The Drowning Tree

Beneath the poem he drew the little tree he always used to sign his paintings, only this time he drew a book under the tree, the roots springing from its pages. You see, it does make sense, he told me, my name means both beech forest and book forest.

  The poem won the college literary magazine’s poetry contest even though Neil was only a visiting student. I loved the way Neil made the inanimate world come alive. It wasn’t until the morning when I found him under my dorm window with dirt-caked and bloody fingernails holding fistfuls of torn pages that I began to wonder how much he really believed the fanciful images in his poems and paintings. That was just before he was asked to leave the campus because he’d stolen dictionaries in a dozen different languages from the library and planted their torn-out pages under every tree on campus.

  NOW READING THESE OTHER TORN-OUT PAGES—PIECES FROM A DIARY WRITTEN A hundred years ago—I’m haunted by how close the images of poetry and art seem to the delusions of madness. How the world that Ovid created, and Penrose painted, has the same fluidity of form—one thing shifting into another, beauty turning into its opposite—as the worst manias that Neil suffered from at the end, when he came to believe in the stories he was transposing on his canvas and to identify the characters in those stories with the model he drew from. In other words, me. Reading the diary, I find myself putting off going inside to bed. I stay out on the roof, lulled by the sound the river makes lapping against the banks, until I fall asleep in the lawn chair.

  The sound of the water enters my dreams and carries me to a still pool beneath a weeping beech, where I float, weightless, surrounded by tall reeds, borne up on a bed of water lilies. At first it’s peaceful. The trailing branches of the beech sweep over me, caressing my skin like long fingers. The wind whistles gently through the hollow reeds. Beneath me I can feel the water lilies gently kneading my back. But then I understand that there’s someone beneath me in the pool. I thrash out in the water, but my hands sink into the fleshy white flowers, which turn bloody at my touch, and then the reeds begin to scream.

  I wake up with my face pressed into the nylon webbing of the chair, the Metro-North whistle shrieking in the distance. When I stumble back inside into the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror—to see that I’m still me, not a flower or a tree—I find myself indeed transformed, metamorphosed, my skin ridged like bark, a veinlike pattern of leaves webbing my face. It takes me a few minutes to realize it’s only the imprint that the nylon lawn chair has left on my flesh.

  In the morning I oversleep. When I come downstairs Ernesto is at the light table shifting sections of glass in the landscape. I stand behind him, sipping a cup of Bea’s twig tea because I’ve run out of coffee, and watch his long brown fingers graze the surface of the glass; he seems to be operating more on touch than sight.

  “Why don’t you have the light table on?” I ask.

  “Hurts my eyes this early in the morning. Besides it would ruin the surprise.”

  “Surprise?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Since he’s obviously not going to tell me anything else I wander over to my desk and stand looking at the bulletin board at our job schedule for next month, which I’ve kept mostly empty while we work on the Lady window. I see, though, that my dad has penciled in a few jobs for August. Someone—Robbie probably—has tacked up a notice for a lecture series on stained glass at the Cloisters and a flier for a band playing next weekend in Woodstock. When I take the flier down to read the reverse side, a postcard that must have been tacked underneath comes loose. A card with a green landscape of pond and mountains glides to the floor like a green-winged dragonfly.

  “How’d this get down here?” I ask, stooping to retrieve the card advertising Neil’s show. “I thought I threw it out …” but Ernesto isn’t paying attention and I realize that of course it can’t be the same card I threw out. Robbie, no doubt, picked it up somewhere and tacked it up, thinking someone would be interested in going. He’d have no idea that Neil was my ex-husband.

  “I think I’ve got it,” Ernesto says. “Come stand over here. I want to try something.”

  Ernesto grabs my hand, his fingers cool from handling the glass, and pulls me up to the third step of the spiral staircase. From here I’m looking directly down on the light table, the glass dark against the unlit surface.

  “Now watch,” he says.

  Ernesto switches the light on and the glass comes to life. The purple mountains recede into the distance, the beech tree spreads a deep canopy of shade over the water, the water lilies in the green pool glow like stars and, linking all these together, a diaphanous stream zigzags through the mountains, tumbles over rocks, and cascades down into the still pool.

  “You did it, Ernesto. I can’t believe it was assembled incorrectly the first time.”

  “Wait, that’s not all. Penrose designed it so you’d see the stream in the light but also so that when the light shifted behind the window—say when clouds pass over the sun—the pattern would move. Watch.”

  Ernesto turns the light on and off again, on and off again, quickly fluttering the switch so the fluorescent bulbs beneath the plastic tabletop flicker and stutter and the clear pattern in the glass begins to waver and sway, to flow, in fact, like water, as if the stream had, at just that moment, sprung out of the mountains and begun its journey into the pool. The mirage of movement brings the whole scene to life and forces the eye to follow the stream down into the depths of the pool and back again into the mountains to find the spring’s source.

  “What a genius,” I say.

  “Yeah, that Penrose was one smart man with the glass.”

  “No,” I say, coming down the stairs and squeezing Ernesto’s shoulder, “I mean you.”

  Ernesto smiles but keeps his gaze on the landscape, which glows steadily now in the light. I look down at the card in my hand at a scene that’s almost identical to the one in the window. Looking at it, I feel as if I’m being drawn across the river—which, if I pretend we’re a little farther north, would be to New Paltz, where Neil is having his show. I slip the card in my pocket. It occurs to me that there’d be plenty of time to make it to the show after my appointment in Poughkeepsie, which is, after all, just across the river from New Paltz.

  THE QUESTIONNAIRE FROM THE GENETIC COUNSELING OFFICE ASKS FOR MORE detailed information than I’d anticipated. In addition to the medical histories of my grandparents and great-grandparents, I’m supposed to know what their siblings died of and when, where they all came from, and whether any of them were of Ashkenazic descent.

  “Jews from eastern or central Europe,” Robbie says when I ask out loud who the Ashkenazis were. “Like from Poland or Germany. They probably ask because there’s supposed to be a higher incidence of breast cancer in Ashkenazic Jews. Two of my father’s sisters had it.”

  “I didn’t realize you were Jewish, Robbie,” I say and instantly realize the comment sounds like the old you don’t look Jewish. Robbie, however, doesn’t appear to be offended.

  “My dad’s family are Russian Jews, but my mom’s not Jewish so I wasn’t brought up with anything.”

  “Like Bea,” I tell him. “Her father was Jewish, and I was christened a Catholic, but I haven’t raised her with any religion. Does it bother you?”

  “Nah. I figure most of the worst wars in history were waged in the name of religion. I do yoga and meditate. That’s enough spiritualism for me.”

  I look over to see if Ernesto and my father, both Catholics, have anything to add, but they’re so engrossed in figuring out how to assemble the rest of the landscape section—the trunk of the beech tree is especially giving them problems—that neither of them have been paying attention to our discussion on religion.

  “Hey, Dad, any Jews on your side of the family?” I ask.

  That does get his attention. “As a matter of fact my cousin Margie married a Jewish guy from Coney Island. I think they moved to Great Neck—”

  “I mean blood relatives.”

  “Oh, now, let me
see.” My father tilts his chin up and stares at the ceiling as if looking for long-lost Irish-Jewish ancestors there. “No,” he says finally, “I don’t believe so, but I’m not sure about your mother’s side.”

  “Well, Mom’s family was Catholic …”

  “Plenty of Italian Jews converted over the years. You never know.”

  “And you don’t remember any cancer on your side of the family?”

  “No, the McKays mostly had strokes or drank themselves to death.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging. That’s something to look forward to.”

  “If you ask me the whole thing’s crazy. Testing your genes to see what might kill you. I’ll tell you this—your mother never would have sat around worrying about such nonsense. Even after she knew she had the cancer she enjoyed every moment she had coming to her. That’s what matters—making the most of the time you’re here, not trying to measure it out with a yardstick.”

  My father turns away and lays down a pair of grozer pliers on the light table so hard that the table shakes and all the bright shards of glass shiver. He wipes his face with the back of his hand. I’m more than sorry to have brought him to this. He’s right, of course, about my mother. Every memory I have of her is a happy one. Even after she was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was nine I never saw her cry. Never even saw her lie down in the middle of the day. When she lost her hair to chemo she said she’d always wanted to be a redhead and bought a wig the color of Hawaiian Punch. She was so alive that up until the moment she took her last breath I didn’t believe I would lose her. For a while that insistent cheer made me angry. She should have warned me, I felt, should have gotten me ready for losing her, but now I realize that she’d given me a childhood free of fear and death and so full of love that no matter how bad things have ever gotten for me I can feel something steadying deep down in my core—like a smooth, round stone at the bottom of a pool radiating out rings of strength.

  “I’m sorry, Dad, I didn’t mean to upset you, it’s just that I think of what would happen to Bea if anything happened to me, so if there’s anything I can do …”

  “You’re right,” he says, “it’s a terrible thing for a girl to lose her mother.”

  And be left with just a father to raise her. He doesn’t have to say it for me to finish the thought for him. Again I’ve said the wrong thing, but I can see that he’s not angry. Instead he nods and tells me I should go down to Cafe Galatea and ask my mother’s cousin, Annemarie, any questions I have about my mother’s family. What we’re both thinking is that as unequipped as he had been to raise me, Bea’s father would be a worse choice—really no choice at all.

  I’M HAPPY TO GO DOWN TO GAL’S BECAUSE BEA’S TWIG TEA HAS FAILED TO KEEP MY caffeine deprivation headache at bay. Half a block away I can smell the aroma of dark roasted coffee beans mingling with the smell of the river. The cafe’s door is propped open and half a dozen old men are sitting on the front porch sipping from gold-rimmed demitasse cups and reading American Oggi. Portia is standing behind the high counter, her long arms folded over the cool, green marble, her cheek pillowed on her arms. She looks up and smiles dreamily at me.

  “The usual?” she asks, drifting languidly toward the espresso machine.

  “Certo,” I tell her, “and put in an extra shot of espresso.” I’m about to suggest she make herself one while she’s at it, but then I study her carefully—her secretive half smile, the tilt of her hip, the tune she’s humming—and realize that the adolescent languor she’s fallen into isn’t likely to respond to a double or even a triple shot of coffee.

  “Is your mother in the back?” I ask.

  “Uh-huh. She’s making a cake for some big engagement party we’re catering tonight.” Portia hands me my coffee. She’s forgotten the extra shot and she’s also forgotten the amaretto, but I don’t say anything as she drapes herself back over the countertop. As I’m walking past her into the kitchen, though, she lifts up her head and pulls a piece of folded paper out of her apron pocket.

  “Oh, Aunt Juno, can you help me translate something?”

  “Certo, bella. Something for school?”

  “Not exactly.” Portia’s skin, which is as clear and delicate as milk glass, turns bright pink. She glances down at the paper without handing it over to me.

  “You took Latin, right?” she asks.

  “Four years. It was mandatory at Penrose back then.”

  “Then can you tell me what this line means?”

  She holds out a piece of paper that’s been folded so intricately it’s like an origami crane. The purpose of these folds, apparently, is so that only a few lines of pale blue handwriting show. It would be easier for me to take the paper from her, but clearly she doesn’t want me to read anything but the few lines in question.

  “Da mi basia mille,” I read.

  “I get that part because it’s like Italian. It says, ‘give me a thousand kisses,’ right?”

  I nod, keeping my eyes on the page to spare poor Portia any further embarrassment. She’s blushing so violently now that it’s like some foreign presence is moving under her skin trying to get out. A pink-plumed bird about to erupt from her long white limbs.

  “Deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum,” I read aloud.

  “A lot of numbers?”

  “That’s right. I remember this poem from sophomore Latin. Catullus is asking his girlfriend to give him a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, and then a second hundred—”

  “In other words, a lot of kisses.”

  “Yeah, that’s his basic point.”

  “Then what’s this word—conturbabimus? It’s not something dirty, is it?”

  I laugh and am immediately sorry. Portia seems to be in actual pain. “No, not at all. He says that when they have made many thousands of kisses they’ll mix them all up, so that they won’t know how many there are and no bad person will be able to know and be jealous that so many kisses exist.”

  “Oh. That’s kind of sweet, really.” Portia draws the folded paper back into her lap and holds it there with both hands as if frightened it might stretch out its little paper wings and fly away.

  “Uh, is this from the boy I saw in here a few weeks ago? The one from your English class?”

  Portia nods and, leaning closer to me, whispers a name, “Scott Heeley.” I remember the tall, awkward-looking boy with his copy of Dante and imagine him copying out poems in Latin for the pretty Italian girl in his class. I remember the last time someone wrote down a poem for me. I take a sip of the bitter coffee, scalding my tongue, and tell Portia that yes, it’s really very sweet indeed.

  ANNEMARIE IS UP TO HER ELBOWS IN FLOUR, DUSTING A COMPLICATED-LOOKING CAKE pan and knocking the excess out on the wooden counter. She holds her hands up, like a surgeon who’s just scrubbed, and gives me a kiss on the cheek. Her cheek against mine feels soft as velvet and when she steps back I find myself looking into eyes the same gold-flecked brown as my mother’s. She’s the same age that my mother would be if my mother had lived.

  “Cara! I heard about your poor friend, Christina. What a horrible tragedy. Do they really think she took her own life?”

  I sit down on a stool and brush away some flour from the edge of the table. “That’s what it looks like, only I don’t know … I find it hard to believe.”

  Annemarie shakes her head, scrapes a mixing bowl full of yellow batter into the cake mold, and slides the pan into a hot oven. I notice that there’s a pile of crumbled cake on the breadboard. “Who can ever imagine such a thing? A young woman, with her whole life ahead of her. What could have driven her to such despair?”

  “She was pregnant,” I say.

  “Dio mio,” she says, crossing herself and leaving dabs of flour on her forehead and on either side of her full bosom. “That’s even worse. It’s not like fifty years ago when a girl had to crawl away in shame. Look at you! How well you’ve done raising Beatrice on your own!”

  I tell Annem
arie that I appreciate her condolences for Christine’s death, but that I’ve got to ask her a few questions before I go to this doctor’s appointment in Poughkeepsie.

  “You’re not sick,” she says, pressing her floury hands to my forehead.

  “No, no, nothing like that. I’ve just decided to have this test for the breast cancer gene—because of Mom—and I need some information about the family.”

  Annemarie moves a hand from my forehead to my cheek, her eyes pinned to mine. The coronas of gold around her pupils seem to expand like little solar flares. “Tell me the truth, cara, have you found something—” she touches her other hand to her breast, “—a lump?”

  “No, no, I swear, Zia, nothing. A woman at the college told me she had the test and that there are things you can do to prevent getting cancer if you have the gene. I thought I ought to find out—for Bea’s sake. I probably don’t even have it. No one else in the family’s had breast cancer, have they?”

  Annemarie drops her hand from my face and wipes it on her apron. She moves over to a large steel sink and washes and dries her hands. Then she sits down with her clean hands folded in her lap. I notice that there are half a dozen molds waiting to be filled with cake batter. It must be some complicated cake she’s cooking up for tonight, but the way she sits there you would think she has nothing to do but to tend to my problems.

  “Well, my mother’s sister, Angela—so your great-aunt—had a lump removed when she was fifty and she said it was nothing, but my mother said she thought it might have been cancer. Angela died when she was sixty-three and no one ever said what from. You see, my mother’s generation didn’t even say the word cancer without making the sign for the evil eye. They just didn’t talk about it.”

  I take out the questionnaire from my purse and fill in the information about Angela—such as it is—in the space for maternal grandmother’s siblings. “This is going to sound funny,” I say, feeling as shy as Portia with her love poem asking this question, “but do we have any Jewish relatives?”