At first the hospital staff seemed concerned about Jo’s mental faculties. They kept asking her if she knew what year it was and who the president was, which she did. “Lyndon B. Johnson,” she croaked, wanting to add that he had a face like a dried-apple doll and a personality to match, but lacking the energy to do so. Her vocal cords hurt just from breathing.
Above all, the doctors and nurses liked to warn her about her future. “Your life won’t be like it was before,” Dr. Meyer told her in her deadpan fashion, flipping through charts and scribbling notes all at once. “Not right away. But after some time, you will begin to feel like your old self inside.”
“New skin for a new soul,” Bea, her favorite nurse, clucked. “Now’s your chance to become whoever you wanted, honey. Just go for it.”
“Take it day by day.” That was Raymond, the night orderly. “Real slow. It’s better that way.” Jo thought maybe that’s why he’d chosen to work nights, because he liked to stay in the dark.
Three months later, when the nurses finally peeled back her bandages and masks and she got her hands on a mirror, Jo figured out why she’d become a lightning rod for other people’s concern. Her face had melted into a contradiction in flesh, tattered and seared on the right side and perfectly preserved on the left, as if her whole self had been forever stopped in one burning moment. People never knew which side to look at when they were talking to her, she discovered, and she couldn’t help them out any, for she didn’t know herself yet which half she desired to inflict on the world.
She was fitted with a new glass eye that she could pop out of her socket and roll in the palm of her hand like an egg if she wanted. “You’ll have to develop strategies to compensate for the loss of vision,” Dr. Wynn, her portly ophthalmologist, chirped in the British accent that Jo sometimes found annoying and sometimes soothing. “Driving will be challenging. You will need to exercise caution when it comes to stairs and uneven terrain, but on the whole you’ll make out fine, I should think. What do you do for a profession?”
Jo settled her forehead into the metal band of the complicated machine in front of her, resting her chin on the foam pad. She fought off the image of cows lining up in an abattoir. “Salt,” she murmured, running her tongue over her teeth, missing the crunch of gray salt between them. The hospital food was so bland. “My family scrapes salt and sells it.” Dr. Wynn adjusted a dial, and a miniature sun seemed to ignite in Jo’s remaining eye. She struggled not to blink.
“Do you really? Now, that’s absolutely fascinating. Have you ever baked a salt-crusted fish?” When Jo didn’t answer, he continued on, adjusting knobs and dials on his side of the examining contraption. “You take a whole fish,” he chortled, “bury it under a mound of salt mixed with egg whites, and then pop it in the oven for a few hours.” He switched off the light shining in her eye. “Sounds dreadful, but it’s absolutely scrumptious. Try it.”
She blinked, still shocked by the way her eyelid curved over the glass like a tongue skimming a tooth. It was the only smooth thing on that side of her body. Jo felt her real eye grow heavy and wondered if she would only cry half as much now, or if her body would just send all its grief scooting over to her remaining eye. It didn’t seem like a fair arrangement to have twice as much sorrow jamming up a single outlet, but Jo wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that that was how things were going to work from now on.
“Here.” Dr. Wynn spun around on his metal stool and handed her a prescription for eyedrops. He wasn’t nearly as old as his speech made him sound, Jo realized. From certain angles he was almost even handsome, if also balding and a little paunchy. But he made up for it with his kind gaze.
“How’s your family handling all this?” he asked, and Jo didn’t answer. Mama had been a rock, but Claire had only come to see Jo three times—once when she’d refused to donate the skin graft, once when Jo had the first surgery on her face, and once when Jo had a fever so high that devils could have danced on the ceiling and she would have called them blessed.
“Claire doesn’t like the hospital,” Mama had tried to explain. “You know that. She’s still so young. And you know how teenagers are—wrapped up in their own lives.”
No, Jo had wanted to snap. I have no idea how teenagers are. I never got to be one.
Dr. Wynn’s voice broke into her thoughts. “You’ll need to use these for the first few weeks until everything is fully healed. The dosage is written at the top.” His plump forefinger underlined a row of chicken scratch on the page, which Jo pretended to decipher.
She reached out and accepted the paper. “Thank you.”
It was time for her to stand up, which still occurred in stages: first the dulled soles of her feet applied to the ground, then a rickety heaving of knees, hip bones, shoulders, and finally her head. None of her seemed to go together the same way it used to.
Dr. Wynn cleared his throat. “Take care of that eye, then,” he said, and Jo wondered if he meant her real eye or the fake one. “Call if there are any problems, and remember that a blind leap of faith is more than just an expression.”
He closed his office door, leaving her to shuffle and grope her way to the orderly, pondering whether it still counted as a leap if her feet never left the ground.
The next morning Mama drove her home, stopping as they neared the long, sandy lane to wind down the car windows. It was the tail end of the cold season, and the frosted air stirred up the ends of what was left of Jo’s cropped hair. She had missed the fall and most of the winter. Two seasons gone.
“That’s better,” Mama said. She’d grown so thin over the past few months, Jo noted. The worry over Jo’s health and the crushing burden of the medical bills was taking its toll, but Mama still sat straight as a sergeant, her hands at two and ten o’clock on the wheel. “Good salt air,” she said. “Makes a solid change from that hospital. A solid change.”
Even with a single eye, Jo could see that nothing on Salt Creek Farm was any different—only the season. Then they rounded the last corner and she spied the black scar where the barn had stood. It had been skeletal before the accident, but now there was only a suggestion of a structure. One charred beam remained, stuck up into the sky like a bony middle finger. “What about the salt?” she asked.
Mama set her lips and pushed her foot down a little on the gas. “Gone good. But there’s more where it came from.”
Jo couldn’t argue as she touched the new geography of her face. The nerves that hadn’t died were in full revolt. They screamed at the contact with her fingers, but she clenched her teeth and took deep, even breaths. Mama was trying so hard, she knew, and she didn’t want to ruin this moment for anything, but she couldn’t help asking the one question that was sure to make the pain worse. “Where’s Claire?” she asked.
Mama’s voice gave nothing away. “Claire’s at a stenographers’ course in Hyannis. She’ll be home later.”
Jo turned her face back to the landscape she knew so well. Here she was, finally home, and her sister was still looking for ways to leave. Nothing had changed after all.
As usual, Jo heard Claire coming before she saw her. Claire had a tendency to bang into the house like a burst of chilly wind, all fury and impatience. Jo heard her dump her books onto the old piano in the hall, one of the volumes knocking against the warped keys, and listened to the thunk of her shoes hitting the bare floor as Claire kicked them off. Jo peeked around the corner of the kitchen door with her good eye and watched as Claire paused to scrape her hair back into a messy ponytail. With her feet planted and her arms upraised like that, she looked like a half-assembled scarecrow. She glanced up, spotted Jo, and froze. Jo’s instinct was to duck behind the door again, but she fought the urge and emerged into the hallway, still dragging her right leg a little, watching as Claire took her first real look at her since the hospital.
Jo still had bandages covering much of her torso, but the loose clothing her mother had fished out of her closet disguised those. Her hair was growing back in, but n
ot well. She had only a few tufts on the right side of her scalp, wispy and undecided as baby hair. The doctors said that would fill in and expand over time, but for now Jo knew that it looked problematic. And of course there was the flat glare of her new glass eye.
Claire let out a squeak and stumbled back against the door. “I didn’t know you’d be here already,” she said with one hand on her chest. “I thought you and Mama were due home tomorrow.”
Jo shrugged. “They let me go a day early.”
Claire took a faltering breath. “That’s good, right?”
“Does it look that way to you?”
“No, I guess not.” Claire bowed her head and tapped her fingers against the door. Jo could tell how much she wanted to fling it open and run through it.
Just to make her miserable, Jo stepped closer to her. “You never came to visit.”
Claire blinked. “That’s not true. I did.”
“Not often.”
Claire looked down at her fingers, white and delicate as lily petals. Even before the fire, Jo’s hands had never looked like that. “I’ve been taking a course,” she said, half sheepish, half proud. Jo felt a twinge of her own guilt. Any chance that Claire would have to attend college had gone up in smoke with the barn. Burn therapy didn’t come cheap.
She lifted her gaze from Claire’s alabaster hands. “Mama told me. Stenography, right?”
Claire nodded, and it was then that Jo saw the semicircles of grief ringed underneath her sister’s eyes. Her skin looked pale, her cheekbones had grown sharper, and for the first time since high school she hadn’t bothered with her clothes. She was wearing a moth-eaten sweater that used to be Jo’s, jeans with the bottoms rolled, and no makeup. She put her hands over her face, and Jo knew she was going to try to apologize. “Oh, my God, Jo, I’m so sorry,” she said. “You always told me not to smoke in the barn, and I didn’t listen. I’m so stupid.”
Jo was willing to grant her that. Claire looked up, her face tear-streaked and miserable. “Will you ever be able to forgive me?”
Jo hesitated. She knew what the right answer should be, and she thought she was prepared to give it, but her heart couldn’t force her mouth to utter the words. Not charred the way it was. Not just then. “I don’t know,” she admitted, and immediately regretted it.
Claire nodded slowly and folded her arms back around herself. “Okay,” she whispered. She turned on her heel and crept upstairs without saying one word more while Jo stood alone in the hall, her new eye hanging heavy in its socket, a bunch of unused words taking up all the extra space in her mouth, squashing her tongue to a loose pulp.
The next morning Mama suggested that the two of them take a walk out to St. Agnes. “You need the exercise after being cooped up so long,” she said to Jo. “And it will be good for you to see a familiar face.” Jo scowled, not sure she wanted to see anyone outside the family yet, but resisting Mama was about as useless as swimming against a tide.
For Jo, unaccustomed to the exercise, the stroll was a painful stretch of skin and will, but complaining wouldn’t have done any good. Mama just would have shushed her. The only other creatures out that morning were the gulls, and they cared only about the worries of their own kind.
Jo was relieved when they arrived at St. Agnes. She took a deep breath of the familiar air, rich with beeswax and lemon polish, and knelt next to her mother at Our Lady’s feet, but her mind wouldn’t quiet. What was there left to pray for? she wondered. The only real thing she longed for was to swing back time, but not even the Virgin could grant her that.
She lit a candle for Henry, and then Father Flynn entered the sanctuary. Mama dug in her handbag and drew out a small bag of salt.
“Give this to the father,” she said, handing it to Jo, who took it with a scowl. She knew what her mother was doing. Right from day one in the hospital, Mama had always told Jo she wouldn’t let her hide behind her scars, and now she was making good on her word. “Go on,” she said, giving Jo a nudge. “You’re still going to have to look folks straight in the eye. Now’s your first chance.”
Father Flynn took the bag of salt from her carefully and then ran his hands lightly in front of her face, as if he wanted to touch her but thought better of it. “God acts with peculiar reason, child,” he finally said. “His methods are not always known to us—” He paused. Jo studied his face, which was turned toward the portrait of Our Lady. “I won’t say it’s for the best,” he said at last, flicking his eyes back to her. “I certainly won’t ever say that. But you may, over the course of your life, come to see this pain as a blessing in disguise.”
Jo had her doubts about the truth of that, but instead of offending Father Flynn with her bad attitude, she regarded the Virgin. “I guess I’m just like her now,” she said. “A lady that’s gone and lost her looks.”
Father Flynn hesitated again. He had never been fond of the painting, Jo knew, so his reply surprised her. “Why, there’s a little of the Virgin in every woman, child. Your own mother knows that better than most.”
Jo glanced toward Mama, who was still kneeling in front of the candles, hands clasped, lips fluttering in silent prayer. “Don’t go bringing up tales you’re not prepared to tell, Father,” Jo snapped, and the old priest paled.
“Jo, what do you mean?” The hurt in his eyes made him look like a boy who’d just lost his favorite ball.
“Magna est veritas, et praevalibet,” Jo said, steadily regarding him with her one good eye. “What does that mean?”
Father Flynn stammered. “Why, it’s from the Vulgate, the old Latin version of the Bible. It means ‘Truth is great and it will prevail.’ What a curious thing to ask. Why do you bring it up, child?”
Jo shrugged. It was a line she remembered from Ida’s letter. She wanted to see Father Flynn’s reaction when she uttered it. She had never been so vile to Father Flynn before—she realized that—but she was a new person, was she not? Now she had layers to herself that even she couldn’t identify. For the first time in her life, she could see why people were tempted by cruelty. There was an electrifying fizz to it.
“No reason,” she said, and then turned her back on Father Flynn and marched out of St. Agnes, leaving her mother behind. Right before the doors slammed, however, she observed something curious. In spite of his total aversion to Our Lady and the adoration around her, Jo could have sworn she saw Father Flynn place the bag of salt her mother had brought at the Virgin’s pockmarked feet and bow his head in prayer or sorrow—Jo couldn’t tell which and wasn’t sure she cared, for one was much like the other, she was starting to believe, and she wanted nothing to do with either.
Salt was not a substance forgiving of absence, and while the hospital in Boston had advocated its particular methods of healing, Jo created her own rules of recuperation once she got home. She took her time and went slowly, choosing to return herself to the salt by degrees: first by sight, then by taste, then, hardest of all, by touch.
She soaked strips of rags in a solution of lavender oil and chamomile and layered them across the bubbled patches of her skin. At first the contact stung, but gradually her nerves learned to tolerate the antiseptic blast. Next she poured a stream of salt under the tap in the bath, watching as the last dead pieces of tissue detached themselves from her wounds and floated away. Finally she made a paste of salt and water and applied it straight to her skin, letting the brine chap her scars into armor.
She and Claire worked out a system of avoiding each other, except for necessary interaction at mealtimes or the awkward seconds when they stepped around each other in the hall, both of them wanting to use the bathroom first. Ever since Jo’s return, Claire had stayed more or less silent—hunkered over her stenography books by the hour, her hair bound so tight it tipped up the corners of her eyes, or disappearing for mysterious stretches of time. Once Jo caught her sneaking in at midnight, and when she saw Jo, Claire jumped and put her hand on her neck, the way she used to when she was hiding love bites from Ethan. Her old girlfriend
s from high school—the cheerleaders and yearbook girls—were always ringing up, but Claire never returned their calls, opting to let her friends slip away until the phone sat silent. And she flat out refused to go to church.
“If God gets to have Ethan,” she spit when Mama suggested she get her tail into Mass, “then Satan can have me.”
Mama slapped her for that, right across her mouth, but Claire just wiped the back of her hand across her lips and set them into a hard little smirk. That Sunday she didn’t come downstairs until noon, two hours after Mass was done. Father Flynn didn’t bother to ask where she was that day, and Mama didn’t offer an explanation.
But Claire’s disobedience didn’t stop with Mass. Just as she was quitting the Lord, it seemed, she was also refusing anything to do with the salt. She wouldn’t put it on her food, she declined to scoop the winter store of it into bags, she turned up her nose at the idea of helping Jo repair the sluices, and she plain balked at going anywhere near the ruin of the barn.
In contrast, Jo spent hours back on the land, relishing the humid odors and the riot of insects coming out after a long winter. One evening she came upon Whit lingering at the edge of the marsh. Behind him the outline of the barn was taking shape, its unpainted boards and planks so fresh they still leaked little pinpoints of sap. The ponds were newly flooded, and so far all the omens were fine for that year. The seawater was frothing at the right temperature. The clouds were lining themselves up in even bolls, and Henry’s pond was deepening into pink.
Whit looked up when he heard her approach, and if he was shocked by the ruin of Jo’s face, he didn’t show it. Instead he was all business. “Looks like you’re busy,” he said, sweeping an arm out at the half-built barn.
Jo dug a toe into the mud. “I wouldn’t say that. Salt’s still forming. We just don’t have a place to put it.”
Whit reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a checkbook. “I could change that. I could make you an offer right now. You and your family let me own the marsh, and I’ll let you stay. You could pay for that new barn in the blink of an eye and maybe even cover your medical bills.” His eyes roved over her scars, calculating.
The Gilly Salt Sisters Page 16
