Season of Salt and Honey Read online

  I walk to the sink and run the tap, glancing out the window before unzipping my dress. I let the dress fall from my shoulders and onto the floor before rubbing the wet bar of soap under my arms. Water splashes on the floor as I rinse it away and then lift water up to my face.

  I’m standing in my underwear when I notice the shrubbery moving outside. I squint, wondering if it’s a bird or an animal. A bear. I didn’t ask Daniel about bears. Though an animal lover, Bella’s greatest fear when we were growing up was bears. We’d seen a movie with a bear in it that opened its huge, dripping mouth and roared and shook a car full of people screaming. Bella had never forgotten it. In my crueler moments as a big sister I’d remind her, in whispers, of that bear from the movie and watch her face turn white, her bottom lip quiver.

  It’s probably just a bird, maybe a squirrel.

  I pull up my dress and, on the way out of the cabin, pick up The Swiss Family Robinson. The cover is dusty beneath my fingers. I pull on the boots from the closet to protect my feet, though they are huge and loose. Then, instead of sitting in one of the chairs to read, I find myself stepping, as quietly as possible, around the back of the cabin. The cedar needles give off a lemony-peppery scent as I crush them with the heavy boots.

  There’s a rustle from one of the trees above. I freeze and feel my heart thumping in my chest, as though it wants to be free of my body. I glance up and spy a foot. Small, brown, and bare. A bird nearby takes flight in a squawking, urgent rush of feathers.

  My gaze follows the foot up to a leg, a leg that quickly disappears behind a trunk that’s forked in two. I step around the tree but still can’t find the owner of the leg.

  I clear my throat. “Hello?”

  A rustle.

  “Hello?”

  A head appears. Small, with dark hair, and eyes that could belong to an animal. Black and blinking. I exhale a small sigh of relief. A girl, I’m guessing, not much older than eight.

  I try again. “Hi.”

  The girl stares.

  “Please, be careful up there.”

  She shrugs. She stares from my dress to the boots and back again. Assessing it all. “I’m not allowed to talk to strangers.”

  I recognize the voice now. The child calling to her father this morning. I glance around for any sign of him but it seems to be just her, all alone. The two of us stare at each other for a while. She’s wearing a pink T-shirt with what looks like a Popsicle stain down the front and yellow leggings. As far as disheveled goes, we’re an equal match.

  “I can whistle,” she says.

  “Oh.”

  “My dad taught me.”

  “That’s good.”

  I don’t spend much time with children other than my cousins’ kids, who are more like puppies than children, rushing at you from every side, kicking balls into your shins, dropping food on your shoes.

  “Can you?” the girl asks.

  “Whistle?”

  She nods.

  “Yes, I can whistle.”

  She looks unconvinced so I give a little whistle and it sounds so ridiculous I quickly stop. The girl gives an approving nod. She clambers quickly to the ground. She only comes up to my chest, her frame lean and lanky, and her curls dark and springy. Unbrushed. Whoever looks after her isn’t like my aunties, especially Aunty Rosa, who insisted on ironed slacks and spotless, food-free cheeks.

  “You live around here?” I ask.

  “Yup.”

  “Close by?”

  The girl pauses, tilts her chin. “Why are you here?”

  The question is bold, the pleasantries decapitated from it. I pause before avoiding it. “My name’s Francesca. What’s yours?”

  The girl looks at the palm I’m holding out but doesn’t take it. It drops to my side, stupidly. She leans against the tree trunk, her leg jiggling, as though she might run at any moment.

  “Huia,” she says.

  “Hi, Huia.” I say the name slowly to get the vowel sounds right. Hoo-ee-ah.

  “It’s a bird.”

  “Ah.”

  “From New Zealand.”

  “That’s nice,” I say.

  “A dead bird. There’s none of them left.”

  She blinks her very round black eyes. I can almost see my face in them. Her chin is pointed, her forehead wide. I realize that the night-black curls that wisp out this way and that remind me of Bella’s as a girl.

  “People call me Frankie.”

  Huia studies me carefully. “Frankie’s better.”

  I nod. She’s right.

  “Why are you here?” she repeats, more gently this time.

  I consider my explanations. Something about Alex. Something about the apartment where Alex’s shoes are still in the closet, his favorite mug in the kitchen cupboard. The place that now feels too small, too crowded with memories I can’t face. Something about needing space. Adult explanations. A lie about a vacation.

  “I don’t . . . feel . . . very good.”

  Huia pauses, then nods. I’m surprised this explanation passes the test. Another thought knits her brows together. Her gaze falls upon the book, drifts over the cover picture: a man in a tree house, shirtless, with ragged pants, scanning the horizon.

  “You like to read?” she says.

  “Sure.”

  “That looks good.”

  “I’ve only seen the movie,” I concede.

  Through the trees there’s a loud whistle. It isn’t a bird I’ve heard before. Huia glances towards the sound. Stands straighter.

  “You can borrow it,” I start to say, holding out the dusty book, but she shakes her head.

  “I have to go.”

  “Okay,” I reply, strangely disappointed.

  Huia gives me a tiny wave and I return it. She disappears as quickly as she arrived, her body moving effortlessly, as though she’s lived in a forest her whole life.

  I continue to watch her dart through the undergrowth, towards something that’s caught her attention, until I can no longer see her or her yellow leggings.

  Somewhere, close by, there’s a path to the ocean. I consider the dangers: I could get lost, I could be bitten by a snake, I could fall. But I’m less worried about snakebites and stumbles than ghosts congregating by the water.

  I imagine Huia looking up at me with those animal eyes, then dashing off ahead of me. “Come on!” she might call, somewhere between encouraging and whining. Like Bella—unafraid of risks, wanting to try everything new. I remember the time Bella and Vincenzo found a rope swing by the creek and returned triumphant, eyes shining and clothes wet. I’d been too scared, too rule-bound, to follow them, and they’d had, by their own account, “the best day ever.”

  That seals it. I pick my way through the sword ferns, which swish coquettishly at my bare legs, to find the little path. It’s narrow and covered with fir needles and rotting leaves—but I can feel the firmness of the ground beneath the heavy boots, the soil pressed down by generations of Gardner sons.

  My breath catches in my throat. I move slowly, carefully, in the enormous boots and pull my dress away from snagging bushes. This is where he brought me. I was blindfolded, my eyes squeezed shut behind it, but I knew the forest by the smell of it and the birdcalls. Alex gripped my hand; I knew he was smiling.

  I am tempted to close my eyes now, but that’s stupid. I might fall, with no one to lift me up into his arms, to soothe me. I keep my eyes open and focused on the path, glancing up occasionally into the canopies of cedar and fir that soar above me, stretching out to one another to make a green and branchy patchwork in the sky. I was wearing jeans that day; I didn’t feel the forest against me, shrub and bush reaching out for me as they do now. I only noticed the grip of Alex’s hand, the skittery percussion of my heart that left me feeling thrilled and a little sick in my stomach. Alex laughed at me, my concerned face, my tentative steps, and I scolded him for being cruel, though I was giddy with happiness. This was it. This was the moment.

  I opened my eyes and peered th
rough the blindfold, the fabric thinned by the sunlight. I stared at his broad back and golden head, blond hairs catching the sunshine, and grinned. We had come to a little clearing and a flat, smooth ledge of rock. Beyond that, ocean. It was laid out like a beautiful silk sheet, just for us. It glittered as Alex removed the blindfold.

  “I’ve never been here,” I said, my voice cracking with nerves. I’d imagined he would take me somewhere we’d been before. Maybe our favorite restaurant, or the lookout where we made out so many times as teenagers. But this. This was better. My heart pounded.

  “I know,” he said.

  He shook out the picnic blanket for me to sit on while he opened his backpack and pulled out food and a bottle of champagne. I peered inside the plastic containers and saw arancini, thick slices of salami, and green olives.

  He laughed and shrugged. “Aunty Rosa.”

  Bread followed, a tub of strawberries. Then he settled back onto the blanket and sighed. We both knew what was coming next. I felt like I might explode.

  Alex licked his lips. “Okay.”

  “Okay,” I replied.

  “Francesca.”

  I burst out laughing. He blushed and laughed too.

  “Frankie.”

  “Yes?”

  “I love you.”

  A lump formed in my throat, making me mute.

  “We’ve been through so much together. It’s been . . . years and here we are, just you and me, babe. In this special place. I don’t want to be without you. I don’t know who I would be without you. We make sense. You’ve stood by me. You’ve been so good to me.”

  His voice wobbled a little on that last sentence. I stretched out and touched his hand, but he withdrew it and reached into his pocket. It felt as though my heart was going to leap right out of my mouth. Alex rearranged himself so he was on one knee, a box in his hands. I put my hands over my mouth to keep my heart in my chest, urged my brain to remember every detail even as they were already scrambling away from me.

  “Will you do me the honor . . .?”

  I started to cry.

  Alex popped open the lid and there was my ring. Glinting.

  “Of becoming my wife?”

  I fell into his arms, nodding and kissing his face.

  “Yes?”

  “Yes!”

  Then we tumbled together, onto the blanket, laughing and crying, and I thought just like in the movies. Alex kissed my hair, my eyelids, and my cheeks. I clung to him. Tears slipped down my face.

  We both sat up and he slid the ring onto my finger. That’s when I properly noticed it.

  “Oh, it’s perfect. I mean, really perfect.”

  A white gold ring, just like Mama’s and Nonna’s were. An oval diamond, and encircled around it were tiny diamond chips like stars. Simple and elegant. I had waited so long and so patiently for him to ask me, to have this token on my finger. My heartbeat fluttered; I wanted to laugh. It felt like relief. I wanted the moment, the minute, the hour, the day, to last forever. I twisted the ring around on my finger with my thumb, the diamond winking and glittering.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Truly.”

  * * *

  I pause from walking and stare at my finger. Did that happen? Just last summer? In this very place? Perhaps it was a dream. Something I saw in a movie once.

  I take a breath. I can hear the ocean in the distance and the intermittent cry of a gull. The trees are thinning, as though they know they will soon be unwelcome, the soil too salty and the wind too battering. Beneath my feet the ground has become rock in patches. My feet are still, as if frozen in place. Much farther ahead on the path I think, for a moment, that I see a figure. Someone in jeans, a hat maybe. Too slight to be a man. Perhaps it’s me, another version, coming back from the border of rock and water, of past and present.

  A breeze finds me. It smells of salt and iron. Like blood. My stomach lurches.

  If I walk just a few minutes longer, the ocean will be at my feet, swaying and blue. Somewhere within it, cradled in a dark, cold place, the ghost of Alex. Blond hair moving in the inklike water, eyes unseeing.

  I had wanted being engaged to last forever. That wonderful beginningness of something so sweet. Childhood sweethearts sealing themselves to each other forever. It was a fairy tale. It was our fairy tale, and it was perfect. Now I will be engaged forever. I will never marry Alex. And nothing makes sense.

  I turn and run. Running again, like I did from the wake.

  I stumble in the oversized boots and trip, fall against the hard ground. The skirt of my dress is covered in soil, dark and dusty as cocoa, musty and pungent. My knees ache, my shin is skinned and bleeding. I lift myself up and cry; from the grief, from the pain of the fall, I’m not sure. Tears mix with soil as I try to brush them away with dirty fingers. I lumber on, letting my cries fly out into the forest, where the air becomes cooler and the trees crowd in again as if to offer comfort. Shhh shhh shhh, their leaves say.

  Anger rises up in me. Anger at the ocean for claiming what’s mine, anger that I believed things could last forever.

  I have been so stupid.

  The ferns scratch against the grazes on my legs and it is a strange pleasure to have validation of the pain on the inside match the wounding on the outside. My sobs are raw and ragged as I round the corner to see the little cabin waiting for me. I slow and walk now, limping a little, my breath slowing too. Safe now.

  Sitting on the step at the front door, under the shallow eaves, is a woman in a long skirt. She hugs her knees, her sandaled feet just visible under the fabric of her skirt. She has an armful of bracelets and wears a T-shirt without sleeves. She lifts her head, covered in loose, dark curls, the tips dyed cinnamon, and gives me a careful smile.

  Bella.

  Chapter Four

  • • • •

  When my sister left, her hair was long and purple-black, the ends wispy and split. She wore black eyeliner so thick she looked bruised. She had recently pierced her nose and it was red, infected around the puncture. I was still living at home then, barely a year into my first job. I had bought a suit with my first paycheck. A little gray jacket with a nipped waist and matching skirt. Alex thought it was sexy. I’d wished I could wear it every day.

  The night Bella left she crept into my room very late. I had my eyes closed but I wasn’t asleep. I was sick of her by then. Tired of the mischief she caused, the worry she put Papa through. Trouble followed her around like a shadow, like a stray cat she knew she shouldn’t feed but couldn’t help herself. By then she’d been suspended from high school for being involved with a party before prom that had gotten out of hand; a boy had ended up in the hospital with alcohol poisoning, the talk of the local paper. She’d been barred from the neighborhood drugstore for stealing lipstick. Papa had found marijuana in her room. Then she’d taken Papa’s car and driven it into a telephone pole. No one was hurt, or not much, thankfully. The police had arrived at our house with their lights flashing red and blue to report the abandoned, damaged vehicle, and Papa had lied—not for the first time, surely not for the last—to protect his baby daughter. I’d especially hated her for that, for making Papa lie. Papa told the police he didn’t know who had been driving, that the car must have been taken by joyriders. His face had been pale; he’d looked ill as he made his false report. Everyone, including the police, must have guessed it was Bella.

  We’d become exact opposites of each other; it seemed a miracle we came from the same gene pool. I didn’t want a life like hers. I didn’t want her around at all, as though I might catch whatever she was spreading.

  “Frankie?” Bella whispered into the dark of my bedroom.

  She tried again. “Soru?” Her voice was a bright, curling ribbon in the silence.

  Her silhouette sat on the end of my bed. A tent of a person, fluffy hair falling to her shoulders, thick jacket meeting the top of the quilt. Just the shape of her, without her stupidly blackened eyes, the crooked little eyetooth, the small hands wit
h chewed nails, the scar by her eyebrow from when she fell out of a tree she wasn’t supposed to be climbing, drove me crazy. I wanted to tell her to leave me alone. To go to bed. To fuck off.

  I didn’t know that was exactly what she was doing, that there was a bag on the lawn and someone waiting in a car. She hadn’t even finished high school; she was still a minor, a child, despite getting herself into adult-size trouble.

  I heard her cough lightly, felt her lift herself from the quilt. I still said nothing. She came to stand closer and I squeezed my eyes shut again, before sensing her leaving the room.

  “Frankie?”

  The woman—the stranger—on the step stands, and I remember how tall Bella is. Tall and pretty, especially with her hair cut like it is. I look her up and down, as though she might be a figment of my imagination. She gives me another wary smile and I notice the nose piercing is still there. A tiny emerald-colored stud by her right nostril. I want her off my step.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Frankie.” Her voice is soft, coercing.

  Papa . . . can I borrow ten dollars? For the movies? Papa . . . you’ll drop me at Valerie’s, won’t you? Frankie . . . I’m just borrowing your skirt . . . you hardly wear it. . . .

  “What are you doing here?” I ask again firmly. Willing her to get off my step, but she remains there, in her long skirt, with her pretty hair.

  I lift a hand to my own hair, knotty and pulled into a ponytail. The shin of my right leg starts to throb.