He has been alone for so long, sketching his own dying tree, that he wouldn’t dare gainsay anyone’s theories. No strangeness stranger than the strangeness of living things. He chuckles, chewing on the bitter nib. “I’ve made magical trinkets for the last nine years. Secret signals are my idiom.”
“That’s what I don’t get.” Her eyes beg him for mercy. Her tea, the steam on her face, the wilds of snowy Iowa: a story so old and large she can’t wrap her head around it. “I’m driving down the road and see your sign, hanging from a tree that looks like . . .”
“Well, you know, if you drive far enough . . .”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to believe. It’s stupid to believe anything at all. We’re always, always wrong.”
He sees himself painting that face in bright war paint.
“Call it whatever you want. Something’s trying to get my attention.”
Someone thinks all his studies of the Hoel Chestnut over the last decade might mean something. That’s enough for him. He shrugs. “It’s amazing how crazy things become, once you start looking at them.”
She goes from distress to conviction in zero seconds. “That’s what I’m saying! What’s crazier? Believing there might be nearby presences we don’t know about? Or cutting down the last few ancient redwoods on Earth for decking and shingles?”
He lifts a finger and excuses himself upstairs. He comes back down carrying an old road atlas and three volumes from a shelf of encyclopedias his grandfather bought from a traveling salesman back in 1965. There is, indeed, a Solace, California, in the heart of the tall trees. There are, in fact, redwoods thirty stories tall and as old as Jesus. Crazy is a species under no threat at all. He looks at her; her face glows with purpose. He wants to follow wherever her vision leads. And when that vision fails, he wants to follow wherever she goes next.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asks.
“Always. Hunger’s good for you. People should stay hungry.”
He makes her oatmeal with melted cheese and hot peppers. He tells her, “I’ll need to think about it overnight.”
“You’re like me.”
“How so?”
“I hear myself best when I’m sleeping.”
He puts her in his grandparents’ room, which he hasn’t entered since Christmas, 1980, except to dust. He sleeps down below, in his childhood cubby, under the stairs. And all night long he listens. His thoughts stretch in every direction, seeking the light. It comes to his attention that nothing else in his life can even generously be called a plan.
When he wakes, she’s in the kitchen, wearing a change of clothes from her car, scrounging up pancakes from flour he has let get infested by weevils. He sits at the center-post table in his flannel robe. His voice catches on the words. “I need to clear out this house by the end of the month.”
She nods at the pancakes. “This can be done.”
“And I need to dispose of my art. Beyond that, I have a little window on my calendar for the rest of the year.”
He looks out the many-paned kitchen window. Through the Hoel Chestnut, the sky is so stupid with blue that it looks like it was slathered on by a primary-schooler with finger paints.
SPRING COMES AGAIN for Mimi Ma, the first without her father. The crabs, pears, redbuds, and dogwoods explode in pink and white. Every heartless petal mocks her. The mulberries, especially, make her want to set fire to everything that blooms. The man will never see a single part of this dazzlement. And still they overflow, the cruel, indifferent colors of Now.
Another spring follows hard on that one, then a third. Work toughens her, or the flowers start to dull. Mimi’s frequent flier account turns platinum by May. They send her to Korea. They send her to Brazil. She learns Portuguese. She learns that people of all races, colors, and creeds have unlimited hunger for custom ceramic molding.
She takes up running, hiking, and cycling. She takes up ballroom dancing, then jazz, then salsa, which banishes all other dance for her forever. She takes up bird-watching and soon has a life list 130 species long. The company promotes her to section leader. She takes a course in Renaissance art, night courses in modern poetry, all the Holyoke stuff she tossed to become an engineer. The goal is almost patriotic: play in every playground. Have it all. Be everything.
A colleague talks her into playing hockey in the office league. Soon she can’t get enough. She plays