The Sweetness of Salt

by Cecilia Galante

  chapter

  43

  Main Street was a wet blur of colors. I could barely make out the orange lettering of the Stewart’s sign across the street. The tiny green lawns that fronted the other buildings had all but drowned in brown puddles, and the Dunkin’ Donuts sign bled electric waves of orange and pink. A lone car drifted by, parting the water in the middle of the street like the Red Sea. I didn’t bother to step aside; by now, it was impossible to get any wetter.

  The rain itself did not particularly bother me, and I had never been inside a church, so there was no reason for me to stop suddenly when I reached the front of St. Raphael’s, with its wide white doors. Maybe it was because it was at the end of the street. Or maybe I was intrigued by the fact that one of the doors was open a little, held in place by a small red brick. Whatever the reason, I climbed the steps, pulled open the door, and stepped inside.

  Shivering overtook me almost immediately, a violent trembling that made my teeth chatter like castanets. My overalls were so heavy that moving forward out of the tiny vestibule I had just entered took effort. I swung open another door and stared. Rows of empty pews lined the huge room, and the vacant altar at the front was a lonely compilation of wood and marble statues. The stained glass windows were as dark and melancholy as winter. In one corner, a marble woman, all in white, stared out at me with empty eyes. Long robes clustered around the bottom of her bare feet, and a mantle covered her head. One of her arms was holding something, while the other remained empty and outstretched.

  This place looked even emptier than I felt. I turned to leave and glimpsed a shadow in the far left corner. Blinking remnants of moisture from my eyelashes, I squinted through the shadows. An old man was sitting in the very front row, staring straight ahead. The collar of his tan windbreaker was rumpled and wet, and white tufts of hair curled along the back of his neck.

  What was he staring at so intently, I wondered. And why was he in here all alone? Still shivering, I slid into the very last pew and hugged my arms against my chest. For a while, I just stared at the back of the man’s collar, at the streaks the rain had made along the slippery material. Anything to block out the impossible fact that twenty years ago my father had deafened my mother. Anything to prevent the impossible task of trying to understand how, even as a little girl, I had never completely believed her explanation about why she wore a hearing aid. Trying to comprehend all of it was like being in the middle of some vast vortex.

  The man in the front row stood up. Walking slowly toward the marble woman, he pulled something from the pocket of his coat, placed it carefully on the flat pedestal where she stood, and then turned back around. Pulling a Red Sox baseball cap from his jacket, he adjusted it on top of his head, moved slowly toward a side door near the front, and disappeared.

  When I was sure he was gone, I walked slowly toward the marble statue. My pants were as heavy as plaster, but it was the shivering that made it difficult to walk. Up close, I could see that the woman was holding a little boy. His feet were also bare and his tiny marble curls clustered gently around his face. I looked down at the base of the statue.

  There, in a neat row, was a single line of perfectly white stones.

  Hundreds of them.

  chapter

  44

  Sophie draped another warm towel over my head and rubbed. I closed my eyes, inhaling the blended scent of lemony fabric softener and paint primer, which seemed to infuse everything now. It was a strange combination—sweet and acrid at the same time. Sophie’s fingers gripped my head and rubbed down, over and over again, until finally I pulled away.

  “What?” she asked. “Too hard?”

  “I can do it myself,” I answered, grabbing the towel from her hands. “I’m not a baby, you know.”

  Sophie plopped down on the other side of the bed. “I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “I can’t do anything right today, can I?”

  She was still in her own wet clothes, despite insisting, when I finally returned, that I get into a hot shower. I hadn’t realized how cold I actually was until I stood naked under the hot water. My fingers were blue. The tips of my ears were so cold, the water felt as if it was scalding them. Now, I sat on the edge of her bed, wrapped in her big green bathrobe. My feet were encased in a pair of red and blue knitted slipper socks that came up to my knees. A cup of chamomile tea was resting on top of her dresser, which, for some reason, looked oddly bare, as if something was missing.

  Sophie watched me rub my hair for a moment more without saying anything. Then she brought her fingers to her forehead, kneading the skin gently. The sleeves of her thin T-shirt clung to the sides of her arms and the knotted ends of her red bandanna dripped against the top of her overalls. “God,” she said again. “I knew I shouldn’t have…”

  I stopped drying my hair. “Shouldn’t have what? Told me about Dad? Told me the truth?” Sophie looked at me quizzically, as if trying to understand my tone of voice. “Because at the very least, Sophie, that is what you should have done. A long time ago. What you shouldn’t have done—for the last twenty years—was keep it a secret.” I let the towel fall into my lap. “I mean, I can almost—almost—understand the whole code of silence about Maggie, since I never even met her. But Mom? Mom, Sophie? I would have never kept something like that from you!”

  “How do you know?” Sophie’s eyes flashed. “You’ve never been in the same situation—not even remotely. In all the years you’ve grown up with Mom and Dad, I bet you’ve never heard them say one negative thing to each other, let alone witnessed a scene like that. So don’t tell me what you would or wouldn’t have done. You don’t have the faintest fucking idea what you would have done!”

  “Yes, I do!” I yelled. “I know exactly what I would have done! And you know why? Because I know what the word loyal means. And I know that there is nothing more important in the world than being loyal to your family—no matter what!”

  Sophie’s lower lip trembled as she stared at me for a long moment. “Oh, Jules,” she said, sinking down against the bed. She buried her face in her hands, rocking back and forth slowly. Then she lifted her head. “He used to say the exact same thing to me.”

  I stared at her. “What’re you talking about? Who did?”

  “Dad,” she said sadly. “He used to give me the whole loyalty routine too. ‘Nothing is more important than being loyal to the family.’” She stood up and began to pace around the room. “That’s how he convinced me never to talk about Maggie. Or Mom. Or even me.” She looked at me. “Do you know where I went that summer after I graduated from high school?”

  My brain started to race. That was the summer I won the Acahela Summer Camp Spelling Bee and Sophie had freaked out, throwing my trophy down the hall. A few days later, she had moved to Portland, where she was going to start classes at the University of Maine that fall.

  “You went to Maine,” I said. “For school.”

  “I didn’t go to Maine!” Sophie’s eyes were huge. “I went to a fucking psychiatric hospital in New Jersey, Julia! For four weeks!”

  My face flushed hot. “What are you talking about? Mom and Dad never said anything about you—”

  “Mom and Dad have never said anything about anyone!” Sophie said. “Think about it. They’ve never said anything about Maggie, they’ve never said anything about me, they’ve never even hinted at the reason for Mom’s hearing aid. I had to go live in a mental ward for four weeks because I was losing my mind living like that! Do you know what’s it like to live your whole life with horrible secrets inside you, screaming to be let out? Do you know what that does to you?” Her face was pink with rage; spit flew out from between her teeth. “It makes you crazy,” she said, shaking her head. “It makes you completely and certifiably crazy.” She shrugged, defeated. “Dad said everything had to be kept in the family. Taking it outside of that was breaking the family circle.”

  “But I’m family!” The sides of my head throbbed with the force of my words. “I’m not some outsid
er, hanging around the circle, Sophie! I’m your sister! I’m part of you. I’m part of all of you. I’m family!” Something broke inside of me when I said those words, a sheet of glass splintering into a thousand pieces. “What was so wrong with me that none of you would talk to me? What did I do to deserve being shut out? Did I not fill Maggie’s shoes well enough? Were Mom and Dad’s expectations of me too high? Did I…”

  Sobs overtook me then, blocking the words in my throat, and I cried with abandon, like a baby left behind in a darkened room.

  “Oh, Julia.” Sophie encircled me with her arms. “It’s not you. It was never you. Ever.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “It was them,” Sophie said helplessly. “They were afraid, I guess.”

  “Of what?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m not.”

  “Of being found out,” Sophie said. She began to rub her hand in small circles along my back. “Of getting called out on the fact that Attorney Anderson and his beautiful wife, Arlene, weren’t actually perfect.”

  “But all families have problems,” I said, thinking of Milo and Zoe’s parents. And Aiden’s too.

  Sophie shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they thought if other people saw us as perfect, they could stop worrying so much about the fact that they weren’t. Or maybe it kept their minds off the things that really needed to be addressed—and never were.”

  “Like Dad’s drinking.”

  Sophie nodded. “And Maggie’s death.”

  My brow furrowed. “But Maggie’s death was an accident. I would think it would make people feel sympathetic toward them.”

  The little circles on my back slowed and then stopped completely. “Not when the death is their other child’s fault,” Sophie said.

  I turned around slowly. “What do you mean, your fault? It wasn’t your fault.” My heart lurched. “It was asthma…wasn’t it?”

  “The asthma was part of it,” Sophie said. “But it wasn’t the cause of death.”

  “What was?” The question felt like a needle going through my ears.

  “Drowning,” Sophie answered. The stare she gave me was both venomous and frightened. “She drowned, Julia. And it was my fault.”

  chapter

  45

  Sophie got up then and walked out of the room.

  But I just sat there, too stunned to move.

  Had I heard her correctly? Drowned?

  Where? How?

  Sophie’s fault? It had to be a mistake. I looked around. Where had she gone? She couldn’t drop a two-ton word like that and then leave.

  I bolted off the bed. “Sophie!” It was empty downstairs; the lights were off. “Sophie!” I screamed again. “Where are you?”

  No answer. She’d only walked out fifteen seconds ago. Where could she possibly have gone? I flung open the front door. The rain had slowed to a light drizzle and the light, pale and watery, had already started to change. I ran out on the front porch, sidestepping the hole in the middle, and leaned against the rickety banister. Main Street was still empty, save for a string of cars parked outside of Perry’s. Perry’s front window was streaked with rain, making it impossible to tell who was inside. Still, I knew she was in there, probably spilling everything to the Table of Knowledge guys. God forbid she tell me the whole story. I was just her sister. Better to tell three old yahoos-or-whoever-the-hell-they-were from Smalltown, USA, so they could cluck their tongues and give her “advice.” Unbelievable.

  I ran inside and pulled on a pair of clean jeans, a T-shirt, and one of Sophie’s sweatshirts. It was impossible to avoid puddles as I raced across the street, so I sloshed deliberately through them, drenching myself again. I didn’t care.

  Walt, Lloyd, and Jimmy looked up as I walked into Perry’s. They were eating pieces of cream pie. Lloyd was licking his fork. A big blob of whipped cream sat like a cotton ball on the collar of his shirt. An older woman with beautiful white hair and blue rain boots on her feet was sipping from a cup in a nearby booth. Miriam was behind the counter, wiping it down with a dishcloth.

  “Hey, Julia.” Walt said. “How’re you—”

  “Where’s Sophie? Did she come over here?”

  Walt put his fork down slowly. “Sophie’s not here. Why? She’s not over at her place?”

  “Obviously not. Or I wouldn’t be looking for her here, would I?”

  “What’s wrong?” Lloyd asked. He had finished eating and had inserted a toothpick in between his bottom teeth. “You two have a fight?”

  “It’s none of your business.” I turned to leave, and then thought better of it. “Actually, you know what? Maybe some of it is your business. I want to know what she’s been telling you. About my family.” I yanked a chair out from underneath a table nearby and set it down hard between Jimmy and Walt. “I know you guys have all your ‘knowledge’ talks over here. I’ve seen her come and talk to you when she’s bummed out, and I’ve seen the way you pat her on the back and shake your heads and talk to her until she feels better. So I want to know what she’s been talking to you about that she doesn’t say to me?”

  The three men stared at me. Even Jimmy, who had been stirring his coffee with a straw, stopped and looked at me.

  “She’s never talked to us about your family,” Walt said finally. He leaned back and hooked his thumbs behind his suspenders. “Not ever.”

  “She told you about me.” I glared at Lloyd. “You knew I was valedictorian of my class.”

  Lloyd dismissed me with a shrug. “She talks a lot about people she’s proud of. You getting all hot under the collar ’cause she’s proud of you?”

  I ran my palms against the flat of my legs. “Fine. What does she talk to you about then? The weather?”

  Walt nodded his head slowly and leaned back on his chair. “Well, yeah. Sometimes she talks about the weather. Sometimes she talks about what needs to be done in the house. Sometimes she talks about what she’s planning on making when she opens the bakery.” He shrugged. “Sophie talks about all sorts of things.”

  I stared steadily at him. “You’re lying.”

  Walt let his chair down with a thud and raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? And what am I lying to you about?”

  “Sophie said you give her advice. About important things. She said that’s why you’re called the Table of Knowledge.” I stared at the three of them. “You must think I’m an idiot if you think you can sit there and tell me that you’re giving her advice about how many inches of snow you’re going to get this winter.”

  Lloyd laughed and took the toothpick out of his mouth. “That about sums it up, darlin’. Studying the Farmers’ Almanac gives us lots of credibility in this town!”

  Walt, who had been watching me with a look of increasing concern, took his spoon out of his coffee. “What’s going on, Julia? What’re you so upset about?”

  I shook my head. If they didn’t know anything, I certainly was not going to be the one to tell them.

  “You two have an argument?” Lloyd asked again.

  “Yeah.” Struggling to hide my embarrassment, I turned to go.

  “Julia!”

  I turned as Walt called my name. “Best thing to do when you’re angry is to sit a while.” He nodded. “Just sit. Don’t do anything crazy.”

  “Crazy?” I thought. “You want to see crazy? Let me tell you about the time my big sister got locked up in a loony bin—then you can talk to me about crazy.”

  I pushed open the door and walked back into the rain.

  chapter

  46

  I decided to go back to the house and wait for Sophie, afraid that if I started traipsing through town looking for her, she’d come back, find me gone, and leave again. I stayed in the kitchen for a long time, rummaging aimlessly through her cupboards, opening and shutting her refrigerator door. What was I looking for? Did I expect the answer to the terrible question I had in the back of my head to just come falling out of a cabinet?

 
; How had Maggie drowned?

  Had it been an accident?

  Sophie had been seven. Maybe she and Maggie had been swimming at a pool together. Mom would’ve been sitting in a fold-up chair off to the side, reading a magazine, watching them with one eye. Maybe Maggie had slipped and gone under. Would Sophie have held her under? It couldn’t be. It was impossible. Sophie wasn’t capable of something like that.

  Was she?

  I thought about the explosive scenes between her and Mom and Dad over the years, how she screamed and cursed at them, clenching her fists as if trying to restrain the violence inside them. Or the hatred in her eyes the day she had ripped that spelling trophy out of my hand and flung it down the hall. She’d even told me about the time she’d slapped Maggie across the face. Could the jealousy she felt toward her little sister have propelled such rage? Was something like that in her?

  I stared at the front of the refrigerator. A picture of a caterpillar Goober had drawn was tacked to the front with little strawberry magnets. Next to it was a torn-off piece of paper with the name Greg and a phone number written beneath it.

  I went back upstairs, walking around restlessly. It was still gray outside. The empty bedrooms felt darker and more ominous somehow, and when a car backfired outside, I screamed. Shaken, I went from room to room, turning on all the lights, and then came back and sat on Sophie’s bed. My eyes roved around the room like an afterthought: walls, floor, dresser, bed…

  Wait.

  I stood up slowly. There was something different about the dresser, something I had glimpsed before, but not registered. I walked over, trying to place what it was.

  And then, like a cold hand settling on my shoulder, it came to me.

  On wooden legs, I walked out of Sophie’s bedroom and into the spare one across the hall. Sophie’s empty sleeping bag was still flung on the floor next to the lamp. The drop cloth was still bunched in the corner, and the windows were streaked with rain. The only things missing were Sophie’s shoes.