The Sweetness of Salt(49)

I wrinkled my forehead. “Did you tell her I’m here? I mean, does she know I’m in Poultney, staying in her room?”

Sophie nodded. “She knows.”

“Well…” I struggled for words, at a loss. “I mean, can we go up there? To Greg’s? We can…”

“She’s not there.” Sophie’s voice was sharp. “I told you, Jules. They’re camping.”

“They’re still camping?”

“Yes!” Sophie nodded her head. “They’re still camping. This is what they do. It’s their thing. Especially in the summer, all right? Jesus.”

“Okay.” My hands were gripping the steering wheel. “God, you don’t have to bite my head off.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Sophie leaned her head back against the seat rest and she closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired.”

I glanced over at her. She did look paler than usual. The veins in her neck stood out like thin cords, and her eyelids were the color of a faint bruise. Even her hair looked limp and exhausted. “You’re working too hard,” I said. “You need to take a break, Sophie. Seriously.”

“Mmmm…” She did not open her eyes. “That’s why we’re going to the movies.”


“No, a real break,” I said. “Like, a few days off from working so you can sleep and do nothing kind of a break.”

“Oh God.” Sophie opened her eyes. “I don’t have a few days. I’ve got to get this house in shape and the bakery opened before the summer’s over. I have to start making some money.”

“Well, you’re not going to get anything up and running if you’re falling down from exhaustion,” I argued. “Why don’t you at least sleep in tomorrow? You don’t have to get up at five every morning. Seriously. You’ll work better and more efficiently if you’re well rested.”

Sophie was looking at me out of the corner of her eye. “You sound like Dad sometimes. You know that?”

“Dad?” A green Rutland sign came into view. “Do I turn here?”

“Yeah,” Sophie said. “The movie theater’s right down the block.” She paused. “Sounding like Dad isn’t a bad thing. It was just an observation.”

I snorted. “Any observation you make about Dad tends to be a bad thing.”

Sophie sat up straighter. “That’s not true.”

“It is true. You never have anything nice to say about him. Mom either, for that matter.”

Sophie’s face creased in the dark. She looked at me for a moment, as if to say something, and then sat back again. “Well, it’s hard. We have a lot of…history, the three of us.”

“I know, I know.” I pulled the car impatiently into the parking lot and turned off the engine. A group of kids were outside the theater, huddled in small groups, punching each other and laughing. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get in there before they do.”

Sophie was looking at me.

“What?” I asked.

She blinked. “Just…don’t make light of it, okay? Don’t say things like ‘I know, I know,’ when I tell you we have a history. It makes it hard for me to say anything when I hear that kind of impatience in your voice.”

“All right.” I nodded, feeling my face get hot. “I won’t.”

She stared straight ahead, watching the teenagers. A few of the boys were wearing hoodies, and the girls, in thin Tshirts and jeans, were underdressed for the cool night. Their teeth chattered as they laughed, and they hugged their arms tightly around themselves.

Sophie’s teeth worked the inside of her lip, and her eyes squinted against the parking lot lights. Suddenly, she put her hand on the door. “Okay, let’s go. I need to pig out and turn my brain off for the next two hours. None of this heavy shit tonight. You ready?”

“Ready,” I said, getting out on my side of the car.

We were settled in our seats with extra-large buckets of popcorn, peanut M&M’s, and a liter of soda when I leaned over in Sophie’s direction. “I’m sorry,” I whispered in her ear. “About sounding impatient.”

She turned and kissed me on the nose.





chapter


36


The movie was full of inane, disgusting bathroom humor that for some reason struck me as horribly funny. I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed like that. At anything. Sophie laughed too, although she was much more vocal about it, throwing her head back at certain points and whooping. We giggled violently all the way back to Poultney, reliving the funniest parts over and over again. By the time we pulled into Sophie’s driveway, the muscles under my ribs ached and I had a stitch in my side. Laughing like that had done something else to me too; I felt lighter somehow, as if something had emptied itself.

“Whew!” I wiped my eyes. “God, I feel like I’m going to puke.”

Sophie laughed and got out of the car. “It’s still early. You want to go over to Perry’s for a cup of coffee or something?”

“Sure.”

Perry’s was empty except for Miriam, who was reading the newspaper horoscopes behind the counter, and the Table of Knowledge. The three men looked over as we walked in, their meaty faces breaking into grins. Even Jimmy smiled and nodded.