I crawled up the tree that night to commiserate with my dad. He sang me a lullaby I’d never heard before. It went over and over and soothed me to calmness. And to think I had believed, so stupidly I then realized, that, because of the angels in heaven that I’d been taught about, I would be rewarded for finding my dad in the top of the tree. I thought it would be like Lourdes. People would journey from all over the world to our tree. They would make pilgrimages to be cured of their ailments. I fantasized about my fame, the fame of our house, our suburb. I didn’t understand that you could be taught about the mystical, but be forbidden to believe in it, seek it out or enjoy it. The mixed message caused an anger to descend that made me hate the world, hate my mother, hate Megan and the drain man; my mother the most though.
It hit me then, that I only came to talk to my dead father when I felt lousy. When I felt good I ignored him.
‘I’m so pleased to talk to you any time in any condition,’ he had answered.
I could see my mother in her bedroom window, she was looking straight up at us. I nested in behind a frayed drop of leaves. I knew she knew where I was, but I wasn’t going back to the house, ever. I decided I was going to stay in the tree. I could come down to the lower branches to get food that I would ask Edward to bring me. And if I convinced him I needed it, maybe he could, with Mum’s permission, build me a tree house a bit lower down. I could sleep in there. Really there was no reason to return to earth.
I heard my mother hissing at me from below. She was stuck halfway out of her window. I refused to answer her.
‘I’m furious with her,’ I said.
‘She’s got to get on and so do you,’ my father said.
He was so understanding, it made me cross. It was easy for him, it was so calm and peaceful where he was living, lit by the sunset in the salmon pink gaps between the branches. I wanted him to side with me, his only daughter, but he wouldn’t. He was sitting on the confounded fence like he always had. He would never put me before her and so discreetly he always put her before me.
‘No way,’ I huffed. ‘No way.’
My mother had woken Edward now, her henchman. They were on the top step, their voices transported easily through the balmy night air.
‘Simone. Come down now,’ my mother said.
‘No way, creeps,’ I replied.
It must have been after midnight. They advanced down the stairs, Edward behind my mother. I could see him clutching the top of his pyjama bottoms, trying to keep them from falling down. Any spring there may have been in the elastic waistband had been washed out long ago. Aware that the neighbours may be listening she sent Edward out in front. She stayed back in the shadow of the laundry door. James was awake too, I could sense it. He was somewhere in the house watching.
I felt sorry for Edward having to do my mother’s dirty work.
‘No,’ I said when he was halfway up the tree, before he’d even said a word. ‘I’m not coming down, so you might as well not bother to come up.’
‘For God’s sake, Simone,’ he said. ‘I need to go to bed. I’ve got exams tomorrow.’
I remembered some elephantine Aunt or other had commented on that, at the time of Dad’s death – ‘. . . and with Edward’s exams coming up . . .’
‘I’m not coming down ever,’ I said. ‘I hate you all and I’m going to live up here now.’
‘Why don’t you start as of tomorrow?’ said Edward. ‘And give me a break.’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You’re so bloody selfish,’ he said, retreating down the tree. But mother wouldn’t have it and she demanded he climb up again.
‘What’s so good about this bloody tree?’ he said, settling on a branch below mine, resigned it seemed to life in the tree with me.
‘I can talk to Dad. That’s all,’ I said. ‘And Mum used to, but now she doesn’t any more.’
‘What do you mean, talk to him? Dad’s dead.’
‘You haven’t even tried. So how would you know?’
‘Because I know there’s no point.’
I wished he would, but I knew he was locked into the logic of his textbooks, he couldn’t let go of that and I didn’t hate him for it.
‘I’m going to stay up here,’ I said. ‘Until she promises to stop kissing the plumber.’
‘Did she kiss him?’
‘And not just a little kiss, either,’ I said.
‘What else then?’
‘It was like a kiss with arms.’
I could see Edward shake his head. He seemed in no hurry to move now either.
‘What is going on?’ my mother called up. I could hear she was seething through the grille of her locked teeth. Neither of us answered her.
‘Would one of you speak?’ I heard a rustling below us and realized she had started to climb up after us.
‘Where are you?’ She had stopped at a point below Edward. Her voice was hoarse with restrained fury. She was trying to whisper, but I felt the entire neighbourhood knew we were in the tree.
‘Simone is upset,’ said Edward. ‘Because she saw you kissing the plumber.’
Edward had taken up my corner and I felt huge affection for him. My mother didn’t reply.
‘All I know is it’s one o’clock and it’s school tomorrow and I get in trouble from the teachers if you’re tired,’ Mum finally said.
‘Whose fault is that?’ said Edward.
I couldn’t remember him ever answering her back in that tone.
‘I should be in bed. I’ve got exams tomorrow, but you wake me up like a madwoman and force me up this tree,’ he said to Mum. ‘I don’t care if she stays up here or not.’
Maybe because there was this distance and branches between us Edward felt liberated to speak in a way he couldn’t have face to face.
‘It’s none of your business what I do with the plumber,’ she said.
‘It is, if you’re kissing him,’ I said.
‘Ssssh!’ my mother hissed.
‘And I don’t want you to kiss him,’ I added.
Suddenly I became aware of this other silent person. The fourth party. The tree.
‘You don’t know,’ my mother said, sounding feeble and close to tears, ‘I’m so lonely.’
‘How does that make us feel,’ said Edward.
‘See, you don’t understand that I can love you, but still be lonely.’
‘You can talk to Dad,’ I said, speaking to the bark on the branch in front of where my chin was resting.
‘I can talk to him, that’s true, but I can’t touch him.’
‘Imagine how he feels,’ I said.
‘You’re so on his side because he’s dead. He’s got such an unfair advantage!’ She raised her voice.
She’d started to say that we would love him more than we loved her because of that. That he had died young, and missed out on decades of yelling at us. A job she had to do exclusively now. It gave her more wrinkles, she said, wrinkles that should have been shared out between the two of them, and it made us hate her more than him, that was her argument.
I don’t know who moved first, but finally one of us did, and the others followed back down to the ground. We stared at each other, then acted like nothing that had been said had really been said. But it was too late it had been, and we slunk up the back stairs as a volley of mangoes fell from the tree in the Kings’ back yard.