The Tree (2 page)

I was punished, put in my room, and told to stay there until I was sorry and had thought about what I'd done. Which I did, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to climb the tree again. So I wouldn't say I was sorry. I finally admitted guilt because I was hungry, and ended up with a peanut-butter sandwich in my room at nine o'clock. Edward smirked when I finally emerged from my room. He was studying in an alcove by the back door where the sewing machine lived.

‘Good one,' he said.

‘Yeah, right.' I ran into the kitchen and straight to the fridge.

He lifted his Chemistry book, a huge volume as thick as a shoebox. Of a similar weight were his Physics and Biology books. The three together were so heavy I could barely lift them when they were packed in his case for school. Behind the great tome were a stash of biscuits and a glass of red cordial. He gave me a sip and a handful of biscuits.

I ate them in my room with the peanut-butter sandwich, hoping my little brother Gerard who had only just fallen asleep wouldn't wake up and start whinging. When my mother came to retrieve the plate she knelt by my bed like a repentant sinner and prayed.

‘God, I thought you were going to die,' she started. ‘I couldn't have lived beyond that.'

Then her tone changed. ‘But if you ever do that again, I'll . . . I'll thump you, so help me God.'

Amen, I thought. It was a type of prayer.

Then she left, taking the plate and the remnants of my stale sandwich. I was still hungry so I waited a few minutes before I crept out again. The fire brigade had gone now and been replaced by Mr Lombardelli. He had come to speak with my mother. Most of the misters, as we called them, came to talk to my mother about money and wills and investments and taxation, but Mr Lombardelli, an Italian migrant who lived in the next street, had come to give my mother a recipe book and some hints on feeding three boys.

‘Pasta.' He kept singing its praises. ‘You can eat it with steak and here's a mushroom sauce. My mother's recipe.' I heard him as I crept past and up the hall to my brother who still sat studying in the sewing alcove. Unwillingly he divided the remainder of the biscuits.

‘Death' – I could hear Mr Lombardelli by the front door, it hadn't taken long to move from food to death – ‘Is never fair,' he said. ‘My father died when he was fifty and my grandfather is still alive. Where's the reasoning in that!'

‘No reasoning,' my mother said and closed the front door. I ducked into my bedroom before she could see me. I had only just crawled under the sheet when she came in. She knelt by my bed, placing Mr Lombardelli's heavy recipe book between us, and she dropped her head on to my pillow.

‘What's heaven like?' I said.

‘How should I know?' she answered.

‘Katherine Padley said you live in wonderful houses and you can watch television all day.'

‘That sounds all right then,' she said, picking up the recipe book and moving towards the door. Across the hall in a block of darkness, James was already asleep. Gerard, in the bed opposite, was snoring like an old man.

Then something made me say it, though I felt embarrassment and a beating in my heart.

‘Dad said to tell you he's all right,' I mumbled.

She was already in the hallway, but enough of what I'd said had reached her.

‘What did you say?' She turned on the heels of her bare feet.

‘I didn't say anything.'

I felt so scared. Too terrified to give her the rest of the message from the top of the tree. She rushed at me.

‘Don't joke about things like that.' She was in my face now, the Italian cookery book squeezing the breath out of me.

My mother was a wild nimble woman, tiny, and outgrown now by two of her children. Her eyes were streaked with brown, imperfect blue, and as she leaned over me, I smelt her stale hair. She hadn't bothered to wash it for weeks. I felt ashamed for her.

‘I'm not joking,' I said.

She released me from the weight of the recipe book.

It wasn't right. I shouldn't tell her, but as she walked back to the door I felt impelled to speak.

‘Dad . . .' I started.

She turned.

‘Dad said . . .'

She moved back towards me. The air was puffing from her nostrils, in and out. I could see it.

‘Dad says he'll always love you.'

‘Don't do this to me,' she breathed in my face.

‘I spoke to him. He's in the tree,' I said.

For a long time she didn't speak. Then without a word she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her. The light from the hall narrowed to an L-shaped slit and I felt as bad as I'd ever felt. She never closed doors, but I was too frightened to ask her to open it.

It must have been hours later when she shook me awake. I knew it was late because the house creaked in a way it only ever did in the lonely hours after she went to bed. I noticed she wasn't in her pyjamas, she was dressed. The shadow from the branches of the tree dipped and swayed on the wall above Gerard's bed.

‘Come on,' she pulled my covers back. ‘Show me.'

I trailed down the back stairs behind her, taking care as she had to step over a loose board near the bottom. There before us, above us, around us, was the umbrella of foliage of the tree.

‘Am I going to climb up there?' my mother said. I ignored her question and led the way.

‘You've done it before,' I said.

‘I've had four kids since then,' she said.

She climbed up the ladder then followed me up the mast of the tree to the first branch. She sat for a moment dangling her legs in the dark.

‘This is all a dream, okay?' She locked eyes with me to make sure I was in agreement.

I nodded and we resumed climbing. There were five branches that grew straight out from the trunk on the Kings' side of the tree. The distance between them increased the higher you climbed, but they could be scaled as easily as a ladder.

‘How far?' she asked.

‘All the way,' I said. ‘Up there.' I nodded to the top.

My mother screamed, ‘Oh my God,' as a dark triangular shape launched itself from the branch above into the night sky. It was only a fruit bat, but the stress of the climb was beginning to show. She leant against the trunk and I could see she was going to give in. I couldn't blame her, it made no sense to me now that we were climbing the tree in the back garden in the middle of the night. Even if I had spoken to my father there earlier that day. I was now beginning to doubt whether I hadn't made it all up. How did I know it was him? It could have been me answering my own questions.

I was desperate to be back in my bed listening to Gerard's snoring, but something made me carry on. Maybe because it would have been so easy to turn back.

‘This is far enough,' Mum said.

‘Come on.' I led her up to the next part of the tree, the forked branch that stretched almost to the weatherboarding of the house. I felt as I had once or twice since my father's death, that I was my mother's mother and she was the child. I'd even forged her signature on a cheque to pay for a school trip. It wasn't hard, there were no frills or squiggles, just her name, Dawn O'Neill, written flat and large like my own. I removed my headband and passed it to my mother, she was struggling to see through the wild curls of hair that kept falling across her face. She wasn't a coper, my mother. She wasn't pretending that she could carry on without my father. We had been covering for her for weeks. Some days choosing clothes for her to wear because she often went to leave the house unaware that she was wearing one of Dad's jumpers over the old slip she sometimes wore to bed. I had taken over doing her hair, washing it in the sink when I could convince her it needed it. While brushing it dry one day, I noticed straight grey hairs that had come uncoiled from her curls. They stuck straight up and I prayed she would start to take care of herself before the grey took over and made her look old. Most of the time, I liked that she wore her grief in her tatty clothes and her feral hair. It reminded me every time I saw her that our father had died and I wanted to remember that every day for the rest of my life. I couldn't imagine going a whole day without thinking of him.

‘Go on.' I knocked her arm with my elbow and motioned higher up the tree. ‘I'll wait here.'

‘What's wrong with here?' she asked.

‘You have to go higher, otherwise you can't hear.'

She climbed on to the next branch. I watched her spiral around the tree, surmounting the final branch before she disappeared into the arbour of dark foliage above me and, I assumed, made it up to the throne.

I don't know how long it was before the tinkling of my mother's laugh caught my ear. Her mute giggles drifted through the leaves and branches that separated us and made me smile. It was momentary, wiped away by their arguing, chased then by more silence out of which rose my mother's voice.

‘I don't care,' she started. ‘Whatever the reason, you didn't have to go.'

I waited to see what would happen next. The silence dragged on.

‘You copped out. You left me. If you really loved me . . .' She was crying again. I slumped. This wasn't what I'd been hoping for. It wasn't why I'd dragged her to the top of the tree. I was hoping she would talk to Dad, be happy, and then start to laugh and cook and wash again.

‘If you really loved me' – I heard her drag in a breath of air that rattled with despair all the way to her centre – ‘you wouldn't have left me like this.'

I searched above trying to see her, but it was too dark, the branches were too dense. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed again. I breathed a sigh of relief, but no sooner had she finished laughing than the tears began.

I don't know how long we were in the tree, but when my mother emerged her face had been unburdened of some of its tension. She swung down the tree like an excited monkey. She hit the ground, crouched and ran across the grass like she was alighting from a helicopter, giggling or crying, I wasn't sure which.

‘Good night.' My mother waved to me when I reached my bedroom door and for a moment I felt there was not even going to be a thank you. She stepped lightly on as she continued down the hall. At her bedroom door she stopped, backed up a pace and turned to me.

‘There is a light,' she said, and squeezed my arm. ‘Now go to sleep.'

I marvelled at how, even after leading her up the tree to talk to Dad, she could be so immersed in her own feelings, so insensitive to mine. She must have seen the disappointment in my eyes.

‘This is our discovery,' she said.

‘My discovery,' I reminded her.

‘So it is, love,' she agreed. ‘But whatever you do, don't tell a soul.'

Through the window of the cubby house, I saw the tree shimmer its leaves. Megan and I were baking a pretend cake in a cooker made from a cardboard box. We slid a bowl of hot water in it to bake the mixture of flour, water and milk we had stirred together.

‘Do you know what?' The movement of the tree prompted me to want to tell Megan about my dad.

‘No what?' asked Megan.

‘I . . . um.' Then I remembered the promise I'd made with my mother to keep the tree a secret. I so wanted to tell Megan. It only seemed right. We told each other everything.

I dived out through the cubby door with a saucepan. ‘I'm getting more water,' I said, as I sped down the cracked path to the laundry.

It wasn't fair not to tell Megan, but somehow I had to find the strength to swallow my secret. I didn't trust myself, so I trotted back up the path with the saucepan of hot water and said: ‘I've got so many spellings to learn,' and I ran.

Megan was calling after me, but I kept running. I jumped through the fence, not stopping until I got to the top step where I took one last look at the umbrella of tree that covered our house. Megan was still calling to me, but I didn't reply. I crashed into the kitchen to find the three boys at the kitchen table, their heads bowed.

‘I had to tell them,' my mother said.

I dropped into a chair, out of breath. I couldn't believe it. I'd just left my best friend in the most awkward way so as not to betray our secret and my mother had blabbed, just like that.

She must have seen my fury.

‘I'm sorry,' she said.

I sat beside Gerard who seemed unaffected by the news. Edward had slumped into a silence similar to James's normal state, and James was, for the first time since the day at the graveyard, crying.

‘They had to know,' my mother said on her way to the sink.

That night we were instructed to behave as normal, kiss our little brother goodnight, then when he had gone to sleep we were to assemble at the back door and wait till dark, then take turns climbing the tree. But the boys had no desire to be involved in the venture. Edward sat in his alcove by the back door, occasionally looking up from his study, and James, who also declined the suggestion of climbing the tree, preferred to stay sitting on the top step. I joined him there and we waited for our mother, listening for sounds of her interchange with the night.

The evening wore on and the rise and fall of the cicadas buzz eventually died away and in the interim before the tree frogs began, we slumped, bored with waiting but too nervous to go to bed without her. James leant against the railing of the stairs and I fell back against the weatherboards of the house. I picked at the flaking paint wondering if she would ever return. I began to think she had gone to join our father, when I heard a faint snuffling. I stood to see if I could site myself in a better position to see what was going on.

Edward was inside pouring himself another rum. The lock on the mirrored door of the drinks cabinet clicked shut. He scraped his chair back towards his desk and hid his rum and coke behind his physics book.

It became obvious once the tree frogs symphony had reached its crescendo and died away and the fruit bats took off from the mango tree by the back fence that our mother wasn't coming in. Edward packed away his books and we all went to bed leaving the back door open.

Much later I heard her sneaking up the stairs. There were her foot steps heavy down the hall, not the same light gait from the evening before. There was a density in her step and the way she fell on to the bed, an emptiness and something more terrible than all the nights I had heard her sobbing, a screaming silence. I stood in her doorway.

‘This is worse, much worse.' She rolled to face me. ‘I remember now what I've lost.'

Her words jarred, they made me sad. I wondered when she would be able to be our mother again.

‘I miss him more now than I did before,' she said.

But it didn't stop her climbing the tree most nights and hassling him. Sometimes the commotion coming from the top of the tree was as noisy as a flock of bickering galahs. The tree would sway with their squabbling on those nights. Other times it felt frozen with restlessness and, occasionally, every so often, it would buzz with a joy. On those nights I was pleased for her, but resentful because her occupancy of the tree stopped me from visiting my father. I missed him and could spend days locked in my own thoughts with him, but I felt my mother needed to visit him more than I did.