The Taste of Salt

by Martha Southgate

  “This is news to you?” Natalie said, setting down her fork with a slight snap. “Cleveland’s been in rough shape for a while.”

  Ray sighed. “I know. But I’ve been living here nearly forty years now. I don’t know. I remember what it used to be like.”

  Natalie came around the table and slid her arms around his neck. “Well, a lot of things aren’t how they used to be. But that doesn’t mean how they are now is so bad, does it?”

  He turned to kiss her, this kind woman who cared for him. It felt good to kiss her. He knew that there was something real there. But he felt a little heartbroken all the same. Everything he had once truly loved was slipping away from him—his city, his home, his wife, his children. No matter how much they talked in meetings about how you had to let go, how you couldn’t control the circumstances of your life, every now and then he still hoped that just staying away from that bottle would fix everything. That staying sober would be enough.

  The next morning, after Natalie left and he was sitting alone at his kitchen table, wondering what he would make of the day, he decided to do something he hadn’t done in about three months. He decided to call me.

  I never called him. But he made himself pick up the phone every few months and go through a chilly, awkward conversation with me. His heart hurt after every call, but he did it anyway—reaching out was part of his amends. He always went to a meeting after we talked. It was either that or have a drink.

  So he took a deep breath and picked up the phone. I answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, Josie-girl. It’s Dad.”

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “I’ve been wondering how you’re doing.”

  “I’m all right. Busy working. You know.” I kept typing as I spoke, the phone tucked uncomfortably between shoulder and ear. What could he know of my life? I didn’t want to tell him anything, especially now.

  “What are you working on?”

  “I’m working on a paper about the effect of LFA sonar on sperm whales. I have to present it in a couple of weeks.” Click. Click.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s LFA sonar?”

  “Low frequency active sonar. The navy uses it to track submarines, but it makes such a loud sound in the ocean that the whales freak out and surface too fast, and it gives them the bends, like divers get when they surface too fast.”

  “Really? That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah.” Silence.

  Finally my father spoke.

  “So how have you been?”

  “You asked that already, Daddy. I’m fine. How are you?”

  “I’m good. Volunteering over in Hough still. Them little roughnecks in there about to drive me crazy sometimes.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well, I just wanted to see how you were doing. How’s Daniel?”

  “He’s fine. We’re both fine.”

  “That’s good. Have you talked to Tick?”

  “No. I haven’t.” I couldn’t go down the Tick road right this minute; my head would explode if I did. So I cut him off. “Listen, Daddy, I’m kind of up against it here, so maybe we could talk later?” My voice shook a little. When I was little, I would have given anything for him to pay this kind of attention to me.

  He didn’t say this to me, but he knew there would be no later. “Sure, baby. Sure. Just call when you can talk.”

  “Okay.”

  “Take care of yourself.”

  “Okay. You, too.”

  “I will. That’s how I make it. Taking each day as it comes.”

  I sighed. What was I supposed to say to that? “Okay, bye, Daddy.” I left my hand on the phone after I hung up as though he could see it there, see that I didn’t quite want to let go. I bit my lip. Okay. Okay. That’s done now. I’m done with him now.

  On his end of the phone, now silent, he too held the receiver a little longer than necessary. It was ten-thirty in the morning. He had an AA meeting at noon and then there was a movie he wanted to get to afterward. He had always loved going to the movies, and he still thrilled to the retired man’s luxury of going in the middle of the day. He looked out the window, my crisp, distant voice still sounding in his ears. It felt as though it was going to be a long day.

  Twenty

  The day after I talked to Daddy, our phone rang around six a.m. I picked it up, confused, my heart pounding from the crush of noise that a ringing telephone makes when it wakes you from a sound sleep. “Hello? Hello?”

  There was only deep sobbing on the other end of the line. I listened for a minute, confused. Then I realized that it was my mother. “Mom? What is it? What’s going on?”

  Finally, she spoke. “Your brother …” By this time Daniel had awakened and embraced me from behind, his hand on my hip, automatically.

  “What about Tick, Mom?”

  “He came home drunk or high or something. I don’t know, sometime last night. He’s started stealing from me. I put him out. I can’t go through any more. I just can’t. I don’t even know where he is.” She sobbed again. “He might come to you. I’m afraid he might come to you.”

  “Right,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. “Right.” I stopped again. “How would he get here, Mom?”

  “How do I know?” she almost screamed. “I don’t know anything about him anymore. How the hell do I know?” Then her voice softened abruptly. “He loves you, Josie. And he’s got nowhere else to go. He might have enough for the bus—he left his car.” She sighed. “I gave him some money when he was getting his things together. Even though I know he’s been stealing. I didn’t know if he had any left. I couldn’t get myself to send him away without anything. I probably should have. But I couldn’t.” She started crying again.

  “Okay, okay, Mom.” I rubbed my forehead as hard as I could. “I guess all we can do is get some sleep now. You tried his cell phone, right?”

  “He doesn’t have one anymore. They cut off his service.”

  “Of course. Well, look, we’ll just see. We’ll just have to see. Don’t worry. We’ll keep talking, and I’ll let you know as soon as anything happens up here.”

  “Okay.” She sounded very old, older than the last time I talked to her. Older than she was when she got up that morning, probably. How little I knew her. “Okay. But I guess there’s nothing else to say, is there?”

  “I don’t think so, Mom. I don’t know what else to say.”

  “All right, then, baby. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m sorry you have to start your day like this. You let me know what happens.”

  “I will.” And then she hung up.

  I stayed on my side, unmoving, my hand clutching the phone so hard that it hurt. Daniel breathed behind me for a minute. “What happened, Josie? Something at home?”

  His voice unmoored me from my frozen position. I hung up the phone carefully, like it would break, and rolled onto my back. I had a sudden flash of me crying in Ben’s arms over exactly this something at home just a few months ago. “Yeah, Danny. Tick’s gone. My mother threw him out. He’s drinking again. Or using again. Or something. Mom thought he might be coming up here to us. To me.” I stared at the ceiling. There was pressure behind my eyes. But I wasn’t crying. I felt salty. Alone. Despite Daniel lying next to me. Despite the fact that I had a lover that I would do anything for. Despite the fact that my eyes were growing wet. I felt like the middle of the Sahara, a place I’ve never been. I felt as though the sun had eaten my bones. I felt like a woman with no brother, no husband, no one to call her own.

  “So what do you think Tick’s gonna do?” Daniel said.

  “I have no idea,” I said. “I can’t believe he’d come here. Maybe he would. But how would he even get here? What’s he doing for money? I have no idea.” I turned toward him and Daniel pulled my head onto his chest and I had a sudden moment of thinking I should say everything. That I should tell him about Ben and about what it was like to have Tick for a brother and everything. That I should tell him every bit of me. But I couldn’t figure out how we
’d ever have that conversation. I’d held back too much for too long. So I just lay there and let him comfort me like he has so many times before. How much do we ever really know another person anyway? How much should we ever say to another person? About anything? Should I have told him how much I used to love Tick? Tick was how I measured myself in the world. He was my template. How I missed that guy. He’d been gone for many years. But I missed him every day. I didn’t say this to Daniel. I couldn’t find the words. So we just lay there for a while. Silent. Then Daniel put his hand on my stomach. I welcomed it. Making love seemed like the only possible response to what was going on. It would let us push everything else aside. So we made love. For our separate reasons. And then the day began.

  • • •

  OUTSIDE, THE SUN BLEACHED everything to blankness. I went into the shower without grabbing a robe, but Daniel didn’t look at me. He stayed in bed until I was done. I was glad he didn’t come in. The water felt like a kind of forgiveness. I suppose he just looked at the ceiling the whole time. That’s what he was doing when I came out. He got up with a sad smile when I sat on the edge of the bed to dress. What was he thinking? I didn’t want to know.

  We had breakfast and had our coffee and didn’t talk about Tick. I didn’t know what to say. Whatever was going to be was simply going to be. As I drove to work, the roads seemed more twisty than usual. I almost missed the turnoff to the institute. I couldn’t pay attention. My throat hurt. My cell phone rang just as I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the ignition. It was Ben. I had to close my eyes and rest my head on the steering wheel, shaking all over. That’s how relieved I was to hear his voice.

  “How are you?”

  “I’m all right. I’m all right, I guess.”

  “You don’t sound all right,” he said gently, “What’s going on?”

  “What’s going on? What’s going on? I wish I knew. All I know is that my mother threw Tick out of the house and now she thinks he might be coming up here to me. It’s just all too much.” I was silent for a minute. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.” Then he laughed a little. “But I’ll see you inside in a few minutes. How high school is this?”

  I laughed a little too loudly and hung up. But I sat for a minute, holding the phone to my chest. Like it was his hand. My heart rattled inside my ribcage. I thought about Tick for a minute. And then I felt sick and had to get out of the car.

  Twenty-one

  It took Tick a little more than twenty-four hours to get to me on the bus. Twenty-four hours of shivering. Twenty-four hours of not eating and drinking lukewarm water from an old Poland Spring bottle as he stared miserably out the window. There were two transfers. He sat in the back of each bus, getting up periodically to vomit in the foul little bathroom that he was making fouler, then returning to huddle in his seat. At one stop a mother with three little kids got on. She was herding and fussing as they came near him to use the bathroom. When they came out, the mother took a long look at him. Then she compressed her lips into a thin line and took her little boy’s hand and marched her children, firmly, back to the front of the bus. They didn’t look like they had much money. But they knew a fucked-up junkie alcoholic when they saw one. And as beat down as they were, the mother guided her children away. Tick would have killed for a beer. But he couldn’t get one. He looked outside at the flat, dirty landscape going by. They were driving down a depressing highway with only scrubby plants and squat buildings next to it. The skies were weeping rain. He stared out the window.

  He arrived at the tiny bus station in Woods Hole at about ten on a bustling Saturday morning. He had been straight for long enough now that, though he still craved a drink, his body had calmed down a little. He felt nearly human.

  He wasn’t quite sure how he’d find my house. He’d never been to visit me before. He had my address, so he could ask someone how to find the street, but who knew how far away it might be? The bus shelter was right in the middle of the town’s business section, so he made his way to a nearby café. The ocean, he noted, came right up to the edges of the town. He also spotted a bar near the bus station called the Captain Kidd. He turned his head away as if the sight of it alone would get him drunk. As he walked into the coffee shop, he noticed a flier offering assistance in staging drug and alcohol interventions on the bulletin board of the café. He smiled a little, bitterly, at this. Too bad Mom hadn’t seen this in Cleveland. Before he went up to the counter, he looked down at himself. His pants were shiny with dirt and had random food stains. He ran his hand across his chest under his stretched-out sweater and felt how sweaty he was. He wished he had a mirror. And then again, he didn’t. He wasn’t going to like what he saw anyway.

  Behind the counter was a floppy-haired white kid who couldn’t have been much more than seventeen or eighteen. He was reading Maxim and chewing gum. Tick swallowed once, hard, and cleared his throat. “Can you tell me how to get to this address?” he said. His voice creaked. It had been so long since he’d used it. He didn’t stand too close to the kid.

  The kid looked up, long blond hair, sleepy, unfocused blue eyes. But then he did something surprising. He didn’t act horrified or appalled by Tick. He seemed to apprehend the situation immediately. He gave him careful directions: “It’s kind of a long walk, but you can make it. You don’t have a car, right?” He offered Tick a bottle of water: “On the house, man.” And told him where the bathroom was. Tick nodded—he didn’t trust himself to speak again—and went to use it, to splash water on his face and under his arms. While he was in there, he did look in the mirror. His dark skin was gray, his lips grayer still and cracked. Stuff was stuck in the corners of his mouth. He breathed into his hand and was grateful he hadn’t gotten closer to that nice kid—his breath would have knocked the kid over. What had happened to him? What had happened? He opened the bottle of water and drank a little. When he came out, he said, “Thank you,” to the kid.

  “No problem, man,” the kid said, a wide, genuine smile on his face. “I think I know where you’re at. I’ve been there myself. You stay strong, bro. Try to get to a meeting up here.”

  He slid a sheet of paper across the counter toward him. It was a list of local AA meetings. Tick took it. “Thanks, man.”

  “No problem. Take it light, all right?”

  “I will. I will.” He pushed his way out of the store. The air was soft against his skin.

  The kid was right. It was a long walk, all uphill. He was finally beginning to feel hungry and it weakened him. But after a long while he saw our street, Daniel’s and mine. He thought it was pretty. The houses were set back from the curb and each had a small front lawn and a porch. It was hard to see the addresses. Some people had those reflective numbers but many didn’t. He thought he probably should have called first. But what would he have said? What on earth was there to say? He just kept walking. He was almost there.

  The street was quiet and still. He checked the scrap of paper he’d written my address on again. His feet hurt and his chest was tight. He wished for a drink. But instead, he climbed the steps and rang the bell.

  A year passed in silence. Then he heard footsteps. And the door opened. I can’t imagine what went through his mind. Every detail of that moment is crystal in my mind. I even remember what I was wearing—a ratty old blue bathrobe that used to be Daniel’s. I took one step toward Tick, then another. And then I slapped him across the face as hard as I could. Tick stood with his head turned, not touching his sore cheek, as if frozen by my touch. My heart pounded furiously and we stood there for another moment. Then he looked at me, so sad and lost, and all the anger drained out of me. How could I hit him when life was hitting him so hard already? I reached out and pulled him toward me.

  “Damn it, Tick. You make me so fucking mad. I know I had no business hitting you like that but … damn.” I said all this into his neck, holding him like a lover. His breath on my neck was hot and stale. He smelled sweaty and scared. He still hadn’t said a word. Daniel came o
ut and stood uncertainly a few feet away. With him there, I felt self-conscious and moved away from Tick. He stood there, biting his lip.

  “I’m sorry, Jose. I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “I know.” I sighed. “I know. Come on in.” I stepped aside so he could pass.

  Tick and I sat at the kitchen table and Daniel started making coffee. I could tell by the set of his back how angry he was, but he was still doing the right thing, still helping. I sat across from Tick and pulled myself together. Our hands rested on the table between us. The only sound in the room was the hiss of the coffee maker. Finally, I spoke. “Tick. Tick. What are you doing here?”

  “Dag, Josie, why’d you hit me? Ain’t seen me in I don’t know how long and first thing you do is haul off and slap me? Damn. Ain’t that about nothin’.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Tick. I just reacted. I’ve been so worried.” I took another deep breath and went on. “Mom says you’ve been using again. I guess I hit you for her sake. I can’t believe you’d do that to her again, Tick. I really can’t.”

  Tick lowered his forehead to the table and rubbed his temple as though he was in pain. I’m sure he was. “Yeah. I can’t believe it either.” Daniel put a cup of black coffee in front of him without a word. He actually hadn’t said a word yet—to either of us—since the doorbell rang. “Josie, you know I didn’t mean to. You know I didn’t mean to hurt her. That’s why I came up here. I thought if I could get the hell out of Cleveland … you know, stay with you a while … that I could get clean.” He lifted the coffee with shaking hands. “I thought maybe I could get clean up here. It’s nice up here. I can see that already.” If I could have seen his thoughts, they would have been these: The kindness of the kid in the coffee shop. The sun off the ocean downtown. Maybe a person could start again here. With the sea close at hand.