|
•
|
|
Pinaceae
"How long will I be able to keep this alive?" she asks. The woman is young, not more than 22 or 23, her blond hair pulled back into an economical ponytail. She's wearing a dark blue turtleneck that needs mending. This is probably the first time she's ever had to buy a Christmas tree on her own. I look at the tree, its naked lower trunk stopped by a wooden prosthetic "X," and feel its green needles between my fingers. I avoid answering her question directly. "Do you have a water stand?" I ask brightly. "They really make that big of a difference?" My throat is scratchy, a constant of the job. I cough lightly, then reassure her. "Absolutely. Everyone should have a water stand." I run down her various options and am careful with my caveats. I tell her that it depends on where she puts the tree, how much heat it will be exposed to, how much water it's going to get. I don't tell her the obvious: that a Christmas tree is a dead thing, but you have to try and keep it fresh while you can. This is not my day job. My name is Dan Mitchell and I teach "Principles of Basic Accounting" at the community college where I have been employed for 12 of the last 16 years. I am fond of even numbers, just as I am fond of finished picture puzzles and completed double crostics. I work within the lines. I will turn 40 years old this February and I have been married since I was 25. My wife Ellie was, when she was employable, a paralegal. Once she had been my student. I admired her clear numbers and forms and her desire to please. She sat in the back of the room always, a girl with straight, ink dark hair and an indirect but serious manner. Like me, she was working two jobs to put herself through school. Eventually she dropped the course but I copied her phone number from my class roster and asked her out. She said "no" but I was persistent, and after a seesaw of friendly dinners and long walks together she became the pursuer. By the time we started dating, the responsibility inherent in the teacher-student relationship was gone and no rules had been broken. I was working weekends at the tree lot even then. Ellie would come to my apartment and try to wait up for me. I'd find her there curled asleep in a chair, her long hair tangled in a blanket. When I leaned to kiss her she woke with a start from the sharp smell of sap against her nose. Every year, end of November through mid-January, I work as lot manager at the Reindeer Ranch Tree Farm. Though it lasts only 2 months, we manage to become a tight-knit little family. As lot manager I hire the crew, and I try to be selective in the process. We end up with a hodgepodge of teenagers, construction workers, immigrants, unemployed, and binge-addicts. Not everyone takes the job seriously. Most work for tips only, and it isn't easy: it requires infinite patience and, more often than not, some beer or brandy or whatever else is lying around. Mornings are the worst. At 10 AM every day the rusty trucks rumble in from Oregon and I have to check the schedule to find out who's supposed to be in charge of unloading. Sometimes they're not even on the lot and when that happens it falls on me to fill the gap. Today is no exception but I shouldn't be surprised. It's Bobby's day. Bobby is 23, a grad student in Comparative Literature at the State University, but you'd be surprised that he's not younger. He's a sweet kid, goofy but wholesome. He laughs a lot, his eyes downcast but partially hidden by dirty blond hair that should be a little shorter than it is. At first, being around Bobby made me feel old, but he teases me, loosens me up. We have an easy, mutual affection. My foreman on the lot, Gary, tells me I should "fire Bobby's ass" if he can't get it together, but I don't mind doing the extra work. Gary's always too tough on people. Normally he'd be working in construction but concrete is slow right now. He's a big guy, a little bossy, with a permanently sunburned face and eyebrows that are so light it looks like someone has taken an eraser to them. Gary's right about one thing - I choose to overlook a great deal of what Bobby does or doesn't do around here. Like growing pot in the empty field behind the tree lot. He pulls big things in front of his meager crop, trashcans, a rusted barbecue, some old poinsettias, but we all know it's there. I only wish Bobby was as good with the customers and the trees as he is with his plant, which I'm sure he's watering now. You get to know the customers, if not by name then by type. The older woman in the red jacket is a Lookey-Loo, easy to spot. She's gone through every tree standing on the lot and still she wants more. She's being helped by Kimberly, a cutie who probably looked like Audrey Hepburn ten years and a thousand needles ago. She's little – only about 5 foot three – but she's stronger than anyone would think and she works hard. Kimberly's been out of rehab for two months and took the job here to keep from panhandling. I have a lot of respect for her. Like I said, patience. "You know, we have other trees back in the shed," she tells the woman. So they head to the rear of the lot, all determination and smiles, and I know that despite Kimberly's effort this will be the smallest tip she gets all morning. It's Thursday. It's early but it's already cold, mean and windy. I go to my "office" which is really a mud-splashed trailer that sits at the side of the lot. At night, this is where I do the books and count up the daily take. During the day it's just a place to get away to, a combination break room and flop house. I try calling Ellie at home but she doesn't pick up. Maybe she's busy decorating the tree. We have this tradition: I do the lights and Ellie hangs the ornaments. I pick up a cup of cocoa someone left on my desk, but it's cold and not worth drinking. My in-box is filled with invoices and receipts. I start to shuffle through them, then decide to take care of them tonight. I shut the trailer door, head back outside and take a deep and satisfying breath. The smell is intense and green, a little damp. Christmas tree lots have figured prominently in my life. When I was a child, before my father left, we would go out, just the three of us, every December on what had to be the coldest Friday of the year to find a tree. We'd start early, sometimes 6 or 6:30 p.m. but we never came home before 10 or 11. My parents were both very precise about what they expected in a Christmas tree, Mom preferring the steady, even branches of a Silver-Tip or White Fir, and Dad choosing instead the pungent piney scent of what was usually a Douglas Fir. You couldn't have it both ways. Since mine was the deciding vote, I tried to remember, year-to-year, what I had picked previously so that I could choose the other instead, thereby maintaining a balance. This was back in the 1960s, when there were gas stations on almost every corner in the San Fernando Valley, where my mother would pull up, smile, and ask for "Ethyl", and the gas jockeys would smile back, pump, and wash all her windows. Most of those service stations are gone now. Some are empty fields, large dirt squares that cycle from corn stands in the summer to pumpkin patches at Halloween and, finally, to Christmas tree lots. My parents married at what was, then, a relatively late time in life. My father was the regional sales manager for a national molasses company, already married and divorced. My mother was teaching elementary school. They met at the "Tip-Toppers" club, which I guess was a kind of MENSA for tall people. Perhaps that was all they ever really had in common. My father's job required him to travel constantly, though he was rarely alone. They were divorcees and widows mostly: women in small dusty towns, markers on the territory map. Sometimes he called home and I could hear their coin red hair and artificial nails in his voice. When my mother finally asked for a divorce and my father left to move in with Connie, I stepped up to the plate, something I've become good at over the years. My mother had never even balanced a checkbook, and she asked if I might be able to help her. That was all it took. At 13, I became the undisputed man of the house. My bookshelves, previously spilling over with comic books, were taken down. At my request, my parents bought me (jointly, for the last time I can recall) a roll-top desk and filing cabinet for Christmas. I went to the Public Library and checked out everything they had on bookkeeping and accounting practices. I established a household budget, created a basic ledger, and set up a filing system, color-coded for our various Accounts Payable. When my mother went shopping she'd come to me and ask me for the checkbook, and I made sure she brought me all her receipts. Once a month I went to the Thrifty Drug Store and used the Xerox machine to make copies for reconciliation. My mother was still not working back then, but my father never missed a single alimony or child support payment. He's the most conscientious irresponsible man I know. We saw each other at least once a month, usually for dinner, and would catch up in the impersonal way that, when I was younger, had been reserved for more distant relatives. My father would tell me that he thought I was doing a fine job in school and at home. Had my mother learned to balance her checkbook yet? he'd ask with a wink of his eye. Sometimes he would ask about my classes and girls. Or what music did I like? In response, I'd show him my cash flow summaries. He'd say he was concerned that I wasn't enjoying myself like other kids. Didn't I have any friends my own age anymore? And I'd think who has the time? as I tried to bring the conversation back to something safe, like budgets. My mother's life too, was moving in new directions. First she became a hippie, ten years too late. She let her long hair fade and started parting it in the center. She wore batik prints and washed out jeans and took classes at EveryWoman's Village. Eventually she started teaching again, although I remained responsible for balancing her household account. Paying the bills wasn't the only thing I still had to do. Ever since my father left it had become my responsibility to buy the Christmas Tree. With only two of us it was easy. I always brought home a White Fir, or a Noble Fir, which was similar; their strong branches more capable of holding the heavy cookie-dough ornaments my mother still made. It seemed like since I was appeasing her, she should have wanted to participate in the selection process, but each year found my mother too busy to go with me, a new excuse always at the ready. So I'd hitch a ride with friends, or take her car, my learner's permit in my pocket and my licensed driver safely at home with her macramé. There are few things in life as lonely as buying a Christmas Tree by yourself. When I was 16 I made my annual trip to buy the tree. At Reindeer Ranch I noticed a sign, "Now Hiring." I inquired within and I guess I never left. Working here was my first legitimate job. I started on a part-time shift that Christmas and I suppose, like most teenagers, I figured it would be an easy ride. Instead it was hard, sweaty work, but I took to it naturally. It's not surprising. I am a person who takes root easily, firmly. At first I did mostly manual labor: unloading the trailers; cutting the bases of the trees to show off their naked ankles; building the wooden stands, taking care to make them straight and strong; setting the trees up so that the lot appears to constantly rejuvenate itself. By 11 PM my hands were cut up and my jeans were black with sticky sap and dirt. I did the tough work. At the other end of the spectrum were the concession counters, filled with cashiers, girlfriends and daughters mostly, trying to up-sell a string of lights or a self-watering stand with every tree. I earned the respect of everybody on the lot and the other guys accepted me, treated me like I was one of them. And for the first time in my life, I was one of them. I wore the same Henley undershirts, the same heavy plaid flannel shirts, thick gloves and sturdy boots with double laces. Everything about being on the lot was rough-hewn and male. At the end of the day I smelled as bad as they did and would hang out around the makeshift bonfires we'd create to keep warm. We all drank. I took my first real drink, not beer or wine, right here on the lot: Wild Turkey. I liked it because the name felt liberating. As ludicrous as it sounds, that was what I was thinking as I drank from the bottle, the contents spilling out of my mouth and down the front of my dirty flannel work shirt. The guys laughed and applauded, all our faces marked with streaks of dirt and sweat and swimming alive in the firelight, something I'll never forget. Because here at last was a place I could be a little less myself. I got older and kept returning. And at some point I was able to reconcile my two selves. After a couple of years, I started to make suggestions about cash handling procedures. I set up controls, checks and balances, so that whoever made the sale wasn't the same person to take in the cash at the register who wasn't the same person to count it who wasn't the same person to make the deposit. It worked. It became clear to my boss, Stu, who owned the lot, that people had been tipping the till. I also did reconnaissance pricing. Going to other lots, asking questions, checking what their costs were. I'd pretend to be a customer. I had to look at everything. I learned about the tree business the same way I had learned my accounting, hands-on. I found out who the suppliers were, names of different cuts, tricks to make the trees look fresher or fuller than they really were. Eventually, I became the lot manager. Over the years, I have become something of an expert on conifers. Spruces and cedars, pines and firs. Now when I overhear customers talking about the pine scent, I know better. I correct them by gently explaining the common misconception that all Christmas trees are pine trees. In reality, most of the evergreen trees sold on commercial lots are firs, not true pines, although they belong to the same family, Pinaceae. I am especially attentive to those customers I see who are alone. I know what it feels like to buy a tree for only one person, to spend hours decorating it by yourself. To have no one able to share that experience with you. Although my hours at the lot are long, being here never interferes with my personal responsibilities. I call Ellie throughout the day. Check-ins. She is in pain. L5-S1 continues to plague. She has suffered 3 spinal surgeries, for the most part unsuccessful, as well as 2 failed pregnancies. For the last several years she has lived as a prescription drug addict, in and out of detox followed by rehab, and even I have lost track of when it all started, what was the precipitating event. The first I knew was when I received a call at the college and was asked to come to the Reseda police station. When I arrived, it felt a little like the school principal's office and I had to look twice before I recognized that the rag doll sitting across the room from me was my wife. I went to the counter and asked softly for the officer who had called me. Officer Sheldon was sitting only a few feet away but he heard me and came up to the front desk, hitching his shiny black pants along the way. He talked to me in that conspiratorial parents tone, something to let me know that he knew, that he understood. He told me that Ellie had attempted to pass off a forged prescription for Percocet at the Sav-On. I looked at her there, her thin straight frame bent, her dark hair uncombed and unkempt for the first time since I had known her. She told me how badly her tooth had been hurting and how she had tried to get an appointment at the dentist's office, but that he couldn't see her. And as she cried I was sorry that I hadn't taken it seriously before when she had complained about the pain. It's only a tooth, I used to think, how bad could it be? Officer Sheldon turned away, but I didn't know whether it was to give us privacy or if it was because he had heard it all before and didn't have the heart to tell me what was ahead. Ellie just kept crying and saying how it would never happen again. Since then I have discovered that she has an entire collection of stolen prescription pads that she picks up from the doctors offices she goes to on those days that she leaves the house. I burn them whenever I find them but she always manages to come up with new hiding places. The effort and imagination she puts into it exhausts me. I head back to the trailer to call Ellie again but the phone rings and rings. I tell myself that Ellie is probably just talking to her sister in Maine and doesn't want to click over. Or maybe she left to go to the store because she needed something for the tree and didn't want to bother me to have to do it for her. I'm sure it's nothing. I dig around in the desk drawers and find a bottle of sloe gin. It's nasty, cloying stuff, cough-syrupy sweet without much of a kick. I take a big swallow. The oldies station we always listen to back here is playing and I sprawl out on the brown triscuity looking couch and close my eyes. I try to sleep but the Rolling Stones and then Creedence Clearwater Revival won't let me. So I'm half-asleep, my mouth hanging wide, my tongue falling out. The door blows open and I hear someone struggle to get it shut. Bobby comes in, his hands stuffed into the pockets of a sloppy ski vest. His cheeks and eyes are red, and in one gust I know Bobby's been sampling his stash. He grins and reaches over to muss up my hair. He tells me "You look real beautiful, man!" And laughs. I straighten out with a long popping of my vertebrae. Bobby acts like he's going to pull a rabbit out of his pocket but instead digs deep and comes up with a tangerine, or maybe it's a tangelo. He tosses it to my outstretched, blistered hand and then follows it to the couch. I make room for him next to me and he tells me about this crazy lady who Gary just went off on. I peel the neo-orange and we share it. Bobby's half is a mess: rind, pith, and juice everywhere. We make conversation. Or rather, Bobby talks to me, telling me about school and his on-again/off-again girlfriend Janine. We hang out for a while, "shooting the shit" as Bobby is prone to say, and I realize that things like this still make me happy, being here with this goofy kid and looking at his melted ice-cream smile. When Bobby gets up to leave he puts on his headset and flashes me a peace sign. The music is louder than my stereo. I know he can't see or hear me but I wolf whistle to the back of Bobby's head as he moves further away, still bobbing up and down to his tracks. For the third time today, I try calling Ellie. This time she picks up. She says that she was sleeping but it's already past noon and after years of experience I can tell that she's not tired, she's loaded. "For Christ's sake Ellie, why?" I rub my eyes; they're hurting from the pine dust and the sun, which seems even brighter in winter. She pretends she doesn't know what I mean. "You're loaded." I remove a splinter of pine needle from the heel of my left hand. It hurts, but doesn't bleed much. "Just tell me what you took, Ellie. No, I'm not angry."
She sobs and denies repeatedly that she's taken anything. Just a little Robitussin, that's all. She should be the one who's angry with me. Why won't I believe her? If I really loved her I would believe her. I hang up the phone and lock the office. It's one of those really bad days, today. Everyone is on edge around here. Thankfully it's only a weekday, not too busy, but I know the evening's bound to be ten times worse. Gary is cooling off, flocking trees. I help Kimberly tie a big Douglas Fir to the top of an S.U.V., which looks like it should be easy but isn't. At least the work takes my mind off of Ellie. For a couple of hours now, Bobby has been trying to catch my eye with an irritating determination that has never found its way into his actual work. When he finally gets my attention he winks at me and cracks himself up. Twice already this afternoon, I've watched him go out to his plant with a watering can and it just pissed me off even more. By 4:30 we start getting the after work rush and before I know it I'm face-to-face with some angry broker-type in horn rims and a Repp tie who's asking for his tree. "You're sure it's not here?" I ask, twisting my mouth and scratching my head in a quizzical manner although I know exactly which tree he's talking about. It was the most beautiful tree that arrived on the lot this year. A huge Douglas Fir with needles soft as velvet and surprisingly stately lines, almost like a spruce. At this very moment it's standing in the far corner of my living room, next to the door, its dark green fingers lifting at the skirt of the cream colored curtains. I spent half the night stringing the lights on that tree, and today it's being decorated (or not) by my wife. "It was on hold for me." The truth is that I had noticed the bright orange "hold" tag, but the tree had already been here five days. I figure that if people care enough about a specific tree then they make the effort to take it with them. Who comes back for a tree? "Is this it maybe?" I hold out a grand one, all bristly and green and full. "No, it's too short. I want my tree. I specifically selected that tree because we have a high beamed ceiling and I wanted something that was at least eight feet tall. How many people can accommodate an eight foot tree?" I'm starting to feel a little funny about all this. I mean, rules are rules, right? It wasn't my tree to take. I switch gears. "What about one of these? They're beautiful trees." "No, no. I don't want one of those. I want the other type. Where the branches are like this!" He holds his arms out and up, ballerina style, making himself ridiculous just as his kid walks up, a little reddish-haired guy in a plaid cardigan who's holding in his hand what looks, at first glance, like clippings from a tree. It strikes me that Horn Rims has been so busy chewing me out he hasn't been paying attention to his kid, who's been wandering around for 10 minutes unchaperoned. I hate it when parents do that kind of thing. I mean, for all he knew, the kid could have been hurt or bleeding. "Let me see if we have more back in the shed." "I don't want one of your dirty trees from the shed. They haven't been washed!" "Sir, I assure you, we wash ALL our trees the moment they arrive." He starts to say something about how the trees need to be sprayed with a special chemical to prevent ants and I look down at the kid, a miniature version of his father without the anger that 30 years can produce. I think the kid's a little embarrassed by it all. "I want to talk to the person who was holding it for me. He was a teenager. With long hair and one of those vest things that are supposed to be for skiing." It figures. I look around and spot Bobby over at the concession counter drinking a cup of cocoa. He's oblivious and when I glare he laughs and returns his patent wink. Frustrated, I shake my head and the kid in the cardigan smiles up at me sympathetically and hands me a gift. Poinsettia and Cannabis leaves. This gets Horn Rims' attention. He's momentarily derailed and grabs the leaves from his son's little hand. "Where did you get this?" It takes Bobby a minute to see that something's going on. He hears Horn Rims raise his voice and he looks over at me blankly. I jerk my head out towards the field where I see that Bobby's barbecue has fallen over sideways, leaving the plant in full view. Horn Rims waves the leaves at his son accusingly. "Timothy, I want you to tell me! Now." Bobby moves faster than I would have ever thought possible out to the field and starts to dig away at his plant. "What kind of a place are you running here?" Horn-Rims sputters in my face. All I want to do right now is quiet this guy down, just give him what he wants and bustle him off somewhere before anyone notices what's happening. But someone has. A dark-haired hotshot with a crew cut and a face like a bullet who couldn't be anything but a cop. He's been watching Bobby's antics from the other side of the fence; silently, pointedly. He writes something down on a tiny notepad. I try to trouble-shoot by calling Kimberly over and asking her if she can help this gentleman and his son find a clean tree and to please let the girls at the register know it's free, my treat. She's quick on the uptake, but there's no way to rescue this situation. The guy with the crew cut starts to make his way towards Bobby, just as a black-and-white pulls up with lights flashing, its siren cut off in mid-WHOOP. Another cop, older and taller, uniformed, gets out and walks up to the lot entrance, pushing aside the "Reindeer Ranch - $23.95 special" banner that I see has come loose and is blowing wild, striking at the fence. Out in the field the hotshot cop says something and Bobby straightens up, slaps the dirt off his jeans. I watch helplessly as he takes Bobby by the arm and they walk back to the parking lot. Bobby shuffles, keeping his head down the whole way. His shoulders are hunched. "Who's in charge here?" the older cop asks through his sunglasses and handlebar moustache. Horn Rims is a few feet away at the register, smirking. Next to him, Kimberly's dark eyes widen like a cartoon character's. I raise my hand. The crew cut cop asks me who the pot plant belongs to. I play dumb and tell him that I don't even know what a marijuana plant looks like. I'm thinking he's such a sharpy he probably figures that it's the truth and that all I know about are Christmas trees. The older cop is smarter. He isn't buying it. "Am I going to have to shut this whole place down?" he shouts, to no one in particular. A crowd begins to form at the back fence. All I see are faces pushed against chain-link. He's really proud of himself, showing off for his audience. He presses again, had I seen the plant before, seen Bobby taking care of it? "Yes." I feel a little sick, but this isn't my problem, isn't my responsibility. "But I don't know anything else about it." Gary manages the customers, pacifies the curious. He's good at this kind of thing. "Does this kid work for you?" They shove Bobby forward, not too hard. I tell them the truth. That Bobby was just day labor. I really had no idea what he was up to out in the field. The cops are pretty satisfied with my explanation. The cops cuff Bobby, which I think is pretty stupid since he's too soft right now to resist much of anything. He gets into the back of the black-and-white and I swear he doesn't even look upset, just a little confused. I try to catch Bobby's eye this time. If I could, I would go to him, say something. I want to let Bobby know that this wasn't my fault. But he doesn't look back at me. The hotshot asks me if he can get a small tree, just something for his desk, before they take off. I tell him "Sure. It's on the house." For the rest of the night, Bobby's arrest is all that anybody can talk about. I go to the office to try and work on the books, just do something to take my mind off it, but we don't get much excitement around here and pretty soon everybody comes in and it's the same thing, over and over. Someone says the cops had the area under surveillance for days, waiting for someone to tend the spindly little plant. They want to know what I think about what happened to Bobby, but I tell them it's none of my business, I run a tree lot. Gary tells me that I shouldn't feel bad and how Bobby deserved it, how stupid he was about the whole thing. Kimberly says she heard that Bobby's Dad is some bigshot attorney and he's going to get Bobby off for sure, probably plea it down to Drug Diversion or something like that. I know it'll turn out all right, but I still feel sick. For some reason I remember Bobby saying that I was beautiful. I know he was kidding but how many times in a man's life does anyone tell him something like that? By the time I get back to the house it's late. The lights are all off except for the entry hall. I come in, pine needles falling from my shirt. I can smell the tree. I brought it home 2 days ago, and it wasn't easy. Big trees are like that sometimes. At eight foot two it would never have fit into the house and I had to cut almost six inches off the base to make it work. There are boxes of ornaments scattered over the living room floor. Getting to the tree isn't easy but I feel my way through a minefield of red and blue and green glass balls that Ellie maybe didn't trust herself to hang. Elves in red felt suits and green caps with golden strings play around the coffee table. A lone angel holds her arms wide where a harp used to be. I fumble to plug in the extension cord, branches pushing through my hair, and the tree springs to life. A procession of multi-colored lights goes from smaller to larger, solids and blinkers from the top of the tree down, twinkle lights working their way around the trunk. It's beautiful. When it's all lit up, I can't help but notice that there's something off about this tree, something wrong about its proportions. I look closer at the dark branches, confused. It's a second before it occurs to me that the tree is only half dressed. I glance down at the boxes of ornaments cast about the floor and figure that Ellie started decorating it but didn't finish, went to bed frustrated and hurt and exhausted. What's more, the ornaments Ellie did hang all seem to be on one side of the tree, as if she was working her way from one side to the other, not from the inside branches out or from the top to the bottom like other people do. It gives the tree a wounded, vulnerable look and I resolve to fix it in the morning, even it out. Ellie is in bed asleep. Her breath is innocent, and she looks so calm and warm that I don't have the heart to wake her up now. I know I loved her once. And she loved me too. Maybe we've never been in love with each other at the same time. I creep back into the other room with a blanket and the afghan Ellie's aunt made for us when we were first married. I sink onto the couch, leaving the tree plugged in so that I can fall asleep watching it flash and sparkle. And if I squint my eyes a little I don't notice the asymmetry of it anymore and can still believe it's the most beautiful tree I've ever seen. |