The April Tree Page 10

  “You can add to the poem if you want,” Becky invited them.

  Elyse closed her eyes. “We always used to laugh and play,” she intoned, then opened her eyes again and peered questioningly at Becky.

  Becky nodded. “And now my mood is dark and gray,” she responded.

  “She chased the tennis ball when it did stray,” Florie said.

  “No,” Becky snapped. “It’s just about April. Not about the tennis ball.” She saw Florie’s eyes fill like clear, oddly shaped cups, and added gently, “Her path through life has gone astray.”

  Blinking furiously, Florie nodded and repeated the line in a wavering voice: “Her path through life has gone astray.”

  “I’m sorry,” Becky said. “But it has to be only about April. What happened to her. Not how it happened, or why.” Like everything else in the tree ritual, Becky could not explain the reason for this. She only knew it in her heart. The poem had to be about April and nothing but April.

  The three of them stood silent for a minute, the only sounds their breathing and the distant chatter of squirrels. Then Florie surprised Becky by saying, “For her soul I pray.”

  That would work. It seemed oddly . . . religious, and Becky felt a twinge of ironic amusement that her sacred ritual should be invaded by something actually sacred, like prayer and mention of a soul. But she wouldn’t criticize Florie’s addition. It fit the criteria. It was about April, her death, this hallowed ground. And it rhymed.

  The candle’s flame flickered, then grew steady. They all pressed their palms against the tree and watched it until Becky felt a wash of stillness surround her. The squirrels stopped their scritching; the blackflies stopped hovering in search of bare skin to bite. She didn’t know if Elyse and Florie sensed this moment when the universe held its breath, but she hoped they did. That was why she went through her ritual: to feel the stillness, the oneness. To find an instant of peace. To honor April with that peace. The peace that passeth understanding.

  “Okay,” she said, shattering the quiet. “Now we plant some grass.”

  “Why?” Florie asked.

  “So grass will grow here,” Elyse said, stating the obvious.

  She was correct, but there was more. “So something new will live where April left us,” Becky explained, unzipping the bag and handing each of them a pinch of seeds. “I don’t know—it’s shady under the tree. Maybe grass needs more sunlight. But I plant some seeds here every time I come.” She shrugged and added, “One thing my parents never taught me was gardening.”

  Her mother had attempted to plant an organic garden a few years ago. The compost heap had attracted fat, ugly houseflies, and the tomatoes had been devoured by crows while they were still green on the vine. Fortunately, less than five miles from their house was an organic farm stand where they could pay exorbitant prices for drab cucumbers and ears of corn with pale worms embedded inside them.

  Becky’s father had never bothered to cultivate a lawn on their property, claiming grass was ecologically unsound, consuming too much water, producing nothing edible, and requiring chemical fertilizers and weed killers. The Zinn front yard looked like a prairie, a wild tangle of dandelions and buttercups and, just to spite Becky’s father, some stubborn grass that grew long and stringy and occasionally produced flowers.

  She’d bought the grass seed at the hardware store in town and stored it on the shelf in her closet, alongside the box with her bottle of bourbon, as if the grass was contraband. Wrong kind of grass, she thought, smiling grimly as she sprinkled her seeds on the ground around the tree’s bulging roots. Florie and Elyse sprinkled their seeds as well, and Becky doused the seeds with water.

  Then she bowed, cupped her hand around the shiva candle, and blew out the flame. “I love you, April,” she whispered into the waxy smoke that rose from the wick.

  Without having to be told, Elyse and Florie both murmured, “I love you, April.”

  Becky felt a closeness to them, a unity she’d never felt before. It transcended friendship. It transcended loss. They’d performed the April tree ritual together, and that meant they were bound together forever.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE WEED Mark was smoking formed a cushion around his brain. Like foam padding, it muffled his mind, preventing it from rattling inside his skull and bruising itself on the thoughts that jutted out in sharp, wounding angles.

  Remy had brought him to this rambling Victorian beach house in Ipswich, up on the North Shore. The house belonged to a friend of a friend of however-many friends, and it had enough beds, sofas, and rug-strewn floor space to hold the twenty or so kids who’d shown up for the weekend. A few were from BU, like Mark and Remy. A few were from Northeastern, a few from Boston College and bristling with a school spirit the BU and Northeastern kids didn’t share. A few were just kids hanging out in town for the summer, and who the hell knew where they were from. Not that Mark was taking a census. The more weed he smoked, the less he cared.

  He and Remy sat side by side on the steps leading down from the veranda to a stretch of long, floppy grass. Further from the house, the grass grew thinner and thinner, individual strands drooping across the white sand like a bad comb-over, until there was nothing but beach, and beyond it, ocean. Whoever the friend of a friend of a whatever was, he must be rich.

  Remy sucked on the spliff, then handed it to Mark and leaned back, folding his arms behind his woolly head and stretching out his legs. “You know what I love about the ocean?” he said. “It smells like a woman’s crotch.”

  Mark didn’t know whether to laugh or gag. He opted to toke long and hard, and held his breath until he could feel the smoke pressing hot against his lungs. He exhaled slowly, proud that he could control his breath.

  Breathing. Smoking. Feeling the edge of the upper step dig a horizontal line into his back. In the past couple of weeks, he’d set himself a goal of distilling his existence into the purely physical, and he was succeeding to a reasonable degree. His work at the warehouse attached to the carpet store was about weight and heft, about the textures of pile and straw-like backing, the stretch and strain of his back when he hoisted a roll of carpet up and over his shoulder and lugged it out to one of the trucks. He felt his labor in his thighs, in his palms. The warehouse was air-conditioned, but its loading docks were open to the outdoors. The atmosphere was warm and musty, the scent of dust so constant that he had to concentrate to notice it.

  He sweated a lot.

  Sweating was better than remembering.

  Last weekend he’d signed on to work overtime. In the evening, he’d returned to the apartment in Brighton and gotten shit-faced with Remy and Sam, ingesting beer and weed until he passed out on the sofa. Passed out was better than remembering, too. He could have done that this weekend, worked overtime, returned late to the apartment and collapsed, except that Remy had insisted that Mark accompany him to the North Shore.

  “So,” Remy said, his gaze following a game of catch a few people were playing on the beach with a Frisbee.

  Mark figured that was his cue to say something. “Did I thank you for getting me the carpet job?”

  “A few times.” Remy hissed a toke. “So, how stoned do I have to get you before you tell me what happened in Wheatley?”

  “Keep trying,” Mark said. If Remy wanted to ply him with dope all summer, he would say thank-you for that, as well. A job and a steady supply of pot. What more could a person ask for?

  “Was it just your brother being an asshole? That’s not a reason to move out of your parents’ chateau. Aston’s an asshole all the time, but I’d put up with him for the free rent and my mom’s cooking.” Aston was Remy’s younger brother. Aston Martin. Remy’s parents had a sense of humor.

  “But you’re not putting up with him,” Mark argued. “You could have spent the summer at your parents’ house, but you’re here.”

&nbs
p; “Number one, my parents’ house has no air-conditioning. Number two, I got a job in Boston. No jobs up in Vermont. Number two, I signed a full-year lease on the apartment.”

  “That’s two number twos,” Mark pointed out.

  “Math is not my strong subject.” Remy shrugged, pinched the joint, and took another hit before passing what was left of it to Mark. “So what the fuck? Your parents kicked you out?”

  “No.”

  “You’re a wanted man? There was a terrorist plot in Wheatley, and you were implicated? What?”

  Mark smoked silently.

  “I never took you for the kind of guy who runs away,” Remy said. “I mean, what? How bad can it be?” He chuckled, then asked, “You killed someone?”

  Mark tensed his muscles to keep from reacting. Hearing the words was like taking a body blow, fierce and painful. He killed someone. Yeah, that about summed it up. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, because he couldn’t lie to Remy. The guy had found him a job, given him a couch to sleep on, provided him with dope. The guy was his friend at a time Mark didn’t deserve friends. Mark couldn’t tell him the truth, but he couldn’t lie to him, either.

  A Frisbee landed at his feet with a dull thump. He stared at it as if it were a dead bird that had dropped out of the sky.

  “Hey, man, throw it back,” someone shouted. Just beyond the grass on the beach, a handful of people stood staring at him. At least he assumed they were staring at him. The sun’s glare turned them into silhouettes, some male, some female. Hands on hips, hair ribboned in the air by the sea breeze.

  The last time he was blinded by the sun, he’d been cold sober, and he’d killed someone. This time, he was blitzed and he couldn’t move, other than to lift his hand to his brow, half a salute, half an attempt to see better.

  “They want their Frisbee,” Remy said.

  “Yeah.” Mark lacked the energy to stand and throw it.

  Remy heaved himself to his feet, smacked his palms against his shorts to dry them, lifted the Frisbee, and sailed it back to the people on the beach. Someone shouted something—the wind fractured her voice—and Remy jogged through the sandy grass to join the players.

  While Mark watched the game reassemble itself, a girl emerged from the house, crossed the veranda, and plopped herself down onto the step Remy had vacated. She was slight in build, her hair loosely braided and her face narrow like a ferret’s. Brown freckles pricked her nose and the bare skin of her arms. Her toenails, visible below the straps of her flip-flops, were painted green. She held a sweating bottle of beer, her fingers so loose around its neck he was surprised it didn’t slip out of her grasp.

  For a while, neither of them spoke. In the distance, the ocean washed against the sand, singing hush, hush, hush. Occasionally that soothing music was pierced by the caw of a seagull or the shouts of the Frisbee players. Mark knew he ought to say something to the girl, but he couldn’t think of anything to say. Instead, he extended the joint to her.

  It had burned down pretty small, and rather than take it from him, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist and used his hand as a roach clip, lifting it to her face so she could suck in some smoke. She nodded her thanks, then released him, exhaled, and took a sip of beer before passing him the bottle.

  He took a sip, then handed the bottle back to her. The beer was warm. His brother, who believed he knew everything about everything, told him people in Great Britain drank their beer warm. If that was true, Mark could understand why they’d lost the Revolutionary War.

  “So, how do you know Wesley?” she finally said.

  “Who?”

  She laughed. “I guess that answers my question.”

  “Seriously. Who’s Wesley?”

  “This is his house,” she said, tapping the step between their asses with her bottle.

  “Oh.” Mark drew the last of the smoke from the joint, then pinched it dead and tossed it into the sandy grass at the base of the stairs. It was biodegradable, he was pretty sure. “My friend Remy must know him,” he said, gesturing toward the Frisbee players. Remy’s silhouette was distinct, his hair uniquely thick and wild. Remy had never mentioned anyone named Wesley before, but maybe he’d referred to the guy by his last name. Or maybe Wesley was the guy’s last name. “How about you?”

  “Wesley and I go way back,” she said in a tone that implied there was a long, involved history between her and this Wesley dude. Either that, or she wanted Mark to think there was a long, involved history between them.

  Once again, he felt he ought to say something. Comment on the cotton puffs of cloud drifting across the sky. Critique the finesse of the Frisbee players. Ask the girl what her name was. Tell her he’d killed someone.

  He said nothing. The layer of inebriation wrapping around his brain felt too warm, like a fleece scarf. Its weight smothered him.

  Well, she wasn’t talking, either. Maybe she’d killed someone, too.

  “Pizza,” a guy inside the house shouted.

  HE DIDN’T remember eating any pizza, but he must have scarfed down a few slices, because someone asked him for ten bucks to cover his share of the food. He handed her a ten-dollar bill that turned out to be a twenty, which she noticed and was honest enough to point out to him.

  He had a kind of dream memory of eating, an aftertaste of hot oil and oregano on his tongue. The girl who went way back with Wesley floated in and out of his peripheral vision. He should have asked her name. He should care about such things.

  He drank a beer, trying to wash away the residue of oil and spice and melted cheese that burdened his breath. This beer was so cold, it tasted more like ice than beer. Remy, smelling of salt and sweat, clapped a hand on his shoulder and said something about getting lucky that night. In Mark’s diminished expectation of happiness, getting lucky would translate into being able to sleep on a couch rather than on the floor.

  And then she was at his side again, her braid slightly lopsided, her arms as thin as a ballerina’s and freckled all the way to her shoulders. She was wearing one of those tops girls wore that looked like undershirts. No bra. She didn’t need one; she didn’t have much going on in the breast department. Although she stood near him, a wedge of pizza held deftly in her hand, the crust folded in such a way that the pointed tip didn’t droop, she chatted with a girl on her other side, leaving him to contemplate her bony shoulder. She was talking about Wesley, or maybe about Wellesley. If she was a Wellesley College girl, she was too smart to be hanging out with him.

  Everyone at the beach house, male or female, was too smart to hang out with him. But there he was, amid all those smart people, his secret safe. They didn’t need to know that he was . . . what? A criminal? A thug? A monster?

  He gazed through a window at the darkening world outside. At least a dozen people were crammed inside the kitchen and living room. A TV babbled at the other end of a hallway. Hip-hop thumped through the ceiling from the second floor, its rhythm synced to the beat of his heart. The noise—music, TV, people all talking at once—felt solid to Mark, as thick as drying mud. He worked his way toward the door and back out onto the veranda.

  The day’s heat had vanished with the sun. Above the water the sky was a rich purple, a few narrow black clouds marbling through it. He gulped in the air and felt his pulse begin to slow.

  “You okay?”

  She’d followed him out onto the veranda. She was prettier when her face was obscured by the evening gloom, which was a rotten thing to think, but then, he’d already established in his mind that he was a shitty person. “Yeah,” he said, resting his arms against the porch railing. Its white paint was chipped and cracked. Like his brain, he thought, taking a sip of beer.

  “You think I’m a pest,” she said.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know why you’d want anything to do with me, but no.”

  �
�You’ve got something going on inside you,” she said. “That’s why.” She extended her hand. “Lynnette.”

  It took him a few seconds to realize she was introducing herself. “Mark,” he said, then shook her hand. “And there’s really nothing going on inside me.” Nothing at all. Absolute zero.

  She laughed in disbelief. A breeze rolled off the sand, causing loose strands of her hair to flutter around her face. “I’m psychic,” she said. “I feel vibes from you. You’re all knotted up inside.”

  “A little more weed would probably cure that,” he joked. Honestly, he didn’t want her unraveling his knots. He didn’t even want her aware of them.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” she said, then proceeded to pry. “You’d feel better if you opened up a little.”

  Her words made him close up. A lot.

  “Or, you know. We could just fuck.”

  That sounded better than opening up. “We could do that,” he agreed slowly, then added, “I didn’t bring anything with me.” Drunk, stoned, and monstrous, he was still a Boy Scout when it came to using rubbers.

  “I did,” she said, giving him a knowing smile.

  He wondered where the hell they were going to do this when the house was teeming with all those loud, laughing people. She took his hand, led him down the porch steps, and he thought, damn, not on the beach. He didn’t want to end up with grains of sand glued to his balls.

  She didn’t lead him toward the beach, and he felt some of his tension ebb. He still wasn’t sure how he felt about this, about her. Psychic? What the hell did that mean? Would she pry after she’d screwed him, assuming she had the right to know his secrets because they’d had sex?

  Did he even deserve sex? No. He didn’t deserve anything, ever again.

  But she kept walking, pulling him along, her fingers woven through his, until they reached the detached garage, a shingled gray barn of a building at the end of a short driveway of pearl-white pebbles and crushed shells.

  She shoved open one of the doors, and he thought he ought to help her with it, since it seemed heavy and she was so thin. He spent his days heaving rolls of carpet; surely he could open a garage door on sticky hinges more easily than she could. But she was in charge, this was her show, and he didn’t interfere.