It was his fortieth birthday. He had two children and a wife whom he loved very much. He had a job that ate a little bit of his spirit every day. He felt time passing, as do we all, and it scared him sometimes. He meant to go home that night. He really did. But it was his birthday. He had been doing so well, resisting that impulse for so long. What could one beer hurt?
He’d said to Oscar as they went into the bar, “I gotta get home, man. It’s my birthday and they’re expecting me home.”
“It’s your birthday, man? I didn’t know that. All the more reason to buy you a beer today. Listen.” Oscar turned to speak to the bartender. “This brother is—how old are you?”
“Forty.”
“Forty today! I think this old man needs a boilermaker to celebrate!” Oscar clapped him on the back.
The sharp cold beer and the small warm glass of whiskey sat on the bar together, inviting him, all but smiling at him. Marvin Gaye eased out of the jukebox; Oscar grinning beside him. He’d go after this one. He’d just have this one drink this time. This time he was sure he’d be able to do it.
THREE HOURS LATER. “OH, shit, man. I gotta go.” The same heaviness in his words that there always was after the one, two, three, how many beers? He made his way to the door, weaving slightly, the careful walk of a man who had done this many times. He drove home very slowly, peering hard at each stoplight and hesitating before he hit the gas. When he walked into the house, the children, the wife, the cake, the screaming, the dashed expectations. The weight of it was all too much. He said cruel things, none of which he meant. How can I treat them like this? he thought. They just wanted to give me a nice birthday. But the vicious words were out before they could be called back and made into anything else. He had to leave after that—his shame was too great. He felt all of our eyes, big and dark and frightened, boring through his back as he left.
He didn’t have a place in mind to go when he walked out the door. He guessed that Oscar had left the bar by this time; the magic was gone anyway. His buzz was being replaced by a familiar, grinding wretchedness.
He got in the car and drove, slowly, to an open minigrocery. He paid for a six-pack. Then he drove down to the parking lot near Lake Erie. He didn’t know exactly why he chose the lake, except he knew that the parking lot would be deserted. He was able to pull up close enough to see the water from his car window. He opened the window to let in the warm spring air. He could hear the slap, slap, slap of the small lake waves. But he was afraid to get out of the car. He sat in the front seat and opened can after can of beer until they were all gone. He was too drunk and miserable even to climb into the backseat and lie down. He finally fell asleep in the front seat—passed out really—until the dawn’s light pierced his eyes. When he got home, his beautiful wife said, “I called you in sick already.” She didn’t say another word to him for the rest of the day. He spent much of the day lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, vowing never to drink again, a vow he did not keep. His hands were clenched to fists. His eyes were dry.
Eight
After that night, the brakes were off. My father was rarely without a beer in his hand. My mother retreated to a sad silence that Tick and I could rarely get her to break. Time went on and time went on. We became teenagers. We both got scholarships to Dean, that prep school I mentioned. We didn’t tell anyone there about what home was like. We just went on. We never talked about what was happening at home and whatever my parents were thinking; they certainly didn’t share with us. So to tell about this last part, I’m going to have to make a bigger imaginative leap than I have thus far—bigger, perhaps, than even seems plausible. But this world is full of implausible things. So I’m going to let them speak through me. My mother first.
I NEVER COULD GET Tick and Josie to see that a marriage doesn’t come apart all at once. That deciding whether or not to stay or go is the most complicated thing in the world. Especially if sometimes you can still see glimpses of the person you married. That person keeps darting out of reach, washed away or shut away, but you keep hoping he might come back. You keep thinking that if you just hang in there, you might get him back.
Aside from how lonely it got to be with Ray, I was bored. I missed nursing. I missed being useful, doing for people other than my family. And once the kids got big and got themselves those scholarships and started running with a whole different crowd out at that school, well, I just felt like I didn’t have a place anymore. It was hard, watching Josie at that school, watching her fight to be the girl she wanted to be: a girl who loved something that really seemed to be only for white men. Watching her, I started to think that I wanted to set an example of a woman who did what she needed to do, what she wanted to do, without worrying too much about what other people thought.
But the main thing was that the man I married was so long gone, and I just didn’t want to pretend he wasn’t anymore. He sat in front of that television like a statue, the beer just flowing through him. I’d have asked him to leave the bedroom, but the house wasn’t big enough. There was nowhere else for him to sleep. So we slept as far away from each other as we possibly could, hanging on to the edges of our queen-size mattress. I was a little afraid of being alone. But really, I was alone already in all the important ways. Why not make it official?
So when Josie was a senior, I did a couple of things. I found out what I’d need to do to get back into nursing. I’d been away so long that my license had lapsed; I had to take some classes and an exam to renew it before I could even begin to look for work. But I also saw that the jobs were out there. So quietly, without saying anything to Ray, I started applying to classes for the fall. I hid the forms in my underwear drawer and filled them out, bit by bit, while he was at work.
I didn’t keep everything from him, though. I did tell him that I had started volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club that summer a couple of times a week. He was at work and the house was as kept as it was going to get and Josie was gone to Florida for the summer—she’d gotten herself into a high school oceanography/marine biology program. Judging from her occasional letters, she was as happy as could be. Tick? Well, God only knew what Tick was doing. He came home occasionally to get food and wash his clothes, but that was about it. He barely spoke to me, and he didn’t say a mumblin’ word to Ray. It was like we were his not all that comfortable boarding house. The family of one of his new white friends with money had a membership to a golf club and Tick got a job working in the concession stand there. At first, it seemed that getting a job would be good for him—get him out of the house, teach him some responsibility. But I didn’t realize that he’d use it as a way to get free of us. He would come home from work, eat something, some of the time, standing in front of the refrigerator, foot tapping, and then he’d be gone again. Never a proper meal. Never a proper conversation. A stranger.
So that’s what made me decide to start volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club. The days were so full of hours and so empty of affection or pleasure. I had a few friends but no one that I felt I could tell the truth of my life to. So after a while, the cups of coffee turned stale and bitter in my mouth. How many times can you shine a table that already shines, sweep a floor that’s free of dust? No. I had to do something else. No one ever touched me anymore. No one seemed happy to see me anymore. No one wanted me anymore.
I loved watching the kids pelting around outside or helping them inside as they wriggled, working on craft projects, glue and Popsicle sticks everywhere. They reminded me of Tick and Josie, years ago, even though these kids tried to be tough: Some of them used rough language and swaggered a little bit. But mostly they were young and sweet and the street hadn’t gotten to them yet. Even the ones who tried to act so hard weren’t—not really. They weren’t rude or disrespectful. Some of them would be later. But they weren’t yet. They hadn’t learned what the world was going to think of them, a bunch of black kids without a lot of money.
One of my favorites was a little girl named Ayesha. She had two puffy braids (just the w
ay I used to do Josie’s hair) with those rubber-band holders that end with plastic balls. She had a serious, thoughtful air, and she carried a notebook shoved under her arm. Her glasses were always sliding down her nose. She wore the same faded red sweatshirt every day. And she sat in the corner of the playground, writing and writing. I watched her for days. Finally, I got up the nerve to go over and talk to her. “What are you working on so hard?” I asked.
“My notebook,” she said, her eyes clear and sure.
“My daughter used to like to keep a notebook that had a list of all the plants and fish and things that she found outside and at the beach. What do you put in your notebook?” I found myself sliding down to sit next to her, even though it had been many years since I’d sat on the ground like that myself. I remembered getting up with dusty knees and never worrying about what people would say. It was a long time ago that I was that free. Ayesha looked at me as though she was considering whether or not I was to be trusted. She decided I was. “I write down stuff I see. Stuff I think about. I got the idea from this book Harriet the Spy’”
“I don’t know that book. What’s it about?”
Ayesha looked uncertain if she should tell. Then she kept talking, getting more and more excited. “Well, it’s about this girl Harriet. She’s a white girl who lives in New York City. And she wears a red sweatshirt—that’s why I got one—and she writes down everything she sees. But then her friends find out that she wrote some mean stuff about them and they get really angry. The things she says are true, but they’re kind of mean.” She paused for breath. “But then Mrs. Henderson, here’s the crazy part. She has this grown-up friend, this lady who stays with her, and she tells Harriet that she has to lie. That sometimes you have to lie about things. Do you think that’s true?” She looked up at me, her eyes intent and thoughtful. She was clutching her notebook to her chest.
I looked out at the kids playing on the playground and I listened to their whoops and shouts. I felt that it was important that I be honest with this child. It had been a while since I’d been honest with a child. “Well, I think that’s right. Sometimes you do have to lie. Sometimes the truth hurts and it causes pain for no good reason. Sometimes. Then I think it’s right to lie. But you have to be careful. It’s a trap, lying like that too much.” My heart sped up as I talked, even though we weren’t moving at all. Why was my heart racing like that? I could feel the girl’s warm body next to mine. “Sometimes you do a body more harm than good trying to protect them. Sometimes the lies get to be too much. You know?”
“So you think it’s okay to lie sometimes?”
“Yes, I do. Sometimes. As you get older, it gets easier to sort out when those times might be.”
Ayesha nodded gravely. “My mama says don’t lie. Period. But I don’t know. When I read that in Harriet, I thought that might be true. I could think of times when that would be true.” She stood up, suddenly. “Can I go play now?”
“Sure. Sure, Ayesha. You go on now. You can leave your notebook here.”
“Don’t look in it. It’s private. That’s the other thing I learned from the book: Keep your notebook private.”
“I won’t look, I promise.” She ran off, her braids bobbing, her feet almost kicking her own behind as she ran. I placed my hand on her notebook but I didn’t open it. I thought about what I had said about lying, if that’s what I truly believed. How did you know when enough was enough, when taking care of someone or something through a lie wasn’t the right thing to do anymore? How could a child tell the difference? How could I? I felt the oddest thrumming start in the soles of my feet as I watched Ayesha play. I didn’t know what it was. I just felt it.
The rest of the day I kept thinking about Ayesha’s face while we were talking, the way she looked as if she were trying to figure out the weight of the world. Some kids begin to see that there is a weight of the world before others do—Josie was like that. I always felt for her a little. But I always admired it, too. It helped her be clear about things. She saw how things were at home and she got the hell out—as much as a high school girl could anyway. There was a kind of clarity in that.
The Boys & Girls Club wasn’t far from our house so I always walked there and back. It was an unseasonably warm day and everything was iridescent. The sycamores on our street arched gracefully over the quiet sidewalks. I waved at the neighbors, Henrietta Boyd with that yappy dog of hers and old Mr. Emerson, who used to get after the kids so when they ran across his lawn. They waved and helloed back, their familiar voices floating by. I could feel each footfall on the pavement. Everything was starkly outlined in front of me as if it were under glass. When I arrived home, I put my key in the lock, opened the door, and entered the house. It was cool and dark inside. I went into the kitchen and Ray was sitting there, home from work early, a cigarette burning in front of him, a beer sweating onto the table. I wasn’t surprised to see him. He was staring out the window. I had loved him so much once. I still would, if he’d let me. But I had that feeling in the soles of my feet and I suddenly knew what it was telling me. I was through lying for him. I was through lying to him. I ought never to have started. This wasn’t one of those things it was right to lie about. It never had been. But I was going to stop right now.
“Ray?” I said, my voice so firm that it surprised me. “Ray. Something has to change, Ray. You need to leave.” He turned to look at me. The thrumming in my soles stopped. I was hard, still, ready for whatever lay ahead.
Nine
When Sarah asked me to leave, I wasn’t all that surprised. That blade had been coming toward my neck for a while. Can’t say I didn’t deserve it. It was almost a relief.
When she told me, I was sitting at the kitchen table, just sitting with a beer. When I thought about it—I couldn’t stand to think about it much—I knew that I was spending a lot more time that way than I ever had before. I got up and went to work and I always did my job and I went to that factory and lifted those doors and supported my family and held my head up. But it used to be that I did other things after work. I read all the time. And I had a wood shop downstairs. I made the chairs in the kids’ bedrooms—my father taught me when I was just a kid myself. I’d always liked making something from the ground up, especially after a few years on the line, when all I did was make part of something, part of something, part of something. When the kids were little, I played with them sometimes. And of course, I used to try to write. It was hard. But I used to try.
But by the time she asked me to leave, the main thing I did with my time was watch TV, letting it wash over me. It was getting hard for me to concentrate on a book. I was always wondering how long it would be before I felt like it was okay to get up and get another beer. Sometimes I could stay focused enough to reread something light. Nothing difficult like Spenser or Milton or Ellison. But things that went down easy and that I found soothing, stuff like James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett. I read The Postman Always Rings Twice and The Maltese Falcon over and over. For a while, I told myself that it was because I was tired from work or the kids were driving me crazy or this or that or the other. But the truth was, I couldn’t concentrate. I was letting the books go, as much as I loved them.
Here’s what Sarah said to me, her eyes shining so positive and clear that it made her beautiful to look at. I never told her that I felt that way still. But it made me happy to look at her, even as she said: “Ray, you need to leave.”
I looked up from where I’d been staring at the table. “What do you mean, I need to leave?” I slid my hand across the table, feeling the aged smoothness of the wood. It calmed me, somehow.
“I mean that you have sat around here with that damn beer for all of our children’s childhoods. I mean that no one has touched me in ten years except the kids. I mean that you’ve gained thirty pounds and you smell like a brewery and I don’t even want you near me.” Now she started crying, standing there in her immaculate kitchen, in the home we made together, where we used to love each other. Where I loved her stil
l. But I wasn’t doing right. I never did right anymore. She didn’t try to wipe away her tears. “I mean that I miss you but it seems like there’s no getting you back, so you might as well go on and leave altogether. I’ve still got some kind of life to lead. I’ve got to lead it without you. I don’t want to. But I have to.”
Even though I knew she was right, I hadn’t reached bottom yet. Not yet. So this is what I said—I’ll never forget it. It took a long time to forgive myself. I took a swig of the beer and said, “What do you mean, you have to? Haven’t I been here, right here, putting up with these kids and putting up with the way you run the house and never doing what I want to do?” I started shouting. “What I want to do for all these years. I could have done something, if it wasn’t for …” I trailed off. What was I gonna say? What were those great things I could have done? How did they—this woman that I loved and these kids we made together—stop me? They hadn’t stopped me. Suddenly, I felt exhausted. “I’m sorry, Sarah.” I stood up and took a step toward her and she backed away like I might hit her. Something I’d never done in my life. But then, she didn’t know me anymore. I didn’t even know myself. “I want you out of here by tomorrow,” she said, her voice deadly level. “I’ll tell Tick and Josie.”
The Taste of Salt Page 6