Hearing The Tree

As I watched Trey walk back to his seat, our eyes met. I held my breath and waited to see if there was any trace of recognition on his face. But he either didn’t remember me or he was so lost in grief, it didn’t register. For a moment, I almost laughed as I remembered the day he called when we were in bed. She showed me his name in her phone was spelled Très. “He’s so very, my sweet Trey, that I told him his name should be spelled in French.” She giggled and answered the call, “Hello Très Trey? No. No, I can’t right now. I’m with Alana.”

My heart had started to race. He knows about me?! When Ulli got off the phone with him, she tried to stop me but I was already dressed and looking for my shoes. It was our first fight. Our only fight, really. She was pleading with me not to go and that he was the only person that knew about us. That she couldn’t love me the way she did and not tell the one person in her life that knew everything about her. That it wasn’t fair to expect her to live in the dark just because I was.

What made me the most mad was that she was right. She didn’t deserve to have to sneak around because I couldn’t be honest about who I was and who I loved. A painful lump formed in my throat as I thought about all those months I let such a simple, silly thing keep us apart. What I wouldn’t give for five of those minutes back. Five more minutes with her. I looked down at my lap and pinched the bridge of my nose to try to hold back the tears.

*****

We met at a campaign fundraiser. I was general counsel for the mayor at the time and he was working hard to get re-elected. His election would ultimately help me when I made my run for judge so I was working hard, too. That meant nursing one glass of wine and pretending to be genuinely interested in a bunch of people I really couldn’t stand. I had my eye on the door, waiting for the guy I was dating to show up so I could take a break from flirting with donors to flirt with a lukewarm accountant named Ryan. Even if I hadn’t been watching the door, I think I would have noticed Ulli immediately. Not just because she had this way of shining more brightly than anyone else in the room, but because she was an overall-wearing oasis in a sea of power suits. Her hair was in two braids that fell to the middle of her back. And the moment I saw her, something in me whispered I know her.

I watched her take in the room, straighten her spine, and walk over to the gallery manager. She stuck out her hand and shook his, then they both laughed and hugged. He was telling her to stay and pointed to the drink table. Without thinking, I downed the wine left in my glass and excused myself. It was as if something in me knew I had to go talk to her. Like I couldn’t be anywhere else at that moment but at the drink table next to her.

She took one look at me, a clone in my own power suit, and said hastily, “My friend is the manager and he said I could grab a drink.”

“You’re going to need one with this crowd,” I said and poured my own, unprecedented, second glass.

Ulli told me about meeting Trey’s new boyfriend, the gallery manager, and getting her times mixed up. I told her that everyone here probably just thought she was an artist. So we walked around the gallery and she described the inspiration for each of “her” paintings. When she noticed that we had a growing group of followers, her accent got thicker and her explanations more dramatic. I was smitten. Our little inside joke made me feel alive in a way I hadn’t in a very long time.

When Trey showed up, she invited me to join them for dinner so I did. They were so interesting and vibrant and real. I never realized that I had been stood up by Ryan the accountant until he called me the next day to apologize.

*****

When I was certain I wasn’t going to start sobbing, I looked up at the woman behind the lectern. She was much more of what I imagined a Norwegian looked like—tall and blond, like a volleyball player turned catalog model. Not like my petite, dark-haired Ulli.

“My name is Annika,” the woman said. “Ulli and I were 7 years old when we first met and even back then, she was always getting me in trouble.”

Probably she said more after that but I found myself lost in a memory again. Of Ulli’s fine, nearly-black hair. I would twirl it around my finger when her head was on my chest. “Is this why you got kicked out of Norway?” I’d tease as I tugged gently on her hair. She would say no, that she got kicked out of Norway because she was supposed to come find me. And I kissed her instead of telling her I loved her.

My eyes began to sting and I pinched the bridge of my nose again, hard, until I could focus on the woman speaking. I wanted to hear what she had to say. I wanted to soak in every bit of Ulli I could.

“Ulli was the godmother to my children and she took her job very seriously, always sending the best Christmas presents, whatever was the popular toy that year. One year, when I was working at the embassy in Washington DC, I got a suspicious package wrapped in brown paper. It was rattling and making strange noises. So the ambassador told me not to open it and to call security. They take that kind of thing very seriously so the bomb squad came and it was quite the ordeal. It turns out, that year was the year Furbies were the popular Christmas toy. Ulli had opened up the Furbies and tried to teach them to say ‘Jeg elsker deg,’ I love you in Norwegian. But it didn’t work so she just boxed them up and sent them anyway. It was such an ordeal that two weeks later, the NSA banned all furbies. True story!” Annika said.

I started to laugh and it seemed to give the people around me permission to the do the same. I could just imagine Ulli delighting in the drama she had created from hundreds of miles away. It was a strange happiness, this learning something I hadn’t known about her. It was bittersweet like very dark chocolate, both delicious and biting. This time, I didn’t try to stop the tears.

“It is funny now but I was so embarrassed that I had caused such a scene at work. I didn’t talk to Ulli for weeks! She thought it was funny though. She used to tell me it was the thing she was most proud of, influencing national security policy.” Annika smiled and looked down at her notes. “We have a saying in Norway. Dei beste vennane er det færrast av which means the best friends are the fewest. And there was absolutely no one like Ulli. Jeg elsker deg, my friend.”

The tears, seasoned with joy and envy, rolled freely down my cheeks. This woman knew my Ulli, she knew things I would never know. I wanted to get up and run to her and shake her and tell her to tell me more, to tell me everything. I wanted her to open her brain and siphon all the memories she had of Ulli. But I just sat there, in secret silence. At the love of my life’s funeral. The unknown element of Ulli’s life. Invisible. And I wondered about the tree falling in the forest that no one hears. My heart felt like that tree. I pressed my hand to my lips to stifle a sob or maybe a scream. My lungs burned with grief.

Then I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see Trey sitting behind me. His eyes wet with tears met my own and I was seen. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it so hard, a silent thanks for bearing witness to my pain. And bearing witness to Ulli’s love. Our love. For hearing the tree.