The Boys in the Trees (9 page)

She never saw the photographer in town, even when she strolled past his studio, but he always seemed happy to meet her when he came to the place by the river, and sometimes she read, but mostly she listened to his talk. He let her look through to the view he was framing, let her see what he saw, and once he stroked her neck with the back of his hand. She cringes to think of it now, how obvious her infatuation must have been, although at the time she felt so grown up. He asked her once how old she was, laughed and said he’d have to wait for her, and she wrapped the idea around herself like the woolen shawl she wore to the riverbank when the branch was bare, thinking that he might still appear.

•  •  •

She could go another way, but Sarah doesn’t believe in giving in, and so she makes herself walk down Norfolk Street. And there is the shop, Mr. Marl’s shop now. He is not a pharmacist, of course; someone else actually runs it. But it is his name above the door, gilt letters on a deep blue ground. He gave them a fair
price, though not the fairest. True, there were debts to pay, but Sarah’s father had planned it well and all Mr. Marl had to do was repaint the sign, turn the key in the door, and start making money. She can’t stop the thought that says how proud her father would be at the shop’s success. It was a part of her life for as long as she can remember, her father teaching her the names of things, the properties, introducing her to each customer.
This is my daughter Sarah
. Resting his hand on her head.

Later Alice started coming and spoiled it all, but Sarah waited her out. She had always been good with figures, was already helping with the books and checking the stock, learning to mix the simpler preparations. While Alice lived her child’s life, giggling with her friends and mooning over words, just words. No help at all the winter it all ended, sobs from behind her bedroom door, from behind their mother’s. What did they think—that they would survive by magic?

Sarah didn’t cry, not then, not later. Only once. Sitting with Mr. Heath in the Sunday school, after the children had gone. They had let the stove go out and the room grew quickly cold while they talked about arranging a party for Easter, about the problem of Robert Bride, who memorized a hundred verses every week and always took home the certificate. And then somehow they were talking about Sarah’s mother, and how she couldn’t even decide what vegetable to cook for their dinner. About the way her father went out that winter night, saying he needed a little air.
There there
, William said, patting her shoulder.
There there
. Soon he will burn in Hell, and though she knows it’s wrong, she is glad.

•  •  •

Alice coils her hair, looking into the spotted mirror. She touches the high collar, buttoned at her neck. There are things she
should be doing but the laudanum has made her movements slower, and nothing at all seems urgent. She knows the children will be edgy when they come, unsettled, for they all know what day it is; everyone in Emden knows what day it is. She had thought of making some special cakes, something to distract them, but realized that would seem like a celebration. She holds the banister when she makes her way downstairs, her feet seeming a little distant, not quite part of her body. In the schoolroom she opens the shutters and sunlight reaches for the long table, the chairs, the map tacked up on the wall. Rachel’s father came for her on a day filled with blue sky, said it was just for a moment, and she left her copybook open, her new pencil lying on top. It was the first thing Alice saw when she opened the door the next morning.

Rachel’s things are now in a tidy pile in Alice’s room; there is no one left to return them to. Page after page of problems copied out and solved, compositions and the carefully drawn maps with their secret signs for mountains and lakes and forests. A folder of pictures she had drawn, several of her family standing all together in front of their little white house. She wasn’t best at drawing people but she did the house very well, taking great care with the swing on the front porch, the fanlight over the door. Through the front windows, one up, two down, she sketched hazy shapes in one of the pictures, a glimpse of what was inside. Try as she might, Alice can’t make out what the shapes are supposed to be.

Although she took away the books and papers, she couldn’t bring herself to touch Rachel’s chair, but Alice began to see that it was not the best thing to have it there, so solidly empty, when the children took their places around the table. She
noticed how careful they were not to touch it as they went by, and one Saturday she moved it up to her bedroom too, placed the other things neatly on it. But still no one fills that space at the table.

Rachel was the easiest child; sunny-natured, curious and quick to learn. In the first days after the murders, Alice was appalled to find herself thinking that there were others it would not have been so tragic to lose. She didn’t know the family well, didn’t really know them at all. Words exchanged on the church steps, in the street. They seemed a solemn group, Mr. Heath’s stern face and his wife in her layers of black, Lilian’s small voice and downcast eyes. But knowing Rachel as she did, what she was like, Alice had to believe that it had been a contented home, maybe a happy one.

It was difficult for a time after, the children inattentive and skittish, and Alice herself unsure of the best way to proceed. They had all known death, in their families or among friends and neighbors, but nothing like this and it clutched at her heart as she looked at their faces, noticed the dark smudges under Eaton’s eyes, and thought that they were right to be afraid. She knew that it would be callous to expect them to carry on with their lessons as if nothing had changed and that first day she led them out the door, through the leaf-littered streets, and they spent the afternoon walking in the wood at the edge of town, where maple keys spiraled down all around them. The children found their voices in the wood, and once Lucius ran ahead, jumped out from behind a thick trunk and made the girls shriek. Alice had them gather up all the different leaves they could find, and brittle keys and acorns, and she asked them if they knew that Emden, with its streets and stone buildings, the houses where
they lived, had once been forest just like this, and not so very long ago. Nina said she thought it would be nicer if the trees had stayed and they could all live in them, and for once no one laughed at her. Bella asked why every acorn didn’t make a tree and Alice told her that she didn’t really know, only that from the hundreds that fell in the wood only some would take root and grow, and sometimes it took years to even begin.

Then Eaton asked how old the maple tree was.
This one
, he said, slapping it with his hand.
Very old
, Alice said, looking up at the thick, spreading branches.
But how old?
Eaton said, and there was a roughness in his voice that she hadn’t ever heard.
How would you know how old it is?
Eaton said, and Alice told him, told them all, that when a tree was cut down rings were visible in the stump, that you could count the rings and know the age of the tree.
But then it’s dead
, Eaton said, and she could tell that he’d already known about the rings, that for some reason he’d wanted to hear her say it.
If you cut it down it’s dead
, Eaton said,
so how can it even matter?

•  •  •

Reporters from the city paper had come knocking, as they were sitting down to their evening meal. Alice’s mother led them in to the front room, and the one with the lazy eye prowled around, picking up ornaments as if he were in a shop or in his own house; he even crossed the hall and poked his head into the darkened schoolroom.
Our readers like the details
, he said as he sat down again, his good eye meeting Alice’s. Making notes in his little book while the one with the mustard-colored jacket went on with his questions.
You heard nothing at all? No screams? No shots?
he said.
Nothing
, Alice said. Her mother dabbed at her
eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief, murmuring,
Poor things, poor things
.

Mr. Luft from the
Herald
had asked the same questions, and before him Constable Street, when he came to tell Alice to send the children away early. He had been the one, the night her father didn’t come home. Calling for Sarah and Alice, calling for water, after their mother swooned. When they came running they found him cradling her head in his big red hands.

Like Mr. Luft, these reporters also asked about money. Said they’d heard about some dishonesty, an embezzlement charge, but all Alice could tell them was that the school fees were paid on time, that the family lived simply, but was far from the poorest in town. The questions went on and on, until her mother spoke up, loudly.
They were a fine family
, she
said. A good, Christian family. There was nothing different about them, nothing peculiar
.

Listening to her mother, Alice thought how true it was. They sat two pews in front in church and she knew the back of their heads, Mr. Heath’s thick brown hair neatly cut, Naomi’s untrimmed black bonnet. Lilian’s thin shoulders and the strange little noises she sometimes made. She thought of the words she’d exchanged with each of them, of the words she’d heard them say to each other. If there had been some clue, some hint, she had missed it completely and so, it seemed, had everyone else.

•  •  •

Lazy Eye turned a page in his notebook, the pencil held tight in his fat fingers. Alice wondered what kind of story he would write, when so little seemed to be known. When her father died, the
Herald
said only that it had been sudden, and a terrible loss
to the town. Christmas Day, and she remembered the cold air, snow squeaking beneath their feet as they walked from church, the dazzling reflection of the sun. The new curate had a problem with his speech, and her father mimicked him all the way home.
I’m sho hungry
, he said.
I wonder wash for luncheon thish day. Stop
, their mother said, her mouth twitching a smile.
Stop
, she said, taking her hand from her muff and slapping at his arm.
Someone will hear you
.

Shtop?
he said.
Did you shay you want me to shtop?
Waving a hand as Mr. Marl drove by, the horses’ harnesses jingling. As they stamped off the snow outside their door her father said in a loud whisper,
The wagesh of shin ish
—and they were all giggling as they stepped inside, the smell of cloves all through the house. Nothing unusual in the rest of that day, meals prepared and small gifts opened, their mother lighting the lamps as the night drew in while Sarah played from the sheet music Gordon had given her, tied with white ribbon and a clumsy bow. Their father saying, when she was finished, that he thought he’d take a little stroll, that he thought he’d get some air. Bending to kiss their mother’s cheek, and the way she tilted her face to receive that kiss, and looked back down at her book. Alice would have said that she knew her father, would never have thought to question that. But as he bent to kiss her mother, as he wrapped the gray scarf around his neck and stepped out into the cold, clear night, his mind must have been on the perfumed rooms on Neeve Street, no sign of that on his familiar face.

Yellow Jacket crossed one sharp knee over the other and asked why they thought such a thing would happen, if they had any ideas at all.
Drink
, Sarah said,
that will be at the bottom of it
, and both reporters leaned forward in their chairs, but when she admitted that she’d never actually seen Mr. Heath take a drop, they
sat back again. Then Lazy Eye stood, cutting off her lecture, and said that they had to be going. In the kitchen, Alice scraped their cold supper into the pail.

•  •  •

Sarah holds her coat closed at the neck; she’s been cold for years, it seems, wears extra layers on all but the hottest days of summer. She remembers that she once saw the murdered girl and the Robinson boy sitting on the grass at the river’s edge, wriggling their bare toes in the sun. For some reason it had made her think of the back room in the pharmacy, the smell of spices and earth and medicines, the way the light there seemed to make everything glow.

Mrs. Beck is the only one Sarah can depend on now. The one who has helped her find her way. Things she used to worry about, listening to Reverend Toller’s sermons—Mrs. Beck has shown her that those things are really her strengths, what make her such a valuable worker for the cause. Sometimes, before she falls asleep, she imagines herself saving Mrs. Beck from a fire, pushing her out of the way of a runaway horse and wagon. Often Sarah is badly hurt; sometimes she dies. She hears Mrs. Beck weeping, hears her say, as she has heard her say in life,
She’s the daughter I never had
.

It was Mrs. Beck who showed her that what happened with Gordon was a good thing, the broken engagement all for the best. There were a few tears, but Mrs. Beck dried Sarah’s eyes with her own handkerchief, explained how it was clear that Gordon didn’t really support their work, would maybe have forbidden it.
It will take time
, she said,
but you will be so glad
.

Mrs. Beck is always early at the store; she likes to be there herself to let little Donal in with his broom, to give him a bit of
bread and jam for his breakfast. Through Donal she hopes to reach the entire family, and there are already signs that this is happening, tears in the mother’s eyes as she tried to sit up in her fusty bed. From the very beginning Mrs. Beck told Sarah that they must be vigilant, that opportunities are everywhere, not just in the meeting hall, and they must seize them.

While Donal sweeps, Mrs. Beck and Sarah check both floors of the store, making sure that everything is neatly piled, the correct things in the correct drawers. From the first, Mrs. Beck was pleased with Sarah’s sharp eye. Mr. Beck arrives later, in time to lead the morning prayers. His heart is not strong and he does less and less, but he likes to sit at his desk looking over things; he likes to get up and greet good customers by name, ask after their families. Sarah went to him when she saw Reverend Toller’s wife slip the buttons into her pocket, and two days later a pair of soft kid gloves, and he dealt with it discreetly, called on her husband, who thanked him for his consideration. When Mrs. Toller died last summer, Mrs. Beck was not the only one who whispered about blessings in disguise.