Small Suburban Incident

A tree falls into a swimming pool. It is early, the morning. The wife is in the kitchen. The dogs through the glass door outside jump up at once. I can’t describe those first seconds. The surface of the pool is or was covered with a thermal blanket, some sort of synthetic solar sandwich, a bold plastic playtime blue. This is or was the sound. The tree covers it. Or so I imagine. I am not there.

Her husband could have been swimming, the wife tells me.

I listen to her voice.

The grandchildren might have been there, she says.

Under the words.

It could have fallen on the house, she says.

The separate story of the sound of her voice.

Don’t touch anything, I tell her. I’ll come over.

But I don’t. I’m not well. I’ve been ill. I’m just that day out of hospital. I don’t trust myself driving. I’m too tired. I want to but I can’t. I’m still full of medication. I’m sorry. Please. I’ll try tomorrow. I’ll be better tomorrow. I have to lie down.

So it’s the morning of the next day before I do, before I can. I park. The gate is open. I start down the side of the house. But I don’t need to look. I know. It’s obvious. A mere handful of hours. I am already too late.

Which is, of course, all the better.

In retrospective confirmation.

If I ever doubted.

In the killing essential sense. 

I stand with the wife by the side of the pool. The husband darts, directing. Men. Ropes. Boughs and branches feeding into the scream of a shredder, furious as a factory, half and more already gone, as vanished as history, so speedily removed.

The pool, of course, is emptied of its water, a pit at our standing feet, its tiled lining in whatever state or not of stricken condition unopen to the eye under its covering of ruptured plastic, its present flooring of temporary playtime blue.

Already no tree remains inside.

No part.

No portion.

The noise.

The activity.

You can’t imagine the efficiency. 

But to itemization.

The tree is or was their famous shading peppercorn, by double and more the age of the pool excavated in careful construction who even remembers when at its seemingly forever implanted feet, the deep end, the diving board, the silver ladder to hoist yourself out in endless carnival yet again, a business of shedding leaves, of course, a bore, a bother, an endless ongoing daily chore, but who would begrudge it, how could you, its sound, its shade, its seasons scent, its moving mosaic to the surface of water so gracefully imparted, the wealth of water by its standing enchanted, enhanced.

A bare back fence now stands revealed.

A commonalty of crowding neighbours.

A shabbiness of shining sheds.

So you might imagine how imposing, how awesome, its spread, the size, the grandeur, the glory, its fall, its finish, its sudden crashing weight.

A tree surgeon spotted it, the wife tells me.

The husband is elsewhere. Busy. Never still, No time to talk. Too much to do.

Actually, we called him for another tree, the wife tells me. The pine. In the front. I was worried it was losing too much sap. He looked at that, and then I brought him round here. I don’t know why. I just did. That tree’s falling, he said. He saw it straight away. It was the first thing he said. He was very nervous. He wouldn’t even stand here. There was a chance, he said, if we cut away about half, a chance to save the tree. Unless it rains first, he said.

I look at the trunk, above the pool, how it has torn, the earth around, where it has tipped.

It rained that night, the wife said.

And then a shrug, a smile, a something.

We saved a thousand dollars, she says. 

The returned tree surgeon in discussion with the husband is advising now placement braces, props, the trunk made firm against further slippage, damage to the pool, danger to his men.

A burly man, the tree surgeon, broad, physical, sloping.

The husband nods, impatient, moving, every least skerrick of tree-toppling tantrum in scrupulous removal, let’s do it, let’s go.

Of cost in needless pruning, she means, of course, the wife.

Ever sensible of housekeeping cost.