The Taste of Salt (11 page)

I met Daniel at a conference—we were on the same panel. The conference had not begun auspiciously. By this point in my career, I was used to my fellow scientists being surprised at me, a youngish black woman, as part of their very white male business. Always, there was the question in the air—
What are
you
doing here?
That day not long before my presentation there was an incident that particularly enraged me. Although there were AV guys at the lecture hall to take care of technical stuff where Daniel and I would be
speaking, I was very nervous—it was an important meeting and I wanted to make a good impression. So I got up the morning of the panel, threw on jeans and a T-shirt, and went over to see the space and get comfortable there. I was poking around the back of the stage when a tall, thin white guy came in. I didn't know his name but I'd seen him briefly across the room at the opening night cocktail party. He looked at me quickly, not really seeing me, and then said, without preamble, “Is there any way you can make sure that it isn't too hot in here today? It was broiling at last night's lecture. And there's a garbage can over there that needs to be emptied.”

I didn't say anything at first because, frankly, I really didn't understand. But then I did. He thought I was from maintenance. There was no way that someone who looked like
me
could be one of
them
, one of
him
, I guess I should say. “I'm Josephine Henderson, one of the panelists,” I said, ice shimmering on every word. He turned the color of a tomato—I didn't think that was actually possible but there it was. Stammering and apologizing and slinking out followed. I sat down alone in the back of the room and took four deep breaths and planted my feet into the floor. I was rooted there. They weren't gonna make me leave.

• • •

A
FEW MINUTES BEFORE
the panel began, I took my place on stage next to Daniel, and introduced myself briskly. After that morning, I was not feeling all that friendly toward white men. He looked at me in a way that was both oddly preoccupied and curiously penetrating, like he was trying to figure something out important about me. But I wasn't in the mood to look back. The panel started and he went first.

He had a soothing, musical voice. His presentation was fascinating, so much so that without my noticing it my shoulders relaxed and the anger drained out of me enough that I could focus.

We finished our presentations and, as often happened, there were lots of questions for him, none for me. About ten minutes in, an elderly eminence asked Daniel something that pertained directly to warm water mammals, which is what I'd been talking about. His voice was only a little bit tight when he said, “I think that's a question that Dr. Henderson is better prepared to answer. That was, after all, the subject of her talk and she's an expert in that field.” Then he turned toward me, smiling a little. I noticed that he had a beautiful smile. And he noticed my skill (and the way some people ignored it) without my having to point it out. I smiled back at him and started to answer the elderly
eminence. After that, people started directing questions to us both.

After the panel was over, we stood next to each other, gathering up papers. I spoke first.

“Thanks.”

“For what?” He said this while peering into his briefcase and shuffling through it with a distracted air.

“For telling that guy that he should be asking me the questions.”

Daniel quit rustling and looked up. “Well, he should have been. You really know your stuff.”

“Thanks.” I had told Max that I might call him after the panel was over but, suddenly, that didn't seem so important. “Are you doing anything now?”

Again that steady look. “Nope. Are you?”

“I hope I'm having dinner with you.” Like some impossibly witty, bold movie heroine. I rarely think of things that clever to say at the time it would be clever to say them.

Daniel smiled broadly. “I didn't expect that.” He paused. “But I'd like it. I'd like it a lot.” And that's how we had our first date.

You know how people say
I knew right away that he was the one?
It wasn't like that for me. I don't believe in that “the one” stuff anyway. I liked how smart Daniel was. I liked his laugh. I liked that when I told him the story of the trash
can, that he was as angry as I was—and he took my hand across the table right afterward. That's where things really began. I broke up with Max, and Daniel and I kept going, slow, smooth, steady, affectionate. Gradually, I moved away from focusing what was on the outside of him—his smile, his body—to take notice of how much he loved me. He told me once that I was the smartest person he'd ever met. He told me once that he dreamed about how I laughed. He told me once that I carried his heart in my back pocket. He doesn't say things like that anymore.

Daniel was a person I could live with, which is also not to be underestimated. I'd been with men who could make me scream with pleasure but whom I couldn't have lived with for more than a week. He was orderly and kind and paid his bills and was respected and respectful. We laughed together. We liked the same movies. We liked to look at each other. He seemed like someone I could spend the rest of my life with. So when he asked me to do that, I said yes.

We were married on a sunny July day when the green-head flies were biting and the air was fresh and hot and blinding. We were married on a beach near Falmouth. We were married under a big tent that Daniel's mother somehow was able to rent at a discount through a friend of hers. Everyone was willing to help. We were married in our bare feet as the cold waves rolled in and washed over our toes,
making them numb and painful. We were married laughing. We were married while everyone we loved watched us. Tick quiet and sober (this was between rehabs) and my mother standing straight and proud beside him and next to my father. My father looked shy and suspicious of the abundance of white people and the cold ocean water and the hot sun. He squinted throughout the ceremony. We were married as Daniel's mother stared at my family, slightly baffled. I don't know if she'd ever seen that many black people together in one place before. And now they were her family. We said we'd always love each other. We said we'd take that leap of faith. Together. I was frightened but it seemed like it was time. He had beautiful hands. I was glad to be marrying those. He was very calm and steady and present. I was glad to be marrying that. He made me feel beautiful. I was glad to be marrying that. What he saw in me. What he made me feel. The way he said my name. The way he looked when he told me about his father's death. That's what I was marrying. That's what I wanted near me. He was the one I wanted.

So here we are. We have a home together. We have a life together. But so often my impulse is to stay away from it. I work late when I don't really have to, take on extra little jobs, have to stay and work just-a-little-bit-longer on that grant or that paper or that observation.

Like last night, a few weeks after I got home from picking up Tick. I came home around ten, exhausted, eyes burning from staring at the computer screen for hours. I'm working on a big study of the effect of LFA (that's low-frequency active) sonar on whales. This is the sonar that navy ships use to track down “quiet” submarines—it blasts low frequency sound waves for hundreds of miles under the sea. On the way to the submarines, it impairs all the sentient marine life it encounters. The blasts of sound disorient and disable their delicate internal mechanisms and their hearing. Just another way that humans are making it rough, rough, rough for every other life form on this planet. It's depressing.

Anyway, I came home late and miserable. The lights were out already. I wandered around the kitchen, eating random foods, turned on the TV for a few minutes to watch a rerun of something or other, then went up to bed.

“You're awfully late,” Daniel said as soon as I lay down. I sighed.

“Yeah, I was working on this study—you know. Wanted to get a little ahead if I could.”

“Oh.” Something about the way he said that didn't sound good.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“I just wish …” he paused. “I wish you were home for dinner a little more often—we only manage maybe two or
three times a week.” He laughed a little. “I thought the man was the one who was supposed to flee domestic life.”

“Well, Daniel, you've always known this about me. That I work a lot. I always have. And this study is due soon.” I took a deep breath and tried to push the edge out of my voice. “I love you but I've gotta do my work. You know that.”

“I know. I have work to do, too. But I try to be here when I can. I'm willing to make a family. To make this our home.”

I didn't say anything. Just looked up at the ceiling in the dark. I knew I should turn toward him and embrace him. Tell him I loved him and loved our home. But I didn't move. Something seemed to be pinning my arms to the familiar sheets. “Aren't you going to say anything?” he said after a while.

“I'm not sure what to say. I love you, Danny. I just had to finish this thing.”

“Okay.” He sighed. “I'm going to sleep now.” He pushed up on his elbow to kiss me. He rolled over and drifted off. I stared at the ceiling, wishing I was anywhere but there.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS
Friday. We had been invited to a party that evening at my boss Bill Hanna's house. It was being held in honor of a new colleague, Benjamin Davidson. When we got the Evite, I forwarded it to Daniel with a note on the top that said: “Sigh. I guess we've got to make
an appearance at this thing.” He sent back a little sad face, but there was no getting out of it.

Bill Hanna was the only one of our colleagues that I truly disliked. He was the director of the Marine Biology Department so he was my boss, which made it even more unpleasant. He had a booming, unmodulated voice and he usually smelled slightly of onions. Here's the kind of guy he was: He'd have twenty people over and maybe two bowls of chips. Not only was this annoying, but people got drunk at his parties because there wasn't enough to eat. I really hated that.

Daniel and I sat at breakfast with our respective cups of coffee, not talking much, which we usually don't in the morning. I was the first to speak. “So I'm sorry about last night, Danny. I think you're right. I mean, I can try to be home a little bit more. I just lose track of time. But you're important to me, too. Really.” I reached across the table and took his hand. He squeezed back and smiled a little but didn't speak. “Let's have dinner tonight before Bill's, okay? We're gonna need something to eat anyway—you know how he is. There won't even kind of be enough food.” That made Daniel laugh, and my heart contracted with pleasure and virtue. How could I lose sight of him so easily? He was such a dear, good man. What could I have been thinking? I got up to go get dressed for work and stopped to kiss him
like I meant it, another thing that I don't do enough. He slapped my butt as I left the kitchen to go get ready for the day. I sang off-key in the shower.

My good mood and good intentions continued all day; I worked like a demon, and Daniel and I had a lovely dinner. We held hands as we walked over to Bill's.

“Hey, how the hell are you!” boomed Bill as he opened the door.

My voice instantly got small and mouselike. How could I find someone so annoying and so intimidating at the same time? “We're good, Bill. How about you?” I pecked his cheek and Daniel shook his hand. “Good to have you back, Josie. How was your trip home? Everything okay?”

I hadn't said anything specific to anyone at work about why I'd gone home. Truth be told, I'd barely talked about it with Daniel. It made me too uncomfortable—and of course there was that little nibble of shame. I'd made good—why couldn't my brother get it together? And a fearful step further: My foothold in this world is tenuous enough—I don't need them to think I fit the stereotype of black girl with a no ‘count brother. I've had only one friend who has lived with that shaming cruel fear the way I have: my college roommate Maren. I still talk to her every so often, even though I live across the country now—we used to be tighter
than tight. Like me, she finished Stanford with honors, but she went on to law school and then got a job at one of the leading law firms in L.A. She never looked less than perfect and she rose through the firm like a rocket. But there was someone just behind her, hidden in her blinding glow.

Periodically, in her vast shining office with a view, she would have to field panicked calls from her brother on his way back to jail for the third or fourth or who-knows-how-many times on some petty drug bust. Sometimes she'd bring her legal expertise into play to help him—but she did it on the sly. “I always have to close the door for those calls,” she told me once as we sat under umbrellas at a café on Melrose, sipping tall, cool green drinks. “I can't help him anymore and I can't let them know at the firm that I'm related to somebody like that. What am I gonna say? What are they going to think of me?” She laughed bitterly. “If I get this associate's job at Kelley and Thompson, I'm not giving him my work number. I can't.” I nodded—I knew exactly what she meant. There was the worry and love for your brother along with the embarrassment and shame with yourself for being embarrassed. It was toxic, but we shared it. I told her about Tick. She understood. But now? Now there was no one in my professional life that I felt safe telling, Bill Hanna least of all. So I put on a big
smile and said, “Oh, fine, fine. It was no big deal. Everyone's fine.”

“Good, good.” He wasn't listening anyway—it didn't matter what I said. “Well, come on in and drop your stuff and then meet the newest member of our department.”

Scientist parties are more raucous than cliché would have you believe. It is true that many of us are more comfortable with objects than people, but we like to drink beer and gossip about our peers and dance awkwardly to the hit records of our youth as much as any other group of professionals. Daniel went off to get us both drinks after we deposited our stuff. That's when I saw Ben.