Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

* * *

The girls’ behavior was to pretend nothing had happened, that Claire was not sick, that everything was the same. But something had happened — Claire had changed. The experience of the disease had opened her up, made her want to reach out, but they still insisted on the mother who required nothing of them. They were more fascinated by Minna.

Exhausted by the heat, they idled away long afternoons on the porch by conjecturing about her.

“What do you think he sees in her?” Lucy asked. No question who they were speaking of.

“What doesn’t Don see in her?” Gwen said. “She’s a mystery. I’ll give her that.”

* * *

On the afternoon of the Fourth, Tim played morosely with a stick in the driveway. A careful child, not wanting to give away too much of himself, miserly for all his six years due to Gwen’s cautious hovering. It infuriated Claire that Gwen forbade him to go into the orchards. “It’s the safest place a child could be!” But Gwen wouldn’t budge. Claire despaired at her tentative, unsure grandson.

“Are you going to see the fireworks?” Claire asked him when Gwen finally relented long enough to go inside for his sunblock.

He shrugged. Claire had only seen him a few times a year since he was born, and he was still wary of her. Obvious that grandchildren needed to be charmed, unlike one’s immediate children, who were more or less hostages to one’s love.

“Mom says I have to stay here. She says you might go away like Mr. Grumbles.”

“Who’s that?” Claire said, a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“The goldfish.” He wiped his nose with the back of his arm. A moment later he sneezed five times in a row.

“Gesundheit!”

“Mom says I’m allergic to plants.”

“But the world is full of plants.”

“That’s why Mom says I should stay inside.”

“Aunt Lucy is going to take you to the fireworks. Do you know why?”

He shook his head, noncommittal, not willing to risk showing excitement.

“They are going to have cannons there, and I need you to tell me how loud they are, okay?”

He looked cheered but still untrusting. Gwen’s child.

“Tell your mom I am not going down the toilet like Mr. Grumbles.”

* * *

As the week progressed, Claire grew more and more exhausted, a hostage to the activity in the house. Forster came by and surveyed the citrus crop, spoke to Octavio. When he offered to take them all out to lunch, Claire begged off.

“How come you never visit when I’m alone?” she said.

“Your Minna doesn’t appreciate visitors.”

Claire nodded, not believing him. Alone in the glory of her empty living room, she sprawled on the couch.

On the coffee table, Gwen had left a stack of books she’d brought about cancer survivorship that Claire refused to read. Now she skimmed through them, intending to dump the whole pile in the trash as soon as everyone was gone. She calculated her best bet was to stay as ignorant as possible of what could happen. She thumbed through a pamphlet on alternative medicine Lucy had included. Formulas for vitamin combinations, herbal elixirs, teas and pastes and poultices. Offers for copper bracelets and crystal charm necklaces. Discounts on pyramid structures built out of lightweight PVC that could be suspended over one’s favorite chair or bed, so that the healing energy of the cosmos would be diverted to cure one. Remedies included bleeding with leeches, diets of macrobiotic food, injections of shark cartilage or third-world embryos, or even a payment plan for prayer directed to one’s recovery, as if lobbying would improve your odds for holy intervention.

Instead she flipped through the growing piles of women’s magazines.

GET 10 YEARS BACK

WE KEEP OUR PROMISES

LIFE IS BETTER WITH BEAUTIFUL SKIN

She blinked her lashless eyes, sucked in her hollowed cheeks, too busy keeping alive to worry about being beautiful.

FOR SKIN SO FIRM

YOU’LL WANT TO SHOW

IT OFF AGAIN

There was nothing she wanted to show off. The airbrushed models made her feel more decrepit by the moment.

LIVE LIKE IT’S ONE BIG PREMIERE

She tossed the magazine down, disgusted and demoralized in equal parts, and a sheaf of white papers fell out. It was an appraisal of the property done a month before. Paid for on Gwen’s credit card. Why, no matter what Claire tried, did Gwen stay so determined to sell the farm? Minna hadn’t been lying.

Claire needed to go through the rest of her treatments, become a model patient, survive, for the simple reason that she had not yet taught the girls what was important in life. Could it be possible her mothering was still not done?

Head spinning, she went to the kitchen to make tea from the last of the mixture Minna had left her. As she leaned over the stove, watching the kettle, a whish of air blew the flame high, high enough to lick the cuff of her housecoat. A singe of flame spun her around and straight into her ten-year-old son. Her eyes swam, and she savagely brushed the blur away, but still he stood in front of her. Fresh and sweet as her dreams, mischievous, and just the smallest bit weary, as if he’d had a poor night’s sleep. Yes, she recognized that, and it broke her heart. Did the dead tire from the grieving constantly calling on them, not leaving them alone to enjoy eternity? Her heart lifted although she knew this was an unthinkable mistake, an error so treacherous that if she allowed herself to believe, it would wreck her.

Many times she had dreamed her boy would return, had returned, that it all had been a horrible mistake. Always unchanged, although his sisters and Claire had aged, and everything else around him had been transformed by time. Even as she reached out for the longed-for hug, she lost consciousness.

* * *

The sun was in Claire’s eyes when she woke, still on the floor. Gwen was running for the phone, yelling directions. The afternoon passed quietly in the emergency room. Gwen stood by her gurney, holding her hand. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

“For what?”

“Not preventing this, for going to lunch.”

“Don’t be silly. You can’t always be there just in case.” Even when one was there, one could not always prevent bad things from happening. How long would it take till she herself believed that?

That night, back in her own bed, Claire poured the vitamin drops Minna had left for her on her tongue. Hours later her throat had swelled so big that she could hardly breathe, her chest a vise twisting the breath out. Her skin turned raw with rash. Back in the emergency room before sunrise, the girls and the grandchildren sleeping on chairs in the waiting room, Claire’s blood count again plunged. The on-call doctor asked what she had eaten, then took an analysis of the vitamin drops. Some unidentified compound in the drops had caused an allergic reaction. He threw the drops away, shaking his head.

“Your cell count is low. Your immune system is weak. Stay away from crowds.” He glanced at Tim, who was sniffling. “She needs to be isolated from anyone sick.”

“We’re her family,” Gwen said.

The doctor looked up from his clipboard. “Germs are germs. Do you want your mother healthy?”

“Of course.”

“Then have the kids stay at a friend’s. And why did you take her to Mexico?”

“It wasn’t our doing.”

“You need to take care of your mom,” he said. “She needs you all on board.”

“That’s complicated,” Gwen said.

“Of course we will,” Lucy said.

A quick family meeting was held around the breakfast table, and it was decided that Gwen would leave early with the children. Mrs. Girbaldi would drive them to the airport. As the girls washed the breakfast dishes, Claire heard Gwen whispering to Lucy, “I’ll have her checked out, too.”