Beneath the Cherry Tree

Fiction by Jeff Harrell

A single petal from the cherry tree drifted down from the branches above us and landed on Elizabeth’s cheek, a spot of pale pink that exactly matched the color of her face, visible at all only because it obscured a dime-sized patch of her freckles.

I toyed with it with the tip of my finger, nudging it this way and that. It tickled her, and when she smiled the petal got caught in the gentle breeze and vanished.

I lowered my face to hers, slowly, and kissed her smile.

That was the last time I ever saw her.

I was in love with her. Well, I mean, of course I was in love with her. If you’d seen her, you would have been in love with her too. She was a vision, all done up in shades of pink and rouge. She was this perfect, shining thing, radiant, almost blinding. She was joy, distilled and molded into human form. Always smiling, positively glowing behind her smile, never far from a laugh that got inside you and bubbled over until you were laughing with her, even if you didn’t know why.

Of course I was in love with her. Anyone would have been in love with her.

And I think she loved me.

Surely not with the intensity of my love for her. She was an angel; I’m just a man. A dull, somber, slightly pudgy man years past his prime, all complaints beneath a receding hairline. For as long as I knew her, I wondered what she could possibly see in me.

It was only later, after she was gone, that I recognized the truth. What she saw in me was the reflection of herself, the way the full moon reflects a feeble fraction of the light of the blazing sun.

But for all of that, I think she loved me, in her fashion. I think she loved me for my eyes, for the way I see. Not just the way I saw her, but the way I saw the whole world when she was with me.

I never got a chance to tell her. I never got the chance to tell her what I see with my eyes.

I never told her I loved her.

I was booked on a flight leaving early the next morning. We said good night early, just after sunset, on the steps of the ancient Victorian house she rented in the suburbs. Not with a kiss, but with an embrace that held a thousand times more promise than any kiss could carry. The promise of a thousand more days like that day, days spent together in a universe just big enough for two. A thousand more days of wordless whispers and fleeting touches of fingertips, a thousand more days to fill my heart to bursting.

As I moved away, back down the steps to the sidewalk and my car, she reached out, grabbing my finger with hers. Not holding my hand. Just clasping one finger, as if unwilling to let go completely. Just one finger, and that finger was the world.

And then it was over. She went inside and turned out the light. I got in my car and made the long drive back into the city, up to the shabby, dingy apartment that just six weeks before had seemed so comfortable but now felt so empty.

I slept restlessly, dreaming of Elizabeth and awaking, dreaming of Elizabeth and awaking. Dawn came too soon, and I was off to the airport and on a plane to meet with people whose names I could no longer remember and conduct business in which I no longer had the slightest interest.

I’d promised her I’d call as soon as my flight landed, and I did, fishing my phone out from the pocket of my coat and risking the wrath of overly zealous flight attendants who couldn’t possibly understand.

She didn’t answer. I left a message. An awkward, stumbling message. All I wanted to do was shout my love for her into the phone, and damn the flight attendants and their meddling ways, but instead I mumbled a few words about arriving on time and whispered a promise to call later.

I spent the rest of the day in a fog, drifting from place to place on a high that I can only compare to the very best narcotics. I couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t compose a coherent sentence. I could barely remember my own name, and frequently found myself bursting into unaccountable giggles as I remembered some meaningless shared moment.

A day of meetings instantly forgotten, a hotel room like every other hotel room in the world. A long, hot shower filled with dreamlike images of the hollow of her neck, the gentle curve of her shoulder.

And then to bed.

Before I went to sleep, I called her again. No answer. Another message, this one even less cogent than the first. The words kept swelling up in my chest, threatening to overflow my lips and spill out into the phone and then into her ear, but I bit down on them. I finished with a promise to call in the morning, snapping my phone closed with a clack.

“I love you,” I whispered into the darkened room.

I called the next morning, far too early, forgetting to do the time-zone arithmetic in my head.

“The number you dialed is no longer in service.”

It made no sense. My fingers dialed again of their own accord.

“The number you dialed is no longer in service.”

Another day spent in the fog, but a different kind of fog now. A cold, sticky sort of fog, the kind that leeches the warmth right out of your body and chills your very bones. I kept sneaking out of meetings and into deserted corners to try again.

“The number you dialed is no longer in service.”

A dozen times that day, maybe two dozen. Maybe more; I lost count before lunch. Every chance I got, every moment I could steal, I tried again.

“The number you dialed is no longer in service.”

Explanations sprouted in my mind and withered from a drought of plausibility. She forgot to pay her bill. She changed her number and didn’t tell me. My phone had somehow malfunctioned and I was dialing the wrong number again and again.

None of it made sense.

I tried one last time, just as my plane was pulling away from the gate.

“The number you dialed is no longer in service.”

I would have tried again, but the flight attendant spotted me and spoke stern words. I turned my phone off and closed my eyes, knowing I wouldn’t sleep.

I got in late, couldn’t find my luggage, couldn’t get a taxi. All the while, dialing and redialing. The same recorded message, over and over. The same words every time, but the voice was different. Colder, more detached, with a hint of anger. I knew it was all in my head, but knowing didn’t make it any less real.

I didn’t even consider going upstairs. Instead I threw some bills at the taxi driver, got my car out of the garage and set off for her house, a quarter past midnight and getting later by the minute.

When I arrived, the house was dark and silent. The facade that I’d found picturesque, even charming, was cloaked in shadow and seemed to bulge at odd angles. I sat in my car, watching from the street, for a full ten minutes before realizing I had no other choice at all. With furtive glances up and down the street, I crept up the walk to the top of the steps and knocked on her door.

There was no answer.

I knocked harder. Harder still. Pounding on the door finally, knowing she could never sleep through it, knowing that if she were in there she’d hear me.

Still no answer.

Half an hour I stood out there, pounding on the door until my knuckles were bloody, then using my palms until I felt blisters start to rise.

There was nothing more I could do. Bruised, bleeding, blistered and numb, I walked back to my car and drove home.

I didn’t sleep at all that night.

The next morning I called in sick, blaming my absence on a late flight and promising to make it in after lunch if I could possibly manage it.

I made the call while I was pulling on jeans. A sweater on top and I was out the door ten seconds later, my shoelaces still untied.

I drove straight back to her house, speeding recklessly past the endless column of suburban commuters inching their way into the city, my heart pounding all the way. Rationalizations exploded like fireworks in my mind. She’d gone out of town unexpectedly. Family emergency, last-minute business trip, something.

I tried not to think of the obvious explanation.

There couldn’t possibly be. There couldn’t possibly be someone else. I would have known. She would have given some hint, held back in some tangible and obvious way. She hadn’t. For the short time I’d known her, she’d given herself to me completely, with nothing held back and no hesitation. There couldn’t be anyone else. There just couldn’t be.

I was still repeating that mantra — there just couldn’t be — when I turned onto her street.

I saw immediately that something was seriously wrong.

I didn’t even have to get out of the car. I did anyway. I climbed the low hill on which her house stood, sinking my shoes heel-deep in the mud from the previous night’s showers. I walked right into the flower bed without thinking, mashing begonias into the earth with my footsteps. Right up to the windows, pressing my face against them.

The house was empty. Her house was empty. Every room bare to the hardwood floors, not a single thing in the house to imply that anyone had ever been there.

The next thing I knew, I was sitting in my car with my hands knuckle-white on the steering wheel. The engine was running; I had no memory of starting it. The radio was on, a song I’d never heard before. I couldn’t make sense of the words.

I couldn’t make sense of anything.

After a long while, I drove back home for the last time.

I didn’t go in to work that day, nor the next. The next day was Friday, and I knew I wouldn’t accomplish anything before the weekend anyway, so I just gave up and stayed home again.

Friday night, my body finally gave out. Three nights without sleep had turned me into a mindless thing. I collapsed in bed just after sunset.

I dreamed that I was a cherry tree, roots snug in the warm earth, branches swaying gently in the breeze.

With each gust, more and more of my blossoms were pulled away, until at last I was bare and cold and hollow and dead.

On Saturday, feeling no more human for having slept, I went back to the place where I’d been with her last. Back to that same cherry tree, where I lay on my back in the grass and stared up at a cold sky through branches nearly stripped of the pale pink blossoms.

A single petal drifted down. I caught it on my palm. I held it for a long time.

I still think I see her from time to time, out of the corner of my eye. Walking down the street I’ll see a flash of strawberry hair and my heart will leap. I think of her every time I smell cinnamon. Her laugh haunts me still; I hear it in the sound of every crowd.

Every time I get a letter with no return address, I just know it’s from her.

It never has been.

I went back to her house once, a year later. Just once. I didn’t linger. I just drove down the street slowly, slowly enough to see that someone else had moved in. A plump couple sat cross-legged in the grass while their toddler picked his slow way between them, clapping his hands at every footstep.

It should have been us.

I haven’t gone back since. I never will again.

But I still think of her. Every day, without exception. Every morning when I wake and every night before I sleep. And every spring, when the cherry blossoms bloom, I go back to that place and lay beneath that tree and stare up at the sky and hope that no one sees my tears.

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff Harrell. All rights reserved.