Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

Importune time to be shown eternity, but the stars swung like heavy gates overhead, a celestial unveiling. She saw stars with her eyes closed — a mystery. A mystery, too, why she couldn’t force herself back to the groves, the earth, her brokenness, but kept spinning above. It made sense that heaven would offer itself to those most in need of its vision, not those secure in starched kneel in church pews.

Octavio called her name, but she refused to answer. Did not want the girls or anyone to see her. She in a swale of blackness, hidden. Later she woke to his scooping arms as she struggled blind against him, ineffectual against him, too. He carried her back to the house, but he could not return her.

The house was brightly lit, morbidly festive, as they entered. Forster locked Claire in yet another set of arms. “You’re safe.” Safe hardly.

Behind his shoulder, through her swelled eyelid, she saw policemen and other people. “Are you okay?” “Just some scratches. More scared than anything else.” The doctor took her away. Broken arm, bruises, slight concussion. The house was crowded with strangers, confusing her, as in a dream. Was this still a cruel continuation of her birthday party? A known face, Mrs. Girbaldi, her unlikely confidant, stood by the stairs, owl-like eyes blinking out of her unmade face. Had Claire ever seen her without makeup before?

“Terrible, terrible,” Mrs. Girbaldi chirped.

“Where’s Joshua?” Forster asked.

“Where are the girls?” Claire answered.

They sat on the couch, Lucy and Gwen holding hands. Faces tracked by tears. When they saw her, they jumped up and rushed to be comforted. Buried their heads so hard against her ribs that already hurt badly, but she didn’t care. She hugged each of them, held them away. “Are you all right?”

They nodded, unsure, the damage invisible but felt.

“Where’s Josh?” Claire said.

“He’s not with you.” Forster making a statement.

“She was alone,” Octavio said.

“He ran to look for you,” Gwen said. “Octavio called the police.”

“Where’s Josh?” The idea growing in Claire’s head that all these strangers were to fill the vacuum of his absence. She searched for Forster’s hand, stumbled across the room to the door. “We need to find him.”

“They have search teams setting out. You need rest.”

“Josh is still out in the orchard.” Claire shook her head, fear tightening the muscles. “Where they took me.”

Octavio stood as if made of wood, helpless, silent.

“Come,” Forster said to him. “Show me where you found her.”

* * *

During the first hours of Josh’s being missing, Claire convinced herself it could all be a misunderstanding. Did she really remember his voice in the dark, the headbutt, or was it her imagination that later inserted it into the scene? A cosmic blip that would soon right itself. Her son, the baby of the family and the only boy, was spoiled, no getting around that. Maybe he was up to his favorite trick — pinching a chocolate bar meant to be shared with his sisters, stealing it and hiding out in the orchards to devour it in peace.

As teams of volunteers and police began to scour the acres of orchard, Forster called neighbors, the parents of Joshua’s friends, all in the off hope that Josh had simply run off, cadged a dinner with friends, not called home. Forster prayed for the irresponsibility he usually punished the boy for. Darkness of real night settled in, a penetrating darkness the boy could not tolerate without his night-light before sleep. At ten, Claire still indulged him this.

When Claire’s parents arrived, having turned around within an hour of arriving home in Santa Monica, she collapsed into her mother’s arms. “He’s afraid of the dark.”

Raisi looked at her bruised face. “Oh, my girl, what has happened to us?”

Claire shook her head. “They wanted money—”

“Hush,” Raisi said, nodding toward the girls.

Raisi watched her granddaughters wandering lost in the living room with smudged faces and reddened eyes, with shorts and T-shirts too insubstantial for the evening’s cool. She signaled to Claire’s father, Almos, to look after their daughter, and then she went to work. Herded the girls into their bedroom, drew warm bubble baths. Went into the kitchen and expertly made dough for cookies. Started a pot of coffee and served it to the volunteers congregated on the porch. Made a sort of order from the chaos.

She knew the value of trifles such as warm socks and hot cider in the face of devastation. Claire could count on her. At first Raisi had been a skeptic of this life her daughter chose, but now she was proud of what had been accomplished. Wrong that after such careful work, it could all so easily be undone. She would not tell Claire her experience of life — that this was the way of the world, to unravel everything one loved most. It was always only a matter of time. She prayed it not be so, but her heart ached with the probability.

Raisi found Claire in Josh’s bedroom, curled underneath his narrow single bed. She made her get up and lie on the mattress, under the posters of airplanes and baseball heroes. Josh swore the family to secrecy about the stuffed animals that he still kept, because even though it was babyish, he wanted someday to be a veterinarian. Raisi sat on the bed to stroke her daughter’s head, seeing the discolored skin and swollen eye and temple, her arm in a sling. Hours later when Claire woke, a question in her eyes.

Raisi shook her head. “He’s not home yet.”

“I’m scared.”

“Be brave for the girls.”

* * *

Claire closed her eyes, wishing that this strength were inherited, genetically passed down through the nerve endings, absorbed in the tissue, exhaled in the breath. Raisi, who had escaped Hungary during the uprising, who had lost all her extended family — mother, father, aunts, uncles, brothers — an entire country gone in one swoop of exile. Halfway around the world in Los Angeles, Raisi found and married a man, Almos Nagy, from the same small district village as herself. He ran an antiquarian bookshop in Santa Monica, a dusky backwater of a store that barely made enough to sustain them. Each afternoon, a half-dozen expats would gather and talk about what they had left behind. Things and places and people that over the years no longer existed except in memories.

Almos and Raisi had one daughter and, grateful, were afraid to push their luck for more. They had learned to conserve, to hoard, to save for a time of need. After she’d traveled thousands of miles, Raisi’s life had ended not terribly differently from that if she had stayed in place, except for the longing. Which Claire had inherited, but her nostalgia extended to things not yet gone.

As a teenager, Claire had chafed at the dull, unrelenting routine of her parents — breakfast, lunch, dinner, always rotating between the same predictable choices, regardless of seasons, with only small concessions to the holidays. But now in the days of waiting for Josh’s return, routine was a lifeline that kept the whole family from going under. It returned Claire to the past, trying to find the wrong turn that had caused this.

“Go take a bath,” Raisi said.

Claire hesitated.

“I’ll get you if there is any news.”

In this way, Claire was prodded to go on with life.

* * *

The first restless night passed with no clues to Josh’s whereabouts. Dawn broke with an ache. The next day, all the workers were ordered to go home, and the farm had an eerie, deserted feel as forensic experts took over, going back over every inch of earth in the daylight, sifting soil in places, looking for signs. They worked meticulously from the farmhouse out, so at their current rate the ranch would be done in years if not decades, while each moment mattered to Josh. Claire walked over the farm, scoured the earth where she had been found, not even able to find her own black drops of blood on the soil. The police demanded the water be turned off even though it was a record heat wave, not wanting evidence contaminated. Octavio cranked the big, shuddering wheels of the pumps closed.