The Pear Tree

“Stop listening to everyone else and listen to the pears instead. The pears are smarter anyway.”

“What are you talking about, Gladys?”


“You keep complaining that everyone tells you what to do, how to live your life,” Gladys said. “Don’t do this, be careful of that,” she mimicked in a high-pitched voice. “Just stop listening to them.”

“Who, the pears?” Zoa asked.

“No,no. Listen to the pears, ignore everyone else.”

“Ah, I see. You forgot to take the blue pills today.” Zoa nodded.

“Forget it,” Gladys grumbled. “What do you know anyway?”

“Pears are dumb for one thing.”

“How do you know?”


“They’re fruit, Gladys. Good God.”

“Fruit doesn’t have to be dumb.”

“I know four things for sure. My name is Zoa Edith Day, as in light of, Princess Diana was killed in a conspiracy and pears are dumb.”

“What’s the fourth thing you know for sure?”

“Oh, right. My son Richard’s a dope. But that’s besides the point.”

Gladys shook her head in disbelief. “And how do you know for sure that pears aren’t smart? Do they say things like two plus two equals three or the sky rains up? ” Gladys watched Zoa’s face and rolled her eyes. “I know what you are thinking,” she said to her friend. “You think you should hoist your lazy bum out of that chair and get a doctor out here to shoot me up with some of that funny stuff made for the crazy ones. Well, don’t bother. I’m not nuts or stupid. I believe even if you don’t.”

“Course you do.” Zoa tightened the loosely knit Afghan around her shoulders.

“You think I’m stupid,” Gladys said with her arms folded across her chest defensively.

“You are dumber than of box of hair sometimes, Gladys.” 


“Lovely, Zoa.” Gladys said, shook her head again and stood slowly taking her time so not to shock her weak knees with too much sudden weight. She left her hand on the back of her wicker chair and looked up at the pear tree.

It was September, the Bartlett pears had ripened from there original green color to a sunny yellow hue that looked melt in your mouth delicious. In Gladys’ opinion they were the perfect fruit. They were a wonderful, healthy shape, voluptuous and strong; and when ripened, their color had the aura of a mysterious treasure. But no one ate these pears. No one at the home was allowed. All their food was regulated and measured, de-salted, de-this or un-that, boring. No, the pear tree was just for looking at, for admiring, just for shade. Gladys’ mouth watered as she tried to recall what a fresh pear would taste like, and she closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, her cloudy and mildly cater-acted vision cast the tree into fairy tale like fog as the sun broke into small pieces of shiny glass that made their way through the branches of the tree and down to the grass at Gladys’ feet. She swung her leg, made contact with a fallen pear and the downed fruit rolled toward the trunk of the tree.

“Don’t kick your friends, Gladys,” Zoa said and let a sneaky grin spread across her face like melted butter.

“Quiet,” Gladys instructed her friend. She was listening to the pears now. They told her many times that everything would be okay, she heard the voices say just that everyday when she sat in the shade of the tree. They had been reassuring her for months, mostly about her family. She knew, because the pears said so, that Stan, Annemarie and Martha would all be fine, live long lives. She knew her grand kids would grow to have their own families. She could relax. Her fears about her family were calmed by the sweet smell of ripened pears that wafted from the tree when the breeze blew just right. It reminded her of an air freshener she used to use back at home, at their home, hers and Marty’s. The one with the wrap-around porch and the rows of impatience, petunias and snap dragons that lined the walkway to the house. The one with the cornflower blue trim around the windows and the window box garden of sage, rosemary and thyme. The one Marty died in, just as he should have. It was his, he made that home, raised that home, watered it with tears and love and hope for forty years.

She missed their home, but not the way one would think. She missed it like you’d miss anything you’d lived with for forty years, like anything you knew inside out, upside down and backwards. Like anything you were so comfortable with that the thought of it made you sigh with relief. Gladys could have closed your eyes and made her way from one end of that house to the other without hitting any walls or doors or furniture.

Yes, her motherly concerns had been put to rest by the pears. Her problem was that the real questions were still unanswered, because they were still unasked. She was uncertain if she should share her true fears with the pears. Would they think she was silly? Immature? Imagine being thought of as immature at eighty-two. She wanted to ask, but she couldn’t somehow.

Gladys and Zoa had a friend, Hillary, and Hillary didn’t die well. She was scared to death of death up to the sad, bitter end. Her face haunted Gladys every night in her dreams. The face of a petrified woman, terrified to die on her deathbed. She looked like she was on a quickly sinking ship, jetsam floating all around her, and she was the next item to be tossed into the sea, discarded like unnecessary cargo cast off for the good of the ship. She died with terror streaked down her face as hot, salty tears. Gladys squeezed her eyes shut and shuddered. The pears told her months ago that she would eventually die from this world, that she should eventually die from this world, and that there were other things waiting for her in the next place.

What do you mean? She had whispered to them. It isn’t over when you exit the world as you know it now, they whispered back to her. But she wasn’t convinced. She wasn’t sure she could let this world go when she felt unfinished, incomplete. Long ago, when she was still a young woman, fate handed her that man, Marty, a man gentle and sweet, and he loved her. She knew he would and she was afraid to let him get away, afraid he’d never come again. Marty gave her a home, affection, three children. He gave her everything she needed. Gladys sighed. But he couldn’t give me to me. She was afraid she would spend her life alone if she didn’t accept his offer of the life of a wife, and here she was. Sure she had her kids, her friends, but she was essentially alone with only herself to contend with. She sighed again. He couldn’t give me to me.

She knew she wasn’t the only woman of her generation to feel this way, to feel like there could have been more. She smiled as she remembered her kids when they were, kids. Anne Marie’s pigtails, Stan’s coke-bottle glasses. Marty and Martha huddled under the maple tree conspiring to dump a pail of ice water on Gladys while she lay soaking up the hot, July sun one long ago, lost summer. She was in possession wonderful memories of a wonderful life. She hated herself for feeling incomplete after so many eventful years.

“Sit down Gladys, you’re making me nervous.” Zoa snapped her fingers, but Gladys ignored her.

She walked to the trunk of the tree and touched the bark. She tilted her head back and looked straight up the middle of the canopy of leaves and pears and branches, and she laughed because she felt like she was looking up another woman’s skirt.

“Pears telling jokes now?” Zoa teased her friend.

“Maybe so, Zoa, maybe so.” Gladys put her ear to the tree trunk and listened. The bark rubbed roughly against her soft, wrinkled flesh but she didn’t back away. They were about to speak. Something important was about to be said. Something she needed to know.

“What things are waiting?” She whispered to the pears.

“Are you tired?” The pears asked.

“Yes,” Gladys said. “No.”

“What do you want?” “I’ve wanted things I didn’t have, I didn’t do. It’s my own fault.”

“Does that matter?”

“Doesn’t it?”

“The only things that matter are the things that we make matter.”

“I wanted to be a writer,” Gladys spit out of her mouth before she could stop herself. She sighed. “I was never a writer and I always wanted to be one. I went to school for awhile but....”

“You wrote.”

“Just for me.”

“Isn’t that enough?”


“I thought it was once.” Gladys wiped at a tear. “No, I didn’t. I was scared. Who was I to fancy myself a writer?”

“Gladys Mason.”

“ I wanted to write to be read. I wanted to be remembered.”

“You are remembered by everyone you ever met and touched and loved or even just smiled at. You will always be remembered.”

“I need to know what’s there, what’s next?”

“Whatever you want.”

“Can I be whatever I want?”

“In the next place, you already are everything you ever dreamed of, you are just waiting patiently for yourself to arrive.”

Suddenly, a pear fell from the tree and bounced off of Gladys’ head. she rubbed the spot. It was so simple. It made perfect sense to her. She smiled and leaned over effortlessly to pick up the piece of fruit that had just innocently assaulted her. She rolled the golden- yellow pear between her palms, rubbed it against her cheek, cradled it like a child and then kissed it on its pear lips.

“Really, sweet Jesus, mother of God, Gladys. That’s dirty. What are you doing?” Glady laughed.

“Don’t eat that.” Zoa wagged a finger, but Gladys just smiled and took a huge bite out of the pear. The fresh fruit aroma made her dizzy with laughter, the pear juice drip down her chin delightfully.