He didn’t even hesitate. “Yeah.”
I experienced a rush of pleasure at my crack forensic psychoanalytic skills, but doubt crept in. Why was I being so nosy?
Time to change the subject. “What did you do today?”
What did you do today?I regretted the question the moment it was out of my mouth. What did I think? I was his girlfriend? And more importantly, did I care what he’d done today?
He didn’t say anything. Fair enough. It had been a stupid question, and he didn’t owe anyone, including me, anaccounting of his day. “Look at that cloud.” I pointed. “It looks like a horse.”
He eyed the cloud in question, but he said, “Today I tried to play this song called ‘Lemon Tree’ on the keyboard in my cabin.”
Ooh. The “Lemon Tree” mystery. “Yeah?” I said, trying to pitch my tone as interested but not too interested. “I know that song.” Of course, I left out that I only knew it because I’d eavesdropped on his conversation with his student a week and a bit ago and then gone on an investigative deep dive. “Peter, Paul and Mary, right?”
“There are several versions of it, but yeah. My mom was obsessed with that Peter, Paul and Mary recording. You know them, right? We sang a bunch of their songs at the campfire the other night.”
“Right. You’re having a 1960s protest-movement-music moment.”
“Apparently I am. My mom grew a lemon tree in a pot. It was inspired by the song. I always thought it was ironic because the song warns against love and attachment, right? But she was obsessed with that tree. It was the center of our lives. It gave one lemon, once, when I was maybe ten or eleven. It never fruited again, though it never died. She bought all kinds of special plant food for it. She would decorate it for Christmas. In the summer, she’d make us carry it down five flights of stairs every day so it could get sun, and then back up every night. In the winter, when the heat got cut off, she’d put it in the prime spot next to this electric heater we ran off a generator. It used to… well, it used to enrage me.” He was still looking at the horse cloud, and he seemed truly perplexed. “I don’t even know why. It was just a tree.”
The why of it seemed pretty clear to me. “She was buying plant food, but not human food. She prioritized a tree over you, her child.”
He blew out a breath and nodded. “I don’t know why it smarted so much, though, because she did that in all kinds of ways.”
“Maybe because the tree was a physical object. A tangible manifestation of her screwed-up priorities. Possibly also because it was so absurd—a lemon tree in New York. It’s already a lost cause.”
“She was Don Quixote tilting at windmills,” he said.
“Don Quixote tilting at windmills while her children raised themselves and fucking starved.” My voice had gone all vehement there, and it must have startled him. He transferred his attention from the sky to me.
“It’s shameful,” I said, and I didn’t care if I sounded overly invested. Teddy and I might have gotten off to a rocky start, but as with the Concrete Temple “divorce,” I was firmly on Team Teddy now.
I really needed to tell him about my ill-fated date with Scott. It was starting to feel like I was keeping something from him, something he had a right to know.
“Still,” he said, “I don’t want to be the kind of person whose every move is secretly motivated by the fact that his mommy hurt his feelings.”
“Well, I think that’s unfair to trauma sufferers worldwide, and I think you’re talking about a lot more than hurt feelings, but I understand.” I hesitated over whether I should say more. Who did I think I was? A shrink?Hisshrink?
No, I was a wannabe crone, and crones didn’t censor themselves. “I just think maybe the way to not be someone whoseevery move is secretly motivated by the fact that his mother hurt him is to stop resisting.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let the feeling—your mom was shitty to you; she hurt you—be. Let yourself feel it. Lean into it, even. Then maybe you can discharge it and it will have less power. Resisting something can take a lot of energy, can make it more important than it is—or than you want it to be. But if you let yourself feel it, maybe you’ll be able to let it go?”
“I don’t think I can let myself feel it without talking to my sister.”
“Then talk to your sister.”
“What ifshe’snot ready to feel it?”
“There’s only one way to find out.” I paused. “But also, what do I know? Don’t listen to me.”
“I think you know a lot.”
I was stupidly pleased by that statement. “So you say youtriedto play ‘Lemon Tree’? What does that mean? You don’t remember it?”
“Oh, I remember it.”
“Where’s your mom now?” I asked when he didn’t elaborate about the song. “If you don’t mind my asking. Have you ever, I don’t know, tried to confront her?”
