Twenty-seven
When a man dies the way Tick did, everyone staggers around, bumping into each other, not knowing what to do. I went home because, of course, I had to. Somebody had to fly his body home. I had to be there when he was laid to rest. Tick needed to lay his head down in Cleveland, not in Woods Hole. I spoke to my mother a few times. Her voice sounded drowned, just like Tick’s body, buried under gallons and gallons of salt water. “The unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.” I read that sentence in The French Lieutenant’s Woman, one of the few novels I’ve ever read on my own. I’d seen the movie on TV and liked it and my father gave me the book, eager to encourage me to read fiction. I read it at a time when I was desperate for distraction. Someone had broken up with me, someone I loved very much, though he was unworthy of that love. I never forgot those words. The sea was never estranging to me. It was on land that I had my difficulties, my lack of comprehension, my estrangement. But something about all those s’s all together, the hiss of them, I knew even as I read them that they’d come back to me someday. And here they were again.
And my father. Gone from the house for so long. Gone from me for so long. I had ended it with him. In my mind. My heart. I had just ended it. I knew he’d quit drinking for good, and to hear my mother tell it, he was different. Quieter, where he’d always been quiet. But now there was someone there in all the silence. Sometimes she made a shy reference to a dinner out with him, something he said that had made her laugh. But I didn’t care. I just remembered him sitting in front of the TV. Slumped in jockey shorts. What was on? Did it matter? It never seemed to matter. It was just always on, always talking, that TV, and him, sullen, silent, with a beer in his hand. Sometimes there would be anger, always a rumble, never a hurricane blast. But the looking at me, at us, and seeing us, the actual us, there? There was none of that either. He was just a presence. Or really, more of a terrifying lack of a presence.
That made it feel especially strange that he was the one who met me at the airport. I wasn’t used to him showing up for me anywhere. Daniel was with me, too, but that was all splintering, breaking, falling away like so much dust. There had been too much damage. I had done too much damage. He didn’t ask any questions; I offered no answers. He read a monograph the whole flight. I stared out the window. I knew I would be moving out when we got back to Woods Hole. He stood a few steps behind me as we got off the plane.
My father stood at the gate, wearing the same kind of flat-brimmed cap he always did, the kind you see only on black men of his generation and a little older. The kind that black men who call people “cat” with ease wear. Sometimes it’s herringbone plaid, sometimes it’s black. It’s never seen comfortably sitting on the head of a white man. Old-school rappers wore puffy ones made of some furry material. And men my father’s age who still wear that exact kind are dying out. But there are still a few. There is still my father.
His skin and eyes were clear. He stood up straight. He was the man he’d been for years, the man I refused to see. And when he took me in his arms, which he did without hesitation, he smelled good and clean and present. I had never accepted a real hug from him; I didn’t believe he could offer them. But I was wrong. And now I wasn’t strong enough to resist. I was surprised at the comfort it gave me, to be held by my father, whom I am supposed to love, but so often fear that I don’t. We stood embracing for a long time. I felt held. I felt something very small and hard begin to unknot. But I didn’t cry. Daniel stood behind us, a fatherless boy, a wifeless man, outside the circle. My father let me go after a few minutes and turned to him. He held Daniel just as he had held me, and Daniel, the one who is not his child, broke down completely. I had to turn away. It didn’t last long but it was as if he were crying for all of us.
Daniel finally lifted his head, abashed. My father handed him his cotton handkerchief calmly, without embarrassment or fuss, and allowed him to wipe at his face. He turned away from Daniel. “Well, baby girl. I think we’d better go on home. Your mother’s in kind of a state over this.” He paused. “All our hearts are broken. I wish to God I could have done something to help that boy. My boy.” His gaze was steady and clear. He extended his hand and I took it.
MY STREET NEVER CHANGES. Sometimes there are FOR SALE signs. Sometimes there aren’t. But the houses always look the same, new generations of light- and dark-skinned kids riding their bikes in wavering lines over the pebbly sidewalks. The lawns green and small and carefully tended, each blade full of hope, except for the one or two houses where folks have just given up. No one ever says anything to them, but everybody talks about those folks. Daniel wasn’t with us. My father said he thought it would be best if my mother just saw me at first so he dropped Daniel off at the hotel. As we pulled up to my old house, I saw that our lawn, my mother’s pride and joy, had become one of those lawns. The tussocky grass was nearly ankle-high, the garden running riot. My poor mother.
My father pulled the car in carefully and all but took my elbow as I got out of the car, treating me carefully, like glass. He walked next to me going to the porch, his presence steady. “Josie,” he said as I approached the door, “you need to be ready for how she’s going to be.”
“How is she?”
“Pretty bad, Josie. I’m not so good myself but I’ve found some ways to get through. I’ve been going to a lot of meetings. But you know how your mother was about Tick.” He reached down to unlock the door, then straightened back up and looked at me. He put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“As okay as I can be, Daddy.” My father, the rock in a storm? A fount of wisdom? My father? What was going on? I sure wished Tick could see this. That thought made me wince. It hurt to have him come rushing into my mind, to want to tell him something, and not be able to.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby girl.”
“Daddy, I don’t know if I can do this.”
“I know, baby girl. I know it’s hard. But come on. Let’s go in.”
All the shades were drawn and the house smelled of sweat and garbage. It was dead silent at first and then I heard some sobbing. The same as the night she called me about Tick. I stopped walking so abruptly that my father bumped into me.
“Daddy, what am I supposed to do?”
“You go on up there and be with her, that’s what you’re supposed to. Just sit by the bed and be with her. She needs her daughter to be with her now. I’ll be right down here.”
Panic rose up in me. I climbed the stairs like a child entering a forest.
The shades were drawn in Mom’s room. It was cool and dark. It had an unexpected undersea feeling that I found slightly comforting. She lay in bed, smaller than she used to be.
“Mom? Mom, it’s me. I came to see you. I’m here.”
Her head lifted up from the pillow where it lay but her eyes were far gone, ranging off to some other shore, some land we couldn’t see. “Josie. Josie, you came home.”
“Yes, Mom.”
“Where’s Tick? He must be out. He’ll be glad to see you.”
I thought I might bite through my lip before I spoke. “Tick’s dead, Mom. Remember? He’s dead.”
She closed her eyes and lowered her head back onto the pillow. She nodded slowly.
“I miss him a lot.” And when I said the words, they came true, took on flesh and body and life. He was my brother and now he was gone. I sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “I know you miss him, too, Mom. The way he used to be.”
“The way he used to be,” she said uncertainly.
“Yeah, you know, before everything …”
“My baby boy.” Her voice cracked. “You know, when he came home this time, when he first came home, he was so sweet and so hopeful. We laughed. We laughed together those first couple of months. You know how he was, Josie. I’d be watching something on television and he’d come and sit with me and say some silly stuff and we’d just laugh and laugh. I think that’s when I first knew things were starting to go bad. When he stopped coming
to me and making me laugh.” She couldn’t talk anymore. She covered her face and started crying again.
Without thinking, I leaned over her on the bed and embraced her with my full length. I hadn’t held her like that since I was little. I could feel her skin and her muscle and all her bones moving within her. I felt her shoulders heaving as she cried. I cried, too. All you could hear was the sound of our sadness.
AND THEN LATER, THERE was the crying, the shock, the relatives and friends saying, “Oh, I remember when.” There I was, standing in the backyard where our climbing structure used to be, looking up at the stark blue and white sky, remembering how Tick used to fly down the sidewalk on his bike. There were whispered caucuses with Daniel and the knowledge that I was no longer married to him and that when I got back Ben would no longer be my lover. I was all alone.
The day Daniel and I were married, after the ceremony, after everyone went home, we went swimming. The beach was deserted. We took off our clothes and laid them in piles in the sand, my going-away dress a bright spill of orange. I remember the shock of the water, how it felt to see his pale body and know it belonged to me now. I remember how the water felt all over me, a baptism. After we buried Tick, I wanted that again. I didn’t tell anyone. I just took the car and drove over to Lake Erie very, very early one morning. It would have to do.
It was a beautiful day. Not too warm, but not too cold. Despite the lovely weather, no one was around. My brother’s body was beneath the earth, in the same city he’d been born in. I took off my jacket, my shoes, my dress and left them on the rocky shore. I waded into the lake, knees, thighs, chest, shoulders. I lowered my head to receive the water and swam. It was just a lake. No salt. No majesty. A gentle rocking of waves. It was where I was born, this lake, this cold gray nothing special. I stroked out for a long way, then floated a little, and then, chilled, swam back to the shore. My mind was blank.
There was someone standing near my clothes. Not much taller than me, dark skin. My father. He didn’t look surprised to see me naked. And I was too heartbroken to be afraid or embarrassed. He looked at me unsmiling as I emerged dripping. He was wearing his hard shoes, just as he always had at the beach. He picked up my dress and held it out for me. I climbed into it the same way I might have if I were at home alone, no anxiety, no modesty. He didn’t say anything while I dressed.
“I thought you might be down here,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “You know I love the water, Daddy.”
We both turned to face it and he put one arm around my shivering shoulders.
“You’re not alone,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” I said. “I am.” He turned me to face him, a little roughly. He looked into my eyes harder than he ever had in his whole life. Every bit of my father was in that look. Every inch of him that I had never been willing to see before. He had been restored. He had done what was necessary. He wasn’t the man I never knew.
“You’re not alone anymore,” he said. “I’m your father and I’m right here. You’re not alone anymore.”
He pulled me toward him and held me for a long minute. I let go first. We stood side by side looking at the small sibilant waves. Then he took off his shoes and his socks and led me back to the edge and we stood there and let the water bathe our feet. He said it again. “You’re not alone anymore. Do you believe me?”
I didn’t speak. I offered a small nod. He squeezed my hand. “I’m here when you want me, baby,” he said. “I’m here.” I nodded. We stood there holding hands, gazing at the muddy greenish waves together.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Charles Baxter, Joanne Gruber, Sharon Guskin, Anne Rumsey, and my husband, Jeff Phillips, all provided tremendous help and thoughtful comments in their readings of one or several of the many drafts of this novel.
My agent, Geri Thoma, who has stood by my work, lo, these many years, always with enthusiasm and encouragement.
My editor, Jane Rosenman, provided wise counsel, skillful editing, and good cheer, as always.
Radford Arrindell of the American Museum of Natural History provided valuable insight into a scientist’s life and an ichthyologist’s work in particular (though Josie ended up being a marine biologist).
I believe I’ve thanked the MacDowell Colony at the end of each of my novels—but I’ll keep doing it as long as I am allowed to spend time writing at this little bit of heaven. I can’t ever express how helpful my residencies there have always been.
To Jeff, Nate, and Ruby: I am so fortunate to have you as my family.
To everyone named here and anyone who helped me along the way whom I’ve forgotten to name, I am and will always be deeply grateful.
The Taste of Salt
The Birth of The Taste of Salt
Questions for Discussion
The Birth of The Taste of Salt
BY MARTHA SOUTHGATE
The first inkling of what grew into The Taste of Salt developed when I was the books editor of Essence magazine, many years ago. A colleague’s husband had what I thought was the coolest job I’d ever heard of. He was (and is) an ichthyologist (a scientist who specializes in the study of fish) at the American Museum of Natural History. Though I have no scientific background, I have always loved the water and could not stop thinking about how I might make the ocean and someone who loved it part of my next novel—I had already published one, The Fall of Rome, by that time. Though the novel took a long and winding road away from that initial inspiration, that is where it began.
When I began work on the book in earnest, all I had was that notion and the beginnings of the voice of my protagonist, Josie Henderson, a headstrong woman who loves the water and has fought her way into this white-male-dominated field. As I spent time with her, I came to feel that I wanted to write about where she came from, what made her tick, and what made her run. And I wanted her to be from Cleveland, my hometown.
Cleveland has always gotten a hard way to go in pop culture—“the mistake on the lake,” the hapless sports teams, the disappearing industries. And yet, it’s a place where hundreds of thousands of people live, love, make their lives and their homes. I have to admit that like Josie, when I left there, I swore I wasn’t ever going back. But I had Cleveland be her hometown, too, because even though you might not go home again, you can’t ever fully leave where you’re from. The need to run is a big part of Josie’s character, something I began to work out in the very earliest days of working on the novel. While working on this essay, I found some notes that I made in 2005 when I was thinking about how the novel might develop: “This story is about her heedlessness, her desire to let go of whatever’s near her, her efforts to keep herself in control … She’s scared and uncertain and a little wild.”
And here’s another note from that same page or two of rumination, the birth of the other major theme of the book: “One big change today—have her go home and find out her brother’s an addict. Parents flipping out. That’s what she has to deal with when she gets home. Getting him into rehab or something. No sick dad. Let dad live and be present. Two parents. Crazy. And maybe we can build the marital conflict by rolling back through it. Let her relationship with her parents reflect her discomfort with her heritage, her hometown.” Then I have a note to myself to begin researching “fish, addiction, water-related jobs.” That’s how it started, that one thought one day.
I’ve long been interested in the mechanisms and effects of addiction, but when I began work on this book, I had no idea it would become such a central theme. But that’s what’s great about writing fiction, the mystery of it, even as you do it. Eudora Welty once said, “If you haven’t surprised yourself, you haven’t written.” Those words are part of why I write fiction, to attempt to surprise readers—and myself—with some aspect of story, some aspect of life, that they didn’t expect to find. I hope that readers of The Taste of Salt will find themselves surprised and moved. I hope that they will find themselves thinking of how one lives in a family in a slightly different way.
Questions for Discussion
1. Josie, the protagonist of The Taste of Salt, is deeply tied to two places: Cleveland, Ohio, her birthplace, and Woods Hole, where she makes her life and work. She has very different relationships to each place. Discuss the ways in which the two places differ from one another. To what extent do they function as characters in the novel?
2. Josie’s father, Ray, and her brother, Tick, both struggle with alcoholism and other addictions. Does Josie harbor any addictions of her own?
3. While there is alcoholism in the African-American community, as in any other community in the United States, relatively few memoirs or novels have been published about it. Why do you think that might be the case?
4. The author uses an interweaving narrative in which each of the six major characters speaks periodically and Josie serves as a kind of overarching consciousness going in and out of various characters’ lives. Other novels that have taken this approach to a greater or lesser degree in recent years are Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex and Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Why do you think Southgate uses this narrative approach?
5. Josie struggles with both the family she came from and with conflicting feelings about being one of the only black scientists in her milieu. Why might successful people try to leave their past (and their families) behind? Do you think it’s ever possible to do that?
6. On page 130, Josie says that she doesn’t want to “fit the stereotype of black girl with a no ‘count brother.” Do you think there is such a stereotype? What do you think of Josie’s comment or of the way it bonds her to her friend Maren?
The Taste of Salt Page 17