Read Online The Taste of Salt by Martha Southgate - Free Book Online Page A

hardly able to breathe. Finally she sighed and said, “Yes, baby. Why don’t we go on and eat. I don’t know what could be keeping your father.” So we sat and ate the cold pork chops and the greasy beans and I thought I might choke from everything we weren’t saying and then it was seven-thirty and then it was eight and that’s when he came in the door.
    His eyes were red. He smelled like a brewery. He was weaving, just a tiny little bit. He was the only thing in the room that moved. He leaned on the doorframe. “Hey, y’all. Sarah, Josie, Tick. Listen. I had to work late and then Oscar and them wanted to go out for a drink and I
said
to them just one and …” Mom raised her hand.
    â€œJosie and Tick, you better go on to your rooms.” We got up and scooted up the stairs; Tick took my hand and held it very tightly. When we got to the landing where they couldn’t see us, Tick refused to take another step.
    â€œCome on, Tick, Mom said to go upstairs.”
    â€œWe are upstairs.”
    â€œYou know what I mean. All the way upstairs.”
    Tick’s jaw set. “This is far enough. I ain’t going up to my room. What if something happens?”
    What if something happens. What would happen? How did he know the question that pressed under my skin every day, the question that never quite left? I stopped and led him by the hand to the edge of the landing so we could bear witness.
    â€œRay, what the hell am I supposed to think? You come in here on your own birthday three hours later than you said you would, drunk as hell. You stink.” Mom was crying. “We worked so hard. The kids and I worked so hard to give you a nice birthday.”
    Daddy kept leaning on the doorframe. “Well, nobody
asked
you to do all this. I didn’t have any birthday parties growing up. Didn’t anybody care what year it was or how old I was.”
    â€œWell, now you do have people who care, Ray. We care so much. You should have seen those kids today. They workedso hard. They so want to make things nice for you. And you …” As she said the next words, she turned and swept the cake off the table and onto the floor. “You just treat it like so much trash.”
    Daddy stepped toward her and grabbed her wrist. “Go ahead,” she said. “You want to be that low? Go ahead and hit me.”
    â€œI ought to,” he said. “If a man can’t go out and have a beer with his boys on his birthday without coming home to this shit.… I ought to hit you.”
    They stood there like that for what seemed like forever, though it was probably only a couple of minutes. But then he let go and sagged into the chair and said, not looking at her, “You better clean this mess up. I’m going back out. Tell the kids I said thanks.”
    â€œThanks! Thanks!” She was screaming now. She had forgotten us. “You’re just going to go back out and get drunker? What the hell is wrong with you?”
    He stood up and put his hat back on. He had his hand on the doorknob. He said quietly, so quietly we almost couldn’t hear, “I swear to God I don’t know.” And then he was gone.
    Mom stood in the dining room breathing heavily for a few minutes after he left. Tick and I had come to sit on the top step. Tick put his head in my lap and started crying.Then I started, too. That got her attention. She looked up and there we were.
    â€œOh, babies, I’m sorry,” she said. “Listen, Daddy got hung up at work and he had to go back and get something he forgot. He’s very sorry that he missed our party.”
    I stared at her. I couldn’t believe that she would just lie like that. But maybe it was safer to believe that than to believe my own eyes. “What happened to the cake?” I said, my voice the still sound of winter.
    â€œOh, I was being silly. I picked it up and went to go move it and it just slipped out of my