The Taste of Salt

by Martha Southgate

  Tick is sitting alone on a bench by the front office, a small green duffel bag at his feet. His dark, once handsome face is hollowed out around the cheeks and eyes. My baby brother. He looks so old. I almost don’t recognize him.

  He knows me, though. He hops up from the bench, and when he smiles, there’s a ghost of the old Tick who always used to bust into my room without knocking. “Josie, hey, Josie. Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “What am I supposed to do, leave you here for good?”

  “Well, I knew you wouldn’t, but you know.… It’s nice to see you, that’s all.” He pauses. “I don’t think Mom could have stood picking me up.”

  “Well, what’d you expect?” I say.

  He looks at me, his eyes gone to rock. “Do you really need to start in right away with that shit?”

  His voice is angry and defensive, the same tone of voice that kept denying that there was a problem even as you could smell it on him, see it on him. The same voice I ran away from, no matter what it cost me. Or him.

  But wait, here’s a difference. The tirade doesn’t continue. The bluster vanishes quickly and his eyes turn sad. “Josie, I’m sorry.” He sighs the saddest sigh in the world. “I’ve got so much to be sorry for. I know that now. I just … sometimes old habits are the ones you go to first, you know?”

  I look at him for a minute. Then I hug him. He’s so thin that I can feel his bones shifting under my arms. “I know. I know.” I push away from him for a minute. “Who do I need to see to get you sprung from this joint?” He tells me and I turn and go into the office.

  Riverrun is clearly a place that is intended to help people start finding their way out of the darkness, but even so, it has the greenish paint and fluorescent lighting that seems to be endemic to the kind of places where you either get well or die. I think there’s a special factory where they manufacture the paint for these sorts of places. A paint factory like the one in Ellison’s Invisible Man (when I was fifteen, my father came out of his fog long enough to insist that I read that book; the sequence with the paint factory was indelible). I imagine the place where they make these paints is difficult and cold and hopeless like the most battered parts of the former Soviet Union or parts of Detroit or East St. Louis. They pour a little of that despair into every can of paint. I sit down.

  There is a drug counselor behind the desk. She looks to be in her forties, a bit older than me. You know how they say that some folks look like they’ve seen it all? Well, you could tell with one look at her that she’d seen it all, and done most of it, walked away from what hurt her, and was just going to let you have your say. Her earrings are those big gold doorknockers that aren’t in style anymore, but on her they look good. She is solid, but not fat. She has a generous smile. The name on her tag is Lakeisha James.

  “Ms. James?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m Josie Henderson, Edmund Henderson’s sister?”

  She looks confused. “Edmund? Oh, you mean Tick. And please call me Lakeisha.”

  I smile a little—he never goes by his right name anywhere. “Yeah, Tick. I’m ready to take him home. Is there anything I need to do?”

  “Just fill these papers out, honey. I think Tick’s ready to go home. Does he have somewhere to stay?”

  “Well … he lost almost everything, you know, before he got here. His job, his apartment, all that. But my mother is ready to take him in and help him get on his feet again. And his job said they’d give him one more chance. I … I’m here now but I don’t live here anymore. I live up in Massachusetts.”

  She looks at me noncommittally. “Is your mother up to supporting him?”

  “Yes, I think she is. She loves him very much.”

  “She’s in good health?”

  “Pretty good. Mom’s a real go-getter.”

  “And I understand from Tick that your father has a history of alcoholism, too?”

  A click inside. “Yes. Yes, he does. He’s sober now, though.”

  “That’s good. How long has that been?”

  “I don’t talk to him often.” Her cool gaze doesn’t change but my face gets hot anyway. “My mother has had some contact with him. He slipped up once but he’s been sober for about ten years now.”

  “Sounds like he’s over the hump. As much as you ever get over it, anyway—one day at a time,” she said, with a shake of her head and a slight smile. “Do you attend Al-Anon meetings?”

  “No. I went to a few when I was in college, but I didn’t find them that helpful.” She looks as though she wants me to say more. I don’t know what else to say. The main thing I felt in those meetings was an intense desire to leave. People sat on folding chairs in a circle and told their stories of car crashes and lost homes and vomiting, and I’d think, “Well, my father didn’t do any of that. What am I doing here?” After about five times, I stopped going. I hated the slogans—One Day at a Time, Keep the Focus on Yourself—and the way they made you feel like their way was the only way. I hated the folding chairs and the bad coffee. I hated that I was the only college student there, the only scientist, the only dark one. I stood out too much. And I’m not the drunk anyway—why do I have to go to the stupid meetings? I know meetings are great for some people. I’m just not one of them. I mean, in the end we’re all on our own anyway, right?

  “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. Most of our families find them very useful. But to each his own. Is your father available to help your mother?”

  “I think so. I’m not on the best terms with him, but I think they’ve been talking about how to handle things.” I take a deep breath. “They separated when I was seventeen—he got sober after that.” I hope she drops this line of questioning.

  She nods and grants my wish. “Well, Tick has a tough road ahead. You know this, right?”

  “I’ve heard.”

  She laughs, then says, “How come your mother isn’t here?”

  “Why isn’t my mother here?”

  “You heard me.”

  “She wanted me to. Tick and I are very close. We were, anyway. My mother thought it would be better if he saw me first.”

  “But you’re leaving town.”

  A note of steel comes into my voice. “Yes. I’m married. I haven’t lived here in more than ten years. I have work I have to get back to.” She keeps looking at me with unnerving steadiness, so I keep babbling. “I can’t stay. I can’t stay.”

  Finally, she breaks her gaze. “Fine. But I hope you’re prepared to support your mother. It’s up to Tick to get to meetings and keep himself straight. He might need some help with that. If your mother couldn’t bring herself to come here—are you sure she’s prepared to give that help?” She hesitates. “Are you sure he hasn’t hurt her too much?”

  Hasn’t hurt her too much. I sit back in the chair for a minute. I remember the day Mom told me that she needed me to come home and help her get Tick out of rehab. That day, my office door was closed and there was a lightning storm outside. The wind sounded like it was crying. I clutched the phone—I could imagine my mother’s face even though I couldn’t see it. I’d talked to her fairly often over the months that she slowly stopped being able to deny what was happening again with Tick. The last time I saw her, about a month before he went into rehab this time, her eyes were sunk back in her head as though she’d been alive for a thousand terrible years and would be alive for a thousand terrible more. “Josie, it’s like he lost his mind. I swear. I’ve been talking to your father a little bit but it’s too hard for me to talk to him much. There’s too much water under the bridge. He understands and I think he really has changed, but …” Her voice thickened and she had to stop talking. I was holding the telephone receiver so hard that my hand hurt. “I went by Tick’s apartment the other day. The landlord let me in. He knows there’s a problem. Josie, it was so filthy—bottles everywhere. I can’t … an animal wouldn’t live the way your brother lives. It’s breaking my heart. It’s breaking your father’s heart. We don’t know what to do. I c
an’t believe that we’re back here.” And I heard in her voice that she’d never meant anything more literally in her life. Her heart was in pieces in her chest, cutting her flesh to ribbons. She didn’t know what to do about anything anymore.

  Not long after this conversation, he totaled his car on Fifty-fifth and Euclid. Went right up on the sidewalk, knocked over a streetlight. When they picked him up, he couldn’t even say the alphabet properly. He went into rehab after that. I helped with the paperwork, but I spoke to him only once while he was there. He wasn’t allowed to make too many calls, and when we did talk, he sounded as though he was at the bottom of a well. I couldn’t stand it. I know, I know I abandoned him when he needed me. I know that’s wrong. But I couldn’t stand the aching, hollow sound of his voice.

  I think that’s why I came home without a fuss when Mom asked me to. I knew that I hadn’t been there for the hard part before and I wasn’t going to be there for the hard part to come. I could do this little bit of driving. That I could do.

  This all goes through my mind rapidly as I sit there. I can’t say any of it to Lakeisha James. So I just say this. I say, “We’ll manage. We all love Tick very much.”

  She sighs. “I’m sure you do,” she says. I can see her deciding that she isn’t getting anything else out of me. She stacks up some papers and shows me where to sign, where Tick already signed. And then it’s time to get him and go.

  TICK IS SITTING WITH his feet angled toward each other, the way he always did when he was a kid. He looks like he wants a cigarette, his fingers twisting nervously around each other. He looks like he’s afraid they won’t let him go. Lakeisha smiles broadly and hugs him, saying, “You make those meetings now, you hear?” And Tick nods and she rubs the back of his head like you would a little boy. I stand awkwardly to the side.

  After another hug, he is released. He picks up his cheap bag and grins at me. “Let’s get out of here,” he says. So we do.

  “Feels funny being back out here again, huh, Tick?” I say as we pull out of the driveway.

  He bristles a bit. “What, that place? I ain’t never been there before.”

  I suck my teeth. “Dag, Tick, I know that. I mean back out by Dean.”

  “Oh. School. Yeah.” He smiles a little. “Actually, I didn’t think about that too much. But yeah. It is weird to be back out here. Especially when you think about why I was out here. He twists toward me away from the side window he’s been looking out of. “You mind if I have a cig? I’ll open the window.”

  “Go ahead.” I wish he wouldn’t smoke in the car—it makes me want a cigarette, too. But I have to grant him this—it’s the one addiction he’s got left. We hope anyway. I stare straight ahead as he lights up.

  Tick reaches out to turn on the radio. I set it to the oldies station on the drive out so the Isley Brothers ease out of the speakers—I don’t know why I love all that old stuff. But I do. I laugh. “Remember when I was little and I used to think that everybody on the radio was down there at the station, waiting to go on? I couldn’t believe it when Mom told me it was records. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.”

  Tick laughs. “Yeah, I remember. You never was too good at thinking stuff like that through.”

  “Stuff like that, yeah. I did okay with other stuff though,” I say. Tick takes a long drag and looks at me. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know. I just mean in school and all.”

  Tick sits straight up. “Damn, Josie, I ain’t been out that damn place an hour and you already steady telling me what’s wrong with me. I did the best I could. Shit, I know I fucked up.” He sighs. “Been steady fucking up. But I’m trying to stop. Always had you as the perfect example in front of me. That didn’t help.” It’s funny listening to him talk—his years with the Cavs have made his voice more … well … black. More slangy, less grammatical, more like the players—who, let’s face it, are mostly young, unpolished black men. You can’t hang around an NBA team and not talk the talk. I wonder what Daddy would think about that—he never liked us to sound too “street.” I like listening to Tick. I never hear truly urban, black voices anymore. I don’t sound like him—in fact, a lot of other kids were only too happy to ask me “How come you talk so white?” for much of my childhood.

  I slide the car into the flow of traffic in front of us. “So it’s my fault.”

  “No … damn, Josie, no. That ain’t what I’m saying. I just had a lot of time to think in there, you know. I been thinking a lot.”

  I have the feeling that whatever I say will be wrong. So I don’t say anything. Tick smokes and looks out the window but then—we’re saved by Prince. The song on the radio changes to “Purple Rain,” a musical peace offering. I seize on it. “Oh, man Tick, remember when we saw him in concert? That was so amazing.”

  He grins, “I think you were more amazed than I was.”

  I change lanes, feeling a little embarrassed for some reason. “I guess I was. Did you know that for weeks after that concert me and Deena used to sit on the porch with that little radio of mine writing down every time they played this?”

  “Is that what y’all was doing? For real? I never knew why you two sat out there like that all that time.” He laughs. “Thought you were watching the cars go by. Or the fireflies once it got dark. I never could figure it out.”

  “Yeah, well, you were too busy hanging out in old McNeil’s lot, getting into trouble.” McNeil’s lot is a large overgrown tract of land behind our block that, for some reason, no one had ever bought and developed. You could get in there easily by going around the corner from our house. It was best known for kids hanging out there and committing nefarious acts—sometimes childish, sometimes not.

  “Mmf.” He pauses and takes a long drag. “You know they mowed that all down now and put a big fence around it. It ain’t nothing but a big vacant lot now. Nobody hangs out there anymore.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. It’s a shame.” Another long pause. “A lotta things changed since you left, Josie. A lotta things.”

  I let that hang in the air. It’s not like I didn’t know that. I decide to go ahead and say what I’ve been thinking about—the hardest question. “You gonna stay clean this time, Tick?”

  He flicks his cigarette out the window and rubs his hands across his pants legs. He looks out the window. “Sure gonna try. I know I owe that to everybody. To try.”

  He’s like a stone around my neck, around all our necks. Is he really ready to set us free? Neither of us says another word the rest of the way home. “Purple Rain” ends and the Brothers Johnson’s “Strawberry Letter 23” comes on. We might be kids again, sitting silently together, our thoughts washing over us like waves.

  When we pull up to the house, Mom is sitting out front. She’s gained weight recently, even though she knows better—she’s a cardiac care nurse. Her hair is gray, straightened, and short. It’s beautifully cut—she’s more careful about that kind of thing since she got heavier. Her half-glasses sit on the end of her nose and she’s wearing jeans and a tunic and sneakers. She looks like herself. Tired and worn but the self I’ve always known. The big surprise is that Daddy is sitting next to her. Their legs are almost touching and they’re both looking straight ahead. I haven’t seen my father in nearly a year—it’s been that long since I’d come home to visit. He looks good. His skin is even and clear and he’s lost weight. His hair, which has thinned very little, is gray and close-cropped and he’s wearing jeans and a polo shirt. Even though I knew that they’ve become friendlier as time’s gone by and he’s stayed sober, there’s also this voice in me that’s still about sixteen. It’s yelling: You threw him out. How can you let him back into your life? If you threw him out, that’s that. They look like statues together there, quiet, dark, and still. They don’t stand up the minute we pull into the driveway. It takes a moment for them to pull themselves together to look really happy to see me driving their son, my brother, home. “Tick, did you know Daddy wa
s going to be here?” I ask. I hate the way my voice is shaking.

  He stubs his cigarette out. “Yeah, Mom told me. My group they thought it might be good for me to see him. And I don’t know. I said all right.”

  Our parents stand up and come toward us. Tick gives me one last nervous look and climbs out of the car. He moves toward the porch and drops his bag on the ground. “Mom?” He takes an uncertain step toward her.

  Her face shatters. I don’t know any other way to describe it. All that loss and anger and that she loves him anyway—it is all in her sorrowing face. She can’t ever stop loving him, even if it might make her life easier. Never. Does she feel that way about me? I suppose so. But I’ve never been as much trouble—nor am I as charming—so I’ve never been in the spotlight the way Tick has. She steps toward Tick with her arms open and it is as though I have never existed at all. My father grimaces uncomfortably—maybe, like me, he sees that she has never loved him the way she loves the man in front of her, the one she’d given birth to, the one they’d raised. Or maybe he is thinking of his part in all the pain my mother has borne.

  Tick and my mother hold each other for a long time, making little noises, almost like lovers. I stare at the maple tree on the front lawn. My father stands with his hands limp at his sides. It is so quiet you can hear the wind move through the leaves.

  They break their embrace, my mother wiping at her cheeks like an embarrassed child, Tick standing so close that their shoulders touch. A big black Escalade drives by, booming “Dirt Off Your Shoulder.” My father says, “Let’s go in.” He and I lead the way. He walks ahead of me but I can still see his face in my mind. He looks older and more relaxed and handsome than he did when I was young; each year he spends sober seems to make time itself sit more easily on him. He seems settled into his soul, if you believe in that kind of thing—I’m not sure I do. He says hello but he doesn’t try to touch me. I think he wants to. But he doesn’t.

  We sit in the living room and I suddenly wish Daniel was with me. He offered to come but I told him he didn’t have to—that it was too expensive and that it would be easier if he didn’t. But that’s not true. He has an ease with my family that I don’t. That’s pathetic, I know, but that’s how it is. Maybe he’s more relaxed because they are not his blood kin. He didn’t live with them and see my father’s quiet disappearance into a beer can or watch Tick start to disappear after him. He just takes them the way he finds them now. Back when we got married, I was still so angry with Daddy that I wasn’t going to invite him to our wedding, but Daniel insisted. We fought over it. I finally gave in when we were arguing about it (again) and his eyes actually welled up. He said, “You will be sorry for the rest of your life if you don’t invite him to your wedding, Josie. I know it. My father’s dead. He can’t be with us, and I’m telling you … you don’t want to throw away the chance to have him there. I know he’s hurt you, but he should be there, even if you can’t stand to talk to him.” He was almost crying about it and I wasn’t. That made me think that perhaps I should soften my stance. And you know what? He was right. Sometimes I think that’s why I married Daniel—to soften my stance. He would have known what to say as Tick fidgeted in front of the mantelpiece and my father sat down in the same chair that he always sat in, even though it hasn’t been his living room for many years. My mother and I sit on the edge of the sofa. I wish I could leave. But of course I can’t.