Brothers and Sisters of Trees

Brothers and Sisters of Trees

Edward didn’t care, not really. He might have pretended, natural when a brother dies, but if his pretense went noticed or unnoticed, Edward didn’t much care about that, either. Still, he spoke the words over the phone.

Oh, sorry, yes, I’ll be there, okay.

And so forth. An obligatory tone of condolence. Not sadness, not regret. He did regret that his solitude had been disturbed, yes that, but death is death and comes for us all, brother or stranger, and in this case, little difference.

And maybe no difference, none at all. Edward had spent his years growing bank accounts. Family relationships shrunk to an occasional birthday card. That is, if relationships is what they were. Family was something that happened whether you wanted it to or not, like a mudslide. And the best way to handle certain unavoidable persons or events was to clean yourself up and go on. No point in needless distress.

No point at all. Edward sat in his study with the lights off and stared through the window at the silhouetted trees that separated his estate from the outside world. Trees prevented him from seeing the world, and gave him a sense of severance him from common people, and common wishes.

Edward was content. John, his older brother, was dead. For Edward, no contradiction existed between the two states. He rose, stretched his back, and walked into the kitchen where the lights were still on, but dimmed.

He sat at a table, picked at some roast beef. Many years ago, he had shared fresh road-kill meat with John along the banks of the Klamath river as the sun rose and the crude fire they had mustered crackled and spit grease.

We are warriors, John had said.

More like scavengers, replied Edward.

It was one of the few times they had shared.

***

The next day, Edward boarded a train to Los Angeles. He hated cars and feared planes. On a train, he could relax in his own compartment and not share conversation or elbows. The gentle, undulant rhythm of the tracks relaxed Edward, gave him a passing sense of accord with the world.

When Edward was eight, John had awakened him in the middle of the night.

I want to be a poet, he said.

Edward scoffed. That’s nothing, he replied. I’m going to make lots of money.

It was almost a jest, but not quite. Edward was almost certain their father didn’t love Edward, the younger, lesser son, and that money would one day soothe his wounds. It was possible that his father did love him somewhat, but if so, it was just enough to satisfy a paternal obligation, which made the betrayal worse.

Edward? John had asked that night. Do you love me?

Of course, answered Edward, but he wasn’t really sure. Still, they said okay, that’s good, good night, and returned to their pillows.

***

At the station, the train lurched and jolted Edward from his reverie. He climbed down with his small suitcase, and stood for a moment on the platform marveling at his nearness to the world, and the masses that inhabited it. They all seemed in a hurry to be somewhere other than where they were.

“Edward.” It was Anna, his sister. She tapped the platform with wooden heels as she approached. “Thank god you made it,” she said.

“God had nothing to do with it.”

“It’s just an expression.” She reached to touch his cheek, withdrew her hand.

Anna was older than Edward, too. In her youth, she had been pretty and favored. Their father brought her presents; their mother brushed her hair and read her passages from books.

“Why are you here?” Edward asked.

“I told you I’d meet you here.”

“Yes, but I didn’t believe you.”

Edward and Anna had fallen out decades before at a Christmas celebration in Oregon that started as most celebrations do, festive and alive, but had quickly transformed into an ugly reminder that family blood doesn’t bind, but instead, flows from stainful, grievous wounds. Edward had said something cruel, perhaps even vicious; Anna, for her part, went to her car, even though it was late at night, and began her trip back to her home in Kansas.

Over the years, John had tried several times to reunite them, a would-be repairman of broken conduits.

Edward says hello, he’d say to Anna, a lie.

I don’t care.

John the mender failed in life, but succeeded, at least briefly, in death. Anna and Edward stood together for the first time in years. It probably wouldn’t last. When the shovels were finished with John, it seemed likely that Anna would retreat once more into her distant silence. And Edward into his.

Five years ago, the last time Edward and John had spoken, Edward had shattered, on purpose he supposed, his brother’s dream, more an illusion, that brothers must always be members of the same tribe. John’s reply had stung a bit, Edward admitted to himself, but as with a mudslide, he cleaned himself up and moved on with his life.

We don’t inhabit the same moral universe, John had said.

***

“The car’s over there.” It was Anna, her finger extended towards the parking structure across the street.

I hate cars, thought Edward.

***

On the freeway to North Hollywood, traffic was light. “Are you hungry,” Anna asked. “We can stop on the way.”

“What did I say to you?”

“I don’t know. You haven’t answered yet.”

“No. I mean at Christmas. In Oregon.”

“There’s a good place at the next exit.”

“I don’t remember.”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been there.”

“Not the restaurant. What I said to you at Christmas, when you left and never came back.”

“Why do you care?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know,” said Edward. “Maybe I want to understand.”

“There’s nothing to understand, Edward.”

***

Edward found lying useful at times. He did remember. What he really wanted to hear was that Anna had forgotten, had somehow converted his cruelty into her forgiveness. He wasn’t sure why he cared if she forgave him, but he had recently passed seventy five years of age, and saw ahead a fearful dark tunnel at the end of the light.

The Christmas words had vaulted from his lips as if they had a life of their own. In the moment though, something heedful surged inside of him, and he had desperately tried to grab the air and wrestle the words back into his lungs, to push them back down into his spleen where they had splashed and demanded to be set free so they could poison the air and give vent to a lifetime of frustration playing second fiddle to brothers and sisters who, by the luck of the draw, were ahead of him in the birth line, a line drawn by a devious god who had forced Edward to the end of it, where he was forever trapped, cut off from all affection.

***

At the service, a man stood, walked to the pulpit, tapped the microphone, cleared his throat.

“Hello,” he said. “My name is Alec, and I was a longtime friend of the deceased.”

You can say dead guy, thought Edward.

“He was a remarkable man,” continued Alec, “gentle, but tough. He didn’t take shit… excuse me… gruff, from people.”

Edward shifted in his seat while Alec went on about how wonderful John had been, placed on the earth to bring etcetera and so forth into the lives of so and so, and on and on and all that, until the day that John did the likes of this and that and more etcetera. Meanwhile Edward shifted again, and again, for the next hour, maybe two, maybe a thousand tedious years, as person after person spoke to the congregation in soft tones. Edward wished he had the courage to simply walk out.

***

When the last person finished speaking, and the organist tested a note for the departure ceremony, Edward stood. “Just a moment,” he said. The room went quiet. Edward shuffled his throat a bit.

Death is so revealing, he said. It exposes your flawed memory for what it is, the product of a weak mind gripped by an overwhelming need to speak well of someone who can’t possibly care if you tell the truth.

Death treats you like a child. And you go along. Meekly. You revert to a fearful boy, afraid of a parent. A father who will beat you if you don’t measure up. A mother who will withhold a hug if you don’t confess your taste for vegetables.

My brother was hideous and you refuse to see. Are afraid to see. You never lived with the boy, later a man, now a dead man. You never grew up in his shadow. Never knew what it was like to have the light sucked out of the room when he entered. Light meant for me, light I deserved. And how he rubbed my nose in that fate, laughed about it, told his friends about it, made me the foul butt of his jokes and his ridicule.

Edward, said Anna. Please stop.

I’m not finished. I loved my father, and by extension, John. But they wouldn’t… they… refused to let me into their hearts. That was between them. Not for me. I cared so much. Too much. But I couldn’t tell them. They never listened, just pushed me down like a dog that wants to bite your shirt tail. Their love contaminated me. It made me… barren, a child mislaid in a family that didn’t see me. They didn’t see what I wanted, what I needed, what I was eager and mad to receive. What my turmoil demanded.

I also hated my father, and by extension, John. I longed inside, burned even, to see them punished, humiliated for their arrogance, their overconfidence. Their condescension. Their exclusion. Oh, one day they would sing different tunes with knives in their throats. But meanwhile… there was no room for me. None. And I went to small, hidden places, alone… and wept.

***

When the last person finished speaking, and the organist tested a note for the departure ceremony, Edward stood. “Just a moment,” he said. The room went quiet.

“Thank you for coming,” he said.

***

The last patch of soil had been placed on the grave. Anna and Edward walked through the trees of the cemetery towards the line of cars.

“I thought you were going to say something different back there,” said Anna.

Edward looked at her, and for a moment saw a sister. In the church, something had stabbed him, something ugly and silent had bled out. “Yeah,” he said. In the far urban distance, a freight train cried.

“It’s not too late, Edward.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know,” said Anna. “Maybe plant a new tree, you and I.”

“You would forgive me?”

“It was a long time ago, Edward.”

Edward nodded. He seemed to have no more words.

Anna smiled small, and in the dappled light of tree shadow, grew younger.

“Let’s get that something to eat,” said Edward. He touched her hand.

They walked to the car. The sun and smog of Los Angeles beat down.

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