The Taste of Salt

by Martha Southgate

  “What’s up?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Having trouble focusing this morning. My mother called. You know.”

  He sat back down on his side of the desk. He looked right at me. “Something wrong at home?”

  I hadn’t told him about Tick. About all the back and forth, the drugs and the booze, the in and out of rehab.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  He looked at me some more. “It’s my brother,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. He still lives in Cleveland. His name’s Tick.” I hesitated, biting my lip. I was thinking, I don’t want to talk about this I don’t want to talk about this, but at the same time, I wanted to trust him. I knew I could trust him.

  “So what’s going on?”

  I looked at the wall behind his head. He had hung up some pictures—a cartoon from the New Yorker, a still of Jerry Lewis in a lab coat from The Nutty Professor. I took a deep breath. “Tick’s an amazing guy. Funny, good-looking, charming. I’d probably want to date him if he weren’t my brother. He kind of glows. He’s always been like that.

  “But for the last, I don’t know, ten years, he’s been drunk. Or high. Or both. I don’t even know what all on. It’s always something. He’s been in and out of rehab twice. I had to go home to help my parents and pick him up from rehab right before you moved here. Sometimes he’s all speedy—I mean faster than normal speedy. But mostly he’s just drunk. Not so drunk he can’t keep a job for a while anyway. But then he fucks up. He works as a trainer with the Cleveland Cavs, and he’s almost lost that job. He’s sober for now. My mother’s still trying to save him. But I don’t know if she can. I don’t know if anyone can.”

  “Why don’t you think he’ll stay sober?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Did I say I didn’t think he’d stay sober? I think he will. I mean … I don’t know what he’ll do. I want him to stay sober. It’s up to him, I guess.”

  Ben looked at me hard. “Why’d you come talk to me about it?”

  I looked back at him. “I like talking to you. Why’d you call me when Leslie left?”

  Ben came around the desk and kind of lifted me into his arms. I fit perfectly. “I like talking to you, too.” I didn’t move away from him. I could feel his hand moving in little circles on my back. He was hesitant at first, just kissed me very gently. But when I opened my mouth just the littlest bit, inviting him, we started kissing the way I’d imagined so often. I felt like a person in a desert having her first drink of water at the end of a long, long day. I thought of my first dive. The way I wished I could somehow live like that, underwater, at home. I didn’t think of Daniel. Not for one single solitary second. It was as if he’d never existed at all.

  After a while, we stepped apart. The office was very quiet. We stood in each other’s arms, breathing in each other’s skin. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, in my ear, mournful.

  I pulled back far enough that he could see that I meant what I was about to say. “I’m not,” I said. “I will never be sorry.” I didn’t know what was going to happen next. But I knew what I said was the truth. “I’d better go.” I wiped at my eyes and my mouth with the back of my hand. I just wanted to kiss him again.

  “I’ll talk with you later,” I said.

  “Sure. Later.”

  I turned and left the room without looking back. I’ll never know how I managed that. Once I was out the door, I went back to my office in a daze. I went in. Sat down. Gazed absently at the wall. The kiss wasn’t the start of this thing. It wasn’t the middle, or the end. It ratified what was already happening. I didn’t know what I would do. I didn’t know what I was capable of anymore.

  NOTHING HAD CHANGED and everything had changed. I worked better than I had in months on my grant, suddenly inspired; it was obvious what needed to be said to earn that money. I deserved it. My scholarship was impeccable. I knew exactly what to write. Every now and then, I would look up from the screen and stretch my arms and the whole thing would suddenly be back, right in my body. I was kissing Ben again. We were kissing and we weren’t going to stop. Who cared about plankton and how they were affected by the warming of the ocean? Who cared about fish? His tongue was in my mouth. We were almost the same color, the same small round heads, dark brown with closely cropped hair. Who cared about the fate of the earth? Not me. He was the only thing I cared about. He satisfied my mind.

  BEFORE EVERYTHING CHANGED, part of my new, be-home, be-present promise to myself about Daniel was that I made a point of cooking dinner a couple of times a week. It kind of broke my heart how much it pleased him. And I liked being there to cook for us. I do love him. That was the funny thing about my feelings for Ben—in most ways, they had nothing to do with Daniel. My feelings for them seemed like two entirely separate but necessary chambers of my heart. I got home, went upstairs, changed into stretchy clothes, and put on an old Rufus CD that I hadn’t played in years; Rufus was before my time, but they are so great. “Sweet Thing”—what a song. I was fooling around in the kitchen with the salmon and just chiming in with Chaka on the high part—“Love me now or I’ll go crazy”—when Daniel came in. He stuck his head in the kitchen.

  “What are you making?”

  “Salmon.”

  “Hope it’s not farmed.”

  “You know I don’t buy farmed salmon.” He started nodding his head to the music. “What is this?”

  “What’s what?” I’d turned back to the stove, my hips swaying a little.

  “This music. It’s good.”

  “You don’t know who this is?”

  Daniel’s eyebrows went up at my tone. He looked as though he had just realized that he’d filled in the wrong bubble on an important standardized test. “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s Rufus. Chaka Khan and Rufus. From the seventies. I used to hear it all the time on the oldies stations when I was a kid.” Chaka wailed in the background. “Dinner will be ready soon. Why don’t you go on up and get changed.” Daniel hated to eat dinner in his work clothes, even though his work clothes were jeans and a polo shirt. He’d wear shorts all year if he could.

  What kind of a person doesn’t recognize “Sweet Thing” as soon as he hears that unforgettable voice? A person who grew up in a very different world from me, that’s what kind of person. A person whose porch didn’t face out onto a little blacktop street when he was growing up and who never heard a car go by with Earth, Wind & Fire or Rufus pounding out of the window, a cup of warm Kool-Aid at his feet and the music sliding under his skin. Daniel didn’t know about that. Ben did.

  I am not particularly hung up on race. I’ve dated all kinds of guys. But when I thought about Ben touching me, I thought, too, about the way in which we were the same color, or at least close in color. I thought about how he knew some things I knew without my having to explain them. I hadn’t been aware of missing that until now. Another thing Ben woke up in me.

  The salmon was done. I called Daniel to dinner.

  He sat down and didn’t say anything. He had a slightly wounded look that made my heart contract a bit. Why was I treating him so badly? He couldn’t help being who he was or having grown up where he grew up any more than I could. He was so kind to me. How could I be angry at him for that? What was I doing? I reached across the table and took his hand. “Sorry. It was kind of a rough day at work.” A lie. A lie to apologize.

  “Okay.” He was quiet a moment. “I liked that CD.”

  “Thanks. It’s one of my favorites from when I was younger.”

  He squeezed my hand and pulled away to pick up his fork. “So what happened today at work?”

  Here is an astonishment. I started talking about my grant as though it was just another night. As though it had been just another day. As I talked, it started to feel like just another night. Me and my husband, sitting at the table, talking. For a little while, I forgot Ben’s lips on mine. Maybe I could have them both, maybe I could manage this whole thing without any injury. For a little while that night, it
felt like I could.

  The next day, Ben was standing by my office door when I arrived. Have you ever had all the breath leave your body at once? It’s a very interesting feeling. Makes it hard to stand up. My hands shook so hard manipulating the keys that I could barely get the door open. He didn’t say anything until we were inside. I went behind my desk. He didn’t follow me. He stood very deliberately on the other side and he didn’t sit down, even when I gestured that he should. “Josie,” he said then. Just my name. “How are you?”

  “How am I?” I laughed a little. “I’m preoccupied. How are you?”

  “The same.”

  He looked at me for a minute. A thousand things went through his eyes. But he didn’t say any of them. He pressed his beautiful hands together. I looked at them. He sighed. “I’d better go,” he said. He had his hand on the knob, his back to me, when he said, “I’ll see you for lunch, right?” His voice hopeful.

  My heart sang. “Same time as always.” I wondered if he could hear the singing in my voice. He wasn’t as strong as he was trying to be. I was glad of that.

  LUNCH WAS PRETTY MUCH like it always was. I had a salad. Ben had a turkey sandwich. We talked about work, about a lecture we’d gone to the previous week. It was as if that kiss hadn’t happened. Or as if we might indeed sail right past it. But then he said, “Anything to say about yesterday?”

  “You mean, about what happened in your office?”

  “Yeah. I mean what happened in my office.”

  I looked away from him. “I don’t know. It shouldn’t happen again.” I said.

  “No. Probably not.”

  Even as I said this, I wanted to slide next to him and lay my head on his chest and feel his lips pressing against my skull.

  Ben looked at me for a moment, then away. “Well. What about your brother, then?”

  “That’s a switch.”

  “Not sure what else to say about … well, you know. So what about your brother?”

  I twisted my fingers together so hard that they hurt a little. “What about him?”

  “Why don’t you tell me a little more about him? What’s happened before?”

  I could feel him paying attention to me with every inch of his being. He wanted to know me. My skin tightened with the pleasure of it. So I answered.

  I started talking about Cleveland, the gray streets, the olive-colored water of Lake Erie, the flat greenish Cuyahoga River, no ocean anywhere. I told him about how Tick and I were always together when we were kids, how we would fight but then, always, Tick would come back to me, sticking his head shyly around the corner of the door of my room, grinning. I said, “Tick always seemed to be wanting something. I could make him laugh, but I couldn’t make him settle down. And then he started drinking. At first it was experimenting. The way kids do. The way you don’t worry about too much. And then it wasn’t. And we didn’t know what to do. We didn’t even talk about it for a long time. It was just like with my father. He was drunk most of my childhood. Just sat in the living room like a rock.”

  “Does he still drink?” he asked.

  “No. He’s been sober for a pretty long time now. But it’s still hard for me to talk to him. It’s hard for me to believe it, after all this time, you know?” I went on, staring at my pant legs. I couldn’t look directly at Ben—what would he see in my face if I did? “When I had to go back to Cleveland a few months ago, right in the middle of a study, and leave my work and leave Daniel and get Tick out of rehab, I pretended that it was only what I was supposed to do, that I didn’t mind. But I hated him. I hated being back there. I hate it.”

  The skin on my face felt tight. I’d never said this out loud to anyone. What was I doing? Ben was just looking at me.

  “So you don’t want to be the one to save him.”

  “I don’t. I can’t.” I closed my eyes. “I can’t.” Here’s what I didn’t say: That it was my job to protect my brother. To save him. And I had failed.

  “Of course you can’t.” His voice was almost a whisper. “How could you?” He stood up. “We have a little while before we have to get back. Come walk with me?” I stood up. I would do whatever he asked.

  We went down the hill to the beach and took our shoes off. It was a bright March day, but a little cold to be out, so we were there alone. We walked a while, not speaking. “You’re really beautiful, you know,” he said after a long while. “It was the first thing I noticed about you. How beautiful you are and how you didn’t seem to know it.”

  I had been waiting for him to say something else about Tick. I was so surprised that I laughed out loud. I pulled him to me without another thought, our brief contemplation of not doing this thing forgotten. I kissed him right out there in the sun, with nothing between us, nothing holding us apart. It was only a matter of time now. He was where I belonged.

  WHEN HE ASKED ME to go on a long bike ride with him the following weekend, I did it without hesitation. I can’t even remember what I told Daniel. I just had one thing I had to do and that was be with Ben. I was in kind of a trance.

  The day of our ride was a perfect day. I mean really perfect. You know when the air is a tonic, and the sun is gentle and loving on your head and your shoulders, and the breeze blows like it was designed for your skin and your skin alone? It was one of those days.

  We had decided that we really wanted to go some distance, so we met in Barnstable, about twenty miles from Woods Hole. There’s a beautiful beach there that leads to a network of bike paths along the ocean. Part of it goes right past our part of the Woods Hole campus—there’s a little office cabin facing the water there. The cabin is full of old phone books and misplaced files and other detritus—it’s hardly ever used anymore. We all had keys to it—sometimes I would walk down there when I wanted some solitude and a view of the ocean.

  Ben and I met, locked up our respective cars, and got going without much talk. He went ahead of me. I didn’t feel the need to say anything. I just looked at him. We stopped once to drink some water and rest. I think we talked about what a beautiful day it was—nothing special.

  When we got near the office cabin, I yelled, “Hey, Ben, let’s stop here.” He pulled over. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. I have a key to that office. Want to go in there for a minute?” I knew what I was saying. So did he. So we rolled our bikes up to the side of the cabin that wasn’t visible from the road. He stood so closely behind me that I could feel his breath on my neck. It made me dizzy.

  Once we were inside, we stood still for a minute trying to act as though nothing was happening. Then he slid his arms around my waist. There was a lot of quiet breathing and the sound of the ocean outside. Words had been removed from my mind. The silence got larger. I felt like I might die inside it, that we might stand there, him embracing me, until the end of the world and I would never say another word. I was thinking that until he said, Oh, Christ, Josie, come on. His voice was hoarse and soft. I turned to face him. He put his hand under my chin gently. Let me look at you, he said. Let me look at you. I didn’t turn away or close my eyes. He kept gazing at me, so long that I thought that might be all he wanted. But then he pulled my head toward him and we started kissing. After a while, he said it again. Let me look at you. I knew what he meant. I stood up and took a few steps away from him. I took off my shorts and then my shirt with a lot of awkward wriggles and twists like I was in my bedroom at home and I wasn’t embarrassed and he said, My God. You are so beautiful. He paused. And then he reached out and pulled me toward him and we started kissing again, kissing everywhere. He tasted of salt. He smelled of the sun. I thought it might never end.

  Fifteen

  Josie and I have been married for nearly four years. I married her to see if I could get behind that sharp unforgiving gaze. Sometimes, I think about the way she looked the day I met her, giving her oh-so-intelligent talk about undersea mammals. The way she stood with her feet planted a little bit apart, like she was going to be challenged any minute (later that very d
ay, I saw that she was challenged every minute, that there are people in our business who didn’t think she had any right to be there).

  She’s beautiful. She doesn’t think so. She’s not conventionally pretty and she wears her hair super-short and doesn’t fuss with herself much. But her skin is so warm-colored and inviting that it always makes me feel like racism is actually based in jealousy that black people are so much better looking. And her smile, rarely bestowed, makes you feel like you’ve won a prize.

  I try to hang on to those feelings—but it’s hard these days. Ever since she picked her brother up from rehab, she’s been skittish, either avoiding me or snapping at me. She’s always that way after a visit home. Home has never been where her heart is. She won’t even talk to me about it much. I’ve met everyone, of course, and I know that her father and brother both have (or in the case of her father, had) big problems with alcohol. But shared anecdotes? This-happened-to-me-when-I-was-kid stories? None of that. It’s like she sprang full-blown from the sea. That’s what she’d like me to think anyway.

  She seems, sometimes, to have genuinely forgotten large portions of her childhood. I’ll ask her about something or tell her some story about when I was a kid and a slightly blank, slightly nervous look will come over her face and she’ll say, “Yeah. I don’t know. It’s weird. I don’t remember stuff like that.” I used to worry that she was one of those women with all those repressed memories of being molested, that some horrifying thing would come roaring up from her subconscious and engulf us both. I’ve never told her that though. I can just imagine the look that she’d give me if I did. The steel doors that would slam shut in her eyes.

  She has those same walls of terror with her family. It’s not too bad with her mother but watching her talk to her father (which she does only rarely) is to watch her shrink into an agonizingly shy, angry thirteen-year-old. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen her bite her nails. And though she keeps a picture of her and her brother, Tick, as children on her bureau, she hardly ever talks to him either. One time, kind of out of the blue when we were sitting together in the living room right after one of those calls, I asked her about it.