Mere Brook

I’m old. I turned seventy in the spring, so, yes, I am officially old. Old wouldn’t be so bad, except that I am also alone. I live alone, with my memories. Neither I nor my memories are useful any more, I’m sure of it.

Fortunately, I have a plan. Some workers were installing a new garage door and fixing the steps to the back deck, and there was some material left over. One of the guys looked at seventy-year-old me and said there was enough to build me a treehouse at the back of my lot where the wooded part starts. He was laughing as he said it. Clearly I, of all people, was not going to be interested in a treehouse, and maybe I wouldn’t even be able to climb up into it.

I fooled him. I said, “Go ahead. Build it for me.” He knew he had to do it, and with one other fellow they got it done quickly. I knew they kind of slapped it together, because they figured I’d never see the inside of the little cubicle, but I was grateful they were able to finish it in a few hours. Then they left and I was alone again.

I spent a couple of days planning what I wanted to do with the treehouse and checking the weather. It was late summer, but there was a chance of thunderstorms in the forecast. That would ruin my plan. I didn’t want that to happen.

I don’t think I explained that the back of my property, in addition to having a number of very tall trees, has a slope that goes down a number of feet until it reaches Mere Brook. It’s a nice little stream, quite narrow and shallow where it forms the back side of my lot, but I read that they used to build boats in it and then move them the short distance to the sea. The steep banks of the brook were just right for building sea vessels, which were then rolled along the v-shaped space using logs or some other contraption.

It was hard to get down to Mere Brook because the sides leading down to it were full of roots, brambles, dead leaves, and muck. I had always been afraid of getting tangled up in that mess and falling flat on my face. Now, however, the stream was going to prove useful, because I was going to use it as my target.

What I’m trying to say is that because I was old and alone, I did not plan to be around much longer. Until the workers had come to do repairs, I had no idea how to end it all, but the treehouse suggestion had been the perfect solution. I knew immediately how I would do it.

The treehouse hung over the empty space that looked down on the strip of water, unpolluted and with occasional small fish meandering along with the easy current. I could be standing in it, standing at the opening, and throw myself into the void. With a good push, I could probably aim for the rocks in little Mere Brook. I laughed, because more than once I’d joked to somebody that I was going to throw myself off the cliff in the back yard. Now I could really do it. I was really going to do it.

First, however, I wanted to say good-bye. Not to anybody, because there was nobody to say good-bye to. My husband had left me years ago for a much younger woman. I didn’t even know how to contact him. It was better that way, I guess. For him, anyway. I wasn’t part of his new life. I didn’t have any pets left to worry about either, because both my dog and my cat had died. I never got over losing them. Still, I felt a real need to sit with myself and reflect on my life as it drew to a close.

I do my best thinking with a piece of paper and a writing utensil, plus a book. As I planned the afternoon in the treehouse - my last afternoon on this earth, actually - I decided to take a number of books up with me. I didn’t know if I would read them or simply leaf through the pages, running my fingers over the dear words, the words I had loved my entire existence. I might just touch the covers, look at the artwork or photographs, hold them close.

The difficult part was deciding which books to take. That’s why it took a couple of days to put my plan together. I knew I would climb up around noon, spend the afternoon in that secret place, then throw myself off it into the open expanse, as the light waned and the biting insects came out.

In the end, I chose children’s books to take with me. Note that these weren’t just any children’s books. They were actually books I had had as a child. That meant some of them were nearly as old as I was - and looked it - or at minimum they were sixty years old. 

They were only a small portion of my childhood library, but it was easy to pull out the Little Golden Books, the Dick, Jane, and Sally books, even the cloth book that taught me how to use a zipper, button buttons, and tie shoelaces. Oh, and a couple of the Bobbsey Twins series, the ones left to me by the neighbor who had been an English teacher but had never married so I had inherited her books. They still had the handmade covers from paper bags that the neighbor lady had taught me to make so they wouldn’t get ruined.

It turned out I had quite the collection when I was ready to climb up into the sanctuary chosen for my final hours. Even though the books were for children, the words and illustrations held my old woman’s interest. I was completely absorbed, lingering over each page, which - incredibly - I still knew by heart. I knew what happened in each book and I knew every expression on the faces of the children in each book. I even recalled the names of their pets.

The hours flew by and soon it was time to put the beloved books aside and carry out my plan. I was done living. There was nothing left that interested me. I just hoped people would find my reading materials before any heavy rain came and destroyed them. I really didn’t want anything to happen to my books. They were very valuable.

I felt suddenly tired and very sad. It was time. The books were safely stacked far enough away so that if I had to kick to give myself the necessary momentum, I wouldn’t kick them. I regretted not having brought others as well, but it was too late for that. I was done living. Done reading. Done writing. Done.

I stood up, my gaze sweeping back toward my little yellow house and the yard with the split-rail fence and lots of flowers. Most of the flowers were ones I had planted, but a few, along with some bushes, had probably been put there when the house was built. The house wasn’t new any more. It was about as old as I was. 

Even though it was late summer, there were plants that were still in bloom. I caught glimpses of yellow and blue, mingled with orange and white. I thought about how spectacular the hydrangeas had been this year and saw that the slow-growing pair of ginkgoes had an extra few inches in height. I would never see them get taller, but that was all right.

Another scan of the yard drew my attention to the bird feeders I had put up in three different areas. I’d enjoyed watching the nuthatches, cardinals, woodpeckers, and Carolina wrens arrive to feast on peanut suet, fresh oranges, or sunflower seeds. Not only birds had come to feast. More recently, I had taken to setting out fruit and bread scraps for the raccoon family. Parents and five - five! - babies had been coming every night, seemingly famished. I think they liked grapes and watermelon best.

There wouldn’t be anybody to feed them now. I hoped they wouldn’t starve.

I spotted the hard, golden fruit ripening on the quince tree just outside my bedroom window. This had been a good year for the stunning coral blossoms, so the amount of fruit forming was already weighing down the branches. It would still be weeks before the precious globes could be harvested and made into jam. I wouldn’t be needing any jam this winter. I wouldn’t be needing anything, because I would no longer exist.

I looked down at the books before taking one last moment to see if I had missed anything before I launched myself out of the treehouse and crashed into the shallow waters of Mere Brook. I saw two chipmunks stealing the birds’ seed, but didn’t try to scare them off. I noticed that there were still some cherry tomatoes forming on the plants in the raised beds, and worried whether they could ripen before the first frost got them. I saw the canoe huddled up against the neighbors’ tall fence. The canoe hadn’t been used much at all since it had been purchased secondhand. It had needed patching, and the person who bought it - not me, I didn’t buy it - had deposited it there. He had left without taking it with him and I heard a lot later that he was never coming back for it because he’d killed himself. I had felt sad at hearing the news, but I understood perfectly why he had done it. Why I had decided to do the same thing. Except I didn’t plan to use a gun.

My thoughts wandered then, even as I tried to keep my focus on the plan that I had made. They wandered to inside the house, which wasn’t all that big but did have a lot of books. Like I said, I had been a reader all my life, but I hadn’t read every book that was on the many shelves. However, I had read some of them more than once. Maybe that counted? Still inside the house, my thoughts moved to a number of places. They stopped to study the abstract painting by a French artist with whom I had taken workshops. Elisabeth was a good instructor, so passionate about color and form. I learned so much from her and her way of seeing and being in the world had changed my life. Only I could never go back now. France was just a memory full of colors, scents, the sound of walks in a village at dusk. Gone, I told myself. From Elisabeth, my mind went to some of my own work and as I looked at it, I smiled. Was it sadness or sensitivity? Are they the same thing?

This isn’t supposed to be a tour of my house, so I’ll skip the hand-painted plates from Portugal, the millions of exotic and everyday spices in a rack on the kitchen wall, and the geraniums happily looking out the window of the library, which is painted the most fantastic, mellow, mandarine glow. (That’s the actual name of the paint, mandarine glow. It’s really a soft yellow.) Somebody will have to come to water them when I am not around to do it, of course. Just like someone will have to empty the refrigerator and make sure the lawn is mowed and the driveway plowed.

It was time, though. The afternoon was coming to an end. I was feeling the weight of the world (such a cliché) and, even more, the weight of my life. I turned around, my back now to the spaces I had inhabited, where I’d lived.

“Look at the brook,” I said. The life you lived is behind you; the opposite lies ahead. Face it.”

Standing up now, with Mere Brook in my sights, I took just a few seconds to think, because I needed to decide whether to just hold my nose and jump, like kids do in pools or ponds, or to assume a diving stance, so I’d plummet head first. Those few seconds turned out to be fatal.

A tiny voice, the tiniest of voices, tapped me on the shoulder. There were only old children’s books, so I looked down. It was Jane or Sally, or maybe Nancy, who had spoken, saying:

“Don’t.”

Just that one word, four letters and an apostrophe, if you spell it correctly. I thought how so many people had lost track of how to use apostrophes and felt sad. I wouldn’t be around to set them straight.

“Please.”

It appeared to be a different voice, but still came from somewhere inside a book. It too was a tiny voice, and it seemed to need me.

“Don’t leave us.” Three words, the message clear. Somebody did not want me to leave, i.e., to die.

“Don’t leave us here.” Four words. I was beginning to listen.

“Don’t leave us here, because we’ll get ruined. There’s going to be a thunderstorm tonight.” This sounded rather made-up, like real fiction. An excuse to keep me from carrying out my plan to end it all. An attempt to appeal to my conscience. I wasn’t going to get suckered in that easily.

“Please take us inside, first.” I thought I could, I should, do that. So I did.

I got down from the treehouse with just a couple of scratches to my arms, but with no damage whatsoever to the books, who were my charges; I had to make sure they were safe. We went up the back steps, then stood looking out in the direction of the stream. The flowers had been lovely this year, the garden had produced enough for several quarts of homemade salsa, and a little bat echoed by. Soon the raccoons would come looking for their evening banquet. Soon the early evening joggers would be out on the quiet street. Soon it would be time to have supper and...

We all came inside. The books were probably expecting to be put back on the shelves, but I didn’t do that. We had unfinished business to tend to. I set them on the coffee table by my comfortable couch, made some elderberry and milk thistle tea, and sat down to do more or less what I had been doing while up in the treehouse: read, touch, remember. 

This time they spoke much more clearly and I paid better attention, because I did not have the lapping of Mere Brook muddling my thoughts. I also understood everything we discussed, and remembered that I am deathly, deathly afraid of heights.