As I’ve said before, I’m not a huge fan of sharing my fiction. Still, every now and again I let one out of the cage. So, here’s a story that was chosen for inclusion in one of Stringybark Stories’ books a few years back. Enjoy!
(You can visit http://www.stringybarkstories.net for more info on Stringybark Stories).
Her gift was a lemon tree
The night before she leaves, the city is flooded in a rainstorm of epic proportions – one of those ‘one in a hundred year’ events. She is in the pharmacy when it begins, briefly stopping to pick up a prescription and then aimlessly wandering under fluorescent lights while it pounds incessantly down outside. She does not consider it especially remarkable, but after the initial deluge weakens slightly and she begins the drive to my house, she is startled by the sheer torrents of water gliding unhindered along once familiar but now barely discernable bitumen roads. As I kiss her hello and offer her a towel she is breathless and agitated and her hair straggles damp to her shoulders. She looks beautiful. I do not want her to leave.
I have an early start the next morning so it is a half-awake kind of goodbye. It is too early for too much emotion. I don’t know if she sleeps again after I leave. I suspect she does, though part of me hopes that her descent back to slumber is at least a little unsettled.
When I arrive home that evening it is already tending toward dusk; she is already in the air, and there is a lemon tree on my front doorstep. Its young leaves wave at me – beckoning in the slight breeze – and she is moving with each second further and further away from me.
I haul the sapling out back and plant it immediately. The soil is damp and heavy but afterwards I deliver a brisk trickle of water to settle it. I take my time. My shirt moulds to the shape of my back and the night shadows the plant so that I can no longer distinguish veins in the leaves, only their pointed oval shapes against the silver-blue of the sun-receding sky.
As my lemon tree endures its first night in the open, I toss and turn, and the woman who gave it to me reclines uncomfortably, attempting to block out the whimpers of toddlers and low grumbling snores of fellow travellers.
In the morning the sun shines and the sapling is strong. I take it as a sign she will return to me. I spend the weekend outdoors, turning earth and preparing a garden bed for vegetables. We’d often talked about how the plot in the back left corner would be perfect for such an undertaking, just as we’d talked about where the lemon tree would one day be planted.
In time, the radishes sprout delicate kiss-shaped leaves, and I learn to distinguish the tiny wisps of spring onions from shoots of grass.
A world away, she wipes sweat off her face with her clammy t-shirt and drinks long from a metal flask, pushed ever from behind half way up the Inca trail.
I build a climbing frame for the snow peas and tease their tendrils to cling onto the wire and grow ever upwards.
She tilts her head back and laughs uproariously among a table full of revellers feasting on local fare – all tanned faces and lean bodies.
I pluck multitudes of bright red fruits staked towering into the sky, arms itchy and tinged with the heady, sweet smell of tomato plants.
She reclines in a cabana, purchasing cocktails off the dark-skinned men that wander, persistently present with their strange accents, ever smiling.
I harvest carrots and cucumbers and zucchinis daily. My diet morphs toward plant-based. I toil and weed and sweat and I let my thoughts evaporate with the moisture.
She strolls, hand-in-hand, with a tall man along the sand beneath the warmth of the South American sky, all but naked beneath the flimsy material of a dress bought only days before.
The lemon tree grows steadily, unfaltering in its journey toward maturity. It does not bear fruit that year; the first lemon must wait for another rotation of the earth around the sun.
When she returns, she comes to me, as I’d known she would. But I am unprepared for the haunt in her eyes. I hadn’t expected we would have to begin again. When I show her the garden, she seems delighted, but also distracted. She regards the lemon tree with a level gaze and her smile does not reach her eyes. As the cooling air progressively turns the once lush plants into skeletons, her head rests against my shoulder – there but not there. She flitters in and out of my life like a ghost.
When I finally push her away it is as much for my own good as it is for hers.
The next woman slides into my life as soundless and easy as slipping under a blanket at the end of a long day. With the first lemon crop I am far more excited than I should be. I try to stifle my enthusiasm but it bubbles within, boiling above the past. We squeeze it on fish smoked over wood chips, we beat it into eggs and sugar for lemon meringue pie, and we grate its zest into coconut and crumbs for an acerbic cheesecake base.
Gradually the lemon tree ceases to resemble a figure from the past. Selecting a lemon becomes as emotionless as it should be.
As we prepare to move, a new beginning, we embrace as they paste the word SOLD over the wooden board erected outside, and in looking back there is nothing but forward momentum.
Our new house is larger. It boasts three bedrooms and an expansive living area looking out over a deck. There is some work to be done. I busy myself in repairs and the garden remains as is. At night we lie together and the house creaks happy and content around us. She talks of going off the pill and winks in a way that is suggestive and not quite joking.
After our first year of living together, winter again eases into spring and the daylight stretches languidly. One evening I meet her in the driveway, synchronised in our arrival, and duly grasp the two canvas bags she’s been preparing to carry inside.
It is edging toward dusk… and there is a lemon tree on the front doorstep.
I freeze when I see it and she grins at my reaction, loping toward it in a flourish of presentation.
The lemon tree waits patiently, evergreen and succulent. With the sun behind me she cannot read my expression.
“I remember how much you loved having one in the old place,” she announces joyfully.
The outline of her protruding belly makes its own kind of shadow.
Before dinner I plant the lemon tree. I dig up dry soil and I spend too much time, like last time. My shirt sticks to me and it feels like penance.
Inside, the woman I live with potters about and I am aware of the comforting, familiar clatter of pans and plates and cutlery. Her serenity cannot be misinterpreted.
The young leaves of the lemon tree she has gifted me wave in the slight breeze, beckoning.
I stand motionless, and she is moving with each second further and further away from me.
an aussie in austria 