The Sweetness of Salt (7 page)

part

two

chapter

13

Mom was right. Driving such a distance in the dark was probably not the smartest thing to do. As the light began to sink behind the hills and fade entirely from the sky, I tried not to let my nerves get the best of me. The good thing was that the majority of the trip was on the highway. A straight highway. In fact, the first hundred miles, along Route 84, was so boring that I had to turn the radio on loud so I wouldn’t fall asleep. Cyndi Lauper wailed in my ears as I pulled onto the New York Thruway and settled in for eighty more miles of silent road, but after a while, I turned the radio off. The silence, strangely enough, was comforting.

I still wasn’t 100 percent sure what my motivation was for doing this. I did know I wanted to hear Sophie’s version of things. I wanted to stand in front of her and ask her why she had kept Maggie from me. But why I was driving three hundred and fifty miles to ask her—right now, with everything else going on in my life—wasn’t really clear. Why was I letting this weird sense of urgency take over instead of the usual straightforward, calculated way I did things? And how was it that I had just graduated at the top of my class two days ago and now felt as if I didn’t have a clue about anything at all? Maybe in an ironic sort of way it would turn out that Sophie was the one who had a handle on things; after all, she’d spent seventeen years keeping a secret. And a massive secret at that. I’d done a lot difficult things in the last few years—getting a 1680 on my SATs (after taking them six times), receiving the highest score ever on Mr. Phillips’s ridiculously grueling chemistry final—but I’d never done anything like that. And as much as it angered me that she had done it, I couldn’t help but feel a strange kind of awe about her too.

The occasional punctuation of a few red taillights broke up the vast blackness in front of me. A lopsided moon moved overhead, gossamer clouds separating in front of it like milkweed strands. By the time I reached the end of the thruway, it had scuttled to the front, like an enormous blinker pointing the way.

Every time I tried to imagine the impending scene between Sophie and me, I felt sick. I’d seen enough blowouts between Sophie and Mom and Dad over the years to know that arguing with Sophie was not for the faint of heart. Sophie, if it could be said, was pretty damn good at arguing. I had never known her to back down. She held her ground the way a bullfighter waited in front of a bull, fluttering that red cape until the last possible second. And then, just before the charge, she would move, so swiftly that Mom or Dad or whoever it was she was baiting did not even have time to blink. By the time they were ready to face her again, she had settled into another fighter stance, red flag waving all over again.

It was not something I was looking forward to. But maybe, when things finally got said, when details were spread out before us, an argument would not be necessary. Maybe we could just sit there and…talk.

I closed my eyes for a second, trying to imagine it. And then I opened them again.

We were talking about Sophie here, a girl who had once been dubbed by Dad as Miss Darrow, after Clarence Darrow, possibly the most famous trial lawyer in history. He was known for his powerful closing arguments.

Who was I kidding?

chapter

14

When I was nine years old I won the Acahela Summer Camp Spelling Bee. It had come down to a final round between me and Hannah Reed, who stumbled on the word “octopus.” I clutched my little plastic trophy on the bus ride home, wriggling with excitement at the thought of showing it to Sophie. Mom and Dad always made a fuss over my good grades, but getting Sophie’s approval was like hitting gold. Once, after I had shown her a perfect math test—complete with three gold stars—Sophie asked if she could hang it in her room. Seeing my paper there every time I came into her room afterward sent a swell of pride through me.

It was unseasonably cool that day in July. Leaves on the maple trees whipped to and fro under a sharp wind, and the sun peered out faintly behind a film of clouds. The air smelled like rain. I had just passed the kitchen window when I heard someone shouting. The window was cracked slightly and I stood under it, listening with my heart in my throat.

“They’ve been saying shit behind my back since the end of last year,” Sophie said. “They just haven’t been as vocal about it until now. Seriously, Mom, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter.”

“What kinds of things? About your weight?”

“Yes, about my weight!” Sophie exploded. “Like it’s a big deal that I put on twenty pounds!”

“Well, what are they saying exactly?” Mom asked.

“You want to know what they’ve been saying? When I got up from my lounge chair at the pool today, some asshole friend of Eddie’s made oinking noises. And when I walked over to the snack bar to get a soda, I heard Marissa Harrington call me a lard-ass under her breath. Okay? That’s the kind of shit I’m dealing with.”

“Sophie, please.” Mom was begging. “Don’t use that kind of language.”

“Jesus Christ,” Sophie yelled. “Me using bad language isn’t the point here, okay? You asked me what was wrong and I told you what was wrong.” I flinched as the sound of something being slammed filtered through the window. “I don’t know why I ever think I can talk to you about anything!”

I counted slowly to ten, then went inside.

Mom looked bewildered as I walked through the door. “Julia,” she said flatly.

“What’s wrong with Sophie?”

Mom blinked. “Oh, nothing. She’s having a rough day is all. She’ll be fine.” She glanced down at my trophy. “What’s that?”

I held it up. “I won the spelling bee at camp today.” Somehow, the news didn’t feel that exciting anymore.

But Mom squealed and clapped her hands and kissed me. She placed the trophy on the kitchen counter so she could admire it, and then said, “How about a snack?”

“No thanks.” I grabbed the trophy and began to climb the stairs.

Mom came after me. “Honey? Don’t bother Sophie right now, okay? She’s not feeling that great. You can show her your trophy later. Don’t bug her now.”

“I won’t
bug
her.” Insulted that Mom would even suggest such a thing, I sat in my room for a while, staring at the little prize in my hands.

Little drops of rain began to pelt my bedroom window. I put my trophy down and went over to the chair behind my desk. I drew a fat pear with arms, legs, a hat, and a skirt. Then I drew a pair of cherries, connected by a single stem, holding hands. All of them wore striped socks, bows in their hair, and had little red cheeks. I put my colored pencils down. Sophie had to see my trophy. She just had to. If anything could make her feel better right now, it would be this. I knew it.

I tapped very gently on her door. “Sophie?”

“Go away.”

I paused, pressing my forehead against the door, and squeezed the trophy in my hand. “Sophie, I just want to show…”

The door flung open and I stepped back, surprised. Sophie’s hair hung around her face, as if she had turned her head upside down and shaken it. Black eyeliner had been drawn thickly around the bottoms of her eyes, and her lips were painted a garish red color. “What do you want?” she screamed. Even her voice, hoarse and shrill, sounded as if it didn’t belong to her. But it was not until I looked down and saw the hair—a large, massive clump of it—clutched in her right hand, that I began to cry.

I took another step back and bumped into the wall. The sound of Mom’s footsteps running up the stairs echoed somewhere faintly in the background, but she was not fast enough. Sophie had already snatched the trophy out of my hands and was glaring at it. “This?” she yelled. “This is what you wanted to show me?” I tried to flatten myself even more against the wall as Sophie leaned down. Her weird eyes leveled with mine. The red lipstick had begun to smudge around her bottom lip, and her breath, hot and metallic smelling, made me wince. “You think getting first place all the time will make them like you a little more?” she hissed. She held the trophy to my face, as if I might forget what it looked like, and then threw it down the hallway. I stared, horrified, as it scuttled noisily against the hardwood floor, and then spun into a corner. Suddenly, Sophie’s hot breath was in my ear. “Well guess what? Being perfect won’t change anything. Believe me. I’ve already tried.”

Mom burst out from the steps, racing toward us. “Don’t touch her!” she screamed, arms waving out in front. “Don’t you
touch
her, Sophie!”

Sophie straightened up. She stepped back as Mom grabbed me and held me against the front of her. Mom’s breath was coming in little spurts, as if she couldn’t catch it fast enough, and behind me I could feel her legs shaking.

“Don’t worry,” Sophie said in a strange voice. “I’m not going to hurt her.”

I could hear her behind me as she turned and walked back into her room.

And then, inside the safety of Mom’s arms, the slam of her door.

chapter

15

I got lost in Albany after stopping at a Burger King for dinner. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I thought, driving aimlessly along a mile-long street before realizing I was probably going in the wrong direction. It was almost two in the morning. A few street lights here and there broke up the darkness, but it was hard to make out much of anything. Finally I pulled over at a twenty-four-hour gas station. It was empty except for a lone gas attendant, an older man with a graying beard. I locked my doors as he approached and then rolled down the window just an inch as I asked for directions. “Oh, you ain’t too far off.” The man scratched his head with diesel-stained fingers. “You gotta go back down this road…”

“Can you hold on a second?” I dug around in my purse for a pen. “I want to write this down.” The man slowed his speech as I wrote and when I went over it, repeating his words back slowly to him, he grinned and nodded his head. “You’ll be fine,” he said, tapping the side of the car. “Just drive it like I said it.”

He was right. Twenty minutes later, much to my relief, I was back on course.

The sun was just starting to rise, dismissing the moon with a slow bleed of horizontal light, when I finally spotted the sign for Poultney. I pulled the car off to the side of the road, put my head down in the middle of the steering wheel, and took my first real breath since the trip had begun. It was 4:47 a.m.—eleven hours and forty-seven minutes after I had left Silver Springs.

Sophie hadn’t told me where on Main Street her place was, but since the street itself was no longer than a football field, I drove up and down several times, looking for some kind of clue. It was a sweet, sleepy stretch of road, scattered with black lampposts and neat lawns. Green Mountain College sat at the north end of it, a tiny campus dotted with brick buildings, paved pathways, and a multitude of maple trees. I slowed the car down as I passed a Mobil station, Perry’s Family Eatery, the Poultney House of Pizza, something called the Red Brick Café, Tot’s Diner, a redbrick church, and finally, around a slight curve, Poultney High School.

Interspersed between the business establishments were regular houses, all in various states of duress. Most of them were neatly maintained, with picture-perfect lawns and pristine front porches. One or two of them, however, looked as if they had been forgotten about entirely. I passed by them with my heart in my throat, hoping that I wouldn’t find some semblance of Sophie behind the peeling paint and rickety frames.

My phone buzzed inside my pocket. Damn. I’d forgotten to call Mom again. She’d called as I’d been trying to find my way out of Albany and I’d lied, telling her that I had an hour or so more to go. I’d turned my phone off, but she’d probably been up the rest of night, pacing around the house. Dad too.

“Mom,” I said. “I literally just got…”

“You said you would
call,
Sophie. You promised!” Her voice was a combination of rage and tears.

“I got lost, Mom. But I’m here now. I just this second drove into Poultney. I’m here, okay? And I’m fine. I’m totally fine.”

She inhaled shakily. “Okay.”

“I’m going to get Sophie now. I’ll call you in a little while.”

I tossed the phone back into my bag and let my head fall back against the seat. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something moving. A man wearing baggy black pants and a Red Sox baseball cap was strolling down the opposite side of the street. I watched as he stopped suddenly, stooped to the ground, and picked something up. He studied the object for a few seconds, turning it around with his fingers, and then inserted it into the side pocket of his jacket.

I rolled down the window. “Excuse me?”

The man looked over at me and adjusted the brim of his cap. Tufts of white hair poked out from the sides.

“Hi,” I leaned across the seat, close to the window. “I’m from out of town. I’m looking for my sister. Sophie Anderson? She lives somewhere here on Main Street. She’s opening a bakery. Have you ever heard…”

The man cut me off with a point of his finger, indicating the house directly behind me. I turned around, taking in the two-story, ramshackle structure with a slow dread, and then looked back at the man. “This…this one? Are you sure?”

He nodded, closing his eyes for emphasis, and pointed at it once again.

“Okay,” I said miserably. “Well, thanks.”

To be honest, 149 Main Street looked as if it had once been a pretty decent-looking house. About a hundred years ago. Now it had the unsettling appearance of having been uprooted by a tornado, whirled around a few times, and then flung back to earth. A good chunk of the roof on the left side was missing entirely. Bare wooden beams, thick and pale as elephant ribs, indicated that something up there was in the process of being restructured, but I could not tell what. The other half of the roof, miraculously enough, looked okay, except for an old dilapidated chimney that stood stubbornly upright in one corner. Curls of peeling brown paint dotted the sides of the house, and the front porch had an enormous hole in the middle of it. The porch railing, full of missing spokes, looked like a mouthful of teeth that had been punched out.

This was Sophie’s place? The soon-to-be bakery?

I ran my hands through my hair, put the car back in gear, and made a hesitant turn into the driveway. Clusters of dead, rotting bushes cleaved to the side of the house, and the lawn—if it had indeed ever been a lawn—was a mess of brown dirt. A side porch, leading up to a small narrow door, held a green watering can and a white wicker rocking chair. Maybe the man had been mistaken. This place didn’t look or feel like Sophie at all.

Suddenly the side door opened, and as if she knew I’d been thinking about her, Sophie appeared, dressed in denim overalls and a white T-shirt. The cuffs of her overalls had been rolled up around the ankles, and her sneakers were spattered with paint. The edges of a red bandanna, folded and tied around the top of her head, stuck out like little ears, and her blond hair was scooped back into a ponytail. She looked confused for a moment, her eyes taking in the green Bug, and then they opened up wide. “Julia?” She ran over, tapped on the window glass and then yanked open the door. “Julia? Oh my God! You’re here! I can’t believe you’re here!”

I giggled with relief, forgetting the state of the house for a moment, or even the reason I had come up to see her in the first place. “Believe it,” I said, getting out of the car. “I’m here.”

She grabbed me and held me tight against her. The smell of turpentine and cigarettes drifted out from her hair. “You
drove
?” she asked, pulling away again. “The whole way? By yourself?”

I nodded, realizing for the first time as she said it, that in fact I had. “I got lost in Albany, though. That place is like a maze.”

Sophie looked down at her watch. “It’s not even five yet. What’d you do, drive all night?”

I nodded again.

“Aha!” she chortled. “That’s my girl!” She frowned suddenly. “Wait. Is everything all right? Are you in trouble?”

“No!”

“Mom and Dad? They’re all right?”

“Yeah. They’re fine.” Now was definitely not the time to get into things. “God, Sophie. You always think the worst.”

“So then, you just…felt like coming?” Her voice was soft. “To see me?”

“Well, yeah. Just for the weekend though. I have to leave Sunday. My internship starts Monday.”

For a split second, Sophie’s face fell. Then she flung an arm around my shoulder. “Oh, Jules, I’m so sorry about that whole scene. At your dinner, I mean. I was gonna call and explain everything to you, but then I felt weird about it, and I don’t know…I just feel so bad about the whole thing. Especially leaving without saying good-bye.” She scratched her upper lip. “I really am sorry. I hope I didn’t ruin your big day.”

I shook my head. “You didn’t. It’s okay.”

She studied my face for a minute and then laughed out loud. “I just can’t believe you’re here! In Vermont! And that I get you all to myself for a whole weekend!”

“What about Goober?” I asked suddenly, looking around. “Where’s she?”

“Oh, she’s still with Greg. He took her camping. It’s her favorite thing to do in the summer. They go up to Lake Bomoseen and stay the whole weekend.”

“Oh.” I was disappointed. “She’s not even gonna remember what I look like the next time she sees me. When’ll she be back?”

“Not till Monday.”

“Shoot. I’ll be gone by then.”

“We’ll call her.” Sophie grabbed my arm. “Listen, have you eaten yet?”

“You mean breakfast?” I shook my head.

“Leave your things in the car,” Sophie said, pulling me down the driveway toward the street. “Right now, I’m taking you to breakfast at the best place in town.”