Season of Salt and Honey (24 page)

My heart beats against my palm, which is resting on my chest. The music is inside me. Pulling at me from the inside.

Then, in a sudden, hopeful way, it's over.

Bella whistles. “Encore, Daniel!”

But there is no more. Just the one beautiful song. Sweet, sad, and too short.

*  *  *

At Merriem's, on the fourth day, I hang out a few pieces of laundry on a wooden frame in front of the big living room windows. Merriem spreads honeycomb on slices of rosemary toast. Honey she collected from her hives, bread she baked. The smell is piney and sweet and comforting, like the forest.

Merriem gestures for me to sit and passes me a piece of toast, the heat still rising from it. “How are you doing?” she asks.

She's wearing a blue dress and a long cardigan that reaches down to her knees. Chestnut-colored wool, with a thick, loose weave. One of her earrings is a moon and the other is a sun. They remind me of similar terra-cotta versions that hang on Aunty Rosa's outdoor wall.

“Okay,” I reply, retrieving dripped honey from the plate with the tip of my index finger. “Is it all right I'm here so often? I enjoy doing the laundry. I never thought I'd say that.”

“Of course it's all right. It's nice to have the company. And sometimes doing laundry is just the ticket.” She nods at the wooden frame. “It reminds me of hanging cloth diapers.”

I frown. “You have children?”

She smiles, shakes her head. “I lived on a kibbutz. It was part of my work. Hundreds of cloth diapers, day after day after day, clothesline after clothesline. Like party pennants. I hated it at first. It seemed so dull. I think I had a different idea of what kibbutz life would be like.”

“A kibbutz . . . in Israel?” I ask.

She nods.

I imagine Merriem in a kibbutz, transplanting her face on to the images I've seen of women with head scarves in faded colors, the sun high and hot in the sky.

“Ezra,” Merriem explains, without my asking. “He was diabolically handsome. I was there for almost a year.”

“Maybe I wouldn't like laundry as much if I had hundreds of diapers to deal with.”

She shrugs. “You'd be surprised. I enjoyed washing diapers in the end. It was meditative. Simple. Ezra and I fought a lot. In the end I enjoyed the diapers more than him probably.” She chews her toast noisily, then laughs. “Diapers don't talk back.”

I glance at the washing on the frame. It's not just clothes I've been cleaning. The cabin is also tidy and scrubbed. I have swept it out, ancient gray cobwebs and all, then mopped the floors by hand with an old cloth. I've even polished the window with vinegar and newspaper, and cleaned the bookshelf, one dusty book at a time. I've finished
The Swiss Family Robinson
and read Huia's guide to birdlife from cover to cover.

“And the women,” Merriem adds, “on the kibbutz, they were something.” She sprinkles bee pollen onto the honey on her toast. “They'd been through so much and they worked so hard, yet they were cheerful. It left a big impression on me. Plus, they helped one another. They helped me. I'd never had that before.” She passes me the bee pollen. “Women haven't always been so kind to me. I didn't have sisters growing up.”

I nod, although I'm not sure how kind Bella and I have been
to each other. Not very; not at all. I still avoid talking to her if I can help it, so she spends her time talking to Daniel or swimming or taking her yoga mat down to the ocean.

“Bella's lucky to have an older sister,” Merriem says. “Especially one that washes her underpants,” she adds with a laugh.

“Oh,” I say, glancing in the direction of the laundry frame, “I was doing my own.”

Merriem just smiles and I return to eating my toast.

“Ezra died a few years ago,” she says after a pause. “I heard about it through a friend.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It's okay. Cancer, of course. He had a family, kids and a wife. I think he was happy.” She shrugs. “Still . . .”

My tongue feels thick in my mouth. I clear my throat. “Still . . . it hurts.”

“Exactly. The country songs aren't wrong. It hurts. The Buddhists aren't wrong either. Life is suffering.”

“Life is suffering,” I repeat. My voice seems to have shrunk. I stare at her and ask, “Always?” I sound like a child.

Merriem shakes her head. She reaches over and takes my hand. “Not always.”

I swallow. I can barely whisper, “When is it not?”

Merriem gives a small sigh. “Oh, darling. Just when it's not. When it's a good day in between the hard ones.” She squeezes my fingertips. “When the sun shines and the bees make honey. When you're with people who love you. When you find treasures—like morels and fiddleheads and huckleberries. When there's toast.” She lowers her voice like it's a secret. “When you're doing the laundry.”

I nod, feeling tears welling. “There's no more laundry left to do.”

“There's
always
more laundry. People make their clothes dirty every day.”

“Well, thank God for that,” I say ruefully.

“Truly,” Merriem says. “You gotta start simple, honey.”

Her eyes are wide, imploring me. I think of what Jack said about finding myself under her wing. I place my other hand on top of hers. Her skin is thin and soft and warm.

She shakes her head again. “You young girls, you have too much to carry. You . . . Summer . . . It doesn't seem fair.”

I frown. I'd almost forgotten Summer. Meeting her in the forest. Her kindness in Merriem's kitchen.

“She lost someone too,” Merriem says. “Someone she loved. An accident, she said.”

Her face is full of compassion.

I drop her hand and stand up so fast the tops of my legs smack the table. I run back to the cabin, gulping down big, misshapen mouthfuls of fresh air.

*  *  *

As I reverse out of the driveway, gravel skitters under the tires. Bella stands in the door of the cabin, calls out, but I'm already halfway gone. I see her face is drawn and worried. I watch her lips make the two shapes of my name.

I drive too fast towards Edison. If I'm caught speeding I hope it's Bob Skinner's partner. I'll shamelessly scribble Cousin Giulia's phone number on his hand and speed off again before he has time to think.

Edison, Edison, Edison.
My heart, pounding, seems to drum the word.

When I reach the town, both sides of the street are packed with cars. There are baskets full of spring flowers hanging under the eaves of Flourfarm, and tourists coming out with brown paper bags. Everyone is smiling. The throng is orderly, like bees returning to the hive. Tourists in T-shirts and puffer vests, hiking sandals. Smelling like sunscreen. A guy in an orange T-shirt and tan shorts glances at me and I realize I am panting. Adrenaline pumping through me like I'm about to run. Like I'm about to fight.

Despite the crowd I find Summer easily. She's wearing a black T-shirt with FLOURFARM printed across the front and her hair is in a ponytail. She's by a kids' play area in the corner, passing a stick of chalk to a boy holding a plastic yellow digger. When she sees me she smiles, but it fades fast.

I thought of things to say to her in the car. Things that might come out as a shout. Things that I now realize will turn into a cry, a sob. I find myself saying nothing and staring at her. She looks pretty with her hair up, and she's wearing mascara again today, her eyelashes long and pretty when she blinks at me. My gaze goes over her body, down her jeans to her dirty sneakers, over her breasts, back up to her face. I'm breathing hard through my nose, like there's just not enough oxygen in the air.

“Frankie.” She steps over to me. “Are you okay?”

Her cheeks flush pink and I watch fear, or something like it, wash over her face. She knows. And she knows who I am.

She's known this whole time and I've been the fool.

I wrestle with the tone of my voice before it leaves my throat. I'm proud when it comes out even and not too rushed. “Who. Else. Knows?”

I see the swallow in her throat. Her cheeks turn a darker shade of red. She glances over to the counter and a tall guy, hair the same color as hers, same pale freckles, is looking over at us. Her brother. There's a huge line by the counter.

“All right, Sum?” His voice is drawling but protective.

“Can I use the office?” she calls back. She's still staring at me, her eyes wide.

“Sure thing.”

“The kids . . .” she adds.

“I can see 'em from here,” he says.

Summer points to a hallway and says gently to me, “Back there.”

She walks ahead of me, her shoulders slumped, and I can hear her breathing deliberately, carefully, like me. In and out. In and out. Doing her best to stay contained. In control.

I hate myself for not completely hating her.

I hate that it feels like the pieces of the puzzle are coming together.

*  *  *

“Frankie—”

I cut her off. “You loved him?”

She nods.

I look around the office. It's a mess. There's a desk covered in papers, shelves above it with ring-binder folders, a swivel chair with the seat set low, and a café chair with a broken back.

I take the café chair while Summer sits on the swivel chair. By the desk there are a couple of sacks of flour, and the concrete floor is dusty and floury. I grip the edge of the seat, feel it press painfully into my palm and fingers, hear Summer clear her throat.

“Yes. But . . . it wasn't . . .”

“Did you sleep with him?”

“No,” she says quickly.

“Did you kiss him?”

“Once.”

She says it softly, more wistful than guilty. My head snaps up.

“I'm sorry,” she adds, sounding genuine.

“How did I . . .” I say angrily. How did I not notice? How did I not
see
?

“Frankie . . .”

I raise my hand without looking at her. If I look at her now I will cry and I don't want to. Yet.
Shit.

“When?”

“When . . . The kiss?”

“When all of it.” I am scared, and desperate to know.

“We kissed a couple months ago. How long have I loved him? Probably a while.” She draws in breath. It's ragged. “God. I'm sorry, Frankie.”

“Who else knows?”

“No one.” Then, “Actually, my brother. He only knows bits of it. He knows I needed to get out of Seattle. I thought I was getting away . . . from it . . .”

“Me too,” I say bitterly.

“I told Merriem, I guess,” she adds. “Sort of but not really. Before I knew you were here. Is she the one who told you?”

I nod. “She didn't mean to. She didn't know.”

“No.”

We are looking at each other now. I don't remember looking up. Her cheeks are less pink. Her eyes are red though. She wipes tears from her cheek with the side of her thumb.

“I feel stupid,” I say coldly, shaking my head.

“I was going to tell you straightaway. Not when we met in the forest but the next time. Or at least I was thinking about it. But then Jack and Huia were there. And then . . . I dunno. I didn't expect to . . .” She looks pained. “I didn't want you to be such a nice person. You being nice, being nice to me, made it worse.”

I rub my temple with one hand. “Did
he
love
you
?”

Summer doesn't reply. I can hear the muffled sounds of chatter from the café. It feels like a long time before she answers.

“I hope so. I know I'm not supposed to say that.”

I glare at her, my voice rising. “No, you're not.” I stand but don't leave the room. I point at her. “We were getting married. You knew that, right?”

She nods meekly. “Sometimes you don't get to choose—”

“Yes, you do,” I say sharply.

She puts her head in her hands. “Frankie, please. Please sit down.”

“You
do
get to choose. You get to decide what you get messed up in. You can walk away. You can make decisions.”

I'm still on my feet. Now pacing.

“I know. Look, I know. Please, sit—”

“You play a part. No one has a gun at your head.”

My voice is loud; it seems to bounce back off the walls.

“You
knew
he was getting married,” I accuse.

“Yes . . . I mean, yes, I did. After I . . . started . . .”

“After what?” I demand.

“Please sit down?”

“No.”

“Please, Frankie?”

“No!”

She stares up at me. I want to call Alex. I want to hear him tell it. I want to know what happened from him. But I can't. My heart is thumping. My chest aches.

Summer lowers her voice. “After I started falling in love with him. He proposed to you after I fell in love with him. I tried to stop. I really tried to stop loving him.”

“You were dating Travis.”

“We broke up years ago. Travis was . . . Travis is . . .”

I remember him more clearly now that she's talking about him. Laughter that shoved itself into a room. Grubby, green “lucky” sweater. Gold signet ring. A joker. A bully.

“I remember him.”

Summer nods, as if she sees the recollection in my mind. “Alex . . .” Hearing her say his name makes me wince. Summer's voice softens. “Alex was kind to me after Travis dumped me. I'd met all the guys by then. We surfed together. It was good for me. Surfing has always been good for me. Especially when my mom started seeing someone new, when we moved . . . again. There aren't many girls that surf. It was better for me to go out with the
guys than on my own. Safer. Alex watched out for me. I could trust him not to leave me out in the deep, to tell me where the rips were. Not like Travis. Travis didn't care if I was . . .”