I’d followed the story of the American elm located in a parking lot directly across the street from the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that survived the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people. It was damaged in the blast—fragments lodged in its trunk and branches—and was almost cut down for evidence. But nearly a year later, the tree began to bloom and so was named the Survivor Tree and left alone.
American elm (Ulmus americana)
IV.
Hostess Gifts
Happy is the house that shelters a friend,” Emerson wrote, which is interesting given his decidedly mixed feelings about how long Thoreau stayed with him.
On its best behavior, I might say. But I don’t have a lot of personal experience. We didn’t open our home easily to others. Being a good host is all about anticipating need and we didn’t have the energy for that. And we didn’t visit much because being a good guest requires knowing how to let yourself be welcomed. We weren’t good at that either.
There are some great party hosts in literature—Fezziwig, Mrs. Dalloway, Jay Gatsby—but few who have to consider the care and feeding of visitors for a night or more. Mrs. Wilcox of Howards End comes to mind, but she spends most of her time in the garden and then dies. Maybe the point is you can’t be a good host and be present. Bad hosts, however, can drive a story. Think of Goneril and Regan, Roderick Usher, and Mrs. Danvers.
It is Martha, I think, who should be the patron saint of hosts. “As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, they came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to them. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’
“‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’”
The “one thing” is faith, of course, which you can’t eat or sleep on. So Martha went back to the kitchen. She deserves a gift.
In descending order, the best approach to hostess gifts is as follows:
Something for the hostess.
Something for the house (which is really something for the hostess).
Something for the family.
Something perishable.
Something for the children (if there are children) is an altogether separate consideration. But fair warning: children are picky.
Staging
On the train to New York, I tucked myself into a window seat. The older woman who took the seat next to me had a short perm and a purple leather handbag and wanted to know where I was headed. It was Memorial Day weekend and she asked if I was off for a “girls’ holiday, too.”
“No,” I said. I thought I said it nicely, but she dug for a long time in her purple bag, and at the first stop she smiled at the air, said, “I think I’ll just get a cup of coffee,” and never came back.
I had considered driving, but the truth is, much as I enjoy driving Bonnie, I don’t love long car rides. The solitude has a way of loosening memories, and when they start to unfurl I’m at risk of being blown off course. Better to take the train, where I can watch the trees rush by, though so many were in bad shape from pruning and storms, they started to make me sad. Do trees regret their lot? The ones struggling in cities or growing along forgotten margins? Do they dream of dark nights and quiet forests?
I was on the high-speed train, but for a time we kept pace with a delivery truck that had a giant scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream painted on its side. This seemed to me to capture both the degradation of American travel and the American obesity epidemic all at once. After a while, I fell asleep. When I woke up there were two girls, probably late teens, sitting across from me. One was in a red crewneck sweater and drank water from a red thermos she pulled from her backpack. The other wore a blue crewneck sweater and had a blue thermos. They shared a snack of grapes and cheese they had carefully stored in Tupperware containers and spoke quietly to each other in a language I couldn’t identify as they passed things back and forth. Between the way they moved together and the color coordination, they were mesmerizing. The young believe the world was made for them, that all of history leads to now, this moment on a train with your friend exploring the world. I thought of Maris and Helen from the café and I had to look away quickly when they caught me staring.
* * *
—
VANESSA NEVER WORE MAKEUP except lipstick, which she loved in deep shades of red, and somehow this was all she needed to bring out her dark eyes and excellent cheekbones. Since college she’d dated a series of dashing and charismatic men who ultimately, after varying lengths of time, had a different sense of the word commitment than she did, and although I was not her primary confidant, I believe her heart had been broken more than once. Vanessa’s parents had the longest, most stable of marriages. I remember her mother as present and reliable, with a pantry stocked with snacks for us. We were always welcome at her house, and yet of the three of us, Vanessa had been unsettled the longest; she hadn’t lived in one place for more than three years. When she married Richard, twelve years her senior, she welcomed into her life twin, eight-year-old stepsons, Colby and Sean, and a Labrador named Shadow.
People rarely like to be reminded of what they once thought, so I had no intention of saying I remembered she’d once planned for a cat and no children.
“I was sure Shadow would be black,” I said, trying to settle the energetic yellow dog greeting me.
“Oh, May,” she said. “Her name is the least of my problems.”
The new family was preparing to move. The apartment, decorated almost entirely in shades of white and cream, had been “staged” for sale, meaning it was Vanessa’s unenviable task of keeping house for an unknown duration to the standards set by an exacting real estate agent. Furniture had been rearranged, walls had been painted, items had been brought in, including framed artwork and expensive throw pillows and succulents in white pots. There was a giant bowl of lemons on the kitchen counter, more than anyone could use in a year, and ferns in the bathroom, the same color as the brand-new folded towels. Everything was exceptionally neat and clean, even the boys’ rooms, which was creating palpable tension.
“It’s all about ‘show-don’t-tell,’ the real estate agent says.” Vanessa sighed. “She’s supposed to be very good.”
Vanessa explained that all of this had come about suddenly, or she would have warned me.
“The boys were going to be with Richard’s mother this month, but her plans changed.” She seemed carefully neutral about this.
“Would it help if I booked a hotel room? That is not a problem.”
“No! I would never forgive myself. Lindy wouldn’t forgive me either. She said you two had the best time.”
“We did.”
“Isn’t her house pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
“Too quiet for me, but you know I love cities.” She poured us each a glass of wine and pointed to the balcony. “Let’s sit outside before the boys get home.”
The evening was chilly. Just as it had been unseasonably warm when I visited Lindy in December, it was now a cold June in New York. The apartment was on the sixteenth floor with a view of the Hudson and the coast of New Jersey. An occasional seagull soared by. We sipped our wine and Vanessa handed me a printed weather report for the days of my visit, along with a list of things she thought I might like to do while she was at work.
“I have a weather app on my phone,” I said.
“Well, I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure you had a phone.”
“This is so organized,” I said, trying to reconcile the more spontaneous Vanessa I remembered with the printout.
> “I have to be,” she said. “This staging thing is killing me. Even the pantry has to be kept with everything turned label out because apparently people open cabinets when they’re looking for a place to live.”
“What?”
“The agent says people need to know what it feels like to occupy the space.”
I stared at the river. The news was full of refugees and tent cities and boats full of terrified families fleeing war, and fortunate Americans were walking through immaculate apartments opening other people’s cabinets. I tried to bend this image into something kinder, but it wouldn’t budge.
We knew Richard was home when we heard Shadow’s nails slipping on the wood floor as she raced to him. When we stepped back into the apartment, Richard looked up from the dog and said, “The third musketeer at last!”
“We’ve been having such a nice time,” Vanessa said.
Richard shook my hand. “V tells me you play the flute.”
This was confusing, and as I was still weighing the three musketeer comment, I took a sip of wine before answering.
“I played the viola a long time ago,” I said.
“I told you,” Vanessa said to Richard. “Lindy and I played the clarinet, May played the viola.”
“V has been looking forward to your visit. You’ve been such a good friend to her.”
This didn’t seem completely right either. I looked at “V,” but she was looking down at the stove. I noticed she’d highlighted her hair.
Richard excused himself and disappeared into the apartment. The twins, who had come in with Richard, greeted me politely and went to play a video game in the living room. Vanessa refused to give me something to do in the kitchen, so I wandered back out to the balcony and tried to enjoy the view.
When I got cold, I came in and insisted on setting the table. Vanessa described how the sleeping arrangements would work during my visit. The apartment didn’t have a guest room, so the boys were going to bunk together, Colby into Sean’s room, and I would have Colby’s.
“Sort of like Lindy’s accommodations,” Vanessa said, jokingly, “but with less space and more Legos.”
Shadow would not stop jumping on me (I assumed she smelled Hester, but Vanessa said she liked me). I tried to be jolly about it, but finally Richard reappeared and closed her off somewhere in the back of the apartment, which made both her and the boys despondent. We could hear her whining and pawing at the door.
“Fancy tonight,” Richard said, picking up one of the dinner plates.
“Don’t be silly,” said Vanessa. “We get these plates out all the time.”
“Do we?” he said.
“Were they a wedding gift?” I suggested. “You are still newlyweds, after all.”
“Oh, no. V just wants to impress you.”
Vanessa made a face at him.
“Americans aren’t very good at having houseguests,” he said. “You know, in Polish there is a saying, ‘Guest at home, God at home.’”
“Yikes,” I said. “Are you Polish?”
He shook his head.
When we were all at the table, Vanessa raised her glass and made a toast. “To fortnight friends!” she said. She looked exhausted.
“Cheers,” I said, and complimented the dinner before I’d even tasted it. It seemed like the least I could do.
Richard said nothing about the food and got up after a few bites to put on some classical music that made Sean and Colby snicker. When he came back to the table he asked them to name the composer, but they couldn’t.
“Beethoven?” Vanessa guessed.
“No,” Richard said.
“Richard knows a lot about music and is teaching the boys,” Vanessa explained.
I nodded.
“Brahms,” Richard said, but didn’t seem interested in telling us anything more.
We didn’t stay up late. Vanessa and Richard had to work in the morning, and the boys left early for school. I fell asleep easily, but in the night was awakened by an unfamiliar warmth against my back. Shadow had nudged open the door to Colby’s room and jumped up on the bed with me. I considered pushing her off but worried she might bark, and I didn’t want to wake anyone up. I shifted to give myself a little more room, but that left me with just a sliver of blanket. Shadow raised her head and looked at me, completely silent, eyes wide. Then she sighed and dropped her head to the blanket again. She was warm and content and I thought maybe I could be, too. I put my head back down on the pillow. I lasted a minute, then got up and spent the rest of the night in Colby’s chair.
* * *
—
THE NEXT MORNING I left a note for Vanessa in the kitchen. I thought it might be best if I got out early and found my own coffee. Shadow seemed to agree but was devastated when I slipped out the door without her. I could hear her whining until I reached the elevator. I hadn’t slept well. In addition to Shadow, a few things in Colby’s room had beeped in the night, and I’d had the general sense of a lot of small, menacing figures all around me. When I got up to use the bathroom, I’d stepped on a Lego brick in the dark and my foot was still sore.
It was a cool, windy morning. In a café that played surprisingly loud music I bought a cup of coffee to go, made my way to Washington Square, and found a bench. A pigeon that looked like it had had a rough night, too, paced back and forth in front of me. His feathers were clumped and dirty and one of his eyes was infected. Meanwhile, between paving stones nearby, a tiny wild chamomile (Matricaria discoidea) was blooming. Plants always beat animals in the ability to thrive in inhospitable environments.
When my coffee was finished, I walked a few blocks south until I came to a garden called Time Landscape. It was meant, according to a marker, to be a “living monument to the forest that once blanketed Manhattan Island.” The north end contained a little woodland of oak, white ash, and American elm, then there was a small rise toward a grove of beech trees in the center. The south end had the grasses, birches, and wildflowers of a young forest.
We preserve old buildings, why not old landscapes? But wilderness on that scale didn’t make a lot of sense. It was enclosed on all four sides by an iron fence and there were no benches. It was like a zoo enclosure without the animals and it made me feel lonely. Trash was blowing in, leaves needed to be cleared, and one of the cedars was leaning precipitously. Another had a man’s necktie draped over a branch.
I was about to go when I noticed a woman working near the beeches. She was tiny, gray haired, and wearing wool from head to toe.
“Visitors on Sundays,” she said.
“Are you the gardener?” She had a shovel and a rake, work gloves, and a watering can. There was no shed in the garden, so her tools were leaned against the trees.
“One of them.”
I could not see how she had gotten in, but there must have been a gate somewhere.
“Visitors on Sundays,” she said again.
I didn’t answer, and after a minute she looked up from her work to see if I was still there. “You can also donate time or labor.” She stretched her back.
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
She studied me.
“Labor is time, right? How would you donate time to the garden without labor?”
“Up to you,” she said. She took a drink from her watering can and turned back to her work.
“I might if I lived here,” I offered, but she didn’t answer.
On my way back to Vanessa’s, I paid more attention to the city trees. I saw bark scraped off by scaffolding and trucks, broken branches, and twisted trunks. On one corner I saw three desperate-looking honey locusts (Gleditsia triacanthos) next to a Starbucks. Two were festooned with torn balloons, the third had a tattered plastic bag stuck in its branches. All of them were suffering from too much salt in the soil.
Horrified, I said out loud, “These trees are
being poisoned!”
But no one around me stopped or asked what I meant or how I knew. One of those sudden city whirlwinds came up and caught a plastic cup in the street. It made a sound like tap dancing against the asphalt until it was crushed by a passing car.
At a farmers’ market I bought a bouquet of wildflowers for Vanessa. When I got back to the apartment everyone was gone for the day. I put the flowers in some water and went to Colby’s room for a nap.
* * *
—
THAT EVENING VANESSA hired a babysitter for the boys, and we went to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. After a day apart, Vanessa and I were happy to be in each other’s company. We told stories about the past, ostensibly sharing them with Richard, but we were really just talking to each other. He didn’t ask a lot of questions, but neither did he interrupt, which was nice. The privilege of the closest friends in the group seemed to be keeping him quiet. He perked up after Vanessa told me she’d recently run her first half marathon. He told me he’d run three plus one full marathon. “Richard is a great runner,” Vanessa conceded. And when Richard was disappointed about not being able to try two different dishes, Vanessa changed her order to accommodate him. I was surprised, but maybe I don’t understand the pleasure of compromise when you’re in love.
When we opened our fortune cookies, mine said, “Redecorating will be in your plans.”
Vanessa wasn’t impressed. “In New York that’s like saying breathing will be in your plans.”
“But I don’t live in New York.”
Richard read, “‘Whistle while you work.’ That’s a command, not a fortune.”
“Do you?” Vanessa asked.
“Never.”
Vanessa’s said, “You will soon cross the great waters,” which made her shake her head. Then she looked at me. “You’re going to London soon. You take this one and I’ll take yours. I could use it for the new apartment.”
Rules for Visiting Page 14