The Boxfield Elm

by Cinda Swans

  What a morbid thought, she realized!

  “Mark, um. Yup, I’m stuck.” She struggled more, another chunk of rotted tree coming down on her head. “How did we do this when we were kids?” she mused.

  “Bri, that was like twelve years ago. More than that. The tree was more solid back then.”

  “So it’s getting worse, is it? Huh.” She touched the stuff that was falling away, considering it in her fingers. “Well sir, I guess there’s no problem here after all – just a rotten old tree. Let ‘em take it, no big deal, right?

  “Oh, Bri. Geeze. How are we going to get you out of there?”

  She laughed. She still didn’t feel that scared. “You have a rope and a pocket knife on you. Throw them down to me.”

  He sighed, almost mad. “You’re goddamn right I do, Bri.”

  “You never travel without them.”

  “You’re goddamn right I don’t, and you’re sure as hell lucky to be with a guy like me right now.”

  “Course,” she said, humoring him. Though, he was right – there was a reason why he’d been her trusted explorer friend for years.

  He threw her the pocket knife and one end of the rope. The other end he secured around a limb of the tree. Bri knotted a loop into the rope just below waist level, and then she stepped one foot into it. She used the pocket knife to knock away a few chunks of the damp, mulchy wood, getting down to wood that was more solid. She notched enough of a shelf that she could rest her other foot in it for a second while she reached her hand up as high as she could. Mark grabbed her and gave an extra yank, and then she was able to get her other hand around a branch up out of the inside of the tree. With one tenuous grunt, she pulled herself back out and Mark managed to scoot around the giant branches of the tree to make more room for her, and then they were up in the tree together, Mark still with his arm around her. He looked at her like she was a treasure he had just salvaged from the sea. “Jesus, Bri.” said Mark. “Did we really have to go to all that trouble?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He touched her face, and she turned to him, and they locked eyes. Suddenly, a powerful wave of vertigo took hold of her, even though she was securely sitting on a wide, comfortable branch. Then Mark’s eyes fluttered shut, and she felt her own eyes close as he leaned in and brushed his lips against hers, gently at first, then more firmly. He breathed out softly, sighing her name again, and as he gently nudged her lips open with his, she tasted sunshine, wood, the smell of beer and fire on the beach from last night. Her lips tingled in response, and she felt herself kissing him back, responding to his arms clasped around her waist, roving up her spine, touching her neck.

  “All that trouble,” Mark breathed softly. “For this,” he said. He drew away and smiled, timidly, she thought, looking at her.

  She still felt the pleasure of his kiss tingling through her knees, the sweet strangeness of kissing in a tree. But, she said, “No.”

  She reached into her back pocket, and pulled out four folded pieces of paper.

  “For this,” she said.

  They were tattered and looked as if they had gotten damp and then dry many times over, but the ink still held – you could see it where it had bled through to the back of the paper. It was sealed shut with a wax stamp.

  “For this,” she said, triumphant.

  Chapter 12

  On the way back to her aunt Claire's apartment, all Bri could think about was the feather bed she'd lie in to rest. She wasn't even thinking about trying to find Cynthia's lost books, or Mark’s kiss, or the sealed note in her pocket - she just wanted a good night's rest. She had to go get the office ready for a Sunday donor luncheon tomorrow, and it seemed very hard to imagine herself folding napkins and entering spreadsheets of donor contact information from the guest book they’d sign before sitting around the neatly laid tables she’d spend all morning setting for them.

  But by the time she was walking the distance between the T stop and Claire’s apartment, she found herself mulling over what a strange character her father was. He had been in love with Aeron‘s mother. Creepy, she thought. Her father had been in love with the mother of the guy she was –

  She stopped herself short, trying to prevent the thought from forming, but it was too late. The man she was in love with. The beautiful, mysterious, forlorn creature she was in love with.

  She sighed heavily as she opened the heavy glass doors. Mike was dozing behind his desk. He perked up. “Bri!” he said. “You back.”

  “Hi Mike,” she said, starting to walk past him. She didn’t feel much like chatting about her evening in Boxfield. What could she say?

  “Hey, that boy – he left this for you.”

  “What?”

  He handed her a slip of paper, carefully folded. She looked him in the eye and felt confused for a second. “He just said to give it to you, he didn’t say anything else.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

  She tried to stay calm, at least until she got into the elevator. “Have a good night, now,” she said to him.

  As the elevator doors closed, Bri held back from opening the note. It mirrored too much the notes she had found in the tree. But it was for her! And it wasn’t waterlogged or sealed with wax. She felt excited for a moment, but also, afraid. She figured he had probably just left his contact information, finally.

  She waited to open the message until she was sitting – not even on the couch, but in the big fluffy bed, which she had sorely missed. Blanco jumped up and mewed next to her, wanting her attention before she read the note. She put a hand on his head and took a deep breath, and read:

  Dear Bri.

  You mean as much to me as ever, but I’m afraid I’m dragging you into a mess that’s mine alone. My mom’s gone. It’s something I’ve been trying to understand my whole life. I’ve made the mistake of caring about people, and then tangling them up in my search for her story – I’ve made that mistake one too many times. You seemed happy when I first saw you, and worried when I saw you again. I don’t want to make you a part of my sob story. I want our memories to stay as they were – strange and lovely childhood things, not a mess in the adult world. I don’t belong here, really, and that’s no one’s fault…I’ve been in the same city too long, keeping the same secrets and telling the same stories. It’s time for me to come to terms with the fact that my mom’s gone, and she didn’t leave anything behind for me to know what happened. I have to move on, I think …

  Maybe we will meet again, but if not…I will always hold on to the Bri I remember, sitting in a tree and calling my name. I love you as ever.

  -A

  She read the note six times, and then she cried. Her heart sank into her feet, and all she wanted was to stay inside the elm tree – just like she had imagined. Aeron was gone from her – she wouldn’t ever have the chance to show him all the pieces of the puzzle she was putting together! What if she had solved everything, it wouldn’t matter anymore. He was gone! He was gone, and she hadn’t even heard the rest of his story, or showed him Claire’s flower, or told him that she went back to the tree…

  “Aeron,” she cried, as if he could hear her. “Don’t go away yet! I can help you…” She cried until her eyes went dry, and then she curled up on top of the white bed and closed them shut.

  She could hear the sound of saws, the machines working to come for the trees. She could hear little-boy Aeron, crying in the tree. Aeron, what’s wrong? she thought. My mother’s gone, he said. She’s gone, gone, gone. I can’t get to her again.

  Bri dozed, dreamed, lost and confused in something dark and sad.

  When she woke up it was dark out, and Blanco was mewing, and her phone was ringing. Bleary-eyed, she got up. It was Josie calling. Bri answered in the dark.

  “Hello?”

  “Bri, listen, have you seen Aeyr?”

  “Oh no. No. I – he left this note for me.”

  “Ok. Ok.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Ila can�
��t find him. She’s worried.”

  “Doesn’t he have a goddamned phone? Or is he too supernatural for that? What does he used to call people, like, Neptune waves or something?” Bri found herself comforted instantly by Josie’s voice – able to joke, at least.

  “Ugh,” said Josie. “Yeah, kinda I guess. He’s never had a phone. Another reason why I never wanted to trust the guy.”

  “Hey now,” said Bri. “I just cried over him for a while. I think I’m in love. But he’s gone. I’m – I’m a mess, Josie. So much has happened.”

  Josie laughed at Bri’s post-crying matter-of-factness. “Can I just come over and talk to you?”

  “Sure,” Bri said. “I’m just saying, I’m alone with the cat, feeling sad and totally out of touch with reality. I would love some company, as long as you know what you’re getting yourself in to.”

  “Okay. Out-of-touch with reality never scared me away before. I’m on your side of town already. I’ll be there soon.”

  Bri got off the phone and sighed. She felt really happy that Josie would be there soon. The whole mess was hurting her heart, and Josie was the only person she felt like she could talk to about all of it honestly.

  Suddenly, Bri remembered not just the note she’d found in the tree, but also the book of poems she’d taken from her room.

  She flipped open the book of Irish poetry. She ran her fingers over Mr. Parker’s handwriting – it was so lovely to see. All the poems in the book were so sad, she realized. Mr, Parker had those sad, forlorn eyes, a little like Aeron’s. Maybe it was a type, a type of person who captivated her – these men who seemed homesick for a time or a place that never existed. “To Bri” the note said, “May you look back on all you leave behind with love.”

  What a sad note, she thought.

  She opened to a page. There was a fern leaf tucked into it. She read:

  A beloved land is yon land in the east,

  Alba with its marvels.

  I would not have come hither out of it,

  Had I not come with Noisi.

  Caill Cuan!

  Unto which Ainnle would go, alas!

  Short we thought the time there,

  Noisi and I in the land of Alba.

  Glen Massan!

  Tall is its wild garlic, white are its stalks:

  We used to have a broken sleep

  On the grassy river-mouth of Massan.

  There I raised my first house.

  Delightful its house! when we rose in the morning

  I would never have left it, from the east,

  Had I not come with my beloved.

  Then the buzzer buzzed, and Bri got up to let Josie in.

  As soon as she opened the door, she hugged Josie tightly, and felt as if they’d known each other for years. “Josie,” she said, “good god. Help me sort out all this crazy mess. Everything’s been weird since you came over and started talking about the damn planets.”

  “I know,” she said. “I know about kind of a lot of it.”

  “From Ila.”

  “From Ila.” Josie repeated.

  “Can we – will you just help explain everything to me?”

  “Yep.”

  “Can we just, like, hide under the covers of this big fluffy bed and snuggle the cat while we talk?”

  Josie laughed. “Sure,” she said.

  Bri led her into Claire’s room, turning on lights here and there until the apartment glowed warmly. They climbed up into the bed, and it seemed like a nice, safe place to talk everything through. They leaned their backs against the back of the bed and pulled the blanket over their knees. The cat curled up between them.

  “So, Aeron’s gone,” started Bri. Tears came to her eyes as she said it, and she felt her own lip quiver. “Right when I realized … we knew each other. I knew him so long ago. I want –“ A little sob escaped her lips.

  “Ok,” said Josie. “We don’t know where he is, but don’t get so worried. I don’t think he left anywhere for good – yet. I’m sure he’s nearby somewhere, thinking about going.”

  “Honestly, Aeyr’s been talking about going traveling for a long time. He’s always talking about setting out for Canada, or going South. He seems to have friends who are those crusty traveler types – I think they even ride freight trains and stuff. I think he’s traveled that way before, and it doesn’t surprise me that he’s thinking about going again.”

  “But I don’t think he’ll leave right away. He hasn’t been in touch with those kids much lately, and it will take him a little time to figure out a plan. A real one. I mean, I think he’s serious about leaving Boston though.”

  “So you think he’s just hiding somewhere? That’s weird.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he went back to Boxfield or something.”

  “Doesn’t he work?”

  “Yeah. Ila asked the bartender at Our House. They said he’d be back some time, but they were trying to hire someone to take his spot.”

  “Ok,” said Bri. She felt a little better, a little less hysterical, reassured that she would see him again. She would see him again, she decided in that moment, no matter what. She’d chase him down. She set her jaw, determined.

  “But really, Bri. What happened?” Josie interrupted her thoughts, bringing her back to the complexities of the story. “I mean, fill me in on what you know. Let’s solve this mystery. There’s more to the picture than whether Aeyr skipped town, isn’t there?”

  “Oh God, so much more. It’s crazy. I guess – I hadn’t realized how much of my childhood I made myself forget towards the end of high school. I guess that I just needed to put it all behind me, because it was so intense.

  “Here’s what I figured out. Well, Mark helped a lot. I met Aeron in the woods behind my house when I was six and he was eleven.

  “Your parents let you..”

  “Play in the woods alone when I was six? Yeah, I know. Crazy, right? I guess they figured I didn’t go too far, or that I had older playmates who would come find them if something went wrong. Well, I guess Aeyr was one of them.”

  “I remember meeting him now. He was hiding in the branches of this big old tree. A big old very important tree. He called down to me, and then tried to hide from me by jumping down into the tree. It was hollow.”

  “Like Pippy Longstocking’s tree!”

  “Ok, sure, Josie.”

  “Sorry – just, that’s the only context I have for this stuff. It all sounds like some kind of zany fairy tale.”

  “I mean,” said Bri, “the more I connect with my past, the more I realize, that’s exactly what it is. It’s…it’s like all the fantasy books I read as a child, melded together and mixed up with my heart. And my family. And Aeyr’s family, too.”

  “Small town stuff.”

  “Yeah. So he hides in the tree, I talk to him until he climbs back up, and I ask him where he is from. He’s crying. I can see that he’s sad, or lost, or lonely, but sort of trying to hide it.”

  “That’s when he makes up the game, to pretend that his mother came from another world, and that she fell in love with a man. But then the man – Aeyr’s father – went away, and sent them to live in a house down the street from mine.”

  “What? Who was his father?” asked Josie. She was tickling the spot on Blanco’s chest, between his front legs, and he purred with pleasure, snuggling deeper into the blankets between them.

  “That, I still don’t know - ” said Bri, reaching down and scratching Blanco behind the ears. The cat was in heaven. “I guess no one does. Somehow he must have had some money, and a connection to the old family that owned that house. It had been sitting empty for a while, before Aeyr and his mother moved in. Without Aeron’s father.”

  “So you remember his mother, too?”

  “Cynthia. I do. But it turns out that, well, it turns out that my Aunt Claire was her friend. Oh! I can’t wait for Claire to come back so I can ask her what the hell is true and what isn’t.”

  “You don’t know Claire
very well, do you? Why not, again?”

  “I don’t know. I guess my parents always sort of acted like she was too much of a ‘free spirit’ to bother with, I guess. Or, I don’t know. I was just shy around her. I mean, look at this place. Imagine a woman who’s like this apartment. She just seemed like she was in a different world to me always.”

  “Hm,” said Josie. “Sounds like there’s a lot of that.”

  “A lot of what?”

  “People who seem like they’re in another world.”

  “Well,” said Bri. “I gotta say, you’re my best friend these days, but I’ve only known you a little more than a month, and you are, well, you’re like that, too.”

  Josie laughed. “You mean, you think I seem like I’m in another world?”

  “Not just a little bit. A lot.”

  “Well,” said Josie, “So do you, and I think that’s why I spotted you on the bus and picked you out to be my friend. You seemed like you believed that the world is still full of magic, even if you don’t think about it every day. You seemed willing to encounter things that can’t always get fully explained.”

  “Well okay,” said Bri, “that’s all well and good, now that I’m putting together all these pieces, but I gotta tell you, I would like A LOT more explaining about everything. So I don’t feel like I’m going to lose my mind.”

  “Over boys?”

  “Ok that, and, will you just let me finish the damn story?”

  “You can try,” said Josie, laughing.

  “Anyway.”

  “Anyway, my dad – ” Bri continued, “yesterday, argh, he was being so awful. He said all this stuff about how ‘that Harris woman’ – that’s Aeyr’s mother – was odd. AND he also mentioned some stuff about how Aunt Claire has some books…”

  “Ok. Ok. Here’s what I think – oh crap, I haven’t even gotten to Mark yet, have I?”