The Language of Trees (24 page)

“Please,” he says, holding up his hand.

As far as Charlie is concerned, maternal instinct doesn't count for much. All addicts are remarkably the same. In thirty years, Charlie has buried his share of them. He knows their patterns, their excuses and their tricks, and how they can momentarily become addicted to other things before returning to their drug of choice. Perhaps motherhood is Melanie's addiction right now. He also knows that the unbridled moods of teenage girls can make even the May weather seem predictable. He has seen Melanie's firsthand. They rode together atop the Harvest Parade float when she was fourteen. Melanie was waving to the crowd, seated right next to him without so much as looking at him. She moved so far away from him that he worried she'd fall off the edge of the seat. He thought he'd glimpsed her cheeks reddening, but he wasn't sure if it was just the wind, or a particular feeling of hatred toward him. At the end of the ride, for no apparent reason, Melanie suddenly put her head on his shoulder. The gesture was so spontaneous and full of trust that he forgot to breathe. He felt his shoulder relax and for a moment he closed his eyes, letting himself fill up with feeling that somehow all his wrong choices had been made right.

Suddenly, she pushed him away.

“What's wrong?” he asked, his voice tight as she glared at him.

“I'll never forgive you for what you did to my mother, you old shit. How do you like someone screwing with your head?” Then she jumped off the float and disappeared into the crowd.

 

I
KNOW SHE'S A
good girl. But good girls have bad times,” Charlie says.

“I know that. Don't think I don't know that.” He doesn't know Leila has turned toward the window because she won't cry in front of him twice in one lifetime. She touches her neck, forcing herself to wait until the flash of heat passes. But when Charlie reaches for her, Leila suddenly clasps her hands together to keep the wall in her heart from breaking apart.

Charlie checks his watch, but his mind doesn't register the time. “I'll give you this, no one at the station has seen her for over a year, but, Lei…”

Leila straightens the pale curtains. “Did you know my girls used to visit your mother at the rest home? Do you know we were there every other Sunday? Where were you?”

“I wasn't a lot of places that I should have been.” He glances at her and looks away.

“I suppose. Well, just about everyone said it was like Christmas when the girls walked in. Maya would tap dance for them. Isn't that something? Your mother used to call here just to make sure I'd be bringing the girls with me. Sometimes she'd call twice, three times in one day.”

“I never knew. Why didn't you call me? I could have stopped her—“

“I left you messages. You never called back. I had my pride, Charlie.”

He looks at her, brushes his hair back with his palm. He is starting to sweat, to feel strapped in, weighted. “Well, I'm sorry, Lei.”

“Your mom loved to have Melanie draw her picture. Your mother always said she wanted a simple mouth, no teeth, just as she was. Melanie'd tell her, you don't have to smile if you don't
feel like it. And your mother seemed so relieved, Charlie. Such a look of relief came over her. Isn't that something?”

“Why did you do this for my mother after what I did to you?”

Leila holds his gaze, and raises her voice. “The girls thought you were coming back. We waited for you!” she cries.

She touches her wet face with the tips of her fingers. The tears are like shards of glass like those crystal prisms Melanie bought for her once at the mall, and later hung in Leila's bedroom window to catch the sun.

He nods, but doesn't say anything. Leila doesn't know how many times he had answered Melanie's frantic calls when she had hit rock bottom. Leila would think he was doing it out of guilt. But she'd only be half right. He had tried to put the Ellis family out of his mind, but he had never felt such a sense of pride and fulfillment, sitting at their dinner table all those years ago, imagining this was his family.

That's why, a few months after the Harvest Parade, he had gone to pick Melanie up himself when the call came in about a dazed girl with long blond hair sitting by the side of Highway 90, yelling into the darkness. It was four in the morning. Her no-goodnik ex-boyfriend had pushed her out of his truck—what did the boys at the station used to call him, the “schmuck with the truck”? Instead of taking Melanie into the station, Charlie handed her a blanket from the backseat, and drove her to Denny's. She was so thin and pale. She'd slid down in the seat, wanting to hide so that people wouldn't see her, as if the whole town hadn't heard her yelling at heaven. Charlie could see she was coming down from a high. There was no paranoia or hallucinations, but maybe marijuana, he thought, by the way she ate two helpings of eggs Benedict and a plate of stale rolls. He never brought up what she had said to him at the parade.
They talked about his police work, about her love of anything purple—grapes, lilacs, beautiful amethysts that were her birth-stone and were said to help a person be brave.

He finishes the last piece of bacon. “How's Maya getting along?”

“Much better,” Leila says, uttering the standard response. She catches Charlie checking his watch again.

“I've got some things to do. I'm on a short leash these days.”

Leila looks at the empty plate. She pulls her hair loosely through her fingers. She watches him get up. Leila can feel the ember glowing on her chest. “It was a really good year,” she whispers.

“There'll be more to come, Lei. You deserve it. Say, you hear anything from that old boyfriend of Melanie's?”

“Thank God he moved to Ohio. I think he called her a few years ago from jail. I believe that's what she told me, but I couldn't say for sure.”

“I'll check on him. What about Lion?”

“What about Lion?” Leila puts the apron down and runs her fingers under the faucet. She keeps her back to him, splashing hot water over the frying pan, the coppery oil running lattice-like across the black surface. With a palm full of soap, she makes it disappear. Charlie is patiently waiting so he can say good-bye without feeling guilty. Leila rinses the pan slowly, turns off the water, and dries her hands. He feels strange, knowing her kitchen, where she keeps the cups and plates, and the drawer that holds all the broken china tea cups that she can't quite bring herself to throw away.

“I should probably talk to Lion, too,” he says.

“I think he's probably gone looking for her.”

“I wouldn't advise that. Not that he'd listen anyway.” He closes his steno notepad and slips it into his pocket. “Like I
said, she'll probably show up. A missing person's report should get things moving. You call me again if you want to. But I've got a feeling you should just sit tight. The best thing I'll say is that people have habits. I'd wager she'll be back on her own.” Charlie is fighting with himself over not being truthful with her. Maybe the schmuck with the truck has shown up. Charlie sees a whole line of trucks in Melanie's future. He knows about the Florence Nightingale syndrome, an affliction in which young girls are so compelled by their new maternal instincts that they'll cling to the first loser who walks through the door with a danger sign on his forehead. Charlie calls this a train wreck waiting to happen. No matter how smart these girls are, they'll believe the rescue a worthy cause, even if it means losing themselves.

The fact he's an expert on the habits of girls is the irony of the century, since, at times, he's been both the schmuck and the knight in shining armor. It gives him an odd perspective, one that, he tells himself, only helps him do his job better. He can get right into the minds of both boys and girls. If Charlie had had a daughter, he'd have started early talking to her about it. Maybe he'd drive her by a wreck. Though some folks might find it harsh, he believes it would teach her in an instant what it took some a lifetime to experience.

The saving grace is that some girls learn. They'll grow wise to their own hearts' meanderings. They'll spot a train wreck miles away and they'll run in the opposite direction. They'll find good men to marry and go on to live good lives. But others will spend their lives compelled by the rescue. These women will become the forever disappointed, so much that sometimes it will hurt to look them in the eye. As he does to Leila, now.

As Charlie turns to leave, he reaches out and takes Leila's hand. “Lei, I never meant to lead you on.”

She pulls her hand away. “Just go,” Leila tells him, her eyes welling up.

“Those three days that we had,” says Charlie. “They were the best of my life.”

“I said, get out,” Leila tells him. But she doesn't turn away when Charlie leans in and kisses her lightly on the lips. “Please,” Leila whispers, rubbing her hand over her lips. “Don't do this to me.”

“You know, I still think about you,” he says, before he walks out the front door. Leila closes the door, leaving Charlie on the front stoop. He gets in his car and drives away, the sound of Melanie's son's crying echoing in the distance as he spots the last of the white stones still littering some of the lawns. Most people have them bagged in their trash by now. A few have used them to adorn their gardens. Some folks have taken them back to the water. When Charlie is halfway back to the police station, he realizes he has left his gun on Leila's kitchen table.

 

V
ICTOR
E
LLIS IS HIDING
in Leila's kitchen pantry, the dog bites on his thigh and shoulder bleeding through the bandages. He has been listening to the sound of a baby crying, a baby that he has just discovered is his grandson, a cry now burned into his memory. And he has been listening to Leila's conversation with Charlie Cooke, which has filled Victor with hate. So Charlie Cooke had been the one to fool around with Leila, the goddamn secret that they all kept from him. Victor had screwed up his family to begin with, but this bastard had contributed to it, too. Now Victor will not let anything get in his way again. He has been away too long. This is
his
family.
His
time.
His
need for truth.
His
redemption.

He will make it right with Leila. He will make it right with Melanie and Maya and they will all be a family again as they
were meant to be. He hears Leila's footsteps on the stairs and then the baby stops crying. Then the sound of rushing water in the shower. Victor sits down at the kitchen table as he has done for the last two nights, reclaiming his place as the king of his home. Last night he ate some leftover Chinese egg rolls for dinner, took some money from Leila and left to bring Melanie food, which she hardly ate. Old Sally stayed far away from him the whole time and that was all right. He never liked that dog anyway.

Right now, as he sits at the head of the table, he is going over and over that last fight with Leila on the night that the boy died. But it wasn't the burnt bread that had made him angry, that had driven him to drink a full bottle of whiskey. It was Luke. His presence, a reminder of Leila's infidelity, of everything Victor was not and would never be. He was never even close to approaching what that child possessed, that element of lightness. No, Victor was always chained by something. He had thought for years that it was Leila. But it wasn't Leila, and it wasn't the whiskey, and it wasn't the girls, and maybe it wasn't even Luke. It was something else, something deep inside him, made him more animal than human, a person operating on an instinct so strong, it left him with no free will. Remember why the dog was chained up, he thinks, rubbing his bandages.

He gets up and walks through the house, touching everything in Leila's glass cabinet. Once it was his gun cabinet, but not anymore. Now, it is a shrine to Luke. It holds antique frames with pictures of the girls and Luke, a silver baby spoon with Luke's name engraved on it, a yellow paper airplane, a purple scarf, a book about flying, and a glass bowl full of Luke's coveted dimes. When Victor was a child, after his father left for work he used to walk through the house and touch everything in the gun cabinet. He would pick up the guns and look at
them, and rub their barrels with his thumb, as though waiting to be transformed. Once Victor began shooting birds for sport, he began to smell just like his father. The scent still follows Victor back from the fields, clings to his skin and his clothing for days. He can smell it now, filling Leila's house, a house that was once his. He wonders if Old Sally can smell it, too, and if that is why she is whining at the door, trying to get out.

There, in the kitchen, he finishes the bottle of whiskey from his pocket and is about to leave to find Maya. His car is hidden under one of the huge willows on a side road. That is when he notices Charlie's gun case on the table. A 40-caliber pistol: shiny, black, and small. Victor picks it up. Seconds later, he hears the front door open and Charlie is calling Leila's name, walking toward the kitchen. Suddenly, Charlie is standing right in front of Victor, open-mouthed. Charlie lunges for his gun.

Instinct is a thing to be feared. Victor, in some part of his mind, knows he is not like other people, that he possesses an absence of free will. Victor hadn't planned to do what he does next. He has only shot to kill once before. But the way Charlie Cooke is looking at him, with that disgusted strangling stare. The old skunk took Leila away from him. It is animal instinct. Victor protecting his territory.

Victor lifts the gun and points it at Charlie. He pulls the trigger and shoots Charlie right between the eyes. Blood splatters across Victor's shirt, across the tile floor, and the organza curtains. The smell of gunpowder fills the air. The black fur on Old Sally's back is now drenched in red.

Charlie, still standing, stares at him for a moment, a look of understanding crosses his face as blood runs from his ears and down his neck.