A Tree Like This - 1. A Tree Like This

A Tree Like This

Three o'clock. My hands are stained with the smell of dirt and potatoes, and sunlight filters through the large oak out front, wall-papering the kitchen with penny-sized sun drops and swaying shadows. The shadows layer one over the other and seem to seep through my holey t-shirt to my chest, cold, adding to the weight already there.

In the corner of the room behind me, Grandpa's pen scratches over his crossword, his rocking chair squeaking every time he guesses a word and he slams his foot on the tiles in hurrah.

"See you tomorrow morning, then," Ma says, her heels clicking over the floorboards in the hall. She comes in, shoving her phone into her pocket, and flashes me a smile.

Squeeeaa. "Safe!" Grandpa says, and with that he drops the crossword onto the table and tucks his pen into his shirt pocket.

"Thanks, Danny." Ma takes the bowl of peeled potatoes and, humming, rinses them.

"You sound like a cheery canary," Grandpa says.

I raise a brow at him over Ma's shoulder. "Cheery canary?"

He winks, and his face scrunches up in wrinkles when he adds a smile. Ma snaps off the taps and dries her hands on her skirt, turning a large grin toward him. "I've finally taken action." She flicks her hand toward the windows. "I'm getting rid of the oak."

Grandpa's face pales to a whisper of its usual colour. "No. I like the oak."

Ma shakes her head. "If you do, you're the only one, and since I have to live here, looking after you, I need this. You practically never leave the kitchen, and I hate being in here. It's dark, damp, and downright depressing. So consider the thing gone."

In a jiffy, grandpa launches himself out of his rocking chair. I've never seen him move so fast. The hairs on the back of my neck spike as he shouts at Ma, ending with, "You won't do anything to my tree, so long as I live."

Slam. The front door.

Ma circles her temples with her fingers, eyes closed. I know moving back here has been tough on her. The walls are thin; I've heard her cry in the bathroom. I snake my potato-hands over her shoulders and bring her into a hug. "Are you happy here?" she asks, her words muffled and warm on my shoulder.

I nod. "Yes, I am."

She draws back and looks me in the eye. "Good." But I can see she wants to say more. To ask me how. And I want to tell her, but it's my secret.

I rub a hand to my chest, but it neither warms nor alleviates the weight there.

A figure out the front yard captures our attention. Ma shrieks, and my mouth drops to see my eighty-year-old grandpa climbing the old oak.

Ma yanks the window open. "What do you think you're doing?" Grandpa reaches the second branch, arms and legs clinging to the trunk. "Get down from there!"

"Not a chance," he said, before wringing out a hollow cough.

"Danny," she says without taking her eyes off the oak, "get your pop out of that tree." Then to Grandpa, "You'll be in a world of trouble if you fall! And you can forget about roast beef for dinner."

I scuttle out the house and over the yard. The oak isn't all that spectacular as trees go, but it is just as large as the two-floor Victorian, and stretches its thick, windy branches two-thirds the length of the garden. I haul myself up using a tree stub and clamber onto the first branch. "Jeez, Grandpa," I murmur as I contemplate my next move, "how on earth did you get up there?"

"I'll tell ya, but only if you promise not to drag me back down. I'm not leaving this tree."

I can't even imagine how I'm going to get back down, let alone with Grandpa. The best plan I have, is convincing him to come on his own. "Promise there'll be no dragging. Now what next?"

He curved a finger around the side of the trunk. "There's a knob back there. Hook your foot on it, grab this branch here, and you're up."

"Seriously, Grandpa," I say, standing in the middle of a V of branches, catching my breath. "I'll never judge a man by his chair again. Now, how do I get you to come back with me? I think Ma was serious about the roast beef if you don't hurry up and get down there."

A slight shudder twitches his shoulders. "No. I meant what I said. I'll be dead before she cuts down this tree."

I sigh, not sure what to say. I watch him a moment, and frown. "What are you doing?" His pen is out, and he's scrapping at something on the wood. Careful to keep my balance, I peer around a fan of leaves. There is a column of letters and dates scratched into the tree.

"This," he says without looking at me, "is my life."

He traces a shaky thumb over the top date, still clutching the pen. "That's the day Charlie, Jack, Thomas and I made our tree house." He points across three thick branches to my left. "Right there it was."

"What happened to it?"

"There was a storm. It was the same weekend Charlie drowned in the river. He was only eleven. Jack and Thomas didn't want to fix it. Neither did I, it seemed wrong somehow, like if we did we'd be forgetting his memory. So we tore down what was left and buried it in his honour."

Grandpa moves his pen to the second date, a slow smile taking up half his face. "That's the day I had my first French kiss. Anna Williams. Right under this tree. Your grandma giggled through it, and I thought I wasn't doing it right. When I got upset, she swapped positions with me, and the leaves kept tickling the back of my neck." A soft laugh breezes out of him and his face lights up. I wonder if when I'm eighty I'll still remember my first kiss, the heaviness of his breath brushing over my cheek before our lips touched. More than that, I wonder if I'll ever be able to share it like Grandpa does.

"This one is one of my favourites," he says, shaking his head. "That was the day I caught your mom's boyfriend trying to climb into her bedroom window." He twists toward the second floor room, and seeing him wobble, I grab his arm. My heart races as I realize he could have fallen. Unfazed, Grandpa keeps talking. "I think the marks of that scuffle are still seared into the tree up there. Let me give you a piece of advice, lad, you don't ever want to be caught sneaking into a girl's room."

"The thought has never crossed my mind."

He snorted. "Yeah-yeah."

"And, Grandpa," I say, sidling onto his branch and firming my grip on him, "just caught sneaking?" He smirks, and behind him a red tin, poking out a hollowed nook, catches my eye. "What's that?"

He stares at the nook until a breeze ruffles his clothes and hair, and he snaps out of it. He pulls the tin onto his lap and taps a beat on the lid with his pen. "This, Danny, is a box of secrets. We all have them from time-to-time and sometimes they just need out." He rubs his chest like I did earlier. I understand. "I stopped writing them after Anna died." He shakes the tin. Clunk, clink, clunk. He opened. "There's just one left in there."

"Were there others? What happened to them?"

"That's the thing about secrets, writing them out is only one step in getting the weight off your shoulders."

"What's the other?"

"Setting them free." He cranes his heads and I do the same. Bits of sun hit our faces, leaves, an umbrella over us, are all shades of green. Light and dark and something in-between. "That's where my others went. Whenever I was ready, I'd climb to the very top of the tree and yell it to the world."

Opening the tin, he takes out a rolled piece of paper. "Looks like I've one left to do." Then, before I can contemplate, he's ripped himself from my grasp and is pulling himself up to the next branch. And then the one above that. Ignoring my desperate and fear-filled pleas for him to get back here!

"I HATE ROAST BEEF!" booms his voice, the branches shaking ominously under him.

I only calm when he's next to me again. I lock him in my grip, despite my promise, dragging him down sounds like a plan now. "Grandpa, you fool, you could've killed yourself. And roast beef?"

"Only not freeing my secrets would make me a fool. And, yes, I hate it. I've held on to that secret sixty years."

"But Grandma always said it was your favourite. Said you ate nearly the whole thing when you met her family the first time, even though—"

"—it was half-burned. I know. What can I say? I was in love. I wanted her parents to like me."

"So you ate everything."

"It seemed like the thing to do at the time. My mistake was fussing over how great I thought it was. After that, she made it for me once a week and every birthday. I could never bring myself to tell her the truth. And I loved her for making it, anyway."

A sob comes from below us, we look down to see Ma, sitting at the base of the tree, palms to her face.

"Ma?" I call softly.

She unfolds herself, and hurries into the house.

Grandpa watches her, his face drawn, a frown cutting his grey wispy brows.

"She'll be okay," I say, because I'm hopeful that's the truth. "I just think we could both use a tin like that, and a tree like this."

He plucks the tin from the hollow and passes it to me. "It's all yours now." He offers his pen to me, and I take it. I rip a piece of my t-shirt off and write. Roll it up, and deposit it in the tin.

Then we sit a moment, looking into the kitchen window at Ma. She has something in her hand. I squint, and grandpa nudges me in the ribs. "Is your mother doing what I think she's doing?"

I nod. Glad to be in the safety of the tree as she hacks the roast beef with a chef's knife and dumps the pieces into the trash. "I have a good feeling about your tree, Grandpa."

In lithe, quick movements, he slides down the tree, cuts across the yard and meets Ma in the kitchen, wrapping her into a hug: Grandpa's nod. His yes. His safe!

And so is my secret. Until I'm ready to shout it from the tree-top.