Tree

There’s definitely something wrong with it. I thought so over the weekend but decided I must have been mistaken. Today the leaves are curled and the colours look faded. Some of the branches are tilted towards the ground. It’s been poisoned. I’m certain about that.

I’ve lived next door to Gianni for twenty-two years. Over that time, we’ve had disputes about everything from fence height to whether or not we can put shrubs on the nature strip. When Hong was living with me, she used to joke he must have some kind of book to keep track of everything.

In the beginning things were fine. I hardly knew he was there. But as time went on, there was always something to complain about. My car was parked a little too close to his driveway, my gum tree was dropping leaves on his immaculate grass. Once he leaned over the fence and pointed to my cat, Matilda, asleep on the back step,

‘Your cat’s doing her business in my garden.’

Matilda’s itinerary consists of sleeping on that step all day, eating dinner, then sleeping on the couch all night. I realise that at some point she goes to the toilet. I was happy to think she went next door to do it. I spent the next few days thinking seriously about investing in another pet – a St Bernard perhaps.

Next morning, the tree is looking slightly worse but maybe that’s because I’m expecting it to look worse. Gianni is leaning on his stick, peering into his mailbox.

‘My tree is dying.’ I tell him.

‘Tree.’ he says, straightening up.

‘I want to talk to you about it.’

‘What tree?’

‘The one hanging over your fence…down there.’ I gesture towards it. I’m not sure what it’s called.

‘Don’t know anything about your tree.’ Gianni says, shaking his head. I’m left wondering what he’s shaking his head about. The condition of the tree or my ignorance about what genus of tree it is.

I watch him walk away feeling a bit defeated. It’s been a couple of months since I had any problems with Gianni.

I’m a little out of practice.

While I’m standing there, a green car pulls up in front of his house and a woman gets out. She heaves a bag of groceries out of the passenger side and picks her way across Gianni’s front grass and lets herself into the house. Her shoes leave big divets in the lawn. I stare after her for a few minutes, then at the divets in the grass.

All this has made me late for work - even though the business is mine and I can get there any time I want. Or not at all is what I’m actually thinking. I push that thought out of my head though and walk back towards my own car. Gianni will probably accuse me of putting the divets in his lawn.

I might leave the tree for a couple of days.

I work in an office. A tiny two-roomed suite on the second floor, above a dentist.

My desk is in the small room. The other part is shared by the three others that work for me. It’s a conveyancing business. Really, it’s just repetition; phone calls and emails to the same departments, the same people. Most of the time, you’d think I was there on my own. Whenever I come out of my office, the others stop talking and pretend to be busy.

Even though I’ve never reprimanded them for anything.

Zac and Rani are married. They met right here – you could say I introduced them. For months they circled around each other being too polite, complimenting each other’s work. It was nauseating. Finally, Zac asked me if I thought Rani would like to go rock-climbing. Rock-climbing! I couldn’t think of anything worse. It worked though because Rani is just back to work after having their second baby. Now she and Zac sit at opposite desks and talk about subjects like kindergarten fees and conjunctivitis. It can get a bit depressing. I almost miss the rock-climbing days.

The other person is law student, Evan. When he started, we gave the easy transfers to him. Even so, Rani complained he asked her a million questions about every little detail. Then she went on maternity leave and he started asking me. Zac is often out on-site, so he had no choice. He came into my office quite a few times to ask me various things. One night he said he was going out for a drink with his uni friends and asked me to join him. It wasn’t long after Hong left so I wasn’t making good decisions. All night, the conversation hovered just out of my reach. A couple of times I’d get an urge to say something, but before I felt confident enough to say it, the subject had moved on. I didn’t go again, and Zac eventually stopped coming into my office.

I didn’t have to do anything when I met Hong – I’ve never met anyone so persistent. And talkative. I was just eating my sandwich in the same place I do every day and she sat down beside me. Even though there were other benches. She did that for a week before I shuffled over and answered some of her endless questions.

Two months later, she’d moved in. Despite my initial reluctance, I found we did have things in common. She had no family either. Her elderly mother had died leaving her nothing except a twenty-year space in her life when all her friends had gone off to get married or not get married; no one had spent the time standing still as she had.

When I get home, the green car is in Gianni’s driveway. Maybe the woman is a carer sent from the council. I don’t want her interfering in my business with Gianni. I don’t want to explain everything to her. Hopefully, things will stay the same until she leaves.

On Thursday morning, I go straight down to inspect the tree. It looks terrible. Leaves have started falling off and the trunk is getting that blanched look that dried wood gets. The green car is gone but it’s too early to go next door now. Anyway, I have to think about what I’m going to say. My previous exchange with Gianni reminded me how often I’ve come out of a discussion with him feeling more confused than I went into it.

I stand by the tree a bit longer and study the branches. I can see now that the damage is mostly superficial; the body of the tree is sacrificing the leaves and the bark to stay alive. Hopefully, if it receives no further damage, it should be okay. Gianni's back door slams and he comes out, dressed in pyjamas with a woollen blanket around his shoulders. The sound of his stick scrapes on the driveway where he uses it to push his rolled-up newspaper back towards the house.

When I moved in next door, Gianni was already an old man. I can’t see any discernible difference in his appearance from then to now. During that time, I’ve gone from being young to being not so young (I’ll be fifty-six this year). People say I look good for my age, but they don’t see me in the middle of the night - when I can’t sleep, when I’ve had too much to drink, when I think about being nearly sixty.

When I look like the tree; curled at the edges, faded.

On Friday, it’s already dark when I get home. There’s the sound of voices at the fence line. I hope Gianni hasn’t asked for someone else’s opinion about the tree. I slink down quietly and squat behind a shrub not far from where they are standing. I feel ridiculous- hiding in my own garden.

Peering through the leaves, I see Gianni discussing something with a woman. I can’t hear what they’re saying but it’s something to do with the tree because the woman reaches out and takes a few crinkly leaves between her fingers. Maybe the woman is a tree physician of some sort. They talk a little more then move even closer to the fence. The woman turns around and I see that she’s the driver of the green car. I must not have seen it in the dark. She turns her face towards Gianni,

‘No, Dad. I’ll talk to him.’

Gianni says something back to her, but I don’t know what it is. I hope he’s asking her not to talk to me.

He bangs his stick against one of the overhanging branches,

‘Gonna die.’

For a second, I think he means he’s going to die, a prospect I find a little unsettling now that I know the woman is his daughter.

Hong and I had a good routine. After work, one of us would make dinner. After that, she would pick a movie. Years of being awake at night had made me buy the best subscription to the international movie channels. At first, Hong complained she couldn’t follow the English subtitles. We tried changing the audio to English and having subtitles in Mandarin but that didn’t work either. It was all wrong. The characters looked cartoonish and theatrical with the sounds not matching their actions. In the end I had a good idea. I set up a second screen (I am quite good at techy things) with English subtitles for me which left the main screen with the original movie plus Mandarin subtitles for Hong. I hardly ever read my titles though. I liked watching the movie through Hong. Watching her laugh when the characters said something funny, concentrate during the tense bits and go quiet when there were no titles on either screen – just the same sad music in all three languages.

I’m caught completely off-guard by Gianni’s daughter at my front door. It’s after ten.

‘I’m Anna. Why are you harassing Dad?’ she says without preamble.

‘I’m not…I mean…my tree has been poisoned.’

‘So? What does that have to do with Dad?’

‘I just want to know why. Why would anyone poison a perfectly good tree?’

‘Exactly. Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?’

Anna leaves the question hanging in the air. I never know what to say when someone answers a

question with another question. But I’m used to silence. I don’t find it awkward at all.

On Saturday, Gianni is working in his garden when I go out and look at the tree. It looks much the same. A little worse maybe. I can’t see Anna or the green car anywhere. Classical music floats from Gianni’s garden into mine. I could complain but that piece of music… I stand in the branches of the withered tree and remember the notes on linoleum kitchen floors amongst the clattering of plates. Gianni picks up his radio and moves too far away for me to hear. I could talk to him now but I have other things to do.

‘I don’t know why you bother with him, Hong.’ I said to her one day when she returned from next door.

‘He's allergic to oranges.’ Hong said, unruffled. ‘I’m going to make a caramel one - that’s his favourite.’

I stare at the untouched orange cake on the table.

‘I just don’t want him being horrible to you, that’s all. He’s unpleasant.’

‘You and Gianni are the same.’ Hong said, laughing, ‘fusty and alone.’

‘I’m not alone.’ I told her, ‘I have you.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

But Hong did leave me and I didn’t even notice until the time she would normally come home from work. She only had her belongings in our room, the bathroom, and a few things in the kitchen which she left behind.

Like a visitor from interstate.

On Sunday, Anna is back. I’m starting to feel concerned she’s moved in. I avoid going outside all day until evening when I take the rubbish out. She must have been watching for me though because she comes out Gianni’s back door to meet me.

‘I have to go home to my own family tomorrow.’

I shift the rubbish across to my other hand. If I put it on the ground, she may think I’m inviting a long discussion.

‘So, I want to tell you before I go, this business with the tree has got to stop.’ she says.

‘I hope it does.’ I tell her.

‘I mean, I want you to stop accusing Dad of poisoning your tree. Did you ever stop to consider the tree may be dying?’

‘The tree is dying...’ I tell her. ‘.and I don’t think you understand. Your father has a long history of unsettling things.’

‘I’ve already told you. Dad didn’t touch your tree.’

‘Well, you don’t have to worry. I won’t be making a formal complaint.’

I’m not sure but I think she holds me in her gaze a bit longer than necessary.

‘I never do.’ I tell her, a little too urgently.

‘I don’t know what your problem is, Mr...’

‘I think we’ve had a misunderstanding- ‘

‘There’s been no misunderstanding.’ Anna says, narrowing her eyes, ‘My father is an old man. ‘

I drop my shoulders in defeat. He is an old man. If I agree, it seems a little rude. Also, that would be like agreeing that there’s been no misunderstanding.

‘I’ve told Dad to call the police if you bother him again.’

I watch her go back into the house. The police. Gianni won’t do that. We’ve always managed to resolve our differences without anyone else interfering.

I’m not sure that Anna understands that.

We might have had our problems over the years. The fence took a few weeks, the car – maybe a few months there. And Matilda is an ongoing problem, I suppose. There’s usually some sort of conflict that needs to be resolved.

I go inside and get something out of the freezer for dinner. Matilda paces around in circles on the floor. She’s too old to jump up on the bench now. I open a tin of tuna and scrape half the contents into a bowl. By this time, my dinner’s ready - if you can call it that. I don’t even bother taking it inside. I just eat it out of the plastic container. After I’ve finished, I rinse the container out and drop it in the recycling.

After a while, I hear Anna get into her car and drive away. I pull my curtains and turn on the television.

Eventually the lights go out in Gianni’s house. I go back into the kitchen and take the bottle from under the sink.

The black liquid makes my heart race a little.

Into a small glass from the cupboard, I measure the contents out very carefully, holding the bottle and glass at eye level to be certain. The rest of the preparation I do over the sink in case I accidentally spill a bit. I check the level on the syringe carefully before going out into the garden. Not enough and it won’t work.

Too much and the tree will die.