The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate

Author:Martha Southgate
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2011-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

A month or so after Tick got home from Riverrun, reports from my mother were brief but mostly good news—or at least not bad news. He was going to work every day and a meeting almost every night.

One morning I was looking at a picture of us that I kept on my bureau. We were only about eight and six in the photo, out in front of our house. I was holding a bucket and standing a little bit behind him, smiling. He was astride one of those sticks with a stuffed horse head, charging straight toward the camera, ready for anything. He looked like he could take on the world. I jumped when my cell phone rang, picked up without looking at the number.

“Hey, Josie. It’s Tick.”

“Whoa. Hey Tick. This is so weird. I was just looking at that old picture. You know the one where you’re riding Black Lightning?”

He laughed. He sounded like himself. The self he was at his best. “Man, I loved that horse. He was the greatest.”

I laughed, too. “How are you, Tick?” Maybe it was looking at the photo. Maybe it was his laugh. Maybe it was knowing that I should give him more than I do. But I willed some kindness, some openness into my heart, into my voice.

“I’m all right. Doing all right. Work’s good. Ain’t the same since LeBron left but, you know. At least all the craziness is over.”

“I know! People lost their minds over that stuff. For God’s sake, the guy’s allowed to work someplace else if he wants to.”

Tick laughed again. “Players don’t really think of it as working someplace else, Josie. People who talk about themselves in the third person—well, they’re a little different from you and me.”

“Right.” A friendly silence between us.

“Well, Josie, I know you got to get to work. I need to leave, too. I just wanted to say hey. And say … say that I’m doing okay. I’m keeping clean, going to meetings. I’m doing okay.”

My hand was tight on the phone, my voice almost a whisper when I said, “That’s great, Tick. That’s really great. I’m so happy to hear it.”

“All right. Call me, okay? Or at least answer a brother’s texts, okay?”

“Okay … you punk.”

“Who you calling a punk?” he said. It was our old loving tease. “I’ll talk to you later, Josie-face.” “Later Tick-tock.”

I was alone in the house. It took me ten minutes to get myself together enough to leave for work. My baby brother. How I loved him.

FOR OUR PART, Daniel and I kept to our routines—which included unprotected sex. We reached an uneasy détente about my getting pregnant: We didn’t use birth control but I wouldn’t take things any further—no ovulation watching, no sperm checks, no IVF (which we couldn’t afford anyway), none of that. Every month when my period came, I felt as though I’d gotten away with something. Daniel looked so disappointed, and for his sake, I wished I felt the same. But I was happy to see the blood on the tissue, an old friend that meant I was not going to be a mother.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.