The Language of Trees (30 page)

And finally, Victor, now in prison, another casualty of the battle that was her heart. But it was his battle, too, and they had both been caught up in it. At least her daughters were not casualties. Not any longer. Her daughters are her greatest accomplishment. Both survivors, showing her the way. Maya is starting to work on her studies. Melanie is strong. Stronger than Leila had ever been. For this, Leila is grateful. She is grateful to Victor for if it weren't for his terror, Leila wouldn't have needed Ben Shongo. And without that need, Luke would not have been born.

At one time, she had three children, and she told them often
that they were a triangle, the strongest shape. And though one was missing, the other two had proven they were strong in their own right. Perhaps a triangle was not the strongest shape. Perhaps each person was her own perfectly balanced shape.

Now, to compound the loss, Lion and Melanie are moving to California. Lion once told her that the water was his curse. That when he moved again, he'd use a map and draw a circle with a compass. He'd figure out a place that was at least a day's drive from any sort of water at all. He'd always believed that getting away from California would solve all his problems, but now he says he knows better, that he wants to face the things that have made him run. He and Melanie won't live in Compton, where he grew up. Instead, he wants to live in Long Beach, right on the water. And Melanie is going to apply to film school at the University of Southern California. They'll only be twenty minutes from Los Angeles when she gets her big break.

“Hey!” Lion calls, standing in the water up to his knees. “No hands!”

Melanie shakes her head and looks at Leila. “Luckiest day of my pitiful life, meeting that guy.”

This is Leila's biggest joy, taking care of her grandson, enjoying her daughter and her son-in-law. It is official as of last week. Melanie and Lion stood at the courthouse and exchanged sterling silver bands made by a friend in town. “Redeem this dress,” Leila had said, handing over her wedding dress. So Melanie dyed it purple in the bathtub, even though Leila wasn't sure if this would exorcise the bad luck. Melanie said she wasn't scared of anything now after what she'd been through. Well, there's still no arguing with Melanie. She wanted a purple wedding dress and that's what she got. She wore a headband with little silk purple flowers, the blond tufts of hair framing her face. She looked absolutely lovely, Leila thought. She wished
Maya could have been there, but the girl was in good hands at Cheever. After what she saw, they decided it would be best for her if she stayed where she felt safe. But Maya told Leila that she wants to move back home soon. It is something to work toward. Something they would do together.

Every few days, Lion comes by with his rake. He insists on raking the grave under the lilac tree himself. Out of respect for Luke, and in gratitude for keeping Melanie alive. That is what Melanie says.

All Leila ever wanted to be was a mother, and maybe that was part of the problem. But at her age, she's becoming an entrepreneur. Hearing Clarisse talk has given her confidence. Leila's about to re-enter the work force. She'll be opening a daycare service. So far she's already got three children signed up and two on the waiting list. What she's really waiting for though is her first trip to California.

“You're gonna be great,” Melanie tells Leila, putting Lucas in his stroller.

“You think so?”

“Definitely,” says Melanie, with a quizzical smile.

Staring at her daughter, Leila actually believes her. “So are you.”

“Well, I'm not getting fake boobs when I get to California,” says Melanie, pulling down one strap in order to see her sunburn line. “I think I'm changing my mind about filmmaking.”

“You promised you'd try,” says Leila. “You said you had a lot of stories to tell.”

“I guess. I've died twice. I must really want to be here.”

Leila looks at her daughter with her spiky hair and her bird tattoo. “Well, California may surprise you. You may find you like it.”

Melanie smiles. “Doubtful.”
“I'd bet on it, sweetie.”

“What if I hate it there?”

“Then come home.”

Leila's already got her plane ticket out to Long Beach for Thanksgiving. By then, Lion has said that the heat won't be quite so suffocating. He's told Leila that even in the heart of the city, the grocery stores are like open-air markets, and you know there's about a million different languages buzzing around. It all sounds so exotic to Leila. She has lived her entire adult life in Canandaigua, in the house where Charlie was almost murdered.

“Well, I guess I can tell you. We're not moving right away,” says Melanie, suddenly.

“What do you mean?” asks Leila.

“We need to save money before we go anywhere. And I really want Lucas to know his grandmother.”

“Sweetie, don't stay here for me.”

Melanie holds up her hand. “Stop. Don't even try to talk me out of it. Lion and I made our decision last night. We're staying one more year.”

Don't keep a man in Canandaigua if he doesn't want to stay, thinks Leila, remembering Victor. “Well, only if that is what you both want.”

“Lion wants what I want,” says Melanie, as though she has read Leila's mind. As Leila sits back in her beach chair, her body shrouded in a long T-shirt, she lets out a sigh. She picks up the pieces of sandwich crust Lucas is throwing into the dirt, and remembers how Luke liked to have his sandwich crust cut off before eating it. She feels a tinge of regret as she stares out at the water, thinking of Charlie, who miraculously survived the shooting, his skull being so hard that the bullet split in two when it hit and exited near the ears. Now he is holed up in a
rehab hospital nearby, enduring a painful and slow comeback, Candice never leaving his side, she hears.

The good part is that some feelings die. And it's the bad part, too. Ben Shongo had been a shoulder to cry on that went too far. It was complicated between them. But she never loved him like she loved Charlie. She had ended it with Ben after a short time because he was married. But he kept coming back. And it was then that she knew that he was as lost as she was. He once offered to leave Emily. But Leila had turned him down. Then, when Luke was born, they were inextricably linked. Ben made her promise to call him whenever Luke had the slightest asthma attack. Leila wouldn't take his money or his love, but at least she agreed to accept his help.

Melanie yells from the water, jarring Leila's thoughts. Leila watches her. She's looking for a smooth flat gray stone that's good for skipping. Triangular shapes are the best, she's always believed. She finds one, positions it sideways and flicks her wrist, sending the stone skidding across the skin of the water just as Leila taught her. It dusts the surface, skipping just once.

Melanie comes running back. “Mom, why don't you try? You can still skip stones the best, I bet.”

“I couldn't, sweetie. Knowing me I'd probably throw out my back.”

“C'mon,” Melanie urges, drying off. “See, Lucas wants you to.” Lucas wants out of his stroller. Melanie takes his hands and stands him up on the blanket. He bounces at the knees, and then walks on his tiptoes, like a ballet dancer.

“Do it, Mom. Please?” Melanie says.

Leila gets up, smoothing the long T-shirt over her thighs. She smiles at Lion and rolls up her pants. “Well, okay,” she says. “Sure, I'll try it.”

Leila wades out into the water, the first time she has touched
the lake since Luke's death. She hesitates partway out and then stops, startled by its icy waves biting at her shins. She looks down, the water is clear enough to see the smooth rocks below. Leila picks up a flat gray rock and wipes it off with the edge of her shirt. She leans back, and then tosses it sideways into the water. It sails farther than Melanie's did, past the nearby dock. She turns to leave the water and then suddenly the flat stone comes skipping out of the lake, skipping back to her.

Leila is staring out at the hazy image hovering above the water. It first appears as a cloud that begins to move forward and spin, faster and faster, changing shape as it forms the image of a child. The sun is glazing the lake with pink and yellow hues, illuminating the glowing figure of the little boy who emerges out of the haze, his blond hair spun in sunlit curls. Leila gasps as a flood of tears falls across her face. For one crystal moment, he captures her eyes and smiles. He reaches down and scoops up a handful of water and throws it into the air, tossing his head back in laughter as he lets the water shower over him. When he was a baby learning to swim, she would play with him like this to teach him that the water was a safe place.

She is remembering it all, his joyful games, his dimes, the way his paper airplanes went spinning into the air. His obsession with flying.

He reaches one hand out to her just as he used to do when he was sick and he wanted her to know he would be okay. Leila knows she cannot touch him, but she reaches her own hand out to let him know she understands.

And then, he retreats into the haze and vanishes.

The lake is empty now, its waters still, calm. He is gone. She feels it in her bones, and the feeling of longing she has lived with for so long is replaced by a sense of peace. Leila knows Luke will always be with her. She thinks of a small snow angel
that appeared early one morning on the lawn, and the branch of the lilac tree waving back and forth even though there was no wind. She stands there, hand on her heart, allowing herself to finally let him go.

Later, when Lion and Melanie are roasting marshmallows under the darkening sky and the ring of fire spreads around the lake, containing it in one glowing circle of light, Leila gets up and wades farther out into the cold water. She is not afraid of the future anymore.

Under her feet, she feels the slip of smooth white stones. She's up to her waist now, but she's plowing through the cold pockets in the water. The evening sky has erupted in a spray of stars. Leila has decided that each star is really an ancestor. She doesn't have to try hard to find hers because they already know who she is and so she always looks exactly at the right one. She turns around and looks at her family. Melanie waves, her face bathed in the fire's glow. Then Leila drops way down into the water, holding her breath, letting her T-shirt billow around her. She opens her eyes. She cannot see a thing below, let alone the face in front of her. Certainly not the silver tomahawk that Two Bears buried on Squaw Island and then years later unearthed on a rainy night in order to return the spirits to the lake before he, himself, passed on.

But when Leila looks up there are little white diamonds and red stars floating on the surface of the water. She wonders how many flares it would take to circle the ocean. Probably one for every person in the world. She tries to imagine the sky so packed with stars that they spill out. All those little white and red lights scattered across the beautiful water. One for every person, living and not.

FROM
ILIE
RUBY
AND
AVON A

Writing
The Language of Trees

I wrote this book over the course of a few years. I researched, wrote and rewrote, as good writers do. I produced a few versions. Okay, I had six versions to be exact. Six 400-page piles of paper sitting in my office on my desk. I carted these versions around with me from office to office during a nomadic time in my life. I felt overwhelmed that I had created so much
paper
. I started writing poetry and painting to take my mind off of these six pink elephants in my office. My painting career began to take off a bit. I just couldn't write anything new. Books become your
babies
. I had to make sure that my book was taken care of, but after a while, I stopped letting anyone read it.

One day, a friend from my writing program at the University of Southern California, announced that she would be visiting from Manhattan and that she wanted to see my new house. (I had just moved,
again
. I had denied her several requests to read my book. She had begged me countless times.) I may have mentioned to her at some point, during a confessional moment between two writers, about my six versions and my inability to choose one. But on the day of her visit, innocently enough, she showed up with a housewarming present—a beautiful vase—and without thinking, I showed her my office, in particular, I wanted her to see the peach-colored walls and my new walnut floors.

When I flung open the door I knew I was in trouble. There, sitting in plain sight, were six manuscripts on top of my packing boxes.

“Is that the book?” she asked me, excitedly, a wild look in her eyes.

I was in shock. “Yes, but—”

Things spiraled out of control from there.

My friend grabbed a manuscript,
Version 3,
to be exact, and tore out of my house with it under her arm, me following, calling her back. She jumped into her car, waved goodbye, and drove out of the driveway, gone with my book, back to New York City with me standing there, outside on my lawn, feeling bereft.

She called me two weeks later. “You stole my book,” I said.

“Ilie, this is a beautiful story and it needs to be published. Get it to your agent right away.”

I went through the manuscript word by word. It felt exactly right. At that point I realized that all these manuscripts were very much the same, with the exception of a few descriptions here and there. With a sense of relief, I finalized some minor changes and sent it promptly to my agent.

The setting of this story is very strong. Did you set out to make it that way?

I grew up in Rochester, New York, and spent my summers in my family's rented cottages on Canandaigua Lake, the birthplace of the Seneca Nation of Indians. Having always been fascinated by nature and the spiritual realm, I have become very attuned to
place
. The gorgeous setting of Canandaigua combined with the Native American folklore, in effect, created a setting that was irresistible, and in the book, became a character in and of itself. This sense of place was very important for me in creating the story, and before I knew it, the
place
became a force that propelled characters into action. Whenever I think of Canandaigua, what stands out most in my mind is an image of huge magnificent willows all around the lake, which of course, inspired the title of the book. I remember walking a dirt road with my younger sister, hand in hand, to our favorite destination point—a little country store where they sold penny candy and rock candy, which in the book became O'Connell's Feed & Grain. I remember stopping to eat sweet peas by the side of the road. I am also a visual artist and have a love of poetry which I am told gives my prose a “painterly” quality. Many parts of this book began as poems about places I have been. In the writing of this story, some of these poems just stood out in my mind and became the fibers I used to weave this story together.

 

Do you believe in ghosts and the spiritual realm?

I have to give credit to writer Alice Sebold of
The Lovely Bones
for this answer, which I heard during one of her readings. She said
something about having a raging optimism about the existence of an afterlife. I do, too. I like the idea that the spirits of people live on and that there is a greater purpose to our lives. Perhaps it is not so much a belief in ghosts but a raging desire to believe in something more. As a child I felt this way. I was always fascinated with folklore and the ghost stories people told. One of the cottages my family rented on Canandaigua Lake was said to have been built on an Indian burial ground. This was likely just fiction. We won't ever know if it was the case for sure, but it sure gave us children a lot of fodder for ghost stories each night around the campfire. The cottage next door was owned by a woman who had thirteen cats. She inspired the character of Clarisse Mellon. She talked often about the history of the place, and told us that someone had died in our cottage long ago, and that the spirit was still in the house. I remember being unafraid of this “ghost.” It actually made the place more fascinating to me.

 

How did you learn about the Seneca Nation of Indians?

You can't live in Canandaigua and not know about Ganondagan and the Seneca Nation of Indians. My family attended festivals and tours there every summer for years. When researching the backstory for this book, I visited the site again. It was interesting to see it from an adult perspective and learn about the issues facing the Seneca, as well as begin to separate fact from fiction. However, there are many versions of the folklore and stories and how this played out around the area where this book takes place.

 

Why are so many of the male characters so “motherly”?

When first writing this book, in many workshops and writers' groups, it never failed that a man would ask me why most of my male characters were so darn good and nurturing. I had many long discussions with these inquisitors and told them that I could only speak from my own experience. Everything I learned about mothering I learned from the warm and nurturing men I've
known throughout my life. For me, the idea of “motherlessness” will always be compelling. The character of Joseph was inspired by a dear friend of mine, Jim, who actually studied in Africa to be a priest, and later met his wife while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. Though he left the priesthood, he was one of the most sensitive and wise people I have ever known. In many ways he was like a father to me, and his belief in the power of the human spirit was unshakable.

 

What's with all the hands-on healing and talk about beliefs?

I have always been fascinated with the idea of healers and healing. Growing up, a chronic illness plagued someone close to me and I always wanted to help. I have met many talented people who are capable of amazing things, and I see this fascination only growing over time. Also, I like the idea of a spirit caught between worlds, and am interested in the power of belief. I was a teacher in Los Angeles after the Rodney King race riots of 1992, where I learned that children become what you tell them they are. In
The Language of Trees
, Joseph says, “You ever see a tree that's dying, it's nothing but a bunch of dried-out branches? You can talk to this tree, tell it all about how its leaves are growing green and healthy. Then you sit back and watch how it changes.” This statement embodies one of my philosophies in life. In other words, people grow into their beliefs about themselves, and if things don't go right on the first try, well, as you well know by now, I am a firm believer in second chances.