Crack the Spine originally published “Off the Curb” in their Issue 94, December 2013. The story was also included in the March 30, 2104 anthology. The magazine has sadly been archived, so I’ve reprinted “Off the Curb” here.

 

“Off the Curb”

by Tania Moore

(approximate reading time 20 minutes)

 

It was a windy June day, and clumps of clouds churned across the sky as Gwendolyn stepped out of Gleason’s Fish with halibut for dinner. She glanced upward, the leaves on the trees hassled into a shimmying frenzy, and she failed to recognize that she had dawdled to a halt in the middle of the street until the honking horn of a Range Rover reminded her.

Gwendolyn hopped up onto the curb and proceeded down the hill to her car, which was parked in the town center of Merrimac-on-the-Hudson. She was rummaging in her purse for her keys, when a virulent gust of wind clamped her skirt to her thighs. In that moment she saw, in the heart shaped leaves of a linden tree, a myriad of tiny, clenched fists, or were they faces? There were dozens of them, hundreds, the entire tree crawling with otherworldly life.

No. This is not real.

Clutching her handbag, Gwendolyn leaned against the sun-baked enamel of her Pepper White Mini Cooper. The clear coat—the words a kind of mantra—would offer scratch-resistant protection. Microscopic ceramic particles in the paint, the dealer had explained, hardened in the shop oven for a forty percent improvement in paint gloss compared to traditional clear coats. She clicked open the door with sweaty palms.

Her nerves steadied by the drive home, Gwendolyn was sliding a tray of broccoli into the oven when the back door slammed, and Gus entered the kitchen, lacrosse stick in hand.

“Perfect timing,” Gwendolyn said. “Do you want to change and we’ll eat?”

“I’ll be right down,” Gus said, heading into the hallway and taking the stairs two at a time.

“And tell Bram dinner’s ready,” she called after him.

“I’m here,” Bram said, appearing in the doorway. He was sixteen and as tall as his older brother, but more slender, with fine, straight brown hair like Gwendolyn.

“Could you help set the table?” she asked. “I was thinking maybe inside tonight. It looks like rain.”

“It isn’t raining,” Bram said. “It’s just windy.”

Gwendolyn shrugged as Bram carried napkins and utensils out to the patio. Wide brick steps led down to the lawn, and the sun had dipped behind the cedars, the basin of day full to overflowing.

Gus and Bram helped Gwendolyn carry the food outside, where puddles of light spilled over the table as they ate. No matter how precipitously the branches bowed in the wind, Gwendolyn resisted the temptation to look at them. Instead she watched her children’s faces, tethered by the sound of their voices.

#

Gwendolyn was emptying the dishwasher when Frank opened the front door, dropped his briefcase in the entryway and walked down the hallway. It was a little past nine.

 “Another late night,” she said.

 “The client called at five o’clock with changes that he wanted for tomorrow. What a jerk.” He opened the refrigerator. Pulling out his plate, he peered at the fogged over plastic.

“What’s this?”

“Halibut.”

“Looks good. Thanks, hon.” He slid the plate into the microwave and spread the New York Times on the counter.

“How are the boys?” he asked, glancing over the front page. “Is Bram ready for his chemistry final?”

“I think so. Why don’t you go say hi when you’re done.”

“I will. Everything else alright?”

Gwendolyn watched as he ate, his gaze skimming an article, and she decided to wait to see how long it would take for him to notice that she hadn’t answered. In his khakis and button-down shirt, his feet bare, with a tuft of dark hair on each toe, he reminded Gwendolyn of a satyr dressed as a man, or a hobbit, better suited to padding swiftly over the forest floor.

“Gwendolyn? How was your day?”

“It was . . . fine.”

He turned back to the paper.

#

The following afternoon Gwendolyn was outside painting lanterns of different shapes and sizes for the party planning business that she’d started when Frank had been out of work. She held her breath, spray-painted a batch, and then stepped back to let the aerosol cloud of white settle. After a few rounds she turned to discover Bram watching her.

“What are you doing?” he asked, his shoulder weighted down by his backpack.

“Making magic.” She grinned. “It’s for the Lindzer wedding.”

“Looks like a lot of work.”

“Imagine what I’d do if I had a daughter. Not that I won’t help you with your wedding. If you want.”

“I have no plans to get married any time soon, Mom.”

“Well that’s a good thing, Bram, because I kind-of have my hands full right now anyway.” Bram smiled, and as Gwendolyn watched him go, a tiny fissure tore beneath her ribcage, the fine white thread of a scar, crows’ feet on the surface of her heart. In two months, Gus would leave for college, and a year later, Bram. She absentmindedly shook the can of spray paint and glanced over at the plum tree, its burgundy leaves infused with the sun’s rays. As she watched, the variegated light within the tree morphed, becoming almost gelatinous, with a pinkish, oily sheen as the spaces between the leaves resolved themselves into clusters of mobile, jabbering faces. Catching her breath, the paint can fell to Gwendolyn’s side. She took a step towards the diminutive faces, their voices crackling like plastic wrappers.

She peered at the tiny noses and ears on their hairless heads, as the creatures’ expressions quickly fluctuated, at turns querulous or fierce, astonished or mirthful. Inching nearer, she tried to detect the color of their deep-set eyes, or whether or not they had any teeth, but when she was still ten feet away the faces froze, and the staticky sound of their talking ceased.

“Who are you?” Gwendolyn whispered. She glanced towards the house, worried that Bram might hear, but neither his room nor the kitchen was within earshot.

“I won’t hurt you,” she continued, her own voice sounding foolish to her ears. “Are you real? Or am I crazy?” A tinkling, like bells. Laughter?

“Who else can see you? Are you everywhere, in every tree, or are you a kind of spirit that inhabits different trees at different times?” The faces were dancing, now, quivering, the sound like wind through dried leaves, unlike any language she could discern but so loud that Gwendolyn looked up and down the street, certain that someone would hear and come out of their house to see what the commotion was. The sidewalks remained empty, each house set back from the road on its half-acre lot. She took another step towards the branches. The faces were the size of crabapples, and squished as they were, it was difficult to distinguish their features. When she was four or five feet away their movements fizzled, then evaporated.

“Wait!” Gwendolyn cried. “Come back . . . please?”

“Mom? Mom!”

“What, Bram?” she yelled in the direction of the house.

“When will dinner be ready?”

Gwendolyn glanced at her unfinished work. “I’m coming in now!” She turned back to the tree, but all she saw was leaves. With a flush of annoyance, she dragged her tarp back into the garage and hurried inside.

#

That Saturday, Frank and Gwendolyn were transplanting one of the Japanese maple saplings that sprouted each year beneath the tree in the corner of the back yard.

“Look at the leaves,” Frank said as he laid a green slip on his palm. “They have five digits, just like us.”

Gwendolyn laughed and glanced at him curiously. “Maybe they talk to each other.”

Frank bent down to loosen the sapling. Together they lifted it from the ground and carried it to the front yard.

“I think she’ll like it here.” Gwendolyn hefted up a bag of mulch and poured it around the base of the seedling.

“Yeah, it looks good.” Frank stood back and looked around, taking stock.

They’d moved into the house when Gus and Bram were toddlers, having no idea that it would take twelve years to save up enough money to replace the drafty windows and the outdated electrical system. The renovation had been almost complete when the economy collapsed. Frank had spent the next eight months out of work. When he finally found a job at a boutique firm in the city, his salary a fraction of what it had been, and with a boss nearly half his age, Frank had considered himself lucky. The financial uncertainty, though, had given Gwendolyn the push she had needed to start her party planning business. Apparently there were still people in and around Merrimac with enough money to pay for their children’s weddings or their own retirement parties.

“Alright,” Frank said, wiping his brow. “Are you happy with your tree?”

“Yes, I am. What shall we call her? Betsy, Lucretia?”

Frank snorted. “How about Plant?”

“You’re just pretending to be a grouch.” Gwendolyn put her arm around him. “Besides, why is it my tree? You always make it seem as though the yard has nothing to do with you.”

“Is that why I’m out here right now? What I like is doing something with you.”

Gwendolyn squeezed his shoulder, feeling the solid weight of him. At fifty, Frank was still in great shape.

“If Gus and I are going to go to the gym before dinner, though, I’d better get going,” Frank said.

“Is Bram going too?”

“Sure, yeah.” Gwendolyn noticed his slight hesitation, but it wasn’t, she thought, that Frank favored Gus, not exactly. It was more that he found it easier to be with Gus. The two of them talked about sports and played fantasy football together, whereas Bram was more interested in obscure, complicated technology that Gwendolyn, also, had a hard time following. Maybe, when Gus was away at college, it would give Bram and his father a chance to spend a little more time together.

“Do you want to help water the tree before you go?” she asked.

Frank glanced at his watch, and she felt his gesture like a drop in barometric pressure; in a minute he’d be gone.

“Something strange happened to me this week,” she said in a rush.

He cocked his head, a question.

“I know this sounds ridiculous, but I think maybe I was hallucinating.”

He laughed. “Magic lanterns, trees with names; you weren’t hallucinating, honey. You just need to get out of the house more.”

She swallowed. “Excuse me?”

“I didn’t mean that. You know I didn’t mean that. Gwen—” She hated it when he called her Gwen, a name he only used when he was trying to placate her.

“We had a nice afternoon,” he said. “Do you want to ruin everything because of one thoughtless comment?” His slate-blue eyes were impatient, his dark hair speckled with gray, her handsome husband.

“I don’t want to ruin anything, Frank.” She kneeled down and scooped the mulch into a ring around the trunk, creating a basin to hold the water. “And you’re right,” she said carefully. “If you want to get back in time for dinner, you’d better go.” She stood, her expression neutral, a smooth surface for him to slip away on.

After Frank and Gus had left, Gwendolyn stopped by the plum tree beside the garage. It was a windless day, the russet leaves tranquil in the afternoon light. She stared at the branches, willing the faces to appear, but the leaves remained still.

What’s going to happen when Gus and Bram leave, and it’s just Frank and me?  She closed her eyes, then opened them.

As she walked away, the light, in her periphery, liquefied, becoming viscous and thick. Gwendolyn whipped around, and there they were, once again filling the tree. The faces were everywhere, like a hive seething with honeybees, each face perfectly formed and distinct, yet part of a larger whole. Their energy was overwhelming. She ran towards them, reaching out her hand to touch their skin or feel the imprint of their tiny teeth around her finger.

As soon as she was within grasp, though, the faces melted away. Desperate, Gwendolyn ran her hand over the bark, but no residue remained. She felt as though a part of her had been torn away.

#

She found herself checking the tree several times a day. She couldn’t figure out a pattern to the faces’ appearance, but if more than twenty-four hours went by without their materializing, she became distracted, unable to focus on her work. One rainy Monday, after not having seen them all weekend, she trekked in and out of the house every few hours, a band tightening around her heart each time she found the leaves glistening but unchanged.

Finally, the next morning, loaded down with groceries, Gwendolyn glanced up and the faces were there. She didn’t dare set down her bags as she stood enthralled, the straps of her grocery bags digging into her arms. The dips and lulls of the creatures’ babble filled her with bemusement, but with something else also, something almost like joy. Eventually they vanished, and Gwendolyn continued into the house, her nerves less frayed. As she stacked the peanut butter in the cabinet and organized the milk in the refrigerator, her well-being lingered, a sense of being connected to a world vast and wonderful, a source of limitless possibility. Gnawing at the edge of her consciousness, though, was the fear that this grace would fade, and when it did, she would be left feeling even more stripped and bare than before.

#

A few evenings later, after the dinner dishes were washed and Bram and Gus had left the table, Gwendolyn slipped on her shoes and went outside. The backyard was shrouded in shadow. It was early July, the evenings warm as she turned on the faucet at the side of the house. She picked up the hose, when a sudden movement made her turn to see a hummingbird, its wings a blur, dart over to the lilac tree and then zip away.

“Maybe you weren’t real, either,” Gwendolyn muttered. She was spraying the planters on the patio when she looked up at the sound of a loud rustling. Bram was approaching from around the side of the house.

“Oh!” she said. “You surprised me.”

“It’s Tuesday. I brought down the garbage.”

“Thanks for remembering. Guess what I just saw—a hummingbird.”

“Is that who you were talking to?”

“Not exactly. I was more talking to myself.”

“I talk to myself sometimes,” Bram said.

“Do you? I’ve never heard you.”

“It wouldn’t be talking to myself if you were there.”

Gwendolyn chuckled. “Good point.” Giving the hose a tug, she pulled it over to the vegetable garden.

“Whoa,” Bram said, looking upwards. “What are those? Are they bats?”

Gwendolyn turned to where he was pointing as a series of small, dark forms darted across a navy sky. “I think they are.”

“That’s crazy. Why haven’t I seen them before?”

“Maybe you needed to be out here at just this time, when it’s dark enough for the bats to come out, but still light enough to see.” They stood for a moment, gazing upward.

“Did you know that a moth’s sense of smell is so acute that it can detect individual molecules?” Bram said. “And birds can see colors over four wavelengths of light compared to human retinas, which can only detect three?”

 “I didn’t know that.” Gwendolyn was tempted to reach over and brush Bram’s bangs from his forehead as she might have done when he was small, but she turned on the hose instead, so the words—when you’re gone, I will no longer know your thoughts in my every day—would stay inside her.

Bram continued up to the house, and Gwendolyn soon followed. She used to enjoy lingering in the yard, watching the light drain from the sky, but recently, just being outside put her on edge. If she turned her head too quickly, or blinked in the sun, she might think she saw the faces fading in or out in a distant tree, but the only place she actually saw them, after that first incident in town, was the plum tree. With every day that passed she became more anxious and irritable. She snapped at Gus for leaving his lacrosse stick in the hallway, and at Frank for not putting away his clothes. Simple, everyday tasks became shabby and dull until eventually, like a long-awaited rain, the leaves would tremble. The air would thicken, becoming mercurial and alive, and the tiny beings would emerge once again.

As July tipped into August, and heat settled over the earth like a balm, the spaces between appearances grew longer. Soon several weeks had gone by without a visitation, until one day Gwendolyn found herself staring at a cookbook that she’d left open on the counter, unable to make sense of the squiggly black lines of a recipe that she had made many times before. In an attempt to clear her head, she gathered her cutting shears and went outside to pick a bouquet of Knockout roses and Stella de Oro daylilies from her garden. She reached through the prickly branches, and was dismayed to see the leaves riddled with the rusty holes left by Japanese beetles, clumps of crabgrass blooming over the mulch. Her garden had always been a place of refuge, but even here, her world had become tawdry and frayed.

#

She was emptying the dishwasher when Frank came home. He opened the refrigerator and peered through the plastic wrap covering his dinner.

“Is this chicken?” he asked. “Looks great. Is it a new recipe?”

“No, Frankie. It’s not a new recipe.”

“What’s in it?”

“Chicken.”

Frank glanced at her. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“You seem kind of cranky.”

Gwendolyn placed the last glass in the cabinet. “I’m just tired.”

When Frank opened the paper, Gwendolyn walked down the hallway. She glanced back to where Frank stood illuminated in the kitchen doorway before opening the front door and slipping outside. The dew-damp lawn was cool against her bare feet, blades of grass sticking between her toes. Fireflies glowed like the neon pegs of the Light Bright toy that Gus and Bram had played with as children.

Banks of shadows loomed where trees had stood by day, the branches of the plum tree shining silver in the light of the rising moon. Gwendolyn paused, taking in this nighttime transformation. Where did the faces go when they were not here, and what would happen in the winter, when there were no leaves? Were they like cherry blossoms, erupting into bloom only to scatter like snow? It had been three weeks since Gwendolyn had seen the faces, and they were an ache inside, a constant, hollow burn.

Why would you come, she whispered, only to go away?

She approached the tree and reached through the branches as twigs scratched her face. Her heart beat rapidly, as if she were violating a sacred space, but she didn’t care. For weeks she’d waited, hoping and willing the faces to come, but they hadn’t. Gwendolyn feared that they were gone forever. Pressing her forehead against the bark, she squeezed shut her eyes.

I’m going to stay here all night. I’m going to stay until Frank discovers that I’m gone, and when he comes to look for me, I’m going to hide in the tree, and he won’t see me in the dark. He’ll call me, and Gus and Bram will come out, and they won’t see me either. I’ll dissolve, just like the faces, until all that will be left will be an iridescent smudge, and the faces will take me with them, and I will be gone.

The house, though, remained still. No one came to look for her. A Mosquito buzzed in her ear. Gwendolyn tried to see the time, but she couldn’t make out the hands of her watch in the dark.

Sliding her arms down the bark, she almost hoped the scratches would draw blood.  Pulling herself back, she turned towards the house. When she opened the door Frank was no longer haloed in the kitchen doorway. Gus’s electronic music thumped from upstairs. She continued into the bedroom and switched on the light. Frank was sitting on the bed.

“Frankie?”

“Where were you? I looked for you in your study.”

“I was outside.”

“What were you doing?”

“I visited the plum tree.”

“Gwendolyn?” Caught within the cadence of his voice was something halting and unsure.

The space between them wavered.

“I see faces,” she said. “They come and go, and I haven’t seen them for a long time, and I miss them.” She started to cry, softly at first, then tears streaming down her cheeks. Frank patted the bed beside him and she sat down.

“You tried to tell me,” he said, his voice low. “But I didn’t listen.”

Tears fell off her chin, and she watched them land, dark splatters on her jeans.

“I’m listening now, though,” Frank said gently. When she didn’t answer, he put his arm around her. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not,” she stammered. “Nothing is okay. Everything is falling apart, and I don’t know what to do or where it’s gone.”

“Oh Gwendolyn. Nothing is falling apart. You have me, and the boys, and we love you.”

“But they’re going away, Frankie. They’re leaving us, first Gus, then Bram, and then what?”

“Gus and Bram aren’t going away forever. They’re only going to college. And what am I, chopped liver?” He drew back to look at her, and she could see the skin slack around his eyes, and she smiled because she knew that she looked worse.

“I need a tissue.”

He reached for one on the bedside table, and when he wiped her cheek, she put her hand over his. For just a moment she wondered what would happen if she held on and didn’t let go.

The End