The Sweetness of Salt (3 page)

chapter

4

When Sophie was sixteen she had a boyfriend named Eddie Waters. We all loved Eddie. He was tall and dark haired, and when he came to dinner he always brought my mother a bouquet of flowers. But Sophie was mean to him. Cruel, even. She spoke down to him as if he were stupid, and often ended their long, drawn-out phone calls by slamming the phone back into the receiver. One night, after a particularly loud argument between them, I tapped softly on Sophie’s bedroom door. She hadn’t come down for dinner, and didn’t touch a thing on the plate Mom brought up. “Soph?”

No answer. Sophie usually let me in when I knocked. I would sprawl out over her bed, drawing in my doodle pad while she did homework. After tonight’s fight with Eddie, however, maybe she had other ideas.

I tapped again. “Soph?” I said, a little louder this time.

“Yeah?” Her voice was stuffy with tears.

“Can I come in?”

There was a long pause. Finally, “Okay.”

I pushed open the door gently. Sophie sat in the middle of her bed, which she had pulled out from against the wall and centered in the middle of the room. She was reading a magazine. Dirty clothes and pieces of paper littered the floor, and her desk was scattered with pens, pencils, and empty coffee mugs. I climbed up amid the perpetual tangle of rumpled sheets and blankets and crossed my legs. “Are you okay?”

She nodded and turned a page of her magazine without looking up. “Why aren’t you in bed yet? Isn’t it past nine?”

“Yeah, but…”

“Listen, if you’re here about me and Eddie fighting, then you can leave,” she said. “Because it’s none of your business.”

I stared at her for a minute. It felt as though she had just slapped me. “You’re mean to him,” I said, before I could stop myself.

Sophie looked up from her magazine. “What did I just say?”

I held my ground. This was for Eddie, not her. “He’s so nice to you all the time, and you’re just mean.” My lower lip began to wobble. “You’re mean and nasty and everyone…”

“Out.” Sophie cut me off abruptly, and then looked down at her magazine. “Out,” she said again when I didn’t move. “Now.”

My eyes began to fill with tears. “You’re mean to everyone!” I shouted.

“Whose side are you on?” Sophie asked. “You’re tired, Julia. Go to bed.”

It might have helped things if she had gotten worked up. Maybe if she had yelled back at me or shed a few tears, the big block inside my chest might have split open. But the boredom in her voice made me furious. “I won’t go to bed.” I was speaking through gritted teeth. “Not until you call Eddie and apologize for being so mean to him.”

“Oh. My. God.” Sophie tossed her magazine to one side and rolled off her bed, all in one fluid motion. She caught me around the top of the arm, dragged me from her room, and while I stood there yelling at the top of my lungs, she slammed and locked her door.

Mom came running upstairs, “What in the world is going on here?”

I was sobbing by then, incomprehensible as I tried to explain what had happened.

“Sophie?” Mom knocked on her door. “What’s going on?”

“Leave me alone.” The words were heavy and solid, spoken with finality.

“Come on, sweetie,” Mom said, taking my hand. “Come with me.”

Mom sat with me while I took a warm bath and then she dried me off, helped me into clean pajamas, and tucked me into bed. My breath was still coming in little hiccups.

“Don’t let Sophie get to you,” Mom said, sitting on the edge of my mattress. “She’s going through a lot right now.”

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

“She’s a teenager,” Mom said. “And she has a boyfriend. You’ll see when you get there. There are a lot of emotions involved.”

“She’s mean,” I said stubbornly. “I hate her guts.”

“No, you don’t.”

I ignored her. “And she’s not even nice to Eddie.”

Mom tucked her hearing aid wire behind her ear. “Well, Eddie and Sophie’s business is for them to worry about.”

I pouted for a few seconds, and then reached up to finger the tiny springy cord attached to her hearing aid. When I was really little, still drinking out of a bottle, I used to drift off to sleep with one hand attached to the delicate rubber tubing. As I got older, I pretended that the wire was a pet baby caterpillar. Now, I just touched it because it was there.

I reached up with my arms. “I love you, Mom.”

She bent down and kissed me. She smelled like Ivory soap and charcoal smoke from the grill. “I love you too, sweetie. Good night.”

Later that night, I felt someone crawling into bed with me. I turned, half asleep, to see Sophie’s tear-streaked face staring at me from across the pillow. Her big blue eyes were lined with little veins of red, and her nose was running.

“I’m sorry I’m so awful,” she whispered. “I don’t mean to be.” Her voice broke on the last word and a new sob worked its way out of her mouth. I snuggled in under her neck as she wrapped her arms around me. She cried softly for a few more moments. After a while, I could feel her settle her chin on top of my head. She breathed in deeply and then exhaled with a soft shudder. “I love you, Jules,” she murmured.

“I love you too,” I whispered.

We fell asleep like that, until morning.

chapter

5

I went upstairs to change when Sophie and I finally got home. Zoe had rushed across the street into her house, but there still wasn’t any sign of Milo. Mom and Dad were busying themselves in the kitchen: Mom setting out a platter of cheese and fruit, while Dad struggled to open a bottle of sparkling water. The radio was on in the background, tuned to the soft-rock station Mom always listened to.

I had just kicked off my shoes when a light knock sounded on my door. Before I had a chance to say anything, Sophie opened it and walked into the room. “Hey.” She had already changed out of her slip dress into a Tweety Bird T-shirt and a pair of soft, worn-out jeans that hung low on her hips “Mind if I hang out for a minute?”

“Sure.” My heart pounded as she meandered around, studying the room the way she always did when she came back home. This had been her bedroom before she left and sometimes as I watched her inspect it, I felt nervous, as if I wasn’t holding up my end of some unstated bargain. Now she paused in front of my dresser, staring down at Milo’s little cardboard card taped to the top of it.

“Unhook me?” I turned around so I could back my way to Sophie.

Sophie unhooked the tiny clasp and then turned back to my dresser. She leaned in, moving her lips soundlessly as she recited the words that Milo had written. “Is this your handwriting?” she asked, pointing. “It’s so tiny.”

“No. Milo gave it to me. For Christmas.”

“Milo?” she repeated. “Zoe’s brother?”

I nodded.

Her face lit up. “The one you were talking to after graduation? Oh my God! He’s so cute! Are you guys dating?”

I stepped out of my robe and arranged it on a hanger. “No, we’re not dating. We’re just friends.”

“Well, this is a pretty—what’s the word I’m looking for?—personal gift to give a
friend
.”

I blushed, glancing briefly out my window. The tiny window seat across the street was empty. “What do you mean?”

“
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands
.” I bit the inside of my cheek as Sophie read the quote aloud. For some reason, it didn’t sound quite so magical coming from her. “Are you serious?” Sophie asked. “That’s practically intimate.”

I shrugged. “It’s about hands. What’s intimate about hands?”

“Julia.” Sophie sat down on the bed with her knees open wide. “That is an incredibly intimate line. Think about it. The person who wrote it was obviously deeply in love with someone. People don’t write things like that for just anyone, you know. There’s meaning behind those words. He’s trying to tell you…”

I rolled my eyes, cutting her off. “Okay, so maybe Milo and I sorta, I don’t know, tried something.” (Or whatever taking me to the prom was.) “But it didn’t work. We’re better off as friends.” (If we were even that.) “Believe me.”

“Oh.” Sophie paused. “Why?”

“We just are.” I shook my head. “It’s not really something I want to talk about.”

Sophie got up and walked over to me. She pulled one of my hands out and studied it for a moment, like she was examining it under a microscope. “I never thought of you as having small hands,” she said finally.

I pulled away uncomfortably and headed for the closet. “I don’t. That line’s not literally about me. Milo just likes that poet.”

She paused for a few beats. “That’s e. e. cummings, right?”

“Yeah.” I paused, hanger in my hand. “How’d you know that?”

“I know a lot of things you don’t know that I know.” For a split second, she held my eyes with hers. “Anyway, whatever the situation is between you and Milo, the boy’s got good taste. In girls
and
poetry.”

I exhaled as I realized the moment had passed, hung up my robe, and began to unbutton the front of my dress.

Sophie looked amused as I shimmied out of it and made a beeline for my dresser, clutching the dress against the front of me. “Can I ask you a question without you getting mad?” she asked, flopping down on top of my bed.

“Maybe.”

“Are you still a virgin?”

I whirled around, still holding the dress against me, and looked at her, aghast. “What?”

She rolled up along her back so her legs stuck up straight above her. “I’m just saying. You look so uncomfortable getting undressed in front of me, and I remember that I used to be like that too, until I started sleeping with Eddie.”

“You and Eddie…?” I let the sentence trail off.

Sophie let her legs fall back down. “Had sex?” she finished. “Well, yeah. You ever get a good look at him? Jesus, I think even the
boys
in our school wanted to sleep with him.”

I turned back around, yanked open my dresser drawer, and rummaged inside for my favorite jeans. This little bit of unwanted information had just sullied the golden image I still had of Eddie. Sophie watched me intently, still in her upside-down position, as I pulled on a black camisole and a V-neck T-shirt edged with tiny sparkles. I didn’t know what Zoe was planning on wearing to Melissa’s party, but this was about as fancy as I got when it came to going out.

“So, are you then?” she asked. “A virgin, I mean?”

I reached down and snatched my dress off the bed. Of course I was still a virgin. “You know what, Sophie? That’s really none of your business.”

“Oh, I know.” Sophie rolled back down, stood up, and walked over to look at my shot glass collection. “God, Mom would be horrified, wouldn’t she?” She picked up a shot glass Dad had bought me from Wellesley when we had gone to visit the campus last fall. It said
GO BLUE
on the front. “Where’s Pitt?” she asked finally, turning around.

“What?”

She pointed to the shot glass collection. “The one from Wellesley is front and center, and it looks like you have one from every other place in the country, but nothing from Pitt. Don’t you think it’s weird that you don’t have a shot glass from the school you’re going to?”

I shrugged. “It’s there. I think it’s toward the back.”

Sophie set the shot glass back in its place. “What’s your major going to be there, anyway?”

“Political science,” I said. “I’m doing the whole prelaw thing.”

Sophie stared at me. “Prelaw?” she repeated. “As in becoming a lawyer? Like Dad?”

I nodded, pushing down another flutter of annoyance. “What’s wrong with being a lawyer?”

“Nothing’s wrong with it.” Sophie sat back down on my bed. “I mean, if that’s what you want to do.” She looked at me. “Is that what you want to do?”

“Of course it’s what I want to do.” I picked up a folded T-shirt, shook it loose, and then began folding it again.

“Why? Because Dad’s a lawyer?”

I gave her a look. “Don’t be annoying, Sophie. Why would Dad being a lawyer have anything to do with what I want to do with my life? I do have my own brain, you know.”

“You think so well on your feet, Julia, which is exactly the kind of trait you need to become a good trial lawyer.”
Dad had said that to me in ninth grade, solidifying my decision once and for all.

Sophie sidestepped my question by asking another one. “Okay then, why do you want to be a lawyer?”

“Because I think it’s interesting, okay? And I like it.”

“What’s interesting about it?”

I sighed exasperatedly. “Everything’s interesting about it. It’s…the law. You know. You get to uphold our constitution every day, protect people’s rights. See that the accused get a fair and honest trial. It’s a noble profession, Sophie. Maybe one of the noblest. ”

“Since when have you been interested in being noble?” Sophie drew her head back as if she had just tasted something bitter.

I put a hand on my hip. “Why do you always have to be so critical?”

“I’m not being critical,” Sophie said. “I’m just trying to understand. What is it about being an attorney that excites you, Julia? What gets your blood pumping? Helping people? Is that it? Or do you have some kind of burning desire to keep law and order in Silver Springs? I mean, what is it?”

Excites me? Was she kidding? This wasn’t about being excited. It was about getting things accomplished. Creating a career that would lead to bigger and better things. Assistant district attorney maybe, or even the district attorney, if I created a sharp enough record. Maybe even a judgeship somewhere in the future. “You know what?” I said. “You’re being a real jerk.”

Sophie looked away. “Well, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be. I just never would’ve thought you’d go that route. You were always so creative, Julia.”

“Creative?” I repeated. “I don’t have a creative bone in my body!”

“You do too!” Sophie insisted. “What about all those adorable little fruit people you used to draw when you were little? Remember? Mr. and Mrs. Apple? The Twin Bing Cherries? With their tiny striped arms and legs. Mr. Lima Bean even had a little fedora. They were so cute!”

I cocked my head. “Sophie, I was like
six
when I did that stuff. It was doodling. You can’t make a career out of doodling.” I tossed my head. “I’m getting a chance to see things up close up this summer too. Dad got me an internship at the DA’s office.”

“So you’re gonna tail the district attorney around all summer?”

I shrugged. “Probably not the district attorney himself. But definitely the assistant DAs. Dad said I’ll probably be able to sit in on a few trials too.”

Sophie got up from the bed and went over to my shot-glass collection again. “Well, I hope you have fun,” she said, picking up the Harvard glass. “That’s what it’s all about, Julia.”

Fun. This was only one of a gazillion things that separated my sister and me. She insisted that life was meant to be lived in some weird, constant state of amusement, even if it meant not making enough money to pay for heat in the winter or falling behind on her rent. It was probably the reason why she was leaving a steady, good-paying job at the nursing home to go open a bakery. Fun was for weekends, I wanted to tell her now. Fun was for later. After the hard work. “I’ll have fun. I always have fun.”

“I don’t know about that,” Sophie said. “It seems to me you haven’t—”

“You don’t know anything about me,” I said, cutting her off sharply.

She turned, absorbing the blow of my statement, and then put the shot glass back on the shelf. For a moment she just stood there, aligning it neatly with the others. Then she nodded, as if accepting the ugly fact.

“You know, I used to have a collection,” she said finally.

“Of what?”

“Condoms.” She grinned slyly. “Unused, of course.”

“Sophie…,” I started, but she pulled on my arm and sat me down on the bed next to her.

“I’m serious! I did!”

I extricated myself from her grip. “Whatever. You’re acting really weird.”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “Why? Because I’m talking about things like sex?”

“No, because you’re talking about things like sex with
me.
We’ve never talked about stuff like this, Sophie, because we don’t talk more than two or three times a year, and when we do, it’s about school or grades or the weather. I mean, I don’t even know how I’m supposed to respond when you tell me things like that.”

The expression on Sophie’s face changed from amusement to annoyance to confusion—all in five seconds. “What do you mean, how you’re supposed to respond?” she asked. “It’s just a conversation, Julia, not a test.”

“Well, it makes me uncomfortable,” I said firmly.

“Okay. Fine. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

I headed for the door. “I’m going down. You coming?”

Sophie sighed. “Yeah,” she said, dragging herself off the bed. “I’m coming.”