Leaves

I brought the lawn mower out on Saturday to vacuum up the leaves. It’s mid November and I wondered if that would be the last cut of grass till the spring, but when I woke up on Sunday the leaves had fallen again and I was annoyed with myself for jumping the gun. It reminds me of the year when I lived on my father-in-law’s estate.

I had only been in Ireland for a week at the time, and I don’t think they knew what to make of me, a failed writer taking a break.

They seemed to like me. They made a point to have my book set out on the coffee table when we got in. It looked so out of place there. I didn’t see them pick it up once. It was more of a table dressing.

The trip hadn’t been planned. It came about as Clare was having a bit of a pre-midlife crisis.

All that year we had maintained the illusion of a content marriage. From the dreary God-forsaken months of January and February to the cruel promise of Spring in a frosty March and then its sudden appearance in April when blossoms and blooms danced forward into May until they withered in the wrathful summer sun of June, July, and August which left them stooped over and penitent as if kneeling to pray for the onset of Autumn.

There were no arguments, no stern looks, and nothing flung anywhere.

I hadn’t been writing much and had been living a mostly sedentary existence. Living off a strange concoction of beer, coffee and cigarettes in no particular daily order.

Clare was working hard and coming home exhausted and asking how the new book was coming and I was telling her it was all gravy and it would be finished for Christmas.

She was thrilled about this. I was always dully aware that a great part of her affection for me was held in my ability to create my own stories and worlds even if they were teen paranormal fiction, and I think it was in this half subconscious place that I determined to give off the air that everything was a-okay.

The true state of affairs became crystal clear one night when Clare shoved me off the couch and onto the floor, dislodging the half finished beer bottle in my hand so it was left to fall and stream out, gurgling, washing over my face and through my beard.

It took me a couple of minutes to realize what had happened, and when I did it was like my whole body became aware of the catastrophe I had become. As I slowly pushed myself up it was like a hibernating bear coming awake for the first time after a winter of slothful despondence. All I could choke out as she stared down at me was a pathetic, “sorry?”

It was almost a question, though a part of me knew all that was about to happen...

--

One morning, maybe a week or so after we had arrived in Ireland Clare’s father came looking for me.

He found me in the window seat overlooking the vast front yard or garden as Clare would say. It was a sprawling green space divided by a long winding gravel drive and interrupted by the dark blue pond and snaking creek. It was bordered all by a thick wall of trees of all sorts captured and wrapped up in ivy and moss. The kind of place that is completely unimaginable in the murky cement depths of Manhattan.

I heard his slow plodding step on the stairs and immediately began typing like a mad man. Even though I could feel his presence standing at the end of the hall I waited for him to speak to look up. The words he uttered were pressed through his teeth with such obvious effort, “Would you fancy raking some leaves?”

He didn’t give me time to answer, just turned and trundled off. Giving no option but to follow obediently. I didn’t know much about Clare’s father. I don’t think we had ever had a full conversation. I knew he was a legend in Ireland. A former politician and sportsman.

We came to the place where we would start. The leaves were spread like a thick blanket over the grass. A mish-mash mess of soggy sod, their colour drained and sapped away. As I surveyed the bare trees and the dead leaves lying all around, the rake was like a shovel and I was just one member of the burial crew. Suddenly he began to speak, “Clare told me to speak with you. Said you could use a talking to.”

He began to rake quite abruptly then as he spoke.

“I’ve always thought your writing was fecking shit, but I respected that it was feckin shit that got read. That’s why even though I had serious qualms about you, I gave Clare my blessing.”

I began to rake as he spoke. Running the metal claw over the surface of the grass like a giant comb.

“I don’t say that with disrespect.”

He takes a few more swipes at the leaves and then stops and begins again, now staring me in the eye.

“The problem is you haven’t had the realisation yet... the realisation that you’re never going to write that damn masterpiece that you’re dreaming of. We all dream, but dreams are just dreams.

His breath spreads out before him in a white cloud and he reaches up to scratch his beard.

There are two kinds of people. Those who realise we all live a lie and those who die blind.”

He was silent after that for a long time and the only sounds were the crushing and crackling of the leaves as we gathered them against their will. After we had been at it for quite a while and formed several mountains at the corner of the drive he pulled up and sighed, “Every year they all fall off. No different than any of the others. Even the most brilliant specimens, they all crinkle, fade and disintegrate. Never a one has survived.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say then. I just looked out away from the house through the empty hand-like limbs, which could no longer keep out the road, and over the craggy rock front wall. In the field across the road a hill rose and just at the crest the sun shone dimly. I didn’t give a fuck what he had to say. For a moment my hands gripped the neck of the rake savagely, but then we were both distracted by Clare and her mother pulling into the drive, and we left the leaves to scatter or be blown away.

--

That evening was the first time Clare and I said a few words to each other since the evening it all began.

“I want to stay here in Ireland.”

“What? We said we were coming for two weeks.”

Her face is unemotional. It worries me.

“If you go back you can go back alone.”

I look down at the table and then back up into her eyes. We’re sitting in a cafe in Dublin. We stand up and walk out.

When we get to the car I don’t get in. She lowers the window.

“Get in the car Dan.”

“What right did you have to tell your father about the book?”

“Dan get in or I’ll leave you here.”

“You and David are the only ones who knew, and you tell your father. What gave you the right?”

“Dan you’re shouting. Calm down.”

“I will not fucking calm down.”

The car begins to pull forward.

“Stop the car Clare.”

“I can’t deal with this Dan. I’m leaving.

“Stop the fucking car Clare.”

I’m jogging holding onto the window, then running and the car is speeding up and I have to pull away and watch her go.

--

I woke up in a sweat that night at 3am. I had been having a dream. I had walked into Cafe Nero. The cafe where I always met my editor to discuss and go over my recently submitted  manuscripts. I made my way to the regular booth and sat down. As usual David was sitting reading his newspaper. I scoot into the booth. “Well,” I say sarcastically waiting to see the blood red pen bleeding through the thick bound manuscript, but when I look up the paper drops and its Clare’s father who looks back at me.

He laughs in a dry gravelly bark and says, “It’s all feckin shit...” he flops my manuscript onto the table. Its title reads:

My Masterpiece

But master has been scratched out and “of shit” has been added at the end in garish red handwriting.

In the dream I couldn’t stop laughing, it was just so funny for some reason. I wanted to stop. I clamped my lips together with both hands but eventually the laughter would build up and ring out through my nose.

I couldn’t get back to sleep so I tip toed downs stairs to the fire. As I stared into the empty stove and began to build a small tepee like structure with twigs and dry leaves a flicker of light landed on the cover of my book which was lying behind me on the coffee table. I leaned over and picked it up. As I stared into the cover I remembered a conversation I had with David my editor shortly after the book came out.

“I want to write something else David.”

He blinks across at me through heavy spectacles.

“They don’t want you to write something else Daniel. They want you to write the next book in your teen vampire series.”

“Can’t you talk to them for me David? Can’t you talk to them and tell them they should give me a chance.”

He lifts his right pointer finger to adjust his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.

“Listen Daniel you write the next book and I’ll have a conversation with them, and if this one sells well they might just give you a chance to put something else out. But you have to write this book first buddy.”

A slow flame is arching up the cover of my book. It swallows up my name and before it licks up to my hand I toss it in the piles of leaves which are now just before me at the end of the drive. I hear the siren sounding alarm behind me and turn to see the door of the house ajar and the house alarm alive like the flashing lights of a fire truck. I must go back and close it, but the leaves have caught now and the flames are dancing to and fro in a hypnotic rhythmic way. I wipe away tears from my eyes and look up into the sky where the fire is reflecting in the stars.

--

Clare dropped me to the airport.

We sat in the car for a long time without saying anything.

When I arrived back in New York I reeled off the rest of the teen vampire series in several months and they sold better with each release. It wasn’t twilight, but it made me a decent enough income to get out of the game with the final instalment.

One night early in my retired life, only a year after returning from Ireland, I decided to take a walk out to Battery Park. The statue of Liberty stood out in the bay like some last warrior, who seeing the enemy is too great, has decided to turn her back and run.

As I stood staring out over the bay a homeless man called out to me, “Hey there homie.”

I looked around me to make sure he was speaking to me.

“Yeah you.”

I laughed and said, “How’s it going.”

He didn’t ask me for money, actually said he just wanted to have a chat. Asked me what I did for a living and I told him I was a writer.

“What kind of shit you write homie.”

I didn’t want to answer, but figured it would be no harm.

“I write paranormal fiction.”

“Is that the vampires and werewolves, and witches and shit?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“That stuff is wack my man.”

I didn’t know what to say to him after that, so I waited for him to speak again.

“But if that’s what you do and you  make money for it, it sure ain’t the worse thing a brother could be doing.”

Before I walked away I pressed a wad of bills into his hand and left without hearing his protest. I slept well that night.

--

I got a letter from Clare this morning after I had cleared the last of the leaves away. The trees were empty and there wasn’t enough room in the bin so I had left a mound of them sitting in the middle of the yard. As I was standing looking down at them mindlessly, annoyed that I couldn’t fit them in the bin the mailman called from behind me and handed me a letter.

It had her handwriting on the front and a stamp from Ireland pressed into the upper right hand corner of the envelope.

She said something about my last book being one of the best she had ever read and that she was sorry for everything and wondered if I was as well.

I crumpled it up and threw it in the pile of leaves. Next to where it landed I noticed an impressively shaped orange leaf. I picked it up and went inside. I dried it ever so carefully and pressed it into the pages of an old book.

Every year she would write in the Autumn and every year I would pick a leaf to live forever.