At the Sycamore Tree

At the Sycamore Tree 

He was dead three months, but his presence had returned to the house. Edi woke in the mornings to find his cup on the counter by the sink and an ashtray on the coffee table. She was alarmed, one of two things were happening—she was leaving things out and could not remember—or he was haunting her. That latter was impossible.  

Edi woke early; the sun hidden behind a small ridge of hills. Only the orange glow of a streetlamp snuck between the curtains and fell on the floor. She pushed back the quilt and slipped her feet into velvet slippers. The floorboards groaned in rhythm with her creaking ankles. She held onto the railing and made her way down the stairs past the bucolic paintings of pastures. She stepped down into the foyer and flicked on the warm overhead chandelier the same light the first owners had installed seventy years ago. Frosted glass and garish bronze in unnatural twists and bends toward the ceiling, a mocking thing at Edi’s age.  

She heard the back and forth of the rocking chair and faintly smelled camel cigarettes. Edi had thrown the last pack out the night after he died. After she tossed the cigarettes, she had purged all his clothes from the closet. She cleaned the house of his belongings. His heirloom pocket watch and photos were all that remained. There were no children to give things to and Carl’s niece had kindly said no to everything. A young man, maybe twenty, had come to collect all the medical equipment from the spare room. He said sorry, but she could see his eyes darting around the home wondering where all the memories hid. 

Edi stood in her nightgown and searched the living room. Carl rocked in his chair and smoked a cigarette. He looked like a shadow—blurred edges and muted colors. The cigarette stood out against the watercolor appearance of his hand. He looked younger; It was the blurriness of him, like the soft glow of romantic leads in movies.  

“You threw out my cigarettes.” He said, "Come in here, where I can see you.”  

His voice was the same. Edi was unmoved. A scream caught silently in her throat. She questioned her eyes. She was sixty-eight. It happened quickly; she went to bed one night and then woke up the next with dementia. She did not imagine losing her mind would involve seeing her dead husband. They hadn't spent much time looking at each other when he was alive. 

She unfolded her arms and walked into the room. His eyes traveled over her and she felt exposed in her thin nightgown. He tapped his cigarette into the ashtray and Edi watched the ashes float down onto the green hued glass. He crossed his legs, his black socks had holes in the heels like always. Even heaven had a sock problem, if it was heaven he was visiting from—of that she could not be sure.  

“Cigarettes killed you Carl.” 

“Doesn’t much matter now,” He said.  

“Why are you here? We had our goodbye,” She said.  

“I’m stuck Edi, neither here nor there.”  

It wasn’t the first time in his life he had been stuck. Stuck in war, stuck at home, and stuck in a life with her. Neither ungluing themselves.  

"There really is an in-between?” 

“When I was in the POW camp—I fantasized about death—I had no idea it was so hard to get to the other side.”  

“What has you stuck there?”  

“There’s a man that says he needs my help. He died as a baby but can’t remember anything, just knows I’m the person to talk to.”  

“All these years and he’s been stuck without help?” Edi said.  

“Says it has to do with us. He came back for me.”  

He was fading, like paint thinned with water. The cigarette fell from his hands and landed on the carpet. She grabbed a magazine from the coffee table and smashed it down on the embers. A new memory of him. A little black smudge on the white carpet. She opened the heavy drapes, and morning light flooded the room. She opened the window and let the fresh air clear the thick smell of cigarettes.  

Edi could not eat breakfast. She poured coffee into a travel mug and diluted it with cream and sugar. She dressed in an old pair of jeans and a heavy flannel button up shirt. She grabbed her car keys and headed outside. 

She wiped the frost from the windshield of her car and entered the chilly interior. The hum of the heater drowned out NPR on the radio. She drove the same Buick she had been driving for fifteen years. It was in pristine condition and smelled of linen air-freshener. She switched the radio to classical music and reversed out of her driveway.  

It was a one-hour drive to the farm. It had been a few years since she had been. When they moved her mother to a nursing home ten years ago there had not been much point. When her mother died, she stopped visiting it altogether. Her nephew checked on it from time to time. He made sure there were not squatters or holes in the roof. It remained otherwise the way it had been when she grew up there. Her and her sisters needed to sell it, but no one wanted to be the first to bring it up. No one wanted the property, no one wanted to let it go. She wasn’t ready to see it gone, so many memories were buried there.  

The barn looked less sturdy than she remembered as she drove up the long drive. Next to the house was a neglected truck with broken lawn chairs piled up in the bed. The blue house had faded to a washed out gray, and an army of pigeons trooped back and forth on the eaves. It was a well-worn postcard of its former self. She could still see herself sitting on the porch with her sisters selling lemonade to the three men who worked on the farm with Daddy. Daddy would usually throw a few quarters in their cup and buy for everyone. On the weekends when they opened part of the farm to u-pick during berry season they sold enough lemonade to buy the latest Beattle’s record. She memorized the lyrics to most of their songs the summer she met Carl.  

She parked her car next to the barn and stepped out on the frozen dirt. She took a deep breath of air. It brought back years of memories, some good, some bad. She closed her eyes and saw her mother’s prize dahlias in bloom and one of their many golden retrievers loping through the tall grass. She tasted lemonade with crushed raspberries and the sting of cold ice cubes on her tongue. She opened her eyes and saw the bleakness of what remained and felt disappointment. A skeleton of what had been there before. Everything worn and faded, much like how she felt.  

It had been near the barn under the Sycamore tree that Carl had asked her to marry him. Three months, that was all she had known him. He had come to work on the farm for the summer, the son of Daddy's friend. He had been handsome, with sun bleached hair, golden skin, and soulful eyes. He sat on the porch at night and strum songs on his guitar for her and her sisters to sing. Her older sister Grace had liked him, but it was her he wanted. His eyes would watch her over the top of his guitar, and her sister would watch her watching him. They would run off to the lake as soon as the day ended, disappear, and not come back till the sun had dipped out of sight. He proposed in August. They married in October on the farm under an orange hued sky. A few years later he left her for Vietnam, and she came back here to wait it out. She had to wait several years. The first of which was most painful; Daddy had died suddenly, and then she had to say goodbye to Matthew. 

The sycamore tree called to her. Its broad leaves had shaded her for many hot summers. She used to press her back into the trunk and read a book. Carl was sitting under it now leaning against the trunk; the light shone right through him. She would have missed him except for the tree trunk created a small shadow on his back that outlined him. He had kissed her for the first time under that tree. She hesitated whether she should approach him, but he would probably show up somewhere else.  

“Carl.” She said. 

He turned and looked at her. His eyes were like water and she looked right through them.  

“Edi, why am I here?” He said.  

“I wondered the same thing?” 

“What happened here at the farm?” 

“What has that man, up there, said to you?” Edi asked.  

“He told me to come to the tree.”  

“Does he have a name?”  

“Yes, Matthew.”  

The tears came down Edi’s face. She never cried, but his name made them come.  

“Can Matthew come here?” Edi asked.  

“I don’t know. I’m not entirely sure how I get here.”  

“Can you go back Carl, and see?” Edi said.  

He bowed his head; he was playing with the space on his finger where his ring usually was. An empty groove.  

“Why did you stay Edi, after I came home? I need to ask just in case I don’t get back again.”   

 Her heart sped up. Why did she stay? She had asked herself that question dozens of times. When she stood over his open casket, saw the scar on his neck that tucked below his collar, she had wondered why she stayed too. He had come home an open sore that had never healed. But the pain of her loss had been greater than any pain he brought home to her. His rage had concealed her hurt and shame; living with his emotions disguised everything she felt. She could be angry at him, instead of herself. She became the perfect homemaker. She made their house perfect: rug tassels that always lay straight, perfect creases in his dress shirts, polished shoes, and hot dinners on his plate. A manicured garden in the summer and a sparkling Christmas tree in the winter. It had all looked beautiful on the outside.  

“I stayed because you needed me.” Edi said.  

“I’m not sure it was best for either of us. Maybe you would have really loved someone else if you had left,”  

“We did love each other when we married, we were crazy for each other.” 

“I always loved you Edi, always.” 

“You had a funny way of showing me.”  

“I tried you know.”  

He faded until only bent grass remained. She wondered how he left an impression when he was like colored air. Unsure how long the wait would be before he returned, Edi felt remiss she did not tell him how long she could stay. A few hours? She did not bring food with her, and the house was empty except for furniture and closets of bagged linens. There would be canned goods in the pantry, but they would be long past their expiry. She stepped up to the Sycamore tree and traced her fingers over a carving at eye level. Carl had been sitting right under it. A simple initialed “M,” faded and slightly bent on the down stroke. Forty-five years carved in the tree trunk and he had never noticed. She guessed he had not had much opportunity over the years, but she had seen him lean his hand here once. You do not see what you are not looking for. If Carl had asked, she would have told him the truth. He never did. When her mother had died, she was sure the secret was gone.  

Edi found a granola bar in the glove compartment of her car. It was stale with a sickeningly sweet taste, but she ate it anyway. It was two hours that Carl had been gone. Her breath fogged up the windows of the car and she wiped them with her hand so she could clearly see the tree. Despite wanting to return home, she waited in hopes of seeing Matthew.  

She stayed six hours, walking through each room of the house several times. Photos still lined the hallway of her and her sisters as girls in black and white. Walking through the old dahlia garden she saw a group of surprised rabbits skittering away from her. The sun was low. Her shadow the length of a telephone pole. Carl appeared first, walking through the neglected berry field. Then another man. Slimmer and a little taller than Carl. He looked like Carl at forty-five, only different eyes—her eyes. Shaped just like hers, too big for his face, like her own, giving him the same doe appearance as her.  

“Matthew?” She said. 

He stepped up to her and took her hands. She could not feel him, but she could see their flesh touching. She tried to squeeze his fingers but felt nothing. Edi wanted to hold him in her arms against her chest, the last place she had held him so many years ago. 

He wiped her tear. She was surprised to see him catch it on his fingertip. The tear sat there for a moment and then evaporated.  

“You know him?” Carl said.  

“He’s our son.”  

Carl pushed his hair back with his hands. Tears fell on his face, but they disappeared into the air as quickly as they formed. Edi had never seen him cry, not on their wedding day and not when his mother died. The tears softened her to him. 

“I don’t remember,” Matthew said.  

Edi shook her head.  

“You were too young.” 

“Tell me.” 

“You came too early. I had not reached the halfway point. It was snowing and it was just my mother and I; she delivered you. You were so tiny I could hold you in my hand.”  

Edi traced her finger over the outline of his face, he pressed his cheek against the palm of her hand. His head had been so small. He had never opened his eyes, and now she knew they were the same rich brown as hers.  

“Only my mother and I knew. I could not bear to tell anyone; it was too great a loss. I was afraid of the pity, a husband at war and a baby gone. I felt if I spoke it aloud that my life would become fragmented and I would never be whole again.”  

Matthew cried too. Edi wondered if rain was the tears of the in-betweeners. He had waited so long to come back here and meet his Father. She imagined a house up there, where family met to discover each other. Perhaps her parents were there too, waiting for her. 

“I don’t understand?” Carl said.  

“I was pregnant when you left for Vietnam. I found out just a few days after you deployed.” 

“I thought we were careful. We weren't ready.”  

“Look at our son Carl. He’s perfect.” She said, cupping Matthew’s face. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I tried. I wrote a dozen letters to you but never sent them. I promised myself I would tell you when you returned. Then you came back, and I could not after everything that happened to you over there. When we could not have more children, well I couldn’t imagine ever telling you then.”  

Matthew was silent, staring at the sycamore tree. He ran his fingers over the carved “M.”  

Carl stepped next to Matthew. He ran his hands over the rough bark, his fingers slipped through Matthew’s like neither of them was there.  

“Has that initial been here all this time?” Carl asked.  

“Yes,” Edi replied. 

Carl kept his hand over the initial, Matthew’s hand resting under his. Their hands were close in size and they had the same bend from the knuckle to the nail of the pinky finger.  

“I would have fished with you. I always wanted someone to fish with. I would have taught you how to put on the lure and cast. I would have been a good father—I always wanted to be a dad.”  

“Were you happy? Did you love each other?” Matthew asked.  

There was silence. Edi could feel the chilly air on her face, her cheeks pink. She wondered if they felt the winter wind. She questioned if it seeped into their bones as it did hers. 

“We did, but sometimes we forgot how to show it.” Carl said. 

Edi nodded.  

Matthew’s eyes followed the tree trunk up to the branches that arched above them like thin fingers. A few dry leaves desperately hung on.  

“I have never climbed a tree before.” Matthew said.  

Edi smiled, “Every boys right-of-passage.”  

Matthew grabbed hold of the branches and pulled himself up. He climbed limb by limb until they grew thin. Edi and Carl looked up. His head peeked out between the bare branches, and the maple-syrup hue of the setting sun filtered through him. It looked like a scene from a painting in their home. One of the last leaves fell and caught in Edi’s hair. Carl leaned over and pulled it off, letting it sail to the ground.  

“Our son is perfect.” Carl said. 

He reached for Edi’s hand. She felt him then, the warmth of his fingers pressed against hers. They stayed like that for a moment then he let go and headed toward the tree. He climbed the branches easily, like a balloon floating up. She watched him and Matthew framed in the light and they slowly disappeared together.