The Gilly Salt Sisters

by Tiffany Baker

  It had stung something awful, but Jo hadn’t cared. She’d called Claire a ninny for letting the fish go. She often called Claire names when she did something silly, but Claire knew that her sister was wrong about her, one hundred percent. She wasn’t a ninny, and she wasn’t sensitive. She just knew what to release and what to bother fighting for in life, and she was certain it didn’t involve salt. She lifted her chin. “Jo’s the one who hasn’t changed, if you want to know.”

  Whit put his hands back into his pockets. When he answered, his voice could have chilled winter. “She knows why I’ve kept my distance from her.” This was news to Claire. She had always thought it was the other way around between them. But before she could follow that thread of thought, she saw Ethan stepping through the evening shadows, and her heart set up a clattering so hard she was surprised that Whit couldn’t hear it, too.

  “I have to go,” she said, tearing herself away from the tree trunk and rushing out from under its leafy canopy. She could still feel Whit there, though, lurking under the restless red leaves, his gaze sticking the way a ball of sap would in her hair, snarling so hard the only way to get it out would be with a pair of scissors and a good clean cut. No longer caring if Whit was watching, she ran to Ethan and threw her arms around his broad shoulders, pressing her face close to his chest and breathing him in. He still smelled like the sea, of places Claire would never go and things she would never witness. She pressed her nose against the side of his neck and blew against his skin, hoping to infuse him with homier smells of grass and mud and ripening pears.

  “I missed you so much,” she said as he kissed her and they made their way back under the tree, where she was relieved to see that Whit was gone. She spread her hands flat against the bare skin of Ethan’s back, warm and hard from long days in the sun. She inched her fingers into the waistband of his jeans and felt him hesitate for a split second before he drew her closer.

  Kissing Ethan always felt like a marvelous experiment that Claire was conducting. She unbuttoned his shirt while he slid her T-shirt higher, his other hand busy under her skirt. “Wait,” she breathed, not quite believing that she was the one breaking things off. “We should stop.” But he surprised her. Without a word he laid her down in the hollow amid the shrubbery, and when she struggled to sit up, he pulled her down against him.

  “Are you sure?” she said. It wasn’t the way she had planned this moment—under the pear tree and in the open like this—but it was thrilling, too.

  Ethan grazed his lips across her breasts. “I need you, Claire. I know that now.”

  She ran her fingers through his thick blond hair and wondered what had happened to him out in the Atlantic, but the wind picked up and he moved over her, and then she stopped thinking at all. She leaned back onto the damp grass and the sandy earth, her hand grazing the trunk of the tree, its bark nicked and carved in a riot of communal desire, and, being young and in love, she assumed she had history trumped.

  “I’m getting married,” she whispered to herself when she woke up the next morning. She threw the covers back and walked over to her dresser mirror, wondering if she looked different to anyone else but herself. She put her hands to her cheeks, feeling how hot they were, and tried to quit smiling.

  Ethan hadn’t exactly proposed the night before, but what else could their lovemaking have meant? He always said he didn’t want to go all the way until they were engaged. Actually, when Claire thought about it, he hadn’t said much of anything, but that didn’t bother her. Ethan rarely talked as much as she did. Afterward he had walked her all the way back to the edge of the marsh, his fingers squeezing hers until they passed St. Agnes. He suddenly dropped her hand, but she’d taken it back in her own. She could do that now, she reasoned.

  “I won’t tell Father Flynn if you don’t,” she’d whispered, but he didn’t laugh. He never did when it came to anything religious. Claire couldn’t even tell priest jokes in front of him. She wondered if Ethan’s devotions would loosen in married life or if hers would tighten to match his. They’d rounded the corner, and the marsh had appeared before them, some of the basins shimmering, some just empty holes. In the moonlight the place looked worse than haunted. It just appeared worn out, too plain even for ghosts. Claire had turned to kiss Ethan good night but found he was already beating her to it.

  “Claire, let’s talk tomorrow,” he’d murmured, his thumb tracing the outline of her jaw.

  She’d tried to hide her smile. She wanted a long wedding dress, she knew, but now she supposed it would have to be ivory. “Okay,” she’d said, too happy to add anything else. He’d walked away without kissing her one last time like she wanted, but she forgave him. After all, they were going to have a lifetime of embraces ahead of them.

  She was waiting for him early in the dunes the next afternoon. She bit her lips, trying to force some color into them so they would look rosy when Ethan bent to kiss her. She hoped she would like her ring.

  But something was wrong. Ethan only brushed his lips against her cheek, and he didn’t linger as long as usual. He didn’t lean over and thread his fingers along the base of her skull or pull her in tight to him. In fact, he kissed her more like a brother might a sister. Claire settled down next to him in the sand, confused.

  “Before I say anything, you should know that last night was amazing,” he began. “It was everything I thought it would be. More, even. If I was looking for a sign, Claire, I swear, I would have said that last night was it.”

  She blushed and stared down at her tennis shoes. In the daylight she couldn’t believe some of the places she’d let him put his mouth and where she’d put hers. She reached up now and brushed his hair, wondering when they could be together again. “I love you,” she said.

  He pulled her hand away. “Let me finish. I have something very difficult to tell you.”

  Her heart quit pounding. It quit doing anything at all. It was a frightening sensation, really, like dying on the spot without going anywhere. Above her she watched clouds rearrange themselves.

  Ethan bent forward and leaned his head against his knees. “You know how important church has always been to me, but what you don’t know is that for months now I’ve been debating joining the priesthood. The only thing stopping me was the thought of having to give you up. I even applied to a seminary, but I never heard from them, and then this whole season when I was at sea, all I could think about was you, and I figured it was a sign. Last night I thought I knew exactly what I was going to do: propose today. But after I dropped you off here, I stopped into St. Agnes to see Father Flynn, and he gave me this.”

  He pulled out a folded letter embossed with seals and a crest. Claire took it from him and then realized she was trying to read it upside down. Ethan turned it around for her. It was an acceptance letter from a seminary. Ethan had applied in February, right around Valentine’s Day.

  “I don’t understand,” she mumbled through numb lips, ignoring the print in front of her.

  Ethan sighed. “Claire, being with you was as wonderful as I always thought it would be. It was even close to prayer, but when Father Flynn gave me this letter, I realized that it wasn’t prayer, and I really think I’m called to that path.”

  She buried one hand in the sand. “You think or you know?”

  “I know. Believe me, Claire, this is just as hard for me as it is for you.”

  She choked back a sob. “I doubt it.”

  He hung his head. “If I go, I have to leave next week.” His finger underlined a phrase in the letter. “They’re willing to give me a full scholarship. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  There was nothing to lean on in the dunes. No boulder propped in the sand, no split logs. Just sand and spiky grass. Claire bent over her own legs. “Where?”

  Ethan took a breath. “California.” It was so far that it sounded final. His voice softened. “Be honest. You wouldn’t be happy if I stayed and went out on the boats every year with my uncle and my dad. You’re about as suit
ed to a life of fish, Claire, as you are to one of salt.”

  She squeezed her hands into fists, trying to get her blood to circulate, but it didn’t help. Her fingers were freezing. All this time, she thought, I was never really first with him. That was the thing that hurt the most. She’d spent her whole life trailing in someone else’s muddy footsteps, she realized: her mother’s, her dead brother’s, Jo’s. Not to mention the entire scraggly line of Gilly women before her. Even the poems that Ethan loved so much were just someone else’s words. She stood up and dusted off the seat of her overalls.

  “I have to go.” She wished she could have said it the way she felt it. She wished she could have poisoned the phrase. But it came out as a lament. She wanted to hate Ethan, but she couldn’t, and that made her want to hate him more.

  He folded up the letter, shoved it back into his pocket, and then stood up, too. “I could come back later.”

  “For what?”

  Ethan’s eyes swam. “Come on, Claire. We should talk about this more. Just because I’m choosing this path doesn’t mean we shouldn’t stay friends.”

  She ground her teeth. “That’s exactly what it means, Ethan Stone.” Her blood was flowing high again—a reassuring tide that was spilling up and out of her. “You’ve no idea what you’ve just done.” Tears were already leaking down her cheeks. Before more could fall, she turned and ran.

  By the time she reached the salt barn, every element on earth was clashing inside her—stone and wood, water and ash. And the only one of them she wanted to entertain was fire. She kicked the barn doors open, making dust devils, and entered the dark of the place, rummaging in the broken barrow for a packet of cigarettes she’d hidden.

  Jo’s voice materialized out of the gloom. “Goddamn it, Claire. Where have you been? The ponds need scraping.”

  The first match didn’t take. Her hands were shaking too badly. Same for the second one, but the third one was the charm. Perhaps too much so. The air in front of Claire flared with sulfur and nicotine, and then there was another flash, a bigger one down where she’d thrown the charred match. The dust in the barn began dancing.

  “What is that?” she tried to say, wondering if her grief was making her see things, and then realized it was smoke. She turned and saw a rush of flames clawing across the floor, blocking the door, trapping her in the back corner of the barn. She tried to breathe, but her lungs felt like they were on fire, too. Suddenly she focused. She still had the lit cigarette in her hand. Stupidly, she threw it down, and it started a new line of tiny flames.

  She tried to call to Jo, but her lungs were closing up and she couldn’t get the sound out. Then she thought she heard Jo yelling something. What was it? Her vision started blurring. It probably included the words “I told you so,” Claire thought. It would be just like Jo, who spent her days patrolling the squared-off hollows of Salt Creek Farm, to want to maintain boundaries at a time like this. Claire’s knees started to buckle. Clearly, Jo’s rules were a line Claire was never going to toe, just as she was never going to do a lot of things—leave this stupid marsh, marry Ethan, make her way out of this burning barn.

  “Claire!” She heard her name again just as the first flames roared back toward her. Her legs gave out entirely, but for the first time in her life she found that she wasn’t stuck in Jo’s footsteps. Instead she was cradled in her sister’s arms, and then she was pitched through the air, free.

  “Jo…” she tried to choke out, but there was a huge crash, a fountain of spitting embers, and she ran out of oxygen. In the distance she heard a siren, and then she turned her head as the barn came down, throwing her hands up over her eyes, unwilling to watch any more of what her broken heart had wrought.

  Chapter Nine

  At first Jo thought Claire might have been trying to kill her when she set the barn on fire, but later, after she found out that Ethan had run off to join the damn priesthood, she decided that maybe Claire had simply been trying to kill herself and Jo had just gotten in her way. That would be more typical of Claire, Jo thought, who tended to conduct her affairs like a mad dog on the hunt. She went where instinct told her and never stopped to consider the poor creatures she might flush out into the open.

  Claire had been a pain in the ass all that summer, mooning over Ethan and not doing much else. Mama hadn’t been well, and even more of the burden of the marsh was teetering on Jo’s shoulders, which were sturdy enough, but even she had her limits.

  The fire Claire had started that day did more than tear Jo’s body in half. It split her memory, too, for whenever she tried to compose a whole picture from that evening, all she ever wound up with were a handful of molten fragments, and she couldn’t ever do much with those except scoop them together and return them to the flames. The thing she most recalled was how fast Claire had disappeared behind the shifting blaze. One minute Jo was telling her not to light her stupid cigarette, and the next Claire was just the outline of a girl consumed by sparks and a wall of smoke. It was like a magician’s trick gone wrong, and Jo’s only thought had been that if she didn’t get Claire out of that barn, she would disappear for good, and Jo had had enough of people disappearing out of her life.

  Jo ended up burned on almost 40 percent of her body, all of it on her right side. For weeks she lay cocooned in the special burn unit in Boston, moist bandages covering her seared skin and eyes, drifting in and out of consciousness. Even though she couldn’t remember actually saving Claire, she had an impression of her sister’s bird-thin wrist gripped in her palm and of the weight of Claire’s bones. But the details—whether she’d carried or dragged Claire, whether they’d escaped out a window or the flaming doors—were fuzzy. According to Mama, Jo had thrown Claire from the barn doorway and then gotten trapped when the beams came down, but the person she wanted to ask about that was Claire herself. Whenever she fought her way up through the haze of drugs and pain, however, Claire was never there. And then one afternoon she suddenly was, her voice trilling and rising like a bird in pain.

  “No,” she was pleading. “Please don’t make me. I know what she did for me, but Jo’s so strong, and I’m not like her. Please.”

  “But your sister’s already endured so much trauma,” another voice responded, a female’s, lower in register, weary with a hint of impatience laced behind it. It was Dr. Meyer, the only female doctor Jo had ever known. “It’s still an experimental procedure, but we’ve had wonderful success with the ones we’ve performed. We would take the skin from your buttock area,” she was explaining, “and graft it onto your sister. Normally we like to use skin from the patient herself, but in this case we think you’d be the best match to prevent donor rejection.”

  No one spoke. To Jo it felt as if the sanitized hospital air had turned back into a cloud of oily smoke. How bad is it? she wondered. She hadn’t yet been able to open her eyes or see herself, but everything about her hurt.

  Dr. Meyer spoke again. “You don’t have to decide today, but we need to know soon. This could make an enormous difference to your sister.”

  There was another silence in the room, but this one was a thick sort of silence, like a pillow being pressed over a sleeping person’s face. Then Jo heard her mother pull the doctor to the far corner of the room and start whispering. Lying blinded for so many days had made Jo weirdly attuned to the quietest of noises. Through the fog of drugs, she tried to pick out her mother’s hushed speech. Nor’easter. Two, not one. Our Lady. She quit listening. It was a story she already knew.

  “I see,” Jo heard the doctor say. Now Dr. Meyer knew it, too. Jo rolled her swollen tongue in her mouth and tried to squeeze the walls of her throat together to make a sound, but she only managed to moan.

  “Joanna?” Dr. Meyer’s clothing rustled as she approached and bent over the bed, checking equipment, flipping open her chart. Jo moaned again and tried to move her head, but the bees in her brain escaped to her skin, stinging with such venom that she gasped.

  “Lie still,” the doctor commanded, and sh
e rang for a nurse.

  Jo heard Claire step to the other side of her, the long red ends of her hair brushing the sheets. Even without sight Jo could picture Claire’s face, as milky and smooth as a piece of sea glass. The fire had not touched even an inch of her, Jo was guessing. She’d made sure of that. But, of course, Claire was nursing her own wounds.

  “She hasn’t spoken to Ethan once,” Mama had told Jo in one of the long hours she’d spent sitting vigil by Jo’s bedside. “She won’t see him, and he’s due to leave in just a few days. She won’t hardly speak to no one.”

  Claire was talking now, though. “I called Whit for you,” she breathed in Jo’s ear, her breath even then tinged with a trace of tobacco. “I thought you’d want me to. He says—” She hesitated, and in her voice Jo detected a small channel of envy she’d never noticed before. “He says he sends his best regards. He asked me to give them to you for him. So here.” Claire leaned down closer, careful not to touch any part of Jo except her left side, and pecked her with cherry-scented lips. Jo wondered if Claire was being cautious or calculating, for she had picked her good side, the part of her that could still get hurt. She listened to Claire’s light footsteps retreat down the hall like rain slipping off a roof, and in spite of herself she began to ponder all the things Claire hadn’t said. Forgive me, for instance, or Thank you, or I love you. Her steps disappeared, and Jo lay there trapped in a charred cocoon of skin, wondering what to call someone who was kin, yes, but also the better half of her flesh, the ambulatory part, walking all the paths Jo now knew she was never going to get to.