Gorgeous traditional home on one of the loveliest streets in Arbor Heights! Mature trees, flowering gardens and great neighbors! Put this one first on your list!
The realtor told them the back porch needed paint and that gigantic magnolia tree really had to go. You could barely see the house for the tree. The branches touched the walls and draped into the gutters—really, it was a detriment. People were concerned about storm damage these days. It would open things up.
Take it down, they agreed.
***
We need to get out from under, Ginny said. We need to get out from under this house and its constant repairs and the mortgage twice renewed, as she twisted the band on her finger and Peter gave her that look again.
Had the tree been planted at the time the house was built? Probably. But why put in the bay window and then plant a tree there, Ginny wondered. Or that tree, anyway. The leaves like crocodile scales, shiny and dark green, blocking the light and the view.
Peter said he thought the scales looked like Puff-the-Magic-Dragon’s. Even when they fell. Fell like rain.
***
The magnolia had died in sections. The foliage-laden branches were taken first, lopped off to fall with dull thuds, fed to the chipper. Then the skeleton stood exposed. Each of the major limbs, taken off by the saw, fell with a crash and shudder. The tree men eventually had it down to just the trunk, the armature on which a tree had been wound. It groaned, toppled, and the whole house shook as it met the earth. It had been alarming.
***
The neighbor down the street remarked, I’m going to miss the magnolia flowers. You don’t just cut down a tree because it’s inconvenient.
Ginny did not agree. Where do you think the term deadwood came from anyway?
***
She could see places where nail holes had been filled from the family pictures that used to hang in the living room, and dents under the fresh paint from toys flung long ago. The off-white paint had appeared smooth and clear, but morning sun now sheered along its surface and showed every defect.
That crack along the baseboard—had it been there before?
She bent and ran her finger along the jagged length.
Peter hadn’t loved the tree, but he’d been all right with it. The deep green shade, light seeping around the edges only to deepen the massive darkness. Just in the wrong place. It was gone now, no setting it back up, gone and carted away except for the circle of chips where the stump had been gnawed flat to the ground.
***
Maybe that was when the cracks appeared, the day the tree fell, though they couldn’t be sure. The cracks, and one crystal fallen from the chandelier to splinter on the hardwoods in the dining room.
***
Did you hear that?
Did you feel that?
The crash and the shudder turned them both around where they stood in the kitchen, coffee brewing, all the lights on against the early spring dark.
The trunk hitting the ground and bouncing.
Echo.
It’s the dumpsters, Peter said. They’re picking up trash now.
The shopping center that had sprouted behind their street after a long, bitter fight to prevent construction had been another reason to move. The builders had promised a barrier fence, a belt of evergreens, but the thing was done and there was no disguising it. After months of construction noise and dust, the lights shone all night and dumpsters were slammed empty back to the pavement.
They waited for another one to drop.
The whole neighborhood had been planted at one time, craftsman homes with broad porches to allow for family evenings outdoors. Willow oaks and maples, magnolias with their heavy perfume, and gingkoes, including one female tree that stank up the neighborhood with its fruit each fall. The owner wouldn’t cut it, for sake of the yellow fans showering down each autumn, improbably all in one day.
***
Ginny began to have dreams. Magnolia roots, muscular as a strongman’s thighs, extended under the house as though preparing to flex suddenly and lift it off the ground.
***
The open house was well attended, according to the realtor. A couple of people remarked about the greenish tint of the paint. Ginny said the color was crème fraîche and it was definitely not greenish. They must be colorblind.
Another person said she thought there might be mold in the house, could smell something sweet but also musty. Almost nauseating.
You don’t have a mold problem we haven’t discussed?
There were no offers.
They bought new full-spectrum lightbulbs and scented oil warmers for all the rooms.
***
Ginny found that she did not like to look at the house upon returning from her daily walks. She averted her eyes, ashamed as if it were her naked form exposed, caught coming out of the shower without a towel. Eyebrow windows on the house across the street were always staring, whether dark in the day or lighted at night.
She had dreams. The roots were there still, that once counterbalanced the branches, under and under and through. A net anchored to the very bottom of the world, its mouth gaping wide around the house.
***
One prospective buyer went through the house knocking on the walls. The dull thuds were magnolia cones hitting the ground. Pods that each fall had erupted bloody seeds hanging by a thread.
None of the prospects said they were glad the tree was gone. What was no longer there could not be remarked upon.
The realtor suggested dropping the price again. Peter waffled, as he generally did, but the realtor’s tone stiffened Ginny’s spine and she made it clear, they were not going to give this house away.
***
Did you know the roots of a magnolia extend four times as wide as the branches? Peter was reading from the Internet.
***
They threw out the scented oil warmers; the faint, musky smell remained.
***
In her dreams, the tree was coming back. But not one tree—hundreds, thousands of new trees budding off the twisted wide-spreading roots. She imagined each small simulacra as pink and soft, the leaves small and paired like hands, like a prayer or a wedge driving up through the soil. They would become an army.
It had been planned as a total getaway, away from the nagging sign on the lawn, the realtor’s less and less frequent reassurances. They needed vitamin D, or C, or something, the stress showing in their tight smiles. But once at the beach, Ginny felt anxious, was eager to return. Peter gave her that look and they checked out early.
***
They arrived late. Their house presented itself, raw and uncertain as a onetime lover. Ginny met herself in the hallway mirror, and yes, her face had developed a definite greenish tinge, like the shade of a great tree.
Valerie Nieman’s book In the Lonely Backwater is being called “not only a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” To the Bones, her folk horror/mystery, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, joining three earlier novels, a short fiction collection, and three poetry books, the most recent being Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse. She has held state and NEA fellowships and is professor emeritus of creative writing at NC A&T State University. You can find her online sites at linktr.ee/ValNieman