The Taste of Salt (14 page)

Well. People don't say that kind of stuff about him anymore. No point in saying that. I was silent. My mother was silent. Finally, we both started to speak at the same time, our tired, anxious voices running into each other. I won out. “What's going on, Mom?”

“I don't know. He's going to work and going to meetings right along, just like he's supposed to. But he seems kind of jumpy. I don't know. He's just either in the basement by himself or at a meeting. I don't know how that can be all he wants to do.”

“He's not using, though, is he, Mom?”

“No, no, I don't think so. I'm just always worried that he'll start again.”

“Well, you'll know if he does, right?”

A long silence. Then, “Yes. Yes, I will.”

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you have anyone that you talk to about all this? Maybe you should think about going to some of those meetings.”

“Okay, baby, I will.… I should go. I'm sure you have things to do.” That was that. Every time anyone mentions meetings, she shuts down.

My mother refuses to go to Al-Anon, even though she's had to deal with not one but two alcoholics for so many years. I have no idea why. Well. Yes, I do. She's ashamed still, and embarrassed that both her husband and her son have walked the same dark road. I shouldn't talk. I'm the same way—but for her it's different. That's her ex-husband, her child. She seems closer somehow—maybe it'd help her. Maybe it'd give her something to lean on besides my resistant shoulders. She has to deal with Tick all the time. That's what those twelve-step programs are for, right? For people who have to deal with that shit all the time. I haven't truly dealt with Tick in years. I picked him up from Riverrun
because my mother begged me to. But since then? I'm done. I'm not going down with him. I'm not.

I turned my chair around so I could look out the window for a minute. My chest hurt and my eyes stung. I got up and went next door to Ben's office.

He opened the door quickly at my knock. Unlike me, he had clearly actually been working on something or other. He looked preoccupied. Until he saw it was me.

“Hey, Josie, come on in. Hi.” He quickly lifted some papers up off a chair—his office was an insane mess. Unlike Daniel's, in which it is hard to find a paper clip unless you know which drawer they are kept in. The neatness is absolute, unapproachable. There is never even any dust or coffee cup rings on Daniel's desk; he goes over it with a Swiffer cloth every morning.

“Hi, Ben.” I sat down.

“What's up?”

“Oh, I don't know. Having trouble focusing this morning. My mother called. You know.”

He sat back down on his side of the desk. He looked right at me. “Something wrong at home?”

I hadn't told him about Tick. About all the back and forth, the drugs and the booze, the in and out of rehab.

“Maybe,” I said.

He looked at me some more. “It's my brother,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. He still lives in Cleveland. His name's Tick.” I hesitated, biting my lip. I was thinking,
I don't want to talk about this I don't want to talk about this
, but at the same time, I wanted to trust him. I knew I could trust him.

“So what's going on?”

I looked at the wall behind his head. He had hung up some pictures—a cartoon from the
New Yorker
, a still of Jerry Lewis in a lab coat from
The Nutty Professor.
I took a deep breath. “Tick's an amazing guy. Funny, good-looking, charming. I'd probably want to date him if he weren't my brother. He kind of glows. He's always been like that.

“But for the last, I don't know, ten years, he's been drunk. Or high. Or both. I don't even know what all on. It's always something. He's been in and out of rehab twice. I had to go home to help my parents and pick him up from rehab right before you moved here. Sometimes he's all speedy—I mean faster than normal speedy. But mostly he's just drunk. Not so drunk he can't keep a job for a while anyway. But then he fucks up. He works as a trainer with the Cleveland Cavs, and he's almost lost that job. He's sober for now. My mother's still trying to save him. But I don't know if she can. I don't know if anyone can.”

“Why don't you think he'll stay sober?” he asked.

“I don't know. Did I say I didn't think he'd stay sober? I think he will. I mean … I don't know what he'll do. I want him to stay sober. It's up to him, I guess.”

Ben looked at me hard. “Why'd you come talk to me about it?”

I looked back at him. “I like talking to you. Why'd you call me when Leslie left?”

Ben came around the desk and kind of lifted me into his arms. I fit perfectly. “I like talking to you, too.” I didn't move away from him. I could feel his hand moving in little circles on my back. He was hesitant at first, just kissed me very gently. But when I opened my mouth just the littlest bit, inviting him, we started kissing the way I'd imagined so often. I felt like a person in a desert having her first drink of water at the end of a long, long day. I thought of my first dive. The way I wished I could somehow live like that, underwater, at home. I didn't think of Daniel. Not for one single solitary second. It was as if he'd never existed at all.

After a while, we stepped apart. The office was very quiet. We stood in each other's arms, breathing in each other's skin. “I'm sorry,” he whispered, in my ear, mournful.

I pulled back far enough that he could see that I meant what I was about to say. “I'm not,” I said. “I will never be
sorry.” I didn't know what was going to happen next. But I knew what I said was the truth. “I'd better go.” I wiped at my eyes and my mouth with the back of my hand. I just wanted to kiss him again.

“I'll talk with you later,” I said.

“Sure. Later.”

I turned and left the room without looking back. I'll never know how I managed that. Once I was out the door, I went back to my office in a daze. I went in. Sat down. Gazed absently at the wall. The kiss wasn't the start of this thing. It wasn't the middle, or the end. It ratified what was already happening. I didn't know what I would do. I didn't know what I was capable of anymore.

N
OTHING HAD CHANGED
and everything had changed. I worked better than I had in months on my grant, suddenly inspired; it was obvious what needed to be said to earn that money. I deserved it. My scholarship was impeccable. I knew exactly what to write. Every now and then, I would look up from the screen and stretch my arms and the whole thing would suddenly be back, right
in
my body. I was kissing Ben again. We were kissing and we weren't going to stop. Who cared about plankton and how they were affected by the warming of the ocean? Who cared
about fish? His tongue was in my mouth. We were almost the same color, the same small round heads, dark brown with closely cropped hair. Who cared about the fate of the earth? Not me. He was the only thing I cared about. He satisfied my mind.

BEFORE EVERYTHING CHANGED,
part of my new, be-home, be-present promise to myself about Daniel was that I made a point of cooking dinner a couple of times a week. It kind of broke my heart how much it pleased him. And I liked being there to cook for us. I do love him. That was the funny thing about my feelings for Ben—in most ways, they had nothing to do with Daniel. My feelings for them seemed like two entirely separate but necessary chambers of my heart. I got home, went upstairs, changed into stretchy clothes, and put on an old Rufus CD that I hadn't played in years; Rufus was before my time, but they are so great. “Sweet Thing”—what a song. I was fooling around in the kitchen with the salmon and just chiming in with Chaka on the high part—“Love me now or I'll go crazy”—when Daniel came in. He stuck his head in the kitchen.

“What are you making?”

“Salmon.”

“Hope it's not farmed.”

“You know I don't buy farmed salmon.” He started nodding his head to the music. “What is this?”

“What's what?” I'd turned back to the stove, my hips swaying a little.

“This music. It's good.”

“You don't know who this is?”

Daniel's eyebrows went up at my tone. He looked as though he had just realized that he'd filled in the wrong bubble on an important standardized test. “No, I don't.”

“It's Rufus. Chaka Khan and Rufus. From the seventies. I used to hear it all the time on the oldies stations when I was a kid.” Chaka wailed in the background. “Dinner will be ready soon. Why don't you go on up and get changed.” Daniel hated to eat dinner in his work clothes, even though his work clothes were jeans and a polo shirt. He'd wear shorts all year if he could.

What kind of a person doesn't recognize “Sweet Thing” as soon as he hears that unforgettable voice? A person who grew up in a very different world from me, that's what kind of person. A person whose porch didn't face out onto a little blacktop street when he was growing up and who never heard a car go by with Earth, Wind & Fire or Rufus pounding out of the window, a cup of warm Kool-Aid at his feet
and the music sliding under his skin. Daniel didn't know about that. Ben did.

I am not particularly hung up on race. I've dated all kinds of guys. But when I thought about Ben touching me, I thought, too, about the way in which we were the same color, or at least close in color. I thought about how he knew some things I knew without my having to explain them. I hadn't been aware of missing that until now. Another thing Ben woke up in me.

The salmon was done. I called Daniel to dinner.

He sat down and didn't say anything. He had a slightly wounded look that made my heart contract a bit. Why was I treating him so badly? He couldn't help being who he was or having grown up where he grew up any more than I could. He was so kind to me. How could I be angry at him for that? What was I doing? I reached across the table and took his hand. “Sorry. It was kind of a rough day at work.” A lie. A lie to apologize.

“Okay.” He was quiet a moment. “I liked that CD.”

“Thanks. It's one of my favorites from when I was younger.”

He squeezed my hand and pulled away to pick up his fork. “So what happened today at work?”

Here is an astonishment. I started talking about my grant
as though it was just another night. As though it had been just another day. As I talked, it started to feel like just another night. Me and my husband, sitting at the table, talking. For a little while, I forgot Ben's lips on mine. Maybe I could have them both, maybe I could manage this whole thing without any injury. For a little while that night, it felt like I could.

The next day, Ben was standing by my office door when I arrived. Have you ever had all the breath leave your body at once? It's a very interesting feeling. Makes it hard to stand up. My hands shook so hard manipulating the keys that I could barely get the door open. He didn't say anything until we were inside. I went behind my desk. He didn't follow me. He stood very deliberately on the other side and he didn't sit down, even when I gestured that he should. “Josie,” he said then. Just my name. “How are you?”

“How am I?” I laughed a little. “I'm preoccupied. How are you?”

“The same.”

He looked at me for a minute. A thousand things went through his eyes. But he didn't say any of them. He pressed his beautiful hands together. I looked at them. He sighed. “I'd better go,” he said. He had his hand on the knob, his back to me, when he said, “I'll see you for lunch, right?” His voice hopeful.

My heart sang. “Same time as always.” I wondered if he could hear the singing in my voice. He wasn't as strong as he was trying to be. I was glad of that.

L
UNCH WAS PRETTY MUCH
like it always was. I had a salad. Ben had a turkey sandwich. We talked about work, about a lecture we'd gone to the previous week. It was as if that kiss hadn't happened. Or as if we might indeed sail right past it. But then he said, “Anything to say about yesterday?”

“You mean, about what happened in your office?”

“Yeah. I mean what happened in my office.”

I looked away from him. “I don't know. It shouldn't happen again.” I said.

“No. Probably not.”

Even as I said this, I wanted to slide next to him and lay my head on his chest and feel his lips pressing against my skull.

Ben looked at me for a moment, then away. “Well. What about your brother, then?”

“That's a switch.”

“Not sure what else to say about … well, you know. So what about your brother?”

I twisted my fingers together so hard that they hurt a little. “What about him?”

“Why don't you tell me a little more about him? What's happened before?”

I could feel him paying attention to me with every inch of his being. He wanted to know me. My skin tightened with the pleasure of it. So I answered.

I started talking about Cleveland, the gray streets, the olive-colored water of Lake Erie, the flat greenish Cuyahoga River, no ocean anywhere. I told him about how Tick and I were always together when we were kids, how we would fight but then, always, Tick would come back to me, sticking his head shyly around the corner of the door of my room, grinning. I said, “Tick always seemed to be wanting something. I could make him laugh, but I couldn't make him settle down. And then he started drinking. At first it was experimenting. The way kids do. The way you don't worry about too much. And then it wasn't. And we didn't know what to do. We didn't even talk about it for a long time. It was just like with my father. He was drunk most of my childhood. Just sat in the living room like a rock.”

“Does he still drink?” he asked.

“No. He's been sober for a pretty long time now. But it's still hard for me to talk to him. It's hard for me to believe it, after all this time, you know?” I went on, staring at my pant legs. I couldn't look directly at Ben—what would he see in my face if I did? “When I had to go back to Cleveland
a few months ago, right in the middle of a study, and leave my work and leave Daniel and get Tick out of rehab, I pretended that it was only what I was supposed to do, that I didn't mind. But I hated him. I hated being back there. I hate it.”