The Sweetness of Salt

by Cecilia Galante

I tried to remember the last time I had flung anything anywhere. Maybe a sneaker when I was learning to tie my shoes? The action was so foreign to me that just thinking about slamming the clay down on the wheel made me giggle.

  “Come on!” Aiden said. “You can do it! Throw it!”

  I lifted my hands tentatively. Bit my lip. Stared at the black marker in the middle of the wheel. And then I let my arms fall, hard. The clay hit the wheel with a dull thudding sound—and then stayed there.

  “Awesome!” Aiden said. “Perfect. Now step on the pedal, get her started.”

  The wheel moved much faster than I expected it to, and I shrieked as the clay began to wobble back and forth. “Lighten up on the pedal,” Aiden encouraged me. “And lean in with your whole body so you can get that clay in the middle of the wheel. There’s nothing pretty about this process, so don’t worry about looking all graceful or anything. Lean in. Give it your whole weight.”

  He let me go through the process three times. Three times I flung the clay on the wheel and bent over it, trying desperately to push—and then keep—the clay into the center. Three times I failed.

  But as I walked back to Sophie’s place a little later, I couldn’t help but smile.

  The clay had a mind of its own. I could respect that.

  chapter

  32

  It was early the next week by the time we finished priming the walls inside, and we were halfway through scraping paint on the outside. We worked until early evening on Tuesday, sanding and cleaning the floor. Walt had loaned Sophie his electric sander, which cut most of the work in half, but Sophie insisted that I do the corners with a small piece of regular old sandpaper. By the time the shadows outside had begun to lengthen and the sun had fallen behind the trees, my fingers were so sore I wondered if they would remain attached if I used them to do anything else.

  “Why did you ask those Table of Knowledge guys to stop helping you again?” I asked, struggling to my feet.

  “Because I want to do this on my own,” Sophie answered. “I like doing things on my own. Come on, let’s get something to eat and hit the hay. We’ve done a lot today. You tired?”

  “Tired?” I repeated. “Try exhausted.”

  She punched me lightly in the arm. “You’ll be okay after a good night’s sleep. Let’s find some grub.”

  In my opinion, Sophie’s kitchen was the best thing about the whole house. With three brick walls—one of which framed a floor-to-ceiling window—real marble countertops (which Jimmy had found in a quarry), upper and lower cupboards, and a wooden pot rack dangling from a length of chain from the ceiling, there was not much else that needed changing. Sophie said she and Jimmy were still thinking about tearing out most of the cupboards to make room for another oven, but that was still up for debate. Now, she opened and shut the cupboard doors, looking for something to eat. “What do you feel like? I can make some pasta, some macaroni and cheese…”

  I dropped down heavily on top of a stepladder that was propped against one of the brick walls, and leaned my head back. “Anything’s fine. I don’t know if I even have the strength to chew.”

  “I wish I knew how to cook better.” Sophie scanned the contents of another cupboard and then shut the door. “I can bake you into the grave, but ask me to put together a chicken dinner, and I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Then just bake something. We don’t have to have a dinner-dinner. I’ll eat anything.” I watched through the window as a baby squirrel made its way up the trunk of a large oak tree next to the house.

  “Yeah?” Sophie put her hands on her hips. “Okay, then. You feel like some biscuits?” I didn’t have to answer. She had already rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and was grabbing flour, baking powder, and salt out of the cupboard. She measured them into a bowl, reached for a pinch of salt and tossed it in. Next, she cut up a stick of cold butter into neat little cubes, poured in a measuring cup of milk, and mashed the whole thing in between her fingers, pressing and turning it inside the bowl. After a few minutes, she dropped a small, round mass of dough onto the flour-sprinkled marble countertop and began pushing it with the heels of her hands.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Kneading,” Sophie said. She lifted one shoulder, brushing a piece of hair out of her face. “You have to do this to make it soft and pliable. Otherwise the biscuits come out sort of dumpy.”

  “Dumpy?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, like big hunks of Play-Doh.” She rolled her hands against the now baby-smooth mound, pulling it back with her fingers. “You gotta give it some love, you know? Get all the rough edges out by pulling it a little this way, and then pulling it a little that way. You’ll see.”

  My exhaustion faded as I watched my sister work. It was exactly the way I remembered, when I used to sit on the step outside the kitchen at home. Sophie’s fingers flew over and under and then on top of the dough. Finished with the kneading, she pulled and stretched it into a circle, and then started rolling it with a pin. When she got it to a thickness that she seemed to like, she dipped the rim of a water glass into some flour, then pressed it down into the dough, forming small, perfect circles. She brushed each biscuit with a coat of melted butter, and finished with a sprinkling of sugar, then placed the tray in the oven. Her confidence and the way she knew her way around her ingredients filled me with awe all over again.

  “I bet you could bake anything,” I said finally, as she set the timer.

  “I’ll try anything when it comes to baking.” Sophie nodded toward the oven. “I’ve made those biscuits so many times over the years I don’t even need a recipe. The trick is the butter. It’s gotta be cold.”

  “You really do like baking, don’t you?” I said stupidly.

  “I don’t think there’s anything else in the world I’d rather do,” Sophie said. She had started washing at the sink; clouds of soap suds encircled her wrists. A soft, floury scent had already begun to fill the room. “I love everything about baking.”

  I felt a twinge of jealousy. “I remember one time you told me that your favorite thing about baking was being in the kitchen with a head full of ideas.”

  Sophie laughed. “That sounds pretty accurate.”

  “What else do you like about it?”

  She shook the soap suds from her hands and then leaned against the sink. For a moment she stared out at the fading light through the window, then she turned back around. “I think the preciseness of it. Baking demands an exactness that I love. It calms me down for some reason. Centers me.” She shrugged. “It probably sounds really weird, but I like the fact that when you bake, you have to follow a specific set of rules in order to get the right result.” She wiped her hands on the edge of her jeans. “A lot of people like to cook for the exact opposite reason—if they add too much of this or don’t have enough of that, they don’t have to worry; they can just substitute something else. Not knowing how or what they’re going to end up with is exciting, I guess.” She shook her head. “Not me. I’d rather know right from the beginning what I’m going to get.”

  She pulled a dishcloth from her shoulder and began wiping it over the countertop. “Besides, I never feel this way anywhere else.”

  “What way?”

  “Happy,” she said simply. “I’m happier in a kitchen than anywhere else.”

  chapter

  33

  We had three biscuits apiece, warm and slathered with real butter, along with several hunks of cheddar cheese and cold slices of apple. It was, I thought as I lay in bed later, one of the most perfect meals I could remember having. The biscuits were ridiculously good, pillows of lightness that melted on my tongue, and the apple and cheese were crisp and flavorful. Sophie was still working downstairs, applying a second coat of primer to the front room. She never stopped. I felt guilty going to bed, but she had insisted and I hadn’t objected.

  Now, after lying there, listening to her muted movements beneath the floor, I got up and padded across the room to the dr
esser. The sketch book Sophie had gotten me was in the bottom drawer, and I took it out. A soft laugh came from somewhere in the back of my throat as I opened it up and stared at the blank page. God. I couldn’t really draw. Drawing was just…something to pass the time. Something that broke up the monotony of studying and thinking and worrying all the time. Though I didn’t have to bury it completely. A lawyer was allowed to sketch, wasn’t she?

  I dragged one of the milk crates over to the window and pushed back the curtains. For a moment I just looked out at the street. Ten feet ahead of me, one of the street lamps threw a small pool of light onto the sidewalk below. Beyond that, the Laundromat, the pizza place, and Perry’s sat in the dark.

  Suddenly, beneath the street lamp, the squirrel I had seen earlier appeared. It paused for a moment, then sat up on its haunches, nibbling something in its tiny paws. Without thinking, I picked up my pencil and began to draw. First the tiny head and ears. A slightly bulbous stomach, and a thin, bottlebrush tail.

  Would I ever be as good a trial lawyer as Dad? Dad had an assertiveness, an arrogant confidence about him that I did not. He’d always said you needed to have self-reliance to stand up in front of a jury. The words you chose could determine the outcome of the entire trial, so how you spoke was critical. You had to be staunch. Committed. Fierce. Things that—at least right now—I was not sure I was. Could those qualities be learned? Or did you just have to have it in you, the way Dad did?

  The squirrel scampered on, but I kept drawing. The stretch of buildings across the street: the Laundromat, Poultney Pizza, and Perry’s, each one aglow under the street lights. I’d never sketched anything in the dark before. It was thrilling in a way, trying to capture the absence of light.

  An hour came and went as I moved the pencil across the page. What if Dad had been a banker? Would working with money have appealed to me the same way the law did? What if he were an electrician? Or a cook? Was it possible that I would have latched on to whatever he did? It was hard to know. God, it was hard to know anything these days.

  I held my breath as I heard Sophie coming up the stairs. She paused just outside my door. I sat motionless, wondering if she had heard me. But then she moved on, going into the room next to mine and shutting the door.

  I kept my lights off and continued drawing.

  Later, I woke to a strange sound. For about ten seconds, I couldn’t remember where I was. My eyes roved frantically around the darkened room, taking in the unfamiliar window and the enormous oak tree, like a peeping Tom, behind the glass. Then my eyes fell on the tiny neon sign blinking in Perry’s window across the street and I remembered. But the sound—what was that? I crept out of bed and tiptoed down the hall to investigate.

  The door to the next bedroom was open just a crack. A tiny circle of light from a lamp on the floor revealed Sophie propped up on her elbows on top of a bright blue sleeping bag. There was nothing else in the room except for a wadded up drop cloth in the corner. The single window was bare, its edges chipped with old paint. Behind it, the thinnest sliver of a moon illuminated a circle of coal black sky.

  Sophie was still in her T-shirt and overalls, but her shoes were paired neatly against the far wall, and she had taken the bandanna off her head. Her braids had been loosened and her hair hung in smooth, yellow waves alongside her face. She was looking down at something small and flat in between her arms—a book? a photograph? a card?—and weeping uncontrollably.

  Suddenly, she picked up the object, pressed it to her chest, and rolled over on her side, away from me. She groaned, as if the movement had caused her physical pain, and brought her knees up against her chest.

  I thought of going to her. It was probably something to do with Maggie, something she alone had to come to terms with. Over the last few nights, I’d found myself wishing that I had laid down better ground rules when we made the agreement about talking about Maggie. Something more definite than the “whenever she felt like talking about it” arrangement. It gave Sophie too much leeway.

  But maybe leeway was what she needed. Maybe I was the one who needed to be more patient. I stood silently, rooted to the spot for a long time without moving, until the soft cries coming out of Sophie turned into slow, hiccupy breathing. Then I turned around and went back to bed.

  chapter

  34

  The next day, on my usual walk down Furnace Road, the growl of a motor sounded behind me. I turned around and leaped to the side of the road as Aiden came hurtling toward me on an orange moped with black flames painted on the sides. Dust flew out from under its wheels, and the handlebars were as thick as arms. He came to a sudden stop, turning the handles sharply so the back wheels spun and growled. “Hey!” he grinned. “I was hoping I’d run into you today. You wanna go for a ride?”

  I looked at the ever-present soft black hat on top of his head. “Where’s your helmet?”

  “No helmet,” he said. “We don’t have to wear them up here.”

  “Up here?” I repeated. “You mean you can’t get head injuries in Vermont?”

  “Something like that.” Aiden grinned again. “Come on. This is just a quad. It’s not like we’re on a motorcycle. And I won’t take you out on the road. We’ll just stick to the dirt trails in the back.” He held out his hand.

  I looked down at my shoes.

  “Come on,” Aiden said. “I’ll go real slow.”

  I looked up.

  “Promise.” He held up a palm. “Scout’s honor.”

  I took a step forward and swung my leg over the back part of the seat behind him.

  “Hold on around my waist,” Aiden said, turning slightly to talk to me. His breath smelled like warm coffee. I put my hands tentatively on the sides of his jeans. “Tighter,” Aiden said. “Come on, hold on.”

  “I thought you said we weren’t gonna go fast,” I said.

  “We’re not. But you still have to hold on. Otherwise you’ll go flying backward.” My nervousness evaporated when he said that, and I adjusted my hands, threading three fingers on each through his belt loops. “Atta girl,” he said. “Okay, here we go.”

  Aiden veered off Furnace Road almost immediately, hurtling through brush and leaves until we reached a dirt trail. After the initial heart-stopping sensation of moving forward and my fear of being thrown off the vehicle whenever he turned the wheel disappeared, I sat back as we sped along and actually looked around. We were riding through an entire forest house, it seemed, with walls made only of trees, and a carpet of dirt and pine needles. Up ahead, there were more trees, their leaves green as jade, with pockets of blue sky peeking through, and then more trees after that. The smell out here—mowed grass and sun-drenched hay—was new to me. Aiden’s back curved slightly over the handlebars, but I could feel the heat of his skin next to my arms. I closed my eyes, feeling the sun on my face, and wished for a moment that we could just keep going.

  We didn’t, of course. The quad emerged suddenly from inside the forest house, spinning into an enormous yellow field. Tightly rolled haystacks, thick as tractor tires, dotted the field in a haphazard checkerboard pattern, and overhead the sky was as blue as a marble.

  “Want to sit for a while?” Aiden asked, getting off the bike without waiting for an answer. I followed him as he walked over to a patch of grass and sat down. “I love it out here,” he said. “Sometimes I run out and leapfrog over all of those haystacks. Just for the hell of it, you know?” He raised his eyebrows. “It’s harder than you think.”

  I smiled. “It’s pretty out here. So quiet.”

  “And the light,” Aiden said, stretching out his hand. “Look. It’s perfect. Right now, especially, when the sun’s low like this.”

  I’d never really looked at light before. But now, as I watched a few insects swoop lazily through the air, I realized that Aiden was exactly right. There was a clear, amber sort of hue to it, like looking at honey through the bottom of a glass. “I can tell you’re an artist,” I said.

  Aiden looked at me. “How so?” />
  “The light and everything. You noticing it like that. Regular people don’t notice the way light looks.”

  Aiden stared back out at the field. “You gotta pay attention,” he said softly. “To all of it. Otherwise, you might miss something. Anything can change your life. You never know. You just have to be patient. And watch.”

  We sat there for a few minutes without saying anything.

  “I think I’m waiting for my life to change,” I said suddenly. What? Where did that come from? “I mean, kind of,” I finished.

  “Oh, you don’t want to do that,” Aiden said.

  “Do what?” I felt a surge of impatience. He always seemed so sure of himself. It was borderline cocky. Not to mention annoying.

  “You don’t want to wait for your life to change,” Aiden said. “That’s a huge mistake.”

  “You just said…”

  “No.” Aiden cut me off with a raised index finger. “I did not say to wait for your life to change. I said to pay attention for something that could change your life. There’s a huge difference. If you want to change your life, do it. But don’t wait for it to change or you’ll be waiting around forever.”

  I bristled for a moment. The only thing worse than annoying, cocky people was when they were right. “You know a lot for only being twenty-four,” I said finally.

  Aiden pulled his hat down low over his ears. “I’ve lived a lot for being twenty-four,” he said. “You pick up some things along the way.”

  “How’ve you lived a lot?” I asked.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  I blushed. “Well, it seems like whatever you picked up has worked.”

  “Maybe,” Aiden said. He grinned. “You ever leapfrog over a haystack roll before?”

  “I’ve never even seen a haystack roll before,” I said, gazing out at the field. “Those things look like gigantic cinnamon buns.”