Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“Have who checked out?” Claire said.

“No one,” Gwen said.

“Turn around,” Claire said. “Sweetheart, quit going behind my back.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know about the appraisal of the ranch.”

“I’m protecting you. Has Minna convinced you to stay?”

“Don asked her to marry him.” Another untruth blurted out. “She hardly needs me.”

Gwen shrugged.

“You’re my daughter. I love you. But this jealousy…”

Gwen blinked her eyes rapidly. “Why do you like her more than us?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Claire said, even though she suspected it might appear that way. “Before I passed out … I saw your brother.” She had intended to keep this a secret, suspecting their reaction, but in her desperation to win them over, she found herself ruthless.

“I just can’t do this. This morbid stuff,” Gwen said.

“It’s a sign. I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Claire said. “I want you to come back here to live. Children need to live here again. It will be like the old days.”

“No one wants the old days back, except you.”

* * *

Gwen passed instructions to Lucy on how to give the injections, but Lucy’s hands shook so badly that she jabbed the needle in like a dart, with such force that it left small, grape-size bruises on Claire’s skin. The grandchildren were herded out the door. Both glanced backward, wondering, she was sure, if they had done something wrong and Nana was sending them away.

“Have them call me on my cell phone,” Claire said.

They stood on opposite sides of the glass window in the living room.

“Alice, will you send me pictures? So I get better?”

The little girl nodded, but she was so young that out of sight was out of mind.

“Gwen, get them some markers.” On Claire’s side of the glass she drew a happy face. Once they realized they wouldn’t get in trouble, the children went wild with the forbidden pleasure of drawing on the glass.

“Can you draw some hair on? Pretty hair for me?” Claire said into the phone.

“Oh, boy.” Gwen laughed. “We’re going to have trouble at home now.”

Tim stared at Claire, not hiding his fascination at how bad she looked, what might be happening inside her, what his mother told him. He started to draw round bugs with scowling faces. “These are the bugs that are eating you,” he said into the phone. “The cancers.”

Gwen grabbed him. “That’s enough.”

“No, no,” Claire said. “Let’s X them out. She put a green X over one; Tim drew a yellow one over another. “That’s a good boy.”

He remained silent, then drew a fish in a bowl that Claire suspected was Mr. Grumbles.

“See,” Claire said into the phone. “Come back from the dead.”

When everything was packed, Gwen made a last attempt. “It’s not too late, you know. To leave. Not too late at all.”

“I need to stay here.”

Gwen pulled away. “I’ll call your doctor directly. Please stay safe, okay?”

“Where else could I stay?”

Gwen grimaced at her mother’s poor joke.

* * *

That night Lucy baked a rigatoni casserole. Claire felt disloyal admitting it, but without Gwen, the atmosphere was more relaxed. It didn’t even bother her that Lucy drank glass after glass of wine. They acted like schoolgirls playing hooky.

“Did I tell you about this artist at the gallery? His name is Javier.”

Claire was happy. On schedule, she drank an elixir before dinner. By eleven she broke out in a sweat, fearing indigestion. At midnight her head was hanging over the toilet. Lucy called the doctor on duty, then brought her a cup of Minna’s tea.

“The pasta probably wasn’t the best idea. Too spicy.”

Claire nodded, hopeful that it could be something so simple.

“The doctor thinks maybe you’re having hot flashes.”

“Of course.” The banality of the explanation made her angry. In her new dramatic circumstances, headache connoted brain tumor.

“Try to sleep,” Lucy said. “Is it okay if I go into my old room to get some boxes from the closet? Her door is always closed.”

“Don’t touch anything. She bites Paz’s head off when things are moved.”

Lucy turned to go away. “I’m going to get a nightcap.”

“Would you sit with me awhile?”

“Be right back.” A few minutes later Lucy sat at the foot of the bed with a shot of tequila. “I never agreed with Gweny, by the way. I would be the same as you — stay where I drew strength and comfort. I’d do a lot of things before I’d agree to live under her roof.”

“She doesn’t like Minna.”

Lucy sipped. “Sometimes people look a lot worse than they are. People do things to survive. Doesn’t necessarily make them bad. Gweny doesn’t accept weakness.”

“How did I get such a brilliant daughter?”

“In the genes, I guess.”

“She doesn’t understand I’m trying to fix things.”

But Lucy didn’t hear her, lost in her own thoughts. “Gweny never got over being frightened that night. She told me they touched her hair. And she wanted to cut it off. Dad wouldn’t let her. He said it would upset you too much. So she just held it all in. I told her you did the best you could for us.”

“I wanted you to have a sense of belonging.” Her parents had been permanent wanderers, making her feel an outsider. She wanted her children to feel the ranch in their blood, to have a bond so deep that it carried them through life and made them strong. “Was that so wrong?”

They sat in silence, the lamp casting a small circle of light around the bed, making the corners of the room dark, the night outside the open windows darker still.

“I saw him, you know.” The words came out before Claire could consider the effect.

“Who?”

“Joshua.”

Lucy nodded, her eyes getting larger, the pupils darkening. It crossed Claire’s mind she might be taking drugs again. “Sometimes I think I’ve seen him. I imagine it was all a mix-up, and he’s living in another state — like Utah — and has no idea how he got separated from us. Except he’s always still the same age as when he left.”

“Still a boy.”

“Nothing extraordinary ever happened to our family except that. The one thing.”

“I blame myself.”

“We were just unlucky.”

* * *

Claire had forgotten Lucy’s request the next morning when she came into her room, insisting even in Claire’s half-awake state that she had to come and look.

“It’s okay…” Of course, Claire knew of the painted walls, knew of Saint Agatha, knew the effect of all this was like being transported to another world, but now a startling new density had taken place, a crowding of impressions that took one’s breath away as if the room were alive, an organic thing, growing and developing with a logic known only to it.

The first thing to assault one on entering was a giant red heart painted against the turquoise wall. The red feral, punctured with black marks, making the whole room swim in front of Claire’s eyes, but then she realized her mistake, shook herself alert to see — what she had mistaken for a long black bar was a sword plunged diagonally into the heart.

Although the effect should have been frightening, it didn’t scare her. Instead Claire found something brave, fierce, even exhilarating, about it. Below the heart, in fine yellow lettering, was the word EZILI. Below that were symbols, painted pots and cups, next to them a palm tree reaching to the ceiling, snakes winding up its trunk. On the yellow wall, writ large, were the words HE WILL COME.