The April Tree

by Judith Arnold

  Inside was shadow, the blended scents of gasoline and fertilizer. He recognized that smell from his own parents’ garage, but they had a real lawn, not a scraggly mess of dune grass. What good was fertilizer on the beach?

  One more thing he didn’t care about.

  Lynnette clearly knew her way around the garage. She led him past a station wagon he saw only in glints where shards of moonlight struck the vehicle’s chrome and glass surfaces. At the rear of the garage was a ladder-like stairway.

  He recalled that she and Wesley went way back. He wondered if they’d ever gone way back up these stairs. She seemed to feel at home here. When you knew your way around a person’s garage, that implied a level of intimacy he didn’t even share with Remy. Did the Martins even have a garage, or would that be too bourgeois for their Vermont-hippie souls?

  The stairs delivered him and Lynnette to a loft. More splinters of moonlight spilled in through a window at the far end, and Mark’s eyes adjusted enough for him to make out some tools, cans of paint, and an array of beach paraphernalia—folded sun umbrellas, canvas chairs, dust-covered piles of towels, chaises upholstered with waterproof cushions. Lynnette pulled him to one of the chaises, nudged him to sit, and then straddled his lap.

  He managed to place his beer carefully on the floor before she took over completely, kissing, licking, tugging at his clothes. She weighed less than nothing, and when she yanked off her shirt, he saw that he was right about her breasts being pretty much nothing, too. Not that it mattered. Not that he cared. It took no more than three seconds for him to be rock-hard and ready. As promised, she produced a rubber from one of her pockets and rolled it onto him.

  Christ. He didn’t deserve this. But damn, it felt good. He hadn’t felt good since . . .

  He started to soften, but she worked her hand on him and got him back to where she wanted him. Inside her. She humped. She ground. He could have been a vibrator for all she seemed to need his input. And that was fine. Remy would say Mark had gotten lucky tonight, and he wouldn’t disagree.

  He leaned back into the cushion, ignoring the soft fart sounds it made as their weight pressed air out through the cracked seams. He closed his eyes and focused on the physical. And then opened his eyes abruptly, because when he’d closed them an image of Tracy, his brother’s fiancée, had floated across the screen of his mind. Tracy, of all people. Whom he didn’t even like, because she was going to marry Danny, and Danny was a prick.

  He didn’t want to be thinking about Tracy, about her and Danny. About the people in his life who were perfect and never made mistakes and never killed anyone.

  Lynnette, he told himself. Lynnette.

  He closed his eyes again, and this time . . . he saw the girl. The girl he’d killed.

  “Oh, shit,” he groaned, and Lynnette humped him harder, apparently thinking his words arose from passion. He opened his eyes again, reminding himself that he didn’t even know what April Walden looked like. He hadn’t seen her that day. If he had, she’d still be alive. A school photo of her had appeared in Wheatley’s local weekly newspaper accompanying the article about her death, but it had been a stiff, false-looking portrait. She hadn’t seemed like a real person in it.

  He had no idea what she looked like. He was sure she didn’t look like . . .

  Lynnette. He had to struggle to remember her name.

  She let out a strange mewing sound, like a kitten being tortured, and writhed above him. She was coming, so he let go and forced his mind blank, focusing on the physical. Lynnette. Lynnette. Lynnette . . . until he came. It hurt, it felt good, it was done.

  He didn’t deserve this.

  She draped herself on top of him, limp and sweaty, damp and no heavier than a swath of fog. Her braid looped rope-like over his arm. He listened to her breathe, ran his finger over her shoulder, traced the bone there. He hoped to hell she didn’t expect him to say anything romantic. The thing he liked most about her, other than her having taken charge of this whole thing so he could just lie passively and not have to contribute much to it, was that she didn’t strike him as a romantic type.

  Long minutes passed. The air in the loft was still and stuffy.

  “Do you believe in God?” she asked.

  Maybe romantic would have been better. He could have made some comment about loving her more easily than he could talk about God, especially now, when he still had a slight buzz from the grass and the beer and couldn’t put together a coherent thought.

  She was waiting for an answer. “I don’t know,” he said. This was not the time for honesty, but suddenly there he was, being honest.

  “I do,” she said. “I believe God has plans for all of us. Whatever is going on inside you, Mark—trust God. He’ll take care of you.”

  Mark doubted that. “Not as well as you just took care of me,” he said, a weary laugh in his tone.

  “God wanted this to happen,” she told him, not sharing his amusement. She sounded ominously earnest. “God loves us,” she said. “He wants us to have good times.”

  “Okay.”

  “I believe there’s a reason for everything that happens in this world,” she said, “and that reason is God.”

  Was God the reason a tennis ball had bounced into Baker’s Hill Road on a Saturday afternoon in May? Was God the reason a girl was dead? Was God the reason Mark hated himself?

  Lynnette would probably say yes. But Lynnette also said God was the reason he was lying on this lumpy upholstery in this steamy loft, with a naked girl in his arms.

  Which didn’t mean God forgave him. It only meant God was one confused, fucked up dude.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “THAT’S MY SKIRT,” Elyse said.

  Her mother stood in the kitchen, the cordless handset of the phone pressed to her ear and her eyes fixed on Elyse. Did other people’s mothers wear eye make-up when they were talking on the phone in the kitchen? Maybe just mothers who stole their daughters’ clothing.

  Her mother couldn’t have been talking to the guy. If she had been, she would have hung up as soon as Elyse entered the room. Instead, she sent Elyse a smile so wide her lips looked like rubber.

  “No, chocolate cake,” she said into the phone. “White icing, but chocolate cake . . . because chocolate is my daughter’s favorite.” She leaned against the counter, her hips stretching the denim fabric of the skirt.

  The counters were granite; her mother had updated the kitchen, at great expense and inconvenience, last year. It was still a small room in a small house, but now it was a small, pretentious room, with the granite counters, terra-cotta tiles on the floor, a Tiffany-style lamp hanging from the ceiling above the table, and state-of-the-art appliances, most of which her mother didn’t use because she wasn’t much of a cook.

  “Right, the balloon design,” she said into the phone. “I’ll pick it up Friday. Fabiano. Right.” She pressed the disconnect button, propped the phone into the base, and beamed at Elyse. “Katie’s birthday cake,” she explained.

  “Katie’s too old for balloons,” Elyse said.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She loves balloons.”

  “She’s turning twelve, Mom.” Elyse shifted her backpack higher on her shoulder and glowered first at her mother’s face and then at the skirt her mother had taken from Elyse’s closet. Her mother’s hips might be wider than Elyse’s, but her legs were skinnier. She reminded Elyse of a flamingo, a rounded body balanced atop stilt-like legs.

  Ordinarily, Elyse would not have confronted her mother after school. At least half the time, her mother wasn’t around when Elyse arrived home, and even if she was around, Elyse was usually tired and preoccupied by thoughts of her homework or April or something that had happened during the day.

  But today Elyse hadn’t come straight home from school. She’d gone with Becky and Florie to the tree, and the fifteen minutes th
at she’d stood with them around the flickering candle, her hand pressed to the rough bark as they chanted poems about April, had infused her with . . . something. Strength. Courage. Pride in the rhymes she’d come up with.

  Anger.

  April, April died in May.

  Fate and faith did us betray.

  Someone should be forced to pay.

  Oh, how sad I am today . . .

  “That’s my skirt,” she repeated, pointing to the skirt her mother had on. “I don’t want you wearing my clothes.”

  Her mother’s smile didn’t flag. “I can’t remember the last time you wore this skirt. It’s just hanging in your closet.”

  “It’s mine,” Elyse said, not caring how selfish she sounded. “I don’t want you wearing my clothes anymore.” With each syllable she felt stronger. Braver. Prouder. Angrier.

  “Oh, it’s yours,” her mother drawled, at last losing the smile. “I paid for it.”

  “No you didn’t. Dad did.”

  “Don’t talk back to me,” her mother snapped. “I’m the one who pays the credit card bills.”

  “With Dad’s money.”

  “With Dad’s and my money. We both work hard, you know. He may bring home a paycheck, but I work just as hard as he does, taking care of you and Katie and the house.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  “What hard work do you do? You ask me to help fix dinner and do the vacuuming. You ask Katie to clean the bathrooms. We go to school, and Dad goes to work, and you spend the day screwing your boyfriend.”

  Elyse should have expected the slap. She sort of did. It didn’t hurt that much, just a quick sting flaming against her cheek. In fact, nothing would have hurt Elyse right now. She was energized, fueled with April’s spirit. Incandescent with it. So powerful, she couldn’t feel pain. So powerful, she didn’t have to say another word. Let her mother keep the fucking skirt. Now that she had it on, Elyse didn’t want it anymore.

  She turned and stalked out of the kitchen. “You don’t know anything!” her mother shouted after her. “Get back here!”

  She climbed the stairs, her gait controlled, neither rushed nor plodding. The wall to her left held a series of framed photos that ascended in step-fashion, like a second stairway. A faded black-and-white photo of her mother’s parents. A photo of Elyse and Katie and their parents at the beach on Cape Cod a few summers ago. A photo of Elyse dressed like a child-bride in frilly white and a gauzy veil at her first communion. A similar first-communion photo of Katie.

  Elyse felt a pang of guilt about leaving Katie behind, but she breathed through it until it disappeared. It wasn’t as if Elyse was leaving forever. Just for now, until she decided what to do about her clothing and her mother and her life. Katie was always undercutting Elyse to their parents, anyway, sucking up to them. And Katie was going to get a cake. With balloons on it, lucky girl.

  In her bedroom, Elyse crammed some underwear and other clothing—clothing her mother had never borrowed, so it wasn’t sullied—into her backpack. Good thing the school year was winding down and her pack wasn’t crammed full of books and assignments. She had room in it for her toiletries, sandals, hair iron, all the essentials. She zipped the pack shut, slung it back over her shoulder, and headed back out to the hall.

  Her mother stood at the foot of the stairs, blocking her escape. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” she said, her voice tight. Elyse could see the tendons in her mother’s neck, taut against her skin. All that make-up on her eyes, but the skin of her neck gave her away. She wasn’t young. She definitely wasn’t young enough to be wearing a denim miniskirt. At least not Elyse’s denim miniskirt.

  “None of your business,” Elyse answered.

  “It is my business,” her mother said, gripping the newel posts on either side of Elyse to pen her in. “I’m your mother.”

  Elyse knew that one push could knock her mother over. Elyse was strong, strong with April’s spirit. But she wasn’t going to resort to physical aggression. Her mother had slapped her; that was all the more reason she would not push back. Whatever her mother did, Elyse would do the opposite.

  “Get out of the way, or I’ll tell Katie what you do while she’s at school. Dad probably already knows, but Katie doesn’t. I’ll tell her, and then she’ll hate you too.”

  “You have no idea—”

  “Move,” Elyse said.

  “—What I put up with, what your father—”

  “You killed April,” Elyse said.

  Shocked, her mother fell back a step. “What are you talking about?”

  Elyse slipped past her mother and stalked toward the front door. Her hand on the knob, she turned back to look at her mother. Her voice emerged smooth and quiet. “You were supposed to pick us up,” she said. “That afternoon. You promised. But you forgot. You were probably off fucking your boyfriend, and you forgot all about us. You didn’t pick us up, so we started walking. And she got hit by a car. Because you didn’t pick us up like you promised.”

  Her mother looked stricken, her cheeks drained of color, which made her eyes appear almost Goth with all that mascara and liner on them. Her horrified look satisfied Elyse, actually made her feel good. She tugged the door open, stepped out onto the porch, and shut the door behind her, managing not to slam it.

  The afternoon heat leaned into her, the air thick with approaching summer. April died because of me, too, she reminded herself. April had died because Elyse had believed her mother when she’d said she would pick them up at the tennis court. April had died because Elyse had trusted her mother. April had died because Elyse had been stupid.

  April, April died in May . . . and even though it was Elyse’s fault as much as her mother’s, April gave her the strength she needed now. Even in death, April had Elyse’s back.

  Elyse waited until she’d reached the end of the block and turned the corner before phoning Becky from her cell phone.

  “Of course,” Becky said when Elyse asked if she could spend the night there. No questions asked. Becky had her back, too. Elyse might have a shitty mother, but in her friends she was blessed.

  It took more than a half hour for Elyse to walk to Becky’s house. She might have ridden her bike, but that was so middle-school, and besides, if she’d ridden it, it would be at the Zinn house, and she’d have to ride it back home eventually. As long as it wasn’t there, she could pretend she didn’t have a way back home. Of course, one of Becky’s parents could drive her. But she could pretend.

  Becky’s mother looked vaguely surprised to find Elyse on her front porch. Becky’s mother always looked vaguely surprised, as if the world that existed inside her head was completely different from the world outside her door. Her hair was long and wavy, a mix of gray and blond, the strands so fine they looked like a spider’s silk. She wore a plain T-shirt, faded jeans, and flat, wide-toed sandals that made her feet resemble a duck’s. No pedicure. Becky polished her toenails only because Elyse nagged her to. Maybe she should start nagging Dr. Lundquist, too.

  “Elyse!” she said, sounding as if Elyse were the last person in the universe Dr. Lundquist would have expected to find standing on her front porch.

  “It’s okay, Mom.” Elyse saw Becky entering the hall, approaching the door. Her mother blocked most of Elyse’s view of the hall, but Elyse glimpsed Becky’s gentle eye-roll and smiled for the first time since they’d parted ways after their tree ritual earlier that afternoon.

  Becky’s mother stepped aside, and Elyse entered the house. She loved the Zinn house. It was old and quirky, the floorboards uneven, the doors solid wood, the panes of glass in the windows heavy with ripples. People who lived in a genuine two-hundred-year-old house probably couldn’t have affairs. It just wouldn’t work.

  Upstairs in Becky’s room, Elyse hoisted her backpack off her sho
ulder and massaged the ache it left behind. While she’d been walking, she’d ignored how heavy the thing was. Maybe she shouldn’t have brought her hair iron with her. But she couldn’t go to school with frizzy hair, no matter what was going on in her personal life.

  Becky closed the door, then stood on tiptoe to reach the high shelf of her closet. She pulled out the bottle of bourbon she and Elyse and Florie had shared the day April died. Elyse thought they’d consumed a lot of bourbon that day, but the bottle was more than half full.

  As if Becky had read her mind, she said, “I refilled it with some stuff I found in my parents’ liquor cabinet.”

  Elyse nodded, let Becky take the first drink, then sipped a bit. She didn’t bother to wipe the lip of the bottle off first. She and Becky were sisters. They could share spit.

  “Don’t call Florie,” she said as she lowered the bottle.

  “Okay.”

  “I mean, it was fine that she was at the tree with us this afternoon. It sort of feels right that she’s there with us, even if her rhymes suck.”

  “She’s kind of literal,” Becky agreed.

  “She’s part of the whole thing. Part of the tree, part of Baker’s Hill Road.” She took another drink, then passed the bottle back to Becky. “I really liked doing the tree stuff, Beck. Thank you for sharing it with us.”

  Becky shrugged, although her mouth twitched into a grin when Elyse called her Beck. She said nothing. That was one more reason Elyse loved Becky: she didn’t ask questions. She accepted things. She was patient. She knew truth was something that found its way into the open in its own time.

  They sat side by side on the rug covering the wooden planks of Becky’s floor, their backs resting against the foot of her bed and the bottle balanced on the rug between them. Elyse didn’t want to get drunk. A few mouthfuls were enough. “My mother hit me,” she finally said.