"That's tough," Harry hedged. The language was simple enough but too precise not to be the work of a highly disciplined, academic type - perhaps, an imagists or confessional poet from the early sixties. "No, I haven't a clue."
Her limpid eyes were transfixed on the opaque maze of summer foliage just beyond the rose garden. "Hayden was a black man born into crushing poverty. He grew up in a Detroit foster home where he was sickly, both physically and emotionally abused." A wistful yearning washed over her face. "From such ugliness and heartache, pure beauty - how do you explain such things?"
"I don't really know," Harry replied.
From such ugliness and heartache, pure beauty…
Harry was eight years old. The family lived on Providence's East Side. His mother gave him a quarter to buy a balsa wood airplane at the local 7-Eleven. The boy gently nudged the delicate, papery wings through the fuselage then inserted the tail section. With care, the toy might last a hundred throws. Even if the fragile wings cracked along the grain, which they inevitably always did, Harry could bind them back together with masking tape or a few drops of Elmer's glue and manage the better part of a week before begging his cash-strapped mother for another quarter.
On the third throw, the plane caught on a gusty updraft of air, depositing his prize possession on the second-story porch of a three-decker tenement. What to do? Little Harry was despondent. A perfectly good balsa wood glider without a single blemish, crack or nick irretrievably gone astray. Forever lost! Ascending the front stoop, the boy found the door ajar. He plodded up the smelly stairs to the second floor landing and knocked. A fat black woman about the same age as his mother cracked opened the door but only as far as the metal security chain would allow. The careworn face was puffy with sagging jowls. She wore a tattered bathrobe and a jumble of pink rollers ranged across her frowzy, graying hair. "Yeah, what you want?"
"My balsa airplane flew up to your deck, and I was wondering - "
"Who… what?" Now the tone was belligerent.
"My toy airplane - it landed on your deck."
Releasing the chain, the woman threw the door wide open. Harry could hear a baby fretting in another room. The congested child coughed - once, twice then let out a mournful, sputtering wail. The apartment smelled of exotic vegetables - spices and seasonings that were both comforting and disconcerting all at the same time. From another room a man's voice barked in a gravelly voice, "Who the hell's that? What they want?"
"Wait here." The woman disappeared and returned a moment later with Harry's airplane perched between a nubby thumb and forefinger. Then she smiled the most beautiful fat-black-woman-trapped-in-an-awful-life smile that the boy had ever seen. "Here, kid. Have a swell day." She slammed the door shut. Harry stood there foolishly holding the glider cupped in his palms. He wanted to thank the morbidly obese woman, give her a kiss and a hug, nurse her tubercular child back to health and make her psychotic husband speak to her in soothing tones. Instead he went three blocks down to an open field where he could fly his plane without fear of a similar mishap.
* * * * *
Dora was sitting on the bench with her long-fingered hands splayed across her lap. Except for pearl earrings, she wore no jewelry or makeup. The Hayden poem had surely triggered the bizarre flashback. Harry thought he might like to tell Dora about the kind-hearted black lady but certainly not today. "You’re not married?"
"My husband suffered a stroke… passed away a year ago this October," she replied in a flat tone.
"Was it a happy marriage?"
"No, not particularly. And you?"
Harry told Dora about his ex-wife. "About a year ago," he added almost as an afterthought, "on a whim, I started learning the various plants and trees here in the park." Pivoting a half turn, he pointed at a flaming mass of foliage closer to the entrance. "That black tupelo is one of the more flamboyant offerings. In the fall you can find shadings of yellow, orange, bright red and purple all on the same branch." Rising to his feet, he led her over to take a closer look. Reaching out, Harry placed his hand against the trunk. "The distinctive bark resembles alligator hide."
“How interesting!” Extending her hand, Dora stroked the textured wood. "And you learned all this from the plaques."
He took several steps back and pointed into the upper branches of the slender, fifty-foot tree. "Notice anything?"
"Lots of noisy birds."
"Those fruity clumps scattered among the leaves are berries. The tree is an important food source for migratory birds." Harry rubbed his chin and, lowering his eyes, stared absently at his fuddy-duddy, wing-tipped shoes. "Would you like to get together some time?"
"A date?" Her features brightened. "That would be nice."
"Are you doing anything later tonight?"
When Dora was gone, Harry followed his weekly ritual, making a walking tour of the grounds, while carrying on an interior monologue with his leafy acquaintances. Yes, over there by the trash barrel was a scattering of quaking aspens with their twenty-five foot spread of noisy greenery. Sometimes he confused them with American beech. The late-blooming Magnolia directly behind with its greenish-yellow flowers was a bit easier to spot.
Dora lingered another half hour after Harry screwed up the courage to ask her out. The woman confided that she played second-chair flute in the Wheaton College wind ensemble. A Fourth of July concert was scheduled. They were doing Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain as well as excerpts from a Tchaikovsky symphony. Harry, for his part, told her several funny stories about a senior-league, slow-pitch softball team he recently joined, where the ballplayers were forty and up. Most of his teammates had non-life-threatening disabilities of one sort or another – a torn rotator cuff, inguinal hernia, pulled hamstring, asthma, emphysema, knee replacement - which made for some interesting athletic buffoonery.
The Eastern Redbud off to the right was a no-brainer. The riot of plum-colored leaves was a dead giveaway. And the mountain ash close by an outcropping of granite ledge had already lost its showy, spring flowers in favor of a thick crop of orangey-red fruit clusters. Harry remembered how the previous November the leaves looked like they had been dipped in yellow ink. Further down the twisty path, a tulip poplar was nestled between an eastern hemlock and diminutive chokeberry.
Harry wasn't so deluded as to imagine that he was in love with a woman he had only recently met. What were the prospects of sex on the first date? Probably nil to non-existent. Harry didn't doubt for one second that Dora would prove a passionate lover; the woman was far too clever and kind-hearted not to be. But physical intimacy proved a minor concern. Deeper emotions eventually might set down roots, like old-growth timber, over a broad expanse of time. In the end, God or whatever animist power governed the universe ultimately got it right. Now Harry had to go home and decide on a nice restaurant and what to wear.
Over by the linden tree…
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