The Boys in the Trees (7 page)

Years ago my mother told Mr. Envers that I was very good with a needle, and some days that is true. Other days my mind is a jumble and even her voice comes to me from far away. After the terrible days in Toronto my father brought my mother a posy of white flowers, and she put them in the mug with the picture of the woman in a boat and set them on the windowsill. On each stem there were small green buds, and day by day they changed. Lighter strips showing, growing wider, the green folds pushing apart so slowly. Two were like that, maybe three, though the others stayed tightly closed. We had to leave before I could see them completely open, but I suppose it might not have happened at all. The first flowers turning brown and limp around the edge of their petals. We took the mug but left the posy lying in a little puddle on the sill.

THE PAIN NUDGES
her awake, boring into her right eye, and in the dark she reaches for the drops, the bottle rocking on the nightstand, and lies back, thinking,
There now. There now
. Thinking that perhaps her mother will have to take the school again, and that will mean another wasted day, long tales about her courtship, her slender ankles. The children will twitch in their chairs, waiting. Waiting until she comes to the part about the storm at sea and the sailor who was washed overboard, the look on his face.
On this day
, Alice thinks, as the warmth moves through her,
on this day there should be no more dwelling on death
.

She slides back into sleep and dreams a memory, as she often has these past long months. The tap on the front door and Mr. Heath on the step, the bright autumn day behind him. She asks if there is a problem with the music Lilian collected and he says no, says that everything is fine. Nothing unusual in his face, nothing in his voice gives any hint. He says that he’s sorry to interrupt,
that he needs Rachel at home, just for a little while. Down the hall the children’s clear voices are chanting:
Seven eights are fifty-six, eight eights are …

She asks him in but Mr. Heath says that he will wait where he is, says something about the clear sky. In the dream her feet are slow and heavy as she moves down the hall to the schoolroom, tells Rachel that her father has come for her, that it’s just for a moment, and she can leave her things where they are. The dream Rachel wears a white dress, although in life Alice knows it was a faded blue. She moves down the hall toward the dark shape in the doorway and Alice turns back to the others. Through the schoolroom window she sees them crossing the street, hand in hand.

•  •  •

Sarah also dreams, dreams a child with blond curls, hugging her around the neck. The chubby arms squeezing tighter and tighter until she is gasping for breath, a long scratch on her neck where she scrabbles to pry them loose. She lies back on the pillow, feeling her pounding heart, and hears the downstairs clock chime. It isn’t until she’s used the pot, poured water from the pitcher and splashed her face, that she remembers what day it is. She kneels by the side of the bed and gives thanks.

•  •  •

Alice wakes again with a start, as if at a sudden sound. The back stairs creak and that will be her sister, Sarah, and it will be exactly eight minutes before six. Hours before she needs to be behind her counter at Becks’ store, but Alice has never asked why she rises, leaves the house so early. It will be something to do with the cause Mrs. Beck has drawn her in to, leaflets to post or a meeting. She may even go creeping down back lanes, may peer
into dawn windows looking for empty bottles, for signs of dissipation. There is nothing wrong, of course not, with wanting to live a pure life. Nothing wrong with the Union, the meetings and speeches. But the thought of her sister standing grim-faced by the tavern door fills Alice with a familiar, helpless fury, and she rolls in her bed and closes her eyes, hoping for just a little more sleep. Finds herself thinking of Mr. Heath, who is surely awake, behind his cell door, tries to imagine what it can possibly be like. Knowing that your life is now measured in hours, in minutes, less time than it takes to ride the train to the city, to read a book from beginning to end. She knows from the newspaper that Reverend Toller will attend the execution, that he has visited a number of times in the months since the trial, and she wonders if his intention was to bring comfort. A man who sat without a flicker of emotion through his own wife’s funeral, who turned away when his son began to sob. But what comfort could even a kindlier man bring, what comfort could there be, even in forgiveness, knowing that you wouldn’t meet them again in Heaven. That even if you could, they would surely run and hide.

It’s more likely, Alice supposes, that Reverend Toller simply kneels and prays, that perhaps they pray together. The same newspaper that called Heath a fiend, a monster, now reports that he spends most of his time sitting silently on the edge of his cot, staring at a spot on the floor. In fact, he has barely spoken since they found him that day, slumped on a cushion of crimson leaves at the base of an oak tree in the heart of Jackson’s wood. The gun, with one bullet left, held loosely in his hand.

•  •  •

Her feet are tangled in her nightdress and the bedclothes are a terrible weight. She kicks them off and feels the cool air on her
skin. It is May, late May, and in the time since her first waking the room has appeared, the heavy, dark dressing table, the chair by the window. She closes her eyes again and tests the pain in her head. Still there, but muffled, and the bottle is half full, so maybe it will be all right. The pattern is familiar to her now, although that doesn’t make it any easier. Just not as frightening; the first time she thought she must be dying, right there at the dinner table, on her fourteenth birthday. A shimmering in the air as her mother raised the silver knife to cut another slice of cake, the pain suddenly there, where all had been sweet and normal, building and building. As her parents helped her from the room she saw Sarah reach with her fork, spear the crumbling piece left on Alice’s plate. Upstairs, it was her father who measured out the liquid from the medicine chest, mixed it with a little sweet red syrup. Alice’s stomach heaved when it touched her lips, but there was his cool hand on her forehead, his voice speaking softly, and she held on to that.
Sleep now
, he said,
and all will be well
. And it was.

•  •  •

Alice’s father was a tall man with a trimmed beard, a teller of jokes, an elder of the church, an educated man with a prosperous business. But he died in an upstairs room on Neeve Street, something that was blurted out in those first terrible hours and never referred to again. Their mother took to her bed, the heavy wine-colored drapes pulled tight. Leaving Sarah to talk with the lawyer, to write to the relatives in England, to sit night after night at the kitchen table, her spectacles glinting, working out figures on long sheets of paper. Alice was sixteen then; she’d never given a thought to money, although she knew that the expansion of the shop had meant only one dress that winter and a
delay in the new furniture. She sat by the fire through those winter evenings, a book in her lap, the distant scratching of Sarah’s pen.

The way they live now is all Sarah’s doing, Sarah’s plan, but Alice tells herself to be fair, to think about what might have happened, otherwise. It was Sarah’s idea to open the school, the real school, to have Alice help, and maybe their mother if she ever opened the drapes.
What else do you have to do?
she said.
What else do you do but sit in your chair by the window, reading poetry all day
.

Sarah organized everything for the school, found a few texts and primers, ordered supplies from the catalog and placed notices, spoke to parents at church. Mrs. Beck came to call and said that although she had no children to send, she would like to donate several Temperance Readers. She said that she was impressed by Sarah’s discipline, her organization, that she would like to offer her a position in the store, if Alice and her mother were able to run the school on their own.
Of course we can
, Alice said, although before that moment she wouldn’t have thought it. It’s clear to her now that otherwise it wouldn’t have worked, that Sarah would never have had the patience. At first, parents like the Robinsons sent their children as a kindness, but most have stayed and new ones have come and Alice knows that must mean that she is doing something right. It’s been five years and now there’s not really enough room around the long oak dining table, sent from England before she was born. Even with the empty place.

•  •  •

From downstairs comes the slam of the stove door, the crash of the heavy kettle. Alice thinks of the Orton sisters, who sing so sweetly together, of Lilian and Rachel side by side on their battered porch swing, arms linked. She tries to find one warm
memory of her own sister, one time they might have laughed together, been easy in each other’s company.
Chalk and cheese
is what their mother used to say, and they couldn’t even share a room, let alone a bed, from the time they were small.

When she was a child, Alice thought that her father was a wizard, and his shop was a magic cave, full of potions. Sometimes she sat on the floor in the room behind the counter, lifting the different colored bottles out of their boxes while he pounded and mixed and measured. Sarah sat on a high stool at the corner of his workbench, writing neat labels and spreading them out to dry.
Aconite, Senna, Chloral Hydrate
. When Alice was older she joined her at the bench, but when their father left the room Sarah shook her pen, flinging black drops all over her own careful writing.
I didn’t
, she said loudly,
I did not. Alice made the mess, she did
. Their father raised his voice and sent them home, and once outside Alice gave her sister a quick kick in the shins and then ran, Sarah’s fingers reaching for her flying hair.

That night their father brought home two large bottles, Alice’s blue and Sarah’s amber. He had labeled them
Forgiveness Potion
in flowing black letters, and he told them they were to take a spoonful in the morning and at bedtime, until the bottles were empty. The liquid was pale green and sweet, but with something sharper that lingered at the back of the throat. It took weeks to finish, and Alice kept her empty bottle standing up beside her brush and comb. When it disappeared, Sarah said she didn’t know anything about it.

•  •  •

In the kitchen Sarah stands by the window, waiting for the tea to steep. The peonies Alice planted are covered with tight, round buds and Sarah knows that it’s only a matter of time before ants
appear inside the house, crawling and sneaking into every space. So like her sister, not thinking of anything beyond the scent through the open window.

Looking past the bushes she sees the Robinsons’ back door open, close, but without her glasses everything is a soft blur and she can’t tell who comes out. They are not known as early risers. She asked Dr. Robinson to speak at a meeting once, but he shook his head and said he didn’t think he’d say what they wanted to hear. When she told Mrs. Beck, she said it was clear there was a great deal of work to do in the town.