The Poisoned Tree (David Reid)

The Poisoned Tree

by David Reid

Not so long ago I used to fantasize about having time on my hands, time to write or draw or paint or play guitar or build or read or lie in the sun, and most of all, time to think my thoughts. A year ago my wish came true: retired forever through one moment of stupidity, one ill conceived lift which damaged my spine beyond repair. And now I sit staring out the window while my wife works and fantasizes about having free time.

So I sit and stare at trees and waste weeks at a time and pray for something new to occupy my thoughts, something big and important and worrying, something compelling enough to interrupt my unhealthy introspection. I look at the empty windows next door, and think about what was, what almost was, and I wonder if I could have done things differently, and if that would have changed anything. Five years ago would have been the time to do it, to maybe throw the switch and send destiny down another track. A tree, now five years old, but somehow, I suspect, so much older.

The house next door was empty back then, but that was all about to change.

…

I looked up from my computer to see a moving van out front of the place next door. It was a Saturday and I was wrestling with a spreadsheet which absolutely refused to behave. I’d come to two conclusions at roughly the same time; first, there was something odd about the formatting of the numbers which made the equations fall apart, and second, I really needed to get a job which didn’t encroach on my allegedly spare time. My wife of some twenty odd years was making kitchen noises in the kitchen. Somehow, she managed to make similar noises regardless of what room she was in, but that’s another story.

The house had been on the market for a few months, a situation we weren’t altogether comfortable with. We’d always liked our neighbors, inasmuch as they never called the cops on our invariably late and invariably noisy parties. I had a theory about suburbs and neighbours. You could live in the most exclusive burb and be surrounded by assholes, and apart from paying inflated land rates, you’d have little to show for your investment. Or, you could live in a shitty neighbourhood with good people on either side as a buffer, and live like a king. We had the best neighbors of all, people who went their own way and did their own things – whatever they were – and basically left us the hell alone. So the arrival of new people filled us with not a little trepidation.

I called my wife over for a look.

‘I’m busy,’ she said, dropping a few dozen saucepans into the sink by way of punctuation.

‘He’s young and hot.’ We’d been married so long and knew each other’s tastes pretty well. She could have just had easily have said the same to me about a woman. ‘He’ was lugging a depressingly large carton, tendons and veins bulging through otherwise lean forearms. The denim jeans and black T-shirt didn’t give away much – tradie or roadie would have fit equally well. Sharon – my wife – came and leaned across me, slowly parting the curtain a little more for a better look.

‘He’s probably gay. Or works for the removalists,’ she said. ‘No, wait, what’s this? Hmm. Looks like your luck might have turned too.’ Sharon didn’t sound entirely happy.

Like I said, I knew her type, and she knew mine. Mine was harder to define. It wasn’t as simple as blonde or tits or ass, although they were all definitely present in our apparently new neighbour, emerging from the back of the van. It was more stature – or lack thereof – and a certain vulnerability or shyness. It’s amazing how much one can pickup in a brief glance, but both my wife and I were instantly aware that our neighbourhood was suddenly and irrevocably changed. Sharon turned quietly and walked back into the kitchen.

‘What?’ I called after her, in a slightly offended tone, knowing full well. She admired young male flesh in a respectful, almost worshipful way, secure in the knowledge that her catholic guilt would derail any improper thoughts that went much beyond a handshake. On the other hand, on a semi-regular basis some poor young girl would make the mistake of finding me funny or interesting and I would spend the next year or so obsessing about her. I continued to watch the activity next door until it became painfully clear that the young couple next door were outrageously happy.

The next day was Sunday, and I left early to check out the local market. Sharon liked to sleep late on weekends. I came back with a small tree. I shouldn’t have as I’m really clueless about such things, but I saw it in a pot and it looked like a housewarming gift and so I bought it. I didn’t ask what it was, how to look after it, or how big it grew. I woke Sharon to share my excitement at being so neighbourly. She rolled over and muttered into the pillow:

‘I suppose you’d like me to get up and bake some fucking muffins too?’

I didn’t go next door immediately. I went back to the computer and spreadsheet, and I swear that it was only seeing her husband leaving the house that reminded me I had a present for her. Sorry, them.

By this time Sharon was up.

‘I’m taking that tree over now. Sure you don’t want to come?’

‘Not really.’

‘Fine.’

‘Fine.’

Which is how and where it all started. There was no shortage of chemistry between Chris and me. True to form I obsessed over her. True to form, Sharon tolerated it, just. Chris planted the tree on the boundary, between her place and ours, so I could see it from my computer and she, coincidentally, from hers.

…

It is only with 20-20 hindsight that you ever realize the things you thought were trivial weren’t, that the things that seemed so fucking important at the time were just noise, and that the truly important things were the things that you simply didn’t think about at all. It took a few years to even suspect there was something truly odd about the tree. Not having been gifted with a green thumb, the only thought I gave to the seasons was my yearly rant at the deciduous trees dotting our yard that made mowing such a pain in the ass for a few weeks each year. Consequently, the fact that the ‘gift’ blossomed and grew according to its own bizarre timetable was lost on me for ages, and would have continued to be lost on me if I hadn’t spent so much time at that damned computer desk, staring at it.

For the first year, the new neighbours - Chris and Trevor - appeared to be fantastically happy, but not so much when we were around. We had invited them to a couple of parties, and they invited us across for dinner. Chris and I always had a blast, less so our respective spouses. Sharon didn’t appear to particularly like either of them, and this was reciprocated by Trevor. That is, until Chris got pregnant. Everyone was suddenly over the moon, and for a while things went swimmingly. We were all suddenly best of friends, no doubt due to the insurance policy Chris was now carrying in her belly. Five months in, it seemed that even the tree was getting into the mood. One day, I looked out to see it had grown a foot overnight and was peppered with red flowers. I jumped on the computer and fired up the chat client, to share this revelation with Chris, on the offchance that she was online. She was.

She had miscarried the night before.

Autumn and Winter came and went, and to Trevor’s credit he supported her throughout. They may not have been happier as such, but the relationship was definitely stronger for it. Throughout, I had a clear view into their living room, as the tree was a barren stick. With Spring, Chris appeared to get her love of life back, and in the evenings we’d often spend hours online, using thousands of dollars worth of computers and ten times that in network infrastructure to chat back and forth across a distance of a little over ten metres.

One night in particular we’d been flirting a little, probably fuelled by red wine I was in the habit of drinking in the evenings after a tough day. There was nothing unusual in this, inasmauch as it was our sordid little secret and we had our boundaries which were fairly well established. Nevertheless, we were careful to delete the histories of our respective PCs after a session. I switched off my monitor, and went to the kitchen to make a coffee, and when the kettle stopped screaming I could briefly hear raised voices and a yelp. I switched off the lights in the kitchen and slid towards the window. At first I thought their lights were off too, but then I realized that the tree was obscuring her window.

After that I had a succession of early starts and late finishes at work, and gave very little thought to the incident. But the following Saturday, as I left to get a newspaper, I looked properly at the tree. Again, it seemed to have put on a growth spurt, and was covered in red flowers. While I knew enough about trees to realize that such things tend to happen when the sun comes back out, I found it vaguely unsettling. I heard a door slam and, partially hidden behind the tree, I waited while Trevor started his car and drove off, very obviously angry.

I watched until his car disappeared, then knocked on her door. I waited, then knocked again. I could head muffled noises, so I knocked again, harder.

‘Who is it?’

‘Me.’

Silence.

‘Can I come in?’

After a moment I heard the chain drop, and the door opened. She was in a white bathrobe, wet, clearly just out of the shower. She looked away quickly, head down. She appeared to be trembling slightly. I moved through the doorway.

‘Hey. I just thought I…’ I began, but she spun around and looked up at me, close. She had a massive bruise on her cheek. I started to ask whether he had done it, but her look said it all. She threw her arms around me and it’s a measure of how thoroughly stunned I was that I completely failed to have a single inappropriate thought about the wet, naked body shuddering against me. I must have been in denial, as it didn’t even occur to me to ask if it was my fault.

…

She stayed with him for another year. Things grew increasingly cool between me and Sharon until one Thursday I left work early with a migraine, and walked through my front door only to bump into Trevor coming out the other way. Sharon was in bed, naked, and didn’t even do me the courtesy of looking embarrassed. I turned and watched Trevor leave. He went straight to his car and drove off. I sat on my porch and glanced next door. The tree was massive. I never saw Trevor again, and Sharon and I never spoke of it. I suppose on some level I felt I deserved it.

You’d be forgiven for thinking, as I’m sure Sharon and Trevor did, that I’d have capitalized on this and jumped straight into bed with Chris. Sorry if I’ve mislead you, but we weren’t like that, not at that stage anyway. I’d spent the past year trying to watch over her and protect her from the thug she’d married for some inexplicable reason. It would have been so very easy to take the opportunity to actually feel that skin and body I’d been imagining for so long, but it would have felt like an abuse of my role of protector.

On the other hand, I’m not a complete idiot. I allowed my wife to believe what ever she wished, and began spending more and more time next door. Some nights we’d just talk until the small hours, other nights we’d just lie on the couch together watching movies. The arrangement appeared to suit Sharon, perhaps balancing the books for her. All in all, we were pretty happy again – well, I was - although I couldn’t help but wonder about Chris’s future. Life was pretty normal, and one night I was sitting at the computer again, when I noticed I couldn’t see Chris’s window at all. Perhaps because I no longer needed to play voyeur, I simply hadn’t noticed how much the tree had grown.

The next day I went outside with my lopping secateurs and began trimming it back. It was late spring, and the tree was fully decked out in leaves, but no flowers. I spent a good two hours trimming it back, then went inside for a break. Sharon was watching television. I made her a coffee and kissed her on the top of the head. She smiled a contented smile. Things really were getting back to normal. I sat next to her and we watched a little TV, then went back outside to clean up the mess.

The tree not only appeared to be at least as bushy as before, but it was covered in red blooms. I sprinted to her front door and pushed it open. I raced through the house, my heart threatening to burst.

‘Chris!’

‘What!’

I pushed open the bathroom door and she stepped out of the shower, and stared at me. It’s amazing how much one can pick up in a brief glance, let alone a lingering look that screams what it is you’ve wanted to hear for as long as you can remember. I stepped towards her, and she held out her hands to me. She took a single step then her feet slid out from beneath her. I grabbed for her hands, but her head hit the edge of the bath anyway and that’s about all I remember except for the red.

…

I tried cutting it down but it grew back. I tried poisoning it but it grew back. I tried digging it out but it broke my back, and now it’s autumn again.