Twenty-two
And what of my good, kind Daniel during all this? When I hit Tick, he was the one who tried to make it right. When Tick needed a place to stay, he was the one who didn’t say no. But he’s not a saint. He’s a man. He’s a man I was pushing about as far as it was possible to be pushed. As the cliché has it (and as we in the sciences know), something had to give.
We sat at the table a little longer. No one seemed to know what to say. Tick stared into his black coffee as though the answer lay there. After a while he lifted his head and gave us a weak smile. “I really need something to eat and a shower and a nap,” he said. Thank God. Something concrete to do. Daniel and I both practically leapt up from the table, flying into awkward host mode, finding towels and putting sheets on the guest bed in the office and studiously not talking to each other (or even looking at each other much) until Tick was safely stowed away.
I did one other thing in this hostly flurry. While I was in our office/guest room alone making up the bed and Daniel was rooting around looking for towels, I called Ben. Right from the house—an enormous risk. I was past caring. Tick’s arrival had removed the last vestige of that from me. I didn’t talk to Ben for long. I just told him I needed to see him. I wished I was diving, somewhere far away from all this. Somewhere safe and cool and blue. I looked out the window. The sun splashed onto the houses across the street. My heart quieted for a moment. Then I went up to our bedroom, where Daniel sat on the edge of the bed.
“So, Jose, how about all this?”
“How about it?” I sat down beside him and sighed. “Well.”
“Well what do you want to do? Have you told your mother that he’s here?”
“No. No—when would I have done that?” I sounded petulant. I didn’t mean to. “I’m sorry, Danny. But when would I have done that? He hasn’t even been here three hours yet.”
“Some people would have called their parents first thing when something like this happened. Some people would not be so afraid of where they come from.”
“What?” Had he heard me on the phone with Ben?
“I just think. I’ve watched you run and run and run from them.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve watched you run from me. And now he’s here. Your drunk, drug-addict brother is here and you can’t run anymore. Can’t you try to be here with it? Be here with me?”
Something cracked in my mind. I stood up and knocked everything off my dresser, in one smooth motion. The crash made me jump, even as I thought about how dramatic the gesture was. The picture of Tick and me fell face down. I was supposed to be a rational soul. But I wasn’t now. I was only impulse. Daniel jumped off the bed, shouting, “What is wrong with you, Josie? What is wrong with you?” He grabbed my wrists and I looked straight into his eyes. My breath whistled in and out, rapidly. Daniel held my wrists a little longer. We had never been in a place like this. We stared at each other. Daniel was the first to speak.
“I’ve been walking around like I’ve got a sock in my mouth for months, but I can’t fucking stand it anymore. Jesus Christ, Josie. Jesus Christ. What the fuck is going on with you?”
“Daniel, my brother just showed up with nothing left in this world. What do you think is going on with me?”
Daniel looked at me silently. Then he let go of my wrists and sat back down on the bed, like an old, old man. “Josie, it’s not just your brother. You know that.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?” I was whispering, too. The room smelled like flowery lotions and perfumes from some bottles that had burst open—girly creams he’d given me that I didn’t value enough.
He looked at me. If I lied now, I’d lose him. But maybe that was best. Maybe I didn’t deserve someone like him. “There’s nothing to say, Daniel. It’s just a hard time. I’ve been having a hard time.”
He looked away from me with a slight nod, out the window. “Right.” He drew a deep breath and started speaking, still looking out the window. “I remember the first time I saw you years ago at that seminar. I remember looking at you and listening to you and thinking, ‘She’s interesting. And she’s really smart.’ But I didn’t think much else. Until the next day. I woke up and looked at the ceiling and I knew I had dreamed about you. I knew it. You had invaded my sleep.” He laughed a little. “I remember looking at the ceiling and wondering what had happened. How you had gotten inside of me so fast.” He looked at me for a long moment. “You’re still there. But I that doesn’t make everything all right.”
Twenty-three
Tick hadn’t been in Woods Hole more than a couple of weeks before he knew he was in trouble. He should have seen the trouble coming when he stood on that porch and I slapped him in the face. He should have seen the trouble coming when he just couldn’t get himself to those AA meetings the very day he arrived. That nice kid had even told him where they were. But he didn’t go. He was so tired. The bus ride had been so long. It was so good to sit on my porch drinking coffee and watching the birds fly by. He kept thinking of that kid’s smile. The one in the coffee shop. He thought maybe remembering that would be enough.
He heard Daniel and me whispering fiercely to each other in our bedroom, in the study, in the kitchen, over and over, all the time. He heard his name sometimes in the midst of these whispers. Then he’d make a noisy show of entering the room and we’d stop talking and look at him guiltily and say a loud fakey, “Hi.” Or “How are you doing? What do you need?”
We couldn’t help him with what he really needed. What he was starting to feel like he needed. He was past all the sick feelings; that was the funny part. He’d ridden out the shakes, the nausea, the grinding in the bones. Now he just … missed it. Right under his heart was painful and tender. Raw. He didn’t have that feeling when he was drunk or high.
He started taking long walks on the beach to try to take his mind off the wound. Being outside and moving around helped a bit. It made the aching subside, if not cease altogether. He wasn’t sure how to outrun it. He thought he ought to talk to someone. But he was so tired of talking. Talking and fighting this thing with all that one-day-at-a-time crap was all he’d done for so long. He was so tired of it.
He ran into Ben on the beach during a very early morning walk—he was finding it harder and harder to sleep. Tick felt compelled to speak to him—he hadn’t seen another black guy in days and days.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” said the other guy. He was thin and dark-skinned, bookish and thoughtful looking. “I never see people out this early. That’s why I like to come out now.”
“Yeah?” said Tick. “I just couldn’t sleep. That’s why I’m out here. Better than laying there, staring at the ceiling. Listen, I gotta introduce myself. There just ain’t that many of us here. My name’s Edmund,” he said. “But everyone calls me Tick.”
The guy took a step backward. Tick wondered if Josie had told everyone in town about her fuck-up brother. “So you’re Tick,” the other man said. “Nice to meet you.”
“What do you mean, ‘So you’re Tick?’ How do you know me, man?”
“Oh, sorry. My name’s Ben Davidson. I work with your sister, Josie, at the lab. She mentioned you to me.”
“Mmm.” Tick nodded. They had fallen into step. “So you’re the other one.”
“Other what?” His voice climbed a little. Tick looked at him sharply. Ben had that look in his eye, that look a man gets about a woman. Well. Looked like Josie might have her own secrets. But he couldn’t blame her; both he and his sister had their own hellhounds on their trail. And he did not want to step into her pile of shit. He had enough of his own.
So all Tick said was, “You’re the only other black doc at the institute. She told me that there was one other black guy. She likes you.” Tick couldn’t resist this little dig, just to see what the guy would do. He held his ground, but the air between them shifted a little. Tick picked up a rock and slung it with unforced grace toward the ocean.
“What do
you mean, she likes me?” Ben asked.
“She just said you were an all-right guy. That it was nice to have somebody else black around the office. You study fish, too, right?”
“I’m a marine biologist. Specialize in the life of plankton.”
“Plankton, huh? Seems kind of hard to study that stuff. It’s so small. Just all one big mush.”
“Not exactly,” Ben said uncertainly. “It’s an ecosystem. Part of how everything in the ocean lives together.”
“I know what an ecosystem is,” Tick said testily. “I went to the same high school as Josie. I’ve got some education.” Suddenly, Tick started coughing so hard that he had to stop walking and bend over, leaning on his thighs. Ben stopped with him and put his hand on Tick’s back. It felt good to have another man’s hand on his back in that friendly, caring way. He’d divorced himself from so many things, even warm regard from another man.
When he was able to stand he said, “Sorry, man. Sometimes this sea air gets to me, you know? Anyway, what are you doing out so early? I know why I can’t sleep. Why can’t you?”
Ben looked out at the water and narrowed his eyes. “Sometimes I just can’t sleep,” he said after a while. “The ceiling starts pressing down on my head.”
Tick nodded. “I know what you mean.”
They both fell silent, walking along companionably. Until Tick banished the silence with his next words to Ben: “You wouldn’t happen to have ten dollars I could borrow, man, would you?”
“What?”
“Ten dollars. You wouldn’t happen to have it on you. Would you?”
Ben stepped away from Tick, shaking his head. He looked sad and sorry, like he’d seen something beautiful lying dead in the road. Tick felt like the lowest form of life there was. He couldn’t even believe that those words had just come out of his mouth. And yet—he did want it. He needed it. He wasn’t going to use it for booze. But still. He was a grown man. He hated walking around with no money, no nothing. Josie didn’t trust him with anything.
“No, man. I don’t have ten dollars. Not today. Not for you.”
Tick felt a tight smile cross his face. “So she warned you, huh?”
“She said a little bit about you. But I think I’d have figured you out anyway.”
Tick turned to head back. The camaraderie was gone. He walked away and then started a loping run, trying to make it look casual, like what he had just done wasn’t a big thing. Like it wasn’t yet another defeat.
A COUPLE OF DAYS after that walk on the beach, Tick and I were sitting on my porch. Daniel was at work, finishing up a project. I had been able to get away to see Ben a couple of times but not often. And when I did? Well, let’s just say it wasn’t the same. But I wasn’t ready to let go yet. There was still some comfort there. But for now, it was just me and Tick. There was between us, for the first time since he’d arrived, a little bit of ease. We both had our feet up on the railing, something we couldn’t do when we were kids, partly because Mom and Daddy would have given us a good talking-to and partly because our feet wouldn’t have reached the railing. We stared at the road, watching the occasional car pass by.
“I met Ben, that guy you work with,” he said suddenly.
“What?”
He turned and gave me a slow look. He knew. How did he know? But I could tell he did, all in one electric moment. “He seems like a nice guy.” He kept looking at me steadily. “Look, Josie, what you do is your business. You’re grown. And God knows I am not in a position to tell anybody what to do. But I hope he’s good to you.” He paused. “And I hope you know what you’re doing.” He looked back out at the road.
I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I do. But I can’t stop.” My eyes stung.
“Well, I know what that’s like,” he said. He reached over and took my hand. We sat quiet for a few minutes.
“What are you gonna do, Tick?”
“What do you mean, what am I gonna do?”
“Tick, you showed up on my doorstep strung out, no money, no job, no plan, no program. You’re not even going to meetings.”
“I hate meetings.”
“You hate meetings,” I said.
“Yeah, I do. You sit there with these people and they all talk about how we’ve got to rely on this higher power and how it’s out of their hands and they tell these long-ass stories and then we all hold hands and say that damn prayer.” He paused. “I want to kick by myself.”
“You do.”
“Yeah, I do. That’s why I came up here. I thought if I could get away from all the craziness, it would be easier to kick. You know. You’d be here to help me, and it’s nice and quiet.”
“Not to mention that Mom threw your rusty butt into the street.”
A car drove past, slowly, and Tick looked at it. A muscle worked in his throat. “I came up here to get straight. I came up here because I thought you and Daniel would take me in.”
A long silence fell. I broke it. “Remember how you used to always sleep at the end of my bed when you were scared? You used to curl up right at my feet.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Tick, I’ll do what I can for you but you’ve got to do this yourself. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“I’m scared for you.”
“I can do it, Josie.”
“I hope so.”
We were quiet again, both of us looking out at the road, still holding hands, a couple of kids who had always trusted each other.
“I love you, Tick. You know that, right?”
“I know. I love you, too. I’ll go to a meeting, Josie,” he said. “I promise.”
• • •
HE WAS AS GOOD as his word. He went to a meeting the next night. He felt depressed and hopeless the minute he walked through the door. Those same stupid folding chairs. The same linoleum that they all seemed to have ordered from the same place in that same shade of yellowy green. The quiet hissing of the coffee maker, the murmuring of the people who knew each other already, the shell-shocked look of those who’d found themselves there for the first time and weren’t ever, ever going to open their mouths. That’s what they thought anyway. Tick remembered feeling that way. And he remembered how good at first it felt to give in to their embrace, to share at a meeting and feel supported and like someone finally got why it was so hard to quit using. He remembered the first time in rehab, the twice-a-day meetings, the bed making, the order, and how that all fell apart in a year when he got out. And then he went back. And then, he was out again. And then he was in a bar. And now he was here. Again. He knew, in his head anyway, that the whole idea was to keep putting one foot in front of the other and sticking with the program. But now? He couldn’t remember exactly when he got the feeling that he might be beyond help. Was it this last run? Was it with that girl at Beenie’s? When was it? The slogans—One Day at a Time, Think, Keep the Focus on Yourself, Zip the Lip—he couldn’t remember exactly when it all started to get on his nerves, all that talk, all that serenity-seeking. When it started to be harder and harder to get himself to a meeting and stay in his seat while he was there. He couldn’t remember when it began. But as soon as he sat down—in the back, where he’d most likely be left alone—nothing had changed. And he felt his heart tighten against whatever the room had to offer.
The speaker that night was a white woman. Maybe thirty-five, maybe forty. Honey-toned blond hair, nicely cut. She had a nervous habit of twirling her pretty hair around one finger as she talked. “So it started like this,” she said. And the drunkalogue began. People laughed and nodded. The night she couldn’t remember where she parked her car. The night she woke up fifty miles from home in the arms of a total stranger. The night she cut off all her hair. The night she drove her best friend’s kids’ home and barely avoided causing a major accident and killing herself and them. The thousands of times she prayed for deliverance. The way that she began to be delivered when she gave it all over. Her finger kept twisting her hair, mesmerizin
gly. Her voice rose and fell like a song. Everyone laughed at the funny parts. Everyone sighed as the story got sadder. Everyone knew how it ended. “So here’s how it is now,” she said. “I still look at those bottles of white wine in the grocery store. They look so cool and inviting. There are always those beads of moisture on them, you know? They look so great.” A few nods. “But then I remember what happened after the first drink. Thank God for cell phones!” she laughed. She told of how she had called her sponsor and she’d talked her off the ledge. Everyone laughed with her. Tick didn’t laugh. His legs hurt. He wanted a drink. He wanted a drink more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted that cold, clear savor, that cold, clear savior. He wanted to be saved. But he didn’t think that what was in this room was going to save him.
The share finished. The treasury envelope made its way around the room. Tick shuffled his feet, shifted around in his chair, was acutely aware of being the only black person in the room. He got up and got some coffee. He sat back down. He stretched his back. Everyone laughed again at something someone said. Now someone said a slogan. Now heads were nodding; a young woman wept quietly in the corner. People talked about how their lives were saved, how hard they worked, how grace had come into their lives through those rooms. Tick tried to sit still. He tried to feel grace. It had worked for his father. For his own father. But all he could feel was the wind whistling through his heart. That sore, empty space that he’d tried so hard, so often, so long to fill. The meeting finally ended—it felt as though it had lasted a thousand years. He left without speaking to anyone. He folded up his chair and put it away like he was supposed to so he wouldn’t call attention to himself. He went outside and stood alone under the brilliant stars.
HE WENT TO THE Captain KIDD right from the meeting. What was the point of trying? This was what he wanted. No more slogans. The beer tasted like mother’s milk, like everything he’d ever wanted. He could hear cars passing, other drinkers behind him in the bar, the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the jukebox. This was what he wanted. This was all he wanted. This was what would make everything all right.
The Taste of Salt Page 15