Season of Salt and Honey (2 page)

That day at the locker was the beginning of everything. We were high school sweethearts, just like everyone dreams about but no one actually has, because that kind of thing only happens in the movies. Or back in our parents' time, when things were simpler or girls got pregnant and that was that. I didn't get pregnant and I wasn't in a movie; I was just lucky and I knew it. I knew right in my bones just how lucky I was. I knew everything was perfect, and did all the right things to keep it that way. Until now.

Until Alex called out from the bathroom in our apartment, “Hey, Frankie, think I'll go out for a surf.”

And I said, “Okay.” And then, lifting my head from the pillow, “You going to be long?”

And he had come into the bedroom and put a kiss on my forehead, right where superstitious people, young wide-eyed girls, and old and wary women say your third eye is. Not that I believe in all that. And he said, “No, won't be long. Back by lunch I'd say.”

The day was just like this one had been: the sun bleeding into the clouds, the light as sweet and yellow as pouring honey. A perfect spring afternoon.

When my phone rang, my hands were in the sink. I'd made
pitta 'mpigliata
. I don't know why; it wasn't Christmas, Alex rarely ate anything sweet, and tomorrow we'd probably be going for brunch at our favorite café. The apartment—our little home with our little things: pictures in frames, books on shelves, lists on the fridge—had been all mine for the morning, so I'd baked and lost track of the day. The place smelled of figs, raisins, sweet wine, cooked dough, and honey.

When my phone rang, I thought it would be Alex. But it wasn't.

“Hi, Francesca.”

“Hi, Mrs. Gardner . . . Barbara.”

Her voice was strange and wobbly, as if underwater. I couldn't understand what she was saying.

“Are you looking for Alex?” I said. “He went for a surf this morning. He should be home soon.”

“Francesca . . .”

I don't remember the next bit. I can never remember the next bit. I was light and free and floating for a moment and everything was fine. And then I was Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.

These stuffed bread scrolls originated in San Giovanni in Fiore, Calabria, and are served at Christmas.

Makes about 1 dozen small (about 6-inch-diameter) rosettes

1 cup pecans

1 cup almonds

1
¹
/
₂
cups raisins

¹
/
₂
cup dried figs

¹
/
₂
cup dates

¹
/
₄
cup honey

¹
/
₂
cup muscat or other dessert wine

¹
/
₄
cup extra virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1 egg

¹
/
₈
teaspoon sea salt

2 cups Italian flour (type “00”), plus more if needed

7 grams or one envelope of active dry yeast

Powdered sugar, for dusting

Roughly chop all the nuts and fruits. Add the honey, mix well, and set aside. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a dough hook, combine the wine, olive oil, egg, and salt. In a separate bowl, sift together flour and yeast. Add the flour mixture and mix until a dough ball is formed (add more or less flour if necessary). Let the dough rest for 15 to 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Taking a piece of dough at a time, roll into thin lasagna-like strips about 3 inches wide (the length is up to you; once rolled the length of the strips will determine the
size of the rosette). Trimming edges with a pastry jagger or fluted pasta cutting wheel will give a pretty edge.

Add nut and fruit mixture down the center of the strip and fold in half lengthwise. Carefully start coiling the filled strip into a rosette/pinwheel shape. If you choose to make larger rosettes you can secure the coils with toothpicks pushed horizontally into the sides.

Place the rosettes on the lined baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the rosettes, until they are golden brown and fragrant.

Dust the baked rosettes with powdered sugar or serve warm with ice cream if desired.

• • • •

W
hen I wake, I'm under an old quilt that smells like mothballs. The cabin is a womb. Its thick walls shelter me from both noise and light. There are no alarm clocks, no cars jostling to deliver sleepy commuters to work, not even children on their way to school, laughing, fighting with sticks, the slick sounds of their scooter wheels against the pavement. My feet touch the end of the short bed. I roll onto my back. Beneath me my dress rustles, and above there's the hum of a lazy fly. I open one eye. There it is, turning in slow figure eights and then gone. I open the other eye. The pale morning light quivers with dust motes. It's so quiet. There's only the movement of a bird taking flight, the creeping walk of the clouds. An entire community of leaves and sky and birds and insects beyond the four braided log walls, paying me no attention at all.

But then there's something else. The something that woke me. The scuffle of footsteps. Murmuring. A rap at the door, which stirs up more dancing of dust in the air.

I pull the quilt up to my eyes. It's on the bed sideways, so now my bare feet stick out at the bottom.

“Hello?”

I don't reply, breathing slowly, making myself as still as possible. It reminds me of Bella, of playing
nascondino,
hide-and-seek, with our cousins. Bella never won at hide-and-seek. Never. She breathed noisily, she started to giggle, and she took up too much space despite her small size. I hated playing with her, in that way all older siblings hate playing with younger ones. Especially when they crawl into your perfect hiding spot and give you away with laughter that just gets stronger when you try to shush it.

“Hello? Are you there?”

I look down at my body as if it might not be. But I'm still here. Stiff black dress with a hole, dirty shoeless feet, painted nails. “Hawaiian Sunset” the young woman at the beauty spa called the nail color.

“Who's in there, Dad?” A girl's voice, light but needling.

I peek out from under the quilt. There's the sound of footfalls among the leaves and detritus.

“Dad?”

A hand pats the back wall, searching for the key. I scan the wooden floor quickly, and then the blackened fireplace and the stool near it. There is the key, lying idly on its side. I feel myself exhale, but the quilt is still gripped firmly in my fingers.

In a game of hide-and-seek the trick is to think yourself invisible; that's what I tried to teach Bella. “Don't breathe,” I'd hiss at her when she followed me into a hiding place, as if that were possible.

“Dad?”

Over by the sink, above a cupboard containing a few chipped
cups and enamel plates, a window has been cut. The frame is aging poorly, bullied by the walls, which are older and know better. The glass is warped. I stare at it, my body still and frozen, waiting.

A face fills the window. The man cups his hands by his cheekbones to peer in.

“Dad?”

“Stay there, Huia.” His voice is steady and assertive, it has a hint of an accent. “Are you a Gardner?” he calls.

The question burns. My heart beats a little faster.

“This is a private cabin,” he adds.

I am mute.

“Are you a Gardner?” he presses again, voice kinder, as though he can see me now and knows already that I'm not.

I lift the quilt over my face. I hear the little girl again, but can't make out what she's saying. The man taps on the window but I squeeze my eyes shut. The girl's calls become a shadow to his footsteps around the cabin, once, and then again the other way. He knocks on the door.

“Can you hear me? You're trespassing.”

“Dad?”

“I'll have to contact the owners of the property—”

“Dad?”

“It is illegal to stay here without permission. I will be contacting the owners and, following that, the authorities, if you don't vacate.”

My eyes stay squeezed shut. That's the other trick with hide-and-seek. Don't give up. Once you start thinking you've been
seen, you stop thinking you're invisible, and someone will notice you. Don't give up till your cousin, tall and skinny with scraped knees, is tugging on your shoulder and smacking his forehead, declaring, “
Imbecille, sta stronza!
”—You idiot. Bella learned all the tricks in time, once we were well past the age for games. You could say that hiding became her forte.

*  *  *

When I finally get up, reluctantly, I pad across the floor to the window where the stranger's face appeared. As far as I can see, which is to the closest wall of trees—Douglas firs, western red cedars, western hemlocks, salmonberry bushes, ferns, green upon green upon green—the man and the child are gone. I feel myself shiver, and glance down at my bare arms and the black dress that is creased in a thousand places like an old face, then turn from the window to take in the cabin, scanning for food and clothes.

This was Errol Gardner's cabin, Errol being a direct ancestor of Alex's grandfather. It's been passed down through the family to Marshall Gardner, Alex's father, though he and Mrs. Gardner rarely visit. Mrs. Gardner can't stand the isolation, the bugs, and the outhouse. Especially the outhouse.

I bend to peer into the cupboard below the sink, clearing a grayed spiderweb. The sink and cupboard and the flushing toilet in the outhouse must have been added in the 1950s by Alex's grandfather, Henry—Hank, as he was known. The cupboard handles are silver and round, the top covered with mint-colored linoleum. There are a few old cans on a shelf—fruit, beans, one with the label peeled off that I decide to avoid. I find a can opener
and a few pieces of mismatched cutlery in a resistant drawer and open a can of peaches. The pink-orange orbs bob about in silken syrup like flotation devices. I pierce one with a fork and pop it into my mouth, juice slipping down my chin. I remain standing by the sink and look around the room. It's a cabin for one, only a few pieces of furniture: a bed now covered in the soft, worn red-and-white quilt, a chair, an awkwardly leaning narrow closet, a small square table, a fireplace—if you consider that furniture—and a sparsely stocked bookshelf. Strangely, a child's coloring book lies open on the small table.

Outside, the forest is vast and towering, but inside the cabin is cozy and perfect. There is reassurance in its smallness and its age, and that nothing matches—red quilt, mint linoleum, large forks with small knives. A confused, broken, mismatched woman is not out of place here. A confused, mismatched woman can become invisible here by closing her eyes and practicing childhood tricks.

I walk to the closet where I'd found the quilt in the dark last night. The heady, sickly smell of mothballs fills the air when I open the door and it seems to lean even more. Like the cupboard below the sink, it doesn't contain much. An oilskin jacket on a crocheted coat hanger, a large pair of boots, blue rubber sandals. In one drawer there's a green Hudson's Bay blanket and starchy cream-colored sheets with a scattering of gray spots; in the other, a man's woolen sweater with navy stripes and three brown leather-covered buttons, socks that haven't dissuaded an opportunistic moth, a pair of well-used gardening gloves.

I unfold the sweater and put it on. The wool is coarse against
my skin but quickly warms me. I glance at the wooden chair next to the little table, but decide to take my breakfast outside instead. The door gives a protesting screech as I push against it.

I have only visited the cabin a few times. It sits in a little patch of coastal forest near Chuckanut Drive between Seattle and Vancouver. The closest village is called Edison, which I only remember because of Thomas Edison and because we stopped there for coffee a couple of times. Coffee and a cookie from a place that only accepted cash. I long for a coffee now.

I glance around the clearing, which seems tidy, maintained even, though I can't imagine that's the doing of any of the Gardners. Alex hasn't been here for a long time, and his brother, Daniel, is neck deep in college study. He's going to be a lawyer, to the delight of his parents. I peer into the trees, searching for the man at the window, but can't see or hear him. I lower myself into one of the Adirondack chairs, place my can and fork on the arm, and lean back.

The trees here are giants, forcing the light to duck and weave between them, to reach around defiant trunks to throw rays across the cabin roof. All the tiny flying things, seeds, grit, and small insects, seem to pool in the radiant fingers. Despite the light it is always cooler in the forest, the trees drinking up most of the warmth from the sunshine before it drops through the canopy. The Caputos are always complaining about the cold in this country, the warm Sicilian blood in their veins offended by the Washington damp and cold, but I don't mind it.

I hear a car moving along the driveway and sit up a little straighter. I consider retreating into the cabin but it seems
pointless; the man who came this morning already knows I'm here. The sound of a stereo grows louder as the car comes closer and I guess it can't be the police. Finally the nose of a white Ford comes into view, the music suddenly turned down. A young man unfolds his tall body from the driver's seat.

“Francesca?”

A voice just like Alex's. My breath catches for a moment.

“Daniel.”

He sits down beside me and runs his hand over his face.

Alex's brother doesn't look a thing like him. Daniel looks like their father—brown hair and greenish eyes—where Alex looked like his mother. But their voices are so similar I sometimes had trouble telling them apart on the phone. It only got worse as they got older.