Ev is in my back seat for all of five minutes before she starts blowing away on her penny whistle. “That was ‘The Ten Penny Bit,’” she says. We’re caught between a white minivan and a pickup truck with mud dripping in chunks from the back bumper. The street is clotted with movement and picket signs, people rallying against a company that lost three employees to suicide in the past month, demanding action. I’m trying to get to the little art gallery behind the company tower, where I’m meeting with a curator who refused to give me her name over the phone.
“Claire,” Ev says, “that was ‘The Ten Penny Bit.’”
“Yeah. I heard.”
Ev is my twelve year-old sister. I’ve just picked her up from school, and she’s looking forward to an evening of testing songs on me before the funeral, but first I have to pretend to be Bronagh, my photographer friend, and convince the gallery to exhibit her work.
Sometimes, when I look at Ev, I see a girl with a fawn-brown mop of hair and dreams of headlining a Celtic music festival. Other times, I see a three-trunked river birch, limbs strong and solid, young roots in old soil. I’m sure I have a tree inside me too, but so far I’ve only been able to see everyone else’s.
“Play me the one you’ve been working on,” I say. In the rear-view mirror, I see Ev square her shoulders like a conductor about to welcome an audience.
“Ladies and gents,” she says, “the theme of the British Navy.”
She squeaks her way through the tune as the center of the street begins to clear. A protester on the sidewalk makes eye contact and twirls her finger in a circle, meaning roll down my window. She doesn’t know I’m secretly one of them, but the road is finally open and I’m starting to regret asking my sister to stumble through a song that’s miles outside her wheelhouse, so I pretend not to notice and ease on the gas once the pickup in front of us lurches forward, vomiting exhaust.
The gallery is in a transition phase – donation box filled with empty space, hollow depressions in the wall where paintings might hang, an opaque plastic curtain flung across the alcove in the back of the room. The curator is a woman in her early thirties with long coppery braids and a red knit cap. She’s also a wild Norway Pine.
When I enter, with Ev and her whistle behind me, the curator asks, “Are you Bronagh?”
I picture the contents of my bag, struggling to recall any incriminating documents with the name Claire on them.
“Yeah,” I say. I remove the sleeve of photos, all taken by the real Bronagh, from my bag. Ev repeats the first six notes of the British Navy song, squeaks, then starts again. Stuck to the photo sleeve is this morning’s receipt from the cafe where I’ve bought my daily sfogliatella from the same barista for the past two years. But she wasn’t at work this morning, and as I remove the receipt from the sleeve, I make the mistake of looking at the price: two-fifty. I’ve never paid more than a dollar. Guess I wasn’t listening today.
We go through the pictures one by one. The curator’s favorite is an image of Bronagh’s hand holding a ceramic plate covered in saltpeter and orchids; the skin of Bronagh’s thumb whitening under the nail, a little ring-shaped tan line beneath the knuckle. I like the way Bronagh makes the viewer wonder whether the details are even worth thinking about. The curator doesn’t say why she likes the photo.
I met Bronagh at a birding club during the summer between junior and senior year of high school. She had purple bangs and a septum ring that she habitually flicked with her middle finger. We did our first Backyard Bird Count together, snowshoeing up the nearby escarpment, tossing Bronagh’s camera back and forth. She raced to the edge of a precipice and snapped a string of photos of a harrier hawk, sending lumps of snow tumbling over the edge, and in that moment a two-petal ash bloomed from her chest, white flowers spilling from her limbs.When I eventually explained to her how I see people, that since I was a child I’ve seen the trees, she squeezed my elbow, and the warmth felt like the first real human contact I’d ever had.
•
Bronagh’s black lace-up dress is slung over the porch railing. I fold it and bring it inside. We won’t be going to the actual funeral; Bronagh has a plan that involves camping near a frog pond behind her house and burning things, which I thought might be a good experience for Ev, who rarely has an audience and almost never goes anywhere with me. Sometimes, with Ev, I feel like there’s a bed of coals between us.
Everything in Bronagh’s house is carpeted, including the bathroom and the kitchen. The smell of chocolate overwhelms me as I enter, and the counters are covered in mostly-finished baking projects: a tin of chocolate fudge, drippy vanilla truffles, mason jars filled with eggnog (one already emptied).
Ev asks where Bronagh is. “She would have heard us come in,” I say. “Gotta be outside somewhere.”
Ev twirls her penny whistle like a baton, only half-caring what we’re talking about.
A pair of Chuck Taylors and two heavy-duty boots rest on the little rug by the front door.
“Her shoes are all here,” I say.
Bronagh’s house sits on eighty-five acres of field, forest, and creek. It was owned by her grandmother, who lived to be over one hundred years old and was part of a conglomerate of pellars and witches who made medicine and performed conjuring’s on the property. Grandma passed the property down to Bronagh, whose parents wanted no part of it, and who herself would never have good enough credit to own a house without the bequest. I used to help Bronagh pay her student loans and credit card bills, but after I mentioned not understanding what some of her expenses even were, much less why she needed them, she’s told me to mind my own business when the first of the month comes around.
Most summers, we go down to the granite wall where Bronagh’s ancestors sat around their fire and worked their magic. We smear paint across the rocks, ignite our own fires, and play stupid games. I’ve promised Ev that in the coming summer, she can get a little band together and we’ll dance to her whistle tunes.
“She’s probably at a sex dungeon,” Ev says.
“I really hope you don’t say things like that in school.”
Ev blows a raspberry and walks to the living room. I spend a minute refrigerating the jars and the fudge, and then Bronagh comes in, feet bare, dyed black hair hanging in a rain-flecked sheet, brown corduroy pants split at one knee. Her cheeks are wet.
“Hey,” she says. “You look fine.”
•
The funeral is for Jill, the third member of our birding club. I didn’t know her well. She was from suburban New England, and she and I never really gave each other a chance. The first time we met, she asked if that was really what I was going to wear on a hike. I still tried, though: I shared my carrot sticks with her, as well as my dreams of possibly taking up a Theatre major. She asked what roles I’d done, and I mentioned filming myself leaping across rubber alligators in my backyard when I was nine. Jill had done Anybody for Tea? and Arsenic and Old Lace. She crunched the last of my carrots and looked past me at the High Peaks.
But Jill and Bronagh jived in their own way, and even though I never understood Bronagh’s attachment to her, I’d see evidence of their all-nighters when I’d come over to pick up Bronagh for hikes or trips to the diner. Once, at breakfast, after not seeing me for a week, Bronagh said, “I wish Jill was here.”
I had a mouthful of Eggs Benedict. “Were here,” I corrected. I haven’t eaten Eggs Benedict since.
When I heard about Jill’s car accident, I let the brief shock of it soak into me, then went back to the comic book I was reading.
•
I loop my arms around Bronagh. She’s not handling it well. She slowly hooks her arms around my waist, her embrace flimsy and noncommittal, and she’s about to speak when Ev bolts into the room, just now realizing she has another audience member.
“Ladies and gents,” she says, “the theme of the British Navy.” She screeches her way through the opening notes again, losing it in the same place as before.
“Play the one about the birds,” Bronagh says.“It’s one of your classics.”
Ev shakes her head. “It’s just not really where I am right now, y’know?”
•
Down at the wall, I struggle to start a fire while Bronagh dips her bare hands in seafoam-green paint. The fire pit is ringed with mud, so I roll up my pant legs and step barefoot into the gooey patch. I squat, swipe match after match against a steel flint. Bronagh touches her fingers to the rocks. Ev sits atop the wall, sipping eggnog from a jar. The whistle is up her sleeve somewhere.
We’ve been quiet for a while.
“Tell me something you’re thinking about,” Bronagh says.
I strike another match. No flame.“I realized that my favorite barista has been undercharging me for sfogliatella.”
“Those weird lobster tail things?”
As she rubs the image of a partridge into the rock, I can see the ash tree inside her, solid limbs swooping.
“Yeah. I just like the combo of crunch and cream.” I don’t know why, but when it comes to Bronagh, I always make excuses for the things I like.
“What’s the big deal about the undercharge? She probably has an employee discount.”
“Right, but why?”
“She works there, dweeb.”
“I mean why give me the discount?”
“Because she likes you. People like each other, Claire. In fact, not noticing was kinda shitty of you.” She touches up the crude green wing. “Come on,” she says. “Sun’s disappearing soon. I need a flame to finish this.”
Ev tosses a pebble at me and asks if we can roast marshmallows.
“Ask Bronagh.”
Bronagh sinks her hands in the paint bucket again. “I’m not your boss. But I do need your hands.”
My underarms are sweating. I think the temperature is actually rising.
“You haven’t asked me about the gallery,” I say to Bronagh. “I dragged my beater through the gauntlet for you.”
She squats and starts mixing more paint. Blue this time. I just want to be able to give her good news.
“Tell me,” she says. She drowns her left hand up to the wrist, and the paint swallows it.
“The curator wants your photos.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t look at me. “Good.” She streaks the image of another bird alongside the first, this one with a long neck. She goes up on her toes to paint the bird’s spiny crest.
Ev soon hops off the wall and joins her.
Once neither is looking at me, I remove the fire-starter square and the plastic gas lighter I swiped from Bronagh’s mantle, and I get a tiny flame going under my tinder pile. I fold my sleeves a few times. Within an hour, the sun is gone, my skin is blotched with purple and green paint, and our wall of birds is glowing. Bronagh crouches in front of our work, looks from one image to the next. She says, “Bustard, cassowary, partridge, shearwater, harrier hawk,” and tosses a small cherry log onto the blaze.
She goes into her pack, and I hear the clinking of glass. She passes around bottles of homemade virgin St. Clement’s, and we all stare at the fire, taking short pulls and waiting for some kind of moment. Eventually, Bronagh says, “You’re an asshole, Jill.”
Ev lifts her whistle and starts into a piece I recognize as “The Bird Song,” the one Bronagh asked for in the house. Bronagh removes a pocket-sized photo of Jill from her corduroys, puts her lips to it, then drops it into the fire.
Later, when I’m curled up and dozing off, I make sure everyone else falls asleep before I succumb. I want to remember this exact image – the birds, the paint, the drowned coals – exactly how it was, but I’m sure it will be gone by morning.
•
I wake up, tucked into my sleeping bag, the sun rising and the bird paintings staring at me. My neck feels like dry pasta. I can hear Ev’s familiar snore. My barista’s face burns behind my eyes, her long dreads tied behind her head, hands pushing an overstuffed pastry over a glass counter, bracelets rattling. I rub my face. Our empty bottles are racked together beneath the birds, and I can still taste the lemony drink on my teeth. Bronagh’s crouched by the frog pond, doing something with her reflection.
When I walk over to her, I see that she’s hacking her hair off with a steak knife. Little black tufts with red-brown roots float on the water. Today is Jill’s funeral, but Bronagh has her own ideas about burial.
“We’re standing on the Cobbles,” Bronagh says. “You can’t see them because they’re buried a hundred feet under the dirt, but six cobblestone roads used to converge here. And this is where the witches would meet. They’d wear their bird emblems, touch hands, and just know each other.”
I picture a congregation of people that look like Bronagh, but without bad dye jobs. They’ve all got talons fastened to their cloaks with fishing line. I see their hands, and I feel the urge to tangle my fingers in Bronagh’s, but there’s the knife.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says. “About how you and Ev don’t always seem like sisters.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, you look alike, but – y’know?” She whips the knife again, and a long strip of hair tumbles into the pond. “It’s like two strangers who happen to be walking at the same pace.”
Ev’s much younger than me and still lives with our parents. They had her when I was in middle school and forbade me from using the word “mistake” when my friends asked about her. It’s not that I don’t feel something for her. We just never really lived together or shared a room, and now I’ve got my own apartment, walls plastered with super heroines and hand-scrawled excerpts from dead woman poets. I assume Ev thinks of me as a cool aunt. But I don’t think she feels the urge to grab my hand.
Bronagh pinches a glob of blue shaving cream from a rubber tube and lathers both sides of her head. She’s left the long hair in the center of her scalp untouched.
She asks if Ev even knows about the trees.
“It’s never come up in conversation,” I say.
She snorts and runs a plastic razor along the skin above each ear until she’s left with nothing but a soft Mohawk. “Here,” she says, handing me another tube full of gunk. “Make me pretty.”
I squeeze the tube, bend forward, and run my hands through Bronagh’s snarl of greasy knots. The gel melts in. Behind us, I hear the first notes of “The Rakes of Mallow,” and I know Ev’s awake. I look more closely at Bronagh as I stand her hair on end: clumps of shed fur around her, leg hair streaked with mud, scalp abraded, knife plunged into the ground beside her foot. She keeps eye contact the entire time, as if I’m the one worth studying.
“I have a question,” she says. “When you look at my tree right now, does it have a few shaved branches? Are nuts toppling down? Am I going to seed?”
•
I chauffeur Ev and Bronagh out of the woods. Bronagh has filled a plastic cup with ashes from the fire – bits of the wood we burned, and the dust that used to be the photo of Jill. She’s clutching the cup to her chest, staring out the car window, watching the hemlocks and maples become streetlights, telephone polls, and other mockeries of themselves.
I pull a granola bar from the side pocket and hand it to Ev, who sits in the passenger seat with her legs crossed. Her eyes are closed, so I set the bar on her lap and keep my eyes on the road.
“I’ll get you something better at the coffee shop,” I say.
She pretends to sleep.
“Hey,” Bronagh says from behind me. “We’re here for Jill.”
I look at her face in the rear-view mirror. She’s gazing into the cup.
We’re heading to an eight-level parking garage, the one attached to the Company’s tower, so that Bronagh can spread the ashes from the top. Apparently, Jill once mentioned during a game of billiards, with a cue in one hand and a whiskey shot in the other, that when she was gone she wanted to be part of the city. This is Bronagh’s interpretation, which she claims is truer than placing the body in a box and whimpering with strangers. Earlier, she asked what I’d see if we’d gone to what she calls the “fake funeral”: as in, would Jill just be a stump.
I imagine it: Jill, a wet log on a massive pile, termites crawling beneath her bark, wasps nesting in her torso. None of this is very pleasant.
I never really knew what Bronagh and Jill’s relationship was.When I’d walk in after their sleepovers, I’d find a sink full of dishes, sleeping bags touching on the floor. They had their own inside jokes, their own language, which Bronagh never attempted to include me in. Once, I watched Bronagh lick her finger and rub a streak of dirt from Jill’s cheek. Jill stared at Bronagh’s eyes the whole time. My neck felt hot.
We glide along the network of veins that leads to the city’s center, and there’s the art gallery, and there’s the protest again – an entire forest of trunks and limbs that would never be together in nature – and there’s the gilded tower from which three people’s bodies rushed into the world, and there’s the coffee shop with its green awning and outdoor tables and a sign that says Open Mic Tonight, and inside is my barista’s face and hair and bracelets and a honey locust growing through the center of her chest, and right now all that matters is the dollar-fifty that’s been missing from my pastry receipts for the past year, and the weight of being between all these things at once is like millstone.
•
We climb the flights of concrete stairs, Bronagh in the front, taking multiple steps in great leaps. Ev is behind me, yawning, looking at the pavement every time I turn around. By the fifth flight, I’m wishing Bronagh would just trip and spill the ashes, or decide this is far enough.
I wait up for Ev, who still doesn’t really look at me. “Hey,” I say, “are you having a good time?” It already feels like the wrong thing to say.
“Eh.”
“How’s everything else going?”
“Like what?”
“Like anything. School.”
“I don’t know. Fine.”
“I’m always here if there’s anything you want to tell me about.”
Another yawn. “I had a rock poking my side all night.”
Bronagh calls to us from the last landing. “We’re not really supposed to be here,” she says. I expect her to finish with So let’s get it over with, but no.
The sun pushes down on the roof of the garage. No one is at work, but below, I can see the crowd of trees clutching picket signs in their limbs, some looking up at us. Bronagh moves toward the edge of the roof, tells us where to stand, and I think of bodies again, of trunks toppling.
Bronagh holds the cup to her heart, whispers something I can’t make out.
Ev says, “What kind of person was Jill?”
I think about it. “I don’t know.” It’s true.
We watch Bronagh standing out there, the tails of her Mohawk snapping in the wind. She keeps pouring words into the cup, and I want to think my sister and I are sharing something now, watching this thing that nobody’s ever seen.
“I didn’t move away because of you, or anything,” I say. “You know that, right?”
As soon as I say it, Bronagh finishes speaking to Jill and turns the cup over. Dust and ashes shoot into the sky and are gone.
Still watching Bronagh, Ev lifts her whistle and starts into “General Taylor.” She doesn’t answer my question. Her eyes say she heard me, but that we have more important things to worry about now.
“Claire,” Bronagh says when she turns and comes back to me. “What kind of tree was Jill?”
I don’t know why she’s never asked me about this before. I tell her about witch-hazel, whose flowers bloom in winter and stud the frozen landscape with something worth looking at. She puts one arm around my shoulders and kisses my cheek. Once Ev’s song ends, Bronagh heads toward the stairwell without looking at us, and we follow.
What I don’t tell Bronagh is that I never saw Jill’s tree. I looked, but it wasn’t there. I expected a little silver birch or a mountain hemlock. Instead, nothing. I wonder if that’s why Jill and I couldn’t live in the same world: we weren’t the same species. Maybe she also looked at me and saw nothing.
I don’t dwell on it. I don’t think we’ll ever talk about her again.
•
Here’s what happens tonight: we find ourselves sitting in the coffee shop’s identical cushioned chairs, facing the five-by-five nub of wood that passes for a stage. I realize for the first time today that the three of us are still covered in paint. I look down at my feet: shins splotched with green, knees a smear of red and brown. I laugh out loud to myself, then turn to Bronagh, whose hands are still gloves of blue, to share it with her, but my seat is just far enough away that I can’t reach her.
My barista, in a dark polo shirt, has seen me, and stands alongside our table as Ev, onstage, pumps out the final notes of “The Ten Penny Bit.”
“That’s my sister,” I say.
My barista nods. Ev takes a big breath.
“Hey,” I whisper. “You’ve been undercharging me.”
She looks at me. My stomach constricts. “Yeah,” she says, and then sets her hand on my shoulder. I feel the warmth of skin, the softness of willow leaves, and I want to say it’s like the second real human contact I’ve ever felt, but that’s not quite it. I open my mouth, and she shushes me.
Ev speaks into the microphone. “Ladies and gents,” she says. “The theme of the British Navy.”
Bronagh asked me earlier what I saw after we chopped her hair off. Well, I said, what do you see when you look at trees? You know what they look like, how they grow. But no, you don’t go to seed, because you’re not going to sleep through the winter. More of you can never be made.
Richard Hartshorn is a genderqueer writer living on the Rensselaer Plateau. His work has appeared in The Occulum, Drunken Boat, Gambling the Aisle, and other publications. He holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.