Happy Honeydew #3

The morning after she died I ate two bowls of Raisin Bran Crunch and stared at Scott sleeping under the cherry tree in our backyard.

My dad shuffled into the kitchen around eleven, unshaved and still wearing the same pink shirt and matching tie he had worn at the hospital, her favorite.

“Is he still out there”, he grumbled as he poured himself a bowl of cereal.

I finished chewing for another ten seconds before swallowing.

“You need to talk to him”, I commented between spoonfuls.

My dad dropped the milk carton on the counter. Small droplets scattered across the tile.

“And what”, his voice rose slightly as he begun to wake up, “Ban him from being in the backyard? People cope in different ways.”

His voice broke and tempered down before he added in a whisper while staring at the floor, “Not everyone moves on quickly.”

Sometimes I wish I had looked down at my cereal, but I still think I would have heard the tiny speck of water falling from his strong chin into his bowl, disturbing a flake resting near the edge.

I got up off the stool and grabbed the half-empty cereal box on my way to the backyard door.

Under different circumstances I would have laughed at the look on my brother’s face when I nudged him awake. His eyes got wide like a child woken up on his birthday, but as he began to realize whose foot was pressing in his side his smile thinned and his eyes became narrow.

“Come on”, I said while shaking the box a foot above his head, “you need to eat.”

He stood up, the top of his head barely reaching my shoulder, grabbed the box from my hand and took several steps backwards to get the full view of the tree.

“It doesn’t work unless we both do it”, he said, still gazing at the thousands of pink blossoms sprouting from the wood, a small bran flake dangling from his lip.

“It’s not real. It’s just a fantasy that-“ I began before Scott cut me off.

“It wasn’t supposed to grow, Jason”, he interjected in the tone of a child reciting his favorite nursery rhyme, “Everyone said it wouldn’t grow, but it did. And it became our tree, and if we ever need something we can wish on it together.”

“And the wish will come true”, we said in unison.

He turned his head to look at me and I reached my hand out to ruffle his hair.

I knelt down to his level.

“Buddy, sometimes things just happen, and it seems like there’s a meaning to it but there’s not”, I explained.

He took two steps backwards, out of my grasp, and thrust the cereal box outward into my hands.

I took the box, sighed, and made my way back to the sliding door. As I put my hand on the doorknob I could see his reflection standing several inches away from the base of the tree.

“She believed in it”, he said.

I opened the door, stepped inside, and closed it without looking behind me.

***

Somehow I knew he wouldn’t give up easily. By six he was still outside. He hadn’t moved at all beyond the occasional sitting breaks to rest his feet.

As the sun began setting I went into the yard again.

“Think you’ve got it memorized by now?” I joked.

He just kept staring forward at the tree as he replied, “Only this side.”

I moved behind him and laid my hand on his shoulder.

“I know you think it works-“ I began, but for the second time he cut me off.

“It worked for you”, he said in a wobbling voice.

I took my hand off his shoulder.

“What are you talking about”, I asked in a calm voice.

“Two years ago, after your bike accident, you spent the night in the hospital”, he began, recalling a lost memory, “She dragged me and Dad away from the waiting room in the middle of the night and you survived and the worst you had was a broken arm.”

I had never realized how big of trouble I had been in until last year when my mom sat me down to explain the whole story and everything the doctors had hidden from me. Whenever I had asked them what exactly had happened all they would say was that I was very lucky.

I put both hands on his shoulders and squeezed, before taken a couple steps around to the other side of the tree.

Like he already knew what I was thinking he put his hands around the tree, reaching as far to me as he could without touching it.

I grabbed his hands, careful not to disturb the tree in the process. The sun, almost finished setting, conjured up a light breeze that stirred the branches of the tree, scattering cherry blossoms that fell to my right. I squeezed his hands, took a breath, and closed my eyes.