The Sweetness of Salt

by Cecilia Galante

  I squirmed uncomfortably and picked at the Band-Aid on my hand. “I don’t know yet.” I glanced over at Sophie, who nodded and grinned.

  “Long as it takes, boys. She’s gonna stay as long as it takes.”

  “Well, let me help you out today.” Lloyd nodded in my direction. “She ain’t gonna make very much progress if she keeps using that scraper the way she is. All she’s doin’ is prettyin’ up the grass.”

  I frowned. People sure were generous with criticism around here. And I wasn’t too happy about them sitting in here watching me through the front window while I worked. Even if these guys were supposed to know everything. Honestly, it creeped me out a little.

  Lloyd ran a thick finger over the space between his nose and upper lip. “You’re going up, down, over, across, backways, and sideways, Julia. You ain’t gettin’ nowhere that way. You gotta keep that scraper going straight. In the same direction.” He mimed the correct way to use the scraper, holding both hands up near his face and then pushing them forward in a straight line. “Nice and straight. Over and over. The whole time.”

  Sophie put her hand over my shoulder again. “Go easy on her, Lloyd. She’s just starting out.”

  “Oh, come on, now!” Lloyd said. “Startin’ out’s the easy part. You don’t go easy on someone when they’re just startin’ out. You go easy on someone when they’ve got blisters on top of blisters and they’re about ready to throw a hammer at someone.” He grinned. A large silver tooth flashed on the side like a nickel.

  Sophie slapped Lloyd gently on the shoulder and winked at me. “We’ll remember that, Lloyd. Thanks.” She gave a wave to the other men. “We’re gonna go eat. See you a little later.”

  “Get the special,” Walt said.

  “What is it?”

  “Ham and gravy with biscuits. It’ll knock your socks off.”

  chapter

  24

  Neither of us got the special. I ordered the pancakes again, with a side of scrambled eggs, two pieces of bacon, and a large orange juice. Sophie decided on two eggs over easy, a homemade buttermilk biscuit, and three sausage links.

  “Can I ask you something?” Sophie asked, after we had settled back against our chairs. Her stubby fingers, tipped with blunt, dirty fingernails, were threaded through the handle of her mug.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “What’s it feel like to be a valedictorian?”

  I shrugged and looked down at my placemat. “You have to come first in your class if you want to stand out.”

  “Huh,” Sophie said. “I thought you might’ve given me something a little bit more interesting than that, Julia.”

  I began to fold the edge of my napkin back origami style. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Awesome? Incredible? Everything you always dreamed of?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t my dream,” I said, folding my napkin more tightly. “Maybe it was someone else’s dream for me.”

  Sophie paused, her toast halfway to her mouth.

  “My turn,” I said quickly. “I have a question.”

  Sophie blinked. Then she picked up her fork and stabbed at the yolk of her egg. Yellow goo bled out slowly. “Go ahead,” she said softly.

  “It’s about Maggie,” I said.

  Sophie stopped chewing.

  “I just want to know what she looked like, Sophie.” I spoke quickly, as if my words might stop her from getting up and running out of the restaurant. “That’s all. Can you just tell me what she looked like?”

  Sophie’s jaws resumed working again. She rubbed a piece of toast in the middle of the yolk, and put it in her mouth. “You mean when she was four or when she was a baby, or what?”

  “Either, I guess…” I let the words trail off. I hadn’t really thought about it.

  Sophie shrugged. “Well, which one? She was around for four years. Do you want to know what she looked like when she was born, when she was one, two, three…”

  “Stop it!” The words came out louder than I expected. Walt and Lloyd turned in their seats. I pushed my napkin over my mouth, and lowered my eyes. “Stop it, okay? You’re being a jerk, and you know it.”

  Sophie inhaled deeply and then set her fork down. “Listen,” she said. “I’m not trying to be a jerk. If you want to know the truth, I was up all night trying to figure out how to tell you everything, and I still don’t know where to start.”

  “You don’t have to start anywhere,” I said miserably. “I know this is going to take time. And I’m staying because I want to give you that. It’s just…it’s hard not knowing.”

  “I know.” Sophie put her hand over mine. “And I want to tell you how it happened, you know? The right way. In order, I mean. First this, then this, then that.” She raked her fingers over the top of her bandanna. “I just want to make sure I get it all, okay? There’s so much, Jules. Every time I think I’m ready to start telling you something, I think of something else that I forgot, and then I get so worried about not telling you everything that I just shut down completely.”

  For a moment, just for a moment, I tried to imagine what it was that Sophie was going to eventually get around to telling me. Maybe if I were in her shoes, I’d need her to go a little easier on me.

  “How about this?” I suggested. “How about if and when a thought comes to you—any thought, it doesn’t have to be in order or from the beginning or whatever—and you feel like talking about it, you just say it. Right then. No matter how weird it sounds or how out of place it might seem. Is that something you think you could do?”

  All the air seemed to go out of Sophie, as if someone had pulled a cork out of the top of her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Okay. That might work.”

  A few minutes of silence passed. Sophie sipped her coffee, but she didn’t eat any more of her breakfast. I finished my pancakes and eggs and pushed my mug forward when Miriam came back around.

  “She was beautiful,” Sophie said after Miriam had left again. I looked up, startled. “She looked a lot like you when she was a baby. Except instead of brown hair, she had this big, thick tuft of black hair. It was like a mohawk or something. It ran the length of her head, from her forehead all the way to the back of her neck, and just stuck straight up. It was the weirdest, cutest thing I’d ever seen. And she had huge eyes. Wide, wide blue eyes, just like yours. Dad used to call them ocean eyes.”

  “My eyes are green,” I pointed out.

  “They didn’t used to be,” Sophie answered. “When you were a baby, they were blue. They changed to green later.”

  I sat back, slightly amazed by this tiny fact.

  “I loved that head of hair of hers,” Sophie continued. “I was only four, you know? Little kids get a kick of out of stupid stuff like that. And I was just fascinated with it. I was always trying to brush it, or clip on those little plastic barrettes when she was sleeping.” She shrugged. “It never really worked, though. Maggie had a hard time during her first year. She cried constantly. It was this weird little cry—really soft and sad, almost like she was whimpering. It would’ve been all right, I guess, if it didn’t go on and on and on. It drove me crazy.”

  Sophie began to trace the rim of her coffee cup with the pad of her middle finger.

  “Dad was really good with her then. I don’t know how he stood all the noise, but he did. He’d stay up all night with her sometimes, just rocking her and singing to her until she fell asleep. He had a terrible voice, but he’d sing to her for hours. ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.’ ‘Rock-a-Bye Baby.’ ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow.’ Even when she got older, Maggie could never go to sleep unless Dad sang to her first.”

  I barely breathed as Sophie continued to talk, afraid that if I did, I might miss a single spoken—or unspoken—word.

  “Mom and Dad thought all the crying was because she had colic. You know that thing that some babies get where they’re just born fussy? They had all these tests done on her, and took her to different doctors, and nobody could find anything, until finally, when sh
e was about six months, I guess, one of the doctors said that he was pretty sure she had asthma. He gave Mom and Dad this tiny little face mask, which they would put over Maggie’s face every night. Her medicine, which was being pushed out by an inhaler connected to the mask, would mist over her nose and mouth, so that she could breathe it in. They did that twice a day, every day, until…”

  Sophie’s face darkened. She rolled her bottom lip over her teeth, and then pulled her package of cigarettes out of her pocket.

  “You’re not allowed to smoke in here,” I said gently.

  “I know.” She withdrew a cigarette and held it between her fingers.

  “Anyway, even with the treatment, Maggie still cried. I didn’t understand that it was because she couldn’t breathe right, you know? That she couldn’t catch her breath. All I could see was this new little person who wouldn’t let me touch her hair, who hogged all of Mom and Dad’s time and left me out in the cold.” Sophie ducked her head, scratched the side of her chin, and then winced. “Once, when it seemed like the crying would never stop, I ran into her room and shook the sides of her crib and screamed at her to shut up.” She glanced up at me quickly, trying to gauge my reaction. “And that wasn’t all of it. I told her that I hated her and that I wished she’d never been born.”

  “You were four,” I said softly. “You were jealous.”

  “I know,” Sophie said in a way that sounded as if someone else had already told her that—and she didn’t believe them, either. “Dad came running into her room that night, pulling at me, dragging me away from Maggie’s crib. He had me by the wrist—hard—and he marched me down to my room and shut the door and told me to stay in there for the rest of the night.” Sophie’s eyes looked through me. “A long time later, after I stopped crying, I crept out into the hallway and sat there and listened to him sing Maggie to sleep. I closed my eyes and pretended that I was in bed, with my purple comforter pulled up to my chin, and that he was really singing to me.”

  She looked down at the cigarette, which she had begun to clench, and then snapped it in half. Letting the broken pieces fall to the side, she chewed the inside of her mouth and looked up at me. When she spoke again, her whole voice was different, as if she had flipped a switch inside. “Listen, I don’t want to demonize anyone by telling you all of this. Especially Mom or Dad, okay? Things happened the way they happened and that’s sort of the end of it. I don’t want you to think that I’m blaming anyone. I was always sort of a loner, even when I was real little. I just kind of preferred it that way. It wasn’t Dad’s fault. Or Mom’s.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Sophie sat back again in her chair. She looked exhausted suddenly. “Anyway, I don’t even know if I answered your question. About what she looked like.” She leaned forward. “But that’s all I can do for today, okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said softly. “Okay.”

  chapter

  25

  Over the next few days, Mom and Dad called no less than twelve times. Each time they both got on the phone, doubling up, as if it might increase their persuasive powers. Each time I assured them over and over again that yes, I knew what I was doing, and that yes, I was still staying. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be. My throat ached when Mom cried and I closed my eyes when Dad swore, but I held fast. It was as if a wedge had already been driven between us; something built out of necessity, but there nonetheless. I wasn’t going to be the one to knock it back down. Not after all this time.

  And to make sure of that, on the third day I turned my phone off completely and shoved it under my pillow.

  Sophie and I worked on the outside of the house for the rest of the week. While I scraped, I thought about Maggie. Especially that black mohawk hair of hers. I wondered who in the family she resembled the most. Mom? Dad? Sophie? Me, possibly?

  It was crazy that I’d never stumbled upon a picture of her over the years, something slipped in behind a loose photo in an album or hidden in between one of the cellophane pages. Mom had at least eight family photo albums—all organized by year—set up like encyclopedias in the living room. The first two were mostly of Sophie—up until she was about twelve years old. When she hit junior high, Mom said that Sophie developed a morbid aversion to having her picture taken and would dart out of the room whenever a camera appeared. She refused to pose for anything except our annual family Christmas photo, which, despite Dad’s threats, always captured her with her eyes glued to the floor. The next six photo albums were all of me—starting with preschool and going all the way up to my senior year. How was it that in all of those compilations of memories, no one had ever thought to include a picture of our sister? Why had Maggie—along with her death—been virtually erased from the world? And what was it about her that Mom and Dad didn’t want me to know?

  The steady train of thoughts inside my head made the hours go by quickly, and on Friday, when Sophie came around to my side again, it was late in the afternoon. She surveyed my work, whistling in admiration. “Shit, girl. You’ve been trucking!” She smoothed her fingers against the smooth wood and nodded. “Nice work. Really nice work.”

  “Thanks.” I wiped my brow with the back of my wrist, detecting a faint whiff of sweat. The underarms of my shirt were wringing wet, and my hair clung to the back of my neck.

  “You stink?” Sophie grinned.

  “A little.”

  “That’s nothing,” she said. “Wait’ll I get you up on that roof. Then you’ll know what it feels like to sweat.”

  I smiled, groaning inwardly. This was by far the most laborious physical activity I had ever done in my life. How much harder was it going to get?

  Sophie swatted me on the side of the arm. “I don’t want to burn you out, though. You’ve done enough for today. Go upstairs, take a shower, and lie down for a while. Relax. I was thinking we could order some Chinese food for dinner. They’ve got a great place just a few miles away. You like Chinese food?”

  “Love it.”

  “Chicken and broccoli?” she asked, pointing her scraper at me.

  “Shrimp and snow peas,” I said. “Extra spicy.”

  “You got it,” Sophie said. “Go get clean.”

  The shower felt good against my hot skin, almost like a salve. I stood under it for a good while, letting the water run over the planes of my face and down my hipbones. I had two more blisters on my fingers, and my shoulder blades hurt when I tried to rotate them, but when I got out of the shower I felt strangely refreshed. The scent of Sophie’s mint and grapefruit body wash lingered on my skin, and my hair smelled like apricots. I fastened my hair back with a rubber band and pulled on a pair of clean jeans, a T-shirt, and shoes. Then I headed downstairs.

  Sophie was sitting on the side porch, smoking a cigarette and talking on her cell phone. “Yes, I know, Greg,” she said. “You’ve told me that at least a million times. Hold on, okay?” She pressed the phone flat against her shoulder. “What’s up? You’re not going to lie down?”

  I shook my head and pointed to the phone. “Is everything okay?”

  Sophie dismissed the question with a wave of her hand. “Oh, yeah.”

  “Is Goober there?” I asked. “Can I say hi?”

  “She’s napping,” Sophie said. “We’ll call her tonight.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m gonna walk around then. I’ll see you in a little while.”

  “Go down to East Poultney!” Sophie said as I headed down the driveway. “I’m telling you, you’ll love the gorge! It’s beautiful!”

  chapter

  26

  I told myself I was going to keep walking in the direction of East Poultney. I’d read about gorges. And now that I thought about it, there had actually been a question about a gorge on my SATs. But I’d never seen a real gorge before. It would be interesting. Something different. An adventure.

  Except that when I came to the fork in the road behind the high school again, my feet had other plans. In ten minutes I found myself at th
e foot of the little yellow house again, studying the flagstone path that zigzagged through the grass and the strange stone wreath on the door. There was something about this house, I thought. Something that made me want to stay, to go inside and take off my shoes and sit down in one of the kitchen chairs. It would smell like cedar and apples and the wooden table in the center of the kitchen would have an enormous jelly jar in the middle of it, filled with wildflowers. Along the windowsills would be a line of the same small stones that were in the wreath, set up like so many round dominoes. The only sound in the house would be my breathing, or maybe the soft footfalls of a cat slinking in and around my chair. Nothing else. No one else.

  A faint whirring sound from the back of the house made my heart beat a little faster. I moved up the lawn cautiously, wondering if Aiden would come charging down again like he had the last time and order me off. The whirring sound got louder as I reached the top. I flattened myself against the side of the house and then rolled my eyes. What was I doing, sneaking around some strange house like this? This was so stupid. Practically stalkerlike, if you really thought about it. Which was not me.

  I turned around quickly and headed back down the expanse of lawn.

  “Hey!” I froze as Aiden’s voice charged out at me. “Julia?”

  He had the same black hat on his head, and the same black Converse sneakers. Only his T-shirt—red, with a print of Pink Floyd on the front—was different. I thought fast. “Oh, hey, Aiden. Hi. Um…sorry to bother you. I was just looking for something. From the other day, I mean. I think I might’ve dropped it around here.” I scanned the grass around my feet helplessly. “On the lawn, I mean.”

  He strode down toward me, his lanky frame tilted back slightly from the pull of the hill. “What’d you lose? I’ll help you look for it.”