The April Tree

by Judith Arnold

  “April is not a little secret.”

  “No.” She was Becky’s heart, her soul. She was everything Becky didn’t understand about the universe: its capriciousness, its cruelty, the mysteries of that dreaded dark where people stopped being. She was writing her honors thesis on the concept of zero because death was the ultimate zero, an eternal nothingness, and April was a number, filling the zero vacuum, creating a value for it. “It’s just not something I want to share with him.”

  Elyse shrugged. She never seemed to mind sharing herself with others. She wasn’t afraid to let people touch her everywhere, including her heart and soul. She posed naked for art students. She slept with anyone she felt like sleeping with. If people saw her weak or in tears, she didn’t care.

  She was wild, reckless, everything Becky couldn’t be. Becky admired, even envied her—but she knew herself. She trusted who she was. It worked for her.

  And no one was going to get in and short-circuit her wiring. Certainly not Emerson Fong, with his scalpel and his electrical tape. That door was locked, and only Elyse and Florie had keys.

  And maybe Mark Gottlieb.

  A scary possibility, but true. He’d been there. He’d been a part of it.

  Like the tree and the chants and all the rest, some things defied logic. Like zero, the place-holder, the nothing that was something. The void that held infinite meaning.

  He was as much a part of it as Florie and Elyse and Becky. And April.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  FATHER JOE’S office at the Jubilee Center was as modest as he was. The room fit snugly around his battered oak desk, which held only a telephone, a blotter, and a thick leather-bound Bible, the pages edged in gold. An old-fashioned cast-iron radiator clanked beneath the window, the sill of which cried out for paint. A metal file cabinet, a color somewhere between gray and tan, occupied one corner, and a bulletin board with notices tacked onto it hung on the wall across from where Father Joe sat.

  Behind him, the wall was decorated with multiple religious prints, flat and clichéd, like pictures cut out of a calendar: a sun-drenched church on a hill; a towering cross on another hill; the sun splaying rays like the light of God through puffy, pearl-hued clouds; the fish symbol composed of arcs that so many Christians displayed on their automobiles. No pictures of Jesus bleeding on the cross, thank goodness. Florie hated crucifix scenes. She liked to think of Jesus as strong and healthy, not writhing in agony.

  Father Joe always seemed strong and healthy to her, clean-cut, clean-shaven, safe. He wore his usual autumn uniform: a crew-neck sweater over an oxford shirt, khaki trousers, loafers. His light-brown hair was combed, but a mischievous cowlick tufted up at the back of his part, making him appear boyish. His hands rested on his desk in front of him, nails clipped and clean, fingertips pressed to fingertips so that if he needed to pray all of a sudden, he would already be in position.

  Florie shifted in her seat, an antiquated folding wooden chair. Most chairs these days were molded to accommodate a body’s curves and hollows. But this chair had clearly been designed to be folded flat. The hard slats dug into her thighs and shoulder blades.

  Not that a little discomfort mattered. Compared to the torture Jesus had endured before rising to heaven, this chair was not so awful. Father Joe’s chair was upholstered leather, but it looked like an antique, too, its caramel surface faded and cracked in spots, a coil of duct tape bandaging one arm. Father Joe wasn’t one of those mercenary ministers who lived in splendor while milking his parishioners. When he’d said, during that morning’s sermon, that the Jubilee Center needed money, he’d been speaking the truth.

  Florie shifted again. She was nervous. Father Joe always said people should come to him with their problems, but her problem was directly related to him, to this place. If she confided in him, would he think she was criticizing him? Challenging him? Wavering in her commitment, seized by doubt?

  “I know you want us to get jobs so we can bring in more money,” she said, hating the watery ripples in her voice. It sounded as if she were choking on tears, and she wasn’t, not really. Maybe just a little. “But if I get a job, along with everything else I’m doing here—” housekeeping chores, distributing fliers on campus, attending services and daily prayer groups “—I won’t be able to keep up with my schoolwork. I can hardly even keep up now. I’ve missed so many classes, and I know I’m going to flunk this semester if I don’t drop out.”

  Father Joe smiled. He had such a soothing smile, his teeth straight and even like glazed ceramic tiles. “‘Dropping out’ sounds so negative, Florence. Why not think of it as choosing a new path?”

  She drew in a long breath. She had suspected, when he’d devoted so much of that morning’s sermon to the importance of Jubilee members getting jobs and contributing financially to the center’s survival, that what he was really saying was that the students in the group ought to consider leaving school and devoting themselves one hundred percent to Jubilee. A significant portion of the group were UMass students. Or former students—people who had left school so they could work for Jubilee full-time.

  But . . . “I’m a senior,” she said, hearing that watery wavering in her voice again. She swallowed, wishing it away. Why couldn’t she sound certain, like Becky and Elyse always did? “I’m only one semester away from graduating. One and a half semesters,” she corrected herself.

  “Florence.” Father Joe leaned forward, still smiling, still neat and poised and as self-confident as Becky and Elyse. “I have one simple question for you: what do you think Jesus wants you to do?”

  That was where Florie got hung up. She thought Jesus would tell her what to do, not make her play guessing games. The thing she loved about Jubilee and Father Joe was that they gave her answers, not questions.

  “He wants me to quit school?” she guessed, feeling as stupid as she’d felt in Mr. Schenk’s English class back in high school, when he’d asked all those questions about the meaning of The Waste Land. Why couldn’t T. S. Eliot simply say what he wanted to say? Why did he have to be so cryptic? Why couldn’t Jesus just say it, too?

  She wanted answers. Was that such a terrible thing? Did that make her a bad person?

  “It sounds as if you aren’t sure,” Father Joe said, and Florie bit her lip to keep from blurting out something sarcastic, like duh or no kidding. Sarcasm had no place in Jubilee, according to Father Joe. It had no place in the heart of a person who had accepted Jesus. “Let’s pray on it together, shall we?” He closed his eyes and bowed his head above his prayer-ready hands.

  Florie pressed her palms together, shut her eyes, and bowed her head. She filled the shapeless shadows of her mind with the words she hoped would summon God and his answers. Lord, tell me what to do. I’m only a few months from finishing my degree—assuming I don’t flunk everything this semester. I’m not stupid, I could pull my grades up to C’s and pass. And if I got my degree, I could get a better job and earn more money for Father Joe and the good work he does here.

  But Jubilee needs the money now, right? Maybe it can’t wait until next May.

  But my parents will be so disappointed if I drop out. My brother Andrew graduated and he’s a certified public accountant now, and everyone thinks he’s so wonderful. Lord, you’ve made everything work out so well for him. Why can’t you make everything work out well for me? Not that I’m complaining.

  The truth is, even if I graduated from college, no one would think I was as wonderful as Andrew. But if I dropped out and got a job and helped to support the Jubilee Center, Father Joe and everyone else here would think I was wonderful.

  Father Joe was right. Prayer worked. She opened her eyes, lifted her head, and found him gazing at her, his eyes bright, his teeth glossy, his expression confident. “I guess pleasing God is more important than pleasing my parents,” she said.

  SHE FELT LIGHTER as she strolled across the ca
mpus in the fading autumn light, as if the air had thinned, weighing less where it touched her body. Cars cruised slowly along the snaking roads, people ambled, girls chattered, guys tossed Frisbees with such aggression they seemed to be using the spinning disc to determine alpha status. Banners fluttered—UMass was big on decorating its sprawling landscape with banners proclaiming the glory of the place, as if without those banners, the university wouldn’t be as worthy. Lights began to flicker on atop the lampposts, sending cones of silver brightness down to the paved paths.

  This doesn’t matter, Florie thought. The answers aren’t here. They’re at Jubilee.

  Father Joe assured her she could continue to live in her dorm room for the rest of the semester. She’d paid for it, after all—or her parents had. After the semester ended, he promised he’d find her a bed at the Jubilee Center, which was just off North Pleasant Street, a few blocks from some frat houses. The Jubilee Center’s building could pass for another frat house, except that it was clean and well-tended, with a cross attached to the shingled front façade where a frat house would have Greek letters, and no empty bottles and dented beer cans strewn across the lawn.

  A faint buzz emerged from her tote like a mechanical mosquito. She halted, dug into the bag, and pulled out her cell phone. She kept it set on vibrate, just as she had in high school—not only because she so seldom got calls, but because cell-phone ringtones intruding on Father Joe’s sermons would be rude.

  She glanced at the screen: Becky.

  A shudder, happiness mixed with anxiety, flashed along her spine. What would Becky think of Florie’s plan to drop out of school in order to sell donuts at a coffee shop or answer phones at a call center to raise money for Jubilee? What would Becky think if Florie told her she’d prayed on it, and this was the Lord’s answer, and all she’d ever wanted were answers?

  Becky was so smart. Whatever answers she didn’t already have, she knew how to find. She didn’t have to look to God for answers. She had her brilliance, and her tree, and her candles.

  Florie scouted a place to sit. A couple of scruffy guys occupied the nearest park bench, smoking cigarettes. Wrinkling her nose, she headed for the next bench along the walkway and raised the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Florie, it’s Beck.”

  Becky’s voice was chased by another voice: “Hi, Florie.” Elyse.

  “Is this a conference call?” Florie asked, amazed that both her friends would be on the phone with her at the same time. Especially Elyse, who preferred texting to talking.

  “No. I switched my cell on speaker,” Becky said.

  “We’re here together in Beck’s room,” Elyse said. “We sent Emerson on a long errand to get rid of him.”

  “It’s not like he’s always here,” Becky protested.

  “He was here earlier. And now he isn’t here. You know the expression, here today, gone today.”

  Florie didn’t quite get the joke, but she laughed anyway. She was just so happy to be connected with Becky and Elyse. They both attended school in the city, separated from each other only by a river. They could visit each other whenever they wanted. Florie was a mere ninety miles away from them, but she might as well be in Alaska.

  Even when they’d been in high school, she had sometimes felt as if they were in Wheatley and she was in Alaska. April had been the continent connecting them, the bridge across the Mississippi, the mountain passes through the Rockies, the ship sailing past a broken Pacific shoreline to that massive, glacial state just below the North Pole. It was April who had kept them united, April who’d allowed Florie to reach Becky and Elyse. April who still united them.

  “So,” Florie said brightly, “What’s up?” She wasn’t about to tell them what was up with her. They might laugh at her or declare that she was crazy even to contemplate leaving school. Or they might somehow leak the news to her parents before she was ready for them to know.

  “Elyse has a friend,” Becky said, inflecting the word friend with a sarcasm Father Joe would condemn.

  “He’s not a friend,” Elyse said. “He’s . . . more. Or less. I don’t know.”

  “Is he a boyfriend?” Florie asked. The nuances of friendship were too subtle for her. She would stick with labels she could understand.

  “Elyse wants to schtup him,” Becky said. “But he’s not a boyfriend.”

  Florie scrambled to remember what schtup meant. From the context, she figured Elyse wanted to have sex with him. Actually, when it came to Elyse and guys, context was irrelevant. She always wanted to have sex with them.

  “He needs our help,” Elyse said.

  “Our help?” How on earth could Florie help a guy Elyse wanted to . . . well, that word Becky had said? Florie was in Alaska, after all.

  “He’s not just a guy,” Becky explained. “He’s the guy who killed April.”

  “He didn’t kill April,” Elyse argued.

  “Okay—the guy whose car hit April.”

  “That guy is your friend?” Florie blurted out. She was usually more careful about what she said, especially with Elyse, who often seemed to regard her with a pinch of distrust or maybe disgust. In high school, tolerance rather than affection had defined Elyse’s relationship with Florie, although the tolerance had grown more relaxed and natural over the years. After they’d all left for college, Florie had actually gotten along better with Elyse. They would see each other in Wheatley during school breaks, and Elyse would hug Florie, who would sometimes be the first one to draw back, which gave her a vague feeling of power. College and city living and the mess with her parents had changed Elyse, making her more receptive, more tender, as lush yet as fragile as an orchid. She was so . . .

  Sexy. Intimidatingly sexy. Even before Florie had been born again in Jesus, she’d never felt comfortable around people who were so openly sensual.

  “He’s lost,” Elyse said. “He’s in trouble. He’s got all this pain locked up inside him. I want to help him. Beck thinks we all have to do this together.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to have anything to do with him,” Becky said. “But Elyse wants me to meet him, and if I have to meet him, you have to be there, too.”

  “Why?” Florie repeated.

  “Because we were all there when April died.”

  “That’s why he’s in so much pain,” Elyse added. “Because of how April died.”

  “Because he killed her,” Becky said.

  “It was an accident,” Elyse argued.

  “All right. Whatever,” Becky conceded. “The thing is, we were all there when she died. We all lost her together. You, me, and Elyse. And him. The guy who killed her.”

  “He didn’t—” Elyse interjected.

  Becky sighed audibly. “Right. He didn’t kill her.”

  “He’s suffering,” Elyse said. “We had each other. And we had all that stuff we did at the tree—”

  The tree, Florie thought miserably. She’d never understood what all those rituals were about. The candles, the chants—none of it had ever made sense to her.

  “—and he had nothing,” Elyse continued. “Just his guilt. Which is stupid, because really, it was my fault more than his that April died.”

  Florie shook her head. It had been her fault. She’d been the clumsy moron who’d sent the tennis ball bouncing into the road.

  “Anyway, we need to save him,” Elyse continued.

  “So Elyse can schtup him,” Becky added.

  “Get out,” Elyse retorted, although they were both laughing. Florie laughed along, even though she didn’t see anything humorous about Elyse’s lust for this boy.

  Saving him, however . . . That, she understood. She’d been saved by the grace of God. She’d been lost, too, wandering the unmarked forests and inlets of her own personal Alaska, shivering in the icy winds. Not k
nowing where she was or what she was meant to do. Not knowing how to save herself from the grief of losing April. Not knowing why her friend had been removed from this earth. Not knowing whether she was supposed to schtup obnoxious frat boys in the hope that one of them might someday decide he loved her.

  “Does he have a faith?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Faith in booze,” Becky said.

  “No, I meant a religion. A faith.”

  “Oh.” A moment of silence. Florie could picture Becky and Elyse staring at each other quizzically. Unlike Florie, they would never have wondered such a thing.

  “We’ve never discussed it,” Elyse finally said. “I was with him one Sunday morning and he didn’t go to church.”

  One Sunday morning wasn’t enough to judge by, although Florie had not missed a single Sunday service since she’d committed herself to Jubilee. When she’d been in Wheatley over the summer, she’d longed for Father Joe’s sermons, but she’d attended her parents’ church every week, even when they chose to skip a service. She hadn’t liked the services at the Methodist church as much as she liked Father Joe’s. The church might be prettier and fancier, but the minister was as dry as the crunchy brown leaves scattered across the grass at her feet. The hymns had been perfunctory. Afterward, everyone had asked her how Andrew was doing.

  If she told Elyse and Becky that the guy whose car had hit April, this lost soul, needed to let God into his heart, they might think she was fanatical or simplistic. Father Joe often spoke of how others might perceive true Christians, thinking they were stupid or weird. Because we know truths they don’t want to face, he would say. Because we have accepted God’s grace in a way they will never understand. It’s easier to belittle the truth than to accept it.

  So she said nothing about praying with this man, or opening his eyes and his heart as hers had been opened. She only said, “If he needs to be saved, we should save him.”