Home Schooling by Carol Windley

could, if it chose, give anyone passing by a whack on the head with its twisted-up branches, like the tree in the Harry Potter movie, which she and Marni actually sat through at a matinee while Sherry was shopping. She loved this old tree, partly because Nolan Ganz said it got pitch on his driveway and his car’s tires picked it up and in the fall its dried-up needles littered the lawn and burned the grass. It was one tree he couldn’t cut down, which was why Nadia worshipped it. Its bark was silvery, thick, and spongy as cork. Its shadows were an inky violet, cleansing on the skin as water. What she liked to do was put her hands on a low branch of the tree and let herself slump forward, her spine bowed, weightless, drifting. Her hands picked up a kind of energy the tree had, right at its core, and through her this power got transferred out into the world. Once, she’d been walking back from a swim at the public beach three blocks away, and she saw someone standing under her tree. He wore sunglasses, baggy shorts, a sleeveless T-shirt. He had a handkerchief tied over his hair, gold earrings in his ears: very cool. She thought he glanced at her as she walked past. Later, she wished she’d said something, asked him if he needed directions or anything. She should have; she should have spoken. Once she got inside the yard, the laurel hedge and the old pine tree hid him from her sight; she couldn’t tell when or if he left.
    Sherry wanted a book on rhododendrons. She and Nadia drove to Maurice’s bookstore, which was in a small shopping centre near a busy three-way intersection, not far from the Royal Jubilee Hospital. On one side there was a flower shop and on the other a pharmacy.Inside the store it was noisy from the traffic and a construction site on the opposite corner. On the counter an electric fan ruffled a pile of papers. A woman stood behind the counter. She was talking on the phone, her back turned to the store, and she didn’t look at Sherry and Nadia. Sherry went to find the gardening books and Maurice came from the back of the store and intercepted her. “How good to see you,” he said, kissing Sherry on one side of her face and then the other. “And you, Nadia. You’ve changed. I forget how quickly young people grow up these days.”
    He found Sherry a book on rhododendrons.
    â€œDoes it say anything about black spots on the leaves?” Sherry said. “We’ve got that, on some of our rhododendrons. I’d hate to see those big old plants dying. If they are dying.” She sat in a child’s chair at a child’s table and opened the book. She slid her bare feet out of her sandals and crossed her ankles. She leaned forward, an elbow on the table. Maurice sat beside her on one of the little chairs.
    Nadia browsed through the books. She heard Maurice say that if they hadn’t had lunch yet, he’d like to take them to a place he knew, a little Mexican restaurant.
    â€œI’m parked in a fifteen-minute zone,” Sherry said.
    â€œWe’ll take your car,” Maurice said. He stood up. He slid the little chair under the little table. He picked up the book Sherry had been looking at and closed it and put it on the counter. He arranged with the clerk, whose name was Shannon, for her to take her lunch break when he got back. He sat in the back of the car, leaning forward, his hand on the driver’s seat, directing Sherry. His fingers touched the ends of her hair. Nadia saw this. Only the unscarred side of his face was visible to her. He had put on dark glasses. He wore a white linen suit.
    When they got back from the restaurant, Nadia picked up a book and opened it, not with any sense of anticipation and dread, or however Maurice had described it at Sherry’s wedding. She flipped through the pages while she waited for Sherry to pay for her bookon rhododendrons. “Let me know if you find it helpful,” Maurice said as he put the