The Wife Tree Read Online Free Page B

can’t rest until he sees her fall to the earth.
    I noticed today that the Man Tree has shed all his coloured leaves. His skeleton stands gaunt and dark and vulnerable against the sky. But the Wife Tree seems to be giving the lie to the season and is still green as green and full and lush and refusing to die.
    Dear girls,
    …The trees are disrobing themselves and soon will stand naked and beautiful, as I was never allowed to be when I was a child, but, like a nun, took my bath under a sheet, as instructed by the priests. And now I think: If I wasn’t permitted to love my own flesh when it was young and firm, what can I feel for it but shame, now that it’s old and withered and dry?…

October 20
    Two weeks have passed since William fell and I haven’t seen Dr. Pilgrim again. He does come in, the nurses tell me, but he’s never around when I’m visiting and I’m afraid that if he knows why William hasn’t yet awakened, he’s reluctant to tell me. After many vain attempts at questioning the nurses, I’ve begun to understand that truth is a very foolish thing to ask for in a hospital. Truth can’t be measured out in milligrams or recorded on a graph in a patient’s chart. And even with all their fancy machines, the nurses can’t seem to tell me anything more than I’m able to see with my one weak eye.
    Released from the day shift at his factory, Morris arrived in intensive care today at four o’clock.
    “Medical intervention isn’t the answer here, anyway, Mom,” he said, “no matter what Merilee or the professionals say. God will decide what happens to Dad, not the doctors.”
    “There’s more to your father than his soul, Morris.”
    “I’m making it my mission to convert Dad to our church. I’ve got my whole community praying for him right now.”
    The thought of all those
Glory be to God!s
and
Hallelujah, Brothers!
and
Praise the Lord!
s shooting William’s way alarmed me.
    Morris stood over his father’s bed with his bible open, his chest puffed out, as though he were more powerful than the doctors themselves. He carries the Good Book everywhere, even to work, where twice it’s cost him his job.
    “You can’t feed those boys of yours on the New Testament,” William told Morris the first time he got fired for preaching at the factory. “The Gospel according to St. John won’t put meat on their bones.”
    “I’ll find another job, Dad. I’m not worried. God will provide.”
    Until he was a man of thirty carting the Testaments around, Morris was never able to stand up to his father. The Scriptures have become his voice, which is a pity, I think, because they contain the wisdom only of men and none of women. For a slow reader like Morris, the Bible is a very thick book.
    “Why was that boy nearly illiterate until he tripped over the Scriptures?” his father has often asked me.
    “I don’t know, William.”
    “I don’t care if you want to waste your time reading the Bible,” he’s told Morris, “so long as you think and question as you go along.” But Morris, like me, is not a thinker, and so he’s swallowed the Good Book whole, chapter and verse.
    “Come to just one service, Dad,” Morris used to beg William.“That’s all I ask. Just come and see what our church is like.”
    “I’ve converted once already. I don’t need to do it again. There’s little difference from one religion to the next, anyway. You get the same hogwash everywhere.”
    “But that’s where you’re wrong, Dad. Our God is a better God than your God.”
    “I didn’t know they were running a competition.”
    Morris was once a small, skinny boy and it still surprises me to see him standing six feet tall, with thick shoulders and broad hands and a big square jaw. When he was young, I tried to fortify him with carbohydrates, at every meal placing a stack of white bread at his elbow. Dutifully, he buttered the slices one by one on the flat of his hand and ate them. Despite this, I was never successful in