The Weeping Treeq

　　I didn't have a remarkable life.  I performed adequately in school.  I kept my nose clean.  Until Zanna it really meant nothing.  I'm not saying my life was terribly depressing, that I wasn't happy.  I'm not undermining the ultimate pleasure of sentient existence.  It just didn't amount to much before her.  I, like the world I lived in, just didn't care too much that I existed.  I just did.
　　Zanna was everything to me.  She was my lover, my beautiful girl--but she was also my closest friend.  My only friend.  As sick as it may sound, she was like a sister that I could also love and make love to.  She was my master and underling as well as my equal but, more often that not, she was my unsurpassed superior.  A being that, through her gentle, quiet exterior, brimmed with a cool and easy genius all her own. 
　　We met sometime in the eve of my youth.  I couldn't tell you the date.  I knew yer before I was aware of her or even aware of myself.  I can't remember a time when she wasn't next door or across the street, when I couldn't wander to her yard and find her lazily dragging her heels in the bare spot beneath the decrepit old white swing set.  She was always there, but until I became truly aware of that and what that meant to me, my life was as meaningless as a dog's.
　　I often find myself remembering the first time we kissed.  It was a breezy green summer, occasionally stifling and occasionally moist and rainy, but today, fair.  Birds and snakes readily sunned themselves in Sol's comforting warmth.  I still lived with my parents then, in the little brick house on Maybelle Avenue, and she still lived next door with her mom.  It was the summer of our senior year, the last year of adolescent youth before we turned eighteen.  I wandered into her yard to where she sat under her tree scribbling something out of her World History textbook.  I'm not sure exactly what lead me there, but it isn't like it was the first of such times.  I was in her home nearly as often as in mine--more often on the day my parents fought.
　　"Is that history?"  I asked, not bothering to offer a formal greeting.  Zanna looked up and smiled.
　　"World history, yeah," she said.  "Well, AP world history.  And you?  Did you already finish all your homework?"  She gave me a smirk.  "Or did you just forget?"  I hesitated, halted by the lighthearted charm that she only seemed to show around me.  With friends, with teachers, even with her own adequately loving parents, she was withdrawn.  Professional, polite, but withdrawn.  I don't even think she meant to be so open with me.  I think it just came naturally.
　　"Um," I said, giving her a sideways grin.  "Something in between."  She offered me another smile, a crooked half-wink, and looked back at her book.  I sat beside her in the cool dry grass, back against the old oak tree.  I was aware of the hundreds of busy ants crawling up and down the dry tree bark, maneuvering against my bosy as they completed their daily tasks.  Not letting the sudden presence of my gargantuan body impede their lives. 
　　"Don't you ever..."  I faltered.  "Isn't that class hard?  What I mean is, don't you ever worry that you'll mess up?"  Zanna shrugged, not looking up, as if the question and its answer bored her with their irrelevance.  "High school is so close to ending," I said.  "Sometimes I sit awake and worry about what the hell I'll do with my life."  Zanna closed the book, set it in a patch of grass beside her. 
　　"You'll find your way," she said.  So calm, so peaceably certain.  The epitome of feminine wisdom.  "I worry sometimes, but then I laugh at myself.  Because I know I can make it.  And that even if I don't 'make it' in the world, I'll be okay."  I sat in silence for a moment, wondering.
　　"How can you be so sure?"  She turned her clear blue eyes, her pale, mild face to me.
　　"Because I'll have you," she said, as if the answer was clear as day, as natural as rain, as obvious as the ants that even then altered their paths to avoid my bulk.  I blinked at her.  She was looking at me, her eyes smiling but her face blank.  Not empty, but blank.  Patient.
　　I leaned in, my body crossing over hers briefly, and felt my lips over hers, hers on mine, the warm thrill of her hands curled around y head, my hands on the side of her face.  When our faces parted, I heard her breathe: "About time."  She was smiling, and so was I.
　　So for a while we continued like that, sneaking innocently into each other's quiet presence, but I knew that all that was really over.  The childlike paradigm of our relationship had shifted as I realized that I did, and always had, loved her in a way that even I didn't understand.  Something in me assured me that she understood, even if I did not yet.  The sweet calm whiteness of her perfect face filled my sleeping and waking hours.  Sometimes the newness of her touch was so unbearably, terribly wonderful that I couldn't breathe.  Living had meaning.  I didn't have to spend my time in deep existential thought, pondering the purpose of being human to arrive at the conclusion that my existence was meaningful.  I just thought of her.  Her beauty, her personness, was enough that it extended, tendril-like, to my being.  I needed her, and I was content to know that she wanted me.
　　"As long as I live," I said, "as long as you live, I will be here.  As long as I exist on this planet I will be yours."  It wasn't a promise I gave lightly.  It wasn't the sparkly sugar-coated sentiment of an adolescent mind.  It was the only truth I knew.  She knew that.  She smiled at me and took my hand, feeling the warm realness of the skin stretched over those temporal bones.
　　For a long time she was my closest companion and dearest friend, the person I confided in, the person I spent hours discussing meaningless things with.  Sometimes we were engulfed in youthful passion; often I was content to sit beside her and hear her breathe, occasionally whispering "Zanna" and hearing her whisper, "Chase" in return, our words swallowed up in the ensuing silence.  I was pleased to sit and watch her as she placidly completed her high school and, after, college, homework on the green chair by our apartment window.  Sometimes she asked for my help and took whatever answer I could give.  If it was wrong, she would debate it with me.  If it was right, her face would brighten and she'd continue her work.
　　For what seemed like the longest, warmest years of my life I was with her.  We shared the apartment facing east, so we could watch the sun rise over the glittering buildings and scrappy trees, before and after we got married.  Busy days melting into quiet nights and tender mornings.  So wrapped up in contentment, I wasn't ready when she miscarried.  "It would have been a girl," she said dully, wiping the tear that collected at the corner of her eye.  She seemed so strong, so unbreakably strong, but her body trembled when I held her.
　　"The doctor isn't sure what happened," she continued, "but he thinks...  My body rejected and reabsorbed the fetus.  He said my womb might be 'inhospitable,'" she spat the word with pain, "but he hopes it was just a...  'temporary fluke,' that's what he said."  She turned her fair white face to me.  "I want to try again."  I kissed the top of her hair gently.
　　"Zan," I whispered.  "There are other options.  I--"
　　"What, adoption?" she cut me off.  "Surrogacy?  Chase, you know I don't have moral objection to the practical use of the sciences, but-- I just...  I just don't want to watch someone else carry our baby.  And I want it to be our baby.  Someone that we created.  Someone who will continue when I die..."  I kissed her again, then took her face in my hands.  How could I refuse her?  How could I try to console her when I felt the same?          "We don't have to try yet," I told her.  "We can wait.  Until you're ready.  Until we're ready."
　　We were careful.  We waited.  The loss of what would have been our baby had jarred us so badly that it was less force of will and more trepidation that kept us from trying again.  When we finally decided that it was time, that waiting any longer would only prolong our suffering--that there was nothing we could do to stop the inevitable--she started seeing our regular Dr. Lee quite often.  Making sure things were okay.  He wanted us to wait until she was in "peek condition for conception," as he said.  Everything was seeming fine.  We got the okay to go ahead (as terribly romantic as that sounds to me today) on a balmy day in the middle of July. 
　　Not long after, in August, she was pregnant.  She seemed both excited and afraid when she found out--and I echoed her feelings.  But for months everything was fine, great, even.  Contentment was back in our little home as it seemed that she, and the baby, would be okay.  We begun to talk about the miscarriage more casually, calling it "our first baby" instead of "her miscarriage," both to each other and to our friends.  Fall melted too quickly into a cold but mild winter.  Our fifth Christmas as a couple rose and set with ease.  Her belly grew and our hope, a quiet, fluttering thing, waxed with it.
　　Mid April.  The sparse trees and well-trod grass flaking the gray street had begun to grow, to bud, sporting lush, bright greenness.  Little white flowers that felt like satin but, if you held one close to your nose, smelled strangely of death, sprinkled the streets, the whole town, settling on rooftops and car windshields like the only recently vanished flakes of snow.  Everyone says April is the time of new life, and birth.  Watching the world begin to stir, not just the plants but the humans as well, I could easily see where the idea came from.  I held Zanna's soft, pale hand as we walked down the sidewalk, occasionally brushing off pink-white flower petals.  Her face was happy and touched by a firm sort of peace, as it always had been, for as long as I could recall.  Pregnancy hadn't marred her.  If anything, it had made her brighter, 
　　She stooped over painfully, the round shell of her belly making her strain.  I offered to help her, but she brushed me off, insisting on bending down unaided to pluck one iridescent black feather from the short fronds of grass.  She slipped it delicately into her bra and returned her small hand to mine.  Often we had theorized that animals--and birds in particular--are messengers from the dead, or from God.  A theory little refuted by some of our favorite literature, both modern and classic.  It was a thing between us.  Whenever one of us was away and found a feather, we would collect it, bring it home, and leave it for the other to find.  I guess it was our symbol of hope, of the idea of something else after this world.
　　I smiled at her, and she grinned back.  The light of Sol reached us from the pale blue sky.
　　Soon her face paled and contorted with pain.  I squeezed her hand.  "What is it?"  I thought of the empty crib and yellow-walled nursery room in the apartment.  I whispered: "is it time?"  Her face twisted again with pain--and something like half-hidden fear--and she nodded, clutching her abdomen.  I kissed her forehead, waved my and frantically in the air to hail a cab.  It could not have come quick enough.  I opened the door for Zanna, still holding her hand, heart beating frantically.  Now I was thinking of the fuzzy gray picture the ultrasound technician had shown us not a month before.  I got in behind her, closed the door and returned to the unshaven, bored-looking driver.
　　"Liberty Hospital," I said.  "Now."  I could see little beads of sweat popping out on her forehead as the contractions worsened.  Outside, the petals were still falling like snowflakes, filling the streets with the hue of winter and the faint smell of death.  I watched them falling, watched them get swept up in piles by car tires and drafts of wind, as we drove to the hospital.  Zanna’s hand clutched mind, and I called ahead to tell the hospital we were coming, but mostly I kept my face pressed to the glass, watching the petals fall.  And thinking of the empty nursery awaiting our return. 
　　They rushed her to a clean, white room divided in half by a pale blue curtain.  The other bed was, as of yet, unoccupied, and I could see the window clearly on the opposite side.  Someone appeared with a cool towel and pressed it to her forehead, telling me to sit back, out of the way.  They let me stay in the room, though, holding her hand when she reached for it, speaking to her softly.  One of the nurses coached her, telling her to calm down, the baby would come soon, but not yet.  Breathe.  I kept talking to her, whispering to her our favorite stories.  Books from our childhood.  It seemed to help.  I had always thought that birth was a loud, frantic, screaming sort of affair, but Zanna was quiet, so quiet, her small form sunken into the bluish bedsheets.  As the contractions grew worse and closer together, the nurses stayed in the room longer, watching her. 
　　“The baby will come soon,” one of them said, a middle age woman with a hard, lined face and steady hands.  We’d decided to wait to know the gender.  Maybe because we’d never been sure that it would come at all.  We hadn’t wanted to get our hopes up.
　　I remember the nurse glancing up at the clock repeatedly.  Zanna was sweating pretty heavily.  The nurse looked rushed, almost, impatient, checking the white and black wall clock every few minutes.  As the minutes ticked by, I grew more tense.  Minutes turned into a first and then a second hour.  Zanna’s usually peaceful face still contorted in pain.  It was more hollow now, like her form was being slowly replaced with the countenance of a ghost.
　　“It’s been two hours,” I whispered to the nurse.  “What’s going on?”  The nurse heaved a sigh and didn’t turn to look at me.
　　“There’s nothing we can do,” she replied.  “Your wife is too weak for a C-section.  We just have to wait for the baby to come naturally.” 
　　I was aware that up until now Zanna had been trying hard to keep her cool.  Suddenly she was crying, sobbing gently, her body vibrating under the sheets.  I turned to her, gripping her hand again, and she seemed unaware of my presence.  The clock ticked, seeming to keep time with her reverberating sobs.  Her face screwed up in weary pain again; her body started to contract and heave.  The doctor and nurses were saying “Push, come on Zanna, just a little longer,” and I was holding her hand in mine. 
　　I remember it like a dream.  Sometimes the most real moments in life feel like dreams.  Zanna grimaced, opened her mouth, but did not scream as she twisted with the effort of childbearing.  Then there was blood, too much blood.  I wiped her hot brow frantically as the doctors rushed out with something in their hands that I didn’t get a good look at.  So much blood.  She looked at me with tired, faraway eyes.  She reached one small hand into her shirt and took out the iridescent black feather that she’d tucked their hours, eons, lifetimes ago, in a world of pink death flower petals and warm sunlight.  Her hand was steady as she placed the feather in my palm.  Gave me a small smile, a ghost of the unwavering peace I’d always associated with her flicking across her face.
　　“Nurse,” I croaked.  My throat seemed too clogged full of emptiness to summon words.  Zanna turned her face to the window, away from me.  I registered stiffly that the sheets were still sticky with her blood.  I wondered how they would clean them.  I wondered who would next use this bed that was forever stained with the dark redness.
　　A nurse finally rushed in--why they deigned to leave her alone I hadn’t quite worked out--and took her wrist in her hand.  A look of grim resignation, not fear, or anxiety, passed across her face.  It wasn’t the same nurse that had told me she was too weak for a C-section, but the cold hard look on her face was the same.
　　“Time of death,” she said aloud, “4:23 pm, April 17.”  I just stared at her blankly, still holding Zanna’s hand, her words repeating themselves over and over in my head.  Time of death.  Time of death.  Time of death.  Wondering numbly where were the rivers of tears that would drown me with their force.  Unbelieving that I could still exist when the meaning of my existence did not.
　　“Mr. Arnaldo,” the nurse said, fixing me with the look you give a confused child.  “Your daughter was stillborn.  Time of cremation is set for 6:00pm, today.  Of course that’s up to you.  If you would like to see her before, you may come with me.”  As an afterthought, she added, “I am very sorry.”  I looked at the small form of my wife’s body where it lay, touched by a few rays of sunlight.  The feather was still in my hand, and I looked down at it dumbly.  I tried to put it in my shirt pocket without realizing I had none.  Instead, I placed it in my pants.
　　I didn’t go to see the baby.  It seemed wrong.  Our baby was not in the tiny corpse I knew awaited me in the little room beside ours.  Nor was she in the tiny clay jar they handed me that evening before I left for home--for the empty apartment of empty rooms an empty crib.  All that was in the jar was the ashes of something we’d tried to create.  Something we had failed to bring into being.  That night I couldn’t bear to sleep in our big bed without her beside me.  I lay awake on the cold blue couch, my head a thick cloud of aching confusion.  I reached out my arm, but retraced it, forgetting what I was groping for.  People say their hearts hurt or ache in grief.  My experience was different.  There was nothing to hurt; it was like my entire chest was an empty hole, a heartless echo of piercing screams that broke the unendurable silence.  It was a while before I realized that those screams were mine. 
　　         
Life’s meaning came slowly, like falling asleep.  And it left with the jarring despair of waking up.
　　I woke up.  I went to work.  But somewhere in between I forgot to clean, forgot to speak, forgot to function.  It only got worse until a year later my well-meaning grandmother came to check up on me and decided that I was slowly killing myself.  Looking back, I can understand why she might say that.  My flat wasn’t just a mess, it was a disaster.  I would go days without eating.  I didn’t become a mute, but I hardly ever spoke to anyone.  Even at work.  The only thing that had kept me from being fired was my boss’s lingering pity for me.
　　In the end I’m not sure what allowed me to accept her somewhat ludicrous proposal to admit myself to 56th Street Mental Hospital (as the locals called it, the actual title was Mental Rehabilitation Facility, which just sounded too nice to the rest of us, I guess).  I didn’t have to obey her.  I hadn’t hurt myself in any obvious ways, hadn’t hurt anyone else.  But I guess it was easy to just give in.  It’s not like I was taking care of myself.  Maybe I needed it.  I was depressed.  People have been admitted for less.  But I really wasn’t crazy.  Insane.  I wasn’t a danger to anyone.  Sure, I was plagued with thoughts of dying and killing myself in wholly unromantic and bland ways, but I was just too exhausted, too tired to act on them.  Maybe some part of me actually wanted to get better.  To live life and make something for myself.  For Zanna.
　　But mostly, I did it because I deserved it.  I needed to punish, to humiliate myself somehow, for Zanna’s death.  The baby’s death.  I wanted to be looked down on like a child and locked up like a bird with its gray flight feathers trimmed. 
　　I moved into a small white-gray room that I had to myself in July of the year after Zanna’s death.  It was nice enough, with one small window by which I could watch the world.  I came to prefer my room over most places in the hospital except, maybe, the walking path that looped around the building.  I was allowed to take it sometimes--that is, any time an orderly felt like escorting me, which was only sometimes.  The people there really were nice enough, the patients rather withdrawn, but mostly polite.  The orderlies tried to be courteous, and mostly succeeded.  My main psychologists’ name was Lucy. Lucy something, I don’t know her last name; the hospital had an unorthodox but commendable practice of referring to each other by first name alone.  Not that surnames were kept secret; I’m sure I head hers at some point, I just failed to remember.
　　Lucy was a very decent lady.  Somewhat squat and bland, with frizzy brown hair and somewhat cold eyes, she wasn’t much to look at.  But she tried her best by me in our daily interactions.  It was obvious that she cared.  I regret that I never really trusted her, never really opened up to her like I should’ve.  I just wanted to get through.  She was trying, but I wasn’t.  And, sometimes, she hardly tried either. 
　　A month.  A month of blank, dull existence, of waking up, sitting through group therapy, taking my meals and retiring.  Occasionally I talked to Luke, before he left, and Rose and Bruce, before they were discharged.  Sometimes I talked; mostly I just listened.  I let them talk to me.  They needed someone to talk to (and at), and I was willing enough to sit passively and be that someone.  It was gray and flat and I didn’t think of Zanna except at night, and the pills they gave me plunged me so quicky into the warm caresses of sleep that I hardly had to endure that for long.  It was blissfully okay.  Adequate, bleak.
　　Until Mariella.
　　It was September.  I hadn’t know they were hiring a new orderly.  Not that I would have cared.  Nothing prepared me for Mariella.  Nothing could have.  We were in ten o’clock group, five of us and Lucy, when the white door opened and someone walked in.  The seat to my right was occupied by a patient, a man whose name I hadn’t cared to learn.  To my left was an empty white plastic chair.  I don’t know what prompted me to look up but, when I did, time froze.  My stomach became a stone.  My face slackened. 
　　She was pale, blonde, covered in light brown freckles despite her age.  I guessed she was still in her twenties, younger than me by a few years.  Her eyes were soft, peculiar brownish color.  They were soft, so soft.  She was more than beautiful.
　　Don’t think I’m being dramatic.  I’ve seen quite a lot of beautiful women, ones with more proportionate features than hers, ones with more supposed charm.  Never has any human being struck me as she did.
　　“I’m Mariella,” she said, smiling at the room.  Lucy gave her a soft grin in return and continued therapy-ing.  Mariella.  She looked at me, indicating the empty seat by me.  “Chase,” I replied.  I barely managed to nod.
　　“Few,” shes aid, brushing a leaf out of her hair.  She reached her hand into a shirt pocket and pulled out a speckled beige feather.  “Found this outside,” she said quietly to me.  “I wonder--would you like it?”  I grinned at her, taking the small smooth feather in my hand.
　　“I love feathers, actually,” I replied.  “I collect them.”  She smiled a again.  After that we were silent for the entire session.  I participated even less than normal.  My mind was full.  My mind was elsewhere.  My mind was on her.  Even after group had ended and I watched her walk off, rejoining the other orderlies, I was thinking of her.  Fingering the soft feather that now resided in my plain shirt pocket.  I could not help thinking of Zanna, of the last time she gave me a feather, of what it mean to us.  I could not stop my dazed mind from thinking about what it could mean.  I knew it was silly, I knew it was just a feather and Mariella was just an attractive woman, and thinking about Zanna still hurt.  Zanna had been everything.  I felt wrong for even looking at another woman, someone who wasn’t Zanna.  Zanna held my heart.  Zanna would always hold my heart.  She had made it possible for me to live.  She’d made life worth living--made existence meaningful.  This woman, barely more than a girl--she wasn’t Zanna.
　　But--I kept thinking this, over and over-the feather.
　　When I went to bed, still thinking of Mariella, of Zanna, of feathers, I had a dream about the first time I kissed my wife.  It wasn’t like other dreams, those livid fantasies tinged with reality but steeped in surrealism.  It was like a tape recorder replaying a memory.  It was like I stepped back for a moment to relive one of my fondest experiences.  Except for the dream’s end; that was different.
　　Zanna got up to leave, maybe to go inside for a drink, maybe she’d been called away by her parents  I remained in the dark green grass with my back against our tree, bathed in summery warmth, watching her go.  I felt like I could sink into that plush grass, bury my legs in its soft carpeting.  I saw the shallow indent her body had left in the grass.  Laying there, where she had been only moments before, was a feather.  Creamy beige and speckled brown.  I knew that she had left it.  Before I bent to pick it up, the dream dissolved, and I gradually returned to the conscious world.
　　I saw Mariella again that day.  Many times.  I didn’t even have to try, it seemed.  We ran in similar circles.  I was beginning to think she’d been assigned to watch me personally by how frequently we met.  After lunch, she offered to walk with me through the little dirt path around the facility.  Of course I obliged. 
　　By then the sun was well toward its highest point.  Yellow rays caught her hair, her eyes, her fair skin.  I was still under the influence of her queer beaty, her radiating femininity, her ease of going about things.  Her face was always peaceful and gentle-looking, as if life was simple and easily endurable, even enjoyable.  Like all the answers in the world lay somewhere close at hand and all one had to do was grope a little to find it.
　　We walked in silence until we came to a little brook I hadn’t known about.  It was shaded by a great, billowing green weeping willow tree.  There, on the bend of one gnarled root baked dry by the sun, she sat down, motioning for me to join. 
　　“I hope you don’t think I’m too forward,” she said, “or inappropriate, bringing you out here alone.  It must seem strange, an orderly taking a patient for a stroll off the path in this way.”  She smiled a little.  “But don’t worry, Doctor--er, Lucy--knows.  She thought it might be good for you.”  I played with the willow fronds, letting them run through my hands like snakes, unsure of what to say.  She looked at me oddly.  I realized I was staring at her, and felt my cheeks blush a little.
　　“I’m sorry.  It’s just...  You remind me of someone.”
　　“Of who?”  She asked politely.  A gust of wind ruffled her hair.  I faltered.  Should I be honest?  We were hardly close friends, or young lovers.  I didn’t owe her my honesty or trust.  But then, I felt like I owed her something.  For staring.  However silly that may seem.
　　“You remind me of my wife,” I said truthfully.  I refused to say ex-wife.  Just because she died didn’t mean we were over.  In a way I refused to let her go.  And yet, here I was, talking to a beautiful woman, admiring the way the sunlight made a game of her hair.  Painfully, humanly aware of her beauty.  “She died about a year ago.  Childbirth.  The baby was stillborn,” I added.  I have her the half-smile, half-frown I was accustomed to giving when discussing my grief.  Mariella looked at me curiously.  I saw the typical awkward pity, but on top of that I saw genuine empathy and, it seemed, understanding.
　　“She liked feathers, too,” I added.  “We used to collect them.”
　　“Chase.”  She took my hand.  “I’m truly sorry for your loss.  Is that why you’re in here?”  I nodded, shrugged.
　　“I just couldn’t cope,” I said.  I guess I gave up.”  She let go of my hand, nodded at me, and smiled.
　　“You’ll get better.  I know you will.  People have gone through worse.”  She hesitated.  “Don’t think I’m patronizing or that I think your situation is less severe than it is.  I understand, in a way.  I’ve had a hard life.  I lost my parents and had to live in  foster homes.  I lost a child once--I know.  I’m so young.”  She laughed a little.  “But I did.  His name would’ve been Colombo.  You must think that’s a silly name,” she said.
　　“No.  I think it’s beautiful.”
　　“It means dove,” she went on.  I’ve always had a thing with birds.  They’re so beautiful.  So pure.”  She ran her soft hand over the heard, leathery bark of the willow tree.  Then she turned to me, her round eyes sparkling a little.  “Come with me.  I wanna show you something.”  She pranced off, feet skipping lightly off the plush grass. 
　　I don’t know why the hell there is a steep cliff just a half mile away from 56th Street Mental Hospital’s inward-swinging glass window doors.  Rather, I don’t know who thought it would be wise to build a mental hospital a half mile away from a precipice overlooking a small brook.  Maybe it had formed after it was built--but the hospital didn’t seem old enough for that.  I don’t now.  All I now is that Mariella, in her pale thin orderly uniform, moon-white face creased in a gay smile, brought me to its edge.  Her eyes were playful.  She took my rough hand in hers.
　　I heard footsteps in the September undergrowth that was just beginning to pile with leaves.  Just now there was a scattering.  Lucy’s voice calling our name though the trees.  Mariella sidestepped a moss-covered rock and tried to follow.  Now she was skipping alongside the edge, saying, “You know, Chase, you have to give yourself time to live.  Breathe.  Smell the air.”  Lucy’s voice again, rather impatient behind us.  I turned abruptly because I could see the doctor’s form coming up the path--turned too quickly.  Saw Lucy’s eyes widen and saw the dappled sun catch Mariella’s hair, making it burn warmly.  She didn;t see me as my foot slid out from under me, betraying me.  Lucy saw.  Lucy reached out to catch me, but there was an infinite gap of empty space between us.  I briefly pitied her.  My last thought was of Mariella’s innocent smile turning confused as she glimpsed my body falling into the void.  It was a further drop than I’d imagined.
　　I think I screamed Mariella’s name.  But it might have been Zanna’s.
　　
“This is my fault.”  I can’t see her, but I know this is Lucy.
　　“No.  No one’s fault.”  Mariella’s voice.
　　“I shouldn’t have let him go.  It’s hardly protocol.”
　　It isn’t a huge assembly.  There’s some music, low whispers, slowly shuffling feet.  My life didn’t amount to much before Zanna.  Even after Mariella it mean nothing.  I still died.  I failed to mark the Earth with my scent, my being--maybe.  My life didn’t matter, but they did.  Zanna, Mareilla.  I hope she littered my grave with feathers that she found discarded in between twigs and rocks.  No birds have to die for the feathers we collect.
　　But they die--one day they die--all the same.
　　It’s appropriate that my body was laid in the shadow of a weeping willow tree.  Its fronds touch my headstone, my bare gray headstone. Its roots, I think, sucked up some of my decaying life substance.  Most people would say, this is my tree.  My weeping tree.  It sobs for me, for the misfortune of a troubled, cut-short life, carried my spirit and makes me immortal.  But it isn’t for me.  Mariella comes here sometimes, talks to me, occasionally presses a feather into the still-upturned soil of my grave.  It is for them.  It weeps for them.