The Boys in the Trees

by Mary Swan

  Thinking of the house, Alice remembers seeing them all on the front porch, Mrs. Heath and the girls standing back while Mr. Heath turned the key, ushered them inside with a little bow, a flourish of his hand. That will be Mr. Marl’s new bookkeeper, her mother had said, standing at the window beside her. They don’t have many things, do they?

  Some days later she and Sarah called with their mother, carrying a plate of cakes, roses from their garden. Mrs. Heath, Naomi, asked first about the church, about who her husband should talk to about a pew. She said that they had come from Toronto, that things had been very difficult there. That Mr. Marl’s advertisement had appeared like an answer to a prayer. She was pleased to hear about the Barnes’ school, just across the way, said that her older daughter stayed at home, but she would speak to her husband about Rachel attending. The two girls carried in a tray of tea things and then took their places on the settee on either side of their mother, although there wasn’t really room.

  • • •

  Sarah walks the long way around so she can stop by the railway station before she goes to the store. The world is clearer with her glasses and there are more people about than she’s used to this early, hooves and creaking cart wheels and the sound of voices. They are all moving toward the jail, even though there will be nothing to see, the execution taking place behind its high walls. She wonders if Heath can hear the voices, alone in his cell, if he hears the tone, the way his name is spoken. She hopes he does, hope it makes him quake; she still can’t believe how completely she was fooled. Those times he helped her with the Sunday school, the plans they made for excursions and concerts, for lessons. Not a hint of his black, black heart.

  The heavy door of the station creaks as she pushes it open. The lamps are still burning and the room is empty, except for Abel Timms at his counter, the scratch of his pen as he writes in a big brown book. He nods to Sarah but then looks down again; she’s seen him staggering out of Malley’s tavern more than once. As usual, someone has emptied the rack and the papers lie strewn about the floor, some crumpled, some marked with muddy boot-prints. She returns those that are not badly soiled, and adds a few new ones from her satchel. TREMBLE, KING ALCOHOL!, one says. And, WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN?

  Sarah’s father always said she had a fine mind, a man’s mind, said she would go to the new university when the shop improvements were paid for. She can’t help thinking about the different way she would have known this station. Waiting for the early morning train, coming back on Friday nights with her head stuffed full of everything she’d learned. She would have shared rooms in the city, would have met girls who were more like her, who talked about things besides the latest styles and who was walking out together. But she reminds herself that if things hadn’t changed she wouldn’t have come to know Mrs. Beck in the same way; she would have been exposed to all kinds of dangers without the clear knowledge she now possesses, without any kind of weapon against them. She would have married her fiancé, Gordon, and he might have become a drunkard, making her life a misery. The first time she stood on a platform her legs were trembling so much she didn’t think she could do it, but she did do it, and the audience applauded, and the women welcomed her like a member of a family.

  • • •

  In the kitchen there’s a sprinkling of crumbs on the table, a puddle of tea that Alice suspects has been deliberately poured, splashing the cover of the book that she doesn’t remember leaving just there. The pain nags behind her eye while she prepares her mother’s tray, reminding her that it is covered up, but not gone. She toasts bread and cooks an egg in its shell, pours a cup of tea and adds the last of the milk, two spoons of sugar. She takes a bite from a crust of bread but spits it out again. When her father was alive they ate breakfast together in the dining room, and they still had Lucy to prepare it and bring the plates to the table. Alice’s mother wore her pink wrap, but her hair was brushed and pinned up and she told them all what she planned to do that day. Three afternoons a week she taught needlework and comportment to six young women whose mothers worried about their chances. When the weather was fine, they often took little stools out the back and sketched the trees and the flowers. Up in her own room, working on her lessons, Alice could smell lilacs through the open window, hear their voices twittering, swooping.

  Lucy works for the Robinsons now, and a girl from across the river comes twice a week to do the heavy work and some of the laundry. They tried to manage on their own the first year, another of Sarah’s economies, but even she admitted it was too much. The cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the mending. Carpets not beaten for months on end, the stove not blackened. They talked about a Home Girl, but remembered one they had tried years before. Worse than useless, their mother said; she had to be shown every little thing, and woke them with her crying in the night. Mr. Heath told her once that the ship they came out on was filled with Home Children; very hard on his wife, he said, though he didn’t say why.

  Life is easier now. Not like before, but not such a struggle, and there’s even time for a walk, some days, time to turn the pages of a book. Although for Sarah it’s only the Bible now, and she reads in a hard-backed chair at the kitchen table. Papers spread out, working on her lectures, her leaflets. Sometimes, walking through the room, Alice expects to see her father there; it reminds her so much of those months of planning the expansion of the shop, working out how much could be raised or borrowed. That Christmas it was almost ready, the shelves built and the walls painted, a new, bigger sign over the door.

  After the burial their mother took to her bed with the drapes drawn and when she did get up, days later, Alice had to help her decide what dress to put on. She’s better now; she walks to the grocer, the butcher; she prepares the meals and on their birthdays makes her special honey cake. But she seems to list a little when she walks, and the smallest thing will have her in a fluster. She likes to help in the school but her mind doesn’t stay on the lesson, and before long she is talking about a ballroom glowing with hundreds of candles, the line of young men with their hands held out to her. The children don’t mind. They put down their pencils and listen, or pretend to listen, to stories they’ve heard time and again. The slyer ones knowing the questions to ask, how to take them all farther and farther away from the open arithmetic text. The children don’t mind, but Alice does; she’s become quite serious about the school. Even the first fumbling year she realized that it was something she liked, and more, something she was good at. Finding the key to each child, seeing their brows unfurrow. She thinks, although she hasn’t mentioned it yet, that she would like to go for her certificate if the money can be found. And then maybe teach in the new high school and who knows, maybe some of her pupils will go on to do great things. Maybe one of them will say, years later, I owe it all to my teacher, my first real teacher.

  • • •

  Upstairs, Alice sets down the tray and goes into her own room, takes one swig from the bottle before she carries on down the hall, opens her mother’s door. As she pulls at the heavy drapes she thinks that they really should be cleaned. The girl might do it, but she’d have to be paid extra and Sarah would have something to say about that.

  It’s a quarter past seven, she says, and her mother groans and reaches to touch the silver framed photograph beside the bed. Alice’s father adored her mother; no one told her that, but it was something she always knew. Maybe the way he bent his head to hear her light voice, the way he loved to tease. Once her mother stood before him, in a shimmering new dress made up by Miss Bolt. Oh, my dear, he said, sternly. That color … Putting aside his newspaper, walking slowly around her, taking a bit of fabric between his fingers. Stroking his chin. It’s really too … too perfect, he said, and Sarah and Alice laughed and laughed at the look on their mother’s face; she swatted at him and said, Oh, Andrew, and he laughed too, all of them laughing together. And Alice was struck by something that she’d never thought of before, by the fact that her parents were people, that they had lives before her,
and without her. She was so taken with this thought that she whispered it to Sarah, who squinted her eyes behind her new spectacles and said, What are you talking about? How silly you are; of course they’re people. What else did you think they were? Later, in her room, Alice took a piece of paper and wrote her thought down. She’s certain she slipped it between the pages of a book, but she no longer remembers what book it was. Wonders if she will come across it years from now, and what it will be like, to see her childish hand again. Wonders if there will be anyone she can show it to. Once she had known, just known, that she would marry a handsome, brooding man who would somehow cross her path. Nothing like Sarah’s Gordon, with his heavy eyebrows, his awkward hands. Nothing like the boyish boys her friends whispered about. Not long before that terrible Christmas her family sat for the photographer, and with his wild hair, his slender, stained fingers, with the way his words spun and flowed, Alice could hardly breathe when he touched her cheek, when he moved her head, just a little.

  She met him again by chance, the first time by chance, walking by the river with a small book in her hand. He was setting up his camera on its heavy tripod and he asked if she would read to him while he worked; her voice sounded thin and a little silly at first, but soon she was lost in the words. He told her that an idea had just come to him, that he would photograph the same view every few days, the river, seen through one curving branch, that he would do it until the branch was completely bare. That first day the afternoon sun was still warm, the leaves just slightly tinged with orange.

  She never saw the photographer in town, even when she strolled past his studio, but he always seemed happy to meet her when he came to the place by the river, and sometimes she read, but mostly she listened to his talk. He let her look through to the view he was framing, let her see what he saw, and once he stroked her neck with the back of his hand. She cringes to think of it now, how obvious her infatuation must have been, although at the time she felt so grown up. He asked her once how old she was, laughed and said he’d have to wait for her, and she wrapped the idea around herself like the woolen shawl she wore to the riverbank when the branch was bare, thinking that he might still appear.

  • • •

  She could go another way, but Sarah doesn’t believe in giving in, and so she makes herself walk down Norfolk Street. And there is the shop, Mr. Marl’s shop now. He is not a pharmacist, of course; someone else actually runs it. But it is his name above the door, gilt letters on a deep blue ground. He gave them a fair price, though not the fairest. True, there were debts to pay, but Sarah’s father had planned it well and all Mr. Marl had to do was repaint the sign, turn the key in the door, and start making money. She can’t stop the thought that says how proud her father would be at the shop’s success. It was a part of her life for as long as she can remember, her father teaching her the names of things, the properties, introducing her to each customer. This is my daughter Sarah. Resting his hand on her head.

  Later Alice started coming and spoiled it all, but Sarah waited her out. She had always been good with figures, was already helping with the books and checking the stock, learning to mix the simpler preparations. While Alice lived her child’s life, giggling with her friends and mooning over words, just words. No help at all the winter it all ended, sobs from behind her bedroom door, from behind their mother’s. What did they think—that they would survive by magic?

  Sarah didn’t cry, not then, not later. Only once. Sitting with Mr. Heath in the Sunday school, after the children had gone. They had let the stove go out and the room grew quickly cold while they talked about arranging a party for Easter, about the problem of Robert Bride, who memorized a hundred verses every week and always took home the certificate. And then somehow they were talking about Sarah’s mother, and how she couldn’t even decide what vegetable to cook for their dinner. About the way her father went out that winter night, saying he needed a little air. There there, William said, patting her shoulder. There there. Soon he will burn in Hell, and though she knows it’s wrong, she is glad.

  • • •

  Alice coils her hair, looking into the spotted mirror. She touches the high collar, buttoned at her neck. There are things she should be doing but the laudanum has made her movements slower, and nothing at all seems urgent. She knows the children will be edgy when they come, unsettled, for they all know what day it is; everyone in Emden knows what day it is. She had thought of making some special cakes, something to distract them, but realized that would seem like a celebration. She holds the banister when she makes her way downstairs, her feet seeming a little distant, not quite part of her body. In the schoolroom she opens the shutters and sunlight reaches for the long table, the chairs, the map tacked up on the wall. Rachel’s father came for her on a day filled with blue sky, said it was just for a moment, and she left her copybook open, her new pencil lying on top. It was the first thing Alice saw when she opened the door the next morning.

  Rachel’s things are now in a tidy pile in Alice’s room; there is no one left to return them to. Page after page of problems copied out and solved, compositions and the carefully drawn maps with their secret signs for mountains and lakes and forests. A folder of pictures she had drawn, several of her family standing all together in front of their little white house. She wasn’t best at drawing people but she did the house very well, taking great care with the swing on the front porch, the fanlight over the door. Through the front windows, one up, two down, she sketched hazy shapes in one of the pictures, a glimpse of what was inside. Try as she might, Alice can’t make out what the shapes are supposed to be.

  Although she took away the books and papers, she couldn’t bring herself to touch Rachel’s chair, but Alice began to see that it was not the best thing to have it there, so solidly empty, when the children took their places around the table. She noticed how careful they were not to touch it as they went by, and one Saturday she moved it up to her bedroom too, placed the other things neatly on it. But still no one fills that space at the table.

  Rachel was the easiest child; sunny-natured, curious and quick to learn. In the first days after the murders, Alice was appalled to find herself thinking that there were others it would not have been so tragic to lose. She didn’t know the family well, didn’t really know them at all. Words exchanged on the church steps, in the street. They seemed a solemn group, Mr. Heath’s stern face and his wife in her layers of black, Lilian’s small voice and downcast eyes. But knowing Rachel as she did, what she was like, Alice had to believe that it had been a contented home, maybe a happy one.

  It was difficult for a time after, the children inattentive and skittish, and Alice herself unsure of the best way to proceed. They had all known death, in their families or among friends and neighbors, but nothing like this and it clutched at her heart as she looked at their faces, noticed the dark smudges under Eaton’s eyes, and thought that they were right to be afraid. She knew that it would be callous to expect them to carry on with their lessons as if nothing had changed and that first day she led them out the door, through the leaf-littered streets, and they spent the afternoon walking in the wood at the edge of town, where maple keys spiraled down all around them. The children found their voices in the wood, and once Lucius ran ahead, jumped out from behind a thick trunk and made the girls shriek. Alice had them gather up all the different leaves they could find, and brittle keys and acorns, and she asked them if they knew that Emden, with its streets and stone buildings, the houses where they lived, had once been forest just like this, and not so very long ago. Nina said she thought it would be nicer if the trees had stayed and they could all live in them, and for once no one laughed at her. Bella asked why every acorn didn’t make a tree and Alice told her that she didn’t really know, only that from the hundreds that fell in the wood only some would take root and grow, and sometimes it took years to even begin.

  Then Eaton asked how old the maple tree was. This one, he said, slapping it with his hand. Very old, Alice said, looking up at
the thick, spreading branches. But how old? Eaton said, and there was a roughness in his voice that she hadn’t ever heard. How would you know how old it is? Eaton said, and Alice told him, told them all, that when a tree was cut down rings were visible in the stump, that you could count the rings and know the age of the tree. But then it’s dead, Eaton said, and she could tell that he’d already known about the rings, that for some reason he’d wanted to hear her say it. If you cut it down it’s dead, Eaton said, so how can it even matter?

  • • •

  Reporters from the city paper had come knocking, as they were sitting down to their evening meal. Alice’s mother led them in to the front room, and the one with the lazy eye prowled around, picking up ornaments as if he were in a shop or in his own house; he even crossed the hall and poked his head into the darkened schoolroom. Our readers like the details, he said as he sat down again, his good eye meeting Alice’s. Making notes in his little book while the one with the mustard-colored jacket went on with his questions. You heard nothing at all? No screams? No shots? he said. Nothing, Alice said. Her mother dabbed at her eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief, murmuring, Poor things, poor things.

  Mr. Luft from the Herald had asked the same questions, and before him Constable Street, when he came to tell Alice to send the children away early. He had been the one, the night her father didn’t come home. Calling for Sarah and Alice, calling for water, after their mother swooned. When they came running they found him cradling her head in his big red hands.

  Like Mr. Luft, these reporters also asked about money. Said they’d heard about some dishonesty, an embezzlement charge, but all Alice could tell them was that the school fees were paid on time, that the family lived simply, but was far from the poorest in town. The questions went on and on, until her mother spoke up, loudly. They were a fine family, she said. A good, Christian family. There was nothing different about them, nothing peculiar.