The Salt House

by Lisa Duffy

  Suddenly I was back in Maddie’s bedroom, the police officer holding my arms, gently guiding me out of the room, repeating that we needed to give the paramedics space. From between the tangle of legs and arms, her pudgy arm, the necklace tangled in her fingers. Then Jess in the doorway, just off the bus, earlier than usual, earlier than Kat. It was her last day of school, only a half day to give the PTO time to get the gym ready for homecoming that night.

  She’d missed the dance, of course, spent the night with Kat, waiting for us to return from the hospital while Boon and his girlfriend tried to keep them distracted by playing cards. Everyone flinching, I’m sure, when a car passed outside.

  Everyone on edge, waiting, hoping.

  Later, when we were home, Kat had asked, “Mommy? What happened?”

  “She stopped breathing,” Jack had whispered, and pulled the girls against him. Jess had put her arm around Kat and closed her eyes. I wondered if it was to block out the image of Maddie, the necklace around her wrist, the locket that hung off it gone.

  I couldn’t go back and remove the necklace from Kat’s neck so it wouldn’t drop in the crib while she and Maddie played. I couldn’t pause the moment Maddie decided to taste it and rewind it, record over it like the mixed tapes I used to make in high school. I couldn’t stop time and make Jess come in the house five minutes later, time enough for me to unwind the necklace from around Maddie’s wrist.

  Time enough for Jess to not see it.

  But she had seen it.

  And the week after Maddie died, when Kat asked if I’d seen her necklace, I lied and told her the store I bought it from called, and the necklace caused awful rashes on several people, and they asked for it back.

  Jess had looked at me wide-eyed, startled at my overly elaborate lie, and I turned away, ashamed that I didn’t have a better answer.

  But when Kat searched for the necklace, I saw it on Maddie’s wrist. And when she asked me if I’d seen it, I pictured the locket in Maddie’s mouth.

  Months ago, Kat begged me over and over to replace the locket, and I knew she was disappointed in the one I’d brought home, a miniature version of the original. I’d chosen the smallest one I could find. So small, I was surprised she managed to get a picture inside of it.

  “Mom?” Jess’s voice broke the silence. I blinked, her face coming into focus.

  I heard the door open, and Kat walked in, my mother behind her. They were holding ice-cream cones, a stream of chocolate running down Kat’s arm.

  “We should have got cups,” my mother said, wetting a paper towel and running it up Kat’s arm. She looked over at us, from me to Jess then back at me, and quickly threw the paper in the trash.

  “Missy, you need a good cleaning. Come upstairs with me, and I’ll run a bath with some of that fuzzy salt stuff everyone is so fond of giving old ladies.”

  She turned Kat toward the door. Kat skipped out and up the stairs. My mother patted my shoulder before she crossed through the living room and closed the door behind her. I waited a moment before I spoke.

  “I didn’t know you felt this way. Remember we talked about it after? You said she would blame herself—”

  “I remember,” she blurted. “She would have blamed herself. I never said she wouldn’t.”

  “But you think I was wrong for not telling her the truth.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, what are you saying? You’re obviously upset.”

  “I’m not upset. I’m just stating a fact. You withheld information from Kat. I withheld information from you. I guess that makes us both liars.”

  A look crossed her face when she said this. I saw that her anger was a surprise to her, as if the words had come from some unknown place inside of her.

  I kept my voice steady, calm. “You’re not a liar, and neither am I. Your sister stopped breathing. That is the truth. That is what we told Kat.”

  “But not from SIDS like you led her to believe. Likes she believes now.”

  “I never mentioned anything about SIDS. She heard that at school and told me about it.”

  “You didn’t tell her that it wasn’t that,” she accused, her voice growing louder.

  I didn’t tell her to speak in a quieter tone. I could hear the bath running upstairs. I knew Kat couldn’t hear us. Most of all, I knew that I wanted Jess to keep talking. That she needed to keep talking. It seemed to me that what she was saying had been eating at her. I saw that it had sat inside of her and festered.

  “No, I didn’t. You’re right. She told me that she liked to think that Maddie just went to sleep and stopped breathing. She said thinking that made her feel better.”

  “And you said she should think that. I heard you. I was there.”

  “I did say that,” I agreed. “And I’d say it again. I want for all of us to think of things that make us feel better. Don’t you?”

  She shrugged, scowled.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  She didn’t speak, but she looked at me out of the corner of one eye.

  “Do you think I should have told her? Is that what this is about?”

  “No.” She rolled her eyes as if this was the most absurd thing she’d ever heard. “It’s not what this is about. You’re the one talking about being truthful. All I’m saying is that it’s not black-and-white.”

  “It’s not black-and-white. I agree. But that doesn’t mean that you were right to not tell us about Alex. I want you to know you can talk to me, Jess. I know things have been—”

  “Can we not talk about it? I said it wasn’t a big deal. He’s going to college and I probably won’t ever see him again, so it’s not worth talking about. Okay?”

  Her face was blotchy. She was on the verge of tears from the pitch of her voice. I wanted to put my arms around her. Erase the past year for her. Undo all the sadness that was etched in her face.

  When I stood, she walked to the doorway and put her hand on the doorknob.

  “Can I go? Bets is expecting me.”

  I nodded, and she was gone, her footsteps heavy on the stairs.

  I sat in the chair and looked at the door. I’d been foolish to think that Jess wouldn’t have struggled at some point with what we told Kat. In some ways, I felt that I’d let the fact that Jess had always been so mature, so levelheaded, convince me that she’d come to me if she needed to talk about it.

  Or maybe it was that we’d always been so close.

  Jack thought it was all those years Jess and I had alone together. Eight years before Kat was born.

  Not that we’d planned it that way. Jack and I tried for another child when Jess was three. It took more than two years, and then I miscarried in the tenth week. We took a break after that.

  After Kat was born, we thought we were done having kids. We’d had such a hard time conceiving Kat, and the doctor said my chances of getting pregnant were slim—so slim, we didn’t even bother with birth control—and then years passed, and there was that hot, humid night at the Salt House when Jack had pulled the mattress down to the screen porch and we made love. And Maddie had come along.

  I walked over to the phone and called Peggy.

  “I have some news,” I said when she answered. “It seems as if Alex and Jess have met.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said breezily. “I saw them talking outside the house in the beginning of the summer. Jess was riding her bike or something. I wanted to go out and formally introduce them, but I didn’t want to be the uncool mother.”

  I cleared my throat. “I think they have moved past just meeting.”

  “Huh?”

  “They might have even moved past just friends.”

  There was a pause. “Hope, I’m confused,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” I admitted. “I just found out. Jess has a little sister who adores her—a little sister who also happened upon some information that her sister had a boyfriend.”

  “A boyfriend!” Peggy shou
ted. “I’ve never heard him mention her name!”

  “Apparently they have lunch together every day in the parking lot near the camp. Kat saw them.”

  “Every day!”

  “I’m sure they’re just friends. Honestly, Jess is not exactly experienced with boys. Jack is strict to the point of crazy—it’s something we fight about, and he’s never been able to explain it. I actually told Jess last year to come to me if she ever wants to go to the movies with someone. But she’s never mentioned Alex, and she was defensive just now when I asked about him. The only thing I got out of her was that it’s no big deal.”

  “I’m sure they’re just friends,” Peggy said. “Alex has been serious with a girl back home for ages. But I’ll talk to him and get the scoop, I promise.”

  We hung up, and I dialed Jack’s cell. It rang once before I changed my mind and ended the call. There was no sense in bringing this up with him now. Jess didn’t need him asking her about it. Jack could never explain to me why he had such an issue with her dating. I should have pushed the issue with him. But she’d never shown much interest in dating anyone specific until now. If she was even interested in dating Alex, for that matter. It wasn’t clear from our conversation.

  Plus, if I called Jack and he answered, I had a feeling I’d hear him cough, and I didn’t think I’d be able to stop myself from lecturing him.

  He’d been hot to the touch last night again. I’d asked him to stay home when he was getting dressed for work this morning. But he’d insisted that he was fine, just run-down from the hours he was putting in. I dropped it and turned over and went to sleep. Because the hours he was putting in was another argument we’d had over the last year that we’d silently agreed to stop having. By this I mean we avoided the conversation.

  How many times can you argue about something before you decide that the argument is more destructive than the thing you’re arguing about?

  It went the same every time, this fight. Jack went to work when things were difficult at home, and I resented it. That was a boiled-down version. But there were valid points on each side. Every good fight that has the ability to last more than twenty years has validity.

  Jack argued that working the hours he did was justified because he liked to work alone, without a stern man. It took him longer to do what he needed to do because there was only one of him.

  It wasn’t true, I’d counter. Over the years, he’d cut back the number of traps he fished, and it was only in the last year that he’d been putting more in.

  But that would lead to his argument that since I wasn’t working, he was picking up the slack.

  And there were the two mortgage payments. And that was a whole different argument.

  So we didn’t argue about it anymore.

  Now, I went into Maddie’s old room and closed the door.

  I pulled open my desk drawer and took out the stack of letters that were addressed to me, care of Parent Talk Magazine.

  Josie had handed them to me months ago when we’d had lunch. She’d looked sheepish, explaining that she’d opened them, even though they were addressed to me.

  “I wanted to make sure they weren’t from nutcases. Read them,” she’d said, pushing the stack across the table. “Maybe they’ll silence those other voices in your head.”

  I’d read each of them several times by now.

  There was a letter from Janet scrawled across ten pages, about her teenage son’s suicide. How she blamed herself for the longest time.

  And Pam, a breast cancer survivor, who recently lost her young daughter to leukemia, writing to tell me how she would never step foot in her church again. No longer able to pray to a God that would allow such a thing to happen.

  And Graham, who lost both his wife and daughter in a car accident that he somehow survived. The list went on and on. The letters were all varied in tone. Some angry. Some accepting. Some eloquently written, and others short and blunt, punctuated by exclamation marks and capital letters.

  But all of the letters had one thing in common. In one way or another, they all said this: You are not alone . . .

   16

  Jess

  Today at lunch, Alex suggested we might want to cancel our sail, with the tide not high enough until dinnertime, and the potential rain, but we’d been trying to get over to the Salt House for weeks, and we finally agreed that we’d take a short sail, downriver and back at the most, just long enough to check the repair.

  I’d met him in the parking lot after work, and we’d grabbed sandwiches from the sub shop and pulled up at the Salt House just before six, when the tide was at its highest.

  But by the time we took the tarp off the sailboat, and carried it across the marsh to the water, the first drops of rain tapped lightly on our foreheads. The weather report said there was a chance of a thunderstorm in the evening, but later, after midnight. By the look of the clouds forming above us, the storm had arrived six hours early.

  The wind had picked up even in the short time it took us to get the boat to the water. The river was dark under the overcast sky. Alex motioned for us to head back to the shed just as the sky opened, rain pouring down on us, the rumblings of thunder in the distance.

  We grabbed the sailboat and hurried toward the house, the boat slipping from my grip and knocking against my shins. Lightning flashed over the water behind us. Alex dropped his end and grabbed the bag out of the boat, holding it out to me.

  “Go inside,” he yelled. “It’ll be quicker if I drag it.”

  I took the bag and sprinted to the house, my shorts and T-shirt drenched through, drops of rain slipping off my nose. There was a small cluster of rocks by the front steps, and I turned them over, forgetting which one the key was hidden under.

  When I finally unlocked the door and stepped in, the smell of the house made me stop where I was. The house didn’t look the same because of the renovation, but it had the same smell—briny and musty mixed together. The way you’d expect an old house at the ocean to smell. I breathed in deep and closed my eyes, realizing how much I’d missed this place.

  In the back hall, there was a raincoat, and I grabbed it and brought it out to Alex, but he was stripped down to his board shorts, apparently unfazed by the rain with the way he was taking his time with the tarp, smoothing down every gap. He laughed when I held out the jacket and told me to go get warm while he finished covering the boat.

  Inside the house, I lit a candle in the kitchen and left a towel in the front hall for Alex so he could dry off. Upstairs, I took a quick shower and slipped on jeans and a long-sleeve shirt that were packed in a bin in my bedroom. They were from last year, tighter than the clothes I normally wore, but when I looked in the mirror, I didn’t mind what I saw.

  There wasn’t a hair dryer, but there was a fan in Kat’s room, and I dried my hair in front of it. Then I rifled through the box on my mother’s bureau to see if there was some perfume to dab on.

  I heard Alex open the front door, and I retraced my steps, cleaning up after myself so I didn’t leave a trail for my parents. Then I walked down the stairs and turned into the kitchen.

  Alex was at the window, looking at the water in front of us. He’d draped the towel over the faucet, where it dripped into the sink.

  “You’d never guess this was the view from the front,” he said, stunned.

  I walked over to where he stood. “Yeah. It’s pretty great. I used to hate it when I was younger, though. The water at high tide seemed like it might come in the house.”

  As soon as I said it, I wanted to take it back. I thought of Alex’s house on the train tracks. How the view from his house was a chain-link fence and steel rails.

  But he was looking out at the water, nodding to himself.

  “My father and I used to go fishing before he died. I was young. Six. Seven, maybe. My uncle came with us once, and he wanted to go out deep, so my father motored out until we couldn’t see land.” He rolled his eyes, shook his head. “It was just this crappy dinghy, and t
he water was so black. As far as I could see on every side was just water. And there was this leak in the boat, so my father had to keep bailing to keep us afloat.”

  “What happened?” I asked, and he looked at me, his eyes going down the front of me and quickly back up.

  “Wow,” he said, and coughed, flustered it seemed. “I mean, wow, you’re all showered and everything. Um, what was I saying? Oh, nothing happened. They fished for a while until they realized I was petrified. Then we went in.” He shrugged. “Probably why I got interested in boats, though. Or fixing them, I mean. All those nightmares about that leak.”

  “You don’t talk about your father a lot,” I said.

  “Well, he isn’t alive, so . . .”

  I cut my eyes at him, and he tried to keep a straight face, but it didn’t last long, a smirk pulling at the corners of his mouth.

  “Don’t give me a hard time. You know what I mean.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, thinking, Everything. When I looked at his face, I saw that he was serious. So I said it out loud. “Everything.”

  He tipped his chin to the screen room and grabbed the bag off the table. I followed him to where our couch was covered with a blue tarp. Outside, the rain had stopped, and orange streaks split the sky. Alex pulled the tarp off the couch, and we put the bag on the seat between us. The sandwiches had miraculously stayed dry, and we ate them from paper plates on our laps.

  It turned out Alex telling me everything about his father took less than ten minutes. He’d died when Alex was eight, and his memory of him was vague. He repeated the things his mother had told him—that his father loved black licorice and his job as a school counselor and hated spiders and hiking—but since they were his mother’s memories, they somehow seemed empty to him.

  “So what about you?” he asked when he was done talking.

  I looked at him. “What about me?”

  “You don’t exactly talk about your father either. And he’s alive.”

  A persistent fly buzzed around us, hovering over Alex’s plate, now empty. Alex put our trash in the bag and put it on the floor in front of us. He sat back against the couch, turning so his body was facing me, his arm resting on the back of the couch. I’d put the candle on the stack of boxes in the corner, and the light from it was a soft glow on his face.