The Sugar Maple Tree

Trigger warning: suicide

By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire. Dressed in deep shades of burnt orange and carmine. I felt more at home in this very moment than I had over these past 6 months, despite being nurtured by my mother, husband, and son. Heaving a deep-heavy breath through my dry burning nose and out my spit drenched mouth, attempting to soak in the fresh autumn air I studied my surroundings, reintroducing them one by one. A rusted mailbox fastened by a singular nail, the light pastel blue of the cloudless sky, the neighbors flashy BMW they hardly ever drove. Somehow I’d forgotten there is a world outside my own, crumbling away in its own way. I tugged my blanket tighter around my porcelain-like body, trying to fend off the intrusive evening chill. As I slowly lowered myself to the step just above my pale, veiny feet. I knew I only had a couple of minutes before the rush of concerned family members began to frantically call my name, 

“Mommmm... Amyyyy!”, followed by the thrashing of closing and opening doors.

Shaking the thought out of my head, down the nape of my neck, and off my narrow shoulders, a chill ran over me shaking me a bit.

I forced a reusable smile on my face as a woman and what seemed to be her husband passed by in matching sweater vests talking to each other in hushed whispers and crazy eyes. I craned my neck like a schoolgirl, trying desperately to cling onto their words, their conversation, but they passed me. Not even returning one of the few smiles I had left in me, I needed that smile, I wanted it back.

 I pushed myself back into my cocoon of warmth and comfort, pulling my neck in and gradually releasing the tension in my body to the wind. A flock of sparrows buzzed around the sugar maple tree standing alone in the front yard, they sang small high pitched melodies as their wings batted against the falling leaves making the familiar sound of warm waves lapping against buttery grains of sand. 

I missed Venice Beach. 

On cool evenings similar to tonight with the exception of less chill, I would bring myself down to embed in the white sand while I watched the sun fade to black, casting a cool tone over Los Angeles. But I wasn’t in Los Angeles anymore, and I hadn’t been in at least 5 years but when I play that memory in my head it is as though the disc I placed in the CD player of my brain isn’t scratched by the hands of time, but instead taken care of, polished, and cleaned often so that each time I let my mind wander back to the sandy shores of L.A the memory becomes clearer and clearer. 

A warm tear dragged across my left cheek stinging a painful-looking blushed cherry red into my dull complexion. I briskly wiped it away folding my right hand back into the weird corner between the inside of my left arm and the blanket that encased it. Bringing my tear steamed eyes back to the maple tree swaying alone in the front yard. I felt a wreath of sadness hang over my head, my own personal guillotine. Waiting, just waiting for the cold, sharp, blade to drop on the middle of my neck severing it off. I couldn’t tell if my vision was just fucked from hot tears or if I actually was seeing my 7-year-old self and my 11-year-old brother Daniel, swinging from a piece of recycled wood and weather-worn rope. I could hear Daniel laughing as he pushed me back and forth while begging for his turn,

“I want a turn, Amy! You’ve been on for 8 whole minutes!” 

My little heart-shaped face stretched into a wide gapped tooth smile, “8 WHOLE minutes.” I mocked.

“8 WHOLE minutes.” Daniel’s face was flushed pink from frustration.

“Alright, if you insist sir, Daniel.” I giggled, egging on my already prominent British accent passed on from my father.

His little dimples were carved into perfect circles upon his chubby cheeks, “That’s what I thought.” He pursed plopping his bottom down on the splintery wood. A gust of thick wind gave him a slight push sending a lustrous smile upon his face.

I shook, starling myself out of my daydream pushing Daniel from my mind I missed him, a lot. Looking back I’m not sure how I came to move on, live on without him. The hours, days, weeks, after his passing was much too painful for me to hold within my china bowl like memory. So instead I let each passing day roll over me. I was a zombie, controlled by muscle memory and old steady routines implanted in my brain many years prior. I pushed my numbing hands over my face trying to relax. But my two kid bearing body and tormented mind wouldn’t allow such mundane things, such as relaxation. Nevertheless, I still tried anyway no matter how many failed attempts.

I could feel the house planted in the soil behind me becoming restless, the search for their half gone Amy was about to begin. I can’t seem to get a few hours to myself let alone minutes now that, I’ve been officially deemed, suicidal. 

6 Months Ago

The thick sweltering summer air embodied my very being, wrapping me like a newborn in its warm embrace. The tiny hairs framing my slightly swollen face were pasted down by globs of greasy sweat, making my pillowcase dense. My eyes were glued on the wide dusty cottage window that overlooked our street, while thoughts raced around the empty caverns of my head. 

*Bee Beep, Bee beep*

The screech of my alarm didn’t startle me into a day’s worth of focused work anymore, but simply just invited back my haunting thoughts into a new day.

*Bee Beep, Bee Beep*

My muted green eyes were glossed over, lifeless as they kept glued to the window.

I lifted my bony arm out of my sheets hitting the orange snooze button on my alarm.

Shut up. 

Not yet, too early.

I pushed myself onto my back, changing my view from the window to the ceiling. I could cry if I had the motivation, but I just couldn’t. Suddenly, I heard two raps against the door before it pushed open revealing my husband in one of his many work suits. His hair sleek, beard clean, and organized, his face permanently rested in a state of symmetry, unlike mine. 

“Amy, I’m getting ready to head off to work. Will you be alright today?” He asked leaning against the doorframe, looking as though he jumped straight out of a cologne ad. 

Now laying on my left side to completely face him I mustered a smile, “I’ll be alright.” 

That was a lie, and he knew it.

He pushed away from the door frame walking over to his side of the bed, “Do you need me to stay home from work Amy, because I will.” 

He knew I was crumbling away inside but I couldn’t let him watch it happen, “Really, Stefen. It’s fine, I’m fine.” I mumbled through my cracking lips. He’d already spent two full weeks at my beg and call, I wasn’t about to make it another. No matter how much I needed him.

He looked at me with those soft brown eyes and a slight furrow between his brows, he was worried about me. I quickly pulled myself out of my deep print embedded in the mattress to roll onto his side of the bed so I could grab his soft hand and plant a kiss on it.“See you tonight,” 

Kissing my widow’s peak he smiled, “I’ll get Owen from school after work today, okay?” 

“Okay.”

He turned onto his heels and began to walk down the hall but not before he peaked his head back into the door frame to remind me to, “Get out of bed today.” 

He was right, I needed to get out of bed today.

Dragging myself from our bedroom on the second floor to the kitchen on the first. I began to feel new aches in my body I swore weren’t there yesterday. As I walked onto the cool tile I felt shivers unfold against my spine like a red carpet. 

Where is the Advil? I began the symphony of opening and closing cabinets, Stefen reorganized. I was supposed to do it last weekend but I never got around to it plus, Stefen was way better at organizational tasks than I’d ever been. 

Found it. Stacked on the counter next to a plate of now, cold pancakes and coffee. 

“Only Stefen,” I whispered to myself with a small smile.

Immediately I downed the two Advil and then followed it with three generous gulps of room temperature coffee. Passing over the pancakes, I aimlessly began to walk around the house starting in the living room. Instantly I noticed all the photos that had Daniel in it were turned so they faced down. 

Stefen.

I quickly walked out of the room keeping my eyes away from the faced down pictures. I couldn’t even look at the frame they were in, so I pressed on making my way back up to my room. But not before I stopped in the doorway of my sons, Owen. All his toys were neatly put in their proper places, his bed was made and his books all perfectly aligned in their shelves.

Stefen.

Standing in the frame of the door I realized I hadn’t actually seen my son in days. I’d been locked away in my chamber of spiraling depression for at least a week now but I know he’d been in there because I keep finding drawings on my nightstand decorated in bright colorful crayons along with stale cookies he’d probably gathered from school. They made the wreath of sadness a little lighter and the guillotine a little less daunting, so I was thankful. Closing the door to his bedroom I made my way down the hall to mine. The sheer white eyelet curtains I put up when we first moved in were glowing as beams of warm sunlight shone through decorating our whole room in a bath of white light. 

I need to clean. 

Our bed was a mess, the floor was sticky from sweat and dirt, our closet mirror was covered in fingerprints, my nightstand was littered with candy wrappers, tissues, lint, and a fine layer of dust. I began to swiftly strip the dirt rode sheets from our bed and the litter from both our nightstands, although mine was the main culprit. The laundry room was in the garage, so as I made my way down I picked up any other pieces of laundry that needed to be thrown in. Grabbing the mirror spray on my way up back to our room I caught a glimpse of a photo Stefen missed, stuffed into the corner of our bookshelf a picture my mum had taken of Daniel, myself, and my father standing next to the swing he built for us in the front yard when I was seven. The grass a violent shade of green, a white pickup truck blurred behind us, the sky a light blue. It looked like a Hallmark card, perfect, happy, whole. Then a tear or two and suddenly three streamed down my face. I was frozen, blank, stuck in this photo. Flashes of Daniel’s rounded face flew across my mind, transforming into morbid photos of his lifeless body floating face down in the ocean. 

More tears, more images.

Waves of cold, blueish water smacking his back as his lungs filled with salty water and granules of rough sand. 

More tears.

His beautiful brown hair all matted and rough.

More tears. 

His face, purple and his body bloated.

More tears.

I grabbed the photo slamming it to the floor, watching the glass shatter into a variety of shards. My bottom lip flopping in and out of my mouth as my breath increased to an unnatural rate. I pushed my face into my hands so hard it felt as though my eyeballs were kissing the back of my skull. More flashes of his face, his hair, his eyes, his lifeless body, berated my mind suffocating me. 

“DANIEL! DANIEL! COME BACK TO ME COME BACK-” I screamed into the open-air collapsing into the pile of glass. 

“FUCKKKK!” My throat was seared from my blood-curling scream. Spit covered my chin and bare legs, as did blood and pieces of jagged of glass.

* * *

The white flicker of hospital lights pulled me out of my drugged sleep. I felt nauseous, exhausted, and horribly weak. Cords and wires as thick as pencils hung from my skin, doctors in white and blue rushed from beyond my closed door. I couldn’t see their faces through the small window, they all looked like abstract photographs. Pulling my attention back into my room I looked around.

I want to puke.

The smell of needles and dirty bloodstained hallways covered up with toxic chemicals stung my nostrils.

I picked up my hands to push myself up to a sitting position, but not before an instant surge of pain shot up my arm through my shoulder, and into my neck. 

“Arghhh,” I growled craning my shoulders to my neck.

My hands were wrapped in thick bandages and gauze.

“Amy?” A soft warm voice echoed from the chair just past my vision.

Stefen.

“Stefen?” I croaked, feeling a sharpness in the back of my throat. 

Getting up from his seat and came over to my bedside. His face was blurred too, an abstract photograph.

“It’s okay, your okay.” He murmured putting his hand to the back of my head while planting his lips into my matted hair. 

“Where’s Owen?” I mumbled trying to take the tension off my sore throat.

His face from what I could see looked tired and worn out, “He’s at home with the neighbors, waiting for us. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Stefen, I’m sorry-” The cycle of tears began again streaming down my face hitting the thin fleece hospital blanket.

He removed his hand from the back of my head to the plastic grab bar on my bed, “Sorry for what? That Owen found you in the living room in a pool of blood and your wrists slit open?” His tanned face was bent into wrinkles of agitation. “Or? Are you sorry that it didn’t work?” I could feel his disappointment. 

“Stefen.” I tried to reach out for his hand.

“Are you fucking with me Amy? Look at your wrists! Look at your fucking wrists Amy!” He grabbed just below my wrists and turned it to face me, so I was staring at the makeshift gauze bracelets on my arm. “This.” He shook my arm. “This isn’t a goddamn joke.” 

“Stefen, I’m sorry.” I cried trying to pull my arm out of his grasp but not before he flung it down letting it hit my body.

“JESUS FUCKING CHRIST-” I screamed, frantically grabbed for my wrists as another wave of intense pain surged through me spreading all over my arms. Slamming my head back into the too soft pillow I let tears of grief, anger, and sadness eat me alive.

Present Day

It was darker now, the sun was barely hanging over the roof of the neighboring houses giving the maple tree an eerie illuminating glow. The leaves rustled against the green grass as the breeze picked up speed. I felt a heavy hand rest on my shoulder, it was my husband’s. 

I could feel the weight of each of his five fingers as they laced my shoulders pulling me out of the cosmos I had thrown myself into.

“Amy, it’s getting dark.” 

I turned my face to meet his, staring plainly into his eyes.

I’ve never been able to read him. 

“Ok, just give me a minute.” I smiled reassuring him I was really okay.

Squeezing my shoulder with a faint smile he headed inside. Closing the door softly behind him as though he were trying not to disturb my thoughts. 

They thanked him.

Stefen. I smiled, turning one last time to face the sugar maple tree before heading inside.

I began to picture Daniel and I running in from the thick summer air as it clung to our skin begging us to stay as we clamored up the stairs onto the porch. Our shoes soaked in mud up to our ankles, as echoes of laugher, filled our every bone. Kicking off our shoes and wrestling through the front door I caught sight of Daniel’s face peeking out the door. I had seen him do this, check to make sure our swing hadn’t gotten legs and ran away. Once he was sure it wasn’t going anywhere he closed the door with a soft click like Stefen, trying not to tussle with my thoughts.

I thanked him. 

Turning back around once more, smiling to myself basking in this old friendly memory I wish I could thank him. For, giving me the memory of that sugar maple tree, humid summers buried in the Carolina heat. I felt the glisten of tears cloud over my eyes distorting my vision into a hazy fog.

I knew when I went inside, the memory would recede back into the cobwebbed corner of my brain leaving me alone and hungry for more.

* * *

As the suns, final rays faded beyond the now, light grey sky. The once fiery color of the leaves turned to a hushed orange and red. 

It was as though the world was telling everything to become quiet, to hush.

I held his face within the callused hands of my memory and whispered into the fleeting breeze,

“I’ll wait for you underneath the long crimson hair of the sugar maple tree, I’ll wait for you. For as long as it takes, I’ll wait for you.”

Will you wait for me?