Claire’s heart knotted. If there was anything she hated more than church, it was casting the salt on the town bonfire. It wasn’t just the mean looks the townspeople gave her or the empty circle of frosted grass they left as she inched toward the flames, and neither was it the fact that she couldn’t stay and celebrate—it was more basic than that. Claire simply hated holding all those people’s fates in her hands. It should have made her feel powerful, she knew, like she could see something special about the world that no one else could, but it didn’t. Instead, ever since the first time she’d sprinkled the fire and watched it spit out that horrifying plume of black smoke, all she felt was guilt. Even at age six, Claire could have told everyone standing around in the smoke that night that black futures were all they were ever going to get with her, but they wouldn’t have believed her, she knew. Not until she grew up and made them.
She held her palm down over the votive, gathering the warmth of the flame to her skin, and looked at her sister. Nothing bad ever happened when Jo threw the salt, but it didn’t make anyone in town like her any better than they did Claire. A Gilly was a Gilly as far as Prospect was concerned. Claire sighed. “Why do we have to throw salt to the fire anyway?” she asked for the hundredth time.
Jo bit her lip and shrugged. “It’s just what we’ve always done.”
“Well, what if we didn’t?”
Jo looked astonished. “What do you mean?”
“What if we didn’t cast the salt for the town? What if there was no bonfire?”
Jo pushed herself up onto her feet. “I don’t think that would be a good idea at all, Claire.” And without saying anything more, she turned her back and ended the conversation. Claire flushed with impatience and leaned over to blow out her votive. The fire leaped and licked at her hair, but Jo leaned down and blew out the candle in the nick of time.
“Don’t you dare tell Mama what you just said,” she snapped. “And just for that”—she nodded at the extinguished votive—“you can take my shift scraping the ponds when we get back.”
For no other reason than to tempt fate, Claire started smoking. She picked it up from hanging around beach parties with the wealthy kids out on the Cape for the summer. They smoked only the harshest, most spartan cigarettes: unfiltered French brands, or ones mixed with cloves. Claire’s asthmatic lungs belched and complained with every puff she took, but she loved cradling the delicate stick in between her fingers, listening to it crackle, and then grinding it out with the ball of her foot. And yes, she was always burning herself, trying to explain away the perfectly round holes in her clothes and the scar on her wrist where she’d bumped it with a live butt.
When tenth grade started, she refused to sit with the dirt-patch kids anymore, the ones who lived all the way across town, whose fathers worked as dishwashers in the tourist clam shacks, who hired themselves out on fishing trawlers or ran salvage yards. She learned to bring her hemlines up or let them down to the fashionable length, and she made sure that her hair was trimmed neatly, even if it was still bound in a braid, and that she picked exactly the right color binder out at Swenson’s five-and-dime.
She tried out for the cheerleading squad and made it. She joined the homecoming committee and the yearbook staff and started eating lunch with Katy Diamond, Cecilia West, and Abigail Van Huben: the triumvirate of Prospect High. Because she was happy for the first time, her grades improved.
“You’re going to be a college girl,” Mama would whisper to her at night, smoothing Claire’s hair with her rough fingers. “It’s all taken care of. I borrowed the money just for you.”
Jo had dropped out of school after her junior year, but it wasn’t any secret that she was better with her hands than she was with books. Claire began to notice how one day slid into another with her mother and sister.
“I’ve just done the east ponds,” Jo would inform Mama, coming in from the marsh.
“But the west ones will be needing a skim now,” Mama would reply.
“One week is about the same as any other out here.” Jo sniffed when Claire complained about this repetition. “The roof is leaking, there’s snails in the garden, and we have mud up to our earlobes. It doesn’t matter if I’m talking about today, tomorrow, or three days past.”
“I guess you’re right,” Claire said, knotting the neck of another burlap sack of gray salt. “Time’s not going anywhere fast out here.”
But she was wrong. That year the shift from summer to fall would bring her something new, and when it did, the frame of her life would never be quite the same again.
Before he became a priest, Ethan Stone was just a regular boy who lived at the edge of Prospect in a gray saltbox near the wharf, where his father and uncle kept a pair of diesel trawlers. It was ironic for men of the sea to be named Stone, but the name suited the Stone men, who were flinty, wordless, and rougher than granite. Every day for nine months of the year, no matter the weather, they set out on their boats and brought back what the Atlantic saw fit to throw at them. Mackerel. Scrod. The odd pilfered lobster or two. Cod in the autumn. The other three months of the year, when the waters heaved and roiled their discontent and the decks on his vessel froze, Chet occupied himself with the curious occupation of knitting, while Ethan’s father, Merrett, slouched on a barstool in a tavern so seedy it had no name.
It must have been torture for a man like Merrett to have a child like Ethan, for if Merrett was an iceberg set adrift on the sea, then his son was more like the foam gathering on the crest of the waves. As a youth Ethan liked fishing well enough, but he also enjoyed watching his uncle knit. Worse, he liked poetry and the harmonic structures of classical music, and he absolutely loved nothing better than to serve as Father Flynn’s altar boy. When Father Flynn discovered that Ethan could sing, he started having him perform the psalms, his airy voice purer than any girl’s. Ethan’s sickly mother, Ellen, would sit entranced, hands clasped beneath her chin, her lips quivering, while Merrett scowled.
“That boy has a voice like God’s own lark,” Claire’s mother would say with a sigh, which produced in Claire a powerful urge to want to march straight up to Ethan Stone and shove her fist down his throat.
The summer they were fifteen, Ethan started skipping church and working on his father’s boat, and St. Agnes rang empty without the dips and lilts of his voice. Even though it had changed over time, the timbre of it hadn’t grown any less sweet, just richer, like a dessert that intensified in the oven. If Claire fidgeted and niggled her way through Mass and the other town boys sat sulking with their hands shoved in their pockets, Ethan had always been calm. He’d moved so smoothly as he lit the altar candles that the flames didn’t even sputter, and Claire had always wondered how he did that, given her own calamitous relationship with church votives.
It took Ethan’s absence to make her pay attention to him, and when she finally did, she wasn’t the only one. Ethan reappeared in church after the fishing season ended on the first really cold day of autumn 1965, and every female in the congregation immediately sat up and noticed that the young man with the angel’s voice had turned over a new leaf.
He’d grown as tall as Merrett, for starters, just as broad in the shoulders and neck. But whereas Merrett moved with steel-toed determination, knuckles held hard at his sides, Ethan walked with the courteous grace of a gentleman. His eyes were the color of the deep part of the Atlantic, where the biggest schools of fish ran, and his hair had gone straw blond from being out in the weather.
“That boy went and stole the looks off a Greek god,” Claire heard Mrs. Butler whisper too loud to her friend, and even Jo smiled at that.
All through Mass, Claire couldn’t take her eyes off Ethan. When she stepped up to receive Communion, she was careful to smooth her skirt tight over her hips. She peeked over her shoulder at Ethan while she waited in line, but he was standing with his eyes fixed on the altar up front, oblivious to anything around him. Claire pouted and turned back around. Clearly, she would have to work on his priorities.<
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After services, while the adults drank coffee and mingled in the sanctuary, Claire bolted to the far side of the rectory so she could sneak a smoke. She thought she was out of the wind, but the first match didn’t take, the second one blew out as soon as it caught, and the third one scorched her thumb.
“Damn it!” she cried, puffing and waving her hand in the icy breeze.
“Let me,” a melodic voice said. She looked up just as Ethan Stone took the still-unlit cigarette from her lips, put it between his own, and scratched a new match off the book. He drew in a deep drag, telling Claire this wasn’t his first, and handed the cigarette back to her. “These things will kill you,” he said, eyes twinkling. “You should think about quitting.”
“Uh… hey,” she said, tongue-tied. “I haven’t seen you at school.” It was true, but only now did she care. The old Ethan was the kind of boy who could have eaten lunch hip to hip with her, stealing food from her bag, and she wouldn’t have remembered him two seconds later, but this new Ethan was someone Claire couldn’t forget if she tried. Ethan took the cigarette away from her again, and she watched his lips curl around the end. He blew out a steady plume.
“I’ve been working with my dad. But the season is wrapping up, and so I’m starting school again a little late.” He frowned. “He didn’t want me to go back to high school at all, but I want to finish, even if I am going to spend my life on the sea.”
Claire inched a little closer and surprised herself by saying something true. “I guess it’s good you like what your family does. I don’t think I belong in salt at all, even though my mother and sister practically pray to it.”
Ethan smiled and passed the half-smoked cigarette back to her. “So where do you belong, then?”
She thought about it. “Maybe on an island. Someplace really shaded and wet, where I couldn’t make salt if I tried.”
Ethan’s face grew pensive. “I bet they’d still have fish there.”
Claire nodded. “Probably.” They both startled as people began shuffling out of the church. Ethan smiled at her, and she noticed again how much she liked his eyes.
“I’ll see you around, Claire Gilly.” She watched him go, shaky in the backs of her knees.
“Claire! Claire, where are you?” she heard her mother calling, and she tried to answer, but it was as if she were shouting down the tunnel of her own past from a great distance.
“Coming!” she finally cried, stubbing out the cigarette. “I’ll be right there.” She turned the corner of the building, wondering how quickly she could trade an existence of never-ending salt for a life of endless fish.
Claire kept seeing Ethan at church and passing him in the halls at school, and he was always friendly, sometimes carrying her books for her, sometimes swapping half his sandwich for half of hers, but he didn’t ask her out, and the longer the time stretched, the crabbier she grew.
What made it worse was that she wasn’t the only girl who’d noticed that Ethan had undergone a transformation at sea. Cecilia West practically threw herself under his feet every time he stepped past her locker, and Abigail Van Huben wouldn’t shut up about his eyes at lunch.
“I’ve just got to get him to kiss me at the December’s Eve bonfire,” she declared halfway through November. She kicked Claire in the ankle. “Oh, look, here he comes!”
Claire scowled and balled up her paper lunch sack, wishing she could sneak out of school for a smoke. Not only would it make her wheeze badly enough to get her excused from gym class, but it also helped her plot. More than anything, she knew, she didn’t want Ethan going to the bonfire with Abigail. “He won’t be there,” she said before she even thought about it.
Abigail twisted up her face. “Why not?”
“Because he’s spending the evening with me.” As soon as she said it, she knew it was true. Ethan wouldn’t want the hurly-burly of screaming girls, sparks, and boys trying to hide as many beers as they could under their coats. He was a boy who combed the town library’s shelves for Wordsworth poems and Shakespeare plays about kings. Inside, he was the same as her, Claire was sure. He longed for the isolated calm of a rocky island, too.
Abigail’s mouth fell open. “But what would he be doing with you? You can’t even hang out at the fire. You’re a Gilly.”
Claire stood up and smiled. “Exactly.” And then, before Abigail could stop her, or she could stop herself, she walked up to Ethan, wrapped her arms around him, and in full view of everyone gave him her very first kiss. Ethan’s lips were cool against hers, but that was okay, she told herself. She had heat enough for both of them. She didn’t need a bonfire to light any sparks in Ethan Stone’s heart.
On December’s Eve, Claire’s stomach was in knots as she made her way to the bonfire behind her mother and Jo. Would Ethan be waiting for her by the pear tree as he promised? she wondered. Her throat tightened with anticipation as she stepped onto the edge of Tappert’s Green.
Just then a familiar voice rang out of the darkness. “Why, you’ve gone and changed, young Claire.” Claire stopped and spun around. It was Whit Turner, recently back in town after graduating from Harvard. In the past eight years, Claire had barely seen him. First he’d gone off to boarding school when he was thirteen, and then his mother had died quite suddenly, Claire remembered. Whit had taken it hard. He’d stopped visiting Salt Creek Farm—and Jo—after that. For the past few years, his shadow had barely darkened Prospect. Claire had heard stories about his glamorous life around town. He was spending Christmas skiing with friends. He was in some secret club at Harvard. He even celebrated one Easter as a guest at a friend’s ancestral pile in Scotland, where the golfing was out of this world.
But those days were done. He was home now to take over the family business. Hamish had grown doddering lately, and the Cape climate no longer suited him. He’d been spending winters in Palm Beach with his long-standing mistress, and now that Whit was home, the town freely speculated, there was no reason Hamish might not want to spend the rest of his time there, too.
Up close Whit was even handsomer than Claire remembered, his dark eyes twinkling with his old boyish charm, his mouth ready to twist into a grin at a moment’s notice, pulling her into laughter with him. He was wearing a cashmere overcoat and soft, expensive shoes. His hair was neatly trimmed, and it cupped his skull in silky curls. He was very clearly a person who had everything he wanted, Claire thought with some envy. He had education. He had money. He had much of the land any of them in town could see—and probably even more that they couldn’t. What he didn’t have was a wife. There was a time in her early childhood when Claire might have put money on Jo’s stepping into that role, but after the summer that Ida died, nothing between Whit and Jo was ever the same. Whit had absented himself from their lives, and Jo would never speak about it.
Whit took in the new womanly outline of Claire now. “You’ve changed,” he said again, dragging his eyes back up to her head. “But your hair hasn’t.” Claire patted the nest of pins and curls her mother had made along her neckline, pleased with his assessment of her. He took a step closer. “You look like a dangerous woman now,” he whispered, and she blushed.
Jo glanced over her shoulder to see what was holding Claire up, and when she saw it was Whit, she stopped dead in her tracks and folded her arms. Claire sighed. “I have to go,” she finally said, her mind already wandering off to the impending bonfire and the rustle of the pear tree’s leaves. “Great to see you,” she called into the darkness, trying to ignore the press of Whit’s gaze along her backside. It was nice to have her own opinion of her looks confirmed, but she would much rather it be done by Ethan.
“What ails you?” Jo asked as Claire drew even with her and she gave Claire’s elbow a pinch through her bulky coat. She lowered her voice so their mother couldn’t hear. “What did he want anyway?”
“Nothing,” Claire answered. “He just said hi.”
Jo scowled. “Well, stay away from him. Just because he’s come home to take charge of his f
amily’s real estate, that doesn’t mean I’m suddenly going to melt at his feet. And you shouldn’t either.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” Claire said, but Jo didn’t hear her. She’d charged ahead to the fire, which had just been lit and was sparking to life. Claire hurried along with her bag of salt. Maybe Jo was right, she reflected. The Turners were robber barons. Everyone knew that. And maybe Whit was the worst of them, for he hid that greed under dimples and winks, like one of those old-time villains from a black-and-white movie, dashing in a cape and a thin mustache but full of dastardly plans. Claire straightened her shoulders and followed Jo toward the crackling fire without a word. Anyway, what did she care about the silly Turners? She had bigger plans for the evening—for her whole life, as a matter of fact. For the first and only time, she couldn’t wait to step forward and throw the salt.
That spring Claire dug and shoveled the drainage ditches in the marsh and didn’t even complain when her hands blistered so badly they started bleeding. Ethan would kiss them better when she saw him, and then she would take over from there. Love, she was discovering, could make even the salt sweet.
Ethan would go only so far with her, though. She’d worm her hands under his shirt, and he’d allow that. She’d lick the side of his neck, and he’d let her do that, too. But when she started tugging at his belt, he would grab her wrists. “If you don’t stop,” he’d say, lowering his arms, “I won’t be able to either, and that’s not what I want for us.”
“What do you want?” she finally asked him, smiling. It was the end of March. They’d been a couple for four months, but Claire felt like a whole new girl. The first thing Ethan had gotten her to do was quit smoking.
The Gilly Salt Sisters Page 12
