The Language of Trees

by Ilie Ruby

  And then suddenly, when he returned to his seat after using the restroom, there was a stack of dimes behind his drink, ten dimes that he counted. He asked the bartender if he had put them there and the guy looked at him like he was crazy. Then Victor felt a bunch of dimes in his coat pocket. The air in the bar took on a chill, and the memories of Luke came flooding back. He resented the boy, maybe even hated him. But he never wanted him dead.

  Victor felt even more panicked. Removing the dimes from the bar, Victor had to convince himself that this was surely a better place to be than alone in the house, deafened by his own silence, and waiting at the kitchen table for something, what, he didn’t know—the flicker of the lamps, the sight of a paper airplane spiraling above the bathtub, or the scent of lilacs that repeatedly tried to smother him.

  Victor knows he is being haunted. He has no patience for spirits. He never liked how the boy’s large blue-green eyes would stay in his mind for days, causing him to wonder whether he could read Victor’s thoughts. The boy knew that Victor had chaos inside him. Luke had had a way of showing up seconds after Victor had told a lie. He’d meet Victor’s eyes, and Victor was forced to skulk away. Humiliated. Shamed.

  After Victor’s shower, he doesn’t notice his pit bull crouched in the corner of the room, having broken its chain yet again. Victor doesn’t plan to fall asleep on the twin mattress. Victor’s hair is still wet, his face damp against the mattress, when he is startled by the sound of sirens. Still drunk, he opens his eyes and sees a small bloody T-shirt on the floor, and a flurry of feathers circling above it as though caught in a small tornado. Luke has finally come for him. Judgment Day is here. Cars are honking and there are shouting voices outside his window. The radio suddenly turns on. The announcer is talking about the tornado, the thunderstorms, and the vortex caused by the meeting of two winds that are blowing in opposite directions, shown on Doppler radar. Loud, spinning storms striking the earth. As Victor sits up, bleary eyed, all he can think about is the scent of lilacs in Leila’s yard. He can no longer bear the guilt of that night, the death of the boy. Victor can no longer live with the secrets that tore apart his family. He has to know the truth. He knows that wherever he goes, wherever he runs away to, he won’t be able to forget his mistakes. He also knows his daughters won’t come near him if he just shows up. He knows they will all slam the door in his face. But Melanie had been the leader, the one who had once taken care of him. Surely she still felt something for him. If he had her on his side, the rest of them, Maya and Leila, would follow. Still, Melanie would not forgive easily, that much he remembered about her.

  As soon as Victor stands he hears a low growl coming from the corner of the room. He stops. Through his bleary eyes he can see his pit bull. There’s a ferocity in her eyes he’s never seen. Suddenly, she lurches at him. The dog sinks her teeth into Victor’s naked thigh as Victor screams so loud it rattles the windows. The stink of blood fills the air. Victor grabs for the lamp. He smashes it against the animal’s head. Rolling over to the side of the bed, Victor grabs his gun. Agnes lurches at him again, this time biting into Victor’s shoulder. Victor tries to wrestle himself out from underneath the animal, but with Agnes’s weight it’s too difficult. He shoots his dog from below, directly into its heart. Agnes’s heavy skull falls on Victor’s bloodstained neck, her body splayed across Victor’s naked chest. She twitches slightly before letting out a sigh.

  Victor, face streaked with blood, knows his dog is dead. But he fires his gun again.

  15

  LION KNOWS HE’S GOT to do something. Melanie has been gone for four days. He needs information. He needs a meeting, fast. Needs the help of a few of his ex-addict contacts. There’s this silent bond among addicts. A first name and a common history suddenly makes them kin. They’re the only people who’ll issue support without judgment. But Lion won’t listen as they whisper quiet words about serenity. Maybe, if he is lucky, one of them has relapsed and has recently seen Melanie. For this thought, he will pray for forgiveness.

  He heads over to the basement of an elementary school near Leila’s house. He arrives late for the meeting, just a few minutes after introductions. Taking a seat in the circle, he looks around, almost twenty people. He knows how to read a crowd. A bunch of old-timers. A few young punks. He can tell who’s still using. He can identify meth or crack just by the look in the eyes. He nods toward a handful of faces. Smiles are exchanged. One by one, people tell their stories around the circle. Soon it’s his turn. He begins to talk, but he can tell they aren’t with him. He can’t fool these people. They can sense when a person is not feeling what he’s saying, when he’s cut off from his heart.

  Lion knows his mouth is forming the words. He can hear himself talking about his last fight with Melanie. But he has no feeling.

  He doesn’t want to revisit the million and one times he’s looked deep into Melanie’s eyes to check the size of her pupils. He had prayed to Matrina each time. But this miracle of normal pupils happened because of his going to church; it was his insurance, he tells the crowd. He looks up, scans the faces. A few nod. He’s connecting now. People are waiting for an inspiring story. Success. Abstinence. To prove it can happen. For anyone.

  But he can’t lie.

  “After the fight, I just lost it, stormed out,” he confesses. “I get back, and I’m running up the five flights of stairs to our apartment. I’m so pissed the way she just lets Lucas cry like that—she’s afraid of spoiling him. I expected to see her standing in the kitchen making Hamburger Helper.

  “But she’s gone. Lucas was wet in his crib, his face all pink. I got real nervous. I’m thinking, what if she relapsed. It’s my first goddamn thought. That she’d do this to me, to us. And I get mad at myself, you know? My faith in her disappeared, I don’t know…”

  He looks around. A few of the young women shift in their seats. As supportive as people want to be, they can’t hide the fact that a relapse scares the hell out of them.

  “Then I wonder if I ever really had any faith in her. And that kills me. Because we had this bond. She had faith in me. I had faith in her. And it’s what got us through. Now it’s being tested again.”

  He tells them how he looked everywhere for Melanie. In the basement, in the laundry room, up on the roof deck. He looks around and can almost hear their silent self-talk. It could be me. It might be. I could lose it.

  Abstinence is precarious. Yes, they understand.

  They fold their hands in solidarity. Not a one takes an eye off of him. Go on.

  “I was living in a fantasy world, pretending to think it was all good. You know, like we had this nice little family,” he says, his voice trailing off. “Here I am, talking about abstinence and God. You got to get this. I just replaced one addiction with another one.”

  He’s sure they can tell that love was his replacement.

  He meets every eye in the circle. “So if any one of you has seen her…” he says. A woman bends down to pick up her purse. An old man checks his watch. His five minutes are up. There are nods. Empathetic smiles.

  At the end of the meeting, he listens to the people clamoring around the coffee counter. An old-timer stops him. He advises Lion to go easy on himself. Stay out of judgment. Love is the train that jumps the tracks. Love is the wolf you try to keep tied up. Let go and let God. Don’t leave before the miracle happens. God helps those who help…“Look,” the old man whispers, taking his arm. “I’ll say what we’re all thinking. Go to Two Bears’ Cave. If she’s there, you’ll want to know the truth.”

  Lion thanks the old man for his honesty and leaves. He had been avoiding Two Bears’ Cave because of an agreement he and Melanie made. The people there are shells of themselves, folks that have given up on their lives. She made him swear that if he ever found out she was there, he would take Lucas and move away. He would tell Lucas that his mother was dead and never speak of her again. It was better, she thought, for Lucas to grow up without a mother than to know the truth about who and what his m
other was, that his mother chose drugs over her own child.

  Why not just give Melanie a couple more days? Lion wonders, as he steps out into the cool air. Pray in the meantime. Doesn’t she always come back?

  He can’t wait this time. There is too much at stake. Four days.

  Lion hits the streets, his boots crunching the hard gravel in the breakdown lane. He is thinking that the people who hang out at Two Bears’ Cave have nothing to lose. This makes them dangerous. And who knows what state of mind Melanie is in. If Lion is going to get her out of there, he can’t go alone.

  16

  AS DUSK SETTLES OVER Canandaigua, Echo slips on an ivory vintage blouse edged in lace, then an old pair of jeans. She pulls the towel through her hair, letting the evening light catch a few loose strawberry blond strands that she pretends she inherited from her mother.

  She tells herself not to be hopeful. That the call she received from Grant at a pay phone asking her to come for dinner was just him being neighborly. She and Grant hardly know each other anymore. And she is certain he doesn’t see her like that now, not as someone who might actually want to be kissed. He is far too preoccupied to notice something as inconsequential as her clothing. It’s not a date, she tells herself. Just old friends having dinner.

  She tries on the feather earrings that she used to wear in high school, and then takes them off. She removes the rest of her jewelry, two silver rings and a chain, as she wants to feel unadorned, plain, just herself. She slips her feet onto the wooden platforms of her worn leather clogs. She has had the same taste in clothing since she was a child. She still keeps a self-portrait from kindergarten of herself in a white peasant blouse and blue jeans. Echo stands before the mirror, her reflection backlit in the flickering candlelight, her breasts, dark and full under the cotton cloth. Her bra is just sheer enough. She fastens the pearlized buttons on her shirt, all six of which match but one. It’s a superstition she read about once and hasn’t been able to shake. In ancient China, during the building of a temple, architects would plan a subtle mistake in the construction, a chip in the frame or an edge left uncut, so the Gods wouldn’t become jealous and destroy the whole building. Echo had learned this years ago and decided her life was too precarious to tempt the gods. So she always sewed one mismatched button onto her favorite articles of clothing.

  She grabs her purse and runs downstairs. She gathers up a small bag of groceries and peeks into the living room. Joseph is sitting in his recliner facing the TV, which is on without the volume.

  “You want me to turn it up?” she asks.

  He turns toward her, the pillow behind his head falling onto the floor. “I just use TV for company. I was napping anyway,” he says, reaching for the pillow.

  Echo kneels and hands him the pillow with her free hand. “I’ll be home early,” she says, pushing her wet hair back from her face.

  “Did you find my car keys?” he asks weakly. She tells him no, she wants to walk. “But it’s bad weather. Make sure Grant drives you home. You hear? It’s not the same place since you left. Look at you, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Your eyes must be very sore.” She leans over and gives him a kiss.

  “Kiddo. You got so much joy around you and you can’t even see it.” He shivers, and then pulls the afghan tightly over his shoulders as though it were winter.

  AS THE SUN BEGINS to set, Clarisse Mellon stands on her doorstep holding a warm plate of cookies. The pungent scent of ginger winds through the air among the lilac petals.

  When Clarisse sees Echo walking by her house, she waves her over. It may be the north wind that’s making her feel she should confess her secrets to Echo, the daughter she might have had if only she’d been brave. Clarisse has always had trouble expressing her true feelings. If she had been courageous enough, she’d have told Joseph that she loved him a long time ago. But fear kept her quiet. She had felt too vulnerable. Now she is almost out of time. Clarisse can no longer keep the secrets locked away inside of her, just as she can no longer ignore the fact that her kitchen window sometimes opens on its own only moments after she has locked it shut, letting bundles of lilacs cascade across the sill and onto the kitchen counter. She will reveal her truths in the only way that she can. Not in words but in images. Although Clarisse’s hands always ache before rain, she has spent the last few days since Melanie’s disappearance molding dough into different shapes, telegraphing stories into cookies. Baking is the way of age, she tells herself. It is a way for her to capture time. And secrets.

  Clarisse has both hated and loved living here in Canandaigua. She once thought that standing in her kitchen, watching everyone else’s life go by, was the safest place to be. But now she knows it is just the opposite. A full life, a life where she captures her heart’s desire, requires that chances be taken; that paths be forged out of the soft cocoon of loneliness. She glances at her old cat, who is rushing toward a patch of sunlight as though rushing for its last breath, the same way there are certain souls that rush back into life, if only to be held once. They only come back for that. Who would believe it? After all those miles of walking.

  Clarisse picks up a cookie shaped like a pipe. She presses a fist to her cracked lips as if it were fifty years ago to the day that Joseph arrived: Generous. Charismatic. Warm. She touches her neck, fingers the absence of her locket that disappeared while she was walking through the clover dreaming of telling him how she felt. That day she lost the locket, she lost the cache of her memories. She searched for it for a week but then gave up, certain that this meant the opportunity to tell him had passed. As time went on, she knew that she couldn’t steal the moment back, even if she could still feel Joseph’s presence around her. As she stood here all those years, baking in the kitchen, the power of her secret has felt like the great Niagara. How many years has she spent walking around the edges of this kitchen, trying to know it as though it were Joseph’s heart?

  For years, Clarisse believed that some things were better left unremembered. The flush of her own skin when confronted by the man she loved. The secrets of her neighbor, Leila Ellis.

  “Ginger cookies!” Clarisse calls out. She knows she must be brave. Seeing the girl awakens a feeling she is not used to, a feeling that is barely tolerable—the maternal ache. It’s an emptiness born of instinct. She still feels it after all these years. As Echo approaches, Clarisse notices the broken buckle on the girl’s clog—a telltale sign of a motherless daughter. You wouldn’t recognize it unless you were one or you knew what to look for—these women rarely comb through their hair or iron their clothing. They carry their little-girl selves through their lives like a warning. They forget to shave their legs or mend their broken shoes. Even when they are thirty-two, they delight in running through the sprinklers at night and stealing away into the treetops to spy on the birds. They carry on in this defiance and though they don’t know it, it makes certain men fall in love with them. And it makes certain childless women want to mother them. Clarisse had once been like Echo. She hadn’t grown up until she, herself, was forty-two.

  Clarisse leads Echo inside, instructing her to step over the cats as they walk through the living room, which is full of knickknacks covering the shelves, and the walls, collections of everything from porcelain frogs to macramé planters. There are six Gold Hummingbird Paradise lanterns out on the back porch alone.

  “How about a cup of coffee? No, you’d like some tea, I bet,” says Clarisse.

  “Mint, if you have it. If not, regular’s fine, too.”

  The flush in Echo’s cheeks gives her a child-like air, making Clarisse feel all the more maternal, making her want for what she has missed all of these years. Echo’s hair is wet. Clarisse wants to dry it for her. Cloaked in a big green army coat, Echo’s eyes are red, and she’s staring at Clarisse, looking somewhat confused, from under a tangled auburn mop of curls. The combination of fear and beauty is compelling. Clarisse has got to relax so she doesn’t let her nerves get the best of her. She has big truths for E
cho. “By the way, dear, do you know you have leaves in your hair?”

  Echo reaches up distractedly. “How embarrassing,” she says, without removing them.

  “Here, let me get that one for you,” Clarisse says, just to have a chance to smooth the girl’s hair. “That’s better. See? It’s just a leaf.” Clarisse can see that the girl is red with embarrassment. “Don’t worry. It’s what people call character-building.”

  “I’ve got enough character to fill a small city.”

  “You’ve got some things on your mind, maybe?”

  “Always.” Echo smiles quickly, looks down.

  “Well, you have choices to make. How lucky you are. I hardly remember when I had choices.”

  Echo follows Clarisse into the kitchen, which Clarisse introduces as her “studio.” Clarisse sets the plate of cookies down on the counter. She can see that Echo doesn’t know where to look first. Bottles of colored sprinkles and tubes of frosting are dispersed throughout rows of cookies, which are laid out across the kitchen table. Each cookie is decorated with its own Canandaigua scene—The Diamond Trees. A cabin. A Jeep, and more, many of which Echo seems to recognize. They have been painted with colored frosting. Some have been adorned with little silver and gold balls.

  “My God. You are a true artist,” muses Echo.

  As Clarisse reaches through the open kitchen window and pinches off mint leaves from the window box, she glances at the bushes for the yellow paper airplanes. Thankfully, nothing. “Mint for the nerves,” says Clarisse, setting down a cup of hot water in front of Echo. She sprinkles the mint leaves into it.

  Echo examines the trays of cookies. “Amazing details. Not a crack in the frosting.”