The Sweetness of Salt (16 page)

chapter

36

The movie was full of inane, disgusting bathroom humor that for some reason struck me as horribly funny. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed like that. At anything. Sophie laughed too, although she was much more vocal about it, throwing her head back at certain points and whooping. We giggled violently all the way back to Poultney, reliving the funniest parts over and over again. By the time we pulled into Sophie’s driveway, the muscles under my ribs ached and I had a stitch in my side. Laughing like that had done something else to me too; I felt lighter somehow, as if something had emptied itself.

“Whew!” I wiped my eyes. “God, I feel like I’m going to puke.”

Sophie laughed and got out of the car. “It’s still early. You want to go over to Perry’s for a cup of coffee or something?”

“Sure.”

Perry’s was empty except for Miriam, who was reading the newspaper horoscopes behind the counter, and the Table of Knowledge. The three men looked over as we walked in, their meaty faces breaking into grins. Even Jimmy smiled and nodded.

“Well, whaddya know,” Lloyd said. “You girls here for a nightcap?”

Sophie made a
pshaw
sound. “We’re just here for coffee, Lloyd. Unless you’ve got anything we can put in it?”

Lloyd laughed and patted his breast pocket. “Nothing that won’t burn the lining off your delicate little stomachs.”

Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Try me someday.”

Walt tapped the space next to him with three fingers. “Pull up a chair, girls. We got the whole joint to ourselves.”

Sophie and I exchanged a look. I shrugged. “Okay,” Sophie said. She pulled out a chair for me and placed it between Lloyd and Walt. I sat down tentatively, arranging my hands beneath my legs. Sophie pulled up another chair next to Jimmy, turned it around, and straddled the front of it. “We just got back from the movies,” she said. “Best thing I’ve seen in years. I almost wet my pants laughing so hard.” She nodded across the table at me. “Even Julia laughed.”

The men turned to look at me. “Julia laughed?” Walt repeated. “Well, I’ll be.”

“Yes, I
laugh
,” I said. “I laugh at a lot of things.”

“Well, that’s good to know,” Walt said.

“I’ve never heard you laugh,” Lloyd said. “Hell, I’m not sure I’ve even seen you smile!”

I grinned hugely, then relaxed my face again.

Lloyd nodded approvingly and eyed his tablemates. “Very nice,” he said. “You have good teeth too. You should do that more often.”

Just then, Miriam came over with coffee cups and saucers. She set them down in front of Sophie and me and filled our cups. “Anything to eat, girls?”

“Try the lemon meringue pie,” Walt said. “Jimmy and I just had a piece. It’ll knock you out.”

Sophie looked over at Jimmy. He nodded. “Okay,” Sophie said. “I’ll have a piece of the lemon pie, Miriam. Jules, you want anything?”

“They have strawberry shortcake,” Walt said. “With real biscuits. Miriam’ll heat it for you too, if you want. I don’t know about you, but I gotta have my biscuit warmed all the way through when I have shortcake.”

“For crying out loud, Walt.” Miriam put a hand on her hip. “Why don’t you just rewrite the menu?”

I ordered the shortcake. Miriam brought it over a few minutes later, along with Sophie’s pie and fresh coffee. Walt was right. It was delicious. I dug in, spooning up mouthful after mouthful of strawberries, whipped cream, and biscuit until my plate was clean.

“You thought at all about what color you’re gonna paint that kitchen?” Lloyd asked. “Or you just gonna leave it bare?”

Sophie licked the back of her fork and then set it down against her empty pie plate. “Funny you should ask. I was actually hoping we could talk about it together. I’d like to paint three of the walls a very light yellow. And I was hoping that Julia would do something to the last one.”

I looked up from my plate. “Do something?” I repeated.

Sophie grinned. “Yeah. Draw something. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. You know, maybe a little mural. Of anything.”

“You an artist, Julia?” Lloyd asked. Next to him, Walt stuck his thumbs behind his suspenders and looked at me.

I sighed. “Sophie likes to think I can draw because I used to doodle when I was younger.”

Sophie sat forward eagerly. “Oh, you should have seen the little pictures she created. Miniature fruit and vegetable people with tiny hats and striped legs.” She stopped talking, her eyes getting wide. “Oh my God! That’s what I want you to draw! On the wall in the kitchen. You can do a whole scene with the fruit and vegetable people.” She bounced up and down a little in her seat. “Will you do it, Jules? Will you, will you, will you?”

“You want fruit and vegetable people on your kitchen wall?” Lloyd asked. “You sure about that, Sophie?”

I stared at my sister, not sure if what I was feeling was embarrassment, anxiety, or pride. She nodded her head eagerly at Lloyd, still looking at me. “I’m one hundred percent sure,” she said. “I’d love it. I would totally, totally love it.”

The men turned in my direction now. Sophie was still staring expectantly at me, eyebrows high on her forehead, lower lip caught between her teeth.

“Okay,” I said. “If you want me to.”

Sophie’s face split open into an enormous grin. “Fantastic! Thank you.”

“A produce-people mural,” Walt mused, draining his cup of coffee. “Now
this
I gotta see.”

chapter

37

Alone in my room afterward, I withdrew my phone from under my pillow and dialed Milo. The sound of his voice in my ear made me warm all over.

“How are you?” I asked.

“Good. Bored. There’s not much to do around this crappy little town, in case you forgot. I got a summer job at the Pantry Quik, though. Night shift. I’m actually leaving in about five minutes.”

“The night shift?” I repeated. “Why’d you take those hours?”

“Didn’t have a choice,” Milo said. “It was that or nothing.”

“You reading anything good?” I tucked the phone between my shoulder and chin and reached for my sketch pad.

“
The Tommyknockers
,” Milo said. “It’s actually better than I thought it would be.”

“Is that another Steven King?”

“Yeah. He’s a suspense genius.”

“Is he another scary truth teller?” I started with his hair, sketching pieces of it this time in a thatched pattern to bring out the thickness of it, ending with a slight curl where the ear would be.

“A what?” Milo sounded startled. “Um…maybe. I never really thought about it that way. Stephen King, a scary truth teller. I guess he could be, if you can tell the truth while you’re writing fiction. I don’t know.” He paused. “Wow. I can’t believe you remembered that.”

Of course I remembered that. I remember everything about him. “I’m a nerd,” I said. “I remember everything, remember? It’s my job.”

He laughed. “So what’re you and Sophie doing? Just hanging out?”

“Hanging out? Are you kidding? We’re working our butts off. Sophie’s opening a bakery in her house. We’re redoing the whole thing. Top to bottom.”

“You’re redoing the house?” Milo repeated. “Wow. Is it in bad shape?”

I laughed softly. “Yeah, you could say that.” I shaded his eyebrows, unruly in the middle where they were the thickest. “But it’s coming along. It really is. We’ve been doing a ton of work.”

“I did construction one summer back in Portland,” Milo said. “I liked it.”

“What kind of construction?”

“Just the roof of a house, really. It wasn’t too hard. But I liked being up there, in the bones of it, you know? Seeing everything all laid out like that. And whaling away with my hammer was pretty cool too.”

“We have these older guys helping out.” I told him about the Table of Knowledge. “But Sophie doesn’t use them very often. She’s kind of stubborn about it, really, insisting on doing it herself. I think she’s trying to prove something.”

“Well, maybe you should let her,” Milo said. “Maybe she does have something to prove.”

I stopped sketching, looking down at the face before me. Milo was right. Maybe Sophie did need to show herself that she could do this. Who was I to stand in her way?

“You doing anything for fun?” Milo asked. “Or just working all the time?”

“Well, I take long walks in the afternoon. And I met a really nice guy on one of them. He’s a potter. His name is Aiden. He lives right around…”

“A guy?” Milo repeated.

“Yeah.” I felt a twinge. Was that jealousy I heard in his voice? “He’s been teaching me how to make things. Out of clay. I told you, he’s a potter.”

“What’s he like, really old?” Milo asked.

“No. He’s twenty-four.”

Milo didn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” There was a pause and then, “Aren’t you coming home at all? Even just to visit? I mean, your parents must be going crazy.”

“No, no visits,” I said softly. “I need to be here. I’m staying here until I don’t have to anymore. Then I’ll come back.”

“Yeah. Okay.” I could hear Milo getting up and walking around the room. “I kind of miss seeing you in your window,” he said. “That’s all.”

My heart began to pound. “What window?”

“Your window. In your bedroom. The one you sit in every afternoon after school, doing your homework.”

Oh, Milo.

“Listen,” he said. “I have to go. My boss at the Pantry Quik docks my pay if I’m even two minutes late.” He paused, hesitating. “Will you call me again, though? Soon?”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call you this weekend.”

“Great,” Milo said. “And Julia? If you need anything, anything at all, I’m here. All you have to do is ask.”

I put my pad and pencil down and stared out the window for a while after he hung up. Why did there have to be so many layers to everything, so many unseen—and unsaid—parts? Why couldn’t everything just be spread out, flat and even, so you could just see it for what it was? It could be like an enormous table, full of food. Over there, next to the mashed potatoes, would be the way Milo felt about me. And on the left, beside the broccoli, would be the way I felt about him. The truth about Maggie would be right in the middle, alongside the centerpiece, and all the reasons for Sophie’s anger would be sitting on the plates, ready and waiting. We could come to the table, all of us, and see what it was we wanted, what we felt hungry for. And because we could see it—and even taste it—we could decide if we wanted to take it or leave it.

Did anyone ever do that?

Was there anyone who even knew how?

chapter

38

Two days later, when Aiden offered me another afternoon ride on his quad, I hopped on. We sped through the forest once more, zigzagging through a maze of tree trunks and pine needles until finally bursting out onto a road.

I gripped the sides of his jacket. “I don’t want to go on the road without a helmet,” I said. “Seriously. Can we go back?”

“We won’t drive on the road,” Aiden said. “I just want to show you something.” He turned off the motor and beckoned me toward a stone bridge a few feet away. I leaned over the side next to him. Beneath us was a waterfall, set between two sloped—and very rocky—banks. A stream, thin as a snake, wound its way out from under the falls and then disappeared under the bridge. “Pretty,” I said.

“This is the East Poultney gorge,” Aiden said. “It is pretty. But it’s dangerous too. Those rocks are a lot trickier to navigate then you might think.” He took off his hat. “I come down here all the time, just to sit and hang out. It’s where I get a lot of ideas for my pottery designs.”

“You’ve learned how to navigate over the rocks, I assume.” I glanced in Aiden’s direction.

“Oh, yeah. I’ve been climbing around this place for years. It’s the people who don’t know what they’re doing that get in trouble.” He pointed toward the rushing column of water. The sound it made, gushing over the boulders, reminded me of a teeming rainstorm—steady, rapid, and forcefully liquid. “Sometimes, when the light is weird and milky, like right before a storm, that waterfall can look almost gray,” Aiden said. “Like slate or even smoke. It…I don’t know, I love to look at it like that. It’s cool.”

I stared at the water, trying to imagine it looking like smoke. “I think Sophie comes down here too.”

“Sophie?” There was a thin film of dust all over Aiden’s face from the ride. It made his features look slightly blurry. “Really? I’ve never seen her.”

I shrugged. “She’s been bugging me to come down here ever since I got here. She said I’d love it.”

“It’s a cool place,” Aiden said. “I’m going to miss it.”

We stared down into the gorge for a few moments without saying anything. A loneliness swept over me then, as I tried to imagine being in Poultney without being able to pop in and visit Aiden whenever I wanted. I liked his company—and not just because he was cute. “When are you leaving?” I asked.

“Two weeks,” Aiden said.

I looked at him in surprise. “Two weeks! I thought you said the end of the summer! Why so soon?”

“I found a studio the day before yesterday. And a roommate too. No use putting off what I can start now.”

I gazed back out at the water. “What are you starting now?”

Aiden looked at me. “The rest of my life,” he said. “Just like you.”

I came into the kitchen the next night to find Sophie beating egg whites in a bright copper bowl. Her hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and her cheeks were pink from exertion. I leaned against the butcher block. “What’s that?”

“Oh, I’m just making a lemon meringue pie for the Table of Knowledge boys. It’s been a while and they all love it.” Sophie lowered the whisk for a moment and took a deep breath. “This whipping by hand is killing me, though. I gotta start doing some push-ups again—get some more upper-body strength.”

“Why don’t you use the mixer?”

“Oh no,” Sophie said. “I always use my copper bowls when I do egg whites. It’s the only way.”

“What’s so special about a copper bowl?”

“Well,” said Sophie, “there are actually ions in copper that mix with the egg white and make them very stiff. Egg whites made in a copper bowl will never fall over or deflate.” She glanced up at the rack of pots hanging above her. “All of my pots are copper too. Did you ever notice?”

I stared up at the gleaming pots for a moment. They were a beautiful color, like a burnished pink, and so shiny I could see my reflection in them. “Wow. I actually didn’t notice. Who would’ve thought baking had so much science involved?”

Sophie raised her eyebrows. “Cool, huh?” She picked up the whisk again and tapped it on the side of the bowl. “So. You given any thought to your mural yet?”

I walked over to the wall slowly. It was about the size of the chalkboards we’d had in school—pretty tall and wide. It was going to take a lot of fruit and vegetable people to fill it up. “Actually, I kind of have.”

Sophie started beating the lemon filling. “And? What’d you come up with?”

I turned around. “I don’t think I want to do it.”

Sophie stopped beating. “Why?”

“I mean the fruit people. I don’t want to draw the fruit people. I know you think they’re cute, but…” I walked over to the butcher block and leaned my elbows on the smooth wood surface. “I’ve sort of moved on from that kind of stuff, Sophie. There are other things I can draw now, other things I’ve been drawing. I’d just…I’d like to do something else. If that’s all right.”

“Of course that’s all right!” The words came out of Sophie in one big exhale. Her eyes were wide. “That’s more than all right. What were you thinking?”

“Well, I’ve been fooling around with that sketch pad you got me…”

“Eh? Does big sister know, or does big sister know?”

I smiled. “And I’ve sort of been sketching…well, the street I guess. From my window at least. With the Laundromat and the pizza place and Perry’s…”

Sophie had put the whisk down again. “Oh, Julia.” She was shaking her head. “Main Street? On the wall of my kitchen? It’ll be beautiful. It’ll be gorgeous. Please do it. Please. I would love it.”

“What if it’s not good enough?” I asked. “What if you hate it?”

“That’s impossible,” Sophie said. “I would never hate it.”

“How do you know? You’ve never seen my sketches.”

“How could I?” Sophie cocked her head. “Up until this point, you’ve more or less denied the fact that you even draw.”

I looked down at the table. “I don’t know. It’s just…God, I don’t even know if it
is
drawing. It’s probably still just doodling. Just goofing around.”

“Can I see the picture you did in your sketch pad?”

I could feel my face flush. “Right now?”

“Yeah. Right now.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

Sophie came around from her side of the table and put her hand on top of mine. “Listen to me,” she said. “For a long time, I thought that I should try to be somebody worthwhile, like a doctor or a nurse or a teacher. You know, to make my mark on the world. And then after I did that, I could screw around with flour and butter and eggs. Maybe on weekends, when I had extra time. Like baking wasn’t a good enough profession. And so I held back from really doing it, from going all the way with it. I told myself I wasn’t good enough, that I could never make bread because I was too impatient to let dough rise, and I should
never
try cheesecake because I burned everything made with dairy. But that wasn’t really true, Julia.”

She took a deep breath.

“You know, people make mistakes doing what they love. That’s human nature. What I bake won’t be great every single time. What you draw will probably never be perfect. But the biggest mistake people make isn’t how well they draw this line or crimp that crust. The biggest mistake people make is never finding or doing what they love at all.”

A few silent seconds passed. Outside, I could hear the dull footsteps of someone walking along the sidewalk, the muted roll of tires against the street.

“You found it,” I said finally. “What you love.”

“I did.” Sophie nodded. “And now it’s your turn.”