The Cherryhill Tree: Cherry Blosssom Drops

    The giggles of summer youth trickling from freshly mowed yards swam around the ears of their neighbors. Even if one was to shut their eyes, a picture of the clearest quality would lighten the dark of the mind, and there would be no doubt that one could see the buttered noses from lion weeds on the juvenile faces. The scene was sharpened more by the air ripe with the scent of dandelions and cherries flouncing in the open windows of the neighborhood. The flowery giggles drifting on the perfume of cherries flowed most through one window in particular...

    Fitted with tattered white siding and neglected shingles of a faded black, the smallest house of the cul-de-sac sat on a plot of dead grass and weeds. A rusted window from its side teetered on its hinges; whether from the breeze or loose screws was unknown. Inside the portal draped with a convolutedly intricate spiderweb, a small fair-skined boy with tired eyes sat hunched over a desk. In one hand he fisted his dark hair. In the other was a pencil that he tediously drummed against a sheet of paper. His name was Jack Riddle, he was eight, and as told by his doodles of angry trolls, he hated multiplication.

    Down the hall, Jack Sr. hollered, "Finish your summer studies, and your mother will walk you to the hill."

    The ears of the younger Jack perked. With all the speed he could muster, he slayed the trolls with his gnawed eraser, and replaced their wart-molested faces with calculations. All seventeen questions had been given answers, though, accurate or not was the least of Jack's concern.

    Jack ran into his old sneakers whose seams were so worn that they appeared to have mouths when he walked. They steadily blabbed as he scampered down the hall and through an archway where the aroma of yesterday's apple pie still lingered. Jack Sr. sat cross-legged at the kitchen table, sipping on a mug of coffee while he skimmed the newspaper. Across the sea of checkered tile, Violet meticulously scrubbed a pan she'd had soaking for the last three days.

    "Good morning," Violet hummed.

    "Mom," Jack said in a tone laced with enthusiasm, "Dad said you'd take me to the hill if I finished my math."

    Violet spun on her heels, and so did her apron. She perched a gloved hand on her hip, eying her husband. Around his mug, a grin tugged at the lips of Jack Sr., and then he raised the daily paper over his face.

    Violet shook her head with the beginnings of a smile. "Of course, dear."

    It was only after Violet scrubbed the pan for another half an hour, and fixed Jack Sr. a second cup of coffee, that she and Jack set off for the hill.

    The mother and son of nearly identical faces trotted down the steps of the porch with Violet tutting on about buying grass seed and Jack Sr. needing to tend to the unruly edges of the lawn. When they reached the road, Violet habitually grabbed hold of Jack's hand despite their quiet neighborhood rarely seeing traffic other than Mr. Lucas' new '59 T-Bird.

    They went down the road, passing larger houses with lawns more lush than their own. Jack could tell his mother was envious, especially when she said old Mrs. Mulberry looked like a Venus Flytrap as she set up an odd contraption to keep pests from her garden. Laughter bellowed out of Jack when his mother muttered something about getting a dog and letting it shit on the neighbors' yards.

    At the end of Daisy Avenue, the road began to curve off to the right, but Violet and Jack held forward until they reached the grass of an expansive field tapering up into a hill beyond their cul-de-sac.

    "Now, Jack," Violet said, planting her heels at the edge of the field, "I'll be just across the street at Lucille's house. Don't go any further than Cherryhill, all right?"

    Jack nodded. He watched as his mother returned to the direction they came. Violet stopped at the eye-sore of a yellow house at the end of the avenue where she hugged the middle-aged blonde, Lucille. Per usual, the duo perched themselves on Lucille's porch where they sipped tea with raised pinkies and crossed legs, ate delicate pastries, and gossiped about their neighbors in language only befitting to drunken sailors. Jack suspected that Lucille added a bit of whiskey to the tea again.

    Jack turned to Cherryhill. The hill was so steep that it looked as if it met the sun, but Jack began his trek without an ounce of confidence lost. No other kids of the neighborhood dared to climb the hill out of discouragement of overprotective parents and the labor that it required just to climb the great giant. As Jack saw it, it was his hill. He often pondered calling it Jackhill, but thought better of it. Such declaration would be disrespectful to the single other inhabitant that already held the honor of sharing a name with the great mound; that being the cherry blossom tree at the summit.

    No one remembered who planted it, and no one remembered how long it had been there, but the cherry tree always blossomed anew every spring. It was an oddity; every other tree on Daisy Avenue was oak, and there was no other surrounding vegetation on Cherryhill. Jack climbed the hill at least four times a week to sit beneath the lonesome tree to enjoy the grandeur of it and make conversation. Violet always told Jack that plants were alive, and, if you talked to them, they would grow to be healthy and strong. Just from a glance at it, Jack made good conversation.

    "Good morning," said Jack as he came to the cherry blossom.

    A single petal of a dusty pink blew from a branch and danced across his chest.

    "It's nice to see you again, too," he chuckled. "I'm sorry I didn't see you yesterday. Mom dug up an old recipe for her aunt's apple pie, and I had to help her make it for the new neighbors across the street."

    Jack plopped beneath the tree, leaning his spine against its thin trunk.

    "Mom said the neighbors have a daughter my age, but I didn't see her; I only saw her parents. They seem all right, but it would be nice to meet another kid my age. Everyone else is younger than me, older than me, or dumb... but, Dad thinks I shouldn't call people dumb. He said it's 'disrespectful and inhibits the capabilities of others because of tarnished self-esteem'... I don't know what that means. Mom thinks it's all right to call people dumb; she said it's a form of honesty, but Dad says Mom can be too honest and that's why our other neighbors don't like us."

    Jack released a lofty sigh and pulled his knees to his chest, but a rustle from a branch above nearly severed his skittish heart. A turtle dove, whose feathers were as pure as snow, cooed from the highest branch. It was a familiar tune to Jack; a tune his late grandmother, Mimmy, an avid birdwatcher, used to mimic. A smile pulled his lips.

    Just then, the clouds opened up and emptied their livelihood onto the small world that encompassed the cherry tree. The droplets graced the blossoms and left traces of glistens behind. A breeze coaxed petals from their branches, and it began to rain cherry blossoms over Jack. The petals fluttered around and rendered him mesmerized.

    "Hello," proclaimed a voice entirely new to Jack and his beloved tree. It was crisp, but pleasant like Violet's.

    Jack nearly jumped from his skin at the sound. When he took in his surroundings with a bright shock of urgency running through his bones, he saw not a thing. He had almost thought it was the cherry tree itself that spoke to him. But it wasn't until a frail, little body wandered from around the tree trunk and plopped down beside him that he knew he had company.

    She was small; smaller than most girls Jack saw sitting prim and proper at school. Her wet hair looked black, just how Jack Sr. liked his coffee, and was as long as Violet's when she combed her curls. The strands damp with rain clung to her cheeks peppered in freckles that were barely there. Dangling from thick eyelashes were tiny drops of rain; when she blinked her big, green eyes, the drops raced down her face. And her skin was as white as Mrs. Mulberry's orchids.

    "You met my parents yesterday," she said. She mimicked Jack; pulling her legs to her chest where she rested her chin on her knees.

    Jack stared at her as if she grew five more heads. With the exception of himself, no other children from the neighborhood climbed Cherryhill before, and, if they had, he would have never thought it would be the new kid. And, surely, not a girl.

    She stuck out her hand like a businessman, a habit she garnered from her father. When Jack did not comply, she grabbed his hand herself with a firm grip, and shook with a force that seemed far too great to come from such a small thing.

    "I like Abby," she said with a formidable hold of Jack's hand and a self-assured grin to match, "but that's not my name. It's Liv, like being alive. And my last name is Frost, like snow. Liv Frost at your service."

    Jack nodded. When her grip loosened, a dull throb pulsed through his hand and he cradled it against his chest.

    "I saw your mother and father. They're nice. I liked the pie. Lucille brought us cookies, but they were burnt on the bottom, and my mom said she looked drunk. Mr. Lucas offered to help my dad with any car trouble we might have. Mrs. Mulberry came over as well, and she told my dad that our yard looked terrible and that we should make that our 'number one priority.' She's mean and dumb," rambled Liv at a pace that crossed eyes and broke trains of thought.

    Jack smiled. "My dad says I shouldn't call people dumb."

    "Mine does too," Liv grinned. "My mom disagrees. She says that 'judging people is a basic human instinct that is beneficial to our survival. If we did not judge, we would put our time into those undeserving of it'... But I don't know what that means. I'm only eight."

    "I think our parents would get along really well," Jack snickered.

    "Our dads are talking to Mr. Lucas about cars right now, and my mom is drinking tea with Lucille and your mom. She said the tea tastes funny," said Liv. "Who were you talking too?"

    "What?"

    "When I came up the hill, you were talking to someone."

    "Oh," he muttered, his cheeks tinted in a shade of bashful red. "The tree."

    "It's beautiful," she said.

    Liv plucked a cherry blossom between her fine fingers. She loved the soft feeling of the pale pink flower so much that she ran it all across her face.

    Jack opened his mouth to ask what she was doing, but promptly closed it when she twirled the petals along his chin and nose. It tickled and he couldn't fight off a spell of laughter.

    The rain began to pick up. From the bottom of the hill, a giggling Violet called for Jack to come inside from the blizzard, but he was sure she meant rain. She was never quite right after a cup of tea with Lucille. A feathery voice called for Liv, shouting something about raining elephants, and Jack guessed it was her mother.

    "You're nice," Liv smiled, "and you have a nice tree. I'll see you here tomorrow."

    As Liv stood to leave, she tucked a cherry blossom behind her ear.

    "What makes you think I'll be here?" Jack asked, filled to the brim with bewilderment at the small girl who had the grip of a grown man and the personality to fill an entire room.

    Liv seemed to lose her confidence and wrung her hands. "Well, I hope you'll be," she whispered.

    Jack watched as Liv skittered down the hill where she met a pretty brunette who wrapped her up in a tweed jacket that was her favorite, although it was her father's and was far too big.

    The next day, Jack was there. He had always been there beneath the cherry tree, but he now had a new reason to come.

    From that day forth, Jack and Liv met under the Cherryhill tree as their fathers discussed cars and their mothers got woozy from drinking too much of Lucille's tea. The two children often talked about things that meant nothing at all, but once in a while they would talk about their lives. Their future lives. Jack would declare that he would get married like his parents, and his wife would be as great as his mother. One day, he called Liv great, and she proposed to him with a cherry blossom. He accepted. They talked about children, and decided upon a daughter and a son. Jack liked Sail for a boy, and Liv liked Iris for a girl. Neither of them knew where children came from, and they expressed how icky they thought the simple act of kissing was, so their parents often joked about buying them each a fish instead. But neither Jack nor Liv budged, and promised to live out their plans together.