The Language of Trees (8 page)

Grant climbs back into the Jeep. Echo is shivering. He wants to put his arms around her but that was another life. What doesn't make it any easier is that she still has the freckles spilling across her face and arms. He feels such a strong affection for her that he has to roll down the window to get some air even though it is still raining. Then he takes off his windbreaker and hands it to her. “Put this on.”

“Your wife,” she says, staring at the jacket in her lap. “She's a wonderful photographer. I came across some of her work a while ago in a magazine.”

“How's Boston?” he says, pulling a stick of gum from his back pocket before pushing the gear into reverse. In his mind Grant is pacing the halls of a house in Rochester on a cold December morning. Susanna's guilt made her so tired she couldn't get out of bed. Yet when she left, she had run from the house
without her coat, her breath forming icicles out of things she could not say. The turquoise barrette must have fallen from her hair as she pushed her bags into the trunk. He found it just yesterday.

“Cambridge,” says Echo. “My house is near a pond. Has everything. Fish, ducks, geese, frogs.” She smiles.

“Any good trees?”

“A huge sugar maple,” she says. “Right out in front of my house. It has thick roots that buckle the concrete. In September, it's pure fire.” She sits back and crosses her arms. “I can see it from practically every window. It's just the same as seeing the Diamond Trees from every part of the lake. And there's a Dairy Queen next door.”

“Now that I'd like to see.”

“Mmm.” She fastens her seat belt, untangles her hair. They'll just keep talking about trees and ice cream and it's fine with him. He can still smell those smoldering leaves along the upper trail of Bare Hill when the Seneca leaders stand by the boulder on the Saturday of every Labor Day weekend and give thanks for peace by lighting a ceremonial fire at the summit. So began the Ring of Fire, the end-of-summer celebration in which homeowners light a bonfire or a red flare on their piece of the shore. Each year, Echo and Grant would join with the rest of Canandaigua residents, and watch the circle of light creep around the lake after dusk, signifying the end of summer and the beginning of their hiatus from each other's lives.

 

“B
OSTON
. I'
VE BEEN MEANING
to get there,” he says.

“Autumn in New England isn't the end of something, like it is here.”

“How so?”

“It's the beginning. I love beginnings.”

Grant bristles at the words. He starts to say something, but then becomes quiet, just looking at her. Echo is not sure what to do, so she keeps talking.

“Oh, there's so much activity. Cambridge speeds up. Everyone is running from here to there, late for meetings and classes. People are running through Harvard yard with their books. The entire city is a campus. My office is right in Cambridge. It's not beautiful like Naples, though. There's something so fragile about this place. It's not as fragile as here,” she tells him.

“Not much is.”

“No,” she agrees. “Maybe not.”

She sighs heavily. “This is so awkward,” she says. She takes a deep breath and looks over at him. “Listen, I need to get something off my chest. After your father died, I wasn't sure if it was right to send you the cards. I know you and your dad had this wall between you. But I knew you would miss him. I knew you would take it hard and I felt so terrible because I hadn't gotten in touch with you when your mom passed away. I didn't know if you wanted to hear from me. I wasn't sure I had any right to try. But I wanted you to know I cared.”

The tightness in his throat makes him look away, recalling how his mother had insisted on not having a funeral, her only request that his father spread her ashes across the lake. “I guess it was easier not to call.”

“How could I expect you to? After the horrible things I said. We were too young,” she says, shaking her head. “God, I was terrified. I said terrible things. You hurt me. I wanted to hurt you back.”

“I don't hold it against you. I never did. Anyway, you met someone else. That's it. Life happens.”

“I didn't meet anyone else,” she says. “I lied.”

He stares at the windshield masked with wet leaves, unable
to speak. “How are you doing? Now, I mean,” he says finally. He reaches around and tries to push the leaves off with his hand. The wipers won't budge.

“Oh, I'm great,” she tells him. “Really super, actually. Pretty great.”

“That's good. Really, that's—”

“You?”

“Yep. Great. You know, overworked. But who isn't?” This isn't a complete lie. His hands are worn. He has open blisters on his palms, but this is nothing compared to how he feels inside. Raw. Open. Obvious as hell. He has always pushed himself, he was compelled to. He could never just run one mile, it had to be a marathon. He couldn't just carve one statue; he had to fill a whole house with them. In high school, he carried a stopwatch in his back pocket everywhere he went. He'd time himself, clutching it as he raced along the upper trail of Bare Hill to the large boulder at the top, a place that marked the Senecas' annual ceremony of peace. Then he'd race down to the dock, where he'd dive into the cold lake and swim the mile and a half across. Time. He'd hit the button. The race against himself has never ended.

The Jeep stalls. “Easy on the clutch,” Echo says.

“As I recall, I taught you to drive.”

He starts the engine again and backs up across the dirt and out into the highway, branches scraping the hood. An acorn falls in through the window. “Two years,” he says, dropping it in her lap.

“What?”

“It takes it two years to ripen.”

“That's a lot of patience for a little acorn.” She waits for some reaction, a smile, but he doesn't move. “It's good to see you again.”

He won't answer. They drive for a while in silence. “She left me,” he says finally, pushing the words out between them. “Susanna, my wife.” His voice trails off as the engine sputters, sending the mayflies swirling.

“I don't know what to say,” she says, her voice hushed.

“Perfect. Let's not talk then.” He's thinking of the way one tiny rock can change the direction of an entire river. And how the bark of a tree grows around an injured place, becoming a knot, changing its whole landscape. He thinks about the tree she just hit, how it now holds the memory of an accident, and a reunion.

She pulls her hair back into a ponytail, and he tries not to notice the way it falls in a fan over her chest. “Wait. Don't look,” she says. She opens the glove compartment and grabs something. “I told you not to look.”

“I'm driving. Some of us actually think that watching the road makes us better drivers.”

“Not me, I drive on intuition alone.”

“How's that working for you?”

“Clearly not that well.” She smiles. “You won't believe this. I've never been able to throw this out.”

“You know your wipers are broken?”

She nods, opening the book.

“So, how exactly do you drive in the rain?” he asks.

“I don't actually drive. Not technically. Not that often,” she shrugs. “I bike to work. The mayflies here are worse than rain anyway.”

She holds up a tattered paperback.
The Foxfire Book
. The pages are still dog-eared.

“Jesus, that thing is ancient,” he tells her. Reading together from this book is one of the most intimate experiences he's ever had with a woman.

“So much history here,” she murmurs, staring out the window at the old boathouses lining the lake. Ancient things make her feel comfortable: a well-loved threadbare couch, and a slight wrinkle to a man's shirt, worn hardwood floors. But he doesn't hear her. “You know when a place is so filled with memories, you can't even see it for what it really is?”

He nods. Too soon, they are nearing Bare Hill. He pulls off to the side of the road, stops the Jeep, and gets out.

“What are you doing? It's another half mile to your cabin,” she says, concerned.

“It'll be better if I walk from here,” he says, as she gets out. She hands him back his jacket, anticipating something. A handshake. A hug.

But he's staring up at the Diamond Trees. He's imagining the old wooden swing glowing against the dark curtain sewn with lights. The frayed rope is caught in moonlight, wrapped around one of the highest branches. When he was very young, during one long winter, his father teased him about being afraid to jump from the swing, bragging about how when he was a boy on the Tonawanda Creek Reservation he could jump from branches much higher. Grant had been reluctant to climb that high, and even more so, to jump into the deep black water. His father said it was because Grant thought too hard, and too much. That a boy had to be broken of this type of negative thinking or it would ruin him when he was a man. It was a lesson.

His father listened with relief as Grant protested that he wasn't afraid to do anything, much less jump from a tree into a lake. Over that entire winter Grant dreamed of climbing the great willow, climbing to the very top, his head poking out from the canopy, looking down on his mother and father with the swing positioned underneath him, then jumping off the branch, arms outstretched before floating down into the
water. In his dreams his body was weightless and the usually cold water was as warm and as welcoming as a bath. When his family arrived at the cabin the next summer, Grant jumped the first day. But the water was cold and as hard as glass when he landed. Still, he jumped all summer long, shattering it, his skin permanently stung red, his father looking on with pride.

“You sure I can't drive you home?” she asks. He turns around and she is standing behind him. The wind floods her T-shirt. He can feel her warmth even if he can't exactly see her eyes.

“Very sure,” he says. “I need to walk.”

“Positively sure?”

“Echo.”

“Okay, give me back my book.”

He turns around with the book in his hand.

“Forget it. You keep it,” she tells him. “Just for a while. Maybe you'll feel like reading. In case you get the urge to make moonshine.” Echo smiles. Their dark eyes meet once, and then he's pulling her close to him but only in his mind. The stillness of the water catches him.

Patience is the ability to slow down.

“Go on. You get to walk away now. And I promise I won't get angry this time,” she tells him.

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

“Intuition is bullshit. I agree,” she says.

“Take this, it's cold out,” he says, tossing her his jacket.

“You know, I'm still never dressed appropriately for the weather.” She pulls the coat over her shoulders and smiles, encouraged by the conversation.

He walks away. With such weight of emotion washing over him, he no longer feels like reminiscing. When her Jeep is clear out of sight, he begins to run.

T
HE
J
EEP'S BROKEN BUMPER
trails along the road, making a terrible racket as Echo drives into the parking lot of the Feed & Grain. This isn't exactly the sort of entrance she envisioned. She pulls up alongside a police car and her mind begins to race. Something has happened to Joseph, she is certain of it. Wouldn't that be her luck, arriving seconds too late? She dashes through the puddles, up the front steps of the store and flings open the door to see Charlie Cooke and Joseph leaning against the counter, deep in conversation. Out of breath, wet from the rain, Echo forces herself between the two men and into Joseph's arms.

“What is this? Echo!” says Joseph.

“Did something happen? Are you okay?” she cries. She squeezes Joseph tight.

“Kiddo, kiddo, kiddo, I'm fine, okay,” he says, peeling her off of him. “Let me look at you. What a surprise. What are you doing here?”

“Surprising you.”

“What happened to your lip, honey? You're bleeding. Let me get some ice.”

“I almost hit a wolf. I hit a tree instead. I'm fine, really.”

He touches her face, looks into her eyes. “Should we call a doctor, honey?”

“No, no, of course not,” she tells him. “Really. What are you doing here, Charlie?” she asks, turning to face the detective, whose presence has always meant bad news.

“I'm fine, and you?” he says, with a grin.

“Sorry, Charlie,” Echo says, pulling Grant's jacket tight around her. “I apologize. I saw the police car and I got worried—”

“She's worried about me,” says Joseph. “And look at her with a busted lip.”

“What's going on? Why are you here at Joseph's?” she asks Charlie.

“Melanie Ellis. You tell her the rest, Joe,” says Charlie. “I have to be going. You know to call if you see or hear anything from Melanie, which I reckon you won't. And don't pay any mind to those white stones out back there. It's a trick by some wise-ass kids, but we'll get them.”

Joseph pulls Echo close. “Honey, I am so grateful that you're home.”

 

T
HAT NIGHT
, E
CHO WATCHES
Joseph carefully as he sips the burnt coffee she has just made. She is standing behind the counter, watching him label jars of juneberry jelly. Joseph says he doesn't know how much longer he can keep up his business since the new Wildman's Grocery has opened up down the street. His store is still the only place in town where you can buy Famous Naples grape pies all year round, but he can't compete with the big guys, he tells her.

Now he's putting oranges into bags for the town's homeless couple, Dee Dee and Papa Paul.

“You sending them pies, too, Pop?”

“We sold the last two this morning,” he says, scratching a note to himself on the small pad. He casually admits that he's having trouble remembering things, like ordering more Eden's black raspberry celery-seed dressing. It took top honors last year, while Steve's blueberry poppy-seed dressing and NY Dijon mustard both placed third at
Food Distribution
magazine's 1997 Superior Product Competition. He says the big guys are selling it, too. Things keep changing, getting bigger and faster. At the turn of the century there were only 160 cottages on the lake. Now, that number hovers around 1,400.

Well, nothing much matters except having good people around you, he tells her. Loving, hardworking folks are the ones who you keep around. Part of getting through life happy is keeping around the good ones and letting go of the bad ones.

“I wish you'd known her all grown up,” he says, remembering Melanie was just a child when Echo left for college. “You'd have done a lot for Melanie, and I think she'd have done the same for you, too. Yes, you would have been a fine big sister. You have a lot in common, you know. You both have your books. See there,” he says, pointing to the box under the counter.

She takes out the first book she sees,
Magnificent Addiction
. She reads the inscription in the front,
For Melanie. With faith, Lion
.

“Lion?” Echo asks.

“Her boyfriend. Father of her child.”

“Nice name.”

“He couldn't pronounce the name Lionel when he was little, Melanie said. Anyway, I just feel so helpless here,” Joseph says, putting away the last of the jars. “Wish there was something I could do.” He reaches up to smooth his tousled white hair.

“Try to relax.” Echo touches his back, trying not to become preoccupied with his worry.

She thumbs through the pages of the book, stopping to read some of the passages underlined with red ink. Her eyes water up. In an instant, she feels like she is trespassing on Melanie's thoughts. She puts the book back.

She had bumped into Melanie once during a short visit home. Melanie had been painting the windows of the Feed & Grain for a Halloween display. She'd asked Echo about Boston and if she liked the Yankees or the Red Sox. When Echo answered Yankees, Melanie had smiled and said, “That's loyal of you.” Then Melanie had gone outside to sit on the porch, giving Echo and Joseph time alone together. She seemed lost in thought, her blue eyes focused on the lake. Echo wonders if perhaps she might have said something in that brief interchange that could have made a difference to Melanie. If a few words said in passing could change a person's life.

“I remember when Two Bears disappeared, it was the same feeling, this helplessness,” Joseph says, scratching his chin. “I miss the talk, you know, after all these years? Night was our time. We'd sit out here late. Two Bears and me were like two trees growing next to each other, one a willow, the other pine, both claiming the same space but needing different things from it. When the sun came up, we were always surprised because as different as we were, neither of us wore a watch. Probably the only thing we had in common.”

“It's sad what happened to him.”

Joseph nods. “Some folks cling hard to what they love. That's how they do it. Other folks have to walk away. Two Bears was the kind to walk away. But not until after he had fought the battle. I don't claim to understand it, but I respect his decision because I respected him. I know he had his reasons.”

“What do you mean, ‘walk away'? He was murdered, Pop.”

Joseph starts to cough. Echo runs over and offers him a
towel. He straightens up after a moment, his eyes watering. She looks down, noticing for the first time the holes in the knees of his pants. Embarrassed, he shakes his head. “I had meant to patch them up but my hands shake too much to thread a needle,” he says.

 

L
ATER THAT NIGHT
, E
CHO
takes off her tattered blue bathrobe and lies down on the soft mattress. Unable to sleep, she is wondering how the unexpected events of the past few days could lead her back toward the man she may in fact still love. She follows the cracks in the ceiling with her eyes, trying to meditate, to let her muscles reacquaint themselves with the old mattress's dips and curves. Has she any right to be thinking about her own feelings when there is so much else going on?

Sleepless, disturbed nights like these were not uncommon when she and Grant were together. She'd lie in bed dreaming of the wreck of the
Onnalinda
, a ship that is still caught in the depths off Otetiana Point, waiting for the waves to push its bones back together. The ship took her name from a book-length poem about an Iroquois princess who fell in love with an English captain. Years ago, Echo would wake up after dreaming about the ship, only to stare at the phone. Within minutes, Grant would call. This became almost commonplace.

What is it that Joseph always says? Faith is made up of one part belief, two parts courage. Life has taught her that a gift always arrives on the heels of despair. That's just the way it has always been for her, one of the better patterns of her life. Echo shuts her eyes, only long enough to hear an ear-splitting whine outside. Is it a baby crying? There is scratching at the window. Must be that the branches of the big oak need to be cut again. Shielding her eyes from the floodlight on the roof, she opens the window.

Lit up like a ball of fire, a huge orange cat is staring at her from the crevice of a branch. Its large yellow eyes blink twice, its gaze, almost mournful, as though it is she who has been crying out for the world to hear. She reaches out her hands. The cat doesn't budge. It is content to sit and meow now, as though rousing her were its only goal. As she clicks her teeth, the wind kicks up, brushing the long white sleeveless undershirt against her nipples, making them hard under the lamplight.

“Here fat cat,” she calls, shivering. The cat reminds her of the ones she once delivered to the doorstep of Clarisse Mellon. This one is so round it must be pregnant. “Come on,” she calls, reaching further. She could climb out onto the branch just as she used to do when she was a teenager. Fifteen years ago impulsivity ruled her life. She wouldn't have thought twice about using the tree as a ladder. But now, she's cold and tired, and not so confident about her balance. She slowly reaches out her cupped hand, making it look as though she has some food for the cat. She has always thought the childhood trick cruel, but these are desperate times.

The cat is disgusted, and scampers down the trunk of the tree. “Nice talking to you, too,” Echo whispers, pushing the window closed. She sits back in the pocket of cold air. Perhaps this will help her sleep. She closes her eyes and counts down from one hundred.

At the count of eighty-two, she gets up and grabs some photos out of her drawer. Her graduation picture. She looks squinty, her smile cuffed by thick silver braces. And then there is the hair, wild and uncombed. Her curly hair had resisted the once popular feathered hairstyle, while all the teenage girls carried round brushes in their purses as though they were arrows poisoned with love.

While other girls were practicing their flirtations during
recess, she was reading her beloved autobiographies. Echo always thought herself too awkward to have been anything but studious, absorbed in biographies like the one about Susan B. Anthony, who was put on trial right here in the Canandaigua Courthouse.

Echo closes her eyes, puts the photos underneath her pillow and presses her back to the wall. It is good to be back in her own room, close to Joseph, so close that even from up here in her bedroom, she can track his movements downstairs if she lies very still. The walls are paper thin and the floors are old and scratched. She can hear the opening and closing of cabinet doors creaking in the kitchen, then the sink faucet, and the
tick tick
of the gas stove where he is boiling water for tea. She hears him taking out the jam jar and banging the lid on the side of the sink to loosen it. Then the sound of two pieces of bread popping up from the toaster. She knows he eats his breakfast at night. She could go downstairs and join him like she used to when they would sit across from each other at the kitchen table in front of the big picture window and talk for hours as the sun rose, and in that perfect space between night and day, dark and light, she would empty herself of her fears and dreams, pour them all out to Joseph who would listen, unfailingly, hearing every word, and then tell her stories about himself that made her feel better. He was not perfect, but honest about it. He had been foolish and stupid, he told her. He had done things he wasn't proud of. And he had times when he was afraid, but he did something courageous anyway, like leaving the priesthood for a woman he met climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.

She is glad she made the decision to come home, where people let you talk at whatever time you need to and there is always an ear to listen. She has been walking around with that full feeling for too long, like her thoughts were in a locked box
just waiting to be opened. She keeps everything so stored up inside her that she often walks around feeling like she might burst. It causes her to cry at little things, at unexpected moments. She thinks of the dawn rising over the reeds and then the fog dissipating over the gray lake where she and Grant used to skinny-dip at night, alongside the soaring herons that live in pairs. Echo liked to believe that the herons were their angels, their watchdogs, protecting them from intruders. They had done their job well, except for once. One night when Echo was sixteen, Grant's mother saw something in the lake, something rising off the moonlit water and she had crept across the backyard and down to the shoreline as silently as a ghost. Pale and thin, her arms looked as willowy as the reeds as she pushed her way through the foggy air toward the shoreline. Having spotted Grant and Echo in an instant, Emily stopped halfway to the shoreline, holding their gaze. Echo and Grant froze in place, treading water, staring back. Emily's mouth opened to say something but she stopped. She put her hands on her hips and stared a moment longer. Then she turned around and walked back up the yard, swinging her arms forcefully until she got to the porch, where she sat down, hands on her knees, staring out in the opposite direction of the lake and chain-smoking cigarettes until after Grant and Echo had shamefully slipped into their clothing. As they passed by, his mother didn't say a thing, which made Echo even more uncomfortable. Echo smiled quickly at Emily but Emily kept her eyes down, continuing to smoke.

Afterward, Grant swore to Echo that his mother did not hate her or label her as “loose,” and he told her to forget about it. But Grant never knew that they actually had a conversation about it. More of an announcement, really. Echo had run into Emily a few nights after the incident, while Echo was closing
up the Feed & Grain. Emily Shongo waited for her outside. Echo saw her walk to the gravel parking lot, set the grocery bag at her feet and light a cigarette. Echo felt it was only polite to approach her. She had no idea what she would say but she told herself she had to set things straight. She was not a harlot. She was not trying to get pregnant. It was none of that, and of course they hadn't had sex, not yet. She loved him. She would tell Emily Shongo that, and then maybe the woman would see she was honest and well-intentioned, and would welcome Echo with open arms, becoming the mother she never had.