He labored for an hour. Dr. DeSoto excused herself, saying she would be back.
“Should we stop him?” Charlie asked at one point. “He’s exhausting himself.”
“He’s almost finished, I think,” said Millie. His hand was slowing down, making finer adjustments now. The thickness of the marker obscured the delicacy of his sketching. What was going on in his head?
Someone echoed that thought, and she looked up to see that the doctor had returned. Dr. DeSoto gently took the marker from George’s hand, which trembled now. She held up the drawing.
“What did he draw?” Millie strained, but was unable to see well enough at that distance. The doctor brought it closer.
Charlie was the one to say it out loud. “I think it’s some kind of prison.”
Examining the sketch up close, she knew he was right. Thick concentric walls, ramps that suggested someplace far underground. No windows, no doors, except to and from the central guard tower. This was a place nobody was meant to leave.
In the early years, when he and the other junior architects were first throwing their hats into the partnership ring, George often stayed out for a drink after work or a late night in the office. They attended dinner parties and groundbreakings. Millie loved the meetings with new clients and their wives. She liked to watch George sell them on his vision for their buildings as if his ideas were their own.
“When I make partner, I’ll build us our dream house,” he said. In the meantime, they moved out to the county. He did his best to balance work and new fatherhood, though it was clear that fatherhood was tipping the balance. He started the tree house when Charlie was still an infant, making preliminary drawings with the baby asleep in the crook of his right arm. Millie would wake up to find the two of them in George’s office. “We couldn’t sleep, so we thought we’d get some work done,” he would say. The early years were all sketches and crumpled paper, false starts and fresh ones.
“They’re too young to ask for a tree house,” Millie said once, after Jane was born. “How do you know they want one?”
“Look at that tree,” George said, pointing to the enormous sycamore in their yard. Its leaves blazed gold and orange in the soft October sun. “How could they not?”
He started the actual construction when Jane was a year old and Charlie was three, working through the weekends and summer evenings. Millie didn’t help with the tree house. Instead, she lingered in the garden, seeding and weeding and nurturing her flowers. She had only recently discovered the joys of gardening, but already it was becoming a passion for her. More than that, it was a chance for them all to be together, even if they were involved in different projects. She dug to a soundtrack of hammer and saw. A slight note of sawdust drifted in the air beneath the heady aroma of her roses and peonies. She liked listening to George explain to Charlie what he was doing, and loved the ways in which he involved Charlie, starting a nail and then inviting the boy to finish it. “You’re some builder, kid. Look at that workmanship.” If Millie could have bottled a moment, it might have been one of these.
As the children grew older, George allowed them to assert their own personalities on the design.
“I want a giraffe,” said four-year-old Charlie, and so George tore out the conventional ladder and constructed a wooden giraffe with stairs built into the neck. When Jane wanted a Rapunzel tower, George built a platform accessible only by a thick flaxen braid. Long after the structure was completed, if one of them asked for a new element he found a way to incorporate it.
“Someday they’ll stump you,” said Millie.
“They haven’t yet,” her husband replied. He was right; they never did. The project that she had envisioned as a simple Our Gang style fort began to assert itself in contrast with her manicured flowerbeds. Over the years he created a pirate ship deck, a Pippi Longstocking wing, a Swiss Family Robinson addition, byzantine passages and secret compartments, and a crow’s nest high in the branches. He wired it with thousands of lights, which switched on by timer every evening and danced like fireflies in all seasons.
He didn’t let the sycamore limit his vision. He strayed yards from the tree in some directions, like an invasive vine. The tree was merely a guide; Millie suspected that if the tree were hit by lightning, George’s structural supports would hold it in place. Some additions were more aesthetically pleasing than others, and some looked better in one season or another, but George didn’t care about the aesthetics of the project; he seemed happiest when the whole thing was overrun with children, theirs and others, which was most of the time. The only thing he ever refused them was a rocket. “Spaceships aren’t made of wood,” he said, with more seriousness than Millie thought the topic was due. “It wouldn’t make any sense.”
Jane arrived from Seattle, buzzing into the room with the manic exhaustion of air travel. Hugs all around. Millie marveled, as always, at the fact that two such quiet people had created two such loud ones. Five of the six grandchildren were loud too, everyone but Raymond. Maybe silence was a recessive trait.
Charlie and Jane spent ten minutes arguing over who would stay the night and who would take Millie home. Millie wasn’t sure if she was the prize or the punishment. In the end, Jane said she wanted to spend some time alone with her father, since she had only just gotten there, and Charlie said that he and Millie could both use some proper sleep in proper beds, and it was all decided. Millie considered arguing that she wanted to stay at the hospital as well, to make the point that she had a say in the matter. Truth be told, she did want to leave. Too much time in a hospital wasn’t good for anyone, even a visitor.
She took George’s sketch with her, folding it across her lap for the ride home. Charlie was a good driver, but everything felt too fast. The car was some strange rental, full of glowing buttons and gauges, like the cockpit of an airplane.
“We’re going to have to make some plans,” said George, no, Charlie. How strange that her son was now older than her husband when she pictured him in her mind. She knew he was Charlie. George never took his eyes off the road, but Charlie stared at her now, waiting for her response to his statement. What kind of response did he expect? She fought the urge to say “duuuuh,” as the great-grandchildren did.
“Look where you’re going, Charles.” Millie pointed at the windshield. Charlie shifted his eyes to the road, but continued throwing glances her way.
“You’ve done a great job of staying independent, but if he needs rehab you won’t be able to take care of him.”
“I know,” said Millie.
“And I’m not sure it’s wise for you to stay in that big house all by yourself.”
“Raymond checks on me.”
“He’s a good boy. I’m glad he lives so close to you. Still, he can’t be expected to take on all the responsibility.”
“I’ll be fine,” said Millie.
“You have to consider—”
“I’ll consider.”
“You’re eighty-eight years old. The fact that the two of you have been able to live on your own for this long is a minor miracle.”
“I’ll consider,” she said with finality.
They drove the rest of the way in silence. The snow that had fallen the day before had compacted. Charlie left her in the car with the engine running while he shoveled and de-iced the walk. Even from a distance she saw his exertion. How strange to watch her son grow old. Did he consider himself old? If he was old, what did that make her? Red faced and sweaty, he helped her up the salted steps.
Later, alone in her bedroom, Millie reached into the pocket of her cardigan and pulled out the two buttons from George’s pajama top. She wondered what had happened to his pajamas now that he was in a hospital gown. These would be easy enough to sew back on for him, if they would only give her back the shirt. George was forever losing buttons, busting them off outgrown pants or catching his shirt on the edge of his drafting table. This time it wasn’t his fault, of course.
She went through the motions: brushed h
er teeth, changed into her nightgown, walked her brush through her hair. No need to look in the mirror; she knew she was a mess. Instead, she looked out at the illuminated treehouse. What would happen if George wasn’t around to change the lights? She couldn’t bear the thought of it going dark for a single night.
Maybe Charlie was right, and they should consider moving someplace easier to maintain. If George passed, maybe it would be better to be elsewhere than to live with the memories that suffused each corner of this house. She couldn’t think of a time when she had spent a night in the bed alone. No, that wasn’t true. How had she forgotten? There had been a whole month in 1951, the year everything changed.
George had only ever taken one trip without Millie, in the fall of 1951. A letter had arrived from the army asking him to fly to New Mexico.
“You don’t have to go,” she said. “You’re not a soldier anymore. They don’t even tell you in the letter what they want you to go for. Just ‘project maintenance.’”
“I suppose I’ll find out. Maybe one of those theoretical designs actually got built. Maybe I’ll fly into George Gordon Airport.” He swooped Jane into his arms and then up into the air. “Maybe they want to give your Daddy a medal! Valor in the face of bureaucracy!” Jane giggled.
He was gone two weeks, then three weeks, then four. They picked him up at Friendship on the afternoon of Jane’s third birthday. Up until the moment she loaded the children into the Packard, Millie kept expecting the telephone to ring and George’s tired voice to say he had been delayed yet again and would she get by for another week. She attacked the ingredients for Jane’s birthday cake, the batter fleeing up the sides of the bowl. Don’t ring, she willed the telephone.
But no, he was already there when she drove up, his suit rumpled and his shoulders sagging. He looked every bit as exhausted as he had sounded. She had been prepared to let him know the stress his absence had caused her, but instead she kissed his stubbled cheek. The kids leaned in to hug or possibly strangle him from the back seat.
“Sit down, both of you,” he said, slapping their hands from his neck.
“Do you have presents for us?” Charlie reached over the seatback for the blueprint tube George was holding between his knees.
“Don’t touch that! Sorry, kid. No presents.”
Millie saw Jane building up a wail, and tried to head it off. “I have a lovely dinner planned for tonight. All of Jane’s favorites, and steak for you.”
“Jane’s favorites?”
“Yes, she got to pick for her birthday dinner, of course. Like a big girl.”
He scratched at two days’ growth of beard.
“Janie’s birthday dinner. Of course,” he repeated. “Janie, how would you like to pick your own present out tomorrow? Big girls do that.”
The tantrum dissipated. In the backseat, Charlie began to run down a list of toys he thought Jane might like, all of which were actually toys he would like better. Millie glanced over at George, who was pinching the bridge of his nose between his fingers. She hoped to get a chance to ask him what was wrong, but when they got home he disappeared into his office. She busied herself making dinner. He snapped at the children twice for fidgeting over the meal; after losing patience a third time, he excused himself before they could sing to Jane.
That night, Millie rolled over in the bed to find George wasn’t there. She checked his office, the kitchen, the children’s rooms, the den, before finally noticing the unlatched patio door. The air and grass were already laced with frost. She wore a flannel robe, but wished she had put on shoes. George’s sobs traveled down from the treehouse and across the lawn.
She climbed the giraffe’s-neck ladder, crossed the bridge of the pirate ship. The first fallen leaves made some of the steps slippery. George cried like a child in the crow’s nest above her. She wasn’t sure which frightened her more, his strange mood earlier in the day or his tears now. Maybe he’d rather she climbed down, slipped back into bed, and pretended she had heard nothing.
Her foot crunched a leaf as she took her first step backward.
“Don’t leave,” he said.
She stopped. “George, what’s the matter?”
“Don’t leave, please,” he said. “I had no idea. I had no choice.”
She wanted him to continue. It wouldn’t take much to keep him from speaking. One wrong word, one wrong step. She stood still, trying to figure out how close he was from the ragged sound of his breath.
“They said the scenarios were hypothetical.”
She waited.
“They were real, Mill. Defenseless, harmless things. Their ship was destroyed. They’ve been in there four years, and the Army wants me to design a newer, better place, to make sure they’re stuck ‘for the indefinite future.’ I should have said no and gotten right back on the plane. ‘For the security of the country,’ the lieutenant said. He said to think of you, and Charlie, and Jane. I had to, you see?”
She didn’t see. She waited for him to say more. She asked questions in her mind: who were ‘they’ and why were they stuck and why couldn’t they go back and where couldn’t they go back to? Why did he call them things? Was it better to know or not to know? She decided he would tell if he wanted to tell. Minutes passed. Shivering, she climbed four wooden rungs bolted to the trunk. An ungraceful shimmy brought her into the crow’s nest. George, in his striped pajamas, sat in the corner, his knees to his chest like a child.
She wanted to go to him, to hold him as he had always held her, to tell him to put it behind him. Instead, she kissed him on the top of his head and leaned out over the edge. She had never been all the way to the top of the tree house before. From this solid perch she could see the delicate curves of her dormant gardens. Then past that, over the rooftops, past the lamplit neighborhood, out to the dark farmland beyond. She didn’t know what time it was, but the faintest glimmer of dawn colored the place where the earth met the sky. Even at this height she trusted his workmanship. The platform was steady, the railing secure.
She sat down beside him. “You’re a good man, and a good husband, and a good father,” she said. “Whatever you did, I’m sure you had to do it.”
After a moment, he put his arm around her. She knew that whatever he had allowed to surface he now had buried. Who would have imagined that such an intimate moment would become the line between before and after? Maybe she should have asked more, pushed more, given more comfort. How had it taken sixty years to come back around to the things he had spoken of that night? That night, she had no idea what he was talking about. She had let it go, let him carry it alone.
Millie dialed Raymond first thing when she woke up. Mark answered the phone, half-asleep, and she realized she had no idea what day of the week it was. If it was a weekend she was calling far too early. Mark put Ray on.
“I think I lost a day at the hospital,” she said by way of apology.
“It’s okay, Grandma. What’s up?”
She took a deep breath. “I was wondering if you would do me a favor if you’re planning on coming . . . no, actually, that part doesn’t matter. Regardless of whether you’re coming to the hospital today, I was wondering if you would stop by the house and help me look for something.”
“No problem. What and where?”
“I’m not sure exactly what, and I’m guessing at the where. There may be nothing. I’m just curious, and I can’t go up there myself.”
“Up there?” he asked.
“The top of the tree house.”
When Charlie woke, Millie insisted that he leave for the hospital without her. “Raymond is on his way,” she said. “He’ll take me.”
“Why are you dragging him over here?” Charlie poured coffee into a mug for her, then rummaged in the cupboard until he found a travel cup for himself. He took the milk from the fridge, sniffed it, and then splashed some into her coffee and some into his own.
“He’s going to help find some paperwork I misplaced.” Before Charlie offered his own assistance, she
added, “I had asked him to put it in a safe place for me, so it makes sense for him to be the one to figure out where he put it.”
He clapped the lid onto his cup and gave her a smile of sympathy. “Like his uncle, huh? Do you remember all the stuff I never saw again that I had put away for safekeeping? I still expect you to call someday to say you found my Brooks Robinson rookie card.”
She kissed him goodbye and managed to push him out the door. Poor Raymond didn’t deserve to be lumped in with Charlie on this one. Nobody lost things like Charlie.
When Ray arrived, she explained what she wanted him to search for, or rather the fact that she had no idea what he was searching for, but he would know it if he found it. She made him put on one of George’s hats and a pair of gloves before sending him out to the tree house.
Once he had stepped outside, Millie set about her own search. She made her way down the hallway and pushed open the door to the office. The air in the room was cold and stale; though Millie would be sitting at the drafting table in a few weeks to plan her spring gardens, neither she nor George had much use for the room in the winter. As in their bedroom next door, the windows faced the backyard. She watched Raymond’s progress through the snow before turning to the task at hand. She didn’t know if George had kept anything here that might explain his actions, but it was worth looking.
She started with the file cabinets: not hers with the house bills and contracts and warranties and receipts, but the wood-faced one he had built for himself. The drawer slid open easily. The plans inside were neatly labeled, arranged alphabetically. What might she find here? “S” for “secret.” “P” for “prison.” Unlikely.
The phone rang. Once, twice. Why had they never put a telephone in the office? Three times, four. The bedroom was closer than the kitchen, but she wasn’t yet ready to sit at the desk where George had been. Five rings, six, seven. The ringing paused, then began again. She wasn’t sure she wanted to speak to anybody who wanted to reach her that badly.