wound, or some unsightly bulge. The tree will look a little bent, perhaps, or its leaves will have an orange tint to them. That is because the tree is
dying
, you see. It is bleeding out. The bulges are what I prefer, their resin is white or yellow and is quite viscous. It looks almost like butter. It gives such a good taste to the tea. Of course, it is pretty solid stuff. They use it to make torches, after all. You have to dissolve it in a little bit of wood alcohol… it’s the only way to get it down.” She smiles, and Mona sees her teeth are small and amber-brown, just like the eyes of the goats and deer around her, and they glisten queerly in the faint light of the basement. “Perhaps I’ll make you some. It makes the rest of the day go so much better.”
“I guess I can see that,” says Mona, who suddenly wants nothing more than to get away from this strange place filled with cabinets and dead things and the perfume of wood alcohol and pitch.
“Well, I won’t hold you up,” she says. “I am sure you want to seethe house. Run along, and I’ll look forward to hearing all about it later.”
“All right,” says Mona. She begins backing away, papers clutched tightly in her hands.
“Good day,” says Mrs. Benjamin, and she laughs quietly, as if enjoying some private joke, and she returns to her work, muttering and humming to herself in several clashing octaves.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The careful striae of small towns. Invisible boundaries, reflecting pay grade, church attendance, model of home. Blue-collar neighborhoods with open garages packed to bursting; houses deeply set in wooded copses, accessible only by winding driveways—the upper crust, surely; then packed, denuded, Puritanical homes, white and harsh and cauterized. The value of the cars (all American) fluctuates wildly from street to street. Crowds of children at play burst out of hedges, then disappear like flocks of pigeons wheeling over cityscapes. In all yards and at all corners, people wave constantly, at everything and everyone, hello hello and how d’ye do, and how d’ye do again.
And there, just on the corner ahead, below a big, leaning spruce, is a low adobe home she’s seen before, though last time it was rendered in the yellow hues and dusky shadows of instant film taken decades ago.
Mona pulls up in front of her mother’s house. The sense of déjà vu is overpowering. She sits in the car for a while, just staring at it. She knows she has never been here, but she can’t help but feel as if she has, as if Earl and Laura once swung by this house on a summer vacation when Mona was still terribly young, and she now has only echoes of the memory.
Once, she knows, a woman in a tight blue dress greeted her friends on that front walk, and then they had a pleasant afternoon in the backyard, with cocktails and gossip and, maybe later in the evening, a little too much candor. Perhaps she or a friend commented,“Mountains are pink—time to drink!” and laughed and thoughtlessly scrawled it on the back of a photo and forgot about it, leaving it to be tossed in with some meaningless papers from work and travel hundreds of miles to the bleak oil flats of West Texas.
It all feels so impossible. It was one thing to learn via papers and photos that her mother had once been happy and whole, but it is quite another to actually see the real, definite place where she lived her life.
Mona feels like the victim of a crime. It is
wrong
for her mother to have been someone else once. It is not
just
that Mona was stuck with the frail, decaying husk she became.
But finally she climbs out, legs wobbling and eyes watering, and she sits down on the front step like a latchkey kid and waits for the locksmith to come.
She gets enough control over herself to take stock of the house while she waits. Parson was right—the house is in very good shape. There isn’t a weed in the yard, the grass is watered, and unless she’s wrong the house even has a new layer of
dying
, you see. It is bleeding out. The bulges are what I prefer, their resin is white or yellow and is quite viscous. It looks almost like butter. It gives such a good taste to the tea. Of course, it is pretty solid stuff. They use it to make torches, after all. You have to dissolve it in a little bit of wood alcohol… it’s the only way to get it down.” She smiles, and Mona sees her teeth are small and amber-brown, just like the eyes of the goats and deer around her, and they glisten queerly in the faint light of the basement. “Perhaps I’ll make you some. It makes the rest of the day go so much better.”
“I guess I can see that,” says Mona, who suddenly wants nothing more than to get away from this strange place filled with cabinets and dead things and the perfume of wood alcohol and pitch.
“Well, I won’t hold you up,” she says. “I am sure you want to seethe house. Run along, and I’ll look forward to hearing all about it later.”
“All right,” says Mona. She begins backing away, papers clutched tightly in her hands.
“Good day,” says Mrs. Benjamin, and she laughs quietly, as if enjoying some private joke, and she returns to her work, muttering and humming to herself in several clashing octaves.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The careful striae of small towns. Invisible boundaries, reflecting pay grade, church attendance, model of home. Blue-collar neighborhoods with open garages packed to bursting; houses deeply set in wooded copses, accessible only by winding driveways—the upper crust, surely; then packed, denuded, Puritanical homes, white and harsh and cauterized. The value of the cars (all American) fluctuates wildly from street to street. Crowds of children at play burst out of hedges, then disappear like flocks of pigeons wheeling over cityscapes. In all yards and at all corners, people wave constantly, at everything and everyone, hello hello and how d’ye do, and how d’ye do again.
And there, just on the corner ahead, below a big, leaning spruce, is a low adobe home she’s seen before, though last time it was rendered in the yellow hues and dusky shadows of instant film taken decades ago.
Mona pulls up in front of her mother’s house. The sense of déjà vu is overpowering. She sits in the car for a while, just staring at it. She knows she has never been here, but she can’t help but feel as if she has, as if Earl and Laura once swung by this house on a summer vacation when Mona was still terribly young, and she now has only echoes of the memory.
Once, she knows, a woman in a tight blue dress greeted her friends on that front walk, and then they had a pleasant afternoon in the backyard, with cocktails and gossip and, maybe later in the evening, a little too much candor. Perhaps she or a friend commented,“Mountains are pink—time to drink!” and laughed and thoughtlessly scrawled it on the back of a photo and forgot about it, leaving it to be tossed in with some meaningless papers from work and travel hundreds of miles to the bleak oil flats of West Texas.
It all feels so impossible. It was one thing to learn via papers and photos that her mother had once been happy and whole, but it is quite another to actually see the real, definite place where she lived her life.
Mona feels like the victim of a crime. It is
wrong
for her mother to have been someone else once. It is not
just
that Mona was stuck with the frail, decaying husk she became.
But finally she climbs out, legs wobbling and eyes watering, and she sits down on the front step like a latchkey kid and waits for the locksmith to come.
She gets enough control over herself to take stock of the house while she waits. Parson was right—the house is in very good shape. There isn’t a weed in the yard, the grass is watered, and unless she’s wrong the house even has a new layer of
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