The Family Tree

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Maybe he had. Here she was, getting the meat loaf out of the oven, dishing up the attendant mushy potatoes and carrots, taking the lid off the saucepan of overcooked green beans, foods she had never prepared before she married Jared. The too-sweet slaw was on the table with the required white bread and the real butter and the grape jelly. Jared looked it over, slowly, as though tallying each item, then helped himself and fell to. It was a typical Jared meal, all prepared in accordance with the rules for “feeding a working man,” that had been communicated to Dora by Jared’s mother. Meals were uniformly dull, uniformly high in calories and fat, and Jared didn’t gain an ounce.

  Dora took a helping of slaw, a small slice of meat loaf, and some carrots.

  “You need more food than that,” he said disapprovingly.

  “I really don’t, Jared. I’ve gained five pounds the last couple of months.”

  “Ummm. Not enough exercise.”

  “Probably.” Though how she could get more exercise without disrupting Jared’s mealtime schedule was a problem.

  “Tastes good,” said Jared, around a mouthful of meat loaf. “Mom’s recipe?”

  “Of course,” said Dora. Personally, she thought the meat loaf tasted of bread crumbs and steak sauce, but not at all of meat. If she substituted soy-something or sawdust for the meat, the taste would be the same, a flavor she identified as vague tomato. But then, Jared liked vague tomato. He liked vegetables boiled into submission. He liked things deep fried or chicken fried or barbecued. He liked his eggs hard boiled or scrambled or fried crisp in bacon grease, with the yolks broken so they didn’t run at all. Salad dressing was okay, but not mayonnaise. She couldn’t imagine why he didn’t gain weight. All the exercise he got most of the year was walking from the car to his office.

  Of course, mental activity could burn up the calories, and Jared probably did a lot of that at Pacific-Alaskan. Jared worked in the research and development department, thinking up more ways to use wood pulp, or designing machines to cut down and chew up trees more easily. Jared not only designed the machines, but he made the models. Jared probably made quite a good salary, too. Though Dora had never been told, or asked, about Jared’s financial position, she knew he could have lived a lot more luxuriously if he wanted to. A few times he’d mentioned a trip one of his colleagues was taking, or an event he’d like to see, but when she’d suggested he go ahead and do it, he’d always said no, he’d rather spend his money on tools he needed, on expensive equipment he couldn’t do without. He was always building weird machines in the basement, but what they were for, God only knew, because Jared never said.

  She waited until his eating had slowed. “My sister Polly wrote me,” she said in a casual voice. “She’s dropping in tomorrow for a couple of days.”

  He put his fork down and scowled. “Couple of days? Well, thank you for the notice!”

  “I just got the letter this morning, Jared. If you don’t feel like company, I can put her up in a motel.”

  “I don’t feel like company, but you won’t put her up in a motel. She’s family.” His mouth clamped into a thin, dissatisfied line, meaning she wasn’t his family, no member of whom would ever, ever arrive without at least six months’ notice. Come to think of it, Jared and Momma were all there were of Jared’s family, so how the hell would he know how families acted!

  She had the sop ready to throw him when he growled. “I thought I’d take her out to dinner tomorrow, just us sisters, for girl talk.”

  His brow cleared at this. “Fine. Okay. I’ll eat with Momma.” Jared hated girl talk. Come to that, Jared hated talk. And he would eat with Momma, just as he always did when Dora got home too late to fix supper. Dora had known he would.

  “If you got the mail this morning, you probably saw that weed,” said Jared. If she had seen it, his tone implied, she should have done something about it.

  She regarded her plate in silence for a moment. “I’m sorry, Jared. I was reading Polly’s letter, and I guess I didn’t notice.”

  He fixed her with a suspicious glare. “You had to notice. The damn thing was three feet high!”

  She opened her eyes very wide, giving him the willing but stupid look, another expression perfected since their marriage. “Was it really? My gracious. What do you suppose it was?”

  He was successfully sidetracked by the look and the tone. He nodded. “It was some kind of vine. I sprayed it with weed killer. Enough to kill an elephant. That ought to follow it down underground and finish off the root.” He came close to smacking his lips at the idea.

  “I’m sure it will.” Poor weed. Didn’t have a chance. Why hadn’t it picked somewhere other than Jared’s place?

  “Maybe it’s a shoot from that damned tree,” he muttered. “The roots are coming up under the garage! They’re making huge cracks in the floor! I’m going to have to have it jackhammered out and relaid.”

  She didn’t reply. Jared wouldn’t expect her to. After all, construction was men’s business, just as doing the supper dishes was women’s. He didn’t expect her to lay concrete; she shouldn’t expect him to wash dishes. While she washed and put away, Jared went down to the basement and moved stuff around in his equipment room. Dora never went down there. She’d looked in, once, when they’d first been married, but Jared made it clear he’d do the cleaning down there himself, he’d prefer she just leave it alone. So, hell, she left it alone. Walls hung with glittering sets of blades and sockets and benches stacked with complicated contraptions didn’t exactly make her salivate.

  Dora was getting ready for work the following morning when she heard Jared yelling and ran to see what the matter was. He was standing on the stoop, his face pale and rigid with anger.

  “Damn, stupid chemicals, damn directions were all wrong, they’ll pay for this….”

  The rosebushes down either side of the front walk had turned a seared, ashen hue, and most of the leaves had dropped. The little round evergreens on either side of the stoop were a sick yellow. Most of the leaves had fallen from the crab apple trees, too. The kill was so total that it looked as though someone had purposely sprayed everything with acid. Only the hankies of lawn remained untouched, green as ever, like plastic.

  The weed was still there.

  “Maybe the wind was blowing, Jared. The mist blew over onto the other plants…”

  He snarled, his teeth showing. “Don’t be stupider than usual, Dora. There wasn’t any wind. Not a breath. I wouldn’t have sprayed it if there’d been any breeze at all.” He reached for the offending weed, grasping it firmly, only to yelp in pain and drop it. “Damn thing has thorns!”

  He brushed past her, almost knocking her down on his way to the first aid kit in the bathroom.

  Dora stood rigid, suddenly burning with anger. “Watch out,” Dora snarled to the weed. “He’ll take the ax to you next. And then he’ll probably start on me.”

  The leaf tips stirred, turning toward her. She looked up, startled, seeing nothing else moving. There was no wind. Still the leaf tips turned, following her until she shut the door behind her and leaned against it, giggling helplessly. She was living in Weirdsville. The world was off its pivot, and old Jared was really shaken up, and here was Dora, doing nothing about any of it except giggle. It had been a long time since she had felt any emotion over Jared, and if she’d had to guess, she wouldn’t have guessed she could feel this half-hysterical disgust.

  Jared stomped out of the bathroom, his hand bandaged, almost yelling at her, “Since you seem to be unable to do anything around here, I’ll take care of the damn thing this evening. You said you were going out with your sister. How late will you be?”

  She actually opened her mouth to scream back at him, then clashed her mental gears and managed to keep her voice utterly neutral. “Not late. We’ll go to the Greek restaurant at the mall. We’ll probably walk over, it’s so close.”

  He turned on his heel and left, not saying good-bye, leaving her to let the rage seep away into her customary calm. For a m
oment there, she had almost told Jared what she really thought. That wouldn’t do. She wasn’t quite sure why it wouldn’t do, but she was certain that telling Jared anything about how she felt was a very bad idea. It was a lesson you learned, being a cop. Telling people what you really think is often a very bad idea indeed. As Grandma used to say, sensible people pour oil on troubled waters, not nitroglycerine.

  She and Polly did walk to the restaurant, leaving before Jared got home. They went out the front, where Dora explained the mostly dead landscaping and pointed out the weed, taller than ever. Polly looked at the weed with a good deal of interest and agreed that no matter what Jared had said, he had to have sprayed the trees and bushes to kill them like that.

  The avenue was only a block and a half away, and the mall was only six long blocks west. It had cooled off quite a bit and they strolled, enjoying the evening, stopping to buy some stockings for Polly, a blouse for Dora. They spent twenty minutes looking at shoes before going on to the Athena, where they had egg lemon soup and stuffed grape leaves and moussaka loaded with cheese. They laughed a lot, and drank wine and cried a little over old memories.

  “Milly killed herself, didn’t she?” Polly asked, as they were gathering up their purses and shopping bags.

  Dora’s mouth dropped open. “I told you…”

  “I know what you told us. But she did, didn’t she?”

  Dora sat back down. “Yes. I don’t think she meant to, but she did. You knew she was on drugs?”

  “We were only a year apart, Dory. When Grandma died, you were up to your neck being a cop all day and taking care of the house and us all night. Sure, I knew she was on drugs. I used to beg her to stop, but she said it made everything easier. It didn’t, really. It just made everything disappear.”

  “You should have told me, Pol.”

  “You had a lot on your plate. I figured you’d done enough, all those years, and then after Gran died, staying there to take care of Milly and Jimbo and me.”

  Dora fretted. Polly should have told her. Maybe…if she’d known. Oh, if she’d known, what? Her mind squeezed tight, the way it sometimes did, shutting grief away. Shutting the pain out, refusing to let the emotions strangle her, making herself go on. Not unscathed, but capable.

  “That’s what the good Lord gave us repression for,” Grandma had often said. “So we can put the grief and anger dogs in their kennels and go on with our lives. If we let the dogs run, they’ll follow the trail until they drag us straight to destruction.”

  “Whenever I remember Milly, I think maybe some people are survivors and some aren’t,” Dora commented, holding herself very still. “Seeing the things I do every day, I think sometimes it’s better if we just let the nonsurvivors go. They don’t enjoy life. They suffer through it, being angry all the time, hating people, grieving over things, and everyone who loves them suffers right along. They’re like a fish out of water, flapping the whole time, from this disaster to that disaster, and we flap with them, feeling the air burning our gills, getting drier and drier with the pain. Better if we let them go.”

  Polly frowned. “Oh, that’s hard, Dory.”

  She nodded solemnly, spoke through her teeth. “I know it is, Pol. It’s just a feeling I get. I know it doesn’t sound nice, but if they were animals, suffering that way, we’d put them out of their misery.”

  “You may be right. Milly was never happy. She was like Daddy, from what Grandma used to say.” Polly looked up and spoke, as though to no one in particular. “But you’re not that happy either, Dora. And I don’t think you will be if you stay married to Jared. Why did you marry him in the first place?”

  My God. Everyone wanted to know why she married him. Including herself!

  She half giggled, shaking her head. “Oh, Pol! You kids were all gone, and I’d sold the farm. And during the day, on the job, I was okay, but at night, when I tried to sleep…” How to describe that feeling, finding herself caught in an undertow of memory, thrashing around, trying to get something solid under her feet? “Jared asked me to marry him and share his house down the street. He said we were mature adults, we’d be able to design ourselves a comfortable life. And I thought, well, why not?”

  “You didn’t love him!”

  “No. I’ve…I’ve never loved a man, not like that.”

  “You were afraid it might be your only chance, weren’t you?”

  Dora flushed. “That’s probably true.”

  “Okay. I can understand that. But why in hell have you stayed married to him?”

  Well, why not be honest? “He’s never pleased about anything, Pol, but he is easy to keep contented. He lives by rules; all I have to do is remember them. And I’m comfortable.”

  “But Dora, God, you deserve more than that! You must know there’s something missing! What’s the matter? Are you afraid if you admit it, you’ll have to do something about it?”

  “Like go look for it? Aren’t half the women in the world looking for ‘it,’ whatever ‘it’ is? Good sex, real romance, love and lust and ecstacy, pink clouds in the skies and violins in the shrubbery. Trumpets, trumpets, madly blowing! Thumpety-thump on the bedsprings. Wasn’t living with Mama and Daddy enough of that!”

  Polly laughed, and flushed, and they let the matter go as they crossed the parking lot. Sprouting up around the light posts were clusters of feathery green, and Dora stopped to point them out to Polly, saying they looked like Jared’s weed. They laughed about that, feeling a gossipy and sisterly camaraderie as they strolled along the avenue looking across toward the pale bulk of the boardinghouse.

  “She’s a funny woman,” said Polly, nodding toward the house.

  “Who? Jared’s mother? You’ve only seen her once, haven’t you?”

  “Um. At your wedding reception. That was the strangest bunch of people!”

  “Well,” Dora laughed, “they were my fellow boarders. Since we had the reception at the boardinghouse, it didn’t seem nice not to invite them.”

  “What was that woman’s name? Michaelson?”

  “The talker?”

  “Talker! That’s like calling Everest a little hill. And the guy with the fish…”

  “Mr. Singley. Mr. Singley talks to his fish. He has names for each of them. He calls them woozums.”

  “And the fanny pincher. The one with the strange eyes.”

  “Mr. Calclough. And Mr. Fries who does martial arts. When he shouts ‘Haieeee,’ the whole house shivers.”

  “You somehow just didn’t fit in with that bunch, sis.”

  “I was only going to be there temporarily.”

  “I wasn’t too crazy about the questions Momma asked, either. Were you a reliable cook and housekeeper? That pissed me off a little, and I told her just how lucky Jared was to get you, and what a great sister you’d been. Here’s where we turn.”

  Something clanged in Dora’s mind, like a coin in a pay phone. She chased the idea around, whatever it was, like chasing a memory of a dream when one first wakes up, only to lose it entirely.

  They crossed the avenue and started down the empty street. Everyone was home from work, cars were put away, doors were closed, everyone was inside having supper. The street was like a vacant movie set as they moved down one block, then past the first two houses on the next block, then the house with the Tree, or the two with the Tree between them. Dora looked up at it as she always did, nodding to it. The Tree seemed to nod back, as it always did.

  The next place was Jared’s. Dora saw two of her neighbors standing on the sidewalk with their mouths open, staring. She saw what they were staring at: a pile of laundry on the stoop. Then her mind sorted out what she was seeing, and she realized it wasn’t a pile of laundry, it was a body, Jared’s body, Jared lying on the stoop, a set of clippers fallen from his hand, one arm curled protectively around his head. Dora broke into a run.

  He wasn’t breathing. “Call for an ambulance,” she cried, handing Polly the key that had been in her hand. “Quick!”

  Polly
went in, Dora rolled Jared off the stoop onto the grass, got him face up, started doing CPR, just the way they’d taught her, push push push push push, breath, breath; push push push push push, breath, breath. He was a funny color. He had little wounds all over his face and hands. Maybe other places, too, for his shirt and trousers looked as though he’d been through a barbed wire fence. Push push push push push. Breath. Breath. Push push push…

  Polly ran out of the house. “They’re on their way.”

  Dora just went on doing what she was doing. She heard the neighbors talking, then there were sirens coming, she heard the ambulance stop at the curb, shoes come running across the sidewalk, and she was suddenly thrust to one side of things, no longer responsible. She took a deep gasping breath, looking around for the neighbors. They were standing by the curb talking to a patrolman she knew, Ralph Gadden. He dismissed them, then came over to Dora to ask what the hell was going on. She told him what had happened.

  “You had any killer bees around here?” one of the paramedics asked. “Hornets, wasps, anything like that?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

  “This guy looks like he’s stung all over, neck, chest, back, even his legs. The medics are running him to Memorial. You have any idea what caused this?” He gestured around himself at the dead trees and the dead roses and the dead junipers.

  “No,” she said, truly baffled. “That is, I’m not sure. Jared used some weed killer yesterday…”

  “Anybody hanging around?” Ralph asked. “Any strangers?”

  “I didn’t see any. Maybe the people you talked to, those two by the fence…”

  Ralph shook his head. “No. They saw him just before you did.”

  She turned away helplessly, seeing the weed lacily arranged against the front of the house, now almost six feet tall. As she watched, all the leaflets turned in her direction. She shook her head, telling herself she was seeing things, then got into the ambulance with Jared. Polly would bring the car, she said. The two raggedy persons watched them go.

  Jared was put into intensive care at the hospital. Ralph was replaced by another cop, one she didn’t know, and he had her tell the story at least five times while someone else queried Polly. Neither of them had anything worth telling, no matter how many times they told it. No, Jared hadn’t yet come home when she and Polly went to the mall. Yes, they could prove they’d been to the mall, they had their sales slips, their dinner check stub. They’d walked home. They’d been together all evening until they found Jared. Neither of them could possibly be suspected of anything.