The Taste of Salt

by Martha Southgate

  HE DRANK FOR A long time. He drank until the buzzing in his head seemed to stop and the hole in his chest was patched. He drank until his hands were steady again. He drank until the money he’d stolen from the jar in the kitchen where Daniel and I kept spare cash was gone. When he left the bar, the stars overhead were screaming. He could hear them. Tiny individual voices, all crying out in pain. Who said the stars were beautiful? Whoever said there was any point to a black velvet night? He stumbled off the stool, across the road, and out onto a pier that wasn’t far away.

  When he got there, the screaming in his head was louder. The waves barely masked it. Their constant rhythm was not a comfort. Nothing could comfort him now. There was all this screaming in his ears. He was never going to get what he needed. Never. He took his shoes off and threw them into the water. He was crying, he supposed. But why shouldn’t he be? Why wasn’t everybody? Drunk’s tears. Everyone should weep them. He walked toward the end of the pier, furiously pulling off his clothes as he walked. The air was hot, sitting on him, a damp weight. And now, here, again, here, his sister couldn’t save him, his mother couldn’t save him, his father couldn’t save him, no one could save him. What was there to be saved? He was stripped down to his underwear now, at the end of the pier. He jumped off, into the freezing water. A baptism at last. He gasped and bobbed up and began to swim out, away from land. He didn’t know what he wanted. He only wanted to stop asking. He only wanted to stop needing to know. Water flowed into his mouth. The salt was bitter; nausea took him the next few feet. He vomited but it wasn’t wrenching. Not the way it usually was when he was really fucked up. Not the way it was on land. He kicked away from the foul traces he left in the water; he was sorry for that. To have fouled the ocean as he fouled the land, as he fouled everything he touched. He hung in the water’s embrace, holding his breath, treading for a moment. But he wasn’t going back. Soon he would be too tired. He wouldn’t have the strength to get back to land. He just didn’t have the strength. For a moment, he was glad he didn’t have any children. I’m sorry, Josie. I’m sorry. That was his last thought. And then he gave in. There was no reason to resist anymore. One day at a time, he had arrived at his last end.

  Twenty-four

  When the phone rang, I hadn’t been sleeping long. Given the events of the last few days, it’s a miracle I was sleeping at all. There was what Daniel had said to me about leaving. I could tell by the silence he maintained around me that he meant it. And Ben. After that last time, the day after Tick arrived, I’d felt him receding away from me even faster, even farther. And I knew, in my core, in my gut, that I had to let go of him, too. Oh, and of course my alcoholic, drug-addicted brother was sleeping on my sofa and not doing much else by the looks of it. Well, really, who had time? Who had time to sleep? I was being eaten alive by men, by their needs and their vague insanities. Not that I was doing that much better with my own needs and vague insanities. I wasn’t. Don’t think I didn’t know that. But still. I felt oppressed by the weight of them. The phone ringing in the darkest part of the night was just another imposition. Probably another man on the line. A man who needed something. I picked up the phone.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this Ms. Josie Henderson?”

  My breath got short. This was a very official voice. The voice of doom. “Yes it is.”

  “Ms. Henderson, there’s been an accident. We need you to come down to the hospital.”

  Daniel was here. No one would call me if something happened to Ben. Tick. It had to be Tick. He hadn’t come home after the meeting. I had been frightened but wanted to give him some space, too. He had to work this out on his own. I swallowed hard, once. “Who’s involved?”

  “Please just come down to the hospital, ma’am. We’ll be able to explain more here.”

  I hung up the phone and sat up. Abruptly, I had to vomit. I ran clumsily into the bathroom. By the time I returned to the bed, Daniel was sitting up, pulling on his pants. “It’s Tick, isn’t it?” he said.

  I nodded. Who else could it be? What else could it be? I went to the drawer and pulled out some clothing. I put my shirt on inside out, as I recall. I don’t know why I remember that kind of detail. But I do. The kitchen smelled faintly of rotting cantaloupe. I remember that, too. I’d had some for breakfast and it had been a hot day and no one took the trash out. I was briefly afraid I would vomit again.

  Daniel drove. Even with all that had been going on, the ways I hid from him, the ways I’d betrayed him, he was still my husband, still the one to drive the car in a situation like this. Using his turn signal carefully. Looking up into the rearview mirror with the same slight scowl he always had when he looked in the rearview mirror. Silence lay between us like a body. There was nothing safe to talk about. “Danny?”

  He didn’t look away from the road. “Yeah?”

  “I’m scared.” The first true words I’d said to him for a while.

  That made him look at me briefly. His eyes were gentle and considering—a look that hadn’t been directed my way for some time. “I’m scared, too, Jose. This whole thing scares the shit out of me.”

  I looked back out the front window. I couldn’t say any more. We would be at the hospital soon.

  Here I was pulling up to another institution. Here I was for my brother again. I tripped getting out of the car. Daniel caught my elbow and kept me from falling. We walked into the hospital with our sides almost touching. But not quite.

  The hospital smelled like hospital. Blood, rubbing alcohol, sadness. It reminded me a little bit of the lab—I found the smell of the alcohol rather comforting. But at work there isn’t the salty odor of people sweating and crying. The sharp tang of despair. We went up to the desk, gave them our names. The shift nurse pressed her lips together and spoke into her telephone. We were ushered to seats.

  After a short while, a tired-looking doctor came out. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. He was Indian and he had a slight accent. “Please, Mrs…?”

  “Henderson. I didn’t change my name. This is my husband, Daniel Ehrmann.” Why did I explain all that? What did this young doctor care?

  He nodded. “Come with me.”

  We followed him down a quiet corridor. At an unmarked door, he turned and spoke. “I must tell you, the news I have is not good. I’m very sorry. He was found washed up in the cove just before dawn this morning. It appears to have been a simple drowning. By the time he was brought here, it was too late.” He lowered his head as though it really saddened him. “We found his driver’s license with his clothing and notified the next of kin in Ohio. Your mother, I believe. She told us that he was here staying with you.” I looked at the floor. So Mom knew already. The young doctor was still talking. “The police have been notified but this seems a simple matter. Though a sad one.” My knees gave out.

  Daniel put his arm around me and led me to a lonely chair in the corridor and knelt beside me. The young doctor stood quietly a few feet away, silent. But after a few minutes, he spoke again. “I’ll need you to come identify the body.”

  I looked up at him. The body. What was left of Tick. All that was left of my only brother. I suddenly felt as though my bones were full of tar, as though I would never, never rise from this seat again. Daniel stood. He brought me to my feet, his hand never losing contact with the planes of muscle on my back, willing to touch me again at last. We walked through the door together, the doctor leading the way.

  No one had died on me before. This is something of a miracle, but it is also a fact. I’ve seen many dead fish and sea mammals, but I had never looked at a dead human face, the face of someone I loved. I had spent my life studying the life all around us in the water. I had spent my life sifting it through my fingers and considering the light, thin bones. I had spent my life this way, considering how the life all around us passes away. And now I would see it in a face I’d always known.

  It was like the TV shows. The doctor had a careful look on his face. He pulled out a dra
wer, not unlike the filing system we use for our samples. Neat and clean and careful. Nothing messy here. I could hear my own breath, the drip of water from the slop sink. The drawer pulled out noiselessly. The face covered, the body an undifferentiated mass. The doctor didn’t say anything, just pulled the sheet back. There he was.

  A sound came out of me that I didn’t know I could make. Halfway between a scream and a moan. Daniel made a startled gasp. Tick’s chin was pointed to the ceiling, his beautiful brown skin ash-colored and rubbery. His eyes were closed; I suppose someone had done that here. They had probably been open when they brought him in. I touched his shoulder. It was cold. The kind of cold you know you’ll never forget. I pulled my fingers away quickly. The room smelled of formaldehyde and alcohol, a familiar smell. “That’s him. That’s my brother.”

  The doctor spoke again. “Is there anything that you’d want the authorities to know?”

  He was my brother. He couldn’t stop drinking, no matter how hard he tried, even though my father managed to stop. We used to do everything together. We were always together. “No. He’d had some substance-abuse problems. He was up here trying to get away from all that. I’m sure that something just went wrong.”

  The doctor nodded. Pulled the sheet back up. “There will be some paperwork.” I nodded. “Do you two need a few more minutes?”

  “Could we?” This from Daniel. The doctor left without another word.

  We stood alone in the freezing room. “Daniel?”

  He was still looking fixedly at Tick’s face. I said his name again and he looked up.

  “What do we do now?”

  He sighed. “We go home,” he said. “I’ll help you through this. But what I said the other day … it still goes.”

  There was nothing I could say about anything at all. So after a long minute, looking at my disappearing husband over my brother’s dead body, I said, “Okay.” I wiped at my wet cheeks. I looked at Tick’s shell for another long moment. “We’d better go out there and find out what we have to do next,” I said. He nodded and we walked out of the room together. I felt as though someone was stabbing me in the chest. Ben gone, Daniel gone, Tick gone. I was all alone. I bit my lip. And there was so much to do. Daniel and I didn’t say anything else. The only words left were official ones.

  Twenty-five

  My name is Ray and I’m an alcoholic. When my son, Tick, was a baby, I never fed him. I left that job to my wife. In those days, the man hardly ever did anything for the baby. That’s what we all thought was how it should be. I wasn’t drinking too much then, not yet. Or really, it wasn’t out of hand yet. I guess that was the thing. I could still handle my liquor. It wasn’t handling me. But even so, I’d look at that little brown boy in his crib, that little brown baby, that little bit of life that our love had made, and I felt so uncertain. I didn’t know what to do with him. Even though he was our second, he was so much harder. He cried so much and seemed to want so much and we could hardly ever figure out what he wanted.

  I still remember how his body felt pressed against mine when I picked him up. Warm and moving against me, that beautiful smell their heads have, those tiny curls pressed against my mouth. I can remember those anytime I like. Those little beads of hair so soft against my lips.

  Sarah thought she knew what was best for him. But in the end, she didn’t know what to do either. And she never would take any help—even after I moved out and cleaned up and started with the meetings, she wouldn’t go. Said she’d be all right on her own. She never wanted to ask for anything. I remember, first time I saw her at Leo’s Casino, I noticed that about her. She was all to herself. Everything she needed was inside her. When I looked at her, I thought I’d get what I needed, too. I was already feeling that hole. When she couldn’t fill it, well, I had to keep looking.

  Before the kids came and before everything went bad, before the bottle got out in front of me and we lost all that time, we used to lie in bed spooned together and I knew that everything would be all right as long as our skin could rest together like that. It seemed like the kind of thing that would never end, that should never end, that could never end. Her hip against mine like that. Those were the best times I was ever to know. In the bars, at first, I thought those were the best times. But they didn’t last. And the pleasures they offered were hollow in the end. Wasn’t long before I couldn’t even remember what happened from one bar to the next. Those times lying next to my Sarah, angel that she was, ministering to me, those were the best times I was ever to know. And I threw them away like so much garbage.

  Well, my mama used to say there would be a reckoning. And I guess when Tick died, that was mine. Josie was the one who had to call me. My poor girl. I never gave her nothing but sorrow either. And now here she was, calling me to tell me that her brother killed himself on her watch. I never heard a woman sound as broken as she sounded on that phone.

  I was sitting in the apartment, watching TV when the phone rang. I had a Coke beside me. That had been one of the hardest times to give up the beer, in front of the TV. Coke was a little like it, the bubbles, the cold. But it was sweet and lacked that sharp edge and—well, I’d be a damn lie if I didn’t say I miss the beer sometimes. But I call my sponsor and I drink my Coke and I get past those moments. I go on. The day Josie called about Tick, I wasn’t even thinking about it. It was one of those days I wasn’t missing the beer. I felt fine.

  So when I heard my daughter’s voice for the first time in a while, first time in months—years maybe—that she had called me, not me calling her. I thought it was definitely on its way to being a good day. I was so happy until she said enough that I could catch the tone of her voice.

  So she told me. She told me that she was going to have to fly my son, her brother’s body, home. She told me my boy was dead.

  You know, the first thing I thought after she told me was that this was the call I sometimes thought someone would have to make about me before I got sober. There were nights when I wished to God that someone would have to make that call, that I’d be out of my misery. I didn’t think about the misery I would have left behind. I’d caused so much pain already. What was a little bit more?

  Josie said some more things. I suppose I must have responded somehow, said something. Plane tickets. Arrangements. What would happen next. We must have talked about all that. But all I could think was that my boy was dead. My boy was dead. My boy was dead and I couldn’t save him. Hell. I probably half helped kill him. Not supposed to think like that anymore. But I couldn’t help but think that for a moment. What’s my part in this? I had a part. I played it so wrong for so long. And now my boy was dead. I looked out the window. It was dark out. People were walking places. I threw my can of Coke against the wall. It splattered and left a dark brown mark I would have to clean. So this was what a broken heart felt like. I thought I knew. Turned out I didn’t. Now I knew for sure.

  Twenty-six

  The last time he kissed her, he knew it would be the last time he kissed her. There was too much between them now—too much pain, too much longing, too many things that neither of them could heal in the other. He found himself noting things about that kiss, the temperature of her lips, her smell. Though their parting was always going to happen, he hadn’t expected it to be so sudden, so without long conversations. She was just gone like so much smoke.

  The last time he saw her, it was very early morning. He’d opened the door, a garbage bag in his hand, and there she was. Just standing there. Bedraggled and breathing rapidly, her face tear-stained.

  Josie?

  Ben? My brother’s dead. My brother killed himself. He’s dead. He drowned. She looked right into his eyes as she said this last.

  That was the moment when the end became inevitable. He felt himself slipping away from her, even as he lowered himself onto the sofa next to her. Oh my God, Josie. Really?

  She nodded miserably. He pulled her to him. Already her body felt a little strange, a little distant. After a while, she shifted a li
ttle and he lowered his mouth to hers. Not to have her, not to fuck her or taste her or swallow her. Just to offer some warmth to someone he had once cared about very deeply. She tasted of bitter orange sorrow.

  They kissed for a while, but she didn’t want much else either. Just to be held and desired outside of the hard things she now had to face. She talked a lot. She talked of how much she had loved Tick and the things they’d done together as children. She talked of the time that “Start Me Up” came on the radio and she was in her room and Tick was in his room and they both burst out at the same moment, dancing joyously in the upstairs hallway to the same song on their little radios. She smiled a little at that memory. She talked and talked and he sat there with his arm around her and gradually it was as if she were a beloved sister herself. Not entirely. What had gone on between them wasn’t completely gone—all the flesh and the heat, all the desire and the smacking together—he didn’t want to deny all that. But it was not the important thing any longer. Not for him. And, it seemed, not for her.

  After a while, she fell silent. Morning had turned to afternoon. Neither of them knew how long they’d sat there.

  Are you hungry? he asked her.

  I am a little, she said. Seems funny to eat with him gone. But I have to.

  Neither of them said a word about her husband. Where he was, why she was with Ben at this moment. He gave her bread and butter, cold bacon, sardines from an opened can in the fridge—the eccentric foods of a man who lived alone and didn’t like to cook. She ate them without comment. She looked at him steadily as she ate. After a while she said, There’s things I have to do. I’d better go. He nodded. He kissed her again, his hand on the small of her back, her tongue warm and eager inside his mouth. He tried to put everything into that kiss, to tell her he did love her but not in a way that was useful, that could live. His love couldn’t save her. She was going to have to save herself. When she pulled away, her eyes were full of tears. Right, she said. And she turned and left without another word. After the door closed behind her, he finally spoke. Take care of yourself, Josie, is what he said.