Story

The Tree Man

The Tree Man is growing his roots. His wife and daughter have left him, and now, only his mother remains and he calls, "more water, I need more water," from the yard as he stands near the swing where he used to push Jessica.

It happened on a Sunday in late February, when there was no longer any snow on the ground in the El Dorado Hills of California and the Tree Man was watching television in his living room. His mother had been sewing in her blue printed armchair behind him and Marie, the Tree Man's wife, flipped omelets in the kitchen. The Tree Man stretched his leaf-ridden limbs out as he clicked away on the remote with a mossy digit. Where once had been toes, now he saw viny stumps twitching, and his bare calves, if you could call them bare, what with the amassing fur of lichen that had devoured his lean body whole, barely bent at the knees any longer. The Tree Man hated the news now, and the programs about murder mystery or average-Joe families; nothing of this world applied to him anymore. The Tree Man had tried to suppress his thoughts of the forest, his desires to be with the tall grass and poppy and grand oaks always. These things would understand him, he would find his mind reasoning, and then he would realize what that might mean: losing his Marie and his mother, his sweet Jessica with freckles and tiny hands. The Tree Man could tell that his wife had begun to lose patience in the way the pans and dishes clamored as Marie used and washed them. It hadn't been long since he had grown too large to sleep in their bed beside her and yet, he could hardly remember the sensation of cool linen against flesh or the scent of her black, glossy hair in the evenings after a shower.

"Breakfast is ready. Jessica!" Marie had called from the kitchen. The Tree Man watched as his small daughter flounced down from her bedroom, two stairs at a time and he smiled. Smiling was something he had begun the take great pleasure in doing, as it was one of his last unscathed features. The transformation had been kind to his face as of yet, his nose still strong and straight, his brows still full and dark. The Tree Man had once been a handsome man, and he knew this of himself.

"Hi Daddy!" Jessica said to her father. She hopped towards him and curled her pale arms around his fuzzy neck. Jessica liked how her father looked as a tree, she had told him. "Your belly is soft, daddy," she had said one afternoon, her hand to his stomach, while he was sitting on the couch in the living room reading with his shirt off. It had become difficult for him to wear shirts now-a-days. The Tree Man kissed Jessica's cheek and watched as she galloped into the kitchen and sat at the long marble counter onto which Marie had arranged several plates. The thick aromas of sausage and syrup wafted towards the Tree Man and he moved to stand slowly as his mother was passing by on her way into the kitchen.

"You alright, baby," she said, glancing down at him apology in her eyes. She was a short and sturdy for a woman of her age, with very few wrinkles, and she could have helped him stand if he had chosen to ask, but he didn't.

"I'm fine ma," he said. But the Tree Man was not fine. He was having much more trouble standing than he'd ever had before and he realized, after a moment, that the cause was his left heel. It had begun to attach itself to the carpeting in the short while that he had been sitting and each time he moved to lift his heel he could see the stretchy roots that had melded pull the grey carpeting upwards.

"Breakfast!" Marie called again, louder, when he did not enter the kitchen with the rest of his family and finally the Tree Man gave in.

"I can't," he said in a desperate voice. He could hear his mother and daughter clinking away with their silverware, their stools making little grunts against the tile floor as they pulled themselves into the table. Marie stomped through the airy door that connected the bright kitchen to the living room with its shades drawn, her honey colored irises ablaze. She took a long look at the Tree Man, who was still pulling at the carpet gently with his heel, and avoiding his wife's eyes. 

"You're ruining the carpet," Marie said finally, and left The Tree Man's breakfast plate at his side where he fumbled to lift it with his twig–fingers, returning to the kitchen with a sigh.

After ripping the Tree Man's foot from the carpet with help from his mother and Jessica, he moved himself outside. At first the Tree Man's roots were weak and slow to come and so he spent much of his time pacing so as took stay mobile; he paced while he read in the yard to himself or to Jessica in the afternoons, when she was home from preschool. As it was still early in spring and often was cold or raining, he would tell Jessica to stay on the porch with her parka buttoned to the neck and he would read loudly. Her favorite was The Napping House, because of the pictures and the napping dog, and he would read it, often with an umbrella wobbling in the crook of his bent arm, and then turn it so that Jessica might see the colorful illustrations from where she stood, elbows perched on the white balcony railing. When he would get tired he stood still, and allowed his feet to plant themselves a little and engulf themselves in the soil; his twig-toes would tingle with delight, and the furry branches that had begun to sprout from his shoulder blades would flutter. Marie and the Tree Man's mother had hoisted an old bench up to where he most liked to plant himself, near Jessica's tire swing, so that he could sit if he so pleased, though he scarcely did as it hurt his knees. Marie rarely visited him. He would see her white sedan as it eased into the driveway in the evenings when she was returning from work at the hospital and out of the driveway in the early mornings but only once did he see her face alone in the nights, when he was lonely and his mother and Jessica had long since gone to bed.

She had approached him as a ghost in the night, seemingly translucent at first and he was petrified. When she came closer through the cool-March darkness however, he was ecstatic to make out her fluid form approaching.

"You don't know me any more," she said, staring at him with her face close to his, so close that he might kiss her lips, dark as slices of plum, if he thought she'd let him. There was nothing he wanted more than for Marie to love him again. He did not answer.

"What can I do with a tree for a husband; a tree that never speaks to me, or cannot hold my hand?" Marie said, her voice growing urgent. The Tree Man looked at his wife and he wondered how this all came to be; how he could have become this man that was no longer a man and why it was that he could not find anything to say to the woman he loved anymore. The Tree Man did not remember the moment at which he had first begun to turn into a tree.

"I wish," the Tree Man said. "I wish—" but Marie cut him off.
"I wish for a lot of things, husband, but most of all, I wish not to be reminded of you anymore by the expression on this miserable tree's face," she said, and then stumbled back the porch steps and into the warmly lit house. This was the last time the Tree Man saw Marie.

The Tree Man's daughter came to say goodbye the next day.

"We're going on vacation, daddy," Jessica said, tilting her head at her father. Mommy says you're too tired to come," Jessica finished as if in inquiry. She wore a purple knapsack around her shoulders and he could see in her face that she didn't really understand that she was leaving. He bent down carefully and kissed Jessica's cheek without wrapping his arms around her. The Tree Man felt embracing had 
become too difficult with his cumbersome chest twined with rings of wood and vine. Where once the Tree Man had nipples were dark nodes.

The Tree Man let his soft roots grow more and more now that his wife and child were gone. His mother would come out to check on him many times a day and ask him:

"What can I cook for you, my son?", "What can I get you to read, my son?" But the Tree Man no longer wanted food, with his roots reaching into the soft and fertile soil.

"There is nothing I want anymore, I can no longer remember wanting," the Tree Man would respond and his mother would leave him again, walking slowly into the house, turning to look over her shoulder at her son again and again as she walked.

The Tree Man prefers to stand dormant now, meditating like the old, broad-topped tree to his side from which the tire swing hangs. He often has to remind himself, it was my daughter, Jessica's, just to know he is awake.

Now the Tree Man stands in his spot always. Replaced by the fragile roots that used to impede his step, are thick woody reaches that pull down from his hips and now even his chest. The Tree Man has lost his ability to separate his legs and since had his mother snip off what remained of his tattered shorts with kitchen scissors before they could burst. The Tree man can still turn his neck if he so pleases although he rarely does; soon he will lose this privilege too. The Tree Man's mother watches from the open living room window through her sewing circles and frowns at her son but does not come out many times a day like she once did. Only when he calls for water does she visit. The Tree Man's mother will walk to her son's spot slowly with a large, tin watering can and tip it to his roots and he will drink.