The Mulberry Tree

by Allison Rushby

  Immy had to agree with her mother — it was the silliest, most superstitious thing she’d ever heard as well. And yet, as she stood there in the presence of the mulberry tree . . .

  She believed every word of it.

  Helen simply shrugged.

  “If they feel so strongly about the tree, why hasn’t someone gotten rid of it?” Immy’s father asked.

  “Because of its age, it has a protection order,” Helen told him. “They can’t.”

  “Any fruit?” he asked.

  Helen gave him a withering look. “Apparently it used to produce bucketfuls, but it stopped when the first girl disappeared.”

  Immy’s mum made a noise that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “Well, I’m going to look at the rest of the house,” she said. “Coming, Immy?”

  Immy took one last look at the tree. “All right,” she said after a moment or two. She followed her mother into the kitchen, where she spent a lot of time going on about some kind of stove called an Aga. From here they crossed back to the entryway and went up the narrow stairs, Immy running her hands over the beams on the wall as she went. Upstairs, she realized the house consisted of only four real rooms. Downstairs were the living room and the dining room/kitchen, and upstairs were a large bedroom and a smaller bedroom, with a tiny bathroom sandwiched in between. Immy turned right, into the small bedroom. The spaces in between the black beams were painted a welcoming lemon-yellow, and a slim mirrored wardrobe reflected the color, making the room look larger than it was. There was an old but freshly painted white desk and chair and a white chest of drawers. A single white iron bed frame was pushed up against the right-hand wall.

  Immy crossed the room and approached the window, hesitating with her last step. Just as she’d suspected, there was the mulberry tree, its cronelike fingers tapping rhythmically upon the window itself. She jumped as a creak came from outside the door to the room.

  “I hope I didn’t scare you downstairs,” Helen said, a worried look on her face.

  “No,” Immy replied, though the truth was, her heart was thumping away inside her chest. “It’s all right.”

  Both of Immy’s parents appeared behind Helen, and they all squished into the room. Just as Immy had done herself, her dad crossed over to the window and peered out at the tree once more.

  “I know the house itself is charming, but to be honest, I’m not sure the owners would even consider your application,” Helen told them.

  Immy’s gaze moved immediately to her mother’s face. Uh-oh. It wasn’t wise to tell her mother she couldn’t do something. However, Immy was surprised to see that her mother didn’t really look all that convinced about the cottage. She came over to stand behind Immy and hugged her to her side.

  “Let’s head back to Cambridge,” she said to Helen. “We’ll give you a call as soon as we’ve decided what to do.”

  After sneaking in a nap, Immy’s mum went off to the hospital to get her ID card. Immy and her dad went exploring, taking a punting tour on the River Cam — a ride in which a student pushed their thin, flat-bottomed boat with a long pole. They sat on fat cushions and slipped silently and smoothly under the low arches of stone bridges. They spied on the grassy backs of the colleges, Immy running her hand in the cool water when her father wasn’t looking.

  The family met up for dinner at a pizza place. Immy’s dad wrote down on a paper napkin a list of the houses they’d visited.

  “So.” His pen hovered. “Which one are we crossing off first?”

  “The moldy one,” Immy and her mother said at exactly the same time.

  He crossed it off.

  The Dursley house was struck next. Then the Star Trek house.

  Which left only the apartment in the converted mill and Lavender Cottage.

  Immy’s dad frowned as he stared at the napkin. “I can’t believe they named it that,” he said. “Surely something else would be more appropriate. Like Killer Tree Cottage, for example. Or maybe they shouldn’t have called it anything at all and instead put up a BEWARE OF THE TREE sign?”

  Both Immy and her mum laughed.

  “So,” he continued, “which is it to be?”

  The threesome looked at one another.

  Immy thought about the apartment. It was pretty, and the cygnets were sweet. It would be fun to feed them and walk to school through the woods every day and see the seasons change. But Lavender Cottage . . . Lavender Cottage was exciting. She shifted to thinking about the tree then, about its skinny fingers tip-tapping at the bedroom window. A shiver went up her spine.

  “Lavender Cottage,” she said quickly, before she could change her mind.

  “Really?” her parents both said, staring at her. They looked surprised.

  “You’re not worried about the evil tree?” her mum asked.

  Of course she was. But the thing was — as much as she wanted to run away from the tree, she was also drawn to it, desperate to know more.

  “You said this would be an adventure,” Immy said to her mum. “And here it is.”

  “When I said this would be an adventure, I didn’t exactly mean I wanted to put you in danger of being abducted.”

  Immy could see that her parents wanted her to take the easy option of the apartment. She’d have to convince them. She looked down at the table for a moment and thought before meeting her mother’s gaze again. “A tree can’t make a girl disappear,” she said. “We all know that.”

  “Yes, but other things can,” her dad replied quickly. “People can.”

  Immy took another second or two, working out the dates in her head. “We don’t know anything about the first girl, but if someone took the second girl in 1945, well, they’d either be dead already or very, very old, wouldn’t they? Anyway, I know all the rules. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t get in other people’s cars unless you’ve told me it’s okay. And Dad will be home before and after school. He can even walk me to and pick me up from the school gate if he wants. Plus, my birthday’s on a weekend. We could go away the night before if we really wanted to be sure.”

  Her parents looked at each other, and Immy knew from their expressions that she’d succeeded. Both doctors, they were very logical. There was nothing they enjoyed more than hearing a solid argument come out of her mouth.

  “What do you think?” Immy’s dad asked her mum. “Should we really go for it?”

  For the next few minutes, Immy’s parents discussed the pros and cons of putting in an application on the cottage while Immy watched her father. He was caught up in the discussion, and for that brief, shiny moment, Immy thought his eyes looked like his old eyes — clear and not clouded with thoughts of the past.

  In the end, her mother insisted they sleep on it and make a final decision in the morning. Just in case anyone changed their mind.

  There were whispers in the night. In Immy’s dreams, words curled around the tree’s limbs, which felt for her in the dark. Girls danced around the trunk, singing a strange song she didn’t know. She woke briefly with a start as other voices — real voices — hushed each other, and she fell back to sleep.

  The bang of the hotel room door wrenched her from sleep yet again, and Immy lifted her head to see that it was light. Her dad entered, carrying a tray of hot drinks, a paper bag held between his teeth. She could smell cinnamon and butter.

  “Sorry, sweetheart,” he said when he’d put the paper bag down on the small table in the room. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Raisin toast? Hot chocolate?”

  Immy yawned and nodded at the same time. She was about to ask where her mother was, but then she realized she could hear the shower running. She clambered up from her rollaway bed and went over to sit down with her father at the table. He placed her hot chocolate in front of her, carefully lifted the lid, and then split open the greasy brown paper bag containing the toast. Immy took a piece and tried not to look as her father popped two pills out of their silver-shelled homes. He took them both at once with a swig of water, leaving the packet shining
in the sunlight on the table. As Immy watched him, she remembered the whispers from last night. There’d been whispers about those pills as well over the last month. Her father hadn’t wanted to take them. It was all right for him to feel sad, he’d argued to Immy’s mum.

  Her mum hadn’t agreed. And now he took the two pills once a day.

  Immy glanced out the window next to her and watched the people hurrying over the cobbled street below, juggling their handbags and briefcases, phones and coffees. She thought back farther then — to another night when she’d heard whispers. She’d been sleeping on a different rollaway bed — a trundle bed at her friend Grace’s house. Just like last night, the voices had woken her. They’d become louder, clashing like steel swords.

  Grace’s father had moved out not long after.

  Back then, Immy had thought something like that could never happen to her family. She couldn’t have imagined nightly arguments and whispers and long, loaded silences. Her parents had always fought about things — about directions in the car, about expensive silk shirts that shouldn’t have been washed with jeans, about who had used up the milk and not bought more. But not about things that really mattered. Not until this. Immy’s chest felt suddenly tight. She glanced over at her father, who was reading the newspaper.

  “How’s the hot chocolate?” he asked without looking up.

  “Good,” Immy answered, even though she hadn’t touched it yet.

  Back in Australia, her dad had been a GP. He had worked in a practice with four other doctors in a big old wooden house in a suburb where there were lots of big old wooden houses. Many of the people who lived in those houses were also old, and lots of them were his patients. Every year, they would have to get her dad to sign a special certificate saying they were allowed to keep on driving. And every year, her dad had to tell some of his patients he couldn’t sign the form, and their license would be taken away. He hated doing this, yet he knew that he had to — it just wasn’t safe for them to drive anymore. He hadn’t been surprised when he’d had to tell an eighty-three-year-old patient, Bob, that he couldn’t sign his form that year. He’d barely been able to sign it the year before, and, over the twelve months that had passed, Bob’s eyesight had gotten worse. Bob had begged him to sign the form. He’d reminded Immy’s dad that he needed to travel the distance of a few suburbs each day to see his wife, who was in a nursing home. Her dad had suggested he could catch the bus, or perhaps his son could look into the taxi-subsidy offers that might be available to him. Her dad had checked Bob’s chart, seen his son’s phone number was on there, and made a note to himself to call the son later on if he had time. Unfortunately, Bob hadn’t been able to take no for an answer. He’d pleaded, said he couldn’t get by without his license. But her dad still wouldn’t sign the form.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d told Bob. “It wouldn’t be right.”

  Bob had stormed off, saying he’d find another doctor who’d sign the form.

  Bob hadn’t done this.

  Instead, he’d kept driving his car. And six weeks later, he’d driven through a pedestrian crossing and killed a mother and her baby girl in her stroller.

  As she remembered, Immy’s hands clenched around her cup of hot chocolate, almost making it spill over the top.

  No one had blamed her dad, but he had blamed himself.

  If only he’d called the son. If only he’d spent a few more minutes with Bob, checking the bus route, showing him how it wouldn’t be difficult to get to the nursing home. If only he’d looked into the taxi subsidy himself.

  Months passed by, and Immy’s father had spiraled ever downward into a bleak, black place lined with “if onlys.” He couldn’t sleep. He couldn’t work.

  And he couldn’t seem to make Immy’s mum understand why.

  “I know you care,” she’d tell him, over and over again. “It’s what makes you such a wonderful GP. But you’re not their babysitter. Their lives are theirs to live. You did the right thing by society in taking his license away. He knew full well he shouldn’t have driven a car, and he did it anyway.”

  “It would have taken only a few minutes to care a bit more.”

  “All those minutes add up, Andrew. You had other patients to see. Sick patients who needed you.”

  “But . . .”

  Her father had as many buts as he had if onlys.

  Immy had if onlys herself. If only her dad could forget about what had happened with Bob. Stupid Bob who’d driven his car when he knew he wasn’t allowed. After the accident, his heart and eyesight had grown steadily worse, and he’d ended up in the same nursing home as his wife. He hadn’t even gone to jail! He’d only gone to court and had been given something called a suspended sentence.

  Unbelievably, her dad had visited him in the nursing home. When her dad had returned from seeing him, he’d told her that Bob had cried. Immy had been mad about this. In fact, she’d been furious. She’d yelled at her dad. Screamed at him for going. She’d been surprised at how angry she’d been. It was as if all the feelings she’d been pushing down inside had bubbled up and gushed out at once. Her dad had sat her down and tried to explain why he’d gone. He’d told her that what she needed to understand was that everyone was fighting their own battles in life. Yes, Bob had made terrible choices — not because he was a bad person at heart, but because he’d been afraid and desperate to keep his wife happy. He hadn’t wanted them to be separated after living their whole lives together. Immy had refused to see her dad’s point. In her mind, Bob had gotten exactly what he’d wanted: now he lived with his wife and didn’t need a car at all. Immy had said he should be locked up forever. Her dad had simply sighed and told her that Bob had made his own prison and he’d punish himself in it until the end of his days.

  The bathroom door opened, and Immy’s mum appeared.

  “Ah, you’re up!” she said, pointing her toothbrush at them both. “And having breakfast. Good work.”

  Immy waited to see if her dad would take this the wrong way. It happened a lot these days. Trying to keep the peace, she shoved half a piece of toast in her mouth before her dad realized she hadn’t touched any of her food yet.

  “So, we have a decision to make,” her mother said. “I was thinking . . . if we’re not sure about Lavender Cottage or the apartment in the converted mill, we could always look at places in Cambridge itself. It doesn’t matter if we take a little longer.”

  Immy chewed and looked from her mum to her dad to see what he was going to say. It was good, she thought, this moving around, being busy. It kept everyone occupied. There wasn’t so much time to think. She stopped chewing for a second as she realized something. What would happen when they stopped again? When they figured everything out and moved into a house or an apartment, she went to school, her mother went to work, and there was nothing left for her dad to do.

  At that very moment, she looked back at her mum and noticed her eyes move to the silver pill packet on the table.

  “Yes, I’ve taken them,” her dad said flatly, noticing, too.

  Staring at the pill packet, Immy realized that maybe Lavender Cottage could be useful in another way. Having that tree around — it might take her parents’ minds off everything else. Maybe if they could all keep worrying about the tree, there wouldn’t be time to argue about other things, like pills. Or for her dad to remember why he was taking them in the first place. After last night’s dream, Immy had wondered if the apartment might be the smarter choice, but the thought of everyone being happily preoccupied decided it.

  “Ithinkweshouldtakeit.” The words came out of Immy’s mouth in a rush, as did a bit of raisin toast, unfortunately. “Sorry.” She wiped it up with a napkin. “I mean, I think we should take the cottage. I think we should go and tell Helen right now that we want it. The cottage . . . it’s everything we said we wanted, except for a silly old tree that people go on about.” She didn’t want to call the tree names, and her words came out too fast again, but she had to convince her parents somehow.
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  Her parents looked at each other silently for a moment or two. And then they both shrugged.

  “You’re sure?” her mother asked.

  “Sure sure?” her dad checked.

  No, Immy thought. But it was a different word that exited her mouth. “Yes.” She stood, almost knocking her hot chocolate over in the process.

  Her mother’s mouth twisted. “I don’t know. It might seem like a good idea now, but —”

  “A tree isn’t going to take me away in the night,” Immy cut in. “It’s just a made-up story.”

  Her parents’ eyes met. Finally, her dad shrugged.

  “Let’s go and see Helen. Right now,” Immy said.

  Her dad gave her a once-over. “You might want to change out of your pajamas first.”

  “Good idea,” Immy said, jumping over the rollaway bed and lunging for her suitcase.

  The truth was, she would have quite happily made the trip in her pajamas if it meant her dad forgetting about Bob. Even if it was just for a little while.

  Luckily, Helen was at her desk when Immy, along with her mother and father, pushed open the heavy glass door of the real estate office.

  “We’ve made our decision.” Immy’s mum got straight to the point, not even bothering to sit down. “We’d like to apply for a year’s lease on Lavender Cottage.”

  Helen stood. “Ah.” There was a short silence as she stared at the three of them. “Well, as you know, you’ve been preapproved by our company and your references checked and so on. It’s simply a matter of my calling the owners to discuss. I did give them a quick ring last night, though they weren’t sure because of your, er . . . situation.” Her eyes came to rest on Immy.

  Immy’s parents said nothing.

  Helen cleared her throat. “However, the cottage hasn’t been rented for some time, so you might just get lucky.”