Tree by Leaf

by Cynthia Voigt

  Tom Hatch wanted Lou to stay in the village because he wanted to court her, and marry her. Clothilde knew that, although she didn’t know how she knew. But Lou was too young yet, he thought, so he hadn’t spoken to her. Now Lou would be moving two states away. He would have made a good husband for Lou; Tom Hatch was a good man and a good friend. Lou would have made a good wife. Lou was young in numbered years, but she was old enough. Clothilde opened her mouth to say all this to Tom Hatch, and ask him please to ask Lou; but she closed her mouth before she let a single word out.

  Besides, Lou would just say No, if he asked her now. Lou had to go with her family, because she was the only one old enough to get work.

  The light lit the undersides of the leaves growing on the branches of the many trees. Darkness was all around them.

  Besides, she might have it all wrong. Who was she, anyway, to think she was so smart about things. She had thought she was so smart before, and so right too, and look what she had done.

  Chapter 13

  On Thursday morning, Clothilde was the first to wake. She built a little fire in the parlor, to take the night chill off the air so that when Mother and Dierdre came to sit it would be comfortable. She started a pot of oatmeal and set the table the way Mother wanted it to be set, with plates, napkins, and spoons, the pitcher filled with milk, the sugar bowl filled. Everything was ready when they came down, everything was done the way Mother wanted it done. But all the busyness couldn’t stop her thinking: her hands worked but her mind kept on thinking.

  It wasn’t what she’d wanted. She hadn’t even mentioned Mr. Twohey. Mr. Small—and she thought of the way Lou’s face had looked that one morning, it was before Lou lived-in with them; Lou had come in that morning with the right side of her face swollen and discolored, as if her face had been caught in the machines and twisted like her hands had been—Mr. Small she had mentioned, and that was why. But she hadn’t meant he should die. It was her fault, and it wasn’t even what she’d wanted. It certainly wasn’t what she’d ask for, either.

  When they were through eating, Clothilde washed up the breakfast dishes. She told herself that what had happened had happened and she couldn’t undo it. That was funny, she couldn’t undo things, she could only do them.

  Clothilde mopped the kitchen floor before she went to find Mother. She needed to know what Mother wanted done first, the clothes dampened for ironing or the batch of bread started. If she looked in the mirror, she was afraid she would see a worm there, an ugly thing with its blunt blind head; that was what she should see, even when it wasn’t what she did see.

  She was so sorry. Even if it wasn’t her fault, she was still sorry and she didn’t know how she would ever make up for what she’d done. What she’d done wasn’t what she was like, but she didn’t know how to prove that.

  Mother wasn’t in the parlor. The brown-wrapped package from Boston waited on the table. Clothilde had given Mother the package, and Mrs. Grindle’s message, last night. “I don’t know what to do,” Mother had said; “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” “You’re supposed to take care of things,” Clothilde had reminded her, too worn down to think before she spoke, but she ran upstairs before Mother could speak again.

  Mother was probably dressing, to deliver the package to the man in the boathouse. Clothilde went upstairs to find her. It was all right if Mother wanted to look like a lady, and pretend she was a lady; there were worse things than ladies in the world.

  But Mother wasn’t in her bedroom. Looking out of the window, Clothilde saw the two of them, Mother and Dierdre, in the garden below. Mother was bending over—weeding it looked like. Her hair hung down her back in a plain braid. She wore a plain blouse and skirt, and an apron. Clothilde didn’t know what to think.

  She stood looking down at them, as if they were a painting. The two figures bent over the earth. Overhead, high thin clouds floated along a sky so blue it could have been some kind of mineral stone, and you could cut it into chunks and sell it for jewelry. It was a good picture, Mother and Dierdre working side by side, in the brown soil of the garden.

  Clothilde went outside to ask her question. Mother was teaching Dierdre how to recognize weeds. Clothilde remembered when Mother taught her that; she had been older than Dierdre was, quicker to learn. Dierdre’s pile of weeds was awfully small.

  “Is this one?” Dierdre asked, her fingers around the delicate stem of a clover. “Mother, is this one?”

  Mother turned around to say Yes. She turned back to her work.

  “Am I done now?” Dierdre asked. “Mother, am I done?”

  Mother turned around to say No, not yet, there’s a lot more to do.

  Dierdre looked at Mother’s back. Clothilde didn’t know what her sister was thinking. Dierdre waited a moment, then reached out to pull up a weed.

  “Not that one, Dierdre,” Clothilde warned her.

  Mother straightened up and turned around. “Remember, the ones like ferns are carrots. They’re in the straight row, remember?”

  Dierdre looked at Clothilde and at Mother. She had to look up for both of them. Clothilde couldn’t remember being that little—Dierdre was so little and round, her eyes were so big, you just wanted to make her happy. “I’m hungry,” Dierdre said.

  “No you aren’t, dear,” Mother answered, and turned back to her own weeding.

  “I am. Am too. Mother? Can I have something to eat?”

  Dierdre couldn’t be hungry. It wasn’t an hour since the good breakfast she’d eaten. Clothilde looked at her sister’s round face. The chin was so little and her thick hair didn’t want to stay caught in braids. The hand-me-down pinafore she wore was too big for her, so it was tied up across her chest. Her blue eyes looked at Clothilde.

  “An apple,” she said. “I want an apple. Clothilde could get it.”

  The eyes were hungry, and the little white teeth between her pouting lips were ready to bite into something. Dierdre was hungry, Clothilde thought, or, at least, she felt as if she was hungry, but it wasn’t stomach hunger. It was heart hunger, as if, no matter how much attention and love you gave to her she wouldn’t be full. Greedy, Clothilde thought, looking at the little girl who was scowling up at her now, hoping that anger would get her what whining didn’t.

  “Dierdre,” Clothilde warned, when Dierdre reached out to interrupt Mother again. Then she had an idea because she could see—almost as if she were inside of Dierdre’s head and walking around—how hard it would be to always be wanting more. She could guess what might soothe her sister. “Dierdre? If you can weed that whole row, without pulling up a single carrot, we’ll make an apple pie for supper. You and me.”

  “Don’t know how.”

  “I can teach you,” Clothilde answered. If you needed attention and love, and you couldn’t ever give it to yourself … then you’d always be asking other people for it. “You’re big enough to learn.”

  “Could I make my own?”

  Greedy and selfish, Clothilde thought. But she wasn’t so perfect that she had the right to criticize Dierdre, was she? “Your own little pie? Your very own little pie just for you?”

  “And roll it out. And prick it with a knife.”

  “Not a knife, a fork,” Clothilde said. “Yes, you can, if you do the whole row. With no carrot mistakes. And not asking Mother every time.”

  “Easy,” Dierdre said. She was smiling now, happy again with something to look forward to.

  “Should I start bread rising, or—” Clothilde asked her mother’s back.

  Once again, Mother turned around. Clothilde felt how Mother was trying to stay patient; and she could understand why, because Clothilde had interrupted her mother’s work, just like Dierdre.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but Mother spoke at the same time:

  “You’ll have to take that package over to the boathouse. It’s his. He must have ordered it. I hope he paid for it, because….” She wiped her hand across her forehead, as if she could wipe all the worry away. Her hand left a tr
ail of dirt.

  “He ought to ask Grandfather for money,” Clothilde said. Men were supposed to take care of their families.

  “He can’t do that, dear. He can’t go begging to his father.”

  “Then he should ask Nate—I bet Nate’ll have plenty of spending money now,” Clothilde said.

  “Or to his son.”

  Besides, Clothilde thought, look what happened when you started asking for things.

  “And bring back the bowl the chicken was in, too, if you would,” Mother said.

  “But why don’t you go?”

  Mother shook her head. “Not looking like this. It’s better if you do it, dear. Right away, please, so you can gather mussels at low tide, we’ll have a stew.”

  Clothilde wanted to say No. But Mother’s face had that streak of dirt across it. So Clothilde nodded her head. She tried to say how much she wished Mother could have things the way she wanted them. “Are we ever going to have flowers growing here?”

  “I can’t see where we’d find the time, can you?” But Mother smiled at Clothilde and Clothilde wondered how much her mother minded not having flowers after all. Because, she thought suddenly, still nodding like some puppet at her mother, what her mother really wanted was to have things growing, even just beans and chard. Her mother didn’t mind work, either. She only minded not knowing what she should do. Mother thought, because she was an orphan—Clothilde unexpectedly saw what it might be, to be an orphan and not somebody who belonged, and if there was somebody who wanted to marry you, even if you were an orphan—but then if you thought he was sorry he’d done that—how would you know what to do? With everyone telling you you weren’t good enough, because you weren’t anybody.

  Clothilde would take the package, but she didn’t even remove her apron and she didn’t hurry one bit. She carried the wrapped parcel under one arm as she walked across the peninsula to the boathouse. If he sold the peninsula, where would they live? But if he wouldn’t see anybody, he’d never be able to sell it. But if he got better—

  At that thought, Clothilde shriveled up inside herself at the ugliness in her own heart. She couldn’t even learn her lesson, she thought, shriveled up like a worm inside herself. If she really were God, the world would be in a horrible mess. Because now she only wanted to have this third thing over with, however bad it was going to be, so it would be all over and done with. There didn’t even have to be a third thing, even if she did have to lose her peninsula. And now she thought of it, she’d be willing to do that—to trade off the Point so the Voice would stop its joke on her. She would, she really would be willing to give it up; that would be fair, she thought desperately.

  She sent her thoughts upward.I will, she thought.I promise, I will.

  Even under the fall of warm sunlight, the boathouse crouched on its rocky bed, the door closed. Clothilde knocked and was answered by the same waiting, empty silence. She didn’t let herself scare herself with her imagination. She didn’t give herself time. She pushed at the door, scraping it across the floor, and marched right in. She would put the box on the table and take the dish and get out, fast.

  She didn’t even look around. She fixed her eyes on the table and took three steps to it, where it sat in the middle of the dim room, with the covered dish on it. She dropped the box on the tabletop and picked up the bowl.

  But the bowl was heavy. She lifted the cloth and could see that nothing had been eaten. The creamed chicken had turned rancid. He hadn’t even eaten the food Mother made for him, she thought, angry, and he hadn’t even bothered to throw it out. Then what was he eating? She didn’t care.

  She dropped the cloth back over the bowl—it was stained now, but he didn’t care because he didn’t do laundry—and turned to leave.

  The dark shape on the bedroll didn’t move. It didn’t have to move. She recognized it. He was there, his back against the wall, staring at her. A face like that couldn’t have any expression, she thought, turning her eyes away; but she couldn’t see it anyway, she thought, because of all the shadows. Sunlight couldn’t get into the room much, with the high dirty windows to keep it out.

  For a second, Clothilde stood there with her head bent down so she didn’t have to look at him. The man didn’t move either; he just hunched there against the wall.

  Clothilde felt like walking out, away. But she couldn’t. “That package came for you,” she said. “Mother says she hopes you have already paid for it.” That was an ugly thing to say, and she didn’t know why she had to say such an ugly thing.

  He didn’t answer, but he got up. She saw him, out of the corner of her vision. She was looking at the floor, and at the covered bowl in her hands, the food he hadn’t even touched. They would have liked creamed chicken, over rice, for a supper, and now nobody would be able to eat it.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw him standing by the window, where, if she looked, she’d have to see him. He was trying to make her look at him. He was trying to drive her away, to make her go away. He was trying to scare her.

  Clothilde refused to budge. Her shoes were planted on the wooden floor, and the boathouse was planted on the rocks.

  “Nate has run away to live with Grandfather,” she said. That was his fault too, this man’s fault, so he should know about it.

  “Then Nate’s a fool,” the man said. “You can tell your mother, my father will have to give up my money. I went to a lawyer. The lawyer will get it for her.”

  “But Mother said—” That was why they were going to have to let Lou go.

  “I thought I could surprise her. It was a foolish idea, trying to make her happy.”

  In her anger at him, Clothilde automatically looked at him. Before she could remember and look away, she saw his face. His face was like the cove at low tide, with the water gone entirely out. Usually, water lay over the cove and hid the floor of it, the rough mud-colored floor, scarred with gulleys, pitted with clam breathing holes, and the dark splotches where colonies of mussels spread out. When the water lay over the cove, it could be smooth and serene, or moving under wind the way expressions moved over a face. This face had no expression, and never would be able to, as if the tide had gone out and never would come back. His eyes looked back, dark blue in the shadows. She wanted to look away. She wished she’d never looked. But she couldn’t look away and he was looking right back at her.

  It was horrible, as if she could see right through his eyes across his brain and down into his heart—and it was all like that drawing on the wall, cold and bare, and the black shadows falling.

  “Tell her that,” he said. “Tell her she doesn’t have to worry. I’ve set the lawyers on him, like a pack of dogs.”

  Clothilde just nodded her head. The bowl in her hands was heavy, the dinner Mother had prepared so carefully for him. The dinner he hadn’t even touched. And he could have told Mother, too, and then Mother wouldn’t have told them false news. She turned to leave. Because if Mother hadn’t told them that false news, things never would have happened that had happened. Things she had made happen.

  At the door she turned around. She couldn’t have said why, except Mother had said he would know about voices and she needed to know.

  When she turned, he already had his back to her, and was looking out the window. He was tall enough to look out of it. All she could see was the back of him, his tall broad shape in a soldier’s shirt and trousers, the back of his head with his hair grown shaggy. “People heard voices,” she said. “They used to. Was there anyone who ever heard just one voice?”

  He turned around again, but the light behind him kept his face in shadows. “Why do you want to know?”

  Clothilde didn’t have to answer that.

  “Are you going crazy, stuck here in this Godforsaken place.” He didn’t say it like a question, so she didn’t have to answer it like a question.

  “It’s not Godforsaken,” Clothilde said. She saw in her imagination the mittened hand, with its clawed fingers digging into the ocean—her peninsula. �
��It’s beautiful,” she said, thinking of the water crashing up against the fallen rocks, the tall swaying birch trees and their high waving leaves.

  “Is it,” he said, another nonquestion. Then—as if he was giving up some battle he was too tired to fight anymore—he said, his whole voice tired, “Maybe it is. Maybe. Socrates did, he’s the only one I know, outside of the Bible.”

  “Who’s Socrates?”

  “In ancient Greece. He heard a voice he called his daimon. He said it only told him No. When not to do things and when things weren’t true. He said it never told him Yes, so he learned to just listen for the negatives, and I guess he hoped, when he didn’t hear them, that he was acting and speaking rightly.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “They put him to death.”

  “Because he was crazy?”

  “No. Because he wanted to speak and act rightly,” the man said. “Go away,” he added.

  But Clothilde had more questions.

  “Go away,” he said again, dangerous now, even though he stayed still as a shadow.

  She left, but she didn’t close the door behind her. Let him close the door himself. She ran clumsily up the hill from the boathouse, never minding the way the rancid creamed chicken slopped and slipped, spilling over onto her apron and falling to the ground. She’d be laundering it herself. At least, she did her own laundry.

  Chapter 14

  Clothilde didn’t want to wake up. The wind, blowing into her room—the wind and the bright sunlight forced her eyes open. She tried to close them. She tried to fall back into forgetting sleep. The wind blew, mixing leaf sounds and water sounds. She sat up in bed.

  It was Friday. In town—early, so as to be in time for the morning train from Ellsworth—Tom Hatch would have loaded Lou’s family trunk into the wagon and they would have driven away, inland. Friday was the day they were leaving, returning to Fall River. Clothilde didn’t know what Lou might be feeling, traveling back to the mills. She couldn’t imagine, except that she knew how she would be feeling herself, if she were leaving the peninsula forever behind her. Imagining that, Clothilde got out of bed.