Season of Salt and Honey (18 page)

“Is she cute?”

“I'm going to ignore that. She seems really nice. I think she knew Alex.”

I screw my eyes shut even tighter, then try to open them. The voices are by the sink, putting things into the cupboards.

“Don't eat that, it's for Frankie.”

Through a mouthful: “She's not gonna miss a few cookies. Seriously. She could live out here for a year with all this stuff.”

“Well, she's not going to live out here for a year.”

Laughter, muffled. “Yeah? Like you're an expert. You get a degree while you were in Portland?”

I hear Bella sniff. “No, but I've seen grief. A lot of it. Don't act like you have a clue. She's my sister.”

“Sure.”

The movements stop. I manage to open my eyes and see two figures by the cupboards. The light from the window makes them difficult to see.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Bella says.

“Nothing.”

“Go on. What were you going to say?”

“Nothing.”

“Didn't sound like nothing, Vinnie. Say it. Don't make comments like that and then not say it. I've been away too long? I don't act like a sister?”

Vinnie shrugs. I want to lift myself onto my elbows but I'm still too groggy.

“She didn't ask me to be a bridesmaid. She doesn't want me around. What was I supposed to do? Papa told me about Alex, and I was there.”

“Hiding outside in your car.”

“Yeah, hiding outside in my car. I'm no good with funerals, all right? But I was there.”

The memory of the car outside the Gardners' house comes back to me. Peeling yellow paint, figure on the dash.

“You didn't have to run away,” Vinnie says.

Bella sighs. “Really? You're going to start in on me about that again?”

Vinnie makes a clicking sound with his tongue. “Blood is thicker than water.”

“Yeah, no kidding. You ever clean up blood, Vinnie? No? Well, I have. Don't act so smug. It was complicated and you know it.”

Bella continues to put things away. Sleep is finally, slowly, leaving me. Vinnie watches Bella work, his arms crossed.

He glances down at a bicep and gives a little shrug. “Yeah, well, why is she so pissed at you? Is it something else? Something to do with her guy? The
merigan
—Alex.”

I manage to prop myself up, blinking as fast as I can, as though it will help the sleepiness dissipate.

“You shouldn't call him that,” Bella mutters.

“
Chiddu facia calari'u latti sulu a sintillu
.” He made the milk dry up.

“Where'd you pull that saying from? God, Vinnie, come on. He wasn't that boring.”

“What was with those two anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why didn't he come to things? Why didn't he, you know, touch and kiss her like a normal—”

“Please don't tell me you're putting yourself in the ‘normal' category?”

“What do you mean?” Vinnie's voice is lilting, teasing.

“You suck the face off of a girl when you are given half a chance.”

“I don't.”

“You do. It's gross.”

“I'm just sayin' it was a bit weird. . . . He didn't really seem to be into—”

“Stop!” That's my voice, louder than I imagined it would be. Both Vinnie and Bella spin around.

“Frankie—”

“Hey, you're awake.”

“Get out of here!” I shout.

Vinnie steps towards me. “Mom and your dad, they sent me over with some food.”

“I don't want
you
here either.”

He manages to look a little hurt. “But—”

“Both of you. Out.”

Bella sets down the tinfoil package she's holding and steps towards the bed. “Frankie . . .”

I shake my head. My whole body feels leaden. “What did you give me?” I press my hands against my temples. “I feel terrible.”

“Just a little, um . . . diazepam to calm—”

“What?”

Vinnie laughs and shakes his head.

Bella looks at him doe-eyed. “She was practically catatonic. . . . You weren't here. . . . Daniel was upset too. I had a bottle in the car—”

“What
is
it?” I ask fiercely.

“Just Valium.”

“Valium. Right.”

Bella looks like she's about to cry. “Frankie, you were really upset. It really wasn't that much. A lot of the patients take it and I know how—”

“Just get out.”

She nods and murmurs, “Okay.”

Vinnie watches her leave, grinning. “I never thought about her getting drugs. I mean, with the seniors' home and that. When I hooked her up with that job I should have—”

“Vinnie?”

He turns to me. “Yeah?”

“Please go away.”

“You didn't really mean . . . me too . . .”

“Yeah, I really did.”

“Oh.” He steps towards the door, before turning back, one hand on the doorframe. “I just wanted to ask you . . . about a few
friends coming here. Not many. I mean . . . seriously, this pad could do with a . . . If you had a hot tub, man—”

“Vinnie.” I point to the door.

“Right, right. Got it.”

*  *  *

After I've washed and dressed, I slip on the black watch. Alex's watch. It's the first time I've worn it since the day it was given to me and it rolls around on my wrist, thick, black, and plastic. It's ugly; probably the reason Mrs. Gardner let me keep it. If he'd been wearing his wedding ring, if we'd been married, I wonder if she would have let me have that.

The truth is, I don't know what else they found or what they gave to his mother as evidence or consolation. I've never asked. Maybe they gave her the bag he took out surfing, the one that probably had his other watch in it, the gold one his mom and dad gave him when he turned twenty-one; the one he wore to work. It had a saying inscribed inside, something in Latin. A family motto. I can't remember it. I just know that Alex preferred the watch that now hangs down against my hand, threatening to fall off. He wore it surfing, and when he was surfing he felt free. “Out there,” he'd tell me in whispers, in the dark of our room, his skin still smelling of wet suit rubber, “I'm nothing. Or everything. I don't know.” And then he'd laugh because he was making no sense.

He always laughed more after surfing. His body was loose, his shoulders relaxed. He'd be tired, but somehow filled up from the inside. His hair thick with salt, dried crispy; the whites of his eyes pink; the skin on his hands tanned from the sunlight reflecting
off the glassy surface of the water. And that was how he disappeared. Feeling like a fish, feeling like himself, like nothing and everything, caught in the lick of the ocean, a giant tongue that drew him in and swallowed him whole. It wanted him for itself.

I run my finger over the plastic joints of the watch strap, hardened from sun and water and wear to the consistency of bone, a knuckle or a shin. The big face of it stares at me; silver buttons I don't know how to use stud both sides. It's 4:09 p.m. I have slept most of the day.

It
, what we had, wasn't weird. We weren't weird. I hate Vinnie for talking about Alex and me like that. I want the memory of Vinnie's dumb voice saying dumb things, as per usual, out of my head.

And Valium? Who has Valium in their car? I was almost starting to believe Bella's life was normal: a regular job, one she's kept for some time, a house, a neighbor's cat. Now I wonder if any of it is true. Perhaps she doesn't live in Portland at all. Perhaps she lives in her car and sells prescription drugs on the street. My mind skips through horrible imaginings. Homeless. Addict. Prostitute. I curse myself for that last one. I'm being nasty. But it's her fault that I am. If she would just leave me alone I might find some peace.

My ghosts might visit, wrap their misty arms about me, console and hide me. Bella's presence is driving them away and me into the bright light of reality like a rabbit scared out of its burrow. I hate her for it. I hate them both. I wish that water was thicker than blood so I could be done with the whole bloody lot of them. Except Papa, of course.

When I peek out of my window, it's not Bella but Huia I see, picking her way through the ferns with a basket. She's wearing a red cardigan, as though she's Little Red Riding Hood. I walk out of the cabin.

“Hey, Frankie.” She skips over.

“What are you doing?”

“Foraging,” she says delightedly. “Look.”

She lifts her basket so I can see the contents. The bottom is covered in little green coils. They're strange and pretty, curled like commas. There are also some ferns, different from the ones around the cabin.

“Fiddleheads,” she tells me. “And some licorice fern for Merriem. Merriem says the forest is full of treasures.”

It sounds like something Merriem would say; I can even hear the way she'd say it. I imagine what the aunties would think of the ingredients in Huia's basket. They'd frown to start with, inadequately restrain their concern that the girl has to pull things out of the forest in order to eat.
Doesn't her father buy groceries? Where's her mother? She's much too thin for a growing girl.
Then they'd look again.
You could batter and fry them,
Aunty Connie would say,
like zucchini flowers.
They'd start arguing about which seasoning to use, which herbs, whether to fry or roast, serve with pasta or on bread.

“I'm looking for morels,” Huia tells me in a whisper.

“What are they?”

She giggles. “Mushrooms. You don't know?”

I shake my head.

She assesses me. “Do you wanna come with me?”

“Oh, I—”

“It'll be fun,” she urges.

“Well . . .” I glance around, checking for Bella, but can't see her. I suddenly realize her car is gone. My heart lifts. “Okay. I'll come.”

“Yes!” Huia sings out and I can't help but smile.

As we walk, she tells me how yummy morels are, and how they grow in areas where there's been forest fire and how you have to keep your eyes peeled. She bulges out her eyes to demonstrate, making me laugh.

It turns out her eyes are much better trained for foraging than mine. To me, the forest is simply green and vast, but Huia knows exactly what she's looking for and points things out from a distance. But slowly I learn. I distinguish devil's club and stinging nettles and salmonberry. I spot the hummingbirds that dart and quiver around pink flowers. I spy a patch of fiddleheads and start plucking before Huia warns me to take only a few so the plant can keep growing for next season. I am the student.

The fiddleheads are aptly named, shaped just like the top of a violin, and soon Huia declares her basket “full enough” of them. We dawdle through the forest, aimlessly it seems to me, though she appears to know exactly where she is, pausing every now and then to watch birds and pick flowers. We sit on a log that's sprouting soft, hopeful ferns, a “nurse log,” Huia calls it, and I show her how to make a crown of daisies. She gets me to make the slits in the stems with my nails and then weaves one for me too.

Soon, the light is starting to dim. Time has slipped away from us. Huia is several feet away from me, knee deep in jewel-green fronds.

“Perhaps we should call it a day.” I gesture with her basket, now in my hands. “You've got a good haul.”

“Yeah,” she replies with a shy smile. She steps over to me and we both investigate our harvest. She tugs, gently, on the hem of my shirt. “Come to my house.”

“Oh, no, I should be—”

“Pleeeeeease?”

“But your dad—”

“He'll be okay. He's working on a terrarium.”

“I don't want to interrupt.”

“He won't mind,” Huia insists. “Honest.”

I mull on the invitation, keen to avoid my sister who may be back at the cabin. “Are you sure?”

“Yes, yes, yes!”

She takes hold of my hand and skips so I almost drop the basket.

“Hey, whoa! Careful.” But we're both giggling.

*  *  *

Huia grips my hand most of the way, dragging me along like an unwilling puppy, until we reach the driveway, which she half runs, half skips up to reach a small white weatherboard house pretty well enclosed by tall trees. There's a small concrete statue of a rabbit by the door and a pair of work boots with a girl's hair clip attached to the top of one. I find myself plucking it off as we walk past, and moving it between my fingers.

Huia smiles at me and pushes the door open wide. “Come on.”

I step inside.

“Dad!” she calls, walking ahead of me towards the back of the house.

We pass through a short hallway with a row of wall hooks holding jackets and a bright yellow rain hat, and three doors leading off it. Then a kitchen and living room out the back, with an entire wall of sliding doors, much like Merriem's place. The homes were probably built at the same time, in the 1960s or '70s, as vacation houses. Huia slides open a door and strides out towards a newer, black studio building, beckoning me to come with her. She's still calling for her father.

A door opens at the side of the studio and Jack pokes his head out. “Hey, bub.” He spots me trailing behind. He smiles. “Oh, hi, Frankie.”

“Hi. I—”

“I told her she could come,” Huia interrupts. “That you wouldn't mind.”

“Of course I don't mind,” Jack says.

Huia grabs hold of her father's hands, which are in dirty, thick gardening gloves, and climbs her feet up his legs like an acrobat.

Jack groans. “You're not as small as you once were, circus girl.” He turns to me. “Do you want to come in for a look? I was just finishing up before putting on the kettle.”

Huia leaps off her father and skips ahead of us. I step inside and glance around. The outside of the studio is stained black, but inside the timber is raw and exposed. It smells as though it could be cedar. There's light coming in from a huge rose window at one end and a large skylight in the roof, partially open.