Читать книгу Tree Fever - Karen Hood-Caddy - Страница 8

Chapter 1

I awoke to the sound of lake water lapping, the primal, sloshing rhythm of water as it meets the shore over and over again. Sitting up, I opened my eyes. Sprawled before me, the luminous, naked body of the lake shimmered and shook in the rough embrace of Muskoka rock.

Blue, orange, purple-black and green, the water rolled towards me. Only a few weeks ago, the lake was held prisoner under ice that cracked and snapped like a whip keeping an animal in submission. But now the water was free again and rambunctious, slapping and clapping restlessly against the dock. Sometimes in its rollicking, splashes of water leapt into the cool spring air, breaking into a spray of silver droplets that sparkled in the light.

Wrapping a blanket around me, I moved to the open window. The waving arms of a thousand evergreens greeted me. I breathed deeply as though I might draw the lush smell of them into the landscape of my body.

Should I go for a swim? If anything could pull the sluggishness from my body it would be the coldness of the lake. It would wake me up, get me going. I’d slept in again. Why was it so hard to get up lately? And when I was up, I couldn’t get myself going. A swim would be perfect. Years ago, I started every day with a swim.

My shoulders hunched and my fingers pulled the blanket more securely around me. My body did not like this idea. Is this what aging does, makes you decide things because of temperature? Comfort? Disgruntled, I sighed and stared out at the lake.

In the dark-green water near the shore, an arrowhead of ducks moved soundlessly. As I watched them, they turned abruptly and scuttled back towards my small wooden dock. Hearing the sputter of a boat, I leaned forward and peered down the lake.

“God, they’re at it again!” I picked up my field glasses and scanned the water. A boat full of fishermen loomed up hugely in the binoculars.

“Look at them. The bastards! They’re tossing bottles into the water.” I paced the room as furiously as if the bottles were being jettisoned into my own living room. “The dump’s just down the road!”

Charlie, my dog, pulled the bulk of his golden body up on his haunches and looked at me.

“You know what I’m going to do, Charlie? I’m going to canoe out there and tell them they’re breaking the law.” I stood for a moment, revelling in the mental images.

I collapsed into the chair. I couldn’t do it. As usual, my sense of propriety strong-armed my rebelliousness into submission. The boat with the carousing men disappeared along the shoreline.

“Why do I let them get away with it?” Doing something, anything, couldn’t be worse than the fury I felt when I did nothing.

“One of these days, Charlie, I’m not going to be such a pushover.”

I sipped my tea, trying to calm myself. As if to bolster my spirits, a fish jumped. Pleasure splashed through me. When I was a child, I used to spend hours pretending to be a fish. I’d hurl myself out of the lake into the warm air, then let myself crash down into the waiting water and watch a billion pellucid air bubbles explode in front of my open eyes.

“Fish” my parents called me. Later, they would go fishing and smash their catch over the head with the end of a paddle.

Such contradictions baffled me as a child. I’d spent years sorting them out in my analysis with Rudi. Rudi. I couldn’t think of her without feeling a softness in my chest. I wondered how she was. My therapist for years, and later on, when that part of my life was over, she’d become an elderly mentor and friend. I missed her. A year ago she’d given in to her daughter’s persuasion and gone to live with her in the city. Although I loathed the idea of it, Rudi was aging. Every few weeks I telephoned and with each call, her frailty seemed to increase. As did my anxiety. I still needed her. The last time we had spoken, she had sounded weak and vulnerable. Ever since, I’d felt a vague sense of panic, as if I were out in the middle of a lake on an air mattress that was losing its air.

To this day, I can’t eat fish of any kind. When my grandson, Luke, catches one, I always want to put the glistening beauty back in the water where it belongs. But even there, the fish aren’t safe. A few years ago, officials put signs along the public wharfs warning people of the level of poison in each species. Those signs made me burn with anger. I cursed the culprits who were polluting the lake and vowed to stop them. But who was there to fight? What was I supposed to do, scream at every motorboat on the lake? Blow up every malfunctioning septic system? Depressing as it was, I had to accept that the enemy wasn’t a person, it was a way of life, as embedded in the culture as gum in a child’s hair.

Charlie banged his tail on the table leg and laid his blond head consolingly on my leg. I slid my palm along the velvet smoothness of his forehead. Heavily, I stood up. “Come on, Charlie, we’ve got Madge this morning.”

I confronted the clothes in my closet, considering the various possibilities. Everything felt so staid, so conservative. Who was the person who wore these clothes? Reaching for a forest-green sweat suit I had bought on impulse the week before and not yet worn, I headed for the bathroom.

My face, round as the moon, stared back at me from the mirror. I have always been told I have a kind face, one that engenders trust. But the face that stared back at me this morning had a precarious, doubtful look. The kind that a mother gives her child when she’s not sure she’s happy with what she sees.

I am losing myself. Like a piece of fruit that’s been left out too long, my face is wrinkling and surrendering its shape to the laws of gravity. My jaw, for example, appalls me. Look at the way the skin sags there, drooping from the bone like a wet towel. Jowls are what I can look forward to next.

Only my eyes offer solace. Frog-green with flecks of dark brown, I’ve always liked my eyes. A client of mine, Norman, said they were “ferocious”.

“They go with that name of yours – Jessie Dearborn James. You sound more like a cowgirl than a psychotherapist,” Norman had said.

I smiled and began applying face cream. As if the cream were going to do any good.

Positioning my fingers in front of my ears, I pulled my skin tight. A younger, fresher face sprang out from the folds of my own. I bet Madge would have a face lift if she could afford it. She wouldn’t have qualms.

I stared at myself unhappily. What’s happening? I don’t like my clothes, I don’t like my face …

Slowly, as in the fairy story of the Princess and the Pea, I groped under my psychological mattresses for the cause. In terms of career, things were excellent. I was a respected psychotherapist with a waiting list of people who wanted to work with me. It hadn’t been easy going back to school, but I had obtained the necessary degree. I was proud of that.

On the home front, things were better than ever with the kids. Ted was managing both his own business and his life as a single parent to Luke. And Robyn was finally home. After being away for over five years, she’d flown in from Sri Lanka a week ago. I had hardly recognized her at the airport. I must have expected her to look older. More mature. But with long dark hair and thin, girlish body, she looked like a teenager. She still wore nothing but black, but now she had a tiny sapphire stud in the side of her nose.

She looks punkish.

Oh, stop. She’s home. At last. Maybe now the healing can begin.

The phone rang and I scooted into my office so I could listen to the message as it was delivered to my answering machine. I didn’t want to pick it up unless I had to.

“Jessie,” the voice hesitated. “It’s Officer Tamlin. Jack.” He paused, then spoke forcefully as if my machine might put up an argument. “I’m going to cancel my appointment this week. I think I’m all right now. I mean, I’m driving and everything. I don’t want to take up any more of your time.”

I smiled wryly at his choice of words. Why couldn’t he just say he didn’t want to come? Why did he have to make it sound like he was concerned about my time?

Jack Tamlin had come a long way. Employed as one of the town’s police officers, he’d been in a gruesome car accident a few months ago. His fellow officer had been killed and Jack had almost lost his leg. When Jack recovered and returned to work, he discovered he was unable to drive a car without shaking like a puppy. Embarrassed and ashamed, he had called me. After a few weeks of therapy, he was driving with confidence again. The last time he’d been in, he’d reported that now when he drove, his palms didn’t even get sweaty.

“You know how grateful I am,” Jack continued into the machine. “I just don’t think I need therapy anymore.”

I shook my head. For some people, often men, the idea of being in therapy was so threatening, had such a damaging effect on their self-esteem, they only submitted themselves to the process out of dire necessity. These were the ones who showed up late so they wouldn’t run into anyone they knew in the waiting room. And they terminated therapy as soon as possible.

“Heaven’s be that you might come to therapy because you enjoy it,” I said aloud, “because it’s gratifying to get to know yourself.”

Seeing the light flash on my machine, I flicked back the tape. How had I missed a call? It must have come in late yesterday afternoon. I’d been out until after midnight the night before and hadn’t bothered checking the messages until now.

The crisp, cheery voice of the health clinic’s receptionist told me to call her back. “Just when you get a moment,” she said, obviously trying not to cause alarm.

Drats. They were closed on Wednesday mornings. Now I was going to have to wait until later to find out the results of those tests. But something must be wrong or they wouldn’t have phoned.

Feeling unsettled, I went back into the bathroom and faced myself again. I was frowning, so the crease lines around my lips and eyes were even deeper now. There was no doubt about it, a face lift would snug things up nicely.

No.

I hated the idea of giving in to the image makers. Wasn’t cosmetic surgery the very antithesis of what I believed in? I, whose profession it was to dig into the realms of truth. Surely that necessitated the honouring of one’s various bulges and blotches.

It did. It had to. It was important that people respect their aging process. After all, aging is part of life. I told that to clients all the time, believed it myself and tried to model it.

But there was another part of me that hated the invisibility that came with age: the waiters who didn’t notice me, the sales people who served younger people first, the television programs that never showed a person over fifty – except to advertise laxatives. As if older people were just a bunch of sluggish bowels.

“My bowels are just fine,” I muttered aloud.

“So are mine, but I don’t tell my mirror about it.”

I swung around to see Madge standing in the doorway, her poppy-red mouth moving playfully. “You probably take all that stuff…” I said.

Madge shrugged, her grey eyes laughing. “Whatever works. That’s what I say – whatever works.”

I laced up my running shoes and looked at her. She was wearing purple leotards topped by a hip-length, banana-yellow sweatshirt with the words DO IT on the front in bright red letters. Huge silver hoops hung from her ears.

“You don’t have to tell me – I’m bright.” Her lips curled mischievously.

“Let’s put it this way, you’ll never be called a dull, shrivelled-up old lady.”

“None of that white-haired, fade-away stuff for me. No way.” She blew a gust of air out of her crimson lips. “If I’m going to die, and I haven’t decided that I will, I’m going out with a bang, not a whimper.”

I chuckled as we headed down the road, Charlie leaping ahead. Madge pumped her arms as she moved into the rhythm of our race walking.

“The only reason I do this,” she huffed “is that when I’m ninety, I’ll be able to mountain climb with my forty-year-old lover.”

Great puffs of air billowed out of my mouth into the cool spring air as I laughed. We settled into a steady, but brisk pace along the country road. Around us the cottages were just visible through the leafless trees. Cottages. Once upon a time they’d been truly that: little cabins in the Muskoka woods for people to escape to. The “escapees” were mostly from Toronto and other southern Ontario towns, but some were Americans, travelling from as far away as Chicago and Pittsburgh and even Baltimore.

In the early days, people nestled their cabins unobtrusively into the woods, painting them bark-brown or coniferous green. And behind each cottage was another structure: the outhouse. Often designed with a half moon cut into the door, these little wooden stalls were fitted with windows that overlooked the lake and stocked with the prerequisite array of Reader’s Digests and Dell Crossword Puzzles.

But the affluence of the seventies and eighties had hit Muskoka like a hallucinogenic drug. Suddenly the simplest of cottages burgeoned into an architectural fantasy with guest quarters, laundry facilities and the inevitable Muskoka Room with its handcrafted wooden furniture and glass from floor to ceiling. In these fashion-magazine cottages, washrooms with saunas and hot tubs replaced the old outhouses, which were then torn down or turned into meditation huts.

On the water, boathouses blossomed out onto the lake, boathouses with four or five boat slips, topped with huge sun decks ornamented with yellow umbrellas and designer lawn furniture.

“I’d like to know where these summer people get all their money,” Madge said as a truck loaded with lumber rumbled by.

“And these are second homes,” I added. “Used a few weeks of the year.”

“Crazy,” Madge sighed. “But we’d be lost without them. Summer renovations are what feed the locals. For Boyd, they’re his bread and butter.”

“You mean his champagne and caviar!” Boyd was a contractor renowned for bleeding the summer people like a leech.

“City people should pay city prices – that’s what he says.

I couldn’t hold myself back. “Just because he’s got a license to steal doesn’t mean he should use it.”

“Come on, all the locals gouge the tourists.”

“They jack their prices up – that’s different from robbing them.”

I didn’t want this conversation. I knew it wasn’t one I could have cleanly. I didn’t like Boyd, although I couldn’t say why. It was strange. In my psychotherapy practice, I saw drug addicts, wife beaters, liars and cheats. Yet I always managed to establish an unerring belief in each person’s potential redemption. With Boyd, however, I couldn’t rally much compassion. And I felt guilty about it.

A lot of people said he’d done a great deal for our community. Just that morning I had read an article in the paper about a development project he’d finished. And Robyn had thought the world of him when he’d been her swim coach in high school. She used to keep a photograph of him on her wall. For years, a blond and boyish Boyd had smiled down on her bed, his white teeth shining.

The photograph had been one that Robyn had taken herself. Once upon a time, she’d been enthralled with photography, sometimes spending hours in the woods with her camera and tripod.

“I saw him again last night,” Madge said.

“Oh?” I tried to keep the concern out of my voice. I was nervous about Madge dating Boyd. First of all, there was the age thing – Boyd was in his late thirties, Madge was almost fifty. For her, however, that probably only added to his attraction. But there were other things as well. “Doesn’t it bother you that he’s married?”

Madge snorted. “Everyone knows he and his wife have separate lives.”

“Then why doesn’t he separate officially? Instead of trying to cut it both ways?”

“Politics, I guess. Some people don’t approve of divorce.”

I frowned. Yesterday someone told me they’d seen Boyd at a bar with Donna. Donna was a client of mine that he’d dropped rather brutally a few months before. Did this mean they were seeing each other again?

“The guy’s a complete rascal.” Madge chuckled. “Obviously very used to getting his own way.” She gasped for breath. “I managed to kick him out before he got into my –” she cleared her throat, playing for time – “bed. But it wasn’t easy.”

I flinched but kept my mouth shut.

“I must admit,” Madge went on, “it’s awfully nice having a man around again.”

“It’s nice having certain men around,” I wanted to correct. Instead I said, “I don’t know which is better, living alone and dealing with the loneliness or being with someone and having to deal with all their hangups.”

Madge elbowed me. “You forget the delights.”

“You forget the hassles!”

“It’s been six months since Ed moved out. And we weren’t doing diddly squat at the end there. That’s long enough for me to do without sex.”

“Six months? Try six years!”

Madge hooted. “I can’t.”

I thought about Ed’s narrow eyes and the way they used to wander over my breasts when he didn’t think I would notice.

“The one good thing about menopause,” Madge said, “is that, for once in my life, I don’t have to worry about birth control.”

“Just all those deadly little diseases,” I added, unable to stop myself.

Madge groaned. “Here I am, finally free to have free sex and its not free anymore.”

“If it ever was …” Oh, Jessie, don’t be such a prude.

We walked faster, neither risking more conversation.

Fifteen minutes later, we reached the outskirts of town. Tea shops and country inns were coming to life again as winter took off its coat of snow and the tourist season approached. The town was large enough to have a movie theatre, a small shopping mall, a swimming pool and bakery, all of which functioned year round. But by May 24th, the annual metamorphosis would be in full swing. Dozens of stores, in business only from May to Labour Day, would open their doors and hang “Welcome Back” signs in their windows to greet the influx of summer people who would soon triple the area’s population.

In the summer the town took on an almost European flavour with art exhibitions in the park, antique boat shows and a parade of tee-shirts emblazoned with LONDON, NEW YORK, MUSKOKA. Artists, painters, potters, glass blowers, quilt makers and silversmiths stocked the craft stores with their wares. For those brief, few months, the movie theatre showed films I actually wanted to see.

I liked the fact that the town had seasons. Like an undergarment, the winter population gave the town its supportive foundation, but it was the summer crowd that dressed it up with flamboyant fashions and startling colours, giving it life and sophistication. The summer people were, after all, on holiday and committed to having a good time. And the town, despite the occasional grumble about the annual invasion, was just as committed to providing it.

The cottagers were offered every opportunity to spend their money. And spend they did. They bought liquor by the case, loading the clinking boxes into mahogany launches that waited at docks built for their convenience. They bought corkscrews with fish heads, raccoon oven mitts and pine-scented toilet paper. They consumed thousands of cones of frozen yogurt, as they acquired hundreds of neon-coloured sail boards and dozens of jet skis. After their buying expeditions, they refreshed themselves in one of the waterside cafes which offered cold beer and jazz.

Muskoka became the playground of Ontario, and cottage property prices, as if wanting to be part of the fun, shot up like fireworks over the bay on the first of July.

“Hows it going with the kids? Ted still doing all right?” Madge asked. “You’ve got to admire him, eh? Ever hear from Luke’s mother?”

I shook my head. “Not since the day she propped the note on the washing machine saying she was leaving. Luke was what, five months then?”

“Strange – women are so different now. No matter how bad things were with Ed, when the kids were young, I never could have walked out.”

I had liked Luke’s mom and wished she could have stayed. “That poor woman, she didn’t have a clue who she was or what she wanted. It’s hard to give to others when your own barrel is empty.” I knew all about that one. So I understood. Besides, I was grateful to have a grandson.

“How old’s Luke now? Eight?”

I nodded. “I’m taking him to a powwow in a few weeks. Want to come?”

“A powwow? Isn’t that something out of the movies? Like when the natives meet and decide whether or not to go to war?”

“Maybe on television. This one’s on the reserve down in Orillia. I don’t know much about it, only that they dress up and do ceremonial dances. I’ve got Luke for the day and thought he might like it.”

“You know me, I’m always good for something different. Count me in – unless Boydie-boy wants me.”

Anger lurched into my throat at my second place position, but I said nothing.

“Speaking of different,” Madge said. “What’s it like having Robyn back? She doing ok?”

I swallowed my resentment and carried on. “Hard to tell. If I ask her anything, I get that invaded look. If I don’t ask, I don’t know.” I made myself breathe out the tension in my neck. “Meanwhile she’s leaving her laundry everywhere. I feel like I’m living with a teenager again, not a twenty-two year old woman.”

“Kids! My son still brings me his sweaters to wash. I never taught him how to do it because I thought his wife would do it when he got married. I tell that to Jeremy, John’s current lover, and we all get a good chuckle out of it.”

“It’s crazy. I couldn’t wait to have her back and now I can hardly stand it.” A soggy wetness gathered in my chest. “She just seems so angry all the time.” And here you are, a psychotherapist and you can’t understand your own daughter. “Maybe I shouldn’t have sold the house.”

“Hey, hold your horses. Things change. She can’t expect to be away all those years and have you run that huge old house alone. You did write and tell her you were moving. It’s not your fault that she was all over the place and didn’t get her mail.”

“I guess she had to go where the work was,” I heard myself say, even though I knew this was a poor explanation.

“What exactly did she do over there for all those years:

“It sounds awful, but I don’t really know. She didn’t write much and when she did, they were just postcards. I know she was a mother’s helper a few times. And she worked doing children’s programs at resorts.”

“Whatever. But it’s not as if you didn’t have a place for her to stay when she finally decided to come back.”

“That’s the reason I bought the house I did. With the basement room, the kids can visit and I can carry on with clients.” My breath was coming in short, anxious bursts. “God, I sound defensive.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself with me.” Madge swatted the air. “Kids always want their parents to stay the same. But life goes on.”

I slowed my pace so I could catch my breath. “I guess it’s hard for Robyn. When she left, her father was still alive and I was still a frumpy, old housewife, ever willing to do what the family wanted.”

“And what does Robyn find when she comes back?” Madge chuckled. “A powerhouse of a mother who’s making a damned good life for herself.”

“Having a therapist for a mother must be Robyn’s worst nightmare.”

“Remember, she’s the one who left,” Madge reminded me. “Speaking of nightmares, I had a dream about you the other night. You’re the dream lady, want to hear it?”

“I’d love to.”

“I’m not sure I remember it all, but some Indian was packing up your things. As if you were moving away. Weird, eh?”

I nodded and speculated about what the Indian might symbolize. Going back to nature? Being more in touch with instincts? Was some primal part of me going to send me off in some new direction?

“The natives are getting restless,” I heard myself say.

“You’re not thinking about moving, are you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“You’re so unsettled lately …“

“I know – I’m putting it down to menopause.”

“As long as you’re not going anywhere.”

“No,” I answered, wishing I could share her relief. I knew that even when people lived right beside each other, emotional changes could create distances as wide as oceans.

“Hey! A craft fair!” Madge jogged across the street. I followed reluctantly. I didn’t like to stop once we’d started moving, but I’d never been able to hold back Madge from a fair.

In the little park a dozen craft tables were set up, displaying hand-painted shirts, pottery, blown glass and other craft items. While Madge went over to look at some basket weaving, I wove my way through the clumps of people.

Feeling someone’s eyes on me, I turned. A man’s face met mine, a full-lipped, dark-skinned face that held itself openly towards me. His eyes pulled away from mine and returned to the drawing he was etching on some leather. He drew freehand, effortlessly, as if the design were already in the leather and all he had to do was trace it out.

Fascinated, I watched the way his hands worked the leather, touching it in a way that made it an intimate act. Sensing my gaze, he glanced up and smiled. His black eyes entered mine. Heat stung my face.

“Breathe!” a voice hissed.

Madge! I half turned, grinned.

“Nice stuff, eh?”

“His work is beautiful.”

“I wasn’t admiring his work,” Madge chortled. “I don’t think you were either.”

I elbowed Madge, but she carried on.

“Look at that hair!”

As Madge spoke, the man turned and I caught a glimpse of the resplendent black rope of it, as thick as a horsetail and just as long. A thong of leather interlaced with some forest green beads and two feathers held it in place.

I imagined loosening the strands, letting them slither over my bare body as he lay on top of me, his smooth skin sliding against mine.

Get a grip, woman. But my imagination was off and running. My body felt like a jungle full of gazelles pressing against the walls of my skin.

“He’s luscious,” Madge continued. “A bit young for you, but lots of women are going with younger men. Sexually, it makes far more sense, don’t you think?”

This time, I dug my elbow home, and hard, too. Madge stopped talking, but the smile remained on her mouth.

I crossed my arms in front of my chest. What was all this about? The fervour of my response to this man was outrageous. Over the last few years, the sexual side of me had sort of slipped into sleep. But this man was shaking me awake. I yanked my eyes away.

“Look,” Madge said. “He’s sketching little trees into the leather.”

Stretching forward, I could see a line of lone pine trees etched into the belt he was working on. I ran my fingers along the length of one of the finished belts and turned it over. There, burned into the leather, was his name: Harley Skinkeeper. The name was familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. What was going on here? I pulled at Madge.

“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Without waiting for her, I turned and started into a light jog. Charlie lopped beside me.

“Well, that was interesting” Madge commented when we were back on our way, heading towards the lake.

I wanted to say something, but no words came. I felt too embarrassed to talk. What was the matter with me? Surely at my age I was past such shenanigans. I quickened my pace and was grateful when I could smell the trees. I looked up and saw the park only a few hundred yards ahead. Instinctively, both of us slowed our pace and became quiet. I felt my breath deepen and my body calm as we moved among the tree trunks.

Although there were several hundred trees in the whole park, in the central area, a few dozen had been allowed to grow to their full magnificence. Their massive girths thundered out of the ground and thrust into the air with incredible power.

I looked up. Above me the branches arched towards each other, forming a sanctuary of stillness. Pale, white swords of light pierced through from the sky, illuminating the orange-red pine needles that covered the forest floor. I took a deep breath and the thick, rich smell of tree bark and rotting leaves went streaking into my lungs.

“Its funny how things change,” reflected Madge. “When you first brought me here as a child, this forest scared me. Imagine. It felt so wild.”

Walking beside Madge, I let my hands stroke each passing tree. To me, these woods had only ever been a refuge. They settled me, took me beneath the conflicts of my life to a place of strength and solidity. No, these trees had only ever been my mentors. They were the peace keepers.

“Then you introduced me to all those tree games,” Madge said. “What were we then, seven or eight years-old?”

There had been a hundred games. Games for rainy days, games for sunny days, adventure games, quiet games, as many games as there were hours to play in. All involving trees.

This had been the enchanted forest, where the fairy tale of the trees lived and breathed. The opening ritual had always been the same and early on, I had appointed myself the one to begin it: I led, showing Madge and my sister and brother how to open their palms and stroke each tree trunk in a slow gesture of greeting. This was the magic signal that told the trees that kindred spirits were now amongst them. We called ourselves the “tree people”, and considered ourselves a special species, born to look like ordinary human beings, but inside, sap ran thickly through our veins.

The trees recognized us and once we had each brushed our open palms along their trunks, they awakened, as if from a spell. To communicate with a particular tree, we lay on the ground, our small heads touching the trunk as our eyes scaled its impressive reach into the sky. Attuned in this way, we soon discovered that a tree could transfer its thoughts into our bodies without a sound.

Almost always, the first thing a tree told us was its name. Sometimes we had to wait to hear it, but no one would speak until all of us had received the tree’s communication. Then, after counting to three, we would all say the name the tree had told us at the same time. Nearly always, at least two of us would say the same name.

The huge evergreen with the plume soaring up into the belly of the clouds, told us its name was Skybrusher. With its giant bristles, it could brush the clouds wherever it wanted, sweeping them away to leave the sky clean and blue again. We often asked it to clear away thunder clouds when we were planning picnics, and it always did.

The two trees with their trunks pressed solidly together were called The Lovers. As a child, Madge had been fascinated with those two trees and the way their branches intertwined. Once she pointed to some sap oozing down one of the trunks. This was followed by weeks of speculation. Did trees fall in love? Could they have babies? Did they have sex?

As we walked through the grove now, Madge touched a beech tree with a bulbous protrusion erupting out of its side. I smiled. “Remember how I used to think a baby raccoon was living in there, making that bump?”

Madge nodded. “I wasn’t much better. I thought it was a beehive. I never got too close in case a bee would come out and sting me.”

I reached for the next tree. “And here’s Red. Big Red.” I looked up into a gigantic maple. In summer, its muscular limbs seemed to ride the wind like a cowboy.

We walked on until we came to my favourite tree: Candelabra. A magnificent pine with a trunk over four feet wide, its torso rose up mightily for about fifteen feet, then split into four offshoots, each rising straight as an arrow, a tree in its own right. The most remarkable part was that just as the gargantuan trunk divided, there was a little bowl-like sitting place. As children, it had taken all of us together, one standing on top of the other’s shoulders, to hoist one of us up there, but oh, the bliss of sitting in this tree’s giant palm.

Looking at it now, the sitting place seemed unreachable. How did I ever climb up there the night of the rape? I guess when you feel crazy, you can do crazy things.

I leaned back against a tree and breathed deeply. I didn’t want to remember that night now. I let my back fall against the solidness of the trunk and felt calm. “Strange how the older I get, the simpler are my pleasures,” I said.

Madge chewed her lower lip. “I’m the opposite. The older I get, the harder it is to find what I want.”

“What do you want?”

“Right now? Boyd.”

I nodded thoughtfully. Over and over in my psychotherapy work, I saw how people wanted things that couldn’t possibly fulfil them. Strange how you can’t get enough of what you don’t really want.

Madge nudged my arm and we wandered down to the lake. A strong wind breezed across the water, cooling my sweaty skin. The surface of the lake was choppy as if being pushed in too many different directions.

“Isn’t that Elfreda Pepper over there?” Madge asked, looking down the shore.

Following Madge’s glance, I saw a small-bodied old woman walking unsteadily between the trees. My back tightened.

“There’s someone I wish you could work with.” Madge said, looking at me intently.

I said nothing. I made sure my face gave away nothing. Elfreda had called me once, but she’d been drinking, so we hadn’t been able to get very far. It was difficult being a psychotherapist in a small town. In a big city, the lives of clients and therapist seldom interfaced. But in a small community, the boundaries were more difficult to maintain and I was always encountering clients: at the supermarket, at garage sales and social events. Once I’d sat with a client trying to dismantle a debilitating depression, only to be introduced to him an hour later at a dinner party.

“Imagine what that old woman’s been through.” Madge sighed deeply. “Nursing a husband through cancer and then having him and her daughter die in the same month. Cancer and a car crash. What a load. No wonder she wants to drink herself into oblivion.” She dipped her sweat band in the cold water and wrung it out.

“Humbling, isn’t it, what people have to bear,” I said quietly. Bone breaking abuse, life-guzzling addictions, death of loved ones. No one was exempt from the egregious cruelties of life. I knew. I heard about them day after day in my counselling work.

“Did I ever tell you about seeing her sleeping down here?” Madge continued. “She was curled up under a tree! Just like a bag lady. It was pathetic.”

I shook my head sadly. I didn’t know Elfreda well, but from what I’d heard, the woman was exceptional, when sober. She’d championed the opening of a women’s shelter in town, set up a food bank, raised money for needy children. Before the tragedy in her family, she’d organized some of the interesting old ladies in town for outings, discussions and social reform. They called themselves The Granny Group. Over the winter, I had led them in an exercise class once a week, although Elfreda hadn’t been there in a while. When she was, she had the quickest wit of them all.

“I just hate to see such a fine old lady go down the tube like that. Isn’t there anything you can do?” urged Madge.

“I wish. But my mother’s alcoholism taught me well. You can lead a horse away from water, but you can’t force it not to drink.”

Madge adjusted the orange sweat band around her forehead. “Well,” she said unhappily, “we’d better push off.”

We turned to walk back through the trees.

“What the hell is – ”

“Going on,” I whispered. I tried to swallow but my throat was dry. Pickup trucks were parked out by the road and men were cordoning off an area around several of the big trees. Two men in hard hats and steel-toed boots were standing beside Skybrusher. A chain saw was at their feet.