The Language of Trees (16 page)

After Maya fell asleep, Melanie snuck into the closet, her ritual. She removed the piece of floorboard from her secret hiding place. She removed the white cloth napkin with Leila's initials on it, unfolding it over her knees, spilling the contents in front of her. There she'd sat, lap full of moonlight, holding a piece of coal, a gold button from Victor's coat, three red beads, and a silver dollar. Here was all her luck. When she turned them over in her hands as the morning light snaked in, the items sparkled, tripling her luck, meaning she and Maya would be okay. When satisfied, she put everything away and got into bed, lying awake, watching the slats of light from the blinds that crawled across the ceiling each time a car passed. This was the beginning of the insomnia that would plague her for a lifetime. Night after night, she'd lie there replaying the events of Luke's death in her mind or waiting for Victor to come home. What had happened to Luke after she had hit her head? Why couldn't she remember? Had there really been a giant on the island? Hadn't he seen her and waved, just for a second? Maya said she couldn't remember seeing anyone. Now all Melanie could do was pray for them all. If she could hold her breath before the light receded, Victor would be okay. If she did this
until she heard his car pull into the driveway, followed by the rattle of his key in the lock and his heavy legs pulling his body up the stairs, her parents would be okay. If he got in safely, if she didn't have to look for him and rub a wet towel around his face to clean him up for Leila, if a radio flicked on and she heard his muffled sobs of apology, it was only then that she could sleep through the night.

Years later, when Melanie was fifteen, she would sneak into the basement of the Shongos' boarded-up cabin. She was almost a woman now, and sad, like her mother. Unlike her mother, though, whose sadness weakened her, Melanie's sadness made her willful, so full of anger that she could barely contain it. It was as though a switch had been turned on. One day, she dyed all her clothing black in the bathtub, cutting off her shirt sleeves and safety-pinning them back on. Everywhere she went she saw shadows hovering in the branches of trees. She was always cold. She never slept. She spent months wanting nothing, even after she got herself a boyfriend and started having sex. Then she wanted him, and she thought that was enough. And then she discovered pills, and she wanted them more than anything. Soon, her life became all about finding a quiet dark place to take them. The Shongos' basement was the perfect place, for she could feel Luke's presence there, and he seemed to be waiting for her. She was dreaming of him again, and this provided some comfort, despite the grief. The tombstone might be in her own backyard, but her little brother was here in the cabin—at least his spirit was. Time and time again, she would peer around corners, as though she might discover him hiding. She would say Luke's name out loud, trying to scare herself. Sometimes she would feel the cool breeze of a draft on her neck and suddenly turn around. “Luke? Luke?” she would whisper. She knew it was bad luck to say a dead person's name out loud.
The spirit might get confused, might try to come back, and not be able to find his way home.

 

M
ELANIE WHISPERS
L
UKE'S NAME
in her mind. She can hear his voice, see his face talking to her, begging her to chase him, again and again through the underwater grasses, amidst the piles of white stones and the layers of green lake glass. He is darting in and out, trying to lead her away, farther and farther away from the place where she is now.

Suddenly, she hears floorboards creaking and footsteps coming toward her. The stench of whiskey is familiar. She tries to scream but can't. Someone is removing the blindfold. Panic races through her body. She sucks in her breath when she sees his face.

Her father, Victor.

The blue bloodshot eyes are burrowing into her, pleading, filling her with that old sense of panic mixed with guilt. He has the same pale stringy hair, the dark beard, now graying, and yellowed teeth. He sets down a box of children's cereal beside a canteen. He leans over her, talking in a low voice, cradling her face in his hands.
You have to eat, Melanie. You need your strength. Help me now the way you did before. I have waited all this time. Tell me the truth about your brother.

V
ICTOR
E
LLIS HAD ALWAYS
been suspicious of moving water. The energy and force of the currents in rivers and streams, especially the ripples that drift across Canandaigua Lake, make him feel weak. He had left the place eleven years ago, even before his divorce was final. It was a reminder of the old life that he had massacred. He'd started drinking soon after they had moved there. He'd only gone there for her, for Leila. But he had always hated the lake. The winding roads that led nowhere; the black gluey mud that always covered his truck; the plethora of insects—mosquitoes, dragonflies, and mayflies—that fed on and around the lake's putrid vegetation; the deceptively unpredictable weather—the way storm clouds could appear quite suddenly in a clear blue sky, finding him in the middle of a field, unprepared, without rain gear; the smell of lilacs so thick in the air it still makes him gasp.

Now, during this last week in May as he sits in his house outside of Spencerport, forty miles away, the scent of lilacs suddenly corners him in the kitchen and he remembers. Each time he is reminded of anything about his old life, he picks up his gun, buys a bottle of Jack Daniels, walks out to the middle
of the woods near his house, and shoots a pheasant. Only to maim, not to kill. Victor does not hunt for death. He shoots only to injure, to feel life regenerate. It is an act of creation to shoot the animal and force it to heal. Causing this explosion of life fills him with power and energy. He is compelled to do this whenever the scent of lilacs overwhelms him. It is almost instinct, the way he grabs for his gun, and in the two hundred milliseconds before Victor pulls the trigger, he reminds himself that he is the king of free will.

He knows he is to blame for the death of the little boy. He'd planned on moving to Mexico after it all blew over, but he'd only gotten as far as Spencerport, just under an hour's drive northwest. On many occasions, he had tried to get farther away. But he was always trapped by the sweet smell of lilacs, which made him run for his whiskey, eventually becoming so sick he'd have to lie down with a blinding migraine. More than once, while packing his truck, his pit bull had broken free from her chain and Victor had had to go chasing her down for hours. In the last year it had gotten worse—his drinking problem had escalated and now he was chained to the courts. He had just gotten his third DWI in six years. The second DWI, a felony, had landed him in prison for a short time and then probation. The third, which he had just gotten two days ago, meant he had two motions against him: a violation of probation and a felony DWI. Bail had been posted and a court date had been set, but Victor knew this would be his end. The judge would surely sentence him to more prison time. He knew a bench warrant would be issued for his arrest if he missed his upcoming court date or was caught driving without a license. But the prospect of another stint in prison was a death sentence. He wouldn't survive it. He had nothing more to lose by leaving town.

When Victor first moved away, he had wanted to be alone,
too afraid that people would question him about his past. He found a small house in a wooded area near abandoned farmland. He has lived there quietly, hardly alive. The sky around Victor's small house is always, somehow, a deep dark yellow. It is a swampy sky, thick, with feathery plants that tangle in the branches of the tallest blue spruce. When Victor's house is dark, when the air is full with quiet, Victor sometimes hears a roar in the trees that makes him want to slip deep inside it just to lose himself in a chaos greater than his own. With the air rushing through his lungs, he wants to push out everything inside him.

There are beaten sugar maples by the highway and a pile of felled branches at the entrance of the driveway and a broken blue mailbox, with the name “Ellis” printed in block letters. No one comes to see him. He has no friends, for anyone he let in would want to know his secrets. Sometimes his house is so silent, Victor wonders if he exists only in his own imagination. Sometimes he whistles just to create a disturbance in the air, proof that he exists. Other times it is as though he lives inside a tornado whose center is always chaos. The inside of a tornado is the loudest place on earth, Victor has thought. He can feel the ruins of his old life inside him, the cadence of his ex-wife's cries after the boy died are still embedded in his memory, the faces of his two girls, the scent of everything wounded, the images of the ring-necked pheasants. Each time Victor shoots his gun, a calm lingers in the air. Each time he shoots, he crawls inside a place so swollen with absence, it's the most peace he has ever known.

He checks his guns several times each day when the silence is painful, when he is out of work and at home all day and night. When he is lost and without purpose, he touches the metal barrel and fills himself up with a sense of free will. He doesn't
need to kill the pheasant like his own father did, a hunter who killed for sport. To shoot is an act of free will, Victor once told Luke, a way to harness creation.

Sometimes Victor would take Luke and Old Sally with him for a day of hunting, despite Leila's protests.

After Victor would shoot a bird, the dog would chase the scent and find the bloodstained pheasant. Luke would trail behind Victor carrying the bloody bird in his arms, and Victor would pretend he didn't know what Luke was up to. They would both pretend. Victor did the wounding so that his son could do the other thing. They had become two symbiotic figures, each of which could not exist without the other. Both engaged, consumed in this act of decimation and re-creation. It was a silent agreement and Victor never asked what had become of the bird, even though he would let the boy ride home with it in his lap, Luke's clothing bloody, stuck with errant feathers.

Luke would hold the bird in his arms, sometimes crying, and then take it out back behind the house. Sometimes Victor heard Luke sneaking out at night to find the other birds that Victor had shot.

But usually Victor went hunting alone. After he had returned, he'd see Luke glance at the gun closet, and Victor knew the boy could smell it. The scent followed Victor back from the fields, clinging to his skin and his clothing for days. On this night in May, he is remembering how Luke would try to hide his own bloodied shirts after he had rescued the downed birds, and the bits of feathers that trailed behind him as he'd run upstairs to take a bath. The scent of blood would elicit Luke's sympathy. But it only made Victor's jaw tighten and his fingers ache.

Once Victor had become so obsessed with Luke's strange ability that he followed the boy in the middle of the night. Luke
had slipped on boots under the pajamas, put on Victor's hunting jacket and sneaked out the back door. Victor knew Luke couldn't see the blood but could smell it clinging to the leaves. Victor had watched the boy locate a pheasant under a small apple tree. Its body was dark, stiff, its wings frozen. Hiding behind a bush, Victor watched as Luke picked it up, wet in his arms. He thought he saw little blue lights flickering around Luke. Luke stood there, flooded in the moonlight, a flurry of blackbirds circling above him. For a few moments, Luke held the pheasant there in his arms.

Then, he opened his arms and the pheasant flew away.

Luke didn't move, not even with the rain and wind kicking up, soaking his face. Victor knew Luke sensed he was being watched. But there was something there that Victor didn't want to mess with. And as Victor snuck away, he feared the child even more.

Now Victor stands in his living room, picturing Luke playing with Old Sally, remembering the sheer elegance of it, the fluidity of play and purpose in perfect combination and how he had envied it. How Luke had seemed to float across the grass, always laughing, while Maya and Melanie stumbled and fought over their jealousies. Luke did not care whether he was judged, whether he was ugly or beautiful or stupid. Victor wondered how a child like Luke could possibly be of his own flesh and blood.

 

T
HE SCENT OF LILACS
has grown stronger. Victor begins to fear the outside. He begins to fear his own dog. He watches Agnes, his pit bull, whose chain no longer seems strong enough. Victor does not leave the house for days on end. From the window, he watches the dog pacing nervously. He remembers how the dog crouched behind the tree one night last week, waiting for him
to pass by, snarling. Instinct is a thing to be feared, Victor told himself. It causes unpredictable behavior. Remember why the dog is tied to the tree.

Each day the anger inside him grows. Victor still smells of everything wounded, and he cannot clean it from his skin or his clothing. He hates Leila for what she has done to him. And he tried to make her pay, even more, for the fact that he loved her. They once had a bond. Victor's skin was always cool to the touch. But Leila's was always warm. He'd put his icy cheek on her chest and give her all the cold chaos inside him. This is the only time Victor ever felt strong. There was someone for everyone, a perfect fit, he would think, in those early days of their relationship, as her hands and feet became cool and his face flushed. She'd become drunk with the cold, and he with her heat, and it made them both laugh and feel as though they were good. And then the girls came, first Melanie, then Maya. And though they were beautiful like Leila, they had inherited Victor's chaos. And in some small way he found this comforting.

He could see it in the way they cried and the way they fought. But then this third child came. This pale slip of a child who possessed no chaos, only peace. Luke's huge green eyes sparked with something Victor could not recognize.

Now, on this night in May, not even whiskey will block out the scent of lilacs. He is thinking of Luke constantly. Stacks of dimes are appearing everywhere: on the kitchen counter, on top of his alarm clock, on the dashboard of the car. It is too much. Wherever he goes he sees Luke. When he finds a yellow paper airplane floating in his bathtub, he wants to scream at the top of his lungs. He cannot stand it. He buries his face into the pillow and howls there, as loud a noise as he can make. For a moment, he is nothing more than air pulsing through the
walls and the doors, through the glass windows. For a moment, Victor, gratefully, disappears.

He imagines that one day a flurry of one-winged pheasants will come for him, just as he sometimes imagines that Luke is living with him. He even makes sure the bag of Reese's peanut butter cups is well hidden, where Luke won't find it. When Victor tries to leave the house now, he rarely gets farther than the porch steps on the first try. He often goes back inside to peel an apple for Luke. He peels it in a perfect spiral, just as Luke liked. Then he grabs the peels, annoyed at himself, slams the door shut and throws the peels across the backyard.

He believes he has been living in purgatory. He believes Judgment Day is coming. He knows that on Judgment Day, whoever has blood on their hands must crawl around in the dirt until their eyes are burning and their lips are cracked. The sun will burn the whispers from their lips; the sun will bear down on their backs and their fingers will ache with sadness. They must toil until desperate and think about what they have done. In purgatory, they cannot feel anything; they have no emotion. They will not feel anything until their skin is parched, and until they have wandered everywhere looking for water, and maybe even then they will never feel anything again. They have wounded too many times. On Judgment Day the sky will become glassy and red and no one will be able to see through it, not even the birds. Not even God. Everywhere, the scent of lilacs will smother the trees and blackbirds will drop from the sky.

Tonight, Victor is aching for connection. As he puts the gun in its holster and slips on a large flannel shirt, he notices two stacks of dimes on the counter. In one sweeping gesture, he swipes them off the counter. They fall, tapping across the floor like rain. He takes out his gun, walks outside in his new black
boots, and makes sure his dog's chain is strong enough where he has patched it. As Victor approaches, the dog backs away, barking like crazy. Stunned, Victor tries to soothe her, for he has had this dog for five years. Only recently has the dog turned on him. Victor reaches his hand out. Ferociously, the dog tries to attack him but the chain holds. Victor falls backward, just out of reach. The dog is still pulling on its chain, baring its teeth and growling as Victor crawls away.

He is going out for a drink. Before he leaves, Victor slaps on aftershave. He needs the comfort of a woman. As Victor drives to the bar, he can't seem to get a certain memory out of his mind. That fateful day of fishing with Luke. Victor and Luke had been far enough out on a small pier, shaded by trees, he thought, in a part of the lake where they would not disturb anyone. They were engaged in battle: Victor had been trying to show Luke how to bait the hook. He wanted Luke to follow his instructions, wanted to force him to feel it. And Luke wanted no part of it. So Victor tore the worm in half and threaded it on the hook. Luke hid his face and tried to stop him but Victor pushed him off and cast the fishing line out into the lake. Suddenly, the line jerked between Victor's fingers, a tiny pressure. He could see the flash of yellow gills in the water, a sunfish, almost two pounds, Victor gauged. At that moment, Luke began to scream, to tear at his hair, to hoot like some hyena gone mad. Victor grew angry and he yelled and cursed at Luke, but the boy just ignored him.

Victor drew his hand back, and he smacked the boy as hard as he could across the face. He felt the force of his own power.

But Luke didn't even flinch.

Eerily, the child stood more solid than ever, as though made of stone.

And Victor hated Luke in that moment, for he knew then
that his son would never understand his chaos as his daughters did. And that Luke would never forgive Victor his mistakes as he believed his daughters had. He realized in that moment that he had been punishing Leila for his own estrangement from the boy, and at the same time hoping that if the boy accepted him, it would make everything that was wrong with his family all right. But that day, he knew he had ruined any chance.