I could feel the scraping at the earth beneath my feet, the trolling, the tilling. Dredging up things I didn’t want to remember, but couldn’t seem, somehow, to let go of.
March 4, 2010
“You’re lucky,” Betsy said, “that you didn’t fall and kill yourself. Or god forbid, break a hip!”
If there were two words most frequently invoked for the purpose of spreading fear among older women, they had to be “broken hip.”
Still, I laughed when she said this to me, fairly dancing at the mossy base of the tree I’d just shimmied out of.
“I used to climb trees much higher than this one,” I said. “My house had fat sycamores lining the drive, which weren’t good climbers, but out by the gazebo, there were oaks and maples and willows. I climbed trees every day when I was young,” I said, brushing leaves from my shoulders.
“Have you looked in the mirror recently? You’re not young anymore, Ann.”
A sentence like that shouldn’t sting between good friends, but that one did. Betsy had a knack for painful honesty. I faced her and raised one eyebrow. I was thinner and far stronger than she was, and it was obvious every time we played doubles. She wheezed on the court and squeezed her plump feet into her Tretorns. We were seventy-three but she looked seventy-five and I looked sixty-eight and we both knew it.
“It’s not very tall for an oak,” I said and Betsy rolled her eyes.
I looked up and smiled. The tree’s spring shoots brushed across the butter-colored trim on the second story, leaving thin green streaks as it swayed in the wind. If the tree had been any wider, its branches would have encircled Theo’s little deck upstairs, but it stopped just short. By summer the foliage would thicken, grow lush, and conveniently shade the slate patio below.
“What were you doing up there, anyway?”
The bird house hadn’t come willingly; I’d yanked on the twine for nearly five minutes, angry with myself for not bringing scissors. But climbing a tree with a sharp object seemed unduly risky, even to me. Finally it gave way and tumbled out of my fingers, bringing small bits of branches and the rhythmic ping of acorns with it as it crashed on the patio. It sat there now, behind us, mostly intact except for its now-sideways chimney and the moss clinging to one side of the green enamel.
I brushed my hands together. “Taking down a bird house to photograph for one of Ellie’s projects.”
“That old chipped brown-and-green thing?”
I surveyed her curiously, surprised she’d ever noticed it, but not wanting the subject discussed. Maybe she’d merely glimpsed it when she walked up?
“Well,” she deflected, “you could have bought her a nice new one at Firth’s for nine dollars. Painted it any color you like. Red would be nice.”
“It’s an historical project.”
“The historical preservation of Victorian bird houses?”
I laughed again. “Something like that.”
“I never thought you, of all people, would turn out to be this sentimental.” She sighed.
My heart skipped a beat; we’d never discussed the origins of that bird house. She couldn’t know what it meant to me. Her comments, I told myself, simply referred to its obvious age. I swallowed hard and pressed my lips into a smile.
“I just like old things,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” She started toward her house. “Remind me to buy you a ladder for Christmas,” she said as she left. “Or a handyman. I’ll make sure he’s old, since you like old things.”
I picked up the bird house and dusted it off on my pants. I couldn’t imagine it red or any color other than its own muted browns and greens. The moss that crept across it was lighter than the paint; it gave it a homey, cottagey look, as if a bird might actually live there, not just visit. The caramel-colored roof was steep; Theo would say it was too steep for its chimney. But bird houses didn’t have to be brought up to code; they could be as rakish as a thrown-together fort. This one, despite the wild pitch of its roof and the lean of its chimney, had been assembled with love and care. I knew that much. I felt that pull again, of wanting to tell Betsy, but of course I didn’t. Just as always. I’d learned over the years, the hard way, how different we were. How she always seemed to see those differences through a cloud of judgment, rather than the gauzy haze of empathy. I suppose I didn’t want practical