I imagined loosening the strands, letting them slither over my bare body as he lay on top of me, his smooth skin sliding against mine.
Get a grip, woman. But my imagination was off and running. My body felt like a jungle full of gazelles pressing against the walls of my skin.
“He’s luscious,” Madge continued. “A bit young for you, but lots of women are going with younger men. Sexually, it makes far more sense, don’t you think?”
This time, I dug my elbow home, and hard, too. Madge stopped talking, but the smile remained on her mouth.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. What was all this about? The fervour of my response to this man was outrageous. Over the last few years, the sexual side of me had sort of slipped into sleep. But this man was shaking me awake. I yanked my eyes away.
“Look,” Madge said. “He’s sketching little trees into the leather.”
Stretching forward, I could see a line of lone pine trees etched into the belt he was working on. I ran my fingers along the length of one of the finished belts and turned it over. There, burned into the leather, was his name: Harley Skinkeeper. The name was familiar and unfamiliar all at the same time. What was going on here? I pulled at Madge.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Without waiting for her, I turned and started into a light jog. Charlie lopped beside me.
“Well, that was interesting” Madge commented when we were back on our way, heading towards the lake.
I wanted to say something, but no words came. I felt too embarrassed to talk. What was the matter with me? Surely at my age I was past such shenanigans. I quickened my pace and was grateful when I could smell the trees. I looked up and saw the park only a few hundred yards ahead. Instinctively, both of us slowed our pace and became quiet. I felt my breath deepen and my body calm as we moved among the tree trunks.
Although there were several hundred trees in the whole park, in the central area, a few dozen had been allowed to grow to their full magnificence. Their massive girths thundered out of the ground and thrust into the air with incredible power.
I looked up. Above me the branches arched towards each other, forming a sanctuary of stillness. Pale, white swords of light pierced through from the sky, illuminating the orange-red pine needles that covered the forest floor. I took a deep breath and the thick, rich smell of tree bark and rotting leaves went streaking into my lungs.
“Its funny how things change,” reflected Madge. “When you first brought me here as a child, this forest scared me. Imagine. It felt so wild.”
Walking beside Madge, I let my hands stroke each passing tree. To me, these woods had only ever been a refuge. They settled me, took me beneath the conflicts of my life to a place of strength and solidity. No, these trees had only ever been my mentors. They were the peace keepers.
“Then you introduced me to all those tree games,” Madge said. “What were we then, seven or eight years-old?”
There had been a hundred games. Games for rainy days, games for sunny days, adventure games, quiet games, as many games as there were hours to play in. All involving trees.
This had been the enchanted forest, where the fairy tale of the trees lived and breathed. The opening ritual had always been the same and early on, I had appointed myself the one to begin it: I led, showing Madge and my sister and brother how to open their palms and stroke each tree trunk in a slow gesture of greeting. This was the magic signal that told the trees that kindred spirits were now amongst them. We called ourselves the “tree people”, and considered ourselves a special species, born to look like ordinary human beings, but inside, sap ran thickly through our veins.
The trees recognized us and once we had each brushed our open palms along their trunks, they awakened, as if from a spell. To communicate with a particular tree, we lay on the ground, our small heads touching the trunk as our eyes scaled its impressive reach into the sky. Attuned in this way, we soon discovered that a tree could transfer its thoughts into our bodies without a sound.
Almost always, the first thing a tree told us was its name. Sometimes we had to wait to hear it, but no one would speak until all of us had received the tree’s communication. Then, after counting to three, we would all say the name the tree had told us at the same time. Nearly always, at least two of us would say the same name.
The huge evergreen with the plume soaring up into the belly of the clouds, told us its name was Skybrusher. With its giant bristles, it could brush the clouds wherever it wanted, sweeping them away to leave the sky clean and blue again. We often asked it to clear away thunder clouds when we were planning picnics, and it always did.
The two trees with their trunks pressed solidly together were called The Lovers. As a child, Madge had been fascinated with those two trees and the way their branches intertwined. Once she pointed to some sap oozing down one of the trunks. This was followed by weeks of speculation. Did trees fall in love? Could they have babies? Did they have sex?
As we walked through the grove now, Madge touched a beech tree with a bulbous protrusion erupting out of its side. I smiled. “Remember how I used to think a baby raccoon was living in there, making that bump?”
Madge nodded. “I wasn’t much better. I thought it was a beehive. I never got too close in case a bee would come out and sting me.”
I reached for the next tree. “And here’s Red. Big Red.” I looked up into a gigantic maple. In summer, its muscular limbs seemed to ride the wind like a cowboy.
We walked on until we came to my favourite tree: Candelabra. A magnificent pine with a trunk over four feet wide, its torso rose up mightily for about fifteen feet, then split into four offshoots, each rising straight as an arrow, a tree in its own right. The most remarkable part was that just as the gargantuan trunk divided, there was a little bowl-like sitting place. As children, it had taken all of us together, one standing on top of the other’s shoulders, to hoist one of us up there, but oh, the bliss of sitting in this tree’s giant palm.
Looking at it now, the sitting place seemed unreachable. How did I ever climb up there the night of the rape? I guess when you feel crazy, you can do crazy things.
I leaned back against a tree and breathed deeply. I didn’t want to remember that night now. I let my back fall against the solidness of the trunk and felt calm. “Strange how the older I get, the simpler are my pleasures,” I said.
Madge chewed her lower lip. “I’m the opposite. The older I get, the harder it is to find what I want.”
“What do you want?”
“Right now? Boyd.”
I nodded thoughtfully. Over and over in my psychotherapy work, I saw how people wanted things that couldn’t possibly fulfil them. Strange how you can’t get enough of what you don’t really want.
Madge nudged my arm and we wandered down to the lake. A strong wind breezed across the water, cooling my sweaty skin. The surface of the lake was choppy as if being pushed in too many different directions.
“Isn’t that Elfreda Pepper over there?” Madge asked, looking down the shore.
Following Madge’s glance, I saw a small-bodied old woman walking unsteadily between the trees. My back tightened.
“There’s someone I wish you could work with.” Madge said, looking at me intently.
I said nothing. I made sure my face gave away nothing. Elfreda had called me once, but she’d been drinking, so we hadn’t been able to get very far. It was difficult being a psychotherapist in a small town. In a big city, the lives of clients and therapist seldom interfaced. But in a small community, the boundaries were more difficult to maintain and I was always encountering clients: at the supermarket, at garage sales and social events. Once I’d sat with a client trying to dismantle a debilitating depression, only to be introduced to him an