by Neil Hetzner
When the disease first appeared at Clarke’s Cove, most of the neighbors who had sick trees simply had cut them down. The trees were stumped and replaced with something else. The Lockwards, however, had chopped off the top and most of the branches until they had ended with a human shape, not much bigger than a tall man, with arms outstretched in longing. In the winter a birdfeeder hung from the end of each handless arm. In the summer the two stumps held hanging pots of geraniums. After the Lockwards example, the Pelottis had left eight feet of the main trunk and one large horseshoed limb to use as a holder for feeders in the winter and as a frame for a rope hammock in the summer. As Bette tried to see under the growth which would soon fall, she thought that the four naked boles might resemble some frozen anguished moment in a modern dance.
When it was ready, Bett stepped outside to sip her tea. As she stared at the branches, imagining the impact of different prunings, she appreciated Lise’s wonderment at science. Science could guide an explosives-laden missile down the airshaft of a building. It could measure the heat of a sand-buried tank from a satellite. It could grow a baby in a stranger’s womb. But, so far, it couldn’t keep Pete’s customers from dying of AIDS, or these strange trees from yellowing and growing bare. And with her…
After guiding some strange unseen energy made from pieces of atoms vibrating a billion times a second. And after adding chemical compounds so wise that they knew to search throughout her body and only harm the fastest growing cells. After that, and after all the good that did. After all the sophisticated chemical and radiation targeting that seemed so similar to shooting a missile down a chimney or locating the motor heat of a tank from space, science got so simple. It wanted to do what Greg had suggested she do to the pines. Take a saw. Bett stared hard at the sick tree, imagined its naked shape, and when the form was firmly fixed inside her mind, she added herself to the picture on a dry autumn day, months hence, putting up a feeder while balancing on one leg and a pink, plastic piece of very simple science.
The trees could wait, but the doctors wanted her decision about amputating her leg the day after tomorrow.
Chapter 27
“Dad?”
“Nita, honey, how are you?”
“Have you got a cold?”
“No. Do I sound like I do?”
“No, I guess not. You just sounded different for a minute.”
Nita tried to inflect her voice so her father would be compelled to answer truthfully.
“How are you doing?”
Neil’s laugh was a small, dry sound.
“Fine.”
Nita waited for several seconds before she asked, “Are you ready for the invasion?”
“Looking forward to it. When are you getting here?”
“I’ll be early.”
“Good.”
“Mom’ll be okay with all of us around?”
“Oh, sure. She can’t wait. She says it will be the first normal thing that’s happened to us in awhile.”
Without the slightest warning tears slid down Nita’s cheeks.
“She’s indomitable, isn’t she?”
“It sure seems like it.”
“I get jealous. Oh, Dad. Let’s make sure we take some time to go somewhere to talk.”
“There’ll be plenty of time to talk.”
“I always think that. It seems it should be true. Then, I get back here and realize that I haven’t talked at all. Only chatted. Remember the night we both ended up downstairs?”
“I hear your mother, honey. I’d better help. See you tomorrow.”
“Bye, Dad.”
After Nita hung up she looked around her kitchen. It was spotless. She rarely ate anything but breakfast at home, so it was easy to keep it that way. The living room, both bedrooms, study and bathrooms were clean, too. Towels were carefully folded; blouses were neatly hung.
During the weeks when Dan Herlick had been at the house, there had been disorder. Shoes had not made it back to the closet, or, sometimes, even back to the bedroom. There had been mornings when she had awakened late to dirty dishes in the sink and empty wine glasses on the coffee table. Newspapers had been left about.
It had not been all bad. There had been moments in the dark when a coma like comfort had come over her as he had held her wrapped tight within the heaviness of his arms and legs. Tight against his chest’s warm wall, held by his thick arms, his stocky legs locked around her own, she had felt a certain freedom. Within that fleshy cage she had allowed herself to drift. But each time, comfort had moved to conflict when his caresses had become more sexual. Despite his concern and careful entry, despite a moment stretched to minutes, despite an urging no more insistent than an ebbing neap tide, despite her ache to be loved and safely lost beneath his careful weight, despite her wishes, wants, plans and formulations, there would come a point when his gentle pulsing pushed her ache from love and lovelorn longing into pain and mindless panic. Despite her feverish admonition to herself to go, go, go to where they were headed, her body would contract, compress, withdraw. She couldn’t stop his slightest pulsing from feeling like a deadly pounding. A cancer causing smashing of her cells. His cautious, controlled breathing would sound like a ravener’s undeniable roar. A fingertip’s touch upon her shoulder would magnify to rapine force. Witless, she would buck and thrust to try to free herself. She would twist and turn beneath his innocent, ignorant savagery. Her brain would swell with all her bruising’s fluids. She would want to bolt her body. She would pause, unpoised, then, free-fall into her carcinogenic mirage.
After a dozen nights of this, feeling the hope that she had brought back from Clarke’s Cove slipping from her grasp, she had made herself talk. She had tried to share her fears. Dan Herlick had been as gentle with his questions as he had been in bed. She had been ashamed that his capacity for kindness far exceeded her chary estimate. He had listened and told her that he would do as she wanted.
She could think only of one thing to ask of him. Patience. She thought that she might try to see someone who could help.
From her files of divorces she made a list of names of therapists, but she became too busy to call. Then, she became too busy to see Dan Herlick.
One evening, in the middle of all the emotion, she had used the last of a gloamy sunlight to plant the pot bound starts her mother had given her. Two weeks later she had thought to water them, but, by then, they were dead.
As Nita carefully packed her suitcase and sorted through her briefcase choosing the files that she should take with her, she wondered how she’d shape the truth about the fate of those seeds were her mother to ask about them.
* * *
“Excited?”
Lise nodded.
“Scared, too.”
“How come?”
“I’m not too sure about our timing.”
Brad opened his arms in concession.
“We can wait.”
“I don’t know. So much has gone on.”
“Maybe a little good news would be appreciated.”
Brad grabbed Lise from behind and took small nips at her neck right along the hair line.
“Ooooowww. That gives me the shivers.”
“It’s supposed to. Look, decide when we get there. You’ll know.”
Lise nodded. She looked around the kitchen.
“What’s left?”
“You tell me. We’ve got the sleeping bags, boogie boards, the tent. The back packs went in first. You wanted your book bag, right?”
Lise nodded her put in marionette theatricality, “Have to.”
“You really think you’ll get any work done?”
“Have to.”
“Toothbrushes, all that, were in the little thingamajig, right?”
Yeah.”
“Then, that must be it.”
Lise pulled an imaginary hat down hard on her head.
“Okay, cowpoke, let’s ride.”
“Wait just a sec, darlin’.”
Brad walked menacingly toward Lise.
She backed away.
“No, no, no way. C’mon. None of that. We’re late.”
Brad kept coming.
In an exaggerated drawl, Lise said, “Ease back, Bradford, or I’ll lame that mule’s leg.”
Brad clucked.
The phone rang. Lise laughed.
“Saved by the bell.” She pointed. “You, not me. You get it. I’m gone.”
Hello? Dr. Adanan. How are you?”
Lise shook her head as she left the house. She pulled the hose toward the slumping cosmos she had planted along the edge of the driveway.
““Pitiful. Poor babies. I know it’s too hot to be watering, but if you don’t drink now, you’ll die before we get back. I’m sorry I forgot you. There’s been too much going on. Try to make do.”
Lise hoped the next few days would help Brad and her to make do, too. She felt as droopy as the cosmos looked. She loved going fast, but the last few months had been ridiculous. She had been living at the lab, and Brad, to satisfy a committee member who had made a last minute decision to take a one year appointment at the University of Sydney, had been working non stop on his dissertation. Lise couldn’t remember them taking a day off since a balmy Sunday in late April.
Lise looked at her hand. She pointed the ring at the sun and watched the color change. Twisting it around on her finger, she used her thumb to feel the slight dimples in the smooth surface of the cabochon ruby, which had been Brad’s great grandmother’s. His great grandfather had bought it for her when he was in Burma working for a British spice company. After he had inherited it, Brad’s grandfather had had the stone mounted in a man’s ring. He had given it to his only grandson on Brad’s thirteenth birthday. And, now, Brad had remounted it again and bestowed it on her.
Lise remembered how when she had opened the box, she had had to fight hard to find a simple smile to put upon her face. Now, four days later, she was still searching for the easy smile. She kept pushing back the urge to take the ring and slip it back into its gray velvet box.
Lise kept telling herself that she loved Brad. Through practice, she had gotten herself to the point where she didn’t question that a dozen times a day. But marriage wasn’t love. It was commitment, and commitment was something different. Commitment meant that you kept looking even when you knew what you would see. You kept listening even when you knew what you would hear. Could she stay alert in marriage? Her mother had, but could she? Would she? A marriage had habits and patterns and customs, and she could not understand how habit could not be stultifying. She thought that at some point marriage must feel like sitting in a well-worn seat in an over heated room, either fidgeting or drifting off into bored sleep.
After finishing her watering Lise twisted the hose into a rubber lariat. She opened the passenger side door and climbed in backwards so that she could straighten up the baggage.
Married. At twenty six. Too young. Too unknown. Too frightening. Too focused. Too boring. Too…
“Hi. I’m driving?”
“Yeah. Sure. What’d Adanan want?”
Brad shrugged in dismissal.
The usual. Attention. Reverence. Do you think when I get out of here that I’m going to be like him, like so many of them? Blind with pride, but, still, so hungry. Just a needy little boy in a big herring bone jacket.”
“No.”
“Thanks.”
“Denim, probably.”
“Lise,” Brad protested.
“Kidding.”
“Great.”
They were on the highway before they spoke again.
“Brad?”
“Professor to you, babe.”
““Why do you want to marry me?”
Brad’s turned his head to show Lise the seriousness with which he was thinking.
“Many reason, the biggest of which is legal sex. It’s such a foreign concept. It’s so hard to imagine that I think I just have to experience it.”
“No, really. Why?”
“I love you.”
“You can love me without marrying me.”
Brad took his eyes from the road to look at Lise.
“Feeling caged? Trapped?”
“No.”
“You are. You will. I know that.”
“Why? I love you. Why should I feel trapped?”
“You know why, Lise. No trust.”
“Fill me in, Professor.”
“You sure you want to hear this? I don’t want to be the one who ruins the first time we’ve had off in months.”
Lise considered whether she did want to hear what Brad might say. She had his ring on her finger. In less than two hours, they might be talking about their marriage to her family before she was sure that she wanted to get married. She had to hear.
“Shoot.”
“Okay, but if I end up sleeping in that tent alone or walking the beach with Lot’s wife, I’m gonna have a hissy.”
“I’ll be okay, Brad. Tell me what you think. That’s what we do best, right? What’s your theory?”
“My theory is that you’re a very nice person. Just like your folks. But, you’re not a pushover. There’s a toughness inside. You’re more like your mom than your dad. You want to please people, but you want your own way.”
“What’s that got to do with trust?”
“Hang on. I’m building a theory. This is the intro. The lit review. A little latitude, please.”
Brad looked at the speedometer before continuing.
“You also want to do the right thing. Be good. So, there’re three things that you want to be good, to be true to yourself, or to your wants, and to be pleasing to others. How often are those three things going to line up? Not that often. Well, then, what’s the decision making rule when two or more of those goals are in conflict? I don’t think you’ve established a clear rule about that just yet. So, I come along. You like me. One criterion is satisfied. Your family, except the gimlet eyed Dilly, approves after they get past a few of my anomalies. Number two lines up. We have an honest, interesting healthful time. We have what a budding relationship is supposed to have. All three criteria light up green. Okay, so far?”
Lise nodded.
“We go along. We’re having a pretty good time in the middle of a situation that most people would consider a bad time poverty, stress, few rewards. Supposedly, there are few things more destructive of a relationship than a doctoral program. We’re involved in two, yet, somehow, we’re paragons of grace under pressure. Things go well. You get nervous. You begin to worry about what happens if things continue to go well, or even better. The longer you like me, the worse, the uglier, it will be when you stop. And, you’re sure you’ll stop. You know that. You’re very sure. It’s always happened that way before. Here’s where the trust comes in. You don’t trust me to stay interesting and, maybe worse, you don’t trust yourself to stay interested. It’s ironic. You’re afraid things will get static, and you have to have things alive and always growing and changing, but at the same time you’re assuming that you won’t change, that what has always happened with you has to happen again. You’re afraid you’re going to use me up, absorb all my juices, make me a husk. A shell too light and too empty to hold you. Or hold your attention.”
As the words slowly tumbled from the mouth of a face which was staring far down the road, Lise felt her heartbeat jump and twitch like the wings of a bird caught by a cat. She squinted her eyes and imagined the few cars ahead on the hot gray road as molecules wandering across the field of vision of a microscope. Interesting.
She felt Brad’s fingers slide down the shallow valleys between her own. She started to pull her hand away.
“Ssshhh. Easy.”
She turned her hand over and they held hands. Finally, his fingers moved again. She looked down and watched as his fingers wrapped themselves around the ring.
“Unbetroth me.”
She kept her hand still as he worked the ring free.
“I can wait. You’re just too skittish. The trust will come. You th
ink a moment’s inattention means more than that. You’re afraid it presages a long, slow dying. That’s your theory. Entropy. I don’t think that way. I think it only means you’ve turned your head. You’ll turn it back. That’s my theory.”
“I’m not that sure.”
“I know you’re not, Lise. It’s one of the things I love about you. Filled with questions. Like a good scientist. It’s why you are a good scientist. But this ain’t science. In science, you jig the bug and see what it does.”
Brad reached back across the seat for Lise’s hand. He brought her hand toward him. He stuck two of her fingers in his mouth and slowly licked them.
“In life, the bug jigs back. I think that’s what makes life more interesting than science.”
“It’s an engaging theory, Professor.”
Lise held out her ring finger, now wet, toward Brad.
* * *
“A uniform? Oh, you dog. Would I were a woman. Look at you. How come you’re even here? Aren’t you supposed to be en famille aujourd’hui?” Raoul brushed something from Peter’s shoulder than only he could see.
“I thought I should try to get a couple of things done before I left.”
Raoul intoned, “Duty, sacred duty.”
Peter pulled a tray from the reach in refrigerator and counted the steaks on it. “I know it’s going to be busy today. I just wanted to do what I could to help.”
“Such a good little fairy.”