The broken tree

Monday, March 28th

I loved getting home from work. Ever since my neighbors agreed to child’s labor and let their son cut my lawn and bushes, I could finally enjoy the sight of my house. 

It’s a small bungalow with a large front yard and a single tree in the center. I planted the tree years ago, thinking that once in the future my children can sit there, back against the trunk and reading a book. Or making out with their girlfriends. Or boyfriends. Or both. It’s their life after all.

I park the car outside and have a look at it again. Such a beauty. I believe that if you have a car and leave without looking back at it, you don’t have the right car. Easy as that. It has to hurt, if you leave it alone and unsupervised.

I walk inside the house, throw the keys on the table in the floor and yell: “Honey, I’m home!”

This had been a running gag for years now and childish as it may sound, I loved it!

I hear rummaging somewhere in the back of the house. Guess she’s in the bathroom or doing the laundry. On the kitchen counter I see two wine glasses, half empty. Probably Susan, the mother of our young gardener came over earlier today. She has a hang of drinking as long as the sun is shining. 

“Genetics”, she would say, “inherited by my father. He is French.”

The fact that Pierre is her step father undoubtedly said more about her than him.

I call out again: “Jane! Where are you?” No answer, except of a muffled “Shit!” from the bedroom. I decid to check why profanity was needed. As I open the door to our bedroom I see my wife Jane hurrying into her underwear, while an embarrassed looking Susan watches me standing in the doorframe.

Tuesday, March 29^th

Jane explained everything and I am none the wiser.

“I forgot the time change. You were not supposed to be home for another hour.” she said.

“Is that an excuse?” I asked.

“No. Just my mistake. I…” she stammered. I give her credit to that. It seems not easy for her either.

“I was going to tell you. It’s just, you know the timing was never right.”

“How long do you have an affair?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer but that’s a question one is supposed to ask, isn’t it?

“Two and a half years.” she said in the flattest voice I ever heard. As if she just hit me with the Netherlands in the face, in that moment my whole life felt like a lie.

“Over 2 years? What happened? Are you gay? Why haven’t you told me anything? How did that start? Am I that bad?”

I continued throwing questions at her, like a blindfolded boxerpunching wild and furious without realizing that he is alone in the ring.

She left me, without saying much more than “I loved you, and maybe still do. But I need a change.”

Friday, April 9^th

It has been more than a week now that Jane is gone. I find myself walking from room to room, not searching, not expecting, just wandering. In the living room above the couch hangs the painting we both loved so much. A mountain valley: The peaks are covered in snow while the plain is green with little villages scattered around. But just like the rest of the house the painting seems empty and dull. As if my favorite color is missing and I cannot determine which it is.

Tuesday, April 14^th

I remember how much I loved coming home from work. After 10 hours of grinding in front of the computer you see your neatly trimmed garden, a house that is yours and a wife who loves you. I haven’t heard anything from Jane since she left and her phone seems dead. I’m not worried that anything might happened to her, but…

Today my boss called me into his office and I could immediately see, that something was wrong. There haven’t been 2 glasses of wine, I know he doesn’t drink, but I knew the look on his face. It is a crossbreed between concern, guilt and resolution. It is the face when you have to bear bad news. Jane had the same look when she left me.

“You have always been a valuable member of our team. And we thank you for everything you have done for the company. But,” he said. 

I know there is always a but. And if you are at the other end of the but, you’ll be the ass of the joke. Years ago I heard someone say “everything before the word but is a pile of horseshit.” Now I know what he meant.

He stood and I did the same. He offered me his hand and I just stared at it. For a second, a minute or a year, I can’t tell. Time seemed to stand still and run past me in the same moment. I stood standing in a timeless void. Life continued around me, only I was caught in a motionless drift. In the end I shook his hand and only then realized, I just lost my job.

Sunday, April 18^th

Silence shares the house with me. Wherever I go, whatever I do, silence is already there waiting for me. Sometimes I talk to myself, just to scare it away. Yet it doesn’t seem to work. Like being captured in a bubble inside space. With every shout the bubble expands, enlarging the void of solitude. I don’t know if I really screamed or if it was just in my head. In times my memory seemed blurry and in other more like a smudge as if someone had trampled on it with dirty shoes and not bothering to clean it up afterwards.

Thursday, April 22^nd

I spend most of my days drunken and delirious watching myself slide down the slope of self destruction. After all, I have nothing to lose anymore, do I? Only when the fridge was empty and the wine cabinet gone I learned that there is something more. I took a shower (tried to remember when I had the last before) and put on the clothes that smelled the least. When I opened the door to the outside world in over a week the fresh air hit me in the face almost knocking me down. I struggled to breath and realized that this is how air is supposed to smell, unlike the stench from the inside which almost left a bad taste in my mouth. When I caught myself and adjusted to the oxygen, I took a step outside. My front porch was cluttered with newspapers and magazines no one bothered to pick up or throw away. The lawn was a mess and somehow trash accumulated on it. Where did that come from? I turned towards my car and couldn’t find it. I left it right there in the entry way. Like I always did. But it wasn’t there anymore.

Saturday, April 24^th

Outside a thunderstorm is roaring. It is supposed to be noon, daylight should shine through the windows. And yet darkness fell into my neighborhood, eating it alive. The wind is increasing and I can see the tree shaking wild and furious to and fro. I’m glad to have walked the 3 km yesterday to the supermarket, I wouldn’t dare to go outside now. The police still haven’t found my car and said I shouldn’t be too optimistic in getting it back – at least not in full parts. It is a common method to pull it apart and sell in spares, they said. If this was a consolation, I am not consoled.

The wind outside is picking up even more and I think I need a drink.

Wednesday, April 28^th

It was not a thunderstorm. The media was talking about it for a couple of days but I never bothered to watched TV. Not before and not after Jane had left me. I think it started all with her, Jane. From the moment on I saw her in bed with our neighbor Susan my life turned, flipped upside down. I had it all, but only now grasp the notion of how deep you can fall when you are on top of everything. Jane left me, leaving me behind watching my life crumbling into pieces of something incomprehensible and beyond expectation. I lost my wife, my job and my car. The hurricane that raged across the country broke the tree that I have planted in the yard, for the children I would no longer have with Jane. It also destroyed my house while I was drunk. I must have passed out and fell under the kitchen table when the center of the storm hit my house and buried me underneath it. Over 3000 people died in the aftermath of the hurricane. When a team of fire fighters found me 2 days later and rescued me from my tomb I was already drunk again. The only nutritional source I had accessible under the wreckage was a bottle of wine laying next to me. I got out without having a scratch on me.

The whole town was in debris. Houses, homes, factories – everything was gone. The only surviving building in the vast destruction was a shop by a German immigrant who always believed that houses should be build of stones. I walked passed his shop and we stared at each other, 2 survivors. He said:

“I saw you on ze news. Ze one buried alive and gotten out drunken without injuries. Is zat right?”

I nodded.

“Tonight’s ze lottery.” He motioned to a sign on his left. 240 million dollars. “Wanna play?”

I nodded again. After all, what else had I to lose than the last dollar in my pocket.