by R. Passov
Mary Jane, when she lived at the end of my block, would periodically warn me that the giant sugar maple in front of my house was not doing well. Water it, she would say and get it tended. She was probably in her early eighties when she first offered that advice. As I got to know her, I discovered she had advice on many subjects.
Her grandson and my son played together on the local sports teams, just as Mary Jane’s five sons had. Once she overheard my son mention how cold his bedroom was. That prompted her to come by with an armload of newspaper which she said, if stuffed under my son’s mattress, would help. It did help. I stopped being stingy and let the house warm up.
On a cold December day I found her standing at the end of my driveway, dressed in all black but missing a glove. Mary Jane, I said, now I know what to get you for Christmas – a glove.
She flew right past my attempt at humor. That won’t be necessary, she said. I’m going to Florida next week. You know, she explained, there are a lot of old people there so if you go to a thrift shop the clothes you can buy are hardly worn. I got this whole outfit at one and intend to go back and get a glove.
Not long after telling me where she intended to find a single glove, she rather petulantly asked why, if I had been divorced for over a year, had I not asked her over for dinner. She was thirty years my senior and the matriarch of our block. I was flattered. This Saturday, I said, if you’re free. I am, she said, and I’d like a steak, potatoes and broccoli.
She was my first post-divorce date.
I learned that a woman who had raised five sons without a washing machine or a dishwasher knows her way around. One son had been divorced twice, she offered and another just once. That was as close as we came to me and my ex.
Soon after our first dinner, she stopped me again and wondered why she had not been invited back. Just as before, I responded on the spot, and she accepted. But this time, she said, I’d like lamb chops. She slowly ate one, then put me on notice that she was taking two home.
Not long after our second date, she passed. The last time I saw her walking down my block, hands held behind her back she had a faraway look. I’ve seen everything I’ve ever wanted to see, she said. I had a good life and now it’s time to go. She was just past 95 when it happened.
Before she left she managed to pass on the name of a gentlemen whom she said could help with my tree problem.
I called Carmine, a wiry Italian fellow, who came to look at the old Sugar Maple in front of my house. The tree, on which a large tumor grows, shades my front door. Woodpeckers visit in the mornings. Every new spring an old branch falls. Should the tree fall, I don’t have the time to watch another grow.
Carmine doesn’t either. He’s 89. Would still climb but, though he looks like he could, knows he can’t. Back in the day, he tells me, if you wanted to work with the trees you had to want to climb. Today, anyone can work with trees.
Around here, Carmine explained, the Eastern White Oaks live the longest. We were under the Sugar Maple. For a while, he said, he worked a row of Sugar Maples that were at least 100 years old. They’d been planted at the same time, one growing bigger than the next. Genetics, he said.
My tree had a good canopy. And Carmine liked the color of the leaves. But they were stressed, he said, and had been for a long time and it would take a long time to bring them back.
The soil around the tree had been compacted by a lawnmower. Carmine knew the history of lawn mowing and which hand mower was once the gold standard and how the owner of the property, before mowing, would walk the property looking for twigs and stones that would ruin the mower and how those old mowers wouldn’t compact the soil. Then power mowers came along. They didn’t have shields and so sent clumps of dog shit in all directions.
They got that part fixed, Carmine said, and now huge power mowers chew up lawns, compacting soil. Trees, according to Carmine, want leaves to fall around them and rot which makes for better soil from which to nourish the sap that feeds the tree. The layer just under the bark, he said, is the most recent growth, the light wood which sugars the sap that feeds the tree. Some sapwood becomes dark wood and some, something else.
Carmine told me he lives close to where he found the note in Italian in which his father asked for his mother’s hand. She was fourteen and he had known her since she was eleven. Just like he asked his wife, Gloria, to marry him. She was also eleven when they first met and he, fourteen. They were together until he went off to war. He told her not to wait. She did have another steady but once he came back and saw him, that was it. It’s been 69 years, he said.
He hated school. Just wasn’t for him. Could sit politely through the class and let the material pass over his head. The only class he got a zero in was Latin. Sat too quietly, he said.
The youngest of five, he was on his own by seven. His father left the work force after a heat attach. Back in ’38. His mother entered the workforce. She was forty-five, he said, and so you know what kind of job she got.
He left school and went to work for the Gristede Brothers, a local grocery chain still in the family. Gave his mom most of the money which he knew was going to be the case. But that was ok; he still had some.
Did I play sports? he asked and before I could answer said he loved sports, especially football. Would have played all winter if he could find anyone else to play with. But back in those days you didn’t stick with one sport all year. During football the gym was closed. And when it was time to play basketball no-one played football. That’s how it used to work, he said.
He got his start in trees working for the John Davey Company. They were the original arborists. Started in Ohio but when Mr. Davey realized that the East Coast has trees, and money, he came out this way.
Back then a man was stationed in each little town up and down the river. It could be up to twenty men on a big estate.
Before he found climbing he enlisted, just missing the war. Got stationed in Hawaii at Animist field and played football. One coach left and another came on board because a captain only stayed 18 months. The second coach was really a football coach. He made it from 3rd string to 2nd string and then to 1st by filling in on a rainy day and taking a smash to the face.
He had met Hank Greenberg’s son and he liked Ted and Joe but not when they were playing the Yankees. He offered that most people don’t know this but the Yankees had a football team and the DiMaggios had a 3rd brother who played for Pittsburgh.
He told me to clear the grass from the tree and to get a different gardener, one who didn’t have a big power mower and then to wait and see what happens. That’s about all you can do, he said.
Before getting around to his fee, he had one more story.
Before his father had passed, they were together in the basement of an uncle who made all of his own alcohol from beer through wine to grappa. The uncle talked about the Jew bastards and his father didn’t say anything. When Carmine got home he asked his father why he let his uncle speak that way, saying that he didn’t know that his uncle hated Jews. Carmine, his father said, at our table when we sit for dinner anyone is welcome so I am not like your uncle. But in his heart your uncle is a good man and so I let him be.
When he did tell me what his fee was, he had a wiry smile as though I had just bought him a plane ticket back to Hawaii.