The Language of Trees (18 page)

A
S DUSK SETTLES OVER
Canandaigua, Echo slips on an ivory vintage blouse edged in lace, then an old pair of jeans. She pulls the towel through her hair, letting the evening light catch a few loose strawberry blond strands that she pretends she inherited from her mother.

She tells herself not to be hopeful. That the call she received from Grant at a pay phone asking her to come for dinner was just him being neighborly. She and Grant hardly know each other anymore. And she is certain he doesn't see her like that now, not as someone who might actually want to be kissed. He is far too preoccupied to notice something as inconsequential as her clothing. It's not a date, she tells herself. Just old friends having dinner.

She tries on the feather earrings that she used to wear in high school, and then takes them off. She removes the rest of her jewelry, two silver rings and a chain, as she wants to feel unadorned, plain, just herself. She slips her feet onto the wooden platforms of her worn leather clogs. She has had the same taste in clothing since she was a child. She still keeps a self-portrait
from kindergarten of herself in a white peasant blouse and blue jeans. Echo stands before the mirror, her reflection backlit in the flickering candlelight, her breasts, dark and full under the cotton cloth. Her bra is just sheer enough. She fastens the pearlized buttons on her shirt, all six of which match but one. It's a superstition she read about once and hasn't been able to shake. In ancient China, during the building of a temple, architects would plan a subtle mistake in the construction, a chip in the frame or an edge left uncut, so the Gods wouldn't become jealous and destroy the whole building. Echo had learned this years ago and decided her life was too precarious to tempt the gods. So she always sewed one mismatched button onto her favorite articles of clothing.

She grabs her purse and runs downstairs. She gathers up a small bag of groceries and peeks into the living room. Joseph is sitting in his recliner facing the TV, which is on without the volume.

“You want me to turn it up?” she asks.

He turns toward her, the pillow behind his head falling onto the floor. “I just use TV for company. I was napping anyway,” he says, reaching for the pillow.

Echo kneels and hands him the pillow with her free hand. “I'll be home early,” she says, pushing her wet hair back from her face.

“Did you find my car keys?” he asks weakly. She tells him no, she wants to walk. “But it's bad weather. Make sure Grant drives you home. You hear? It's not the same place since you left. Look at you, you're a sight for sore eyes.”

“Your eyes must be very sore.” She leans over and gives him a kiss.

“Kiddo. You got so much joy around you and you can't even
see it.” He shivers, and then pulls the afghan tightly over his shoulders as though it were winter.

 

A
S THE SUN BEGINS
to set, Clarisse Mellon stands on her doorstep holding a warm plate of cookies. The pungent scent of ginger winds through the air among the lilac petals.

When Clarisse sees Echo walking by her house, she waves her over. It may be the north wind that's making her feel she should confess her secrets to Echo, the daughter she might have had if only she'd been brave. Clarisse has always had trouble expressing her true feelings. If she had been courageous enough, she'd have told Joseph that she loved him a long time ago. But fear kept her quiet. She had felt too vulnerable. Now she is almost out of time. Clarisse can no longer keep the secrets locked away inside of her, just as she can no longer ignore the fact that her kitchen window sometimes opens on its own only moments after she has locked it shut, letting bundles of lilacs cascade across the sill and onto the kitchen counter. She will reveal her truths in the only way that she can. Not in words but in images. Although Clarisse's hands always ache before rain, she has spent the last few days since Melanie's disappearance molding dough into different shapes, telegraphing stories into cookies. Baking is the way of age, she tells herself. It is a way for her to capture time. And secrets.

Clarisse has both hated and loved living here in Canandaigua. She once thought that standing in her kitchen, watching everyone else's life go by, was the safest place to be. But now she knows it is just the opposite. A full life, a life where she captures her heart's desire, requires that chances be taken; that paths be forged out of the soft cocoon of loneliness. She glances at her old cat, who is rushing toward a patch of sunlight
as though rushing for its last breath, the same way there are certain souls that rush back into life, if only to be held once. They only come back for that. Who would believe it? After all those miles of walking.

Clarisse picks up a cookie shaped like a pipe. She presses a fist to her cracked lips as if it were fifty years ago to the day that Joseph arrived: Generous. Charismatic. Warm. She touches her neck, fingers the absence of her locket that disappeared while she was walking through the clover dreaming of telling him how she felt. That day she lost the locket, she lost the cache of her memories. She searched for it for a week but then gave up, certain that this meant the opportunity to tell him had passed. As time went on, she knew that she couldn't steal the moment back, even if she could still feel Joseph's presence around her. As she stood here all those years, baking in the kitchen, the power of her secret has felt like the great Niagara. How many years has she spent walking around the edges of this kitchen, trying to know it as though it were Joseph's heart?

For years, Clarisse believed that some things were better left unremembered. The flush of her own skin when confronted by the man she loved. The secrets of her neighbor, Leila Ellis.

“Ginger cookies!” Clarisse calls out. She knows she must be brave. Seeing the girl awakens a feeling she is not used to, a feeling that is barely tolerable—the maternal ache. It's an emptiness born of instinct. She still feels it after all these years. As Echo approaches, Clarisse notices the broken buckle on the girl's clog—a telltale sign of a motherless daughter. You wouldn't recognize it unless you were one or you knew what to look for—these women rarely comb through their hair or iron their clothing. They carry their little-girl selves through their lives like a warning. They forget to shave their legs or mend their broken shoes. Even when they are thirty-two, they
delight in running through the sprinklers at night and stealing away into the treetops to spy on the birds. They carry on in this defiance and though they don't know it, it makes certain men fall in love with them. And it makes certain childless women want to mother them. Clarisse had once been like Echo. She hadn't grown up until she, herself, was forty-two.

Clarisse leads Echo inside, instructing her to step over the cats as they walk through the living room, which is full of knickknacks covering the shelves, and the walls, collections of everything from porcelain frogs to macramé planters. There are six Gold Hummingbird Paradise lanterns out on the back porch alone.

“How about a cup of coffee? No, you'd like some tea, I bet,” says Clarisse.

“Mint, if you have it. If not, regular's fine, too.”

The flush in Echo's cheeks gives her a child-like air, making Clarisse feel all the more maternal, making her want for what she has missed all of these years. Echo's hair is wet. Clarisse wants to dry it for her. Cloaked in a big green army coat, Echo's eyes are red, and she's staring at Clarisse, looking somewhat confused, from under a tangled auburn mop of curls. The combination of fear and beauty is compelling. Clarisse has got to relax so she doesn't let her nerves get the best of her. She has big truths for Echo. “By the way, dear, do you know you have leaves in your hair?”

Echo reaches up distractedly. “How embarrassing,” she says, without removing them.

“Here, let me get that one for you,” Clarisse says, just to have a chance to smooth the girl's hair. “That's better. See? It's just a leaf.” Clarisse can see that the girl is red with embarrassment. “Don't worry. It's what people call character-building.”

“I've got enough character to fill a small city.”

“You've got some things on your mind, maybe?”

“Always.” Echo smiles quickly, looks down.

“Well, you have choices to make. How lucky you are. I hardly remember when I had choices.”

Echo follows Clarisse into the kitchen, which Clarisse introduces as her “studio.” Clarisse sets the plate of cookies down on the counter. She can see that Echo doesn't know where to look first. Bottles of colored sprinkles and tubes of frosting are dispersed throughout rows of cookies, which are laid out across the kitchen table. Each cookie is decorated with its own Canandaigua scene—The Diamond Trees. A cabin. A Jeep, and more, many of which Echo seems to recognize. They have been painted with colored frosting. Some have been adorned with little silver and gold balls.

“My God. You are a true artist,” muses Echo.

As Clarisse reaches through the open kitchen window and pinches off mint leaves from the window box, she glances at the bushes for the yellow paper airplanes. Thankfully, nothing. “Mint for the nerves,” says Clarisse, setting down a cup of hot water in front of Echo. She sprinkles the mint leaves into it.

Echo examines the trays of cookies. “Amazing details. Not a crack in the frosting.”

“Egg whites. I brush them and bake them at extreme heat for thirty seconds, then let them cool, repeat, three separate times.”

Just then a large orange tabby jumps up on the counter and Clarisse gently nudges him off. “Bad Ella,” she chides. “You know she thinks she's people. She likes to go visiting,” she says.

Echo picks up one of the cookies. “Clarisse, this is my Jeep.”

“A masterpiece. Take a bite.”

“I've already done enough damage to it,” Echo argues. Clar
isse winces, tries to hide the pain she feels in her legs. “Are you okay, Clarisse?”

“My knees are giving me trouble lately. But creativity is good for these old bones, though. Here, taste this one. Don't be shy. Go ahead.”

Clarisse holds up a mayfly cookie, its wings striped with blue and yellow frosting, and shimmering with tiny silver threads. “It's good,” Echo says, taking a bite. “I bet you never run out of ideas.”

Clarisse holds up another. “Guess this one.”

“Two Bears,” says Echo. “The feathered cap and all.”

“He wasn't as mysterious as people think. And yes, there are enough secrets here to keep me going for the next thirty years,” says Clarisse, peering out at the lilac bush, which is starting to scratch at the window. “See, I've been thinking about starting my own business.
Cookietales
, I call them. People have always raved about my baking. I've always lacked confidence. Now I figure, why in the hell not? Oh, I hope my swearing doesn't offend you.”

“I admit, I do admire a woman who can swear well,” Echo assures her, and laughs.

If I had a daughter, she would be just like you
, Clarisse thinks, enjoying the connection as she shuffles over to the cabinet and takes out a Tupperware container. Throughout the years, she has caught herself looking for reflections of herself everywhere.
That hair. Those eyes. My daughter would look like that, sound like that. She would say things in just that way.
“I thought you could talk to Joseph about selling them in his store. I'm giving you some samples to take to him. I'll split the profits.”

“Why not ask him yourself, Clarisse? He'd say yes to you.”

Clarisse is suddenly distracted by what she sees in the
window. A police car driving up to Leila's house. “Well look who it is, there goes old Charlie Cooke, coming back to break Leila's heart again. The sonofabitch wouldn't be the first. Poor Leila. A person can only take so much disappointment,” says Clarisse, her voice softening. “After all this time, with this family living next door. Their turmoil has drained the life out of me. And with Melanie. Four days gone. And Maya, she never got over the little boy's death. I'm not suspicious by nature. But that little boy knew how to swim. You don't live on a lake and not learn how to swim, for God's sake.”

“It was an accident. There was a storm.”

“Storm or not, those kids were like fish in the water.” Clarisse is shivering. “It just got cold, didn't it? Keeps happening.” She closes the window. “It all goes back to Leila. She made some bad choices. Even smart women do dumb things when they're afraid of being alone. As they get older, this fear clouds their vision. They settle for less than they deserve. They get hurt. Their children, too.”

Echo notices something yellow caught underneath the window frame. “Is that a paper airplane?”

Clarisse is unusually calm as she picks up the airplane and tosses it into the garbage. She can no longer deny its presence any more than her other secrets. “It's nothing,” she says.

Sitting at the kitchen table, Clarisse deals out the cookies in front of Echo like playing cards. The secrets of a town can weigh on a person. These stories have to come out. The canoe. Two Bears. A silver tomahawk. A medicine bag. She can't keep it silent any more. “We could start small, just with our town. Then we'll expand into a custom cookie business. People from all over the world can send us their pictures, and we'll decorate cookies for Christmas, or birthdays. You'll do the writing, tell
my stories for me. You're a writer, aren't you? You know how to tell stories?”

Echo is holding the Jeep cookie. “I refuse to write about this one on the grounds that no one will give a rat's ass about it.”

“Oh, good, you swear, too,” Clarisse says.

Echo smiles. “We're a lot alike, you and I. Don't you think?”

“So it seems,” says Clarisse, letting herself bask in the recognition.

“What would I say about myself anyway? Do people want to read about my issues with freckles?” Echo asks.