I threw two out and kept the third, pressing it between the pages of Harvey’s manuscript.
CHAPTER SIX
The sky was already beginning to turn the purplish gray shades of dawn before I finally managed to get to sleep “last night.” Though in my last entry I made much less of the three oak leaves I found on the bedroom floor than I made of “Pony” and the whole mess with Constance, as soon as I’d shut off the light and was lying there, waiting for the Ambien to kick in and send me tumbling away to whatever nightmare was waiting, I could hardly think about anything else. What I’d first accepted as just another — and rather humdrum — consequence of living here, next door to that tree and old Hobbamock’s sacrificial stomping grounds, seemed suddenly a threat, an insult, a gibe.
What the hell am I trying to say? The words are not coming to me easily tonight. I’m exhausted, and it’s been a long damn day. What I’m trying to say is that I began to seriously consider the possibility that Constance placed the leaves there, that there was nothing the least bit preternatural about their appearance.
And, so, I was suddenly back at the gaslighting scenario. I got angry, and I lay in bed, sweating, trying to find some way to absolve her, but kept coming back around to the things I’d written about parsimony and the provenance of “Pony.” I began to mull over the implications, that Constance might have visited the tree to get the leaves (though I can hardly rule out her having acquired them from a different red oak, possibly one she encountered on her recent trip into Foster, and that’s probably much more realistic). It was all I could do to stay in bed. I wanted to get dressed and march up those attic stairs and pound on her fucking door. I wanted to see the look on her face when I confronted her and called her on pulling such a sick fucking joke at my expense.
I thought worse things, too. Furious, vengeful ruminations I’m not going to put down here.
The last time I remember looking at the digital clock beside my bed, it was sometime after five. And when I finally slept, there were the dreams. I might have written those down if I’d gotten to this entry before sunset, but I didn’t, and so I’ll either save them for next time or just let them go. Let them fade, and be forgotten.
As for Constance, I hardly saw her again today, and when I did, I mostly kept my mouth shut. She seems completely consumed in whatever it is she’s painting up there. Maybe meaningless sex with older women is her muse. I made no accusations, and she did nothing the least bit suspicious. I did ask her about her work, how it was going, on one of her trips down to the toilet. I was sitting on the living room sofa, trying to make my way through a story on snow leopards in the June issue of National Geographic. Her hands looked as though she’d given up on brushes; indeed, there was paint, mostly shades of green and blue, halfway to her elbows. There were also smears on her face.
“Do you know anything much about painting, Sarah?” she wanted to know, not a trace of condescension in her voice, and I admitted that I knew very little. She watched me a moment, then stared past me, and I couldn’t decide if she was trying to think what to say next, or if, maybe, she’d forgotten we were talking. That unfocused quality to her eyes, which I believe I noted after first meeting her, seemed more pronounced than usual. Her gaze seemed fixed on something far away, well beyond the walls of the house.
“You’re not familiar with František Kupka?” she asked, at last, and once more I admitted my ignorance. I asked her to please write the name down for me, so I could look it up online, so we could talk about the painter later. She seemed skeptical, and in a hurry to get back to work, but did as I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not really so much like Kupka, now that I think about it. He’s just the first thing came to mind.”
“Kupka. Is that Czech?”
“Yeah,” she replied. “Well, it was still eastern Bohemia when Kupka was born. Later, though, he went to Vienna, and eventually to France, of course. You might recognize some of his work, when you see it.” And she named a few of his paintings then, though the only one I can remember is “The Black Idol.”
“Do you ever miss having other writers to talk to?”
“No, not really,” I said. “Truthfully, I’ve never much cared for the company of other writers. I usually just get into arguments I don’t want to get into. Why? Do you miss having other painters around?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “Excuse me, Sarah. I really should get back,” and Constance pointed at the ceiling.
“Of course,” I replied. “I don’t mean to keep you,” and without another word, she turned and disappeared down the hall again. I sat there listening to her footfalls, to the opening and closing of the attic door. I sat staring at the name she’d scribbled on an index card, and the aquamarine smudges her hands had left on the paper. Suddenly, it seemed utterly absurd, that I’d lain awake all night, entertaining notions that Constance was sneaking about trying to freak me out by putting oak leaves on my bedroom floor. Or, for that matter, that she’d written “Pony.”
Later, sometime after a bland lunch of tuna fish and saltines and beer, I went back to Dr. Harvey’s typescript, skipping ahead, only half conscious of what I was looking for there until I’d found it. Beginning on page 262, Harvey documents a number of instances in which those who have had encounters with “the red tree” have been visited afterwards by the appearance of its leaves:
Does the oak perhaps leave calling cards, meant to remind those who have visited it that they have been marked in some way? The pun was unintentional, but I shall let it stand. Does the oakleave calling cards. I have discovered a number of accounts that seem to indicate that at least some of those who’ve gone to the tree have later experienced the spontaneous manifestation of Quercus rubraleaves. The earliest such account goes all the way back to John Potter, fittingly, who in October 1710 wrote of the repeated appearance of “stupendous quantities” of such leaves, “gone red as blood and flame with autumn, and acorns, too,” appearing inside the house he’d built two years before. He recorded his wife’s alarm at the coming of the leaves, and also her consternation at having to repeatedly sweep them out of her home. Then, again, in the summer of 1712, Potter found his rooftop blanketed with “a heavy falling” of red oak leaves, though he claims he was unable to find even a single such leaf lying on the ground anywhere around the house. “The wind seemed unable to dislodge them, and they lay still.” I have even seen one of the leaves from the October ’10 manifestation preserved between the pages of his journal, where, I assume, he himself must have placed it. Potter also mentions an acquaintance from “Satuit” (Scituate) who, following a call on the Potters, found red oak leaves beneath both his bed and writing desk on several different occasions.
This is the earliest example of the leaves appearing a considerable distance from the tree, though it is hardly the last. I have so many newspaper accounts of such episodes that it would be tiresome for me to recount them all here (see Appendix B). Instead, I would call attention to two rather disturbing and exceptional cases.