TOTI O'BRIEN
September
Sitting by the teahouse I look at the treetops. Softly, the afternoon breeze shakes the leaves, and I hear a murmur of water from the nearby creek. The dark wood of few garden benches, of a miniature bridge arching above the stream soothes my eyes, soberly complementing the green. I enjoy even the sign listing drinks, over there, for a bar that doesn’t open today.
I imagine it open, and I ask myself if being here with a friend I would order something. Fancy cocktail, olive on a toothpick and little umbrella, perhaps.
But I like for the bar to be closed. I appreciate the absence of noise, the quiet only interrupted by the breath of nature. The sign posting liquors and juices is nice because virtual, unreal—a suggestion of pleasure I can turn on and off.
I should walk, now. There is much to see. Lilac grove. Thick and shady camellia bushes. A pavilion on the hillside, its white walls embroidered by climbers. A trail edged by lavender mixed with young olive trees—their small fruit unripe and yet promising.
Olive trees deeply move me. They know me well. They directly address me, their voice piercing my cells as their roots dig the soil.
Trees don’t talk, I know. Isn’t it my voice, my inner monologue that I hear, whispered by tiny silvery leaves? Well, correct, although I gave a portion of it to the olive trees as I wandered among them, as a child, trusting my reflections and thoughts to their serene beauty.
Then I grew up and left. But the view of olive trees, miles and decades away, brings those reflections back. The trees have kept the secrets I shared. They have preserved my soul as it was, and they faithfully replay it for me. In a blink, I cross a vertiginous distance, reaching a distant past... How remote? The trees wouldn’t know. Plants compute time otherwise.
But they are not the same trees, someone could object, only the same species. True. I don’t believe it matters. Maybe it is the multitudinous quality… see, this habit trees have of starting from a single stem and then spread, expand, diffuse, divulgate themselves in a myriad of fingerlike extensions… Perhaps, this collective attitude is what makes me sure all trees know what each specimen does.
And their roots, tapping into the earth… I am sure they communicate with all other roots, deep and wide, hemisphere to hemisphere, all connected as it is for oceans, for water. A sea of canopies, an ocean of green.
And those seeds they spit on the grounds, through which they reproduce, are miniature coffers containing… all that each tree was told. That is why I recognize these plants and, more crucial, they recognize me.
When I die these trees will be still around, material and tangible. Dotted with promises and full with innuendos, right here. Only I won’t be able to reach them. Only I. Won’t be. The trees will.
As I leave the sloped trail to enter the oak forest, I am listening to Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, headphones on. I hum the soprano line but I wish I could be the chorus, simultaneously singing all parts. Music rises as tall as the tallest branches of the mighty canopies above me. Oak trees are less direct and less talkative than olive trees are. Equally resilient and brave but, perhaps because of their size, they are quieter, more private. They let the music speak.
Every theme, every phrase of Beethoven’s work, not only the sung section, has something to say. Quite a simple message, and easily summed up. Sursum corda, look up, keep living no matter what. Isn’t it what Beethoven always intends? He did. The man is long dead.
But his notes are resounding against my bones, striking my membranes. They vibrate through my throat, echo within my ears. The composer is dead, but he’s not. I know it is common sense. Still, how common is that? What outlives the body, where, why?
My ex-husband gave me a pass for this garden. We have been divorced for decades. I don’t think we love each other. We did at some point. We must have.
He gave me a pass for this park, allowing me to take this long walk, bathed in sunset glory. He works here in the morning. I go visit the place where he works and I picture his trace. I imagine him here, among this complex beauty, tiny square of a larger mosaic. A small stone. I imagine this evening light embracing him, smoothing him in.
Weird. I feel that he’s still my husband, in a way. Nothing can change the fact that we have met, intersecting each other’s life. We have crossed. We can’t be uncrossed. As the olive trees kept my voice and Beethoven keeps singing, he will always be my husband. In the past I mean, he will, does it make sense? Tenses intersect in this garden.
I recall many times when I’ve walked these trails, although never alone until now. I remember the pleasure of nature each time, and I remember pain. Pain when I was in the company of my husband, or with him and the baby. By then I was dependent, a shadow, mortified, mute, and I didn’t know about it. Pain was thick like the strata of dry leaves we stepped on, in the oak woods. Pain was mine but it spread, lightly tinting the steps we climbed or the bench where we rested, clouding the glassy skin of the pond we often looked at.
Still I’m eager to sit by the pond today, visit the bird sanctuary, another favorite stop. Pain has been preserved in those sites, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. Slowly, it has mixed up with the memory of more pleasant walks I took later, with friends, after divorce.
And yet more recent memories also have gloomy undertones. As I attempted to emerge from the mud of too many failures, I was brittle and broken. I was fragments, the random scatter of self that had graciously managed to survive. I was maimed, sewn back, full of scars.
My child blamed me, resented me, disliked me. I was a non-lover, non-loved, botched wife and bad mother. I can catch glimpses of those selves around. I was here with those selves. We sat by the teahouse… did we see the cocktails’ description? I do not recall. Perhaps we couldn’t process it. We had no room yet for cheerful fantasies, not even as a joke like tonight’s.
I have been here with a friend who has recently passed. The last time we came we sat among inward-spiraling boxwood hedges, shielded within a miniature labyrinth where our children played hide-and-seek. My friend taught me the word “maze” and I was ecstatic. Raised below the olive trees, I still didn’t know this term. A new language comes slowly, through many voices and a word at a time. Each word takes its place in the larger mosaic. Each word is a small stone.
Now my friend, I said, is gone. No more sitting side by side. Or yes, in a maze with no entry or exit. In a place where all is kept, all is perfect like the moment when we rested and talked, and she gave me a two-syllable gift. That, you see, I still recall. That moment, that word.
I have no pain tonight, not even melancholy. I was never so clean and so clear, in this garden. Beauty pierces me and it is bare, uncut. Suddenly, it makes me cry and yet not with sadness, and my tears don’t last.
Now I know that I’ll also die. Like for my darling friend, quite soon. Which means nothing. Death, like trees, clocks around in ways we don’t fully grasp. I always knew about my mortality of course, and its impending quality, unrelated to dates. But today soon, somehow, becomes sooner.
Today there’s no doubt. The garden dispelled it. This place where my husband invited me, today, is the labyrinth. Here’s the map, though. Someone left it on a bench. Here’s the map and I see the exit, right there, softly lit and yet perfectly discernible.
I think pain or those wounds of mine had veiled my eyes. For a while I was too weepy to see, and my internal sobs deafened me. Tonight I heard words so pristine, so sharp, I understood they were ultimate. Perhaps Beethoven whispered them, or his ghost. Perhaps the trees did. Death, they said, is the golden key.
I will die, now I am sure. It has been pronounced, and the verdict—look—sets me free. I will die. I will become this garden.
Toti O'Brien is the Italian Accordionist with the Irish Last Name. She was born in Rome then moved to Los Angeles, where she makes a living as a self-employed artist, performing musician and professional dancer. Her work has most recently appeared in Dragon Poet Review, Atticus, Cloud Women, and Poetic Diversity.