Feature: Silver Tree

By Sarah Benjamin

Two days ago, Danielle found herself standing with her brother at the entrance to St. Herbert’s Care House. Nick was wearing a button down shirt, the small logo of his electrical firm smothered by the plain, white nametag. It was summer, a cold summer, but one that gave his spirits a small reason to hope. He turned to her and hugged her shoulders as she continued to stare at the building.
“It’s just a few sessions, Danielle. Honestly, this guy isn’t so bad. He was a friend back in college and when I called him up, he said no problem.” He gave her a little shake until she finally smiled and pushed him away.
“Yeah I know. I’m not a baby. It’s just…” She grimaced. “A shrink? This is so not how I wanted to start my first real summer.” A breeze drifted around her body and she pulled her jacket closer. “He better not do something freaky on me though, seriously. I can handle the cards with those blobs and the hmmms and ahhhhs, but please God no other freaky stuff.”
Nick laughed. It was a while before his sister had even attempted a joke. He took this as a good sign. It made the past few days dim a little, fade into the background. The nights when her nightmares had her screaming in terror and wide-eyed with sorrow by turns and when she woke up she wouldn’t speak but would just curl up in a ball and allow herself to be rocked by him. Sleep hung under her eyes in folds. When Nick would try to look into them and to reassure her, he would always catch his breath at the terrible confusion in them. He never liked looking at her in those moments. Her eyes reminded him of their mother, towards the end.
“Nick?” She turned to look at him, frail shoulders pushing up from her body as her neck sought the warmth in her jacket. “Do you think mom would laugh if she saw me here at the crazy bin?” She thought of the picture she had on her nightstand. Her mother holding a baby version of Danielle, laughing at whoever was taking the photo. Danielle imagined it to be mischievous, as if her mother was smirking at some sort of inside joke.
Nick swallowed but then crooked a smile on his face. He tugged her in for a tight hug. “Danielle, I promise you mom would not laugh. She loved you so much and... would have wanted to protect you. And if that meant making you see a doctor, she probably would have done it a while ago.” He started to squeeze her tighter and tighter until she finally screeched and squirmed. Her laughs rang out in the lukewarm air. He let her go with a flourish and dodged the ill-aimed punch to his chest. She stood there, laughing for a moment, hands in pocket. Nick knew she was delaying.
“Well. I just wish I could remember more of her you know? I mean, it’s no fair you were older and not me. I know what she looks like from pictures and stuff, but honestly that’s just not enough.” She shrugged and turned away, but Nick saw the pinched lines around her eyes and the clenched set of her jaw. He reached out and put a hand on the back of her neck, squeezing gently in comfort.
They stood for a moment, gazing past each other. She turned to face him again, her eyes a bit bright, maybe from the sun. “Maybe I should go see dad sometime this month.”
Nick was taken aback. He only remembered to close his mouth when she let out an exasperated sigh. “I never thought I would hear you say that.”
“Well I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I miss mom a lot, I do. And I don’t know if I could ever forgive dad yet. But still. He’s my father and maybe he can tell me more about her.”
“Oh…is that why you want to see him? To ask about mom?”
“Don’t get smart with me. You might be able to find that forgiveness somewhere, but I’m not you, okay? I don’t even know how you manage to see his face even once a week.” She angrily shook out her body, relaxing her neck back and forth. “Okay, I just want to get this over with. You’re picking me up at four, right?”
Nick nodded and knew that no kind of response from him about their dad would be welcome. “Just try you’re best to be nice, sis. Just a few sessions, that’s it, okay?” She waved her hand back at him as she stomped up to the front door. He turned and started his walk back to his car.
Danielle looked back over her shoulder, watching Nick’s retreat. She knew he was worried for her. As any brother would be, I suppose. Even though all they had left was each other, she sometimes felt stifled under his worry. That’s why she chose not to tell him about the little girl she kept seeing everywhere the past three weeks. She opened the door to the center and a cold draft of air-conditioned air slapped her face.
The first time she saw the small mouse-eyed girl was when she arrived home from school and she was sitting on their porch steps. She remembered smiling at her gently, so sure she was some neighborhood kid who got lost. When she asked the girl, whose thumb refused to come out of her mouth, where her mother was she only stared at Danielle mutely. She had on a white, pink flowered night gown and Danielle told the girl it looked like one she used to wear. The child continued to stare, but abruptly got up and ran down the steps and across the street. Danielle dropped her bag to follow, but by the time she swung her side-pack over her head the girl had run behind some house and was no where to be seen.
After that first incident, Danielle could have sworn she had seen the same girl about nine other times. Twice in the grocery store, three times on the main street in town, and two times again at Walgreens. All those times she was dressed differently and had a different mother. Danielle blamed the happenstances on her paranoia. But the last two times she saw the girl without anyone else around, with no crowd to confuse her, no mother to accept the coincidence. Once she was sitting in her chair in her empty History classroom and the other when she caught the subway to her weekend job at Freddie’s Diner. No, it was best if Nick didn’t have something else to worry about. She took a seat in the waiting room, taking her cell phone out to text Callie later about going to the movies later.
~
“So, tell me why you think you are here, Danielle.” The doctor’s voice was nasal and stuffy, but Danielle was pretty sure it was his regular voice. She shifted in the leather chair, too big and too plump to be completely comfortable.
“Because of my dreams. I came here to forget them.” And to get Nick off my back. It was hard to keep her feet on the ground the chair was so high. Instead she settled for toes barely touching the patterned rug.
“Can you elaborate?” He was going to be stubborn, it seemed.
She screwed her face and looked at the ceiling – her eyes followed the swirls of the paint. Her fingers were getting sticky from the leather as they rested under her thighs. “I remember everything about my dreams. I don’t think that’s normal for people.”
“Sometimes it is, Danielle. You might just have an exceptional memory.” The doctor leaned back in his chair. The squeak echoed in the large office, despite the warm cherry wood paneling and books lining the walls.
“Maybe for normal memories. I’m not talking about memories. I’m talking about dreams.” Danielle bit her lip. “These dreams are different too. They are mine…but not really mine. Like I’m remembering someone else’s life and it’s not pleasant. Definitely.”
He leaned forward. Danielle stared past his eager face and at the plaques on the wall behind them, smooth edges glinting in the weak sunlight.
“How about you tell me about one of the dreams you’ve had before, Danielle? It might help of I had an example.” He clicked the silver pen in his hand.
She shook her head, her short brown hair swishing her track jacket. “I…I don’t want to.” She moved one hand to her face and squeezed the bridge of her nose. “I want you to help me to forget them.”
Dr. Gold leaned back into his chair. He toyed with the pen between long fingers. “I’m sorry to say this Danielle, but part of the healing process is to remember. Then you can learn how you can forget and move on. That’s why you are here. Nick tells me you are losing a lot of sleep over this. He’s worried about you.”
“Then can you help me forget them? Can you?” She stared at him, no accusation, only a deep tiredness unusual in one barely out of highschool.
Dr. Gold only nodded but that seemed to satisfy her. She pulled her feet off the ground and tucked them under her small body.
“Okay. Here goes. It always starts with me at a train station. I’m standing there in my old pajamas, just looking at this huge train in front of me. It’s silver and smooth like chrome. Sometimes I see reflections in it, like there are people around me. Next to me. But no one is around me, it’s just the reflections” She closed her eyes, licked her lips.
“All of a sudden I have a ticket in my hand. It’s blank though, when I look at it. The perforations are really sharp and sometimes I cut myself accidently on the edges.” She opened her eyes and looked at her thumb, prodding it gently, as if trying to find the invisible cut lines. “So I suck my thumb.” She stopped here. She tucked her thumb into her fist and placed her hand on her lap.
“This is where the dreams change. I walk to go into the train and as soon as I get on, it begins to move.” She stood up and began to pace the room. Her steps were fluid and slow, like a lost fish.
“Dr. Gold. I have never been to this train station before. But I guess that’s not the most important part. This is where things change in all my dreams. I get dropped off to a different place each time. Sometimes a green plain, others some desert and once in a playroom full of kids I don’t know.” Her voice started to rush now, tumbling out of her mouth and two patches of color appeared under her round eyes. “Okay, but first I’m on the train and it’s going real fast, but there is nothing outside the windows. Like just blank nothing. Then it stops and –“Danielle tripped on the throw rug and stumbled. She cried out as her knee hit the floor.
Dr. Gold rushed over, and placing his hands under her arms he helped her to her feet.
“Are you okay, Danielle? Here. Let me help you up.” Danielle stood and winced as her knee protested. She sat heavily in the leather chair again, thinking of how Nick always said her clumsiness reminded him of mom. It was the only reason she sometimes reveled in her horrible coordination. It was a haphazard connection to a woman she barely knew.
“So do you want to start again?” asked Dr. Gold.
Her knee still throbbed a bit, red skin bleeding just a bit but not warranting a Band Aid. “Yeah, where was I? Oh yeah. The train.” She licked her lips. “This one is the most colorful. I get off the train and I’m stepping onto a really bright green plain. I think it’s a plain ‘cause there is nothing else besides grass and it’s rising and falling in the breeze. I know this is going to sound funny but I think the grass is waving to me. So well, my dream self waves back. Suddenly I find myself walking and I get the feeling I am walking towards something, but I don’t know what.”
“What do you feel at this point in the dream?” Dr. Gold was writing in his pad.
“Well, nothing stupendous or amazing. Just kind of like a confused peace. I’m comfortable here, walking along. Pretty soon I see something in the distance. It’s really bright against the blue sky, like a metallic shiny surface. Well the second I notice this thing, suddenly I’m right there. It’s a tree, a silver tree.”
“Mmmkay.”
Danielle paused, wondering what mmmkay could possibly mean. “So it’s a smallish tree and looks smooth to the touch. I put my hand on it. I stretch out my hand and instead of my hand…it’s a little girl’s hand. I’m pretty sure it’s mine still though. I touch the tree and as soon as I do it starts to bleed.”
The pen paused over the pad. “I know it sounds weird, but well it does. I keep patting the tree, as if my dream self wanted to stop the blood from leaking out of the tree. ‘Cause that’s what it’s doing. It’s leaking. I’m panicking now, but I look up and there’s like a huge ink blot over my head, over the tree. It’s spreading and spreading and I just get this feeling that something is wrong. That if I can’t put the blood back into the tree the sky will keep turning black. I sometimes wake up crying at this point, like the kind of crying that makes it hard to catch your breath. Soon the blood is dry. It’s just stuck there now, just dried blobs. I touch it with my clean hand and close my eyes. When I open them again, I’m in a different place.”
“What place is this?” Dr. Gold stopped writing. Danielle was vaguely reminded of her Nick and his somber voice.
“It’s a desert. The tree is gone and I am just touching the hot air. The sand burns on my bare feet. So instead of walking this time, I just sit and stroke the ground. The sand feels rough and hurts my little fingers. The breeze it still there and I can see my pajamas, the ones I wore as a kid, being tugged by it. I am not scared this time. This time I am so sad it hurts to wake up. I feel like I lost something I was looking for and that no one really cares that I just lost it.” Danielle found it hard to exactly place the feeling. But she knew it was something her friend Callie might find hard to relate to. After all, they still had their parents.
“Is there any more to your dreams?”
“Oh. Well yes. Almost. Sometimes I dream that I’m in a play room and I see a little girl in the corner. She is sitting all by herself and my dream self is trying to play with her. But she only sits there. That’s all she does. But it scares me anyways. Scares me so bad that I wake up and I can still see her sitting there.” Danielle paused again. Images of the girl she had seen lately sprung into her head, unbidden. “Everyone has dreams I know. But…well. I think mine are something more. I sometimes see this girl even when I’m awake.”
Dr. Gold looked startled at this. He clicked his pen and momentarily the only sound in the room was his furious scribble on the pad.
“It’s hard to say. Dreaming, and the implications it has on the psyche, is an indeterminate science. There is no branch of science that can completely map out the processes of the mind. That is why a lot of doctors try to understand dreams from outside the dream. They look at environment, family history, even other factors like situational traits and other such things. It’s not an exact science.” Dr. Gold paused here, considering something. He cleared his throat and for the first time he looked at a spot other than Danielle’s face.
“Your brother told me a bit about what happened with your parents when you guys were younger. It must have been hard to find out about your mother and what your father did.” His gaze was uncomfortable.
“I was so young. I don’t even remember the actual thing. In fact, I think it was my brother who told me what happened years later.” She scrunched her brows together, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice. She wasn’t entirely sure it was sadness, but maybe a form of anger. “I remember he told me later that I had been at my neighbor’s house that day, playing.” She shrugged nonchalantly. “Of course, kids don’t have memories that young, right? I don’t even remember my neighbor’s face.”
Dr. Gold’s brows drew together, a confused look on his face. He opened his mouth to say something, and instead locked it back together just to shake his head. “I think this session is over for now, Danielle. I have someone else coming in at five p.m. I’d love to continue our talk…next Friday, same time?” He stood up to show her out the door. Seconds after she left, he walked back to his desk and dialed the phone.
“Hi, Nick? This is Dr. Gold. I need to clarify something with you briefly…”
~
Danielle sat outside on the steps, waiting. She leaned back against the top step and rested her elbows on the gritty cement. The sun was lower in the sky, but its warmth still penetrated the roads, the buildings and the steps she was on. She closed her eyes against the dimming intensity and underneath her lids the sunlight patterned randomly. She was mentally trying to follow the bright yellow, blinking spot even though she knew it would never stay in one spot. There was a faint hum of traffic a few streets away. The care center was not really a hospital, but collection of older houses, renovated and joined together by walkways and smaller gardens in between. It was set back from the busier roads, and nestled comfortably in the quiet neighborhood of Sheraton. The sound of an approaching car caused her to open her eyes.
Nick stopped at the bottom of the walkway, his hand holding his phone to his ear. She jumped up and lightly ran the distance to the car. As she pulled open the door and sat, he snapped the phone shut and turned to smile at her.
“So, how’d it go? Not too terrible, right?” He put the car into gear and turned back out onto the street.
“Oh, well. He did the shrink act good, clicking pens and mmmkays and stuff like that.” She fiddled with her rings on her fingers. “But I think I feel better for talking. Surprisingly. He wants to see me again next Friday.” She waited for him to laugh.
“Yeah, that’s fine with me. Sure.” He cleared his throat.
“God, you wouldn’t believe the huge fall I took though! Tripped over my own two feet, it was so embarrassing.” She smirked and shook her head.
“Mom would’ve been proud, that’s for sure. Taking after her and all. She always said to me that her little girl would be just like her father.”
Danielle felt cold now, all laugher gone. “Figures.”
Nick glanced over at his sister, sitting glumly back in her seat now. He forced a chuckle and said, “Well, I never remember dad being that way. So maybe she got it wrong, huh?” He coughed again and said, “So, what do you want to do for dinner?”
That night, after spaghetti and red sauce with garlic bread, they sat outside on the front porch. It was cool out already and both were wrapped in blankets taken from the couch. Cars passed by, their sound of passing the only noise besides the occasionally voices from the other houses. Some raised in laughter, some questioning, a TV voice here and there. Danielle shrugged the blanket closer to her body and tucked her feet underneath. It was past being late, but she didn’t want to sleep yet. Nick knew she probably had some coffee brewing in the kitchen.
“I love nights like these. Don’t you, Nick?”
He grunted in agreement.
“You’ve been quiet ever since we got home. Is something going on with the new girl at work? Chelsea or Zoe or something?”
“Chelsea. And no. Nothing really.” He scooted the chair to face her. A strange look crossed his face and Danielle wondered if he was thinking about Chelsea. Instead he locked his somber brown gaze on her and asked, “Danielle, what exactly did I tell you, when you were like ten, about where you were when mom died?”
Danielle was taken back. “You said I had been over at the neighbors, playing Barbie or something. You said mom had sent me over there after calling them up.” Silence fell between the two of them. Danielle shifted uncomfortably, trying to remember that day her brother told her about mom being gone, “taking a very long nap” he said. She only nodded, her little face scrunched with the effort of understanding why someone would want to take a nap for a long time.
Later, when she was old enough to understand and when she got too indignant to be left in the dark for no good reason, he told her about dad and the knife. Something about whiskey and accusations of another guy too. Yet dad always had a thing for whiskey and shouting. It was never anything but threats though. She remembered Nick telling her that towards the end he got worse, but she always figured it was because he had lost that job. But she never connected the dots. She only understood that her mom was gone and it was her dad’s fault, all his fault and she still felt the bitterness in the back of throat like bile.
“Nick. What’s this about?”
“What if…what if I wasn’t entirely truthful when I said that?” His voice was quiet, a whisper that bordered on the reverential. Danielle was silent.
“What if I told you that so you could have a better memory instead of the real memory?”
“I don’t get it. Nick, you better tell me something quick or I am going to go crazy.”
“You were so small. When I heard the shout, I ran over to the room. But…you were already there, Danielle. Mom was trying to protect-… well, when she had passed, you had crawled on top of mom. You were trying to pull the blade out, but only managed to knock it around a bit. There was blood all over your hands. It was scary. When you saw me, you started to cry.” His voice was shadowed. “Dad was so shocked, I think he became sober in an instant if that’s even possible. He didn’t resist when the police came.” She could hear the guilt of such a secret screaming from his mouth, but no sound came out. She turned to look out onto the street again.
“Protect me? What do you mean?”
“I tried to clean you up the best I could before the cops came. I didn’t want them to take you away without me. So I brought you over to the neighbors. It was a birthday party for their kid. You stopped crying immediately and well…you were just so happy.”
“Why was mom trying to protect me…and not herself?” Danielle was surprised at how loud her voice sounded in her ears.
“Dad wasn’t trying to just kill mom. He was aiming to kill both of you.” A car drove by, the sound of the bad muffler cutting through the atmosphere like a blunt axe.
Her voice was thick now. “But…why?”
“He found out mom was having an affair. You were the result, Danielle. Mom died protecting you.”
An image came rushing back. The image of the girl she saw and suddenly she knew the face. Her face. And then there she was, sitting on her lap and Danielle drew the silent girl into her arms.