Chapter Five

No girl had ever been so ingloriously wooed. Burchard hoisted her onto the horse and mounted behind her, pushed his spurs into the poor animal’s flank and set off at a pace that reminded Renelde of the hurtling she sometimes experienced just as sleep overcame her. The horse sidled through the forest trees, unperturbed by the bramble that tore at its legs. Burchard stopped short somewhere in the very depths of the forest, in a place that Renelde had never ventured, off the various paths on which the peasants and the gentry travelled to and fro. He pulled her off the horse and told her she was exquisite, a word with which she was not familiar. He gently brushed the hair off her cheek. Her face was flushed with fear. He then did what any man will do if he has never learned self-restraint.

His breath calmed when his lust was satisfied and had given way to light caresses down her unformed breast. You must come and live with me in the castle, as my wife’s maid, he said.

She shook her head. I cannot, sir. I love the countess too much for that, and besides I am betrothed. Renelde lay as still as if she were dead.

Ah, but my wife has a welcoming soul, Burchard said. And as for your betrothal, that is easily unravelled. I insist you come; I can no more live without you than . . . well, now I know you. He leaned into her and kissed her breast as if it was a meal laid upon his very own table. She had no new answer for him. Her only answer was already offered. That he had taken what was not his to take did not enter his mind. The land and all that grew upon it was his. It infuriated him that she did not bend to his birthright. Her implacability enraged him. He followed her for days and cornered her in unlikely places and begged her, once with genuine tears flowing down his face. She was the most pure, modest, beautiful creature he had ever laid his eyes on. She was unattainable. Burchard forced his hand with her, in the name of love, a sentiment that overran him, caused him profound grief the likes of which he had never before imagined. It cut him, wounded him, afflicted him, drained him of all his energy and, simultaneously, energized him. No one had ever said no to him before.

Come and live in my castle, he insisted. I will make you maid-in-waiting to the countess.

She shook her head.

Once upon a time. The story I don’t tell Jake. The story that isn’t safe to tell: the shovel went in, the earthen hole gaped, the tree root was buried. A careless operation. It seemed like ages ago, but it had been only one year since I last joined the ranks of the wayward, the hippies, the avaricious, ambitious university brigade and the cultish Bhagwan Rajneesh groupies, their orange clothing so lively in the early morning frost of Hearst, Ontario, in May and June. I would do again what I had first done four summers before, and each summer since — plant spindly little conifers just south of the treeline, each tree a back-crunching effort, earning seven to ten cents per, not to mention athlete’s foot, callused hips and thighs, a certain infection due to blackfly bites, DEET burns along the neck and shoulders, an oozing staphylococcus someone had brought back from Egypt, various bruises, scratches down the legs and arms, chafing.

There were really only two rational reasons to treeplant and neither had to do with ecology. The first was purely fiscal. The other was an enduring joy to the job, the joy, once I had become adept at it, of facility, of physical ease. The lyricism of motion. I liked to stop in open burns and watch the other planters stoop and plant and rise, shovels poised, then dropped like spear shafts to the kill. I enjoyed the infinite repetition — the draw, the tree whipped out of the bag, the stoop, the rise, all the while the figure, treeplanter (sun-baked skin, sun-bleached cotton plaid farmer’s shirt billowing in the wind), moving silently, erratically away. The ash rose up into little cumulus-like puffs each time the shovel cut the earth. Treeplanting had a compelling physicality I could not replace in other ways, a physicality that made it difficult for me to deny the call each spring — the thick smell of mud, the sexiness of earth drawing me toward it.

I worked for a West Coast firm owned by two Dutch hippies who had tired of the Vancouver pot culture and decided to go entrepreneurial. They saw a niche market in the scarred clearcuts, saw opportunity there in the detritus of forest fire. A year ago, I was glazed over with wanting to go back. I was an addict of soil and hard weather and the erotic momentum of clouds. There were preparations to make, work to be done. Before leaving, I had to clean out the fridge, a shuddering 1975 harvest gold monstrosity full of unmarked leftovers decayed almost to toxicity. I cleaned it out annually as a ritual before I headed up north. This fridge was the focal point of my claustrophobic apartment on the main floor of a chopped-up Edwardian house, a hodgepodge of ad hoc renovations strewn with personal treasures: a great number of paisley scarves, treatises on the history and practice of weaving, old notes from Evelyn’s course. The living room sufficed as a bedroom. The bathroom — shower, mini-tub, vanity and all — was constructed, crammed in actually, along the hallway by the stairs to the second floor apartment.

The walls were papered with an ancient woodchip-textured material, painted every six years, whether it needed it or not, in a shiny bluish-white oil-based smear. The kitchen opened onto the dining room, the division marked by an ugly strip of aluminum where linoleum met hardwood. The furniture, table, every surface held books and magazines and tea-stained ceramic mugs, left in situ until they were all dirty and I had to fill the sink and wash them. I was bound to the place by my laziness. By inertia.

Rot. On the top shelf of the fridge, I spotted yogurt fungus, its lacy green foam seeping under the lid and travelling down the outside of the tub. There was a naval orange sinking into a brown puddle in a half-tied plastic sack. A lumpy white circular mould on top of the jam, its peak of forest green forming up the inside wall of the jar. And the smell. The reek was heartbreaking. I had to deal with an entire bowl of desiccated lemons. They had shrivelled and darkened and thinned. The skins were hardened shells not unlike shellacked Easter eggs, and I peeled one. A nugget of pulpy juice, two drops, no more, and one miserable little seed. I felt like crying. My mother called just as I was sorting compost from trash. I ran water into an almost full pint of whipping cream. Stinking lumps gurgled up over the top, pulsing into the stream of chlorinated water. They wobbled in the drain before dispersing.

Alma? she said. Alma, where are you?

Mum? You called me. Where are you? I had the cordless phone tucked up between my ear and shoulder and was poking a stiff deposit of fungus with the back end of a wooden spoon in order to facilitate its journey down the drain to Lake Ontario.

Her voice warbled. Home, she said. Home was on the eighteenth floor of a condo building, the Ivory Tower. She moved there when they divorced, purchasing with her share of the spoils — yes, it was a war — a quantity of useless and extravagant furnishings. I imagined her slumped into the feather couch; she paid a fortune for it, claiming it was the couch my father would never have permitted her to buy when they were together and that was why she had to have it. Upholstered in burgundy velvet, it was the blue-red of royal blood, chosen for its pretence, its appearance of upper classness, its hopeful snobbery. She didn’t like it either, but in spite of this, she wanted it. It plumped up when she sat in it, making her appear small. And all around her, stacked on little shelves, were the books, the Oxford dictionaries lined up, soldiers smugly guarding intellect. The carpet was vacuumed on the bias, one stripe against the grain, one with, and so the floor was like a lawn bowling green. She wore silk, nubbled wool or both, and as we spoke, I imagined her legs crossing and uncrossing. I squeezed a dollop of liquid detergent over the spore growth in order to neutralize its acrid smell and asked, Are you fine? My voice was pitched too high.

Well, she said, I’m okay. Hers was higher, a baby-doll voice. I knew by the crackle of interference that she was calling me from her cell phone, even though her land line was likely not more than a metre away. Her little voice sang out, Are you still coming, Alma? We’ll meet in the ravine. I’ll pack lunch.

The train to North Bay was scheduled to depart at eight-thirty the next morning. I had yet to buy a couple of large tarps, a nylon cord, a dome tent, Muskol, moleskin, calamine lotion, Band-Aids, talcum powder, a travel soap dish, a bar of multipurpose soap (skin, hair, clothes), and a decent thermos. Lying in a heap on the floor along with my enormous backpack were my planting bags (a three-bag holster harness, orange and white PVC-coated nylon, with suspender braces, holes punched into the bottoms to let the root water run out), my D-handle shovel, one foot bar ground off to lighten the tool (carpal tunnel syndrome being a common occupational hazard), rain gear, a supply of an Avon perfume product, non-toxic and reasonably good as mosquito defence, full protection Watkins bug dope lotion, a multi-season sleeping bag, and an air mattress, deflated.

I had packed a supply of men’s cotton long-sleeved suit shirts, light in colour, several white T-shirts, an abundance of underwear, cotton socks, wool socks, scarves, three rolls of top-quality duct tape, a weekend bra and a supply of tampons. The list of necessities sent around to the crew encouraged the wearing of rubber or rubberized gloves to protect the hands from bramble tears and other damage and from the seeping-in of tree-borne pesticides, but I did not have these. I never wore gloves. I could not feel the plant along my fingertips with them on.

I still had to finish sorting the biodegradable from the nonand wipe down the inside surface of the Inglis, the door of which stood open, propped by a large plastic Godzilla that I had once been given and which I had carted through various apartments, rooming houses, bad relationships. The refrigerator occasionally sputtered as the motor struggled to keep up to the warming coolant. I looked beyond it, through a little vinyl-clad window into the backyard, to my miniature Eden, and wondered at the crocuses, which had poked through the last April snow and opened their petals, presenting stamens to the bees already thrumming about them. I needed to rake the pin oak leaves out from the beds, prune, flay and bind the espaliered apple, stake the climbing tea rose. The box of hair dye beside the sink reminded me of my last task.

I’ll be there in an hour, I said. I turned the tap on full and then slowed it down in turns, fast then slow, in the hope that the last wad of decay would break up and wash away. In the end I had to reach down and poke my thumb into it. I peered into a bag of black mission figs that I’d found in my fruit bowl. Little ebullient maggots wriggled in and out of them, white ridged worms, their reproductive fate sealed in the Baggie. Let us be grateful for their culinary demise. Others dine on nothing, shit, fast food. I told my mother.

How awful.

But, Mum! Come on. Black mission figs. C’est haute!

I don’t know. Meet me, will you? she said. You’ll be gone for so long, otherwise, and . . .

Yes, Mum, yes.

I took my mountain bike, my panniers and all my Canadian Tire money and raced. The store was full of people standing in my way, buying such trusty hardware items as Fudgeo cookies, disposable diapers and plastic laundry baskets advertised as Mother’s Day gifts. I got caught up in the angst these situations often create. I became rankled; I was sweating in my armpits. My cart was overloaded but I threw one of those laundry baskets over top of it all just the same. A woman jostled me in the lineup.

Excuse me, miss. The woman was elderly, pinched about the mouth area; she had blue-rinsed hair. But I’ve only got one item, she said. Do you mind? I’m frail, you see. She held up her would-be purchase by way of explanation.

Oh for Christ’s sake.

I waved her in front of me. She clutched a large transparent plastic bag that held a two-part kit, ready to be assembled at home. One part was a set of aluminum legs, the other the body of a pink plastic garden flamingo. I calmed myself by staring at a patch of hair, a coloured swirl of unnatural blue on the back of her head. Her eddying hair. It took almost two hours — the shops, the garden rot, the fetid leaves, the thorns. I was exhausted by the city, the expectations, these people moving in and out of importance and wanting, the smell of exhaust fume. Mother gave me a hug, and I was exhausted by this hug too. It was a hug that took, not gave.

Mum was down in the ravine alone, wearing white leather sneakers and looking lost. She wore the dusky pink of wealth; she had studied the wealthy. Her skin matched this pink and offset it with the grey pallor of illness recently overcome. She was a person of former health, had declined in scale in such a way that in place of fat her wrinkled skin hung about her; illness brought on by drink and cigarettes. Her facial muscles shifted in a slow intense dance of concentration, she was searching for a thought. Words to fill silences. I could not bear her vulnerability, that flutter of sun-bleached pink glowing under the great maple trees. The park smelled of feces and we pretended it didn’t, marvelled aloud at the blue sky and the sense of sap moving up toward the littlest branches. The trees had unfurled their new leaves, and the very air was tinged with the light green of new hope. If she died, I suddenly considered, I would be free. I was made bitter in her presence, and I did not entirely know why. We walked and walked and finally sat, watching the tennis players lob balls back and forth, our heads following the banal sway, finding comfort there. Mum handed me a now-cold grilled sandwich of roasted vegetables and a condiment of unbearable tastiness.

I’ve been wondering about trees, she said. How do the roots know to go down and the stem up? I thought you might know the answer.

I looked at her and saw myself. We were so alike, it was disturbing. We had the same small, upturned, schoolgirlish nose, the same smattering of dark freckles, the same perfectly arched eyebrows framing identical green, oval eyes. I was her doppelgänger, but decades younger. I thought of the hair dye at home and breathed a sigh of relief. I would not be like her; I would be fiercely not like her. The hair would only be the beginning.

I don’t know, Mum, they just do, I said. But I did know. Roots had many properties: they anchored the growing plant, they sought water and minerals, they stored food safely away from most animals. The roots went down because that was their job, because they weren’t stems, meristems, axillary buds, flowers, because the cotyledon halves of the seed had sent them there. I told her instead how treeplanters regularly laid their tree bundles in rows along the ground and hacked the bottom half of the roots away with their razor sharp shovels. This diminished the tree’s strength, lessening its likelihood for survival but making it much easier to plant. The first time I encountered this practice, I was watching a veteran planter, a highballer, Karl, who reeked of garlic and had the rheumy eyes of a drinker. I saw him from a distance when he thought no one was looking. He picked up his shovel and drove it down like a man seeking revenge on the earth. Again and again.

I watched in dismay. What are you doing?

He looked at me, a snarl pulling his lip away from his teeth, and then he seemed to consciously settle this tic in order to smile. It doesn’t bother them, he said. Well, only a little. It disenchants them. He spoke in a soft accent.

Disenchants? I said.

Yes, that’s right. They don’t know anymore where they are going.

I corrected him. Disorients them, then, you mean.

Yes, I mean that, actually. His long fingers were red with cold, his nails pale blue-pink moons set into them; the nails were bulbous, slightly larger than they ought proportionally to have been. He stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans and stared at me in a way that left me shivering.

It makes them work harder. It makes them stronger in the end. Karl was jangling change in his pockets or keys or something. Spittle had formed in the corners of his lips.

Your accent, I said.

Karl’s eyebrow rose fractionally, and I watched his eyes scan me, along my topography, tits, belly, the slight gape of cloth between my legs. He was memorizing.

I am not German, well, only very slightly, he said, though there are some who believe I have a linear claim to royalty. My father, he was five generations Canadian military, you see, he took me over there and raised me with the help of a sort of au pair. I kept the accent, can’t shake it. I don’t know a word of German anymore and my English is pretty much crap. I speak English in translation, like my au pair, and I do not know the original. I call it shadow English. I’m nothing really. Which is why, I suppose, I’m here in this hell at my age. You didn’t think I enjoy it? Ha! I’ve been rich, of course, but I’ve also been poor like a church mouse. I just keep reinventing, you know?

What happened to your mother?

You’ve got gold in your eyes. I see my reflection there. Ah? He was staring at me.

Huh?

She’s dead, he said. His eyes bored into me, through me, to the landscape behind. I began to move away. He held up a sapling, the slashed roots dripping runnels of muddied water, and he snapped it in two.

He smiled, said, Disoriented. There were signs of decay in his mouth.

There must have been disenchantment too, I considered. There must have. The trees were planted for future editions of The New York Times and first-grade toilet paper rolls, the pages of this book. The landscape was a devastation, a scarified abomination. Very few trees were left standing. It was a man-made tundra. Barren lands. Birch, alder and poplar stems stood in singlets where the greedy feller-buncher had passed them by for more valuable trees. Along the ground, where it wasn’t swampy, where the water table hadn’t risen when the severed trees failed to suck up water come spring, where it wasn’t scraped, exposed sand or duff or clumps of gnarled root tangling up my shovel, it was blanched, bone-like leftovers — deadfall branches and whatever hopeful greenery managed to sprout out of that nothing.

Occasionally a grouse built a nest in amongst the tussock and screeched if I came near. Finding a plantable microsite could become frustrating. Blackflies rose light as air out of the decay. I breathed them in through my nostrils and later sneezed or blew them out. They struggled against the mucus, not yet dead.

Gold, he said. Your eyes are flecked with gold.

I told Mum about Karl, doing his persuasive accent as best I could, describing his handlebar moustache, the renegade red bristles of it, recounting the tenuous claim he made as heir to the throne (fifth cousin, thrice removed, bastard child or some such ridiculous assertion) and his awkwardly roving hand, which had tried but failed to enter my pants one day in an elegant hotel room in Kapuskasing, model town of the north.

What did you do? she said.

He pushed me onto the bed. Alma, Alma, he cooed, I think I am in love with you. I told him to fuck off. I slapped him off me.

Mum gave me a sober look, though she was far from it. I’d seen her nip from her little steel flask; very pretty. She liked pretty things. The flask showed misty condensation around her fingers. She clasped it tightly, scared it might slip away and leave her with nothing at all. A whoop went up on the tennis court. The ball was too high, out of bounds. Mother offered the flask to me, and out of something, camaraderie, I poured her gin into me. I saw my mother’s relief that I had not fully drained it.

Will you come for tea? she asked.

I will.

I dropped her home and then headed to my place, where I packed up the gift and a box of Peak Freans; she liked the assorteds, preferring out of these bourbon creams. We did not drink herbal tea.

Like drinking perfume, she said.

We drank Darjeeling made from civilized little bags. I dipped my cookie; she, never.

With that woman again, I suppose, she said.

I kept my mouth shut. To change the topic, I handed her the plastic laundry basket from Canadian Tire. I’ve brought you a Mother’s Day gift. Happy Mother’s Day or almost, Mum.

A basket case! How fitting, she said.

She lifted herself off the couch and brought the basket into the kitchen, where her stacked washer-dryer was hidden away in a cupboard. She opened and closed the fridge door several times. She returned and slumped into the feathers. I despise this couch, she said, flinging her tight little half-curled fist into it. Hate this whole apartment, you know. He’s with that woman, I can feel it. I can feel it, I can, under my skin. Men are shits. She was moving into dangerous territory and I protested.

You know, I wish you wouldn’t constantly target men. It isn’t Dad’s fault he’s a jerk.

Whose fault is it then?

I don’t know. You can’t keep blaming him for everything, it’s tiresome. He’s predisposed; you should have seen it coming.

Blame the victim, sure. Cheating is genetic?

How should I know? I just wish you didn’t have to slip it into everything, wish you’d get over yourself.

I am over myself.

My father, whom I love greatly and deeply, is a poor, sick, stupid man. He was an almost-soldier when they met, just eighteen at the end of the war, barely handed a uniform. It was devilish of my mother to run off with him. It was the first time he ran away and the last time she did. Canada was their land of milk and honey, not to mention ill-temper, high drama and messy divorce. What a spawn they found in me. A seething mixture of evasion and daydream. All the world could be explained away, couldn’t it? Little diagrams of helices and enlarged DNA molecules wound in spirals around aluminum poles. Biologists could explain the want, the desire in vines to twine as they sought support, and they could draw pictures of what a leaf looked like at the code level. The mathematical beauty of this baffled and astounded me. But what astounded me more was that a tree, not so much in its sapling stage but in its prime, that canopy, the giant stage, so human that people cared to save it from the chainsaw and built sleeping quarters in its branches to ensure its longevity, that a tree was just a plant, like a dandelion, a shaft of plantain, a stalk of nettle. That seemed wonderful to me.

It’s possible wanderlust is genetic, isn’t it?

Roaming?

It’s possible.

Running away?

There, there, I said. I wrapped her in a blanket and set her feet in a warm Epsom salt bath. Her feet were like little bird claws, so skinny, so poised.

I’ve never done anything to deserve this, she said. I haven’t done anything . . .

She soon fell into talking about my father, lambasting him and praising him in turns. I offered her a drink so that she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about sneaking back and forth to the kitchen. I poured one for myself too. I bypassed the drink she’d snuck into the fridge earlier and grabbed the tonic behind it. The pong of exotic cheeses gone too far hit me like a wall, reminding me of the Inglis and all the work I still had at home. I dropped ice cubes into the tumblers and listened to the background noise of my mother recalling some ancient, unspeakable wrong my father had perpetrated, a coat he bought for her, yes, the cheaper version of what she wanted. Were we all in the state of becoming our parents, of streaming into the sea of blind, wilful unknowing? The notion terrified me, and with shameful relief I considered I’d be on a train in twelve hours heading toward wilderness, away from this other urban bewilderment.

Your fridge needs cleaning out, I said.

The inside of a fridge, she muttered. Yes. And then her eyes fell upon the crossword beside her on the couch, the newspaper folded over so only the blocked-up grid showed.

Oh, God, she said, don’t leave me.

I’m sorry, Mum, I said. And then, You know, the roots? What you asked about the roots? The roots are relatively lucky; they hide down there away from the view and brood, their heads stuck in the mud, while the rest of the plant, you know, what we really think of when we think tree or shrub or weed has to deal with the ugly scenery, the horrific weather and the annual Agent Orange sprayings.

They do that? she said.

There’s bound to be disenchantment.

That’s terrible, honey.

I imagined all my things waiting patiently, inanimate without me. I thought about the northern sky pressing down on me, the scent of clean air and the complex sensation of nothing for miles around. I said goodbye to my sleeping mother and, appearing calm, I left.