7.

The side of the white Ford van read “Torres Bros.” and it had a huge painted image of an extremely happy looking man in shorts and a ball cap pushing a lawnmower while jumping in the air and clicking his heels together. The van was parked half on the curb and half on the street, resting cockeyed on the sidewalk across from the Troy home. Above it the trees of late autumn dropped the last of their crinkled, mostly brown leaves. Just one flamboyant Maple, which stood in the front yard of the Troy’s next door neighbor had the audacity to still cloak its limbs in shocks red, yellow and orange this late in the season.

Inside the van, the men who’d earlier mocked Vivian’s attempt at exercising her green thumb, made small talk and enjoyed their breakfast. Steam rose from their stainless steel thermoses as they ate their donuts. They teased the eldest among them, Joe Torres, who was also the owner of the landscaping company, about the new girl he was seeing, which was risky territory for the employees to enter considering the fact that Joe’s wife had left him for his rival, Tony Bruno, owner of “Bruno & Sons Lawn Manicuring Services.” Tony and Joe grew up on the same street in Jersey City and had been rivals, it seemed all their lives. Entrepreneurs from the start, as boys they were the first ones on their block to put up lemonade stands, competing for the same business. Tony’s business grew faster than Joe’s, though, when his dad gave him a case of plastic cups and lids he’d gotten from an associate’s warehouse allowing Tony to tap the market demand for lemonade on the go. When Joe bought a lemon yellow whatever would be a pretty cool car in 1968 but not brand new, Tony bough a cherry red whatever would top Joe’s cool car. When they both tried out for an open position as a running back on their high school’s football team, both boys made the cut, but it was Tony who was given the starting spot. Joe was Tony’s back-up. Joe had wanted to go to Rutgers, but it was Tony who actually got in. Joe went to Temple and majored in horticulture and architectural landscaping, came out of school and took over his father’s small lawn care service—a company that performed basic lawn care tasks like lawn mowing and weeding and provided Joe’s family with a modest but stable upbringing. Joe’s training and talent allowed him to build the service into one of the most successful landscaping businesses in metro NYC, catering to wealthy Manhattan executive’s suburban estates. Tony, on the other hand, graduate from Rutgers with a business degree and was working as an assistant manager at the local branch of a large national bank when he ran into Joe, who had come to the bank to sign papers for a loan to purchase several new vans for his booming company. They made small talk and Joe was very polite, realizing that his successful business had finally given him the upper hand in the strange dynamic between the two lifelong…acquaintances. You really couldn’t call them friends.

And then one day, Joe was coming out of a Dunkin’ Donuts shop near a job with a cardboard container of coffee and a box of donuts for his men when he saw it. A bright red pick-up truck with the words Bruno & Sons painted on the doors in bright yellow. In North Jersey, you can’t really swing a dead cat without hitting a Bruno, so Joe was at first willing to consider that it probably didn’t belong to the Bruno he counts as his nemesis. He began to make his way down the block to where his van was parked, but decided to hang out for a few minutes and weight for the truck’s driver to return. Just to be sure. At the exact time the hot coffee inside the box began to leak through a shoddy seam and burn Joe’s hand that he saw Tony, jet black pompadour on his head and bright red jumpsuit to match his truck, walking with a Bagel Chateau bag in his right fist, and the keys to the red landscaping truck in his left hand.

As it turned out, Tony Bruno, Sr., hearing from his son about the financial success Joe Torres was enjoying by simply fixing up people’s yards, found a few associates who were easily persuaded to act as investors and get Tony started in the landscaping business. The capital raised allowed Tony to start out with a fleet and state of the art equipment and three men to a truck. It wasn’t long after Joe saw the Tony and the truck that billboards started popping up on the Garden State Parkway and Routes 78 and 80. The slick commercials, a succession of clips exhibiting Bruno & Sons’ best work with a friendly voice over urging viewers to call 800-THE-YARD for a free consultation, started appearing with regular frequency on ESPN and stations that cater to wealthy males. Finally, Tony scored a gig, no doubt with the help of a favor owed his father, as the private landscaper to the Governor of New Jersey—a fact that was touted on the cover of NJ Monthly and in the pages of North Jersey Upscale Living, a publication widely coveted by those offering manual labor services in the Garden State. Once again, Tony had edged Joe out.

But he was used to losing or, as he chose to see it, coming in second place. It was better than third place. Or fourth. Or last. And ultimately, having the better car or the bigger business wasn’t as important to Joe as it was to Tony. To Joe, happiness was defined by his relationships with his family and friends. Weekends spent cooking food and drinking beers by his pool or Monday night football at the Beacon Tavern with his buddies. Get-away weekends with his wife. Summer vacations at the shore with his kids. As long as his business enabled him to enjoy good times with the people he loved, Joe was content to leave the petty one-upmanship to Tony.

Then one evening, after working late on a job, Joe decided to return to the his company’s headquarters to drop off the van rather than taking it back to his home. After such a long day, Joe was exhausted and wanted to take the next day off. He went into the office and wrote a note on yellow lines sticky, informing his staff that he’d not be in the following day and requesting that one of them clean out the inside of the van, as he’d tracked a great deal of mud into the cargo space. Joe locked up the office and walked out to where he’d parked his car that morning and the slight swaying back and forth of one of the vans in his fleet.

“What the hell,” he said as he walked in the direction of the van in question. As he got closer, the swaying became more of a rocking and he could hear quiet murmuring which soon turned into grunting and moans.

A smile crept across his face as he realized there were two people doing it in the back of one of his vans. He wondered which of the little dogs he employed had the audacity to use his property for extra-curricular activities. As he tiptoed toward the back of the van, Joe rubbed his hands together in front of him, as if here were sitting down to a delicious feast. He was going to enjoy this surprise confrontation. He wasn’t actually mad, but he was going to have fun scaring the hell of out one of the cocky little punks. Joe decided maybe he’d come in to work the nest day, after all. He couldn’t miss the opportunity to make the little fucker squirm all day and, hell, he’d need to fill the rest of the crew in on the details of whatever activity was taking place in the van.

Joe reached the van and was praying that the kid hadn’t had the smarts to lock him and his little lady inside. He fully intended to throw open the door and scare those kids right out of whatever clothes they were still wearing. Joe’s fingers quietly wrapped around the bar of the door handle and his thumb depressed the button to unlatch the door and with all his might, Joe threw the van door open.

“Aaaahaaaah!!!!” he yelled as a woman’s voice screamed in response.

“How da-” Joe began to chastise, but stopped just as quickly as he’d started and just stared at the naked couple inside his van. The man was lying on his back with his head closest to Joe, looking up at him in wide-eyed disbelief. The woman was completely naked, straddling the man and covering hear breasts with her arms. The silence between the couple in the van and the owner standing outside of it lasted only momentarily and Joe spoke first.

“Why are you hiding your tits from your husband, Melissa?” he said. “I’ve been looking at them for 25 years.” And then Joe walked away from the van. The woman, still naked, jumped out of the vehicle and barefoot ran after him across the gravel parking lot.

“Joe! Joe, please come back. Please Joe,” his wife yelled after him, but he didn’t stop and he didn’t turn around. There was no sign of a naked Tony Bruno following after Melissa, though Joe assumed he remained back at the van to gloat. Once again, Tony got the better of Joe. And Joe’s own wife helped him do it.

He reached his car and fumbled with is key, giving his now sobbing wife the opportunity to catch him. “I’m sorry. Oh God Joe, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me. We can work this out. We’re going to be okay.” As she pleaded with him, she tried to hug him, tried to pull him toward her. But the naked body and the gorgeous curves and soft skin that he’d worshipped since it was 25-years-old, now only repulsed him. The moment she touched him, the numbness that overcame him back at the van all but disappeared and it was replaced with rage.

Melissa reached for Joe’s face, attempting to kiss his lips and still begging for forgiveness, but he pushed her away and she stumbled backwards, landing on her ass in the stones. She stayed down on the ground as he spoke.

“Whore. I have no love for you. Do not come home.” He got in his car and backed out quickly and carelessly, despite the fact that his wife was on the ground, inches from his tires. He drove away and didn’t allow himself to look in the rearview until he was certain her form wouldn’t be part of the view.

Melissa stayed away for a while. She knew she had betrayed her husband and that he was devastated. She knew it would take time before he could look at her again and not call her a whore. She knew of his history with Tony Bruno, which is also why she believed she deserved to be called a whore. But she also knew that she was Joe’s first and only love. That aside from her, Joe had only made love to one other woman in his life. She’d fucked up majorly and she knew she’d probably pay for it in one way or another for the rest of her life. But Melissa knew that Joe needed her. So on a Friday night about three weeks after the incident, she gathered her courage to return to her home to ask for Joe’s forgiveness. But this time it was her turn to be betrayed when Jane, Joe’s 29-year-old, live-in girlfriend, answered Melissa’s door. And she was wearing Melissa’s aquamarine and diamond earrings from Tiffany. The ($60,000!) gift Joe had given her on their 25th anniversary last year .

6.

The next morning, for the first time in a long while, Vivian didn’t get out of bed and follow Derrick through his morning routine. She didn’t walk him to the door and then watch him from the window. Instead, she slept in and was barely roused even when he brought her some coffee and kissed her good bye. She had slept well and deeply and by the time she finally rolled out of bed, her coffee was cold and had missed her spin class.

Vivian got out of bed and went downstairs to make herself some breakfast. As was her habit, she brought her laptop with her and as she waited for a new pot of coffee to brew she returned to browsing the web. She’d forgotten until she looked at her history bar, about the online parenting group she’d discovered the night before. As she made her way through a bowl of granola topped with fresh blueberries, she clicked on the link and went to the homepage of Parent 2 Parent 4 Support.com. She was immediately assaulted by a collage of images of happy families, smiling, laughing children and parents of all ages, races and sexual preferences.

“If everyone’s so fucking happy why do you need 100 message boards of support and chat rooms for…whatever it is one does in a chat room not devoted to fucking,” she asked her monitor.

Vivian started scrolling down the homepage, exploring the different offerings of Parent 2 Parent while outside her kitchen window a small team of Mexican laborers sent by her landscaping company at Derrick’s request, slapped each other on the back and pointed at the trees she’d planted, while they laughed hysterically. One man, who wore overalls and a Boston Red Sox cap and who couldn’t have been more than five feet four inches tall and 150 pounds, stood beside one of the trees and with just one hand and no real exhibited effort pulled the tree from the earthen hole that Vivian had so lovingly carved for it with a too heavy shovel and then filled with soil she packed down with her own LL Bean garden gloved hands, barely flinching at the occasional piece of worm that writhed in the dirt. The suddenly uprooted tree sent the gathered men into new fits of laughter before they left it propped against its sibling saplings and returned to their trucks.

Inside and still oblivious to the activity taking place in her back yard, Vivian had entered a general chat room with an assigned guest name and observed the friendly but pointless banter exchanged among the people present. A woman named Joanne was conducting an opinion poll—not about ear infection medication or the value of Montessori school, but rather posing the question, “McDreamy or McSteamy—which one do you want in your bed?” in reference to the popular television show, Grey’s Anatomy. The mothers in the chat room overwhelmingly preferred the sensitive McDreamy, while the fathers declared both of the men gay.

“Well, already I don’t fit in with parent types,” Vivian said as took a sip of her coffee. “I’d take them both to bed.”

Dropping out of the general chat room, she moved her cursor to a link for a divorced parents chat room and sat back waiting for the fun to begin, but was disappointed when she found just two men—both lawyers—talking shop. Vivian quickly dropped out again and was about to give up on the parenting website, when she saw a message board for Mommies-To-Be. This topic made her cringe a bit. When she’d discovered the sight the night before she’d imagined it populated by overbearing yuppies of overscheduled kids fretting about parenting theories and education models, courted by upscale advertisers of children’s clothes and study aids. The sort of people she could make fun of until she eventually fell in line and became one of them. But she didn’t expect to see a an area for pregnant women on Parent 2 Parent 4 Support.

“Can’t escape the pregos, even if you try,” she said and clicked on “Join Mommies-To-Be.”

Outside the wind picked up and the unplanted tree fell on its side and the wind gusts rolled it over and over, very slowly pushing it across the yard. The Troys’ home was built on a corner lot, and the Weeping Cherry was headed toward the street that ran along the side of Vivian’s and Derrick’s home. The landscapers huddled in the back of their truck among tools and sitting on bags of soils, drinking thermoses of coffee, sharing a dozen donuts packed inside a wax coated bag.

Vivian watched the conversation of the pregnant women, which, unlike the other chat rooms she’d visited that dad, was on topic. References to strange cravings and morning sickness were tossed out and fetal measurements were tracked, but the main topic of conversation for the women in the Mommies-To-Be chat room that morning was how to best prepare their existing children to welcome the new baby into the family. As they talked, Vivian realized that all the women had children and were online discussing not their first pregnancy, but second or third. Or, as was the case for a woman named Tiffanee who was typing on and on about her home birth plan and the ease with which she’d had all of her children—her fifth pregnancy.

“Jesus Christ, TiffaNEE, do you do anything but breed? Are you a woman or a rabbit?” Vivian said reaching for the lid of her laptop in disgust, figuring it was time to leave this foreign world of parents and take a shower. But then she stopped and smiled wickedly.

She began typing in the chat room’s text box.

Visitor342489: Wow Tiffanee, that’s quite a little family you’ve got.

Tiffanee: *Giggles* Thanks.

Visitor342489: Do you do anything but breed?

Tiffanee: J Sometimes.

Visitor342489: Are you a woman or a fucking rabbit?

Tiffanee: L Go somewhere else if you’re going to be rude.

Visitor342489: Just messing around.

Tiffanee: It’s okay! I forgive you. Hugs!!

Visitor342489: *Smirking* Gee Thanks.

Visitor342489: So, you must be able to drive a truck up that thing, eh?

Tiffanee: You’re going to get banned, Visitor. This is a warning.

Visitor342489: Sex for your “dear hubby” must be like throwing a hot dog down a hallway, though. Am I right?

And just like that the window Vivian had been typing in had closed and a message appeared informing her that Visitor342489 had been banned from Mommies-To-Be at Parent 2 Parent 4 Support.com. Vivian started laughing hysterically as exited her internet browser and closed her lap top. When she’d calmed down she took a sip of her coffee, but ending up running to the sink to spit out as another wave of laughter overtook her. When the contents of her mouth were sprayed safely in the porcelain sink, she wiped her lips on the back of her hand, straightened up and looked out the window above the kitchen sink.

“What the fuck?” she said as her eyes settled on the two Weeping Cherry trees and the single empty dirt hole where her third baby tree had been. “Someone stole my fucking tree!”

5.

Later that evening Derrick read in bed while Vivian surfed the web on her laptop, looking at ads on Craigslist for possible jobs. She hoped to find something part time or a telecommuting gig, as she really wasn’t ready to return to the 9-to-5 grind—especially since their next step in starting a family hadn’t yet been decided. She quickly lost interest in the job search, though, and began to entertain herself by looking through the personals.

“Honey, listen to this one,” Vivian said. “‘Daddy seeks baby for OTK.’ Wait, what’s OTK?”

“Are your reading internet ads again?”

“How can I not? Do you know all the people we could be fucking now if we weren’t old married people? Actually, there are a number opportunities here requesting old married people.”

“Stop reading that shit,” Derrick said.

“Why, it’s not illegal? What’s OTK?”

Derrick was growing annoyed, “I don’t know. Quit reading it.”

“It’s fun, Derrick. Jeez. Listen, he says, ‘Generous daddy looking for a baby to spoil and spank. Just be pretty and nice.’ And he uses a dollar sign for the letter ‘S’ in his ad. Isn’t that hilarious,” Vivian said. “Is that internet code for saying you’ll pay for sex? Would he pay to spank me? Honey…this could be good side money.”

“Knock it off, Viv.”

“Oh…he’s got a pic.” Vivian clicked on the ad and her eyes widened and she cringed backward into her pillow, pulling her sheets up to her neck in mock terror. “Jesus Christ, look at that thing!! He doesn’t want to spank Baby, he wants to impale her.”

“Jesus! Cut the shit, Vivian. Get off the personal sites, it’s pissing me off.”

“Jeez. Fine,” she said as she returned to the homepage. “Why are you so pissed? It’s not like you found me in the corner writing down Daddy’s phone number. I’m just playing.”

“It’s inappropriate,” he said, not looking at her.

“Square,” she said.

Vivian began her search of the non-sexual sections of the website, looking at all sorts of offerings for yoga and jujitsu classes, book clubs and scrapbooking meets, baseball memorabilia sales and the like, before she came across an ad for an online auction being hosted by an internet parent support group.

“Christ,” Vivian said out loud and when her husband didn’t bite, she continued, “Can you believe this? An online parent support group—what the fuck is that about? I mean, just be a parent, people. Am I right?”

“Yeah, really,” Derrick agreed, not looking up from his book.

“I mean, you’re probably not going to need ‘support’ if you spend a little less time online looking for it and a little more time parenting,” she continued her rant. “Why do parents today spend so much fucking time analyzing their parental roles? Just go be a mom or dad to your kid, you know?”

“Mhmm.”

Vivian looked at Derrick and could see he was not interested in debating the worthiness of an online parent support group. So she read it to herself:

Parents!!! Are you tired? Worn out? Frustrated? At a loss? Do you need to talk to other people who know what you are going through? Well here’s your opportunity to do that!

USAParentsconnections.com is a website devoted to everything about being a parent. Our website compiles all the top information in parenting resources, and provides more than a 100 different message boards dedicated to a variety of “hot” parenting topics as well as a dozen different chat rooms so that you can talk “live” with other parents, just like you.

“Why is that ‘chat rooms’ always sounds dirty to me?” Vivian asked. “Like the only kind of chat you can have online is sexual?”

“Huh,” Derrick said. “Oh. Probably because you’re a dirty whore.”

“Oh yeah. That’s right.” She said and then wondered, “What do you think goes on in a ‘parenting chat room,’ anyway. Riveting conversations about rashes and getting shit stains out of baby Gap denim? Or maybe it’s a bunch of women bitching about their kids and husbands, like my mom used to do on the phone, just these people type it instead of say it.”

“Probably a little bit of all of that, honey,” Derrick said, humoring her.

“Well, I think these people should stop worrying so much online about the trials of being a parent and trying to just enjoy it in real life,” she said, as she shut the lid of her laptop and put it on the bedside table before sliding down under the covers and turning toward Derrick. She laid on her side, staring at him and waiting for him to put down his book. When he continued reading, glaring at her playfully out of the corner of his eye, she reached under the covers to find another way to get his attention, a method that worked instantly. Derrick dropped his book and pulled her close to him, kissing her mouth and neck.

“Derrick,” she mumbled into his kisses. “Derrick? Wait a second.”

He pulled back to look at her, “Yes?”

“Do you think that will have an advantage? Do you think because it was so hard for us to have a baby that when we finally do get one, it will make us better ones? The kind who never take for granted the gift we were given?”

He kissed her nose and said, “Nope. I’m pretty sure the little fucker will get to us, too.” He climbed onto of Vivian and started kissing her more aggressively, interested not in talking about babies, but possibly making one the old fashioned way. Beneath him, when she was able to come up for air, she said, “I bet you’re wrong.”

4.

Derrick’s old green pick-up truck, which he kept for tasks like this one, lurched into the parking lot of Landis’ nursery, with Vivian behind the wheel trying to finesse a crotchety old clutch that was much more stubborn than that of the friendly luxury sedan she normally drove. She eased the truck into a parking spot, grabbed her purse and headed for the outdoor section of the nursery. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was there for, but she also knew she wasn’t leaving until she found it. Today, things would change for Vivian.

It was true that Vivian’s life was about to undergo a few changes that day, but it wouldn’t have anything to do with the three Weeping Cherry saplings she loaded into the truck with the help of two young Lanids employees. She was about to find a way to put the losses of three babies behind her, but the process had nothing to do with the blisters on her hand from digging large holes for the trees in her yard. In fact there would be no sweat or shovels or dirt involved; rather she’d figure it all out in the comfort of her own bed, the answer at her fingertips.

After Derrick had absorbed the scene in the back yard, the couple went inside and Derrick ordered a pizza while Vivian hopped in the shower to clean off. Have gotten over the shock of finding his dainty wife outside planting trees that she’d hauled home from a nursery over an hour away, he started to see how this was probably a positive thing. It was the first area, outside of reproduction and work-outs, where Vivian had shown initiative in the two years since she’d left her job. It was reasonable for him to assume that this was Vivian’s way of taking charge of something she had no control over – her fertility. She planted the trees in tribute to the babies and she’d done it on her own. This was probably the very first step to some sort of recovery.

Derrick poured himself a glass of wine and picked up the paper work from Landis’ Nursery, looking over the details of his newly acquired trees.

“Jesus, Viv,” Derrick said as he looked over the papers. “These fucking things can grow to 40 feet,” he said to the empty room, glaring at the saplings his wife had planted so closely together that the wind was blowing their delicate branches into one another and they became tangled up. Oh well, he thought, he could call the gardener and ask him to hire some help replant the trees with enough distance to grow. Anything to get Vivian through this.

And, really, the trees weren’t a bad idea. A nice gesture, actually. Derrick thought of the babies, actually knew all their conception dates—which with IVF is easy since it’s done by appointment—but he also knew the dates of the miscarriages. Six times a year, his calendar would blindside him with reminders of the little boy and girls that never made it the room at the end of the hall—the would-be nursery—that he and Vivian avoided like the plague. For Derrick, the pain would last momentarily before he pushed it back down and away. But, with the trees growing in the yard, he could let go of the specific dates and allow the losses to mesh into the fabric of the couple’s background; something lingering and ever-present, but only taking center stage fleetingly with the trees’ first blooms before fading into the scenery again.

“Should’ve planted evergreens, Viv,” Derrick said. “Then we wouldn’t even have to deal with the blooms.”

“What?” Vivian said, standing behind him, towel drying her hair. He didn’t realize she’d been come back into the kitchen.

“Nothing. I was just realizing that we’re going to have to have George move the trees,” he told her. Holding up the planting directions, “These things can grow up to 40 feet. You’re going to need more than two feet between them. We’ll have to spread them out around the yard.”

At this Vivian frowned. “Oh. I don’t like that idea. I liked the idea of having them nice and close together. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s so cold and dark during the winter. I wanted them to have each other.”

Derrick didn’t want to point out that leaving them the way they were would cause them to die. He wanted the trees to be the answer to their problems, not actual tangible fucking representations of them, taunting him and Vivian from their own backyards.

“Well, we could return them and get a different type of tree. Something that won’t need so much room…” he suggested.

“No. I’m attached to the idea of the cherry blossoms at the end of each winter. We can spread them out,” she said and then, smiling, “I guess I’m not THAT crazy, yet. One more dead baby, though…then I’ll be certifiable.”

“Fine. One more dead baby and you can try planting evergreens in pots in the god damned living room, babe,” Derrick said as he poured his wife a glass of wine and himself a second.

“Ooooh. So that’s the official number? Three dead babies and a girl must remain behaved and well-adjusted, but when the tally hits four I’m allowed to go stark raving mad?” Vivian laughed.

“Yeah. I think with four, juries overlook abduction charges,” Derrick joked.

“Well schedule the next IVF, baby, let’s get this show on the road,” she said. “Cuz I’m hanging by a fucking thread.”

They raised their glasses and Vivian made a toast: “To insanity defenses,” she said.

“To stealing cute babies,” Derrick countered, and they became hysterical, trying to outdo each other with tasteless dead baby jokes and planning baby heists until the pizza delivery boy rang the door bell. As Derrick grabbed his wallet and deaded for the door, Vivian called after him, “If he’s young enough to need a parent, invite him in.”

“Jesus,” he said, shaking his head and smiling.

3.

Her days all start the same and the morning Vivian decided to buy the saplings was no exception. Kissing her husband goodbye, Vivian shut the door behind him and looked out the window, watching him get in his car. As he drove out of sight she lingered there, looking but seeing nothing. Behind her a living room waited, beyond it a kitchen, dining room, and a den. Above her perched three bedrooms. She stayed at the window, keeping her back to the spiteful rooms that mocked her with their unsoiled floors and tasteful décor. She hated this moment and though it came every weekday morning, she just couldn’t get used to the feeling of dismay that physically rose up in her throat as she mentally took stock of what her day would bring. Lately she’d been staying at the window for longer stretches of time, grateful for the sheer curtains that hide her form from her busy neighbors as they hustle children to the nearby elementary school or stroll the streets pushing baby carriages and pulling wagons with giggling passengers. If anyone had noticed her behind the curtains she would have looked like a ghost, which was oddly appropriate for a woman who spends each day haunting her own home, roaming from room to room.

The damn clock—an antique cuckoo clock that was a wedding gift from her inlaws—conspired with the rooms, passing time behind her. Each second’s tick commanding her, in a judgmental tone, to move from the window. She knew her legs could hold her there all day while the sun climbed over the house—she had done it once—but Derrick found it very upsetting. Her window vigil had come to be called “the incident” in the Troy household. Just recalling his reaction that evening, when he returned to find her exactly as he’d left her nine hours earlier, caused Vivian to look at the floor in shame, averting her eyes though she is all alone. Vivian sighed uncomfortably at the memory. With no need to revisit that unfortunate business the young woman ran her palms over her thighs, smoothing her night gown, took a deep breath to steel herself and, squinting her eyes so that she could absorb the grotesque view slowly, she turned to face her living room.

But that morning, things had to be different. She couldn’t spend another day, cleaning already clean surfaces, mopping shiny floors, washing loads of just yesterday’s clothes. A zombie. She felt like a zombie busying herself in a home with nothing to do. She supposed she could call her old boss, tell him she was ready to return to work, but that was almost two years ago that she took a leave of absence from her job as an editor at a small publishing house. Although she’d been promised her job back when she was ready to come back, she’d avoided the calls she’d received from her colleagues a few months after she left. They would leave her kind voicemail messages, “not intending to pressure” her, but inquiring about her plans for the future. Finally, Jim, her boss, called and asked if they could have lunch to discuss her position with the company. She agreed to a date, but then canceled, not once, but twice with his secretary. After the second cancellation, Jim emailed her, insisting that she meet him at his office in the near future. That email was followed by several calls from Jim’s secretary, trying to schedule an appointment, but Vivian avoided all of it. Eventually the calls and emails ceased—her boss and her colleagues stopped attempting to reach her, which, Vivian was certain, meant her job was actually no longer hers. But she and Jim were friends from college. They’d lived in the same dorm as freshman, both being English, majors found themselves in many courses throughout their college careers. Her job, her office, her writers might belong to someone else, but she was fairly confident Jim would find room for her if she requested that he consider allowing her to return.

That was the problem, though. Vivian didn’t want to return to the publishing house or, for that matter, the workforce. Not like this. Not still without the family she’d initially left her job to start. She was no closer that morning to being a mother, than she was when she took Jim to lunch and told him that she needed to take some time off to pursue “assistance” with beginning a family. Now here she was, two years later and three lost pregnancies with nothing to show for it but a psychotically clean house and a whole lot of emotional baggage.

One of the biggest topics Vivian wrestled with in the perpetual Oprah episode taking place in her head was what to consider herself. None of her babies made it to term, but they also lived long enough to be measured and grow, to have heart beats and distinguishing genitalia – two girls and a boy. And then there’s the fact that she refers to what they did inside her belly as “lived long enough.” During her fleeting pregnancies, she rubbed her belly with soothing strokes like she hoped to rub the babies’ backs one day. She talked with them, telling them stories about how much they were wanted and all that they’d do together when they arrived. And, in each case, when the cramping or spotting would start, she pleaded with them not to leave her. Begged them to hang on, stay put, to give her more time. But all three times her bargaining and begging were not enough to keep them with her. She’d lose them. Her babies, they’d be gone. So when strangers on the treadmill next to her at the gym or the ones who’d catch her daydreaming in the baby aisle, fingering the tiny jars and wondering if the baby she hoped to have some day would like peaches or peas, asked her if she had kids, it pained her to tell them no. She was aware of women who counted their miscarried and stillborn children among their family members. Had talked with women online who would blink an eye to hear Vivian say, yes, she had three children. But that didn’t sit well with Vivian; she didn’t like the idea of angel babies. At the same time, she felt like some kind of Judas, denying her babies three times. She couldn’t help it though. She just didn’t feel like a mother, but it also pained her greatly to completely disregard the little beings she’d bonded with. While she didn’t see herself wearing a necklace with three little angel charms—one for each of her miscarriages—she also realized that the time had come to do something about them. Or, more accurately, for them. She couldn’t continue to act like they never existed, like her miscarriages were medical conditions no different from a common cold or a sinus infection. She also couldn’t afford to exist in a state of what could only be described as suspended grief. She wasn’t a mother, but she had lost three children. It was time for Vivian to face that.

2.

2.

Derrick opened the door, and Vivian tried to rise so that as she explained herself she could have the slight benefit of being able to look him in the eye. At last she would have being upright going for her. Of course, several hours sitting on the cold concrete of the porch with her back against the cold doors of her kitchen had caused her entire bottom half to go numb, so she stumbled in through the doorway and braced herself on the edge of the counter as she shifted her weight from foot to foot, trying to work trough the pins and needles.

Derrick spoke first.

“Vivian? What the hell are you doing out there? I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon.”

“Sorry. Sorry, sorry. I just forgot my damned keys and couldn’t get in the house,” she said, hunched over an tending to her lower extremities.

“Well why didn’t you call or…”

“I didn’t have my phone with me. I went to the Y and I didn’t bring it with me. Nor, it turns out, did I bring my house key.” She was vigorously rubbing the fronts of her thighs and noticed that her ass had gone completely numb, as if she’d been sitting on block of ice all day.

“So you just sat there all day,” Derrick asked her, looking at the porch. “You could’ve gone to the library or Starbucks or something.”

But he stopped his lecture when his wife finally straightened up and looked at him for the first time since he’d found her on the porch.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine now. I’m warming up. I’m really hungry…what should we have for dinner?” she said.

Derrick didn’t respond with a dinner suggestion. Instead he just looked at her face, realizing from the smeared make up and puffy eyes that she’d been crying.

“What? I haven’t eaten since this morning. I’m starved,” she said, and turned to walk into the pantry to survey the ingredients.

Derrick remained in the kitchen, trying to decide what to do. Unsure if he should follow his wife into the pantry and demand to know what had gone on that afternoon or, instead, look in the freezer and start tossing out dinner ideas, as if nothing unusual were happening. And the truth was, if Derrick were to be completely honest, coming home to find Vivian shivering and crying on the back porch wasn’t the sort of event that was becoming all that unusual in their household. In the wake of what was her third miscarriage in two years, Vivian’s behavior was becoming stranger and more erratic over the last few weeks, rather than improving as she healed. In fact, as more time passed since the pregnancy was lost, the worse she was becoming.

Last week, Derrick has returned to his home at lunchtime, bringing takeout sushi to Vivian as a surprise and, at first, thought she was not at home. The house was empty and quiet and when he called her name, no response was offered. He was about to stash the lunch in the refrigerator and return to his office, but he noticed that Vivian’s car keys and wallet were on the table in the foyer. It would not be unusual for Viv to do her errands on foot, as the downtown of their little city was just a few blocks from their home, but a wallet would be necessary for her to accomplish anything. The only other explanation would be that she went for a run and so Derrick decided to check the closet for her running shoes, to make sure they were missing.

He entered the bedroom and was startled by the scene he came upon. The thick white goose-down duvet, that usually hung loosely around the sides of the bed, skirting the floor, was tucked tightly around the perimeter of the bed. Protruding form beneath the tightly tucked covers was one larger lump. It was still and beside it were two smaller, squirming lumps. Derrick said his wife’s name, but the lump did not move. He repeated her name, the second time with about more urgency, but she was still not responding. When he approached the bed he was starting to shake, unsure of what he was about to find and still her saying her name. He gripped the top of the blanket, and tugged it, but found it had been tucked into the mattress so tightly that it was resisting him. Fed up with the situation and feel his concern turn to fear, Derrick gripped the feather-stuffed cotton in his fist and ripped the entire covering from the bed, revealing his startled wife, who in one swift movement went from a fetal position to sitting upright with her knees hugged to her chest. Derrick’s abrupt invasion also freed the smaller lumps, the cats, Franny and Zoey, whose fur coats stood out from their bodies, electrified by static as they skidded across the hard wood floors and out of the bedroom.

He wanted to be patient. He wanted to be calm, but the adrenaline zooming through his body as he anticipated finding the worst in his bed, made that impossible.

“What the hell is THIS?” he boomed.

Vivian was ashamed. She felt her face go red with embarrassment at being found. She also remained silent.

“Vivian? What? What is THIS?” Derrick repeated, this time not yelling, but by no means inquiring in a comforting or encouraging tone.

And his wife remained quiet, putting her face to her knees and hugging them to her chest so tightly he could see the strain in her forearms. She was dressed as she’d been when she’d gone to sleep – a pink camisole and white underwear. Her bare shoulders began to shake and her hair fell forward over her arms, veiling her face. He knew she was crying, but her vulnerable state did not ease his anger or compel him to scoop her up and soothe her. It instead further angered him and he grabbed her upper arm, trying to open her up. To see her eyes. But she resisted him.

“Vivian, look at me,” he said, as he tightened his grip on his growing hysterical wife’s arm, but still she refused to unroll from the protective ball she’d made of herself. “Vivian!” he was chastising her, then, as if she were a stubborn child and he dragged her off the bed by her arm, finally succeeding in pulling her apart, so that she ended up on the floor, looking up at him with her arm still gripped in his fist. Tears ran down her face, but she was silent. They were not accompanied by sobs or heaves. It was just a steady flow of waves of salty liquid brimming on her lower lids momentarily before, running down her cheeks and chin.

Derrick remained standing over her. “Are you going to tell me what this is? What I’m supposed to do here?”

Vivian sniffled, wiped snot from her nose and just looked at him. Her eyes were open wide and still leaking and three creases he’d never seen before ran across her forehead. Her lips were chapped and trembled, but no words came.
Her hair much like the cats’ stuck out around her head like a halo, but he saw her as anything but angelic.

He looked her up and down, taking in the sight: his beautiful wife on the floor, nearly naked and crying and blotchy-faced. A physical manifestation of the heartache she’d been enduring for the last few months. He shook his head at her and said, “For Christ’s sake Vivian, clean yourself up.” And then he left.

Once outside of the house, Derrick paused a moment in the driveway, looking up at the window of their bedroom, wondering what was going on in the wake of his departure. Vivian’s shape did not appear in the window to watch him drive away, nor did she emerge from the front door, begging him to stay or offering an explanation. From the outside, the house remained still and quiet and he suspected Vivian was just where he’d left her. He knew he should go back and check on her. He wanted to go to her, but he also wasn’t sure how he’d handle finding her still on the bedroom floor, unfazed by his outburst or unbothered by the unacceptable nature of her bizarre behavior.

When Derrick returned home later that evening, he was braced for a confrontation or, even worse, an icy cold reception, which he deserved he believed, for his own frigid response to his wife’s…breakdown? Is that what it was, he wondered? But he entered his home and into neither scenario. Instead, his wife was dolled up and cheery, setting the table with the good china and candles, playing soft music in the background and, upon seeing him enter the dining room, approached him cheerfully with a large hug and rather long and lingering kiss. They enjoyed a delicious dinner, a bottle of wine, and pleasant conversation Derrick’s co-workers and the recipe Vivian found for the roast they were enjoying, before blowing out the candles and climbing the stairs to their bedroom. They made love in their bed, where earlier that day, the encounter between the lovers found them, for the first time in their ten-year relationship, unable to connect.

Things in the Derrick and Vivian Troy household were business as usual for several days until Derrick came home again to a quiet house, and just as he began to dread that his wife was upstairs tightly tucked in bed with the cats he spied movement in the backyard from the kitchen window. Toward the back of their property, along the wooden fence his wife was on her hands and knees patting a mound of dirt around the base of a sapling that stood about four feet tall. Next to the baby tree his wife was tending, stood two others of similar size, already snug in the moist ground of his recently rain-soaked backyard. Derrick went outside and walked across the yard to where Vivian was working.

“Trading poetry for gardening, Viv?” he asked her, referring to the poetry course she’d enrolled in at a local university. Vivian looked at him and smiled.

“Unlikely. I can’t even keep a cactus alive, remember?” she said. “Though, my poetry sucks, too.” She turned her attention back to the tree, putting her weight behind the her hands to ensure that her tree was secure in the ground.

“So, what’s with the trees?” Derrick asked her.

Vivian finished what she was doing, and still on her knees looked up at her husband as she removed the gardening gloves from her hand and wiped the hair that had escaped her ponytail and fallen into her eyes. It wasn’t lost on Derrick that this was the second time that week he found himself standing over his wife as she displayed unusual behavior.

She looked at him for a few minutes, trying to gauge what his reaction would be to her explanation. Taking a deep breath, she said, “They’re for the babies. One for each.”

Derrick wasn’t following what she was telling him.

“Whose babies, Viv?”

“Ours,” she said, quietly. “Our babies. They were our babies, Derrick. Our children and we never did anything for them, so I thought the trees would be a nice tribute,” she explained calmly and then getting up from the ground continued.

“I think about them a lot. So I thought I could plant these trees and maybe put a bench or maybe some Adirondack chairs out here, and…I don’t know. When I’m thinking of them, maybe I could just come out here as a way of visiting them.”

Derrick was quiet and looking at the trees. “They’re nice trees,” was all he said.

“Am I weird?” she asked him. “Is this weird,” gesturing at the trees.

Yes, he thought. Yes, this is weird, planting trees for babies who were never born. They weren’t their children - they were miscarriages. Derrick thought about one of his colleagues whose 3-year-old had died of a rare type of cancer. You plant trees for children whose lives are documented by toys and bedrooms left behind, and little outfits no longer worn, and photographs in frames. You don’t plant trees for fetuses who leave behind ultrasound images—medical documents holding about the same sentimental value as a healthy cholesterol reading.

“What are they?” he asked.

She looked at him, cocking her head to the side, “Trees. Well, baby trees.”

He laughed and clarified. “I mean what kind of tree?”

“Oh. Duh. Yeah…they’re called Weeping Cherry,” Vivian informed him. His eyebrows arched comically and his eyes widened in alarm.
“No, no…I didn’t pick them because of the weeping part. Jeez…You don’t think I’m that crazy do you? I picked them because they flower in late winter or early spring, which is the time of year I hate the most. It’s always so depressing, you know? After putting up with gray skies and dead everything for so many months and then by March your really waiting for the weather to warm up and the grass to start getting a little green. I thought it would be nice to have this little burst of color visit us during a dark time of the year.”

Derrick still said nothing, so she asked again: “Is this weird?”

“No,” he said, this time, drawing her near for a hug, looking at the cemetery that had suddenly sprung up in his back yard over the top of his wife’s head. He could feel her relax into his chest. “Not weird,” he told her. “But, wow. A lot of work Viv, to bring three trees home from the nursery by yourself and drag them back here to plant. Why didn’t you ask me to help?”

“I thought you’d be mad,” she said, her voice muffled as she spoke into his chest. At her confession he pulled her tighter and wondered, for the first time, how his wife would get through this.

1.

Vivian, sweaty from her workout but becoming chilled by the autumn air, reached the corner and turned left on to her street where she was immediately swarmed by a buzzing entourage of little people each led by their own Queen Bee.

Startled by the surge of activity she looked at her watch and realized her workout had run a bit longer that day. She was usually very good – actually obsessive – about timing her returns from the Y to avoid ending up on the street at the same time the neighborhood elementary school let out.

Vivian wove her way through the swarm, jostled about by the excited children to whom she was invisible, as they orbited their respective mothers – some clinging to her waist or grasping her hand, others walking backwards ahead of her, and still more scampering up and down the obstacles so considerately provided by neighborhood landscaping – chattering excitedly about their days.

A little boy, still walking and talking, reached into his backpack and rooted around with his hands in search of the construction paper present he’d made for his mom. When his hands seized the prize from within the dark nylon cave of his school bag he withdrew his hand as if he’d just been burned, tearing the gift in his hastiness to bestow it upon his mother. Tears came as only half of his bright red gift, the edges now fringed from the rip, revealed itself and Vivian put both hands to the side of her head and pressed the head phones deeper into her ear canals, not to block out the horrified kindergartner’s cries, but the soothing words from his mother that would make it all better.

The pop music of some trendy bimbo now filling her head, blocking the affectionate chatter of the swarm, Vivian held her head high, looking directly ahead, careful to avoid contact with the Queens, but risking the occasional peek at the faces of the children. She couldn’t help herself. It was a habit she had of searching a crowd of little faces for the one that would most look like her daughter. The one with long, dark brown curls, big green eyes she’d yet to grow into, and a broad smile between apple cheeks. Vivian didn’t see her daughter in the stream of bobbing heads as she made her way past them, which was just as well.

Finally, the bulk of the school kids behind her, Vivian emerged from the swarm and breathed a sigh of relief. She mentally congratulated herself on her strength and wondered when it had become fashionable again to have more than two kids. Almost home, she had turned off her iPod and stuffed the headphones into the pocket of her fleece vest when she saw the pair coming in her direction.

“Must have gotten cut off from the swarm,” Vivian muttered to herself. But two on one she could handle. No need to plug into her music again, Vivian continued moving forward down the sidewalk, remembering that she too had the right to walk down it, even without a child’s hand in her own.

The mother son duo approached her slowly, lost in their own worlds. The mother looked to be about 40. She had dark wild hair that hovered around her head, tan skin, and dark eyes. She wore a thick brown shawl wrapped her shoulders. The little boy, about six, had his mother’s hair though his was shinier, his wavy locks rested on his forehead and curled around his ears. He also had her eyes, big and round and almost black. The boy’s hand disappeared under his mother’s shawl, the lump of their clasped hands occasionally visible beneath the wool of her wrap.

The little boy talked. He was less rambunctious than the peers that walked ahead of him. Speaking slowly and purposefully, considering each of his sentences, as he shared with his mother the details of the visit by a policeman to his school. As he shared his story, he worked the fingers of his free hand, staring at them intently, willing them to produce a snap and his mother looked down at him, smiling and in love. The gaze of utter adoration and amazement the woman cast upon her son was too much for Vivian.

She jumped into the road, making a desperate beeline for the opposite side of the street, screaming when the car that nearly hit her blared its horn. Vivian could feel the stares of the mother and son on her back, but she broke into a run anxious to get back to her home before it began.

“Crazy bitch,” yelled the driver, ensuring that any remaining dignity Vivian may have possessed was annihilated. Normally she would have flipped him off or exchanged a few ugly words with him, but at this moment she just wanted to be safely behind the closed door of her home, which sat at the end of the block, cheering her on as each stride put distance between her and the mother-son pair and nearly being run over by an asshole in his Mercedes SUV, probably on his way to pick up five or six of his own little brats.

Beautiful. That would have been just a beautiful fucking way to die, Vivian, thought. Run over in post-workout, sweaty, with dripping wet pony tail, cat hair-covered yoga pants and a fleece vest. She imagined herself splayed out and mangled in the middle of the street, in her workout clothes, her smashed eye pod ending up in the gutter with some ridiculous Justin Timberlake tune streaming for the still-attached earphones, while the fashionable mothers shielded their eyes from the mess of a childless woman mashed into the pavement.

“That sounds about right,” she said, laughing hysterically as she turned up her driveway and slowed down to a walk, patting herself down for her house key. The vision of her humiliating death buoyed her spirits briefly and then she realized she’d forgotten her house key and would need to break in.

“Jesus Christ!” she growled. “Jesus H. Christ! Idiot! You idiot. Vivian, you stupid fucking idiot. How many times can you do this? How do you not think of bring a key when you leave the house. And her mood darkened significantly. As she squeezed between the shrubbery, hoisting herself up the side of the house to test various windows for an entry, she berated herself further.

“A child. You want a child, Vivian? You can’t even take care of yourself,” she hissed and then louder, to no one and the sky, “And why are all these god damned windows locked? There’s no fucking crime in this god forsaken suburb.”

Rounding the side of the house, Vivian’s pony tail was snagged by a gnarled, wayward branch of an ailing tree that gave her head a yank, but Vivian’s forward momentum, in search of an unlocked rear window, propelled her forward leaving a few strands of long brown hair dangling from the limb, blowing in the wind.

With no entrance to be found at the back of her home, either, and her head smarting from the tug of the half-dead Willow, Vivian’s personal attacks reached a new low. Her own worst enemy couldn’t have been more vicious and it wasn’t long before Vivian ended up on the cold concrete of the back porch with her back against the French doors that came between her and the kitchen, sobbing from a an emotionally lethal combination of self-pity and hatred. And that’s where she remained until the lights came on behind her and Vivian turned to see Derrick standing frozen in the center of the kitchen staring at Vivian’s mascara-stained cheeks and red nose.