they thought I wasn’t listening. All the cousins arguing about politics and discussing their next vacations. Uncle Mario and Papa smoking cigars; Cousin Vincenzo getting drunk; Cousin Cristina’s baby, Emma, crying and being passed from person to person. The smell of espresso mixed with pine needles, tobacco, icing sugar, and almonds. The winking of Christmas lights, the tiny and perfect presepi—nativity scenes—with real straw and miniature donkeys.
I walked down the hallway towards the kitchen. It was cold. Family portraits lined the wall. Grandparents’ black-and-white wedding photos, with stiff faces and dresses; Alex and his parents at his christening; his high school graduation photo. Ice clinked against crystal as I walked. You don’t belong here, it seemed to chime. I couldn’t understand why Mrs. Gardner seemed to dislike me so much, but it was clear I wasn’t what she had planned for her son. She looked at me with a mixture of displeasure and pity. I guessed it was because I was too different, too Italian. And my family was not of the same class, if such a concern still existed. Alex said his mom was like that with everyone. But I didn’t believe she looked at everyone the same way she looked at me. She looked at me like I was in the way; a dandelion head full of fluffy seeds among her roses; an annoyance. Like something that if left unchecked would spread and disrupt all her well-laid plans.
Alex had his back to me in the kitchen, slicing something on a chopping board. I placed the glasses of eggnog on either side of the board and wrapped my arms around him.
“Hey,” he murmured.
“One of those is for you.”
Season of Salt and Honey Page 6