Truth Tree

The sapling shoves up through the split in the countertop, tilting the coffee grinder aside, dark leaves brushing the bottom of the cabinet. The clock on the stovetop gleams an electric green 7:35 across a kitchen still grey with morning light. A light flicks on, the sound of feet shuffle into the kitchen. A pause, an intake of breath. “Julie! There’s a tree growing out of our counter!”

Muffled, at a distance, a woman’s voice: “What? I haven’t had my coffee yet,” the voice is growing clearer and closer, “you know I don’t do jokes at this time of morning…” Her voice peters out. “Why is there a tree growing out of my kitchen counter? Is this some kind of joke…?”

A woman’s hand pushes the sapling this way and that, but it switches back into place with the limberness of green youth. She steps back, her hands on her hips. “What on earth, Sean?”

“Hey, don’t look at me. I didn’t put that there. –hold up, why are you reaching for a knife? I don’t like to see you grabbing a knife this early in the morning!”

She scowls at him. “…I’m going to cut it down. It’s a tree. It doesn’t belong in my kitchen counter.”

“Shouldn’t you figure out how it got there first? Where it’s coming from?”

“Which I can do just as easily when it’s not sticking out of my counter.”

“It just seems like a better idea to find out why it’s there before you just chop it down. You never know.”

“Excuse me? Is this your house? No. You live here because I let you.”

He grins, cheeky. “And because I make good eye candy.”

“Ha ha. It’s still my counter.”

Grabbing the flexible branches, Julie saws the sapling off at the base, leaving a strange, ragged stick poking up. She glances at her watch. “Ugh, we’re so late this morning. Let’s figure out this mess when we get home.”

--

The kitchen is dark. A light flicks on. The sapling has grown out of the crack again, larger this time and casts a many-leaved shadow over the counter. It has reached the bottom of the cabinet and is bent over, pressing upwards. The trunk is thicker.

There is a thump of groceries being sat on the floor and Sean takes a step back, startled: “Woah. Why is this happening?”

Julie drops her own sack on the counter and snorts in disapproval. “This is ridiculous. I’m calling a tree removal place tomorrow.”

“Hold up—can we just stop and think for a minute? Why is this happening? Let me just take a minute to go down to the crawlspace and see if it’s come up from the foundation. Maybe there’s a crack. Could change who we call in.”

“I don’t really care, where it comes from; it’s not spending another night in my house, wrecking my counter. I’ll get the professionals out tomorrow and they can take care of why, but tonight, it’s going down.”

She stalks off and reappears with a small reciprocating saw propped jauntily on her shoulder. She pops in the battery. There is a cracking, splitting sound. Sawdust fills the air, and out she swaggers, dragging the limbs behind her, a quiet shh-shhh of leaves brushing against the cabinets in her wake.

When she comes back in, dusting her hands, Sean asks, “Has your vengeance been satisfied?” There’s a certain amount of sarcasm in his tone. He is making himself a sandwich on the kitchen table since the counter is covered in sawdust.

She raises an eyebrow, props a hand on her hip. She feels she has gained the upper hand over him and is prepared to be amusing about it. “Hey, somebody in this relationship has got to actually commit instead of hemming and hawing all over the place.”

There is a pause, a second too long, a subtle warning. “I believe I asked if we could stop hemming and hawing around several months ago and you didn’t want to be—” he makes air quotes, “tied down’. So maybe lay off making fun of me for not committing.”

“Are you for real bringing this up again?”

“Well if you’re going to twit me about being decisive, yeah, I’m going to bring it up again.”

“I’m talking about the stupid tree growing out of the counter, not my life!”

“Uh-huh. You react without thinking, deny the existence of problems, and attack anybody who doesn’t agree with you! Which am I talking about? The tree, or your life? Can you tell? Because I can’t!”

“Oh, are we going to play it that way? How about you stand around talking about problems and never do anything! You want to get married—you don’t even have a job! How about you leave the sawdust on the counter and take care of yourself instead of picking up your big, dumb hands and actually doing something useful for once!”

Julie slams her hand down on the table as punctuation and stomps out of the room. Sean follows, shouting. Neither of them have noticed the roots slowly sending tendrils out from under the cabinets.

--

In the morning, the tree is jutting up from the counter again, as big as ever. Sean walks in and simply stops. It was a sawn-off stump just last night. Now it has cracked the counter in two. Leaves are bunched up against the kitchen window and ceiling where its branches have stretched out. He doesn’t move for a long time. The air conditioner kicks on. The leaves whisper against the countertop.

After Julie has run through her vocabulary of curse words twice, and they are standing around the tree, sizing it up, Sean says, “It’s kind of pretty, in a menacing kind of way.”

“I want it cut down.” Julie says, her voice cold. She has clearly not forgiven him for the previous’ night’s argument. “It’s like you want to keep it or something! Ooo,” she said, mocking him, “It’s kind of pretty, hur-dur!”

Sean’s brief conciliatory moment evaporates. “I said find out where it came from, not keep it! Look, it’s growing—and see what it’s doing to the floor?” He steps on a raised section of linoleum and the floor groans. “While you were busy running your mouth last night, I went into the crawlspace to see where it’s coming from—And it’s everywhere. I mean….everywhere. There’s no crack in the foundation, there just isn’t a foundation anymore.”

Julie has her back to him, her arms crossed. After a long pause, she says, “Fine. Fine. I’ll call the foundation repair people right now.”

--

It is a tense couple that sits down to supper under the leaves of the spreading tree that night. Sean stands up to get the ketchup and gets poked by a branch for his troubles. As he is bent over, swearing, Julie is using her fork to chase a scrap of broccoli around her plate.

“You know I can’t begin to pay for them to take apart half the house. I can’t sell it with the foundation all torn up like it is. I think it’s only fair for you to pitch in half for the foundation repair.”

Sean looks up, a hand over his eye. “Weren’t you just saying the other day about how this is your house, not mine, and you make the decisions?”

“This is my decision. You’re part of this. You pay part.”

“How am I part of this? I mean, sure, okay, ask me for help—but how is it fair that I pay?”

Julie swings around to face him, her arms crossed, her mouth set. “It didn’t show up till you did. You found it. Sean, face it, your sense of humor is immature and…be honest, okay…was this some dumb joke you were trying to play that got out of hand?

Sean throws his hands in the air. “Are you kidding me right now? Are you freaking kidding me?”

Now Julie is on her feet, pointing a finger at him. “For expecting you to act like a mature, responsible adult for once in your life?!”

“This isn’t my house, as you have frequently reminded me!”

The tree groans.

Startled, they swallow their words and stare at it. It stretches…lengthens…groans again, deep and throbbing—and with a creaking of nails and a splintering of wood and a crash of glass, it shoves upward and outward and the wall collapses. Huge roots crawl out of the air vents and begin to pull down the cabinets. Julie screams and jumps out of the way as the kitchen fan drops to the ground, its wires tangled up in the twiggy parts of a branch.

For a moment, they stare at one another across the wreckage. Then she stabs a finger at him again, hisses, “This is your fault!” and runs. In a moment, her car starts and her tires squeal as she races away.

All around Sean drywall and rubble are raining down. The largest branches of the tree hang over him, shielding him from the debris. Dust poofs up in thick clouds as the house frame crumples. Coughing, cringing, Sean stumbles over to the tree trunk, puts his hands over his head, and waits.

The roar dies away. Silence. He sits up, coughs, wipes his face off. The tree is standing, tall and strong, in a pile of wreckage. Its trunk is wide and dark, its leaves powdered with drywall dust but green and healthy. Through the dust, the sky is a splash of purple and orange in the fading sunlight. The tree stands, stark and dark against the fading light, its branches curving down to conceal the man sitting beneath its boughs, both destructive—and protective.