The Taste of Salt (20 page)

“No, man. I don't have ten dollars. Not today. Not for you.”

Tick felt a tight smile cross his face. “So she warned you, huh?”

“She said a little bit about you. But I think I'd have figured you out anyway.”

Tick turned to head back. The camaraderie was gone.
He walked away and then started a loping run, trying to make it look casual, like what he had just done wasn't a big thing. Like it wasn't yet another defeat.

A
COUPLE OF DAYS
after that walk on the beach, Tick and I were sitting on my porch. Daniel was at work, finishing up a project. I had been able to get away to see Ben a couple of times but not often. And when I did? Well, let's just say it wasn't the same. But I wasn't ready to let go yet. There was still some comfort there. But for now, it was just me and Tick. There was between us, for the first time since he'd arrived, a little bit of ease. We both had our feet up on the railing, something we couldn't do when we were kids, partly because Mom and Daddy would have given us a good talking-to and partly because our feet wouldn't have reached the railing. We stared at the road, watching the occasional car pass by.

“I met Ben, that guy you work with,” he said suddenly.

“What?”

He turned and gave me a slow look. He knew. How did he know? But I could tell he did, all in one electric moment. “He seems like a nice guy.” He kept looking at me steadily. “Look, Josie, what you do is your business. You're grown. And God knows I am not in a position to tell anybody what
to do. But I hope he's good to you.” He paused. “And I hope you know what you're doing.” He looked back out at the road.

I took a deep breath. “I'm not sure I do. But I can't stop.” My eyes stung.

“Well, I know what that's like,” he said. He reached over and took my hand. We sat quiet for a few minutes.

“What are you gonna do, Tick?”

“What do you mean, what am I gonna do?”

“Tick, you showed up on my doorstep strung out, no money, no job, no plan, no program. You're not even going to meetings.”

“I hate meetings.”

“You hate meetings,” I said.

“Yeah, I do. You sit there with these people and they all talk about how we've got to rely on this higher power and how it's out of their hands and they tell these long-ass stories and then we all hold hands and say that damn prayer.” He paused. “I want to kick by myself.”

“You do.”

“Yeah, I do. That's why I came up here. I thought if I could get away from all the craziness, it would be easier to kick. You know. You'd be here to help me, and it's nice and quiet.”

“Not to mention that Mom threw your rusty butt into the street.”

A car drove past, slowly, and Tick looked at it. A muscle worked in his throat. “I came up here to get straight. I came up here because I thought you and Daniel would take me in.”

A long silence fell. I broke it. “Remember how you used to always sleep at the end of my bed when you were scared? You used to curl up right at my feet.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Tick, I'll do what I can for you but you've got to do this yourself. You know that, right?”

“I know.”

“I'm scared for you.”

“I can do it, Josie.”

“I hope so.”

We were quiet again, both of us looking out at the road, still holding hands, a couple of kids who had always trusted each other.

“I love you, Tick. You know that, right?”

“I know. I love you, too. I'll go to a meeting, Josie,” he said. “I promise.”

• • •

H
E WAS AS GOOD
as his word. He went to a meeting the next night. He felt depressed and hopeless the minute he walked through the door. Those same stupid folding chairs. The same linoleum that they all seemed to have ordered from the same place in that same shade of yellowy green. The quiet hissing of the coffee maker, the murmuring of the people who knew each other already, the shell-shocked look of those who'd found themselves there for the first time and weren't ever, ever going to open their mouths. That's what they thought anyway. Tick remembered feeling that way. And he remembered how good at first it felt to give in to their embrace, to share at a meeting and feel supported and like someone finally got why it was so hard to quit using. He remembered the first time in rehab, the twice-a-day meetings, the bed making, the order, and how that all fell apart in a year when he got out. And then he went back. And then, he was out again. And then he was in a bar. And now he was here. Again. He knew, in his head anyway, that the whole idea was to keep putting one foot in front of the other and sticking with the program. But now? He couldn't remember exactly when he got the feeling that he might be beyond help. Was it this last run? Was it with that girl at Beenie's? When was it? The slogans—One Day at a Time, Think, Keep the Focus on Yourself, Zip the Lip—he couldn't remember exactly
when it all started to get on his nerves, all that talk, all that serenity-seeking. When it started to be harder and harder to get himself to a meeting and stay in his seat while he was there. He couldn't remember when it began. But as soon as he sat down—in the back, where he'd most likely be left alone—nothing had changed. And he felt his heart tighten against whatever the room had to offer.

The speaker that night was a white woman. Maybe thirty-five, maybe forty. Honey-toned blond hair, nicely cut. She had a nervous habit of twirling her pretty hair around one finger as she talked. “So it started like this,” she said. And the drunkalogue began. People laughed and nodded. The night she couldn't remember where she parked her car. The night she woke up fifty miles from home in the arms of a total stranger. The night she cut off all her hair. The night she drove her best friend's kids' home and barely avoided causing a major accident and killing herself and them. The thousands of times she prayed for deliverance. The way that she began to be delivered when she gave it all over. Her finger kept twisting her hair, mesmerizingly. Her voice rose and fell like a song. Everyone laughed at the funny parts. Everyone sighed as the story got sadder. Everyone knew how it ended. “So here's how it is now,” she said. “I still look at those bottles of white wine in the grocery store. They look so cool and inviting. There are always those beads of
moisture on them, you know? They look so great.” A few nods. “But then I remember what happened after the first drink. Thank God for cell phones!” she laughed. She told of how she had called her sponsor and she'd talked her off the ledge. Everyone laughed with her. Tick didn't laugh. His legs hurt. He wanted a drink. He wanted a drink more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. He wanted that cold, clear savor, that cold, clear savior. He wanted to be saved. But he didn't think that what was in this room was going to save him.

The share finished. The treasury envelope made its way around the room. Tick shuffled his feet, shifted around in his chair, was acutely aware of being the only black person in the room. He got up and got some coffee. He sat back down. He stretched his back. Everyone laughed again at something someone said. Now someone said a slogan. Now heads were nodding; a young woman wept quietly in the corner. People talked about how their lives were saved, how hard they worked, how grace had come into their lives through those rooms. Tick tried to sit still. He tried to feel grace. It had worked for his father. For his own father. But all he could feel was the wind whistling through his heart. That sore, empty space that he'd tried so hard, so often, so long to fill. The meeting finally ended—it felt as though it had lasted a thousand years. He left without speaking to
anyone. He folded up his chair and put it away like he was supposed to so he wouldn't call attention to himself. He went outside and stood alone under the brilliant stars.

H
E WENT TO THE
Captain K
IDD
right from the meeting. What was the point of trying? This was what he wanted. No more slogans. The beer tasted like mother's milk, like everything he'd ever wanted. He could hear cars passing, other drinkers behind him in the bar, the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the jukebox. This was what he wanted. This was all he wanted. This was what would make everything all right.

H
E DRANK FOR A
long time. He drank until the buzzing in his head seemed to stop and the hole in his chest was patched. He drank until his hands were steady again. He drank until the money he'd stolen from the jar in the kitchen where Daniel and I kept spare cash was gone. When he left the bar, the stars overhead were screaming. He could hear them. Tiny individual voices, all crying out in pain. Who said the stars were beautiful? Whoever said there was any point to a black velvet night? He stumbled off the stool, across the road, and out onto a pier that wasn't far away.

When he got there, the screaming in his head was louder. The waves barely masked it. Their constant rhythm was not
a comfort. Nothing could comfort him now. There was all this screaming in his ears. He was never going to get what he needed. Never. He took his shoes off and threw them into the water. He was crying, he supposed. But why shouldn't he be? Why wasn't everybody? Drunk's tears. Everyone should weep them. He walked toward the end of the pier, furiously pulling off his clothes as he walked. The air was hot, sitting on him, a damp weight. And now, here, again, here, his sister couldn't save him, his mother couldn't save him, his father couldn't save him, no one could save him. What was there to be saved? He was stripped down to his underwear now, at the end of the pier. He jumped off, into the freezing water. A baptism at last. He gasped and bobbed up and began to swim out, away from land. He didn't know what he wanted. He only wanted to stop asking. He only wanted to stop needing to know. Water flowed into his mouth. The salt was bitter; nausea took him the next few feet. He vomited but it wasn't wrenching. Not the way it usually was when he was really fucked up. Not the way it was on land. He kicked away from the foul traces he left in the water; he was sorry for that. To have fouled the ocean as he fouled the land, as he fouled everything he touched. He hung in the water's embrace, holding his breath, treading for a moment. But he wasn't going back. Soon he would be too tired. He wouldn't have the strength to get back to
land. He just didn't have the strength. For a moment, he was glad he didn't have any children.
I'm sorry, Josie. I'm sorry.
That was his last thought. And then he gave in. There was no reason to resist anymore. One day at a time, he had arrived at his last end.

When the phone rang, I hadn't been sleeping long. Given the events of the last few days, it's a miracle I was sleeping at all. There was what Daniel had said to me about leaving. I could tell by the silence he maintained around me that he meant it. And Ben. After that last time, the day after Tick arrived, I'd felt him receding away from me even faster, even farther. And I knew, in my core, in my gut, that I had to let go of him, too. Oh, and of course my alcoholic, drug-addicted brother was sleeping on my sofa and not doing much else by the looks of it. Well, really, who had time? Who had time to sleep? I was being eaten alive by men, by their needs and their vague insanities. Not that I was doing that much better with my own needs and vague insanities. I wasn't. Don't think I didn't know that. But still. I felt
oppressed by the weight of them. The phone ringing in the darkest part of the night was just another imposition. Probably another man on the line. A man who needed something. I picked up the phone.

“Yes?”

“Is this Ms. Josie Henderson?”

My breath got short. This was a very official voice. The voice of doom. “Yes it is.”

“Ms. Henderson, there's been an accident. We need you to come down to the hospital.”

Daniel was here. No one would call me if something happened to Ben. Tick. It had to be Tick. He hadn't come home after the meeting. I had been frightened but wanted to give him some space, too. He had to work this out on his own. I swallowed hard, once. “Who's involved?”

“Please just come down to the hospital, ma'am. We'll be able to explain more here.”

I hung up the phone and sat up. Abruptly, I had to vomit. I ran clumsily into the bathroom. By the time I returned to the bed, Daniel was sitting up, pulling on his pants. “It's Tick, isn't it?” he said.

I nodded. Who else could it be? What else could it be? I went to the drawer and pulled out some clothing. I put my shirt on inside out, as I recall. I don't know why I remember that kind of detail. But I do. The kitchen smelled faintly of
rotting cantaloupe. I remember that, too. I'd had some for breakfast and it had been a hot day and no one took the trash out. I was briefly afraid I would vomit again.

Daniel drove. Even with all that had been going on, the ways I hid from him, the ways I'd betrayed him, he was still my husband, still the one to drive the car in a situation like this. Using his turn signal carefully. Looking up into the rearview mirror with the same slight scowl he always had when he looked in the rearview mirror. Silence lay between us like a body. There was nothing safe to talk about. “Danny?”

He didn't look away from the road. “Yeah?”

“I'm scared.” The first true words I'd said to him for a while.

That made him look at me briefly. His eyes were gentle and considering—a look that hadn't been directed my way for some time. “I'm scared, too, Jose. This whole thing scares the shit out of me.”

I looked back out the front window. I couldn't say any more. We would be at the hospital soon.

Here I was pulling up to another institution. Here I was for my brother again. I tripped getting out of the car. Daniel caught my elbow and kept me from falling. We walked into the hospital with our sides almost touching. But not quite.

The hospital smelled like hospital. Blood, rubbing alcohol, sadness. It reminded me a little bit of the lab—I found the smell of the alcohol rather comforting. But at work there isn't the salty odor of people sweating and crying. The sharp tang of despair. We went up to the desk, gave them our names. The shift nurse pressed her lips together and spoke into her telephone. We were ushered to seats.