Aquia Harbour Subdivision Lot #2083. Ago, my father—I assume it was he—trimmed the loose wire fence at the lot’s rear, Accessing infinity We wore sneakers for boots paused by the tree house gauging the daunt, the climb. I would lead my brother. We trudged as kids trudge, crunching to the top, past the subdivision horizon, to a cloister from all noise but leaf tuttles, birdsong, two coins in my brother’s pocket, a rumbling mower clearing a lot in China or across the fourth-hole fairway. I would arrive first because I was taller and a woodswoman and my brother did not know that finger paints should cover every inch of paper. He sang song lyrics wrong. Never sure if he, The Tree, were one giant or three conjoined, I would climb, scrape my sneaker against his bark, and settle in the smooth spot, Virginia’s mezzanine. Should I live so long, would my skin become rivulet bark? Jay would crest the hill a moment later and want up, and I would help him, although he had stepped in something. “Yeah, okay. Yeah, I know you need a little help.” The boy and I could keep quiet a minute. We peered downward through skinny trees from our hilltop castle, listened for rustles or growls or the worst danger of all: other kids. They were nice and all, but we did not trust them. To be quiet was sanity and frugality for six whole minutes. When later, at twelve, I fancied myself a landscaper and cleared a path all the way to The Tree, forty yards uphill in both directions, Dad was proud of me. Thirty years after, when my brother and I put the house up for sale, we scratched our way up the hill for a last visit and filled our lungs with the molecules of home. I would have let him sit first but, of the hundred trees that lined the ridge, guess which one they took.
