The Eve Tree: A Novel

by Rachel Devenish Ford

  There was nothing intuitive about it. Her breasts became evil stranger sisters, rock hard and unwilling to let milk down, making her cry in the night, so sore, every part of her hurting. She regularly woke up swimming in a pool of milk that had come when nobody needed it, when they were both finally sleeping. Nursing Todd felt like wrestling a beaver. He was never happy with the hold he had on her, pulling away to gulp at the air while milk streamed from her breast like a geyser, forming beads in his eyebrows and scant hair, getting in his eyes which made him blink and stop crying for a moment before continuing to scream himself red.

  It was the worst when Jack hovered over the bed, helpless and slightly amused. He ducked the pillows she threw at him, not even joking, tears in her eyes, and came back later with orange juice in his outstretched hands as a peace offering. The orange juice fixation was a sorry replacement for coffee, which kept Todd from sleeping, another thing she'd learned the hard way.

  But one day, a few months into her oldest son's life, when Todd woke up and made his kittenish squeaks, Molly's heart did something new. It rose and clenched and ached and her eyes filled with tears. She went to his crib and when she saw him, saw his lips making that beautiful 'O', his eyes roving for her, her heart did it again. She picked him up and smoothed his wrinkled forehead—soft as a flower petal—with one hand, settled into her rocking chair and pulled her shirt up to nurse him. Something had shifted between them. He shut his eyes tight, sweat dampening his scant hair. He smelled sweet and milky. His lips relaxed at her breast, a small pool of milk forming in the corner of his mouth as he floated toward sleep. She turned to look at the rain on the pavement outside their apartment complex. Winter rain in San Diego, dull, dull, but unable to darken the illumination going on inside of her.

  Molly had named this doe Peony because she was so dainty and pretty, the smallest in her birth year. Now she stood stubbornly chewing on a stalk of dry grass. Small swirls of dust curved upward like smoke around Molly's ankles as she walked toward the doe. Peony glared at Molly.

  "It's not my fault," Molly said. "Blame that handsome buck who charmed you." She gripped Peony's collar and tried to lead her over to the little buckling, who was still bleating like an angry child, making a ruckus to wake the dead. The doe wouldn't budge. Molly tried pulling her again, but the tense spot between her shoulder blades was already hurting. She gave up. Molly didn't feel like hauling the stubborn doe all the way across the pen in the heat. She switched tactics and quietly stepped through the dust to the kid. When she picked him up she was startled by how light he was, though she'd picked up hundreds of goat kids before. He came off the ground like a handful of hay. He was startled too, shocked, if his loud yelp of protest was anything to go by. Molly laughed out loud, despite the sharp flailing hooves. He sounded like a toddler throwing a fit. As she walked back to Peony, the leaves on the big oak rustled. Molly's heart lifted with the music of wind combing through leaves, one of her favorite sounds.

  "Here," she said. "See? Like this."

  Molly set the buckling down in the dust by Peony's left flank. The shade of the oak tree dappled Peony's hide and formed dancing shadows on Molly's arms. The kid immediately began butting his little head all around, searching frantically for the doe's teat. Peony bleated and moved away, looking at Molly as if to say, "What is this?" Molly wondered for the first time if the approaching fire had anything to do with Peony's resistance. She shuffled along on her heels, back beside Peony, pulling the kid with her, and made a shushing noise with her teeth, a long languid breath to soothe the doe. As the kid butted her ribcage again, Peony made a visible effort and stood her ground. Molly rubbed at the base of the buckling's tail until he calmed down enough to find his mother's teat. Molly settled back on her heels in the dust, arms wrapped around her legs, smiling at the sight of the kid sucking noisily away, his little tail like a whirlwind behind him.

  The leaves of the oak rustled again, and Molly looked at them. The sound filled her with longing, and she realized where she needed to be. She wanted the Eve tree.

  Jefé was waiting for her at the house.

  "Darling!" she said. "I haven't seen you today. Where have you been?" He put his nose on her open hand and reached his face up to her shoulder. When she touched his neck she could feel his muscles flexing under his quivering skin.

  "You can feel it coming, can't you?" she whispered. "Hey, come for a walk with me." They started off. Jefé was sluggish, but she prodded him along. "If you want to come, you need to keep up." His eyes were almost obscured by his sandy eyelashes.

  The road to the tree was steep. Molly's grandfather had been the first to find the tree; a large black oak off to itself in a small natural clearing. Catherine said he'd brought her mother out to see it after she recovered from the birth of her stillborn son. Recovered was not the word for it, Molly thought. She couldn't imagine recovering from that.

  The forest came right down to the tire ruts in the road. Molly could hear birds crying yearning calls to one another in the forest. They sounded frightened. She wanted to soothe them in their nests. She turned at the curve, to enter the woods, but Jefé balked. Molly tugged at his mane, but he wouldn't move. She was hot and irritated, tired of stubborn animals. "Come on, you big baby." They contemplated one another for a minute, she frowning, he through those eyelashes, and then she shrugged, batting her hand at the air by her waist.

  "Fine. Stay." She walked into the woods alone.

  There were degrees and degrees of difference between the temperature on the sunny road and the temperature in the shady forest. Molly felt thirsty after her short hike in the sun, and wished she'd thought to bring some water. Around her, Douglas Firs stretched their tips into the highest pieces of sky they could reach. It was quiet, like a church, and cool. There was no stone, but it felt like the cathedrals Molly had visited on the East Coast when she was on her honeymoon with Jack. She wouldn't have been surprised to see a spire. In fact, there was one right over there, that perfect tip of the tallest tree in her vision. She wanted to cry.

  How was it that she so often lived without speaking to God? The fear of punishment, the sadness, they rolled over her like waves and she was breathless, she was driven to the bottom with the air pushed out of her. She could hear the birds telling one another about the fire, and she felt a hideous guilt about being human.

  "It's not our fault!" she yelled. The birds were quiet. "It was a lightning strike!" She walked on, shaking her hands by her sides like dust rags, taking huge gulping breaths. There were ferns here, still, clover in the crannies. All that had been scorched by the sun so long before in all the other places on the ranch. She saw the dancing light on the floor, the way a little stand of trillium was lit by one beam, the way the malice was strained out of the sun by the trees. Things were much closer than normal, and then Molly was in the clearing.

  There she was. Molly's grandmother had named her Eve, not after the woman who fell, but the one who had been taken from Adam's side. The before woman. The lovely one. She was beautiful, the shape of her sculpted, incredibly, in the tree's side.

  Molly walked to her and put her hand on the Eve tree's bark, felt her warm skin, smiled to herself as she thought of it as skin. She walked to the other side of the tree and the woman disappeared. You had to be standing at the right angle, or she wasn't there at all. Molly came back to her, tipped her head to look at where her face would be, if she actually had a face.

  Molly's grandfather had told her grandmother that it was because God knew that she was going to lose a child, because of this, he had formed a tree that was like Bertha, hair twisted behind her, to be a remembrance of life before loss. But Catherine said that her mother always thought of the tree as a woman after loss, frozen there in her sorrow. God closest in her weakest place. That place of anguish the closest she could get to pure creation.

  Molly didn't know about any of it. She had wanted to free the woman ever since she was a little girl. She wished she could release her now, especially n
ow with that damn fire coming. It was too much. She turned away from the tree and rushed back into the thick forest, tripping and falling, lying still where she fell, pressing her face all the way to the earth.

  The forest floor was cool. Small pieces of rock and earth dug into her bare knees, one sandal pinched the side of her foot. She couldn't bear how she was letting these creatures down, all these things coaxed into a shape they held for the rest of their short lives. The responsibility of it! Under the trees she felt her own true size, small, not much bigger than a child. These trees had lived for so much longer. They lived while people died. Her father had died, and her mother's baby brother had died before he ever felt air on his face. All this death!

  When she was a girl, she hid from her chores in these trees and they never gave her away. In Gerard's story they walked away from danger. Through the dancing lights at the corners of her closed eyes she could picture the hands of God, smoothing the strong trunks upwards, aging them as she aged her cheese, resins and oils and fragrance. She thought of her mother trying to save a hurt chicken. Something was here, something she could almost touch, something twisted she needed to straighten in her mind. If only she wasn't so tired.

  You couldn't help but get old. She thought of her mother sleeping and her throat ached with tears. Life cut short, no matter how long it was, no matter if it was hundreds of years, you would burn anyways. She thought of Jesus weeping blood in the garden, asking for the cup of suffering to be taken from him. She imagined that the sound of his death would sound in heaven like the crash of a thousand-year-old Redwood tree, the reckoning rippling in the earth for hours afterward. A sound you ran from, that you never wanted to hear again.

  ELEVEN

  Jack was surprised to find the house empty. Molly or Catherine must be somewhere, he thought, walking from room to room. His footsteps echoed ominously, and he straightened an old school photograph of Rain that had been knocked slantwise in the hallway. He tried to shake the spooky feeling that had come over him. Must be more worn out than he realized. In the kitchen he opened the refrigerator door, stared inside absently for a minute, then closed it again. A cold beer would be nice, but he wanted to find his wife. He thought of beer at his favorite spot on the boardwalk at Pacific Beach, and a knot formed in his stomach that he didn't want to feel.

  Fortunately, Catherine opened the kitchen door right that minute and grasped the doorframe with her hand while she pulled herself up the steps. Jack went quickly to help her. He could hear the crickets starting up. She had an armful of spinach and gladiolas and something in her other hand, which he realized was her cane. Dusk was beginning to shift the colors in the air.

  Catherine lay the flowers and spinach on the counter and sat down heavily on a chair.

  "I forgot how hard it can be to get down that hill to the garden," she said, taking a small handkerchief from her bosom and wiping her face with it. Jack looked away to be respectful as she tucked it back in. "Not to mention the hike back up."

  The lodge was at the top of a gentle slope in their hill, and the huge garden was on a plateau just down from the house, protected by a six-foot fence. Molly hated the fence, but after too many accidents with wayward goats and the lost of an entire bean or lettuce crop, she'd given in to a safer future. They had Jefé now, too, who would eat through their garden in an afternoon, given the chance.

  "Thought I'd get some things for dinner."

  "We're going to eat gladiolas?"

  "No, monkey head. The gladiolas are to cheer things up some. Everyone moping around all the live long day."

  "Is Molly coming in?" Jack asked.

  "I haven't seen her."

  "She wasn't with you in the garden?" His left hand closed into a fist.

  "No. She lay beside me on the bed for a while, then I must have drifted off and when I woke up she was gone. You haven't seen her?"

  Jack hated how they were asking each other the same stupid questions. They'd lost her, that's all, but kept looking for confirmation that one of them might have overlooked her under their elbow or in their jacket pocket.

  He had a sour feeling in his stomach. Catherine seemed unmoved, pulling herself out of her chair and opening the fridge.

  "Is anything off-limits?" she asked.

  "What?" he said, mind still on Molly.

  "I'm going to throw a salad together. Anything I shouldn't use?"

  "No. Use anything you want. You okay if I leave you here for a while? The kids should be back soon. I'm going to take a walk and see if I can find Molly."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence. You know I live alone, don't you?"

  "Hey," Jack said, hands up, palms out. "Just asking."

  Molly's truck was still in the driveway. Gerard had said he'd do the evening milking again... she wouldn't be up at the makeshift goat barn. They really needed to get a second ranch hand, Gerard shouldn't be doing this on his own…

  Where was she?

  When he was halfway to his truck, all three of his kids loomed in front of him.

  "You guys seen your mom?"

  "Nope. Where is she?" Rain asked.

  He sighed. "I'm going to look for her."

  "Want me to come?" Todd asked.

  "No, it's fine. You've been working all day. I'll go. We'll be back in a minute, just as soon as I find her…"

  What was that? He squinted. On the uphill road that hugged the side of the hill, he saw the silhouette of a dark shape. Jefé? The animal stood like a rock. It had to be Jefé.

  "See you in a few," he said, already walking.

  The road crested where the donkey stood, and as Jack approached he could see the unearthly sunset behind the stolid animal. The sun glowed desperately through layers of smoke cover, lighting each smoke molecule to move the blanket from its forest friend. Unlike cloud, made of water, the smoke couldn't be burned away. The sky was red, licks of yellow in the thicker clouds to the northwest, the hills he could barely see stained mahogany in the light. He was breathing hard.

  "Jefé," he said. "Where is she?" The donkey didn't say anything. He was shivering and silent. Jack rubbed at the donkey's neck to calm him, but his muscles were iron hard. It was the smoke, there was nothing Jack could do. He felt a pressure on his leg and looked down. Sam was leaning on him. He sniffed around at the ground, then took off into the forest. Jack saw color, a small glimmer, in the distance.

  "Well, okay," Jack said, and plunged in after the dog.

  The gloom of smoky night had him squinting. "Molly?" In the distance a cicada, monopolizing the night sounds. He looked toward the place where he'd seen a flash of color, but it was gone. He kept walking, following Sam, who quickly left him behind. Around him, the trees seemed attentive. He reached out and softly touched their trunks as he passed. He could feel Molly here.

  He looked up and saw the clearing where the Eve tree stood. Of course.

  Heading toward the clearing, he almost stepped on her. She was asleep on her side, curled at the base of a tree, one arm flung up, fingers splayed in a small patch of clover. The other arm was underneath her. The dog sat by her legs possessively. She was small and pale, brown hair spilled on the forest floor, mixing with fir needles, pine needles, dirt. Her eyes moved under her veined eyelids. He didn't want to wake her.

  He bent and sat against the trunk of the closest tree, stretching his legs in front of him. In the nearby clearing he could just make out the shape of the Eve tree. Smoke plundered his nostrils, heavy in his brain. Wood smoke had such a comforting smell, most of the time. All through the winter for the past ten years, he had piled wood in the stove, plying the flames with wood. Tongues of fire blackening the grains, wood splitting and shivering. White flames on the coldest days.

  He was almost asleep himself.

  From the beginning, he was caught and held by her. She wasn't gorgeous like some of the other women in the hallways or in his classes. But something in her face, in her dark black eyes, in the way her bones were put together, something told him she
could be his. He first saw her one winter in the university library, where she worked. He watched her hands placing books onto shelves for days before getting up the nerve to talk to her. One afternoon she was checking books out while the Librarian took a lunch break. He pulled something off the shelf—anything, didn't matter what— so he could talk to her before she got away.

  "Astrology Now, huh?" she said, taking the book from him and cracking open the front cover. It looked like the book had never been checked out before. "You believe in this stuff?"

  He should have looked closer at the book before picking it up. He was a young surfer, used to beach girls, girls all around, and here he was with sweat collecting on his upper lip, watching this black-haired pixie frown at the numbers racing away from the tip of her pen.

  "It's for a class," he said.

  She nodded without further inquiry. Thank God. Her pen ran out of ink and she wandered back to a shelf to find another one, taking her time. He could hear the line forming behind him, feel sighs on the back of his neck. The girl didn't seem worried. Her jeans were too big for her. She'd folded them up in big cuffs. She was wearing socks, no shoes. Jack scanned the floor for her footwear, but they were nowhere in sight.