The Laundress

by Barbara Sapienza

  When she stops crying, she hears the silence and it doesn’t scare her, because Zack is waiting beside her, his arm around her shoulder, his face openly caring. How comforted she feels by his words and the way he just lets her be. She feels his quiet presence hum inside her.

  She blows her nose, breaking the silence. “I’m ready for Methuselah.”

  “We’ll begin our walk here. It’s a four-and-a-half-mile loop. We’ll make it back to the car by noon.”

  The narrow path holds an earlier snow. They begin in the soft light of the new day. It’s cold—the sun hasn’t yet warmed the trail. Lavinia can’t believe they’ve had breakfast and made it here all in two hours. It’s only eight thirty. The half moon is still visible behind moving gray clouds. With each step, she hears a crunch, like crystals beneath her feet. She imagines Zack’s liquid crystal that he spoke of, now frozen and supporting their steps. This sound eases her mind, gives her a focus, and adds a dimensionality to her surroundings.

  “By nine thirty the sun will warm up this ridge . . . just about the time we pass the old tree,” Zack assures her, his feet crumbling ice on the frozen path.

  They walk by young healthy bristlecone pines about fifty feet tall. The branches are covered in waxy green needles that look like bottle brushes. Each needle is a cluster of five—a peculiarity of bristlecones, Zack tells her. At the tips of some branches, purple or green cones seep with sap, giving off a butterscotch smell. The white dusting of snow sticks to the branches, reminding Lavinia of Christmas.

  “That’s a two hundred-year-old tree,” Zack says, pointing to one.

  She follows the old man up the hill, listening to the crisp sound of their feet on the crystal path. Cold air grips at her face and hands. She stops to zip up her red parka, pulling the hood up to cover her ears. She can feel the warmth of her own breath around her nostrils as she inhales and at her mouth when she exhales. Actually, she feels lightheaded; she wants to take more breaths than usual. If only she could catch a deeper breath! Zack tells her they’ll be climbing eight hundred vertical feet of elevation to be in the company of the old trees, but assures her that this walk is a steady winding switchback with ups and downs, not a straight vertical ascent.

  She paces herself, following his steady, slow footsteps like she’s keeping time with a metronome. Like one of his clocks, he is steady and consistent. The smell of pine is primal and seems to enter through her pores and mix with her own blood. She imagines the smell being carried through her blood vessels to her heart. The sun rays warm her face.

  The partially sunny sky casts a soft light. When they reach the moraine an hour later, Lavinia sees the oldest naked trees standing in dolomite stone, shaped by thousands and thousands of windstorms, hail, rain, sun, and moonlight. She stops before the most ancient living, breathing organisms she’s ever encountered and faces squarely these living trees. Silence prevails.

  Never having seen such nakedness before, Lavinia gasps. Her eyes widen and her heart opens while everything else seems to stop, except the smell of resin.

  Living stones like sculptures chiseled by nature’s hands appear in front of her. She thinks of George and his stone-cut mausoleum for his beloved Angela; how her mother, too, seemed alive in stone. As the sun rises higher, the air warms, reflecting the wash of color on the body of the trunk, orange and red dripping for thousands of years like the tears that have been cried over her stone-struck mother.

  “Limestone and dolomite with ice particles,” Zack whispers.

  “So shiny, like gold and silver—reminds me of tears.” She pats her gloved hand over her lips.

  “I see that, Lavinia, the way the sun is reflecting on the dolomite.” His eyes glisten in the low sunlight, catching the brightness.

  They listen silently to the gentle wind that rustles the pine leaves, the gentle crackling of the light snow cover beneath their feet. Sounds mixing with their breathing and heartbeats make their own music.

  “So this is the great rhythm of stillness,” she says, beginning to appreciate it. “Zack, what is time?”

  “It is this moment, nothing more,” he says, reaching for her hand. The moment is prescient.

  They stand together in the midst of the family of trees, the dead ancestors clinging next to the live younger trees, all of them holding each other in their own majesty. She watches the old dead and the old alive hand in hand before her. When the wind picks up, Lavinia moves in closer among the trees, using their trunks as a protection from the cold. They are not much taller than her. Zack hovers nearby, touching the great skin of the tree trunks—cold and naked, yet clothed sparsely by the pine foliage. Enchanted by the family group, which stands solidly together yet alone, Lavinia stares, wondering if the spirits of the dead trees feed the spirits of life or whether they are a drain on the living. Pine needles glisten on the naked bark, calling her attention.

  They walk farther on. When they come to the grove of the oldest trees, she asks Zack which is the Methuselah.

  “Not marked for fear someone will take a chunk of it,” he says, his eyes still searching for the old one, the one older than time. “Maybe it’s the one on his knees,” he says, moving toward a tree whose trunk curves, resting on the ground, in a penitent pose.

  She prefers to think the oldest living tree is the one she now finds in front of her, standing tall, a flamenco dancer dressed in vivid red and burnt orange and a deep brown. A flowing wood sash of stripes hangs down its leg, and green plumes of life grow out of its side. She stops in her tracks, leaving an imprint on the crusty snow on the path. Right in front of her she swears she sees an ancient Mercedes, dancing her alegría with her arms and legs twirling and swirling.

  “Is that you, Mercedes?” she asks. She hears, “No, mijita, that’s you. Lavinia Lavinia, you are an old and beautiful soul. This tree is within you to give you strength.” Tears come to her eyes. She crouches down on the narrow path, resting on her knees on the crispy snow, and looks up into and through the old branches. She sees a myriad of antlers crisscrossing. She sees a great stag.

  “Who are you?” she asks. She hears, “A woodland deity. A god of plenty and the voice of the spirit.” She doesn’t feel so alone.

  When she stands up, a long, waxy branch brushes her face. She turns, half expecting to see Zack smiling, but he’s not there. How long has she been here, huddled in awe among the ancient ones, engrossed by their twisting swirls and turns like the people on the dance floor, like the clay torso of her mother in George’s studio, oblivious to the passing of time? How long has she been standing in the place where there is no time, like when she was with the littlest bird?

  Worried about Zack, she steps out of the grove and into the colder air, but she doesn’t see him. She retraces her steps, feeling frozen. The cold stings on her skin and she wants to get out of here, but where’s Zack?

  Should she stay put? Should she return to the place where they last spoke? What’s the rule? They haven’t spoken about a plan in the event of getting separated. She looks around before and behind her and sees footprints in the dust of snow. She traces a circular path until the prints disappear. The sun rises higher, melting the snow. She tells herself that he has wandered into a smaller grove the way she did, so she follows a path to where a stand of the eccentric trees breed. She wanders within the circles, and there, at her feet, she sees Zack lying face up, his eyes closed, his mouth open. His hands rest one over the other, as if he’s in a deep sleep or . . .

  She stares at him. “Oh no, not him, too.”

  He’s just lying there with his hands crossed, the way Angela’s hands rested in her casket in the mausoleum.

  She yells.

  Listening to her own echo dissolve into the thin air, she drops to her knees before the outstretched man. He looks stunned, like the bird that flew into her window. He lies on a bed of crushed bark, eons old, in this small, sacred, butterscotch-smelling grove in the sky. But who is more stunned? she asks herself. Me or Zack?

  She sits
with him in the same way she did with the bird, like she must have done with Nonna when Angela never came home on that fateful day. She feels paralyzed. She cannot move, though she wants to help him. She knows she needs to do something, but what?

  The sun disappears behind the clouds. She hears a slight hum on the distant wind and imagines an oncoming storm. How long has she been gloating over these tree images? An hour? Ten minutes? Time has slipped away. What is this thing called time? He said it was this moment.

  She considers that he might be hypothermic. I can’t let him get any colder, she tells herself. She takes off her jacket to cover him, but it barely does, so she covers his body with her own, lying down on top of him and listening for his heartbeat. She feels his breath with her fingers. His gentle exhalation is moist and warm. Outstretched, her head reaches to the top of his shoulders and her feet touch just below his knees. Her heart rests above his waist. We have to be heart to heart. She adjusts herself and feels the pulse in his neck—slow, like the softer roar of a distant wind, but at least his heart is beating. The great clock nestled within his long, thin body ticks, sending out blood to his limbs and back again. Lavinia stays, transfixed like the stone princess, reminded of the sleeping princess on Mount Tamalpais. She listens to his heartbeat, hoping for courage, hoping he will wake up.

  It begins to snow, and just when Lavinia is beginning to despair, Zack begins his own hum, which feels like a bright vibration—first on his neck and then moving on and pulsing through his veins. He sticks out his tongue, lets a few flakes fall there. He opens his eyes. They twinkle like the snow.

  “S-s-sweet s-s-snow,” he whispers, a light wind song to her ears.

  She’s not sure she has heard him, so she lets her body tilt to see the old man’s eyes.

  “It’s s-s-snowing, Lavinia.”

  A wide smile like the moraine itself crosses his face just as a white eagle soars over them from the top of the bristlecones. She rubs his forehead with her hands and then slides off of him. She takes off her parka and tucks it around him. Lovingly, she cups his head in her hands.

  “Look, Lavinia, look.” He points to the eagle. “You see? There’s nothing to fear in this puzzle of life.”

  Lavinia on her knees beside him, with his head in her hands, feels an urgency to go back downhill toward the parking lot. She begins to lift him at his neck and shoulders.

  “Wait, Lavinia, listen to the wind. Look at White Eagle. Do you hear him?”

  She strains to hear and just makes out the whirring sound of its wings.

  “I dreamed that death is sweet,” Zack says. “The eagle is confirming this truth. You saw it, didn’t you?” he asks, lifting his head, now free from his stupor.

  She nods.

  “Wait. And there’s more, Lavinia. The great clock ticks. I have seen it, buried deep in the mountain, across the way.” He looks in the direction of Mount Washington, near Ely. “It rests deep inside the cavern of the earth; it’s buried deep in the inner heart of the dark mountain like a great god, breathing into eternity.”

  His beatific smile radiates, making her feel she is amid something sacred. She holds still, realizing that this experience is holy.

  “I’ve seen this through the eyes of the eagle,” he says. “He showed me. It’s as clear as a bell.”

  “Yes, and now you must rest, please, Zack. You fainted, and you need to save your energy for the steep walk down. We must get down to our car before the snow falls heavier.”

  He has a dusting of snow on his eyebrows and nose. He ignores her, instead wanting to tell her about the transitional pendulum, the equations of time, the horizon, the sun, the moon, the good morning star. He goes on, not making any sense to her, which is concerning.

  “I have seen and heard the clock tick once a year, seen the hand that advances every hundred years, and the cuckoo that comes out once every thousand years. Only it was a great white eagle singing, and you saw it, too. No need to be afraid, Lavinia, of time, or death. I have seen the long now, carpe millennium.” He rests his head back down on the ground.

  “Zack, you need to sit up,” she insists. “Do you think you can stand?” Getting to her feet, she helps the old man up to a sitting position. She holds his arm as he gets his bearings. They look over the ridge to where Mount Washington and the excavated site for the millennium clock might be. Cirrus clouds mark the great blue of midmorning in the form of a giant bird.

  “Maybe it’s the plume of the Great Eagle,” Zack says.

  She nods, standing beside him, reaching for both his hands. “Let’s go before more snow and wind come, Zack. We can talk about the plume later.”

  She brushes the needles and chips off his clothing and takes the pack he still wears on his shoulders, with water for two, off of him. She gives him some water.

  Zack winks at her. “We have time,” he says.

  They rehydrate and walk slowly down the curved path to the lower elevations.

  “You saw it, too, Lavinia, didn’t you? You saw the limestone mountain and the eagle.” He stops, wanting reassurance before they go on.

  “I saw it, too,” she says with conviction.

  She will not crush this moment for him, and besides, she asks herself, how is his seeing these visions any different from her seeing Mercedes and the stag? Or listening to the fig tree? All she’s doing is affirming. She’s just validating his dream. This is what they’ve come for—to fulfill the pieces of the puzzle. Didn’t he once tell her in his apartment that she would fill in the pieces? Her life is beginning to make sense to her as he, too, is filling in the pieces of his life.

  “Look, a new dusting of snow, Lavinia,” he says with childlike wonder, holding her hand. She squeezes his long, thin fingers in her tiny hands, thinking about the miracles she has experienced in recent weeks.

  But he’s coming out of his daze and wants to talk. He tells her how the old trees stay upright for one thousand years after they die.

  “That’s fifty generations, a long time after death!” she says. She finds herself thinking of her grandfather again. “How do the trees die?” she asks.

  “Heart rot.” He pauses and then stops to look into her eyes. He takes her hand in his, his eyes penetrate her being. It seems to her that he is giving her his heart. Her heart feels like it might crack open, as this gentle being sends his beams of love right into her. His eyes seem to see her pain.

  “Heart rot?” she asks.

  “Yes, trees die when their heart core is diseased.”

  “Like Don’s?”

  “Yes, like Don’s, and perhaps like your grandfather’s, too.” He seems to be reading her mind, and they walk in silence through the grove. Then he says, “You, Lavinia, have heart-love. I could feel it the first day I saw you. Your heart cannot rot. I see the beauty born into you as a child.” He pauses. “You have more opportunity than your mother did, and her mother before her; you don’t have to carry the burden of the family legacy anymore; you don’t have to fear this past. You are glorious. I have seen this. Now you have a chance to take your place.”

  “Like Margaret has,” she says.

  “Like Margaret has.”

  “But—”

  “‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,’” Zack cuts in. He lifts his eyebrows. “Shakespeare.”

  They look at the old trees in this adverse condition of their lives.

  “That’s me,” she jokes, feeling lighter.

  “That’s you, a fine laundress-teacher who could resuscitate this old body. Thank you for bringing me back.”

  Thinking now only about getting him down safely, she helps him along. “Let’s go home, Zack.”

  “That works for me,” he says. “No need for Ely.”

  “I’ll drive,” she says, feeling la querencia pulsing straight from her core.

  They walk, holding hands, letting the deep silence comfort them.

  Chapter 33:

  GOING HOME

  It’s midnight and Lavinia is sitting with Mario, who�
�d minutes ago met her at Zack’s place and walked her back to Falcone and his upstairs apartment in North Beach. It was a poignant moment with Zack, saying good-bye after their two full days together. Tears and blessings came from the old man who, as he gave her a gentle hug whispered, “You are worthy of seeing your many gifts, Lavinia. You are a blessing to me.”

  Now Lavinia, content with a satisfying fullness, feels happy to be in Mario’s arms, telling him about her adventure, laying out the story about the white eagle and how they retraced their steps down the trail, arriving back to the car at noon; drove down through Bishop for another loaf of bread and to gas up; stopped for late lunch in Bridgeport; and made it to Truckee for dinner. How, after a double espresso in Auburn, they drove two more hours toward the wing of the East Bay Bridge, that looked to her like Zack’s white eagle.

  “Eight hours of driving,” Mario says. “You’re amazing.” He squeezes her close to him.

  “Yeah, but with Zack beside me, talking and humming all the way, it was a breeze.” Before she knows it, a heaviness descends upon her and she’s in a deep sleep.

  In her dream, Lavinia stitches a bracelet with colored yarns, each loop a gratitude. One is for Zack’s revival and his trust; two is for Mario and their love dance; three is for Kinky and her sisterly love; four is for Mama Mercedes and la querencia; five is for George, the keeper of his love for Angela; six is for Rose and Sal, who gave her a sheltering home; seven is for the fig tree, who speaks to her; eight is for the redwoods and the bristlecones, which have survived time; nine is for her mother and grandfather, and their strange dance; ten is for Nina and Don, may they rest in peace; eleven is for Nonna Caterina and her suffering. And finally, twelve is for the glimpse of Time Eternal. She knows each moment is made of the past, the present, and the future. The present is already the future, and the past is gone.

  When she wakes up, it’s morning and Mario is next to her, still sleeping. How new he seems to her. He is beautiful, like a living tree. She wants to tell him all her secrets and to know his, to sleep in his bed and in his arms forever. He rouses and reaches out his hand to her and she takes it, staring into his eyes. She sees his inner beauty. He makes her laugh and makes her cry at the same time. When has she ever known such love? She looks into his face and kisses him.