Tree By Leaf (20 page)

“Girl?” the Voice sounded surprised.

Maybe it didn’t know girl. Or maybe it hadn’t noticed. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, with the unexpectedness of the situation pulling at her mouth, to make it smile, with her smile making her voice as warm as the air around her.

“You do know that I didn’t mean—” she started to say, but she stopped herself. She was evading the question. “Am I responsible?” she asked, wanting to be told No.

“Yes. You asked.”

She couldn’t do anything about that, except learn. If she asked to be prettier than Polly, for example, and Polly—and something had happened to Polly. Clothilde blew away at the picture of Polly Dethier with all her strength, and shook her head clear. “I am responsible, aren’t I?”

“No,” the Voice said. “Amos Small,” it spoke the
names, “Joseph Twohey, Nathaniel Speer—they chose. So there is no more?” The Voice didn’t want her to ask for more. It wasn’t trying to trick her into greediness. It was only asking. Clothilde, her lips firmly closed, shook her head. But the Voice was wondering—she could feel that.

“I understand that it’s not mine,” she said, “Speer Point. The peninsula. This.” She felt it firm under her feet, rock upon rock, as she said it.

“Yes,” the Voice agreed. “Then there is no more.”

Only gratitude, Clothilde thought, looking for the right words to say it.

The Voice had gone before she could find them, and she was alone again. She turned quickly, before she could lose a second of it, to see the woods behind her, every leaf of every branch, every little ground-clinging vine, and the ordinariness. She didn’t grieve, because she had been able—for however many minutes it had been—to see. She didn’t grieve, because she knew where she could find the seeing again, not complete but still there: in Father’s drawings. The seeing wasn’t lost; it was just going to be rare; it would take some seeking.

Clothilde stepped into the woods, to go home. But she hadn’t said good-bye. The Voice hadn’t said
good-bye either. For that matter, she thought, following the sound of her own laughter through the woods, it hadn’t said hello. The Voice didn’t notice good-bye or hello, she was willing to bet on that.

That’s it. That’s my story.

It happened a long time ago, as the simplest mathematics will tell you. That’s what happened and I’ve written it down for you to read. The only other person I’ve ever told it to was my husband. You’ll want to know what he thought, because I know how crazy my story sounds. When I finished telling him about that peculiar week in my life, he believed me but he didn’t believe it, if you see what I mean. On the other hand, what he said to me about it did surprise me. “You didn’t ask why, Clothilde,” he said. “What a strange little girl you must have been. Didn’t you ever wonder why this happened to you? To you specially?” Well no, I hadn’t, and I never thought that made me particularly strange, and I still don’t. “Anyway, now I know why you wouldn’t agree to marry me until we’d been to Speer Point,” he said. “But what would you have done if I’d hated it?” He was no fool, your great-grandfather. I
told him it was no good thinking of what might have happened, since it’s hard enough making sense out of what did happen. And that was that.

I’ve written it down for you because I’m getting old now, old enough to know that at any time I may die. Sometimes that knowledge is comfortable to me, as comfortable as this untidy old desk by a window that overlooks the rose garden that encircle this house. (When the leaves are down in winter, I can just see the roof of the boathouse.) Sometimes that knowledge gives me the jumps. Death frightens me. Well, it’s a big change, and if you’ve read my story you must know that changes have always unnerved me. I will, of course, be dead at the time when this is put into your hands.

I don’t know what you’ll think. But if I know my family, there will be a lot of questions asked. They’ll wonder why I’ve left Speer Point to you, you of all people. You aren’t even a proper Speer. How could you be, when you were already born at the time your mother married my grandson. The Speers have a strong greedy streak, and they’ll wonder. If your Great-Uncle Nate survives me—and has all his marbles—he’ll speak out for you. He’ll be wrong about it, but they’ll listen to his explanations of inheritance
taxes, and he’ll believe it himself. That’ll be reason enough for them. I want you to know the real reason.

But if I know children, what you’ll really want to know is: Then what happened?

You know what happened to me. Father and I are the two distinguished Speers, the famous ones. The family is proud of us, so you’ll have heard more than you want to about us; and the family resents us, too, in the complicated way of families. You already know about me, so I can only add what they don’t know, or don’t know the significance of.

The peninsula—obviously, it remained in my hands, because otherwise I couldn’t now put it into yours. It was money from selling timber that paid my college bills. We harvested the older, larger trees, pines and spruces, maples; and then we replanted. Some of the trees that were young when I was a girl will be there for you, should you need them. After college I continued studying; I studied medicine and psychology. I became, as you know, a psychotherapist—and a fine one, if I’m the one to say so. I turned out to have a talent for seeing inside of people, and I used it. I married, and continued my work, and had children, and continued my work. At first I was criticized for that, and then I was admired, as times changed and
opinions changed. My life was intensely interesting to me, but I don’t imagine it would be to you.

Father and Mother lived their lives out on Speer Point. When his illustrations began to earn money, they rebuilt the cottage, where I now live alone. Father has become famous as a watercolorist, but his illustrated books earned his living.
Beauty and the Beast
was his first success, the old fairy tale. They’ll give you that book, when you’re old enough. The Speers take to pride easily, and they are proud of Father because his pictures hang in museums. I think it would have amused him, to have been brought back into the center of the family like that; although he did no laughing when Speer Electric Motors went under, half a century ago. Mother finally had her gardens at this house, the flower garden, but she kept up the kitchen gardens too. Father came home, to live with us, and as the years went by Mother learned to believe that he was glad he’d married her, which gave her all the contentment she wanted, between her children, her husband, and her garden.

Jeb Twohey was her gardener. At first, it was only the orchard and vegetable gardens at the farmhouse, and we could pay him only in work, only by giving him work to do. Jeb had hands that made things
grow. His dahlias—their colors just exploded into the air. His mind never mended but he worked in peace out at Speer Point.

Nate—as you know, because it’s family legend—pulled himself up after the Great Crash by his bootstraps. I’m sure you’ve heard more than enough about his various struggles. I always thought struggle was the best thing for him, but I don’t see that his bitterness has been sweetened any by his later successes. Dierdre grew up and married one of Father’s artist friends, who never gave her much but love—which was all she needed. He went off to the Second War, but came through it safely; Dierdre was kept safe. She raised the basset hounds every Speer who keeps a pet has in his house, and those dogs loved her enough to fill in all her hungry cracks.

Tom Hatch lived and died a bachelor, and a good friend. Polly Dethier—she had her coming-out party, and I went to it. Nate did not accept his invitation. I was miserable, of course, but Polly danced with the young men, and her eyes had that shining hope in them. When she did marry, however, it wasn’t to one of the summer boys from town, nor to one of the young men from Bangor. She married the youngest Henderson boy. I went to her wedding and saw how
her eyes shone with hope, as she turned around from the minister to look at us. Polly had children and she worked, the way a farmer’s wife has to. She and her husband moved into the farmhouse when this house was built; it’s their grandchildren who manage the farm and the timber plantations now. Polly never lost her ability to hope. I don’t know if that was a blessing to her or not—how much she could hope, no matter how many old hopes were dashed—but I got to admiring that quality in her.

I tried to find Lou, tried to have her come back, but I never did. I wrote letters, but there was never any answer. Lou couldn’t read or write, so I don’t even know what it meant that there was no answer. Nobody in the village knew her address in Fall River, or the name of her mother’s sister. We didn’t know which of the mills she worked at, so I wrote to each. There was never any answer. We didn’t know which of the many churches there was hers, although our minister wrote to find her. With the money from the first timber cutting, Father hired a detective for me. The detective at least could track her down, and find her name on the employee lists. But she’d gone away five years earlier. She had vanished from the lists, after being employed there for only a year. Where she went
to, I’ve never known and I’ve always wondered. Sometimes, I’ve thought it must have been good, her life, because she had strength. Sometimes I’ve been afraid it must have been bad, to need strength. Every time I think of Lou—like right now—I feel how I need to know, and how I never will.

Finally there’s you. If my own experience is anything to go by, you’ll want to know why I’ve left the peninsula to you in my will. Everybody will want to know, but you’re the only one who has the right. I’d let the rest of them wonder, if I were you, but then I’ve always been uncooperative and uncomfortable, to myself and to the people around me. They’ll tell you we only met the once, but they won’t be able to tell you what it was like for me—the distinguished old lady—to meet the child you were. You refused to come any farther into the room than the doorway, and your mother wanted so badly for you to make a good impression on your new family. She had scrubbed you shiny clean for the wedding, and dressed you up. You hated it, I could see that. You hated the way the family was studying you, and studying your mother. She had shined your shoes as bright as your cheeks, and you had the big eyes little children have, standing there with your feet planted
on the rug … you looked about as miserable as anyone I’ve ever seen. I recognized those square planted feet of yours, and the sullen little face, and it made me laugh. I was laughing when I said hello, and bent over to shake your hand—me, the grand lady with my white hair and white gloves. I held out my hand for you to shake and you—you looked at me as if you’d like to kick me in the shins. Your mother made the apologizing, purring noises mothers make, and you looked like you wanted to kick her in the shins when you were through kicking me. So I went away, because your poor mother was already at her wit’s end with all those Speers in the room and I wasn’t helping, trying to get you to like me. I went to talk to somebody else, I can’t remember who. But I remember you.

And if that isn’t explanation enough, you’ll have to find your own. I’ve given you my story and the peninsula that isn’t mine. The rest is up to you.