The Singing Trees by Boo Walker
Epilogue
December 2019
Portland, Maine
Three days after retrieving the wind chimes from the tree for Emma, Annalisa pushed through the crowd of Mancusos in the lobby of Casco Hospice to get her hands on her two grandchildren: two boys—three years apart—who were growing up entirely too fast. Patrick was graduating from high school in a few months and would be setting out to make his mark on the world just as Annalisa had done in 1970 when she’d left the Mills for Portland.
“Nonna!” the younger one, Adam, said, catching a glimpse of Annalisa. Was there a better designation in the world? He went to her.
Annalisa’s heart filled as he hugged her waist. “Look at you, nipote. All grown up now, aren’t you?”
Patrick in his John Lennon glasses appeared, and she pulled him into the hug too. “What’s it been? Two weeks? I can’t go this long without seeing you. Any news on colleges?” She held them for a long time, taking in the love she felt for these two.
“Hi, Mom,” a voice interrupted.
Annalisa patted the boys’ heads and let them go, then turned to Celia and her husband, Jakub. “I’m so glad you made it,” Annalisa said, kissing their cheeks and pulling them both in.
Jakub was a hotelier in Manhattan and had, funnily enough, approached Celia at the Whitney Museum of American Art while she worked as a research conservator there. Whereas Annalisa had rejected Thomas, Celia must have learned from her mother’s mistakes, as she had accepted his invitation to dinner, and they’d been married six months later. That was twenty years ago.
They still lived in New York, where Celia had finally landed the job of her dreams as a conservator for the Guggenheim. Unable to stay away for long, Annalisa and Thomas had bought an apartment near Central Park so that they could spend as much time as possible with Celia and her boys. Maybe one day Annalisa could convince them to move up to Bar Harbor, but she knew a little something about wanting to live in the city.
A sweet, dashing man who’d turned out to be a great father, Jakub asked quietly, “How is she?” He was referring to Emma.
Annalisa felt her bottom lip droop. Other than to feed Emma’s cats the past few days, she had barely left Emma’s side. “Dr. Gorky says today might be her last.”
Celia, who had taken on her father’s hazel eyes but held fast to her Italian genes, put her hand on Annalisa’s shoulder. “I’m glad we made it then. How are you holding up? Have you spoken to Dad?”
“I spoke with him this morning briefly,” Annalisa replied, and then, without much to add, she shook her head. No, he wasn’t coming. She’d read him Emma’s last letter shortly after helping her write it three days ago, but he’d quickly moved on to another subject, as if he couldn’t breathe when Emma was on his mind.
Annalisa turned toward the crowd in the lobby. “Emma knows she’s loved, and that’s what matters.”
Celia and Jakub and their two boys turned with her and looked at the leaves of the Mancuso and Barnes family trees. Though Thomas had not found a way to forgive her, the rest of Emma’s family had, and they’d been visiting her steadily—two or three at a time—yesterday and this morning. Her clients, too—veterans from the Vietnam War and forward had popped by to say their goodbyes.
Annalisa took her grandchildren’s hands. “Why don’t we go back and see her?”
Even the boys had come to know their great-aunt over the years. When Emma returned from her stint in the Peace Corps and moved to Portland to get certified as a counselor, she’d become exactly the aunt that Celia had asked about for so long. Though she wasn’t welcome at Graystone because of Thomas, she spoke with Celia often on the phone and very often invited her down for weekend visits.
Emma had started her practice and bought her house in Cape Elizabeth around the same time Celia got her driver’s license. By then, the two had become very dear to each other. In fact, it was Celia who’d helped Emma hang the wind chimes from Walt’s shop in the backyard, becoming the first of so many in Emma’s collection.
Sadly, due to Emma and Thomas’s separation, she wasn’t able to be there for the birth of Celia’s boys, but she’d jumped into their lives as quickly as she could, as if she were still making up for what she’d done.
“She’s a little tired from all the visitors,” Annalisa warned them, approaching the door, “but she’s desperate to see you.” As she knocked, Annalisa fell back in time, thinking of the moment she’d knocked and pushed open the door of Emma’s room in Davenport and found her with her mother’s pill bottle. What a long way her friend had come since then.
Annalisa led Celia and her family into the room. Sitting up in her tilted bed, Emma cracked a faint smile. “You came . . .”
“Of course we came,” Celia said, approaching her aunt, leaning down and kissing her cheek. Annalisa sat in the chair by the window as Jakub and the two boys joined Celia by the bed, and Emma listened with a weak yet full heart as they shared the latest from their life in New York.
Outside, the snow fell in clumps, like God was shearing his sheep up above. Thomas had always said Emma came alive in the winter, so it made sense that she would meet her maker in the winter, too, coming alive in heaven for the first time.
Ten minutes later, the boys left Annalisa and Celia to spend some time with Emma alone. They pulled up two chairs to the bed, and Emma asked about her work at the Guggenheim.
“Oh, you know,” Celia responded, smoothing her hands together. “It’s a mad race, but I love it. I’m getting my hands on a Picasso tomorrow, so that’s kind of exciting.”
Emma slid her pleased eyes to Annalisa and muttered, “She’s just like you, isn’t she?”
“Like me on steroids,” Annalisa admitted. Celia had pursued a master’s degree and career in art preservation just as diligently as Annalisa had and still continued to chase excellence with her brushes.
Emma commented on how quickly the boys were growing, and Celia lit up, speaking about their plans after graduating high school. Annalisa found herself profoundly pleased that she’d made peace with Emma, and it had been wonderful to see how much Celia and Emma had connected over the years. It was a seven-year-old Celia, after all, who’d urged Annalisa on, refusing to cease asking about her aunt, whom she’d never met.
Emma seemed to be turning paler and weaker by the minute. As if they were on the same page without even planning it, Celia and Annalisa did their best to be animated and cheery. Celia had a filterless sense of humor—much like her mother—and no one else could make Annalisa laugh to tears like her own daughter. And every time they succeeded in drawing a smile out of Emma, it felt like a great success, like they were buying her a few more moments of life.
The only topic they tended to avoid was Thomas.
Emma had stopped asking about him.
Sadly, even Emma’s best smile would be short a full curve, as she had wanted only one thing her entire life, and that was her brother’s love.
Annalisa didn’t claim to understand Thomas, and he was still as unpredictable as when they’d first met, but the one fact she knew beyond all else was that Thomas would let Emma die without seeing her. He never replied to her letters. He never called. And he certainly would never forgive her, no matter how much Celia and Annalisa urged him. Though she would never judge her husband for his decision, it certainly saddened her.
Annalisa and Thomas had lived a good life—even great. He was a wonderful teacher who found tremendous pride in steering the youth of tomorrow. There had always been the tension of the past, though. He’d changed in a lot of ways during the war. He wasn’t the Mr. Sunshine that she’d first met in the museum. It was like he was 99 percent happy, and their lives were 99 percent perfect, but the shadow of the past was never too far from Thomas, and Annalisa had come to accept that this was the way things would always be.
Celia helped Emma to a glass of water that ended up dribbling down her chin. After wiping her clean, Celia said, “We’re gonna try to get into Eventide tonight,” referring to her favorite restaurant in Portland.
Emma was the one who’d first taken her there. “Oh, what I’d do for one last lobster roll.”
“We’ll bring you one,” Celia promised.
Emma looked like she might say something like, “You better hurry,” but instead, she reached for Celia’s and Annalisa’s hands. The three of them looked at each other, and Annalisa had a terribly sad feeling that this was it. The end. She was saying goodbye. Oh, thank God she’d let Emma back into their lives.
“I love you girls,” Emma said, dashing her eyes back and forth between the two.
Annalisa felt a tear roll down her cheek. She and Celia leaned in, saying, “I love you too,” and they hugged Emma as best they could, her frail body nearly disappearing in their hands.
Then there was someone at the door, and they all turned. Annalisa said, “Give us just a—”
Thomas Barnes, seventy years old but still clinging to his younger years, stepped into the room, his hat and coat in his arm. Annalisa nearly lost her balance. He smiled at his wife and daughter and then looked past them to the woman on the bed.
“Emma?” He approached and took his wife and daughter into a hug. Then they stepped aside so that he could get to his sister in time.
As he took her frail hand, Annalisa and Celia held each other and wept. This was her hero, Annalisa thought, the man she loved more than any other. And this was one of the many thousands of reasons why she loved him.
“Can you hear me?” he asked Emma, whose eyes had glazed over.
For a second, Annalisa worried that she’d passed before speaking with him.
Turning back to Annalisa, Thomas asked, “Can she hear me?”
“I can hear you,” Emma uttered, filling Annalisa’s heart with joy. He’d driven down from Bar Harbor just in time.
Thomas turned back to his sister with relief. “There you are.” He leaned down to kiss Emma’s cheek, and she let loose a smile that said it all.
“You took your sweet time, didn’t you?” Emma said as the two stared happily into each other’s eyes.
Then Annalisa watched Thomas’s shoulders bounce as he succumbed to a cry like she’d never seen, and the two siblings fell into a hug that lasted a long time. Holding her daughter, Annalisa felt so much love in that room that she thought the snow outside might melt and give way to an early spring, all in a few seconds. People loving people. Was there anything better?
Unraveling his arms from his sister, Thomas stayed very close to her, holding one of her hands with both of his. The two whispered back and forth, and at one point Emma even laughed, albeit weakly. Then she closed her eyes. No heart monitor was needed to know that she was departing.
Annalisa came up behind her husband and put her hand on his back, red paint still on her fingers from painting that morning. Never had she been prouder of him, and perhaps never had she loved him more. Celia approached from the other side of the bed, leaned down, and kissed Emma’s forehead, and then the three of them met eyes, now knowing for sure that theirs was a bond of love that nothing could break.
What Annalisa would never forget—what no one in that room would ever forget for the rest of their lives—was that seconds later, as they felt the life of Emma Barnes rise up out of her body, the wind chimes began to sing.
She turned and looked up. Sure enough, as if they still hung among Emma’s choir of singing trees, without a draft, without a breeze, the chimes she’d made of Walt’s old timepieces had gently come alive. Annalisa had always been a religious woman, but she’d never witnessed proof of God until that moment.
They didn’t sing a loud song, and one had to listen closely to hear them, but the chimes were certainly moving and pinging against one another, evoking a wondrous melody. And Annalisa knew, deep within, that the unseen breeze stirring in that room was Emma’s spirit singing a song of happiness, her unseen spirit singing a song of love.