by Kim Golden
"I'm not sure…"
"You said you wanted to decorate…well, then you need a tree. I need one too, so we may as well go together," he says. "That surely can't be a violation of our agreement."
I smile. He's teasing me, I know. But he does it so nicely—without any cynicism or malice in his voice—that I can't say no.
6 O Christmas Tree: Jake
I am the one doing the driving. I don't really trust her behind the wheel of a car. Not after that smack to the noggin that she had this morning. I know, looks are deceiving. She looks just fine right now—well, she's got a slight bruise on her forehead, but otherwise she looks okay. But I've seen men who've been shot who keep going and swear they're fine until they collapse. It happened all the time in Afghanistan and Iraq. Saw it at least five or six times in Fallujah, before I got shipped back to South Africa. But, like I said, she looks okay. She's less skittish and even seems excited at the prospect of Christmas tree shopping. For a city girl, she knows how to dress for the weather. I'd expected her to put on one of those flimsy jackets lots of the weekend visitors pop up in, but she has a good down jacket, which she calls her marshmallow coat, and fleece-lined duck boots, so she'll be alright. Outside, the cold air nips at my nose and my ears. I've forgotten my hat in the house, but I don't feel like going back for it. Besides, we'll be in the car most of the time, so it's not like I am in any danger of freezing.
When we're on the road, I ask Mia if she knows any good places. I've already got a few in mind. Plus, I asked Ruth Carter yesterday and she filled me in on the best places. I guess I just want to humor Mia a bit. She hasn't lived here for a while, even though she talks as though she knows Hunters Grove like the back of her hand. Maybe she does. It doesn't seem like much has changed in this town in years, no matter how many people keep telling me there's a Starbucks in the next village.
"We could try the Cudahys' place over on route 10," she suggests. "That's where my granddad used to buy all of our Christmas trees."
"You know how to get there?"
"Of course."
And then she begins giving me directions, even though we could easily plug the address into my GPS. The route she suggests takes us through the village proper. She points out the houses and shops of family friends and then the village green, where a massive tree is being decorated by local members of the DAR.
"What's the DAR?" I ask as we speed past the purposeful-looking women and the local handymen they seem to be bossing around.
"They're the Daughters of the American Revolution," she tells me with a smirk. "Most annoying bunch of busybodies you'll ever find."
Then she tells me how the ladies of the DAR—back when her great-grandmother first moved to Hunters Grove—tried to convince her that settling in Hunters Grove was perhaps not the best idea. "They even tried to convince my great-grandmother that she ought to consider moving back to the South. Stupid ninnies."
I get her to focus on directions again and then we end up on route 110 and begin heading north. The Green Mountains seem to press against us. I ask Mia if it ever bothers her, the way the mountains loom so close. But she shakes her head. "It's what I grew up with."
She fidgets with the radio, then asks, "Don't you miss South Africa?"
"Sometimes. It's…I miss my dad and helping him out on the farm. Miss the energy of Cape Town. I don't miss the crime or the bugs; I can tell you that much."
"I know what you mean," she says. "I love living in Philadelphia, but the crime…gives you pause sometimes."
"So, is that why you're here then? Need a break from the craziness?"
She shrugs. "I guess you could say that…"
"Ah, so there's more to the story."
"I'd rather hear your story. You should fasten your seatbelt. The local police are sticklers about it."
I humor her and fasten my seatbelt. I know she's right. I've seen enough car accidents and victims to know that driving on icy roads with no seatbelt is not the smartest thing in the world. She's a pretty girl. I don't know why I call her a girl. She isn't a teenager. I'm guessing she's in her late twenties, maybe early thirties, but it's hard to tell. She has that smooth, brown skin that shows no fine lines and dark hair that hasn't got any tell-tale gray strands.
Ruth Carter says Mia is old enough to know better, which could mean anything. I don't know if it's a Vermonter thing—to speak in idioms and non sequiturs. It sure seems that way. Ruth said Mia was unlucky in love, but I just don't get it. She seems likes a nice person—even with all her weird rules of cohabitation of space, which, by the way, seems to have been forgotten.
She leans back in the passenger seat and unsnaps her down jacket. She smells lovely, like honeysuckle. Is it her natural scent, or perfume? I once dated a woman whose skin smelled of cinnamon. She didn't wear perfume. Her skin just smelled so cinnamony and delicious all the time. When we were in bed together, the scent would rise from her moist skin and even her breath would begin to smell like the spice. I used to tell her it was a drug. Maybe that's why it hurt so fucking much when she left me. She left, moved back to London, and married an earl; said she wasn't cut out for life in the bush. Now, she lives with her husband in a pile of stones in northern England.
"Jake! We just missed the turn. You're going to have to double back."
"Sorry…"
"You were lost in thought," she says carefully.
"I was, yeah. Sorry about that."
"Can I ask you something?"
"You are already, aren't you?" I say in a light tone. I don't want her to think I am annoyed with her.
"I know…sorry, I shouldn't pry. Here! Turn here…"
"So, what's your question?"
"What are you doing here? In Vermont, I mean? What made you come here?"
"I guess I just needed something different," I say. And the snowy hills here and postcard-perfect towns are definitely a change from the shantytowns and townships edging Cape Town.
I grew up in a South Africa in flux. Most people don't understand that. They have one idea in their heads of life in South Africa and how we whites all sucked what we could out of the country and left. My parents were born in South Africa. Their parents were born there. There have been four generations of Groenewalds in South Africa. So, I feel African, even if I don't fit everyone's stereotype of what a South African should look like. Going back to South Africa, though, after Afghanistan…I tried it. I couldn't find my way there anymore.
"You ever have that feeling? Like you don't fit the boundaries of your life anymore?" She nodded and turned her face away. I tried to imagine her as a child, making snow angels in the yard, climbing the branches of the sycamore tree in the fields behind the houses. "Well, that's why I left…that and just needing a place that felt…calm."
"And, you chose Vermont?"
"Vermont chose me."
"Meaning?"
"How much further have we got?"
"What? Oh, another ten minutes and we're there." She shifts again, slowly turning towards me again. For a fleeting moment, her brown eyes shine copper and gold. "But you're not off the hook yet. What did you mean? When you said Vermont chose you?"
"My car broke down right after I crossed the Connecticut River…I got it in my head I needed to see a covered bridge—"
"I know which one you mean…it's the Cornish-Windsor bridge…I love that bridge…"
"Well, as soon as I emerged from it, my engine started making sputtering noises. I made it into Windsor and found a mechanic there. Ended up staying there a few days. I didn't have any real destination in mind."
Mia inches closer. Her lips are parted. She must surely realize how sexy she is. All of this wide-eyed innocence must be an act. But then, I get the feeling she isn't trying to seduce me. She's not doing the usual act I've seen so many women pull—lowering her eyes whenever I look at her, licking her lips, or that constant hair-flipping. She is just staring out at the road, tapping out the beat of the song on the radio against the dashboard.
&nb
sp; "Windsor's a nice town," she says. "A lot of people end up there, looking for someplace else, and they just stay."
Maybe that's what's happening to me. I don't feel any drive to leave Hunters Grove. My job with Reuters has provided me with a green card. Concentrate on the road, buddy. She may be beautiful but she's probably chock full of problems, otherwise she wouldn't be hiding in Vermont. With you.
"When I was a kid, I used to tell my grandparents I was going to marry Owen Cudahy and live here with him for the rest of my life." I can almost imagine her making that sort of declaration. She smiles to herself. Then she perks up and says, "There it is! Up ahead. Cudahys' Christmas Tree Farm."
We bump along the pitted driveway lined with fields of fir trees in varying sizes. We park in front of the converted barn that Mia tells me is where Owen's mother and wife make garlands and wreaths from balsam fir and Norway spruce. She hops out of the truck and gestures for me to follow her. She's already calling out Owen and Liezl's names.
Owen Cudahy, whom she swore she'd marry one day, is tall and brawny with wild curly hair and a beard. He is a poster child for Vermonter wholesomeness—this is what eating plenty of Vermont cheese and maple syrup will give you—a man who looks like he is made of pure Vermont granite. He scoops Mia in a bear hug and swings her around. The woman beside him doesn't look at all nonplussed at who I assume is her husband being affectionate with the lovely Mia. When he finally puts her down, she and Liezl hug each other and talk at the same time, asking questions without hearing answers. I saunter over, noticing how Owen is watching me through squinted eyes.
"You don't look like the last boyfriend," he says as a greeting.
"I'm not her boyfriend," I explain. "I'm renting the guest house from Mia."
Owen nods. "Oh, right, Ruth Carter told me about you…the African photographer. Thought you'd be black though."
His forthrightness catches me off guard. I should be used to it by now. I've been in Vermont a few months and no one minces words here. They just say what's on their minds and that's that. But I shake his extended hand and reply, "South Africa is pretty diverse. You get every color of the rainbow."
Then Mia introduces me to Liezl, Owen's wife, and says she is going to look for her tree. She grabs an axe from the wall and heads off behind the barn.
"She looks like she knows where she's going."
"She knows where her tree is."
"She's actually got a special tree here?"
"Her grandfather planted it for her," Owen says. "Come on, follow me. I'll show you some nice trees."
While Owen shows me around the farm, he explains the difference between the trees. He relaxes after a while, not posturing as the protective older brother to Mia. I can see why a younger Mia would have had a crush on him. He is a down-to-earth guy, who looks strong enough to make anyone feel secure. But he is also genuinely nice. He tells me he's known Mia since she was a baby. Her grandmother and his grandmother attended the same church. Her grandfather and his grandfather were volunteer firemen for the town in their youth. Then he says, "That last boyfriend of hers…I know she thought he was great, but Liezl and I never really got what was so special about him. He was so damned full of himself."
"I think he's the reason she's here," I tell him.
"That doesn't surprise me," Owen says and shakes his head. "He was just trouble waiting to happen."
I don't press him for information. That would make it seem like I was interested in being more than Mia's tenant. I wouldn't mind it, but, then, she's got her list, which she seems to ignore at will.
"Mia's a firecracker," Owen says after a while. We've come to a nice-sized Fraser fir that he says would look mighty fine in the guest house. Then he grins at me. "But you're probably not going to need it, seeing as you've already taken a shine to Mia."
"She's a nice girl."
"Don't play coy with me," Owen says. "I saw how you were watching her when she jumped out of the car. Hell, I had my chance with Mia long before I met Liezl, but I got warned off."
"Why? Because she's black?"
"What? No…she's just Mia for me." Owen scratches his chin and starts walking back towards the barn. "No, her granddad didn't want me messing around with her, said she was too young for me and that she was too restless to stay in Hunters Grove. Funny she always keeps coming back."
Owen leaves me on my own and I walk along the gravel paths between the rows of trees and breathe in the fresh, balsamy scent of the fir trees. It is almost citrusy with something deeper, almost feral underlying it. And now, with the sun dipping low behind the deepening shadow of the mountains, I can almost imagine being lost in the woods, the untamed imagination of a child set free. I picture the younger version of Mia I've seen in the photographs her grandmother showed me before she died. Mia with her hair in two symmetrical braids, a skinny little bean of a girl with dusky skin and mischievous eyes who runs through the rows of trees singing Christmas carols, while her grandfather checks the progress of the plot of trees he's purchased to sell in the village green in the weeks leading to Christmas. She spins, she dances, she makes up stories that make her grandfather smile.
Owen says he was always a little in love with Mia. Even when he was twelve and she was nine. She trailed after him, hiding in the trees and pretending he was the worst boy alive. And when he ignored her, she'd pout and say he wasn't her friend. There was a moment. He tells me this when we're gathering boughs to use as garland. His wife Liezl has gone into the house to rest her feet. She is six months pregnant, with their third child, and shouldn't be doing any heavy work, but Owen keeps catching her trying to lift tree branches instead of asking him for help.
With Liezl in the house now, Owen tells me how, when he was seventeen and Mia was just turning fifteen, he asked her on a date. "She thought I was pulling her leg," he says with a grin. "Her granddad had already scared off the other local boys, before she'd even come up that summer. But, he told me he was only letting me near her, since my granddad was his closest friend." So, Owen, seventeen and probably already looking like the man he would become, showed up that Saturday night to take Mia to the movies. He'd bought tickets for a horror movie and figured they could drive to the lake afterwards and talk, maybe go skinny-dipping.
"She let me kiss her in the movie theater. And it was like sunshine, you know? Like someone lit me up from inside and I couldn't stop."
Afterwards, he took her to the lake and they lay down in the grass staring up at the full moon. Owen was already hard, unable to shake the desire that this girl, whom he only ever got to see a few times a year, could unleash in him. When she rolled on top of him and asked him if he'd ever been with a girl before, he nodded. It was almost true. He'd made out a few times with Hannah Bartlow, whose parents owned the local bookstore. Hannah used to sneak him into her bedroom and would let him slide his fingers inside her. She let him dry hump her, she'd even give him head, but she wouldn't let him inside her. And then here was Mia, fifteen years old, with her slender, taut body and those bee-stung lips, scrambling on top of him and kissing the tip of his nose, his chin, her hands sliding under his Grateful Dead t-shirt and grazing his nipples. In the moonlight she looked like a dark fairy with her curls spiraling in a halo framing her face. She rocked against his hard-on and urged him to touch her, touch her wherever he wanted. And damn he wanted to. And she wanted him to do it. So he did what she asked of him, touched her where she whispered she wanted to be touched, kissed her where she said she wanted to be kissed and then they fucked…no, it wasn't urgent, there was none of this "get mine and get out". He savored her. When he drove her home later, she told him she always wanted him to be the first. And, Owen- who was usually never at a loss for words, who strutted through the halls of Hunters Grove High School like a god- felt humbled and smitten for the first time in a long time. He asked her why him. She smiled and shrugged. Her answer? "Just because you're you."
Owen's story is still reeling through my head when I finally catch up with Mia. Sh
e has found her tree and she's marking it with the axe.
"Should we get Owen?" I ask her.
She shakes her head. "I know how to do this. My granddad taught me."
She swings the axe like a pro, chopping away little nicks until she gets the perfect shape. She sends me to get the netted stocking to slide over the tree and then, once we've swaddled it, she makes the final chops. The tree lands with a soft thud on the snowy ground. I hoist it onto my shoulder and carry it back to the truck. I set it in the truck bed and strap it down.
When I head back to the barn, Owen and Mia are laughing at a private joke. I ask Owen how much we owe him. He shakes his head. "Your money's no good here," he jokes. "Besides, her granddad helped my granddad buy this place. Mia can have whatever she wants from us."
Liezl comes out of the barn with a rubber basket full of coils of fir garland. I take the basket from her and say, "You shouldn't be carrying anything this heavy when you're pregnant."
She laughs. "I'm made of tougher stuff than that." But her smile tells me she appreciates my concern. I load the basket into the truck, and then Mia says, "The only thing now is we need two wreaths, but you have to let me pay. You can't just keep letting me have everything for free."
"We're flush this year so it's okay," Owen tells her. "C'mon, if your granddad were still around he'd skin me alive for charging you."
"Owen…"
"No, it's okay. We're doing fine this year."
"We really are," Liezl assures her. "Nobody wants those skimpy trees from Home Depot and Walmart, so they still come to us."
We leave them with hugs and promises to meet before New Year's Eve. As Mia climbs into the cab of the truck, I say to Owen and Liezl, "Come by on Boxing Day. We could have coffee. I make a mean Swiss roll."
On the road again, Mia smiles at me. The sun has disappeared and layers of purple tint the sky. "This has been a good day," she tells me and lets out a happy-sounding sigh.
I smile back at her and think, yeah, it has.