Tree by Leaf

by Cynthia Voigt

  Clothilde felt his words being true, as if he could give it back to her, and had done that. She could feel the land beneath her feet rising up from the center of the earth, for her to stand on. She knew that it had been there, that way, all morning too, if she had been able to feel it. If she had been able to feel the way he had been able to see twice in his pictures, she would have felt it.

  The man from the boathouse waited, as if she should say something, but she didn’t know what to say, standing there. So she asked him, pointing, “Those berries.”

  “Yes, I saw you studying my little efforts,” he said, bitterness in his voice.

  “No, those—” She picked up the paper and took it over to him, pointing out to him the one particular cluster.

  He didn’t say anything, tall beside her. She’d forgotten how big he was. He looked at where her finger pointed until she let her finger drop.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked. She knew what he wanted to say; she knew he wasn’t asking her if there was anything else she wanted, the way you said that to people to tell them it was time for them to go. She knew it, just as he knew—however queerly she’d said it—what she was telling him about the berries. She could feel him forgetting, for a minute, about his monster face. He forgot, for just that minute, so entirely that he didn’t even remember he was forgetting something.

  “Yes,” she answered. She put the paper she held into his hand and picked up the second one. “This.” Her finger touched the tree trunk; and her finger could almost feel the scratchiness of the lichen.

  “Well,” he said, standing beside her. “Well, well. You’ve got an eye, haven’t you.”

  She shook her head. “It’s you. You did it twice,” she explained, asking.

  “I know what you mean,” he said, his voice like water, deep and glad and full of wonder. He did know.

  A gust of wind blew through the woods, pulling at Clothilde’s skirt and the papers they held in their hands. It blew away the communication between them, too. Without looking, Clothilde felt him remember again. He remembered his face and moved away from her. he gathered up the blowing papers. He put a rock on them to hold them, and then walked away from her. Across the way he sat down, leaning his back against a tree, with the pad of paper on his knees. He didn’t look at her. He sat so that if she stayed she’d have to look at him. He was waiting for her to go away. Clothilde just stood there.

  “Was there anything else?” he asked, cold and distant, and meaning to be rude.

  Clothilde sat down, leaning against her own tree. She sat and stared at him. He was only pretending to be drawing, she knew that. He was only pretending he didn’t notice that she was there. Over his head, the wind pulled along the leaves and the leaves moved helplessly; it looked as if the wind was trailing sunlight, like fire, along the leaves, and they were twisting and pulling to get away from the way the fire hurt them.

  “It’s not your face,” she said. She didn’t know why she was saying that because—as he lifted his face in surprise to look at her—she saw how the thick unfeeling skin had grown over it. “You’re just—she doesn’t care about your face.”

  He knew what she meant, he knew who she meant. He was angry too, because he didn’t want her to talk about it.

  Clothilde leaned forward and told him, right to his face, letting him go ahead and be angry: “It’s not. And you know it.”

  His blue eyes glared at her, and she glared right back.

  “I saw that picture,” she said, proving her point.

  “The self-portrait?” he asked. “While you were snooping around?” That wasn’t the picture Clothilde had meant but he rushed on, not giving her a chance to correct him. “I suppose you’d call this a handsome face then, a face a woman and a little girl could love?”

  “It’s a horrible face,” Clothilde yelled at him. “And you know it.”

  As soon as she’d said it, she was sorry. She should never have said that to him. He couldn’t do anything about his face and she’d yelled at him, as if it was his fault. But she couldn’t stop herself. “It was the other picture I meant. You don’t know everything.” Clothilde jumped up. Let him just—stay here. She wasn’t about to.

  He stopped her by laughing. His laughter she had remembered; she didn’t know until she heard it how well she had remembered it. Hearing it stopped her feet and turned her around again. But she wasn’t going to apologize.

  “Where are you running away to?” his laughing voice asked. Then the laughter flowed away, and he said, “Sit down. If you want to. You don’t have to go, unless you have to go?”

  Clothilde sat down again.

  “It was a terrible thing,” he said. “War. The war. Just being….” He was looking at her now, and she was looking at him.

  “I know,” she said, remembering that black wave she had briefly drowned in.

  He shook his head. She couldn’t know, he knew that. He was right, too; and she knew that too.

  “Your grandfather was right—I never should have taken Bucephalus. You know, I’m the one who shot him. I had to. It was—” Clothilde’s head nodded because she had understood the sketch he’d sent to them. “He trusted me, and he never should have. It never frightened him, not even at the worst of it. He should never have come with me, I should never have taken him. I was the terrible thing,” he said.

  Clothilde knew how he felt. The worst things weren’t outside of you; no matter how bad they were. “I know,” she whispered.

  “I earned this face,” he said. “It’s my face.”

  Clothilde shook her head.

  “I didn’t want to come here,” he said, gently now, “but I have responsibilities. It would have been easier not to—bring myself here. Some things you do, you can’t ever undo them, or make up for them,” he said, gently still.

  “But it wasn’t what you wanted to do,” she protested, reminding him. “You didn’t mean for Bucephalus to die.”

  He didn’t answer. He knew she didn’t need to be answered. He started sketching again, and for a few minutes forgot she was there. Clothilde sat watching him, feeling how well he’d forgotten that she was there with him. It wasn’t that he’d turned his back on her, it was that he was sketching.

  Shadows ran over them, and sunlight, while she watched. When he finally looked up it was to apologize. “I’m sorry,” he said, meaning, she thought, sorry to have forgotten her.

  “I don’t mind,” she answered. “But you ought to come back. Home. To the house, to live with us. Nate’s gone.”

  “You told me,” he reminded her. “But you have to think of your sister. Dierdre. I’d give her bad dreams.”

  That was true, probably, Clothilde thought, maybe. “There’s a man, he’s in a bad way because of the war, as if his mind….” She couldn’t explain it. She tried to ask him another way. “He said—he sounds crazy but—I guess he is, but—”

  The man waited, watching her. Then he said, “After the doctors were through with me, they sent me to another hospital. It was in England. I was there a year, more than a year I think, I can’t remember. After a while, I talked to a lot of men there, who talked crazy.”

  “Jeb told me, things that grow down love the rain; and things that grow up love the sunlight.” She wanted the man to tell her which he was, so she could know it. She didn’t mind which he was, as long as she could be sure of it.

  The man watched her, and considered. “He sounds like a gardener to me. Is he a farmer?”

  That wasn’t what Clothilde had wanted to know, not at all. She shrugged. “He doesn’t do anything, he can’t. He’s really in a bad way, he can’t do anything. He gets frightened, and—”

  “I think,” the man said, setting his sketchbook down, “that I’m both. Or maybe I’m shadows, which is part of the above-ground world.”

  “When he said it—he thinks he’s below-ground.”

  “I can understand that,” the man said.

  “So can I,” Clothilde agreed.

&nbs
p; He laughed again, and asked her, teasing now, “And when did you get so wise?”

  She didn’t answer that. And she didn’t think she was wise, anyway. Neither did he, teasing her, and she smiled at the teasing; but he didn’t know. “Nate shouldn’t have gone,” she said. Nate had just run away, and not tried; he hadn’t even given the man any time.

  “You can’t blame him. After all, your grandfather has a lot to offer.”

  “He doesn’t have anything,” Clothilde said. “And you know that as well as I do, Father.”

  “Clothilde!” He sounded shocked, but his mouth was smiling and his eyes, too, were smiling, in that old way, in his new face. “How can you say that about the man who has the most magnificent mausoleum in Manfield, Massachusetts?”

  Clothilde couldn’t stop herself—it just made her laugh, what he said, and the way he said it. She’d been taken to the cemetery to see that mausoleum, which looked like a tiny palace with pillars and scrolls and the name,SPEER, carved over the doorway. It was all out of proportion, that building—huge and ugly for a grave, but ridiculously small and heavy for a palace. Laughing, she got to her feet. “You ought to come home,” she told her father.

  He shook his head.

  “At least, in the evenings,” she insisted. “For Mother.”

  He couldn’t answer her. Words were tangling up in his throat, she could feel that. She made herself, now that she was up, take the long five short steps across to him. She made herself bend over and kiss his face. She didn’t want to do that and he sat stiff and still, as if he was helpless to stop her.

  When she’d kissed the face once, she felt so sorry for him she kissed him again, because she loved him and wanted him to be happier than he could be. She felt his strong arms go around her. Just for a minute, selfishly, she let herself feel her father’s strong arms around her.

  She looked right at him, from close, when she pulled away. He looked right back at her, and she didn’t know what he was thinking.

  “I could have lost my eyes,” her father said. “That was a possibility. And I didn’t.”

  “You really ought to be home,” she said.

  This time he answered “Maybe.”

  Clothilde went back through the woods, cutting across to her own path. He would be drawing again already, she was willing to bet. Maybe, if he drew a picture of a little girl, like Dierdre, with a man who was himself, and the picture showed how the man loved the little girl—like Beauty and the Beast. If he gave that picture to Dierdre—he could draw it, she was sure of that.

  She almost turned around to go back to him with that idea. She didn’t though, because he’d be sitting and sketching. She remembered it like a picture of the glade surrounded by trees, the sky overhead and the bright air blowing around the scene, with the quiet man sitting there. He sat there so concentrated on drawing what he saw that he didn’t see what he saw.

  Clothilde knew that he shouldn’t be disturbed. And she suddenly knew—knew so deeply and entirely that she broke out crying, tears bursting out of her eyes as sudden as rain—that he was getting better, that he was going to get better. Not his face, but the important thing. His face would always stay the same, she knew that. But the important thing—inside him—was healing.

  Her legs collapsed underneath her, but the ground caught her and held her safe until she had cried herself out.

  Chapter 16

  The next morning, Clothilde awoke before first light. She had been very deeply asleep, with the blankets wrapped around her like a pair of arms. Then she was wide awake, and out of bed. She dressed hastily but carried her shoes in her hand. In the dark kitchen, she put on the shoes and cut herself a big piece of the coffeecake she had made yesterday. She had baked the sweet cake for Father, kneading it, layering the dough with slices of apples sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg, to serve to Father, should he come to call.

  He hadn’t come, not last night. He might not come again tonight, she knew. She wasn’t worried about her cake: if it wasn’t eaten tonight, it would be eaten for breakfast tomorrow, before they set off to Sunday morning services. If it was eaten tomorrow for breakfast, she would bake another in the afternoon, for Father, should he come to call.

  Father would, one day, come home; she knew that. She didn’t doubt him. Clothilde, stepping outside into the morning, bit into the chunk of cake. It tasted good, so good that she hoped Father would choose tonight to make the attempt. She would like to give him a slice of this cake that she had made, because it was sweet and fresh and good, because she had made it.

  The tide was out, the water distant, calm. Predawn light silvered the mud flats. The tumbled rocks lay like a pirate’s treasure of tarnished silver bowls, with the seaweed draped over them like stolen necklaces. Clothilde climbed up and over the rocks, to enter the woods. She followed her own path through the lightening air.

  At the headlands, as the sun rose, she stood. There was no wind and the air was cool, with warmth behind its coolness. Off to the east, in pale whites and pinks and yellows, the sun rose. The sun painted the water beneath; the sun spread out colors before itself. Sunlight brought color to the islands, to trees, rocks and lighthouse. The water reflected the brightening blue of the sky with its own deeper shades. Clothilde stood, and waited.

  As the morning went on, she sat and waited. Birds awoke, and the tide came silently in, rising. Cormorants, gulls, three swimming seals, and the white sails of one of the yachts from over town moved across the water, as she waited. She waited impatiently, and then through her impatience. She waited stubbornly, as the air warmed and the morning moved on, the sun rising along the arc of the sky. The air was warm at midmorning, but there was a coolness behind it as she sat waiting through her own stubbornness.

  The waves moved below her. She watched them—each one separate and distinct, each one making its own flowing design. Each wave she watched she lost track of, in the whole dancing movement of the water. The slow-moving tide rose up on the rocks, and the slow-moving sun rose up the sky to its noonday height. Clothilde felt as if it was always one moment she was occupying, the waiting moment. The slow-moving morning went by, minute by minute, and Clothilde sat silent in the same moment of waiting.

  With the sun so high overhead that there were no shadows, she knew she was no longer waiting. The wave her eyes followed in its dancing journey to shore had sudden deep colors of blue and green and brown; as she watched, she saw it join in with its fellows, saw it both separate and part, saw it both at the same time.

  There was no need to hear her name called. She stood up, her hands clasped together behind her. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for my father.”

  “Who?” the Voice wondered.

  Remembering, Clothilde named him: “Benjamin Speer.”

  “Yes,” the Voice said, in her ear, all around her. “And the others?”

  Clothilde didn’t answer that. If she had, her answers would have been only questions, Why’s, and What’s-going-to-happen’s.

  The Voice waited, and then asked her, “Are you answered?”

  “Yes,” she said. She didn’t like the answer, but she knew now she couldn’t understand; that knowledge was her answer. She wanted to protest, but didn’t care.

  “Ask,” the Voice asked.

  “Lou—Louisa Small.” Clothilde didn’t know how she dared to think of asking for something else, and she was frightened to see—coming into her own mind—even more requests, as if she hadn’t understood after all. She wanted something for Lou most of all; but blowing into her mind like a leaf under the wind was the notion of Polly Dethier. Prettier than Polly, that was the wish.

  It was Lou to whom she owed what she could do, if the Voice didn’t lose patience. But it was so dangerous to ask, and she didn’t want to make things worse for Lou. To ask for things, a husband, wealth, happiness—Clothilde could see the dangers in such wishes, however well-intentioned they were. Those were what she wished she could ask for. If she could frame out her whole
desire it would be that Lou should marry Tom Hatch, return to the village or maybe even to the peninsula, and have children of her own, living with that good man. Even though it was a good wish, Clothilde knew it was dangerous. Each life, like each wave, or like each leaf—she knew she couldn’t understand.

  Not wealth then, not happiness. “Strength?” Clothilde asked.

  “Strength, yes,” the Voice answered.

  “Thank you,” Clothilde said again. To ask for more would be greedy. There was always more to ask for, to want. She pushed her lips firmly shut and pushed back at the picture of Polly.

  Waiting, the Voice waiting, Clothilde wondered if there was something she was supposed to do. She wondered if she should bow her head, or curtesy, if there was some gesture by which she could show that she was finished. Then she remembered and “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry about Mr. Small, and Mr. Twohey especially, and Nate too. I’m sorry I didn’t do better. I should have. Maybe you shouldn’t have come to a girl.” She didn’t want the Voice to think she was giving advice, but she thought maybe the Voice ought to know this.

  “Girl?” the Voice sounded surprised.

  Maybe it didn’t know girl. Or maybe it hadn’t noticed. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, with the unexpectedness of the situation pulling at her mouth, to make it smile, with her smile making her voice as warm as the air around her.

  “You do know that I didn’t mean—” she started to say, but she stopped herself. She was evading the question. “Am I responsible?” she asked, wanting to be told No.

  “Yes. You asked.”

  She couldn’t do anything about that, except learn. If she asked to be prettier than Polly, for example, and Polly—and something had happened to Polly. Clothilde blew away at the picture of Polly Dethier with all her strength, and shook her head clear. “I am responsible, aren’t I?”

  “No,” the Voice said. “Amos Small,” it spoke the names, “Joseph Twohey, Nathaniel Speer—they chose. So there is no more?” The Voice didn’t want her to ask for more. It wasn’t trying to trick her into greediness. It was only asking. Clothilde, her lips firmly closed, shook her head. But the Voice was wondering—she could feel that.