by Julia Slavin
“Let’s check on Gina,” I said.
“Okay,” Katherine said, rejection in her voice. She dropped her arms and led the way to the storage room. We passed the cuttlefish. He’d turned red. I put my hand on the back of her neck. My fingers wrapped almost all the way around it. She looked up at me and smiled with her mouth closed. In the storage room, she dimmed lights and hung her keys on a nail by a wall phone. I looked in the tank. Esther glided across the surface and bumped into the side like a plastic float, then wobbled back to the middle. Katherine looked puzzled, her face screwed up. She reached across the tank and touched the crab. Esther bobbed in the water. Katherine bent over the tank, straining at the waist, her shirt coming untucked, and turned over an empty shell.
“My God,” she gasped. “The lobster’s attacked the crabs.” She thrust her arms into the water. “I can’t find Sadie,” she cried, her arms churning the water into froth. “Sadie’s not here. And I can’t find the lobster!”
Katherine shimmied around the tank, making white water with her arms. I lowered my arms into the water, drenching my sleeves, almost instinctively to the exact place where Gina had crawled after devouring the crabs. I held her around the middle and raised her up out of the water.
“I have her,” I said. “She’s fine.”
“Sadie’s gone,” Katherine said, shaking off her arms.
“The crabs must have cut through the rubber bands,” I said, looking at Gina’s claws, wide open, victorious.
“No,” Katherine said, utterly annoyed with me. “They don’t bother the large crustaceans. They’re shy.” She stomped over and glared at Gina, examining her for crab shell or tentacles or meat.
Gina, who’d been slack in my hands, suddenly arched the front section of her body back. I tried to get control of her but I couldn’t get the right grip. I felt myself start to slip on the wet floor as she lunged toward Katherine, scissoring through her upper lip with her cutter claw like it was paper. I saw a flash of silver gleam in the dim light of the lab and then a gush of red that poured down Katherine’s chin like spilled paint. She stumbled backward, lifted her hand to her mouth, touched herself with her fingertips, and looked at the blood on her hand. Gina lunged again and flew out of my hands, landed on the floor with a smack, and crawled around the tank. I grabbed the Celtics T-shirt balled up on a worktable. Katherine snatched it from me and held it to her mouth to stop the blood. I picked up the wall phone and dialed 911. Katherine shook her head, made a grotesque gurgling sound out of her mouth, and pointed to a security number taped to the wall. Then she stepped back and lowered herself to the floor, leaning against the tank. I punched in the numbers and sat down facing her. Our feet touched. She whipped her knees into her chest.
“You know, it’s going to be okay,” I said, waiting for security to answer. “Everything is going to be all right.”
She looked at me for a moment, her pupils like black pearls. Then she pulled the shirt away from her mouth to look at the blood. Red bubbles foamed from her lips.
“Keep it covered,” I said. “Keep pressure on it.”
But she paid no attention to what I said and never looked at me again. As far as Katherine was concerned, I wasn’t there anymore. I was excess. I’d invaded her world like a virus. I should be flushed away with everything unnecessary.
“There’s been an accident,” I said, when security answered. “In the invertebrate house.” Then I saw Gina, by the side of the tank, looking at me. She wanted to know what we were going to do next, where we were going to go, why we were still here. She waited for my answer, unflinching, her eyes locked on mine for what felt like forever.
Blighted
First there was a scratch: a twig blown across the window. Then a thud: a branch thrown against the house. Paint rained down from the ceiling, and plaster hit the floor in a single sheet. A second bash against the house felt like a Cessna missed the airport; I grabbed the maple highboy in the corner and screamed for the neighbors next door. Then it stopped.
I let go of the dresser and looked at the damage to my walls. A fissure in the ceiling now divided the room in two. In the quiet I listened. It was a June night. And still. I peered out the window in search of the mystery assailant, looking up and down, the white oak between my house and the Bradleys’ still trembling slightly after the collision.
My God, I thought, it was the oak. And there was the branch that had caused the damage. I put a hand on my hip and shook my finger. “A little trim would do you good.” And with that, it reared back, paused to unfurl, and shot forward through the window. Everything went out of focus as I was blinded by shattered glass. Spitting shards and blood, blinking wildly, I saw it rear back again. I tried to dive away but it caught me in an awkward leaf-rustling vise grip, lifted me into the air, and slammed me down on my bed. I managed to lift my head: My legs were free, I could move my arms, but I was pinned. I pushed the branch, hoping to slip out, but a stalk of trumpet creeper caught me around the neck and jerked my head back. I wrapped my fingers between my neck and the vine to make room for little bursts of breathing and started to kick: bicycles, crescent fronts, scissors. But with such little oxygen, my legs soon fell heavy and useless on the bed. I closed my eyes. A leaf tickled my ear. I raised my shoulder to stop it. Another tickle. I was being tickled and grazed and brushed all over, then lapped. Wet leaves all over me. I tasted dirt, felt the puffed-out veins of a leaf on my tongue. Leaves covered my breasts like a bikini top. I felt the tightening of being wrapped in a cradle of bark. My legs were nudged apart now by a two-pronged limb and I was completely exposed, the air rushing in from the broken window. But there was something warm and wet, a rough pointed tip with a felty pubescence underneath. I called out again for the neighbors as best I could with the strangling vine, but at the same time my hips were rising.
When I awoke, half the morning was gone. The covers were pushed down, my nightgown was balled up under my arms. I rolled onto my side and saw the bark sheddings, the leaves that had dropped on my rug and quilt, the broken glass, the damage to my walls and ceiling. A disoriented dove pecked the rug, lifted up, banged against the rear window, and flapped around the floor on its back. I sat up and opened my gown. My body was scraped, rib cage to ankles, as though I’d been dragged under a car. Outside, my oak swayed in a moist wind from the south.
You should know, my next-door neighbor, Del Bradley, built himself a cathedral for a kitchen. It included a gas grill, a wood-burning stove, and a brick pizza oven with vents shooting out the top of a ribbed vault that could be seen for miles around. There were pillars of Purbeck marble and frosted glass and an eight-sided ceiling that Del said was inspired by the octagon of Ely. There were potted palms as high as the roof and indoor window boxes of geraniums. Del’s wife, Marguerite, had developed a pathological fear of all places but their home, after her last child left, and Del said if he couldn’t get her out he’d bring the outside in. It wasn’t long before he started replacing other rooms in his house with chapels and cloisters and arcades that led to spare bedrooms that workers had turned into Sistine masterpieces. For each new room added to the fortress, an old tree was cleared. This week a pair of tulip poplars, delimbed and chopped into block, next a hickory, ground to mush in a chipper, a group of beeches now stacked up behind Del’s house for firewood. It seemed wrong, ecologically, to take down a tree for a house. But Del and Marguerite had been good neighbors, through my divorce and all the years of being alone, and I wasn’t going to stand in the way. They were apologetic about the noise; I waved them off. They were ashamed of the chemical-shit smell of the outdoor Sanijohn that wafted over on hot summer nights. Nothing I can’t live with, I told them, and brought over pots of soup and banana bread while their kitchen was under dust. But then Del came to discuss the oak between us.
“I’ve tried to work it into our plans, Carla. Hired and fired three landscapers, because you are right, it is an excellent Quercus.”
My oak. To be slaughtered for a master bathroom. I
shook my head, squeezed my lips into a frown.
Since my first encounter with the tree, a lot of the kinks had been worked out of our activity. I’d covered the window with plastic strips to avoid glass breaking, and there was less sense of urgency. The branch never crashed through the wall anymore but floated in, squeezing its limbs to fit the small space, then growing, stretching, giving the wildlife a chance to pack and flee. Our moments had become tender and slow. Sometimes I’d climb on top, moving knob to burl. Maybe from behind, two limbs across my chest, a cluster of leaves flickering at the backs of my thighs, and then rolling over and under its tremendous, reassuring weight. During the night, as I slept, it would draw back into itself, the leaves kissing against the side of my house. I made a place for myself in the branch with pillows and a folded blanket, and soon thick leaves grew over my perch and I lived in the tree. In the leaves, there were whispers and voices. My mother’s voice—nothing extraordinary—playing cards with the women in our town, the sound of money sliding off a table into a hand. My grandparents arguing on a train. There were children. Someone crying up in the crown, the boughs too soft to climb. My father, not a voice but a shadow from a bough, in his wool coat, smiling at me in the last seconds of his life. Between us there were no boundaries.
“The root system, which is extensive,” Del went on, “is interfering with our raising the ground.” He smoothed his hand through the air above the grass. “It’s going to be good, Carla, for both of us. We’ll plant new trees between us, a row of hollies, some cedars. More human-level trees.”
“All the destruction, Del. It doesn’t seem right.”
Del looked at the ground between us. He felt bad about what he had to say, I could tell. “It is, after all, lawfully, on my property.”
I looked over at the branch. It was nearly four o’clock. It would be reaching out soon. “I can’t give you my blessing on this one.”
“Now, Carla, you know that Marguerite and I—”
“Have been so good to me.”
“I know it’s not easy being …”
Everything got uncomfortable, as it does when my aloneness is mentioned. Women my age have husbands and grown children. Or they live in the city. Family life never came together for me; a six-month marriage to a policeman who broke my cheekbone and a rib with his fists was as close as I got to having my own family. I let Del wiggle and tick while he tried to think of something to pave over the unease. He shifted foot to foot, rearranged some phlegm in his throat, and then I noticed the branch pushing into the window.
“We’ll have to finish this discussion later, Del.” I scurried up the path to the house.
“It’s all set to go Wednesday, Carla. Tree guys are hard to pin down.”
By the time I got upstairs there was a mess of covers and clothes and pulled-out drawers as the branch turned over the room in a blind search. “I’m here, I’m here.” I waved my arms to stop it. It then came at me with a thrust so hard the wind was knocked clear out of me. Just like old times.
Other towns have regulations about air rights and building responsibly and more enlightened notions of the ownership of property, but not this town. After searching through some dusty three-ring binders at our town hall, I did manage to find an ordinance from the 1950s about cutting healthy trees, which I Xeroxed and brought back for Del.
“Good of you to take time from your day, Carla.” He was concerned, kept shaking his head in disbelief at what he was reading. He lifted his eyes from the paper. “My lord. The poplars. The beeches, the hickory.” He looked around like we were under surveillance by police. Del Bradley abided by the law. Never jaywalked. Never drove over the speed limit. Cleaned up after his dog. “What do I do, Carla, turn myself in?”
I laughed. “That doesn’t seem necessary, Del.”
“Well, then, I’ll give something back.” Del’s eyes caught fire. “I’ll build a chapel.” He stretched his arm toward the back of his house. “A reading room for the community. With a lighted path. Open twenty-four hours for reading and sanctuary.” I did a little dance. Del could reproduce Chartres for all I cared. I got to keep my tree.
I was lying in my place on a humid afternoon. I’d fallen in and out of sleep listening to the leaves, rocked, floating on the bay. Through the stone tracery around the Bradleys’ side door, I could see the rubber-gloved hands of Marguerite at the sink, washing a cup, hanging it on the rack, washing a pot, drying it with a towel. Then, for a long time, she stood with her fingers spread under the steaming water, the rubber protecting her from the heat. I wondered if she enjoyed the feeling. When I awoke fully I saw that I wasn’t eye level with my bedroom anymore. The branch was sagging under my weight. I shimmied down so that I was a few feet off the ground and let myself drop. A clump of brown leaves and bark spiraled down after me.
Over the next few days the leaves turned black and upward and fell like late November. I checked the notebooks at our town hall back to 1912 and found no record of oak wilt in this area. Gypsy moth can defoliate in two weeks, but I would have seen the caterpillars in early June. No cankerworms or oak worms. No gall. I checked depressions in the bark for oak scale. I should have been able to crack the case without staying up and seeing Del Bradley tiptoe between our houses with a five-gallon gas can of Velpar. Herbicide. Poison. I was born near a Christmas tree farm where Velpar was used to kill hardwoods. Del had poured on enough Velpar to defoliate the Everglades.
The most important thing was to keep the tree cool and moist. I bought cork and tubes and some five-gallon bottles and made IVs. After midnight, when the porch lights had been turned off and the nervous flickering from televisions went black, I got to work. I drilled quarter-size holes in the bark and dripped water. I poured potassium chloride over the roots to knock the poison off the cell walls. Night after night I continued with the regimen, adding sugar to the water when the tree started running out of starch reserves, and soon it perked up, the leaves turned down, and the trunk stopped shedding. But I was no match for the Velpar. Again the branches drooped, and the bark became covered with stringlike threads. Through the night Del and I worked in shifts: I’d hydrate and feed; he’d pour on more Velpar. Finally, the only action worth taking was to remove the poison.
Through the night I shoveled, slamming the shovel into the dirt like I was staking a claim, stamping down on the blade with my foot, bending into the ground, my back screwing apart like a jar opening, dragging the bad dirt in lawn bags to a hole I’d made in the woods and scooping in new dirt around the roots. At times, this would occur to me: I wasn’t just digging out the poison, I was digging into the tree. Deeper, higher, wider. I knew the complexity of its root system. I knew the insect and animal life that had lived and died beneath its body. I made a crawl space and backed down into the dirt. With my foot, I searched for cold places to warm with my body heat. I looked up through the roots and watched a fingernail moon cross the sky. For weeks there was dirt in my nails and scalp that wouldn’t scrub out. The poison gave me a purple rash on my hands and face, as though I’d been slapped a thousand times.
The discomfort in my lower back had become intense. A tincture I prepared of lactuca leaf failed to bring relief, and the digging became torture. I’d also been having a considerable amount of lower abdominal pain and palpitation that I first attributed to stagnant blood or perhaps even a uterine fibroid. I tried tea and twice-weekly sitz baths of yarrow, but the pain worsened. Just to get to the bathroom I had to bend forward, tuck my head, and bring up my knees in a clumsy march. Del came to my door during this difficulty and asked me to step out to meet someone.
“This is Mr. Bohrman, Carla. Mr. Bohrman is a tree physiologist.” I tilted up my head at this “tree physiologist,” in his stiff plaid short sleeves and Naugahyde briefcase. He handed me his card from Wooded Acres Tree Service. “Mr. Bohrman has taken a look at the oak, Carla, and the prognosis is … Mr. Bohrman?”
His voice was soft. “Oak wilt is serious, ma’am.”
“There’s
no oak wilt. Hasn’t been oak wilt in this town in a century.”
“Infected trees, like this one, ma’am, need to be destroyed. To save the others.”
“Infected? You mean poisoned.”
“Don’t know what you mean,” Del said.
“Ask him.” I pointed at Del. “Ask him about the herbicide. Ask him.…” My knees buckled as the pain down below became unbearable.
Del caught me under the arms. My ovaries felt like they were being ripped out by pliers. I slapped my feet against the stonework. “It’s okay, Carla. I got you. Marguerite!” He yelled for his wife to call 911. I spit up yarrow tea down the front of my robe. Del got on his knees and smoothed back my hair. I was crying. “You just hold on to me, Carla.” He took out a handkerchief and wiped my mouth. The tree physiologist bent down and offered his own handkerchief. And then, instantaneously, the pain stopped, flew out of me, and I felt light as powder. The euphoria of being free of pain made me laugh. Del laughed too. The tree physiologist stepped back and looked around nervously. Del gave me his hands and helped me stand. I was woozy but fine. Once I got my footing, I felt something inside me, heading down, slipping out. I watched it drop from under my robe and bounce on the stonework. A blood and mucus-streaked acorn, a perfect little oval in a cuplike hat—oh, a good inch and a half in diameter—wobbled down the incline and stopped dead between the tree physiologist’s feet.
The next ones weren’t nearly as strenuous in their passing. I’m not saying I loved passing acorns; I was dropping all over the house, and I’d wake each morning with a panty-load of fruit. But, like anything, it became part of the daily routine. I gathered them in baskets and vases and placed them next to family pictures on the mantel. As for Del and me, we got into an all-out offensive. He’d pour on the herbicide at two, I’d shovel and change dirt until dawn.
