Season of Salt and Honey

by Hannah Tunnicliffe

  “You’ll stay, won’t you, Frankie?”

  I don’t have the heart to tell her no. Instead I rub her back and look back up to Merriem. “I might come by this afternoon? I have those books to give back to you.”

  “Oh, no rush now, keep them as long as you like,” Merriem says, grinning.

  “No, it’s okay, I should . . .”

  Her grin fades to a smile and she nods. “Okay, honey. I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  That afternoon, when I arrive at her house with the books, Merriem’s expression is more solemn than usual. “Frankie, honey. I’m glad you’re here.” She lifts the books from my arms. “Let me take those for you.”

  Behind her, a figure rises from a chair by the dining table. My throat goes dry.

  Summer.

  My hand connects with Merriem’s shoulder; she turns her head.

  “Don’t,” I whisper. “I can’t . . . Why is she here?”

  Merriem twists around to face me properly. “I’m sorry, Frankie. I didn’t know that he was the same person. Summer’s been waiting for you. She wants to talk.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” I say, my voice rising.

  Summer steps towards me. I feel hijacked.

  “Frankie?”

  “Try,” Merriem encourages me, with a reassuring smile. “She’s really sorry. It might help.”

  I shake my head. “It won’t help.”

  “Frankie, please?” Summer says, closer now. Her face is worn and her eyes red-rimmed.

  Merriem looks at her and then back to me. Her expression is gentle and sad. I hate her for her sympathy. I feel my own expression harden.

  “I’ll make tea,” Merriem says.

  “I have to go.”

  “No, stay.” She wraps her arm around my back, guiding me to the dining table.

  Summer and I take seats opposite each other. I hear Merriem filling the kettle in the kitchen. I stare at my hands on the table. When she clears her throat, I speak before she can begin.

  “Alex proposed to me here. Did you know that?”

  I lift my eyes just enough to see her shake her head.

  “Down by the water. He made a picnic.” I realize I’m staring at my ring. “He said that we’d been through so much together and we made sense. He said I’d been good to him.”

  Summer says nothing.

  “I thought it was romantic. I thought he was being romantic. I’d been waiting so long. Now when I think about it, I feel like a consolation prize.”

  Summer is blinking back tears.

  “We met in high school. I’ve never loved anyone else.”

  Her face is grave. “I’m so sorry. I understand. You had a love story. I ruined that.”

  I nod. That is true. Partly true.

  “I wish you didn’t have to know. Don’t let me change what you had,” she says. “One kiss, a mistake . . . It was nothing.”

  I can see her pain as she speaks. It wasn’t just a kiss. It wasn’t nothing. It wasn’t nothing to her, and it wasn’t nothing to him; that’s written all over her face. It was something and it will haunt her. I may never get to be his wife but I was his fiancée. I’m allowed to be sad. I’m left with that and the cabin while Summer has nothing.

  The diamond on my ring slides around, and when I make a fist it presses into my skin. Alex has abandoned all of us.

  Merriem places a teapot and cups in the center of the table. We are silent. Then Merriem rests her palm against the top of my shoulder and for a moment I don’t feel mad. Mainly just weary, like I want to go to bed. I think of Jack’s couch, the smell of the blanket, cedar and lavender. Steam streams out of the teapot as Merriem leaves the room.

  “Everything’s different now,” I say.

  Summer frowns dolefully. “I really am sorry. Can you believe me?”

  I give a small nod.

  “It was easier not knowing you,” she whispers.

  We both stare at the teapot, until she stands and pours the tea, a cup for me and one for herself.

  “We can’t be friends,” I say. My tone is, surprisingly, almost regretful.

  “I know,” Summer replies.

  * * *

  When I return, Bella is brushing out the tent. She’s already packed some of her things. I tell her I’m taking a walk and she studies my face before nodding.

  I take the path I took that day Bella arrived. In my mind I have walked it dozens of times. I pick my way through the ferns, looking for things Huia would pluck and eat. I walk past the two identical Douglas firs. I walk past the nurse log with its tiny seedlings reaching up to the sunlight. I walk through the forest, till the trees thin and the ground becomes rocky. I lift my eyes from watching the fall of my feet and take in the ocean, which is suddenly in front of me. I drink in the air and feel the salty breeze tug at my hair.

  A narrow path picks its way down the rocky face to the expanse of water. My feet follow the crooked line that many have wandered before me. I walk alone. My steps are quiet. I hear only the gulls and waves breaking against the rocks.

  I pause at the place where the path meets the water. Or, I should say, where the water rushes and splashes at the path. How violent the ocean seems after the poise of the forest. How different the sounds, the scents. The nose-prickling, metallic, life-affirming smell of salt.

  I take off my shoes and toss them behind me. I dip one foot into the water. The cold rockets through me and I pull it out again. This is always the way, I remind myself. Too cold at first.

  I force myself in, still wearing my summer dress, and wade until the water is up to my knees. The chill is a sweet kind of pain. I lower myself in and swim beyond the waves crashing against the rocks to where it’s calmer, bobbing like a buoy in the cold, rising and falling with the gentle swell of the ocean. I peer at my hands through the greenish tint of the water. The skin on my fingers is starting to pucker. I stare at my left hand, the diamond glinting like an eye.

  Tesoro mio, I whisper, though I never called him that other than in my head. Tesoro mio, my treasure, my darling.

  I imagine him right beside me, like he was all those years ago, that night at the cape, grinning and glowing, lit up from below like a creature from another place. Like an angel.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  • • • •

  When I come back, wet, Bella stares at me. The tent is no longer there; a rectangular imprint left on the ground. I know she is ready to leave.

  “Are we staying?”

  I shake my head. “You’re going.”

  “I’m not leaving you—”

  “No, I don’t mean it like that. I’ll come soon. I just need a little time.”

  “I don’t think you should be alone,” she says, frowning.

  I know she would stay here as long as I need her to. Would sleep in her car and refuse to leave as she did before. But it’s time to go, for now, back to the life I have left.

  “I won’t be,” I say.

  She touches my arm. “Ghosts don’t count, Frankie.”

  I smile. “I’ll be right behind you. You have a lot to do if you’re planning on moving back.”

  “It can wait.”

  “You don’t need to worry.”

  She blinks. “It’s my job.”

  “I’ll be right behind you.”

  She makes me promise and I do.

  After she leaves, I start to pack my own things, retrieving clothes from the ramshackle closet. My fingers touch something shoved to the back of a shelf, which I pull out and unroll. My black dress. I press it between my fingertips and the material feels foreign. Thick, rustling, and stiff . . . I’m reminded of cucumber sandwiches. The airless room. Seeking freedom.

  I pack the dress and slip on a long-sleeved top, stepping out of the cabin with the heavy key in my jeans pocket. The daylight is gone but the sky isn’t black yet.

  I drive away with my window rolled down. The air is fresh and tingling in my lungs. I stare down driveways, imagining the ho
uses at the end of them. I imagine people all over Washington State, nestled deep in their homes, in living rooms watching television, in kitchens stacking dishwashers.

  I remember Alex coming home after a day’s work. The way he jangled his keys. The way he huffed as he took off his shoes at the door. Dropped his briefcase by his shoes. Tugged at the knot on his tie. I’d be on the couch. Reading a magazine or watching the news. He’d come over and kiss the top of my head. His breath against my hair.

  “Hey, Frankie.”

  “Hey.”

  Then into the kitchen to open the fridge door. Searching for a beer, something to eat before dinner.

  “How was your day?” I’d call out.

  “Same as usual.”

  That’s what he said every day. Same as usual. Until the day there was no answer. And no usual. No sound of shoes coming off, or a briefcase falling to the floor. As far as I know, the briefcase is still where he dropped it that last Friday afternoon.

  Reflective mailbox numbers shine at me like cat’s eyes. Mine is the only car on the road. Lawns, where there are some, roll down into gutters, where leaves rot, making food for worms and mushrooms. Morels.

  Soon there’s the mailbox with a sunflower on the side. Yellow and hopeful against the battered metal. I slow down. Then the little green house with the beehives out back.

  A sign at the fork in the road points to Edison. I turn in the opposite direction. The highway reaches out ahead, dark and twisting.

  Though it’s becoming night, the darkness seems to recede as I drive on. There is light on the motorway, then from houses in clusters, traffic lights, floodlights shining on billboards advertising coffee and clothing sales and health insurance.

  I drive past children’s playgrounds, empty now it’s getting late, and gas stations, grocery stores. Neighborhoods that all look the same—garage, fence, mailbox, garage, fence, mailbox.

  Finally, a vanilla-colored apartment building strung with little balconies. A kitchen window with a crystal hanging in it. Rooms full of things and ghosts and memories. I park the car and get out, taking only the keys and leaving the rest of my belongings in the backseat. In case I cannot do it. In case I need to escape.

  I open the main door and ignore the row of silver mailboxes with dark mouths. I take the door leading to the stairs instead of the elevator and every footfall echoes in the cool, concrete stairwell. My breath quickens and my heart pounds as I climb. When I get to our floor, my key slides easily into the lock though the door is heavy and needs a strong push. It’s dark inside. I reach out to flick the light switch.

  Our place.

  I swallow down the fear that rises up into my throat.

  There is a briefcase in the hallway. I move slowly into the living room and switch on the light in there too. It is so quiet in here, like a strange cocoon. I see the surfing magazine on the side table, the photograph of us on the shelf. A gray throw blanket folded on the arm of the couch. Everything as it always was. I glance across to the open door of the kitchen, where the espresso machine shines, our two cups sitting on top. I listen and wait for ghosts to come to haunt me. For memories so vivid I could fall into them. Instead there is silence.

  I breathe in deeply. There is no scent of soil and leaves and tree resin here. No salt and iron coming from the ocean. It smells as ordinary as any place. I lower myself down on our couch and exhale. There is no birdsong, no guitar being played, no laughter ringing out. It is simply an apartment, still a little warm from the afternoon sun. It is as ordinary as any place and full of ordinary things—just a magazine, just a photograph, just cups. And I start to believe Papa may be right.

  Life will be better, duci.

  Epilogue

  • • • •

  This is where I come to eat lunch most days. The café is generally quiet and cool. It’s across the road from the beach, which is rocky and met by the pale green, glittering sea. The café isn’t pretty or fancy; the food’s simple and traditional. Some days the cook is late and they serve only what the man at the bar can grill or fry—whole fish, the silver scales marked with charred black lines, and home-cut potato fries. On very hot days, I order gelato brioche or granita.

  “Buongiorno,” the waitress sings at me. She’s carrying a tray of dirty glasses in one hand. “I’m Carmelina.”

  I smile and reply in Italian, “You’re new.”

  “First day back,” she says. “I was on vacation. Croatia.”

  “Nice?”

  “Very. You been?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  “You have to go. It’s so cheap.”

  “But it’s cheap here.”

  She laughs and shakes her head. “Not like there. Believe me. And the sea . . . It’s so clear. But can’t be on vacation forever. Back to work, you know?”

  I nod, but I haven’t worked, not properly, for months now. I’ve picked fruit on farms, cleaned dishes and floors, even herded goats, all to help pay my board in the places I’ve stayed. In one place I looked after a pair of four-year-old twins. It had reminded me of Summer, helping out with her nephews.

  Now I’m in Sicily I often stay with distant relatives, people whose faces I barely recall but who tell me they remember me when I was “this big,” gesturing to a height around their kneecaps. They have noses or eyes or expressions like the aunties and they mother me in the same way, bullying and pampering.

  Work the way I think of it—the little desk at the council, my favorite mug, my notice board pinned with lists and old photos and a Peanuts cartoon about Mondays—seems a million years and a million miles away. Those things, at least, are a million miles away, and now someone else sits in my chair, her things on the notice board and her mug on the desk.

  I inhale the Sicilian air, its heat and salt. “I’m Francesca,” I say to Carmelina.

  “Hey, Francesca. What can I get you?”

  “Pasta alla Norma.”

  “Good.”

  She takes the menu from me and I hear her sing out my order to the kitchen as she returns to the bar.

  I consider reaching into my backpack for the book I’m currently reading but decide against it. Instead I sip my glass of water, look across the road, and stretch my legs out under the table. They’ve turned brown in the sun, browner than they’ve been since I was a kid.

  My skin is browner everywhere, as dark as Aunty Rosa’s chocolate torrone, and my hair is sun streaked. I got it cut short, just below my ears, before I left Seattle, but it’s grown since then, back down to my shoulders. It’s ragged and marked with sun-bleached, bronze-colored pieces, tied in a lazy ponytail. Sometimes I catch my reflection in the mirror and wonder who it is; I think I look more like Bella than myself, touching my cheeks with my fingertips, noticing new freckles. I wonder if Bella does the same with a mirror in the apartment. Staring at her face, questioning, seeing a new reflection and a different life.

  She e-mails me most days after she’s finished work, telling me about this patient or another, the art and yoga classes she teaches at the seniors’ home. She has her favorites: Magda with the glass eye; Bert with the loud laugh who keeps a parrot in his room; shy Agnes who paints watercolors. She is happy being in the apartment while I travel; after living by herself in Portland she doesn’t mind being alone, though the aunties and cousins like to drop by unannounced. She tells me about Daniel here and there too. The gigs he’s been playing, a movie they saw. They have become friends and it makes me happy to think of them looking after each other. I’m happy about many more things these days, just as Papa promised. I’m happy to be here and happy she is there where she should be, both of us living our mirror lives.

  On the beach, an older couple are coming out of the water. I watch them help each other over the stones, the man steadying himself against the little waves, gripping his wife’s hand. She’s wearing one of those old-fashioned suits cut low on her legs, a rubber cap, though it doesn’t seem as though she’s put her head underwater, and pearl earrings. When she almost
slips, her husband grips her elbow with his other hand, steadying her, and she turns her face towards him. His expression is stern while she laughs, showing the dark fillings in the back of her mouth.

  I trace a finger through the condensation on the side of my glass and watch Carmelina moving between the tables of men smoking and chatting, eating, drinking beer. She’s so easy with them, so comfortable in the sway and swish of her body; she reminds me of Merriem.

  Merriem refuses to use e-mail so I have to send and then wait for postcards and letters in return. Whoever I’m staying with is always amused by her packages—large, recycled envelopes thickly stuffed with sketches, little boxes of chocolates and sachets of tea, tiny jars of honey wrapped in five or six plastic bags, dried flowers between note pages, pictures and paintings from Huia.

  “Here you go,” Carmelina says, setting down my meal. It’s steaming hot and fogs up my water glass.

  “Grazie,” I reply.

  “Pepper? More ricotta salata?”

  “No, thank you, this is perfect.”

  Once it has cooled, I pierce a stack of wavy-edged pasta with my fork and eat in silence. The fried eggplant is soft and rich, the ricotta salata subtle and salty. Though the aunties make this dish at home, it tastes different here in the place it belongs. Simple flavors, not too many, all working together, accompanied by the heat in the air prickling my skin and sound of water against the stony shore. When I’ve finished, Carmelina delivers my bill.

  “You’re not from here,” she says. The lunch rush has cleared out and siesta’s soon to begin. This afternoon I’ll probably go for a swim or write a letter on the beach.

  I unzip my bag to retrieve my wallet. “No.”

  “But you look Italian. And you speak well.”

  “My family,” I explain. “My mother’s family are from Calabria and my father’s family are from Sicily.”

  “Ah,” she replies, nodding. “So where are you from then?”

  I pull my backpack onto my lap, fingers still searching for my wallet. Instead I find something else. I wrap my palm around it out of habit, distracted. The charm I have carried with me on my travels. “Sorry . . . America. I’m from America.”