Chapter 28: Salt Taffy

Waking up was always hard to do. In the years following Greg, every morning I awoke, his death was the first thing that hit me. It washed over me in a cold wave of grief that tainted my first few minutes of consciousness. That next morning, my first thought and sight was Jo. She was sleeping next to me, her arm thrown over my stomach, her face resting on my shoulder. Under the covers, where our naked bodies slept, her legs were tangled with mine. The ends of her hair were strewn across my chest. When she woke up, her green eyes looked around for a minute until they caught me, her pupils pulsing as she focused on me, and then she cracked that wide Donnelley smile.

It was like that for a few weeks. Stolen glances, stolen kisses, nights spent in my room. It was getting much harder to look Marty and Katie in the eye, but I didn't feel ashamed. In fact, I was happier than I ever was. Jo swept me up in her liveliness and energy. She breathed me back to life when I didn't even know I was dead.

Of course, we were not deafened to the times. Even in California, in 1964, we couldn't just walk around showing our love. Even her friends did not know, but I don't think it was out of shame. Bobby was gay, and so was Jo, and the others were open-minded about it, even Johnny who finally started hanging around again. I think Jo wanted to keep it to herself because it was special. She showed a different side of herself around me, a comfortable and vulnerable side that reminded me of a child. Nonetheless, she wanted to keep up appearances.

It was relatively easy to sneak away, with Marty and Katie always busy doing something, and the kids always outside playing. Jo spent all her days at home now, with me. She was careful when we were around her family, which was mostly at dinner time, but I was grateful for that, too.

There was one day when we were down at a different beach than Hermosa, one that didn't have any piers or hotels, where we were the only ones in sight besides a few cars that passed down the road up away from the beach. I wore the pink bikini she had given me, without covering myself up.

Still, I was hesitant to get in the water, but Jo was so persuasive. "Come on, Becks," she said as she held both of my hands, wading us backwards into the sea. The water was already at our knees.

"No!" I shrieked, though I was also laughing.

"Nothing's gonna get you!" she exclaimed, giving me another tug and pulling me out further into the water as the waves slapped up my thighs.

"The water is what's going to get me!"

"You swam that day in the pool!"

"That was a pool, Jo! This is the damn ocean!"

Her eyes widened, and her mouth slowly opened into a wide laugh. "I've never heard you curse before! Do it again!"

I rolled my eyes. "You're a shit-head."

She laughed harder, and I started to giggle, leaning against her and feeling her body move with the force of her laugh. The California sun was glaring down brightly upon us, and I was so giddy with laughter that I didn't even notice that the water was up to our waists now.

Suddenly, I felt something coarse brush my leg, and out of pounding fear, I screamed, grabbing onto Jo's shoulders and clinging to her. "There's something in the water!" I shrieked, holding onto her and looking down at the murky water below us.

Jo squinted her eyes and looked around until she saw a dark spot floating in the water. "That's just seaweed, stupid."

Hot embarrassment flushed my cheeks, and I felt dumb, but I just chuckled and gasped, gently swatting her arm. "Don't call me stupid!"

"You called me it first!" She grinned and held my waist, turning me around in a circle so that the water splashed up on us. I laughed and held onto her, just letting her spin me around like a toy and pretending to be scared when actually I felt safe with her. I felt so safe with her.

We'd brought a picnic to have on the beach. We got out of the water and dried ourselves off, sitting down on a towel and opening the beach bag where we had packed ham and cheese sandwiches, pickles, and candies. Holly knew that we were going to the beach and was upset when Jo told her she couldn't come, but she threw a couple pieces of candies in our bag, along with one of her dolls to "make sure we were safe from beach monsters."

Jo picked up the doll and stuck its legs into the sand so that it was facing us, unwrapping a piece of candy and putting it in front of the doll. "There. We all get to eat."

I smiled, and I wondered if Jo liked to play with dolls when she was a kid as much as Holly did. We ate our sandwiches in silence, feeling a little tired from the hot sun and from running around in the water. Our shoulders touched against each other—there was no one else on the beach.

"You know, I was thinking," Jo started long after we had finished eating our sandwiches and were just munching on the salt taffies Holly put in our bag.

"Oh, yea?" I responded, chewing the hard taffy and watching as she stared out into the ocean, her eyes squinted from the sun, her hair blowing in the sea breeze. I'd noticed she didn't wear sunglasses as often anymore.

"I think I'll stop partying," she said simply, opening another taffy and popping it in her mouth, moving it around with her tongue until it was in a comfortable place so she could talk. "Stop drinking, and all that. Stop the coke."

I remembered the times I'd seen her do it—at the bar, at the movie. I hadn't seen her do it since then, and I honestly hadn't even thought about it. I chewed my taffy and thought about what to say, but she continued.

"I do it to kind of get away, you know. Sometimes it's just to have something to do. A lot of people do it so that they can feel something, but I think I do it so that I feel nothing." She rolled the taffy wrapper around her fingers, her eyes looking at the doll in the sand. "I think a lot about Holly. I don't want to set a bad example for her."

I remembered Holly asking if Jo was going to die. I wondered if the reason Katie had said what she said was because she knew about Jo's drug usage, and if Holly also knew.

"Well, that's good," I said, tucking the taffy wrapper into the bag and taking out another piece. Taffy was always my favorite at the candy shop back home. "They both look up to you a lot—Holly and Judd."

"Judd's fine, I think," she said with a shrug. "He's real steady like my dad. I imagine he'll take over the family business when he's older."

"You don't want to?"

She smiled a little sadly and shook her head. "No, I don't. That's not... my thing. My parents know that, certainly my mother does." She sighed, letting her shoulders slump. "I really don't know what's my thing."

I remembered when we were on the back of Willow that day at Manor Farm, and she told me she felt like a lost cause. I still didn't know what purpose Jo had, but I knew it was to be alive. That much I knew for sure.

"But I kind of want to figure it out now," she added, rubbing some of the sand off her calves. "That's why I'll stop partying. I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. And I also..." she trailed, finally looking over at me. I stared at her questioningly, waiting for her to finish, but she shrugged and looked away. "You know I was thinking."

"You said that."

"No, about something else."

"What is it?"

"Well... I don't think I should live at the house anymore. It's just not good for me, being around my mother. She drives me mad. But I know that if I just leave completely, they will cut me off, and then I'll really be screwed. Well, I was thinking... I could get an apartment somewhere close. I'll ask my dad if he knows anyone who would hire me for something—anything, really. And there's a lot of schools around here, you know, so..." She turned to look at me again. "I was just thinking—of course you don't have to, and I don't expect you to—" She was talking like Marty now. "But I thought maybe it would be a good idea if—if it's okay—that maybe, if you wanted to, we could get an apartment together. You know, to split the costs. And so I wouldn't be lonely. And also because I just really want you to."

My eyebrows rose in surprise. I never saw it coming that Jo would ask something like that of me, something that would entail more commitment than she'd ever had in her life.

Did I want to live with Jo? Yes, I did. I wanted to spend every minute of my life with her, because next to her, I was happy. Next to her, I wasn't just a flower on the wall. I wanted to be the flower between her fingers, dwindling around under her grip and her gaze. I wanted to be under her ray of sun like I couldn't live without it.

"Oh," I said, because there was something else—Louisiana.

"You don't have to," Jo quickly said. "It was just a stupid thought. Stupid, really. Silly. I was just wondering what you would say." She bent her knees at her chest and hooked her arms around them.

"No, Jo," I said, turning to her. "I do want to. I... I wouldn't love anything more than to live with you. But it's just... I live in Louisiana. And my Mama..." I trailed. Jo knew little about my mother, but I remember way back when I tried to call Mama and had caught Jo eavesdropping.

"Do you still want to go back to her?" she asked me, her attention piqued.

I shrugged and looked out at the waves. "I don't know if she wants me to. In fact, I'm pretty sure she hates me. That's basically what she said before I left."

"What did she say?"

I remembered the anger in her voice and the hate in her eyes. "She was scared more than anything. She was always scared of everything, my entire life. It's because of Daddy and how he died in the war, I think. She was afraid the same thing would happen to me—that I would go off into the world and get killed in it. She told me she wouldn't be there for me when that happened, so... I don't know if she would even accept me if I went back."

Jo listened carefully, her eyes softening.

"But she is the only family I have." Bitterness filled me as I realized how much I still loved my Mama, even after what she said to me.

Jo looked at the sand thoughtfully for a moment. "You have us."

I chuckled a little. "Katie thinks I'm a sewer rat."

Jo rolled her eyes and scoffed. "Well, besides her. Holly and Judd adore you. I... adore you." She blushed a little, and so did I. "And my dad loves you. He really loves you."

Looking down bashfully, I drew a circle in the sand with my finger. "I don't think he would feel the same if he knew about us."

The reminder dimmed her face a little, but as she thought for a moment, she raised her chin confidently with a small smile. "No, I think he would. I really do."

I looked up at her doubtfully. It was true, Marty was the nicest man I'd ever met and always handled me with grace and compassion even from the start, but back then, the sweetest soul you ever met could still turn away once you told them that sort of truth about yourself.

We didn't talk much more about any of that, though I told her that I would think about living with her. She seemed a little disappointed and impatient, but she was happy that I was considering. I didn't know that she already did some searching and found an apartment for us, and was just waiting for me to say yes.

I wrote a lot about Jo in my diary. Every single interaction, from the very start, from the little expressions I found on her face, to our deep embraces of passion, everything. She took up most of the space in my journal, and I kept it tucked away in my desk where I now kept the picture of Greg with it, tucked between the pages. They were the two people closest to my heart, and I kept them both on paper.