Tatjana Soli - The Forgetting Tree

“We’re moving to Sarasota. A broker is listing the house.”

“What is Sarasota?”

“Where I’m moving, silly. I’ll give you two weeks, and then the movers are coming.”

Marie reached out and, much against Linda’s will, hugged her. Marie hid her face. When Linda felt her shaking, she patted her back.

“You sweet, sweet thing,” Linda said, then walked out of the room.

Later Marie wondered if she could have asked Linda to take her with them. But she always was too busy, too distracted, to listen. Always looking past Marie to more important things. But Linda was Marie’s whole life. Or rather, her house was. For a few days, Marie went through her usual routine in a trance, frightened. The threat of the outside world was too real, and she had grown cautious. She could not imagine going back to Coca or the dogs or Jean-Alexi. Her best hope was when she cornered James in the hallway one morning.

“Would you ask her to take me?”

He smiled and looked at her polo shirt. “Oh, sweet Maleva,” he said, and raised his hand to touch her breast through the fabric.

She let it stay there. After all, she knew the ways of the world. She even moved her hand toward his pants because this was how she knew to survive. A caught breath made her look up just in time to catch a glimpse of Linda’s face in the crack of an open door. They both heard the click of Linda’s bedroom door shutting.

“But I don’t need this kind of temptation in my house,” James said, pulling away.

* * *

Marie planned the time carefully — one of the days Linda would not be home till late evening.

She woke that morning, heart empty but light. Dusted the dustless house, then she clicked off the television in each room, one at a time, as if bidding adieu to acquaintances. She shut off the omnipresent air conditioner that tightened her shoulders and made her skin pock into goose bumps, made her nose run. That made living inside the box-house like living on the scentless, atmosphere-free moon and made the outside, with its bugs and smells and humidity, unreal and finally intolerable. She cranked open the windows; the rusted metal struts stuck, then screamed from long disuse as she forced them open; the panes of glass angled out like stiff, broad sails in the wind, letting loose a small universe of cobwebs never before visible.

She unbolted the shiny, brass latches on the French doors and spread them wide in a gesture of welcome, but of course no one was there, just the blast and tumble of hot, boiling air pushing its way in. The smell of wet grass and flowers, hot-baked, like perfume, calmed her. More faintly, the bite of salt, the flat sea smell of rocks and kelp, all of this shoving itself where before it had been denied — inside the sepulchral white box.

* * *

Marie prepared herself breakfast. First, four pieces of toast, greasy with butter, and on each piece she swirled a different jam: strawberry, blueberry, apricot, and plum. She drank from a carton of orange juice, ate a bowl of cereal, with blueberries and bananas. She made strong coffee, then poured cream into the entire pot, took that and a mug out on the patio. Sitting on a chair under an umbrella, she drank cup after cup until the pot was empty, savoring that morning more intensely than she had any other day in her life.

When she was ready, she made her way into Linda’s bedroom.

She took off all her clothes at the foot of Linda’s bed, then, on a whim, crawled onto the mattress, sprawled out in a big X with her head nested on the down pillows as she looked out the French doors to the pool beyond. She wondered what it must be like to have another life, Linda’s life, to marry James and live happily. But it was useless. Salvation, even salvation so close that one can see, hear, touch, and eat it, but that’s not one’s own, was maddening. Salvation just out of reach undoubtedly one of the first causes of cruelty in the world.

How to explain that this new life was harder than the one Marie left? Because here there was plenty — denied. Nothing here for her, simply a caretaker of other people’s things. Nothing that didn’t come with a price tag that would destroy the little that was left of value inside her.

She rolled over and picked up the phone, called Jean-Alexi’s number. More and more lately, he had been strange and jacked up on the phone, barely hearing what she said. Coca said that he was more involved with selling drugs, taking them, too. His liquor license fell through. He was losing himself. No one answered.

She rose and moved into Linda’s bathroom, turned on the lights, and saw her blackness reflected many times over in the mirrors. Those feet, those legs, hips, breasts, that throat, that kinked hair, none of it worthy of belonging in that bathroom? Wouldn’t James gladly exchange Marie for Linda in his arms? Wouldn’t he rather fuck her? Marie, who had never had sex with a man she loved, except maybe one, and even him she was not sure of. Love a luxury not allowed the desperate. Who had now been celibate for over two years. Why was she undeserving of love? She took a long bath, scented her skin with the expensive oils from Linda’s cabinet, then dried herself on the plush towels that she washed and stacked, but was not allowed to use. She walked into the closet, turned on the light, inhaled the scent of the lavender sachets that she herself had put in those drawers and shelves so that Linda didn’t have to smell her own odor.

She pulled out shoes and put on one pair after another. She chose a pair of strappy, gold sandals with a tall heel that made her legs look a mile long, the calf muscles bunched. Her stride was long and graceful thanks to Jean-Alexi, and she walked back and forth in front of the mirrors, mesmerized by her own feet. Those feet belonged in that room. How was it that the smallest of changes could transform how one felt about one’s place in the world?

She searched for the dress she loved more than any other — a long, dark dress that had large flowers in red and gold twisting around the body. She felt at home in that dress, having worn it countless other times for games of make-believe, pulling it over her head, letting the silky fabric slide over her skin. The straps, thin and dark, were invisible on her shoulders. Almost as if the dress were painted on her. She searched through the drawers and put on black lace panties, a lacy black bra. She sprayed herself heavily with Linda’s most expensive French perfume. At that late date, she was not too modest to say that she had never looked finer. The woman in the mirror belonged in that house.

She swept the bottles of pills in the medicine chest into a towel and took them with her to the living room. She stopped in the kitchen and took the smallest, sharpest paring knife — the one capable of cutting an apple peel as thin as a strand of hair. In the bar, she opened the best bottle of French red wine, poured a glass until it was filled to the brim, and took a deep drink to fortify herself.

She swallowed down two bottles of pills with the wine, then rose to refill her glass. In the sudden calmness, she was sure it was enough pills, but needed more wine to celebrate. The blade ran smoothly across her skin, so that she had to hold her wrist close to her blurred eyes to see the delicate thread of blood swell.

She sat in Linda’s long, black dress. Black dress on black body on white couch in white room. A black speck in a white universe. Carefully she held the glass of red wine because if it spilled, it would be the same color as her blood. Red on red on black on white. That simple. A tragedy of color.

Time passed through her mind like a needle pulling thick thread so that it seemed either a blink of an eye or an eternity. She thought of pouring the wine on the carpet, a vévé to bring Papa Legba to open his gates for her. The sun was higher, beating overhead, unbearably hot. The room humid as a greenhouse. All she could feel was a sensation of floating, as if she were one of those colored balloons that skinned its way across the ceiling when let loose. She longed to burst, to be released.