Valentine’s day. Therese notices her Fig tree, a gift from ex-husband Ernie many Valentine days ago, is dying. She fears this a portent Ernie himself is preparing to predecease her as was foretold her in a vision just before their divorce. She wonders, again, how she could ever hope to survive such a loss. Because Therese still deeply loves Ernie. Always will. Divorce hasn’t changed that.
Therese has many plants. But only some, like Ernie’s Fig tree, possess mystical, significance. A “Mother-In-Law Tongue,” from her dad, has accompanied her dwelling to dwelling, since she graduated from her parent’s home – growing ever stronger, never once hinting at destruction. Therese, herself, is similarly imbued with buoyant resiliency reminiscent of her, now deceased, father’s — that itinerant musician and smoker of pot in New Orleans jazz clubs long before it became universally acceptable, legal even. Then there’s her lucky Jade plant, casually purchased at Budget Drugstore Warehouse. Languishing for years in a vase of water, it floated ever nearer death till Therese, who heard Jade plants signify luck and feared her own luck might expire along with her Jade’s, took action. Deciding, contrary to purchase tag directions, her Jade might need a more substantial medium than water, Therese transferred it to a small clay container of potting soil in just a “nick of time.” Gratefully, her Jade caught its second wind, pushing bright green stems upwards while splaying green shoots at soil level — reminding Therese how she survived, often wanly, throughout years of marriage, loving Ernie but never really rooting into her own life until after their divorce.
Although theirs’ was an unconventional, somewhat dysfunctional marriage, still everyone, including Therese, was caught off guard when Ernie filed for divorce. And their divorce was a “bad” one – false, demoralizing allegations hurtled back and forth across indifferent courtroom settings while their only child, Lucinda, was roughly buffeted about between them like a ragged game ball the first day of Spring.
Ironically, it was Therese’s premonition of Ernie’s death preceding her own which delivered her through divorce’s ugliest, saddest moments. Not that Therese wished Ernie dead. No. She did not. Although at times during their divorce she certainly felt as though she could have killed him herself, personally. Rather, it was that she still loved him. It was an epiphany when her premonition allowed her to understand Ernie’s presence in her life still would remain, as it always had been, at the discretion of higher powers. She was relieved to realize even if they divorced, even if Ernie did not wish to share her company at that particular moment in time, he still existed. This meant they retained some sort of relationship even if it was a bad one – one in which they specifically avoided and/or even mistreated one another. For Therese, divorce was superior to death — which would have permanently excised Ernie, regardless of her wishes or even his own. Such insights comforted Therese as she struggled to understand and withstand apparent collapse of their shared world.
This is how Therese’s vision of Ernie’s death had come to pass: It was during pre-dawn hours following a night of bitter fighting when both Therese and Ernie were sleep-starved and confused. Ernie sat across from Therese in his favorite cordovan, leather recliner, in his underwear, looking beaten up as she felt. She stared blearily at his familiar, slender frame – blue veins pulsing visibly just below pale skin’s surface, ruffled, dishwater-blond hair sticking out at unkempt angles. We’ve been through so much together, she thought, how could we have come to this? Involuntarily her eyelids drooped momentarily shut. When they reopened, she was shocked to see the chalky, white bones of a human skeleton occupying exactly the same chair arranged in precisely the same position as living Ernie had been only moments before. Deliberately closing and reopening her eyes, Therese was relieved to see flesh and blood Ernie had returned. She knew then and there that she was being given a sign that her right to have Ernie in her life, like anyone’s right to a beloved companion, was not absolute — not under her own, or Ernie’s, control. All of it: him, her, their relationship, their lives – it was all in the hands of a higher power. God, for lack of a better term. God, who from a celestial dwelling in Heaven reigned over them all parceling out loved ones and snatching them back according to some Devine formula not understood by mere mortals. Her job, Therese suddenly recognized, was to keep the faith, be true to herself and be true to her love for Ernie (for who they’d been to each other and who he was, still, to her). In other words, her task was to love Ernie – divorce or no divorce — until death actually did part them. In this manner, she hoped to avoid that fate befalling characters in tragic operas who, each imagining themselves betrayed by the other, ultimately bring about each other’s death and destruction in ways which could have been avoided had they only trusted their love.
Upon achieving this insight, Therese immediately refused to participate further in that grim game where divorcing former lovers repeatedly torpedo one another and everything in their lives until all they previously held dear has been decimated to the benefit of no one except paid professionals ferrying them across battle lines. Losing Ernie to divorce, Therese began to understand, was actually a blessing. It provided her with an opportunity to practice her independence, to learn whether or not she could survive on her own, without Ernie, before he was actually gone from this world – if indeed he was to go. She could. Though, as it turned out, she wouldn’t need to until much later. Because, after their divorce ended, Therese and Ernie quickly recaptured a friendship and were able to offer one another many additional years of mutual support and comfort and to resume a shared family life with their beloved daughter Lucinda. Still, each family member’s life was altered by their divorce. Especially financially. Legal expenses drastically depleted family finances causing stress which, in turn, caused numerous stress-related, medical issues. Meanwhile, Lucinda, once cheerful and trusting, became more sullen and wary. Then, Ernie was diagnosed with stage IV cancer. Around this same time, his Valentine fig tree began dropping leaves and drying up despite vigilant watering, pruning and feeding.
As the tree’s death looms with increasing certainty, Therese, remembering her vision, redoubles efforts to make Ernie’s life as comfortable as he will allow – which will require considerable effort as Ernie, she knows, never welcomed people fussing over him.
Therese knows most things about Ernie. After all, they were together pretty much their entire adult lives. Their realities intertwined like slender, sparsely leaved, co-dominant limbs of a ficus (or fig) tree braided together, as they sometimes are, to create an impression of one strong central member beneath a balanced crown of foliage. Unraveling their marriage was like unraveling such a carefully crafted arboreal construction. It’s difficult if not impossible to separate parts of such a closely integrated whole. Even if you successfully rend apart interdependent limbs, they will be forever twisted and bent by previous joined existence, unable to remain upright without support.
Ernie and Therese were barely adults when they first met. In their “they-ness” they dismissed those questioning their ultimate “rightness” for each other — laughing out loud when a spinster aunt delayed sending her wedding present to them, sure their marriage would not survive. It did. But just as living cells carry blueprints for eventual destruction, so were there early signs of troubles later to come for Therese and Ernie. For example: They were really, quite good at love but at romance not so much. Shy, pale, soft spoken Ernie was frequently overshadowed by his colorful, outspoken wife. Her constant whirl of activity left him tired. He preferred to sit quietly, newspaper or beer nearby, watching sports on t.v., occasionally dozing off.
Early on, Ernie’s quiet calm was a perfect foil for Therese’s ceaseless energy. As a team, they achieved considerable financial success and created, together, a lifetime of shared Norman Rockwellian memories. Till the day she died, Therese’s mind would remain crowded with these images: Ernie with a shy, slightly sly, smile surprising her with their first fancy, four-star restaurant supper. Ernie, quivering chin, firmly cradling a dying Bisket, while their vet injected her with a fatal air bubble which would end her suffering, Therese, sobbing quietly nearby softly rubbing Bisket’s head murmuring “good dog, good girl” while holding the dying creatures trusting gaze. Ernie’s face upon first beholding Lucinda. Therese, almost blinded by light radiating from his smile, laughing as he held his daughter as though she was a precious, fragile object he feared he might break. Ernie passing her a bag of chocolates smuggled into a movie theatre. Ernie and she rowing down a sleepy river in some forest preserve in a rented canoe. Spinning around on skates to see Ernie, who could not skate at all, sitting behind her on the ground with an “I told you so” look on his face. Holidays, parties, graduations, weddings, births, deaths, snowy days, rainy days, days when it seemed the sun shining so brightly over them would never set.
Loving Ernie as she does, it seems only natural for Therese to be concerned when she observes her fig tree losing more and more leaves, appearing ever closer to death. She is particularly distraught because Ernie, who has now undergone surgery and radiation therapy for his cancer, is alarmingly thin – almost like that skeletal Ernie of her pre-dawn, pre-divorce vision. When efforts to resurrect her fig tree prove unsuccessful, Therese turns to her adult daughter, Lucinda, for help.
“It’s gone.” Lucinda pronounces. “You should have gotten rid of it long ago.” She regards her mother steadily through the tree’s almost bare branches. Her beautiful dark eyes, reminiscent of her mother’s, express impatience.
“You don’t understand, this is a special tree.” Therese begins, not for the first time. “It represents love. Dad gave it to me…”
“I know, for Valentine’s day,” Lucinda, as she so often does, cuts her off. “But Dad and I give you different plants now. Orchids. So ‘love’ is not ‘dead’ just changing form.” Lucinda’s tone suggests her hope that placating her Mother’s “odd” beliefs about links between plant and human destinies may elicit more “rational” behavior from her mother in the future.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me and Dad…and plants,” Therese retorts. She is both prideful and annoyed at Lucinda’s know-it-all attitude. She hopes in time her child will learn to examine life more closely before embracing rigid conclusions. But she is also glad Lucinda can take positions and stand her ground. “I remember how Dad used to give me a Poinsettia every Christmas and you see how ever since our divorce he doesn’t anymore,” she adds.
“Because we have dogs now and they’re poisonous,” Lucinda responds patiently, as if to a child, while languidly plucking pale, dry fig leaves, one by one, off the dying tree.
“No. That’s not why” Therese states firmly. She grabs the fig tree’s central braided trunk and shakes vigorously till its remaining crispy brown leaves blanket the floor around them. “We always had dogs even before you were born. Dad used to give me those Poinsettias because that’s what Grandpa used to give Grandma every Christmas back when they were stationed overseas together during the war. It was a romantic gesture. After our divorce, Dad no longer thinks of me romantically so he has stopped giving me Poinsettias.”
With a resigned shake of her head, Lucinda sighs and begins to sweep leaves while her Mother holds her breath in anticipation of a sudden call that Ernie has collapsed from relapsing cancer and been rushed to some hospital near death.
“Perhaps I could replace this fig tree with another,” Therese muses aloud when the telephone doesn’t ring. “Dad could help me pick it out.”
Lucinda stops sweeping. “If you get another fig tree,” she brushes back a lock of shiny black hair and faces her mother directly, “I will not help you clean up after it or take care of it. Fig trees are too messy.”
It’s true. Fig trees are messy. They exude sweet sap onto floors and furniture beneath them drawing ants and requiring frequent clean ups. A fig tree is like love in that sense. Not sterile. Not neat. Leaving a permanent residue upon whoever or whatever has been in its presence. Fig trees, like love, are also vulnerable to disease and destruction from various pests and predators.
Therese thinks back to a time when a pest and predator infiltrated then destroyed her marriage – leaving only love to survive. Feigning friendship with Therese’s family, this desperate woman had targeted Ernie, incorrectly identifying him as his family’s source of emotional and financial security. Recently abandoned by her third husband, a small child to support, this deceptive woman’s goal was to seduce Ernie and claim him for herself in hopes of stabilizing her own life. She was determined to show the world that she could have a marriage like Theresa’s even if it actually was Theresa’s. Mistakenly, this foolish woman imagined Ernie could be simply uprooted and transplanted from Theresa’s carefully tended homestead into her own tumbleweed strewn relationship landscape thereby instantly enriching that vast, empty wasteland. She also felt her needs, and those of her child, justified whatever harm befell Therese and Lucinda through destruction of their family.
This conniving woman’s efforts were carefully and deftly executed. Calculating sex to be the weakest link in Therese & Ernie’s marriage, she began fertilizing an illicit bond with Ernie employing sexual acrobatics left over from ex-husband number two (a former lab assistant to a human sexuality professor during graduate school). Once Ernie was in her grasp, she methodically proceeded to topple lifelong pillars of trust and loyalty between Therese and Ernie like a chainsaw felling wood in a pine forest. At their children’s middle school, Happiness Montessori, she carefully planted scattered seeds of doubt as to Therese’s character which flourished and spread, as gossip often does, like weeds in an untended garden. By the time Therese realized what was happening, she was already victim of a full-blown character assassination. This conscienceless woman slashed and burned through Therese’s world – leaving a trail of ashes and scorched earth wherever she went – with never a thought to consequences of her actions for others.
Where she had never mustered much energy to nurture her own relationships, this relentless woman was vigorous in her efforts to destroy Therese’s. And she was tenacious. Dear God, how tenacious she was. Even after Therese and Ernie were divorced, this treacherous and immoral woman lurked about their lives anticipating culmination of her diabolical plan. That never came, however. Because, although he did not display it often or well, Ernie actually did love Therese – had from their very first meeting. Divorce had not changed that. It was, however, a good ten years before this homewrecking woman would finally see this and be forced to admit her plan had failed. Upon achieving this insight – without apology or explanation – this remorseless woman abruptly packed her bags and left town never to be heard from again. Therese then began re-cultivating remains of her beloved family within a now decimated topography of their former world – attempting to regrow sufficient trust and friendship to reunite and sustain them all.
In that goal, she succeeded.
But now, her fig tree is dead.
Therese is distraught, Lucinda relieved, Ernie indifferent — well not indifferent so much as oblivious — like he was about so many things throughout, especially later years of, his relationship with Therese. He probably doesn’t even remember that tree was a gift from him to her way back so many Valentines’ days ago.
Therese, meanwhile upon reflection, realizes regardless of her fig tree’s death, she still has a job to do and determines she’ll do it to the best of her ability. In response to Ernie’s health issues and financial woes, she amplifies efforts to offer frequent home-cooked meals, relaxing family movie nights, simple shared excursions to plays or sporting events. She is determined Ernie should not become like one of those thin, ragged, gaunt-faced hobos roaming America’s landscape during the great depression – alone, always alone.
Lucinda, meanwhile, feels trapped by her parents — not sure which she resents more, her mother’s stubborn determination to minister to a man and relationship which no longer appear fully functional or her father’s inability to dig out of his physical and financial morass and get back to “normal.” Both parents seem overly needy, dependent upon her in ways she does not appreciate or even fully understand. Most frustrating of all, she is equally dependent on them. A true “boomerang generation” baby. She has years of graduate school and internships to complete before she will be a self-supporting adult. Like many of her peers, she returned home after college and now divides her time between Mom’s and Dad’s houses just as she was forced to do following her parent’s divorce. She knows, of course, both parents adore her, strive hard to please her. Still, Lucinda feels angry much of the time. She longs for a life surrounded by her own friends and boyfriends, marriage and a child. Yet she feels she cannot leave her parents alone with each other.
The fig tree – well not so much tree as denuded stump of what was once a tree — sits, phantom-like, in its customary corner of the former marital residence – now Therese’s home. Dead, it no longer oozes sticky sap. Although it appears oddly out of place, Therese refuses to move it. Her fig tree is like Ernie – the way he continues to occupy familiar memory loops in her conscious mind even when he’s not really there.
That is not to say that Ernie’s presence is always imaginary. Certainly not. Routinely, what remains of flesh & blood Ernie turns up at the former marital residence – where he lets himself in with his own key, because locks were never changed, and pets a tail-wagging dog that was his until it seemed easier to allow Therese to take over its care. Plunking down in front of a wide-screen T.V. he tunes in to CBS Sixty Minutes or The Masters Golf Tournament. He can be found carving Easter hams and Thanksgiving turkeys or nestled in a living-room bay window, in a tufted leather club chair, opening Christmas presents and sipping eggnog while a fragrant wood fire crackles nearby. In fact, on a weekly basis, Ernie spends as much time at his former residence as he does in his current lodgings. More, maybe. Yet when he is there he moves from room to room in an almost ghostly fashion – never lingering too long in any one place unless there’s some sort of official family gathering. He avoids places Therese is likely to occupy. So she is often unaware of when he is in the house and when he has gone. In this way, he is present and yet not present — a lot like many, especially later, years of their marriage.
Therese is used to Ernie’s stealth ways and long ago ceased ascribing to herself sole responsibility for his apparent repudiation of his surroundings…of her. And, in truth, although perhaps some of Ernie’s furtive behavior and sarcastic comments to, or about, his ex-wife might be a result of conflicted feelings about her, there is no question that something more is going on with him. Therese knows this. Thus, when Ernie seems particularly distant, dismissive or hurtful, Therese reminds herself of his maternal aunt, who spent her entire life in mental institutions, his several autistic cousins, his brother, a brilliant scholar, who ceaselessly wanders the country hobo-like. That’s just who they are, she tells herself most of the time.
Sometimes it’s hard overlooking slights. Therese remembers one Christmas she and young Lucinda spent an entire day decorating their family Christmas tree. Anxious for Ernie to return home, they drank hot chocolate laughing about what he would say when he saw everything they’d done. Which part would he like best? But when he arrived, Ernie did not comment on or even seem to notice their tree or decorations. Instead, he scooped up little Lucinda and announced he was taking her downtown to a public, municipal tree-lighting ceremony. “You can do a countdown,” he explained to his confused daughter, whisking her out their front door leaving Therese standing mutely illuminated by pulsating red & green holiday lights. “You mean backwards, like ten, nine eight until you get to zero,” Lucinda’s small voice could be heard asking as the door shut behind them.
Therese meets a friend for coffee who shares her own tails of strained relations with an ex-spouse who occasionally makes mean-spirited jokes at her expense. “That’s all men,” Therese reassures her friend, recounting how Ernie’s occasional snipes at her sometimes cause people to inquire, privately: “Is Ernie OK”? Therese and her friend consider how many other women they know who make similar complaints about husbands and wonder, jokingly, if such lashing out is somehow pre-programed into men of a certain age (like snapping wet towels and pulling “wedgies” is into younger boys). Where her friend is angered by such behavior, Therese is resigned. She loves Ernie. Loves him for better or for worse. She determines to try even harder to be sure he really is O.K..
Winter cedes to spring. Therese’s dead fig tree remains in her den. Ernie lives.
Therese considers her options. She could follow advice of friends and family: “Drag that dead tree out to the alley, for God’s sake, and sit it next to your dumpster. Your local scavenger service will remove it.” She could. A less repugnant option might be simply take it out to her garden and prop it up somewhere behind other trees and bushes where it could just stay – still dead but at least not in plain view for everyone to remark upon. Thoughts of ice, snow and winter winds deter her from this plan. At last, she decides upon a third choice which, later, most of her family and friends will find slightly disquieting.
Returning home from an afternoon at a local craft store, Therese commences turning her dead fig tree and its dirt filled planter into a work of art. After sanding and painting her tree’s lifeless trunk a flat, bone, white, she encircles its plaited branches with flexible strips of gold and aqua sequins so one can no longer determine where one branch ends and another begins. Painting branchless crotch angles in bright bursts of pink and blue, she adheres large colorful rhinestones, like tributes, to areas where sap and life once flowed. Next, she addresses her fig tree’s 15-inch diameter planter – painting it pea-soup green decorated with black primitive stick figures. She then creates mock foliage from armature sculpture wide draped with strands of twinkling, LED, mini lights. Finally she carefully places fresh, growing plants in dirt surrounding the dead fig’s base, bringing life back to an area temporarily dead.
Stepping back to review her handiwork, Therese can already hear friends and family who will consider her efforts bizarre. She will remain unfazed — having strolled enough galleries and museums in her time to know that even dirt, if respectfully arranged in a thoughtful context, can be art. Anyway, she thinks, how is her exercise, honoring her love for Ernie with this tree-art, so very different from other people placing remains of departed loved ones in purchased plots of earth which they periodically visit to decorate with plants and flowers?
Therese, smiling, observes her completed testament to love. Lucinda shakes her head then, smiling too, walks over and, in an uncharacteristically affectionate gesture, kisses the top of her mother’s head. Ernie, ambles in from his afternoon patio-deck snooze paying no attention whatsoever. Plopping down in his favorite spot on a couch, he flicks on a wide-screen TV and contentedly channel-surfs between ESPN and CNN as Therese’s tree art twinkles at him from its brightly lit corner. Aside from occasional forays — front porch for a newspaper, kitchen fridge for an imported beer, back yard to rake a few leaves, front walkway to shovel a little snow — Ernie will remain there surrounded by loving family until, at last, it comes time for him to return home.