Caitlin R. Kiernan - The Red Tree

I woke this morning to find Constance sitting on the porch, smoking and staring into the trees and undergrowth at the edge of the front yard. There was a sketchbook lying open in her lap, and an old coffee mug of charcoal pencils on the porch rail. But the paper was blank. Near as I could tell, she’d drawn nothing. She didn’t seem to notice me until I said her name, and repeated it a second time; even then, when she turned and looked at me, there was something about her eyes, something about her expression, that made me wonder if she understood I was addressing her .

“How about some breakfast?” I asked, yawning and scraping together half a smile or so.

Constance blinked at me, like maybe she was having to work to remember my name. After a few seconds, there was a faint glimmer of recognition, and she turned away again. She took another drag from her cigarette and looked back towards the yard and the woods beyond.

“Sarah, I don’t feel like cooking for you today,” she said.

“That’s not what I meant,” I replied, caught slightly off guard and determined not to begin the day with an argument. “How about I cook something for the both of us. I think there are still a few eggs in the fridge.”

“I’m really not hungry,” she said.

I started to go back inside and leave her alone with her thoughts, whatever they might be. I’m sure that’s what I should have done. There was nothing I had to say that she wanted to hear, and I’m not quite so dense that I couldn’t see that. But, just as our inexplicably failed bid to reach Dr. Harvey’s red tree seems to have caused Constance to withdraw, so it has left me somewhat less content with my own company than usual.

“So how about I make you a cup of joe?” I asked. “Or tea? Or, hey, fuck it, what about a beer? A cold Narragansett wouldn’t be such a bad way to start things after yesterday.”

“I’m fine, ” she said, grinding that last syllable and sounding anything but, and she stubbed out her cigarette in a ginger Altoids tin she’s taken to carrying around with her. She popped the butt inside and snapped the tin shut.

“Constance, you know, some things, no matter how long you sit and stare at them, they just stay weird. You don’t always find a library book—”

“Don’t you patronize me,” she said, and, looking back, it was probably for the best that she interrupted me when she did. I just wish I’d have had the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut to start with. Constance glared at her Altoids tin, clutched tightly in her right hand, and I was beginning to think she was going to turn around and throw it at me. I suppose I’d have had it coming.

“Don’t you fucking dare, ” she continued, slipping the tin into a pocket of one of the black smocks she wears when she paints. “And don’t try to tell me there’s no point obsessing over it, because I know you’re doing the same goddamn thing.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I wasn’t trying to.”

“You know what I think?” she asked, and then told me before I could reply. “I think you could go inside and pack yourself another picnic lunch right now and head back to the tree alone. I think you could do that, Sarah Crowe, and you wouldn’t have any trouble whatsoever finding it, or finding your way back here again, afterwards.”

I shrugged, wishing I hadn’t left my own cigarettes inside, but not about to ask Constance for one.

“You know,” I replied, getting a bit pissed, but doing my best not to let it show. “Me not patronizing you, that would have to include my telling you how crazy that sounds, right?”

“Yeah? So why don’t you try it, Sarah? If it’s crazy, what have you got to lose?”

“Look, I’m going to make a pot of coffee, and maybe when I’ve had three or four cups, when I can see straight, maybe then we’ll continue this conversation.”

And I was already stepping across the threshold, back into the house, already pulling the door closed, when she said, “You won’t do it, and you won’t do it because you’re scared. But I wish you would, Sarah. I wish you’d try going back without me.”

“Okay. So, maybe I will,” I said, knowing full well I wasn’t about to do any such thing. “But first, I’m making coffee, and getting something to eat. And you are more than welcome to join me, if you should happen to get tired of sitting out here not drawing whatever it is you’re staring at so intently.” And I shut the door, quickly, before she could get another jab in or possibly raise the stakes of her silly little dare. Hey, old lady, I’ll even screw you if you’ll just try to find the tree again without me. Sure, give it another shot, and, if you make it back, I’ll throw a pity fuck your way. I went to the kitchen and wrestled with the temperamental old percolator that came with the place, and I listened to NPR and had a bowl of stale Wheat Chex without milk, because the carton of “Rhody Fresh” had gone over. Constance didn’t join me, though halfway through my second cup of coffee, I heard the front door slam, heard her stomping upstairs to her garret. When I was done, I tried valiantly to occupy my mind by doing a half-assed job of cleaning the kitchen and the bathroom. Both badly needed it, though the work did little, if anything, to distract me. I kept stopping to stare up at the ceiling, wondering what Constance was doing overhead in the air-conditioned sanctuary of her attic, if she was painting or sketching or just lying on the futon beneath the chugging window unit, worrying at her memories. Or I’d find myself sweat-soaked and gazing at a sink filled with dirty dishes and sudsy water, or at the toilet brush, and realize that I’d spent the last five minutes standing there, thinking about the tree, playing back over the events of the day before. No less guilty than my housemate of trying to see past what had happened to anything else that would make more sense and not leave that cold, hard knot in my guts.

When Constance finally did reappear, it was late afternoon, and I was lying on the sofa in the den, intermittently dozing and trying to concentrate on Alice Morse Earle’s unutterably dry Customs and Fashions of Old New England (1893), which I’d brought home from the library in Moosup a few days before. She slipped into the room without a word and sat down on the floor not far from me. There were a few fresh-looking smears of paint on her smock, and she was accompanied by the pine-sap smell of turpentine. There were motley stains on her hands and fingers, too, several shades of blue and green and red.

After a moment, she cleared her throat, so I closed my book and dropped it to the floor beside the sofa.

“We still on speaking terms?” she asked.

I rubbed at my eyes, and watched her a moment or two before answering. “It would be damned inconvenient if we aren’t,” I said.

“Good,” she smiled, guarded relief creeping over her face. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I know I shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, well, we both saw some seriously freaky shit. Not exactly the sort of thing you tend to forget overnight. And, besides, I really should have had enough smarts to leave you alone this morning.”

She picked up Customs and Fashions of Old New England and stared at the spine. “You were actually reading this?” she asked.

“No,” I told her. “Not actually.”

Constance set the book back on the floor between us and, with her left index finger, traced invisible circles and figure-eights on the black cover.

“I’m never at my best when I’m afraid,” she said.

“Not many people are,” I replied. But it sounded trite, maybe even condescending, and I sighed and shut my tired eyes. Orange and yellow ghost images floated about in the incomplete darkness, a swirling, leftover smutch of four-thirty sunlight generated by my confused retinas.