Tom Lake(48)

At the edge of our woods is the shore of Grand Traverse Bay, our corner of the choppy, gray--blue behemoth that is Lake Michigan—-the dark stand of woods, and then a dozen feet of pebbly, sandy beach, and then the water that stretches out forever; the trees and then our eldest daughter alone on the beach, hugging her knees. I sit beside her and she tips herself into me, her head on my shoulder, her glorious hair falling across my chest, and for what feels like a very long time we watch the cormorants skim the water.

“Everything should stay like this,” she says.

I tell her that I wish it could, even though I know she means the temperature of the lake and I mean this summer, everyone home and together. As sad as I am for the suffering of the world, I wish to keep this exact moment, Emily on the beach in my arms.

“We didn’t mean to tell you last night. I’m not even sure we were going to tell you at all. Lots of people don’t have children, you know. I could have just waited until I went through menopause and then said I’d forgotten.”

“You never know.” I try to make my voice neutral. “You might change your minds later on.”

I feel her head move sadly against my neck. “It’s bad enough having to worry about what’s going to happen to the farm. I can’t imagine worrying about what would happen to our kids.”

“Every generation believes the world is going to end.”

She raises her head. “Is that true? Did you and Dad think it was all going up in a fiery ball?”

She is so close to me. I can see the faintest remnants of long--ago freckles on her forehead. “No. I said it to make you feel better.” Joe and I thought about the plays we wanted to get tickets for, the price of rent, whether or not we should go out to dinner, how soon we could afford to have a baby. We didn’t think anything would end, any of it, ever.

Emily returns her head to its comfortable spot. “I know it seems like I’m upset that Benny and I aren’t going to have children, but I don’t even know what that means, really. I want to marry Benny but if I have a biological clock it hasn’t kicked in. Maybe women don’t have biological clocks anymore.”

“It’s not like humanity’s stopped having children, you know. It’s still going on.”

“That’s because humanity doesn’t live with Benny Holzapfel, and if I didn’t live with him it wouldn’t be any less true, I just wouldn’t have to think about it.”

“We couldn’t begin to list all the depressing things we’re not thinking about—-all the things that have happened in the world, the things that are happening right now here in Michigan, the things that are going to happen in the future—-no one can hold it all.”

“Emily died in childbirth,” my daughter says.

“What?”

“She died giving birth. I remember thinking about that when we read the play in high school, like it was a bad omen.”

We had named our daughter for the plucky girl in the first act, the smartest girl in her class. We had not been thinking about the third act at the time.

Emily shakes her head. “I’m just talking. I don’t think I’m going to die in childbirth.”

Which doesn’t mean I can get the thought of her dying out of my head. “So it really is the cherry trees?”

She nods. She still isn’t looking at me. “I’m going to tell you something I probably shouldn’t tell you.”

“This would be the day.”

She takes in a deep breath, giving me just enough time to flash through every horrible thing that might have happened to her without my knowing it. “I never forgave you and Dad for burning those trees.”

“Which trees?” We have burned a great many trees over the years.

“I think I was nine. I don’t know, I might have been younger. If it had happened before, I don’t remember. I think you used to burn trees when we were in school or else you sent us to the neighbors’ or something. Dad said they were old, they weren’t putting out enough fruit anymore so he had them pushed out.” She turns to me then, her cheeks wet with tears. “Look at me!” she laughs, rubbing at her nose. “I’ve been to hort school and I still can’t talk about this. We begged him not to do it. I said I’d bring out buckets of water. Fuck.” She pinches the bridge of her nose and waits. “I’ve burned so many trees since then but that first time I couldn’t stand it. You set them on fire like it was some kind of party. ‘You’ve outlived your usefulness! Time to die!’ The neighbors were standing around drinking cider. All I wanted to do was save them and I couldn’t save them. I’m sure I’m going to miss having children. I’m sure in twenty years I’m going to feel awful about it, but for now all I can think of are all these trees that aren’t going to make it and how we’re going to pull them all up and burn them.”

The men had come in the afternoon with a 4WD loader. They sank the tines down into the ground and then bulldozed the trees, pulling them up to shake off the dirt before piling them to burn. By the time the work was done it was nearly dark and we set the fire. I remember it now, our girls screaming as if the plan had been to throw them into the blaze as well. Had they just not remembered, or had they really never been there before? Those fires are enormous and I worried about keeping up, all three of our girls were runners. I had to keep them safe. Maybe we did send them away before that. Maybe this was the time we decided they were old enough. Old trees have to be pushed out but we didn’t need to turn it into a party. We’d told the girls that the trees were our life and how good they were to us and how they took care of us because we took care of them. The night air was bitter on that autumn night but one by one we pulled off our jackets. The flames shot twenty feet over the pile of branches, throwing bright--orange sparks up to the stars. Joe couldn’t leave, he and the neighbors had to make sure the fire didn’t get out of hand, so finally I pushed the girls into the station wagon and drove them around until it was done, until they’d cried and kicked and slapped at the back of the seat for such a long time that they wore themselves out, falling asleep against their will. When we got home Joe lifted Maisie out of the car and I took Nell, but Emily was awake. That night she said she hated us, and that she had always hated us, that she would always hate us.