The Citron Tree
by Jeff Adams
Originally published in The McNeese Review, March 2020
Today I trim the citron tree and hope to kill it. I do not plan to do it, no. Planning suggests intent. Louise would sniff that out in a military second. I hope the way I used to hope way back in the day when I tossed water balloons over the fence. Or last month when I had to tell her I lost yet another job. Today it is the tree that produces hollow, bitter fruit every year, like Louise’s sister Sunny produces children. She has four of them from three different fathers. Sunny and her boys live with us in a three-bedroom house. I put food on the table for seven people every day of the week. The fathers? They rode into the sunset years ago. Apparently, Sunny doesn’t learn from her mistakes.
The fruit grows big and yellow and heavy from tight little green orbs that look like fleshy limes but are poisonous little bullets. Just ask the neighborhood dogs that run away when I plunk them and come back to bite into the thing that stung them in the side. The ones I don’t pull off the tree lose their toxin when the deep green turns to pale yellow and the orb grows into a fat, football-shaped, bumpy-skinned, cancerous blob with what looks like a huge wart growing at the end.
Whoever built the house planted the tree next to the foundation. Might as well build a sailboat in the cellar, I tell Louise. She says she likes the tree where it is, as though I would sneak out and move it in the middle of the night. I should offer to move it, shouldn’t I. The shock might kill it. But I go with the flow, which is how Louise and I stay a couple. It’s how I agree to take in Sunny and her kids. She has no plans for her future. I have no way out. The kids’ legs and arms grow longer right before your eyes, just like the branches of the citron tree. And they eat like starving animals.
How can you call it a fruit if it has no pulp? They tell us it’s ornamental. Who eats ornaments? And the tree has pointy, two-inch spikes growing out of it, all over it, armies of them. Sentient little spears that jab you if you’re not careful when you reach in to grab a branch. They sink deep into you, silently, like the steel needle of an assassin’s ice-pick. Or like the cutting remark of a sister-in-law who says, don’t you dare talk to my boy like that. You’re not his father. And I say something like, give me a second to figure out which father I’m supposed to be. And that gets Louise all riled up and the kids cry so I go out to the shed and smoke a cigarette.
Today I will be ruthless. Be the executioner who asks, now where did I put my sword, as I hoist my blade high above my target. Swoop down with a whoosh. Cut through bark to cambium to pith like cold metal through juicy sinew. Try not to hit my leg. I ask Sunny to keep the kids in the house, out of the way. Louise goes off to work, cautions me not to injure myself, and oh, by the way how about making chicken for dinner.
Sunny comes out to the shed. She asks to see my tool. Do I have to tell you Sunny is not subtle? I tell her that Louise asked about having chicken for dinner. Sunny says she is gaining weight. Does she look fat? I say skinless breasts. She says, What! That gets her back with the kids where she should be.
Louise is all career. Imagine her and Sunny growing up together, right? She puts the food on the table. Well actually I do but she makes it possible. Why she is so attached to the citron is beyond me. It’s like the dove in our back yard that looks pretty and lays empty eggs every year. Louise is here and awake maybe three hours a day before she turns in. She sees the citron when she gets in her car to go to work. That’s if she looks at it, if it’s the time of year when the sun is up, and you can see something, or when she isn’t on her smartphone with her eyes closed leaving a message for someone at the office. She does that a lot lately. She also sits in the car after work, at the house, into the darkness, talking into her smartphone. I call her in when food is on the table.
Then there are the trips. Short ones to start with, two or three days at a time now. Louise is moving up in the world, I can tell. We save on food money. That is the positive way to look at it. I do her clothes for her, she is so busy. Sometimes, she doesn’t come home with all the clothes she left with. I know that because I pack for her. It gives her an excuse to do more shopping, which she does on her trips because she doesn’t have time to do that when she’s home. Always going off to work, talking into her smartphone. Walking past the citron without a glance at it.
Sunny wears clothes that Louise doesn’t want any more. Louise has run out of room, she says. Time to upgrade. If I’m going to succeed I must look the part, she says. When does silk beat cotton to the boardroom, I wonder. But Sunny is looking better and better especially when she doesn’t button all the buttons. Louise asks why don’t I give Sunny something to do in the yard with me. Keep her occupied and not having to dote over her kids all the time. Exercise keeps the mind sharp, she says. How about veal chops tonight?
I decide the citron should be shaped, not killed. I will give it three crowns: Two side by side at eye-level, one in the middle at hip-level. Tree discipline. What doesn’t kill it will make it funnier. It is my hope that Louise will take notice of my affection for the citron if not my talents as a plant sculptor. I ask Sunny to join me. Keep track of the cuts, please, I tell her. I want everything symmetrical, distances matching, crowns rounded, and sizes equivalent. She asks about that last word. I mean crowns the same size, I tell her. She smiles and points to her chest, but I look away. Self-discipline.
Louise calls home to say she is stuck in Kansas City for another day. Who gets stuck in Kansas City? You don’t get stuck in Kansas City like you don’t get stuck in Evansville. But I understand, I tell her. More food savings. Water and laundry-soap savings too if she comes home with new clothes. Sunny hopes for new clothes the way Louise hopes never to have kids of her own. I discovered that last month when Louise told me, you try raising a family without a job or a career, and I went along with it. It was just a hope, not a plan.
Then there is a knock at the door and a man asks if Sunny is home. How do you know her, I ask, and he says, just at the coffee shop down the street. I say, let me check because she is supposed to be bathing the boys this morning. The boys, he says. Yes, the boys, I say. All four of them and you should see it, it’s quite the scene. And he says he will come by later when it’s more convenient. It will be more convenient in twenty years is the real answer. Sunny thanks me later and says I am a good person, and that she is trying hard to be a good person.
The phone calls are a different story. If Sunny answers after saying hello her first words are no, I’m Sunny, then, hello, hello. With me it’s different because there is just dead air. I’m going to have to check with the phone company. We pay our bills on time and we don’t deserve this kind of service.
Sunny has a new regimen with oils. Morning oils go on after the boys are washed and dressed and playing. Afternoon oils are catch as catch can. Evening oils are after dinner if Louise is traveling. Which she usually is now. I bring that up with her, but she says, you must understand that travel comes with the job. How come I don’t come with the job, I ask. You wouldn’t like Kansas City, Louise says. Nothing there for you to do. I ask her if she gave Sunny the idea about the oils. That is my original question as Louise comes home one day with a whole bag full of fancy oils but never uses them. I have more than travel on my mind. Where do oils come from in Kansas City when you are in wall-to-wall meetings and you never use them anyway? Samples she says. You always get samples. I decide to let it go because I don’t travel like Louise does. And what kind of man brings home oils after he travels. Unless it’s to give them to a woman and he has ulterior motives…
I decide to landscape light the citron tree. Nothing fancy, just a couple of ground-level floods that shine upward and into the foliage like stage lights under a stripper. Give Louise something to think about when she’s sitting there in her car at night talking into her smartphone. I ask Sunny if she’d like to help me between oil applications. Sure, she says she can wear Louise’s onesie with the cut-off legs and arms and V-neck that breathes when you do. I’ll do the electrical bits, I say. I’ll do the placement, Sunny says. Teamwork, we say in unison. Since it is another travel day we can install fixtures during daylight and inspect the effects at nighttime without Louise to interfere. Proper placement is everything in landscape lighting. That’s what I tell Sunny as I instruct her to get on her hands and knees. Get down with the lights while I get a good feel with my eyes for how it will look to me later, in the dark, as the light spills upward through the foliage at hip-level and lands lightly on the two same-size crowns at eye-level. Of the citron tree.
Sunny’s placement is flawless as we discover later that night with the after-dinner oil, in the shadow of the citron tree. I want to tell Louise, but I also want to keep it to myself. I want Louise to see what I can do without her having to tell me, but I think it’s best to leave things where they are. Although I think she has had something to do with this. Because now I learn that Kansas City is a long-term proposition. Am I not clear now? There is the apartment. Much better than a hotel room for the lengthier stay-overs. More like a home away from home to the weary executive. A phone gets installed, utilities are put in her name. She asks me to send her the contents of the hall closet that is filled with new clothes from last month’s trips. The apartment is a new thing she says. New as in Who knew she would get the commitment so soon? I want to tell her that the citron tree thrives. Its three crowns grow fast, like children’s limbs. The fruit is big and ugly and inedible. Sunny seems to have learned from her mistakes. But I still go with the flow. It’s how we stay a couple.
The fruit grows big and yellow and heavy from tight little green orbs that look like fleshy limes but are poisonous little bullets. Just ask the neighborhood dogs that run away when I plunk them and come back to bite into the thing that stung them in the side. The ones I don’t pull off the tree lose their toxin when the deep green turns to pale yellow and the orb grows into a fat, football-shaped, bumpy-skinned, cancerous blob with what looks like a huge wart growing at the end.
Whoever built the house planted the tree next to the foundation. Might as well build a sailboat in the cellar, I tell Louise. She says she likes the tree where it is, as though I would sneak out and move it in the middle of the night. I should offer to move it, shouldn’t I. The shock might kill it. But I go with the flow, which is how Louise and I stay a couple. It’s how I agree to take in Sunny and her kids. She has no plans for her future. I have no way out. The kids’ legs and arms grow longer right before your eyes, just like the branches of the citron tree. And they eat like starving animals.
How can you call it a fruit if it has no pulp? They tell us it’s ornamental. Who eats ornaments? And the tree has pointy, two-inch spikes growing out of it, all over it, armies of them. Sentient little spears that jab you if you’re not careful when you reach in to grab a branch. They sink deep into you, silently, like the steel needle of an assassin’s ice-pick. Or like the cutting remark of a sister-in-law who says, don’t you dare talk to my boy like that. You’re not his father. And I say something like, give me a second to figure out which father I’m supposed to be. And that gets Louise all riled up and the kids cry so I go out to the shed and smoke a cigarette.
Today I will be ruthless. Be the executioner who asks, now where did I put my sword, as I hoist my blade high above my target. Swoop down with a whoosh. Cut through bark to cambium to pith like cold metal through juicy sinew. Try not to hit my leg. I ask Sunny to keep the kids in the house, out of the way. Louise goes off to work, cautions me not to injure myself, and oh, by the way how about making chicken for dinner.
Sunny comes out to the shed. She asks to see my tool. Do I have to tell you Sunny is not subtle? I tell her that Louise asked about having chicken for dinner. Sunny says she is gaining weight. Does she look fat? I say skinless breasts. She says, What! That gets her back with the kids where she should be.
Louise is all career. Imagine her and Sunny growing up together, right? She puts the food on the table. Well actually I do but she makes it possible. Why she is so attached to the citron is beyond me. It’s like the dove in our back yard that looks pretty and lays empty eggs every year. Louise is here and awake maybe three hours a day before she turns in. She sees the citron when she gets in her car to go to work. That’s if she looks at it, if it’s the time of year when the sun is up, and you can see something, or when she isn’t on her smartphone with her eyes closed leaving a message for someone at the office. She does that a lot lately. She also sits in the car after work, at the house, into the darkness, talking into her smartphone. I call her in when food is on the table.
Then there are the trips. Short ones to start with, two or three days at a time now. Louise is moving up in the world, I can tell. We save on food money. That is the positive way to look at it. I do her clothes for her, she is so busy. Sometimes, she doesn’t come home with all the clothes she left with. I know that because I pack for her. It gives her an excuse to do more shopping, which she does on her trips because she doesn’t have time to do that when she’s home. Always going off to work, talking into her smartphone. Walking past the citron without a glance at it.
Sunny wears clothes that Louise doesn’t want any more. Louise has run out of room, she says. Time to upgrade. If I’m going to succeed I must look the part, she says. When does silk beat cotton to the boardroom, I wonder. But Sunny is looking better and better especially when she doesn’t button all the buttons. Louise asks why don’t I give Sunny something to do in the yard with me. Keep her occupied and not having to dote over her kids all the time. Exercise keeps the mind sharp, she says. How about veal chops tonight?
I decide the citron should be shaped, not killed. I will give it three crowns: Two side by side at eye-level, one in the middle at hip-level. Tree discipline. What doesn’t kill it will make it funnier. It is my hope that Louise will take notice of my affection for the citron if not my talents as a plant sculptor. I ask Sunny to join me. Keep track of the cuts, please, I tell her. I want everything symmetrical, distances matching, crowns rounded, and sizes equivalent. She asks about that last word. I mean crowns the same size, I tell her. She smiles and points to her chest, but I look away. Self-discipline.
Louise calls home to say she is stuck in Kansas City for another day. Who gets stuck in Kansas City? You don’t get stuck in Kansas City like you don’t get stuck in Evansville. But I understand, I tell her. More food savings. Water and laundry-soap savings too if she comes home with new clothes. Sunny hopes for new clothes the way Louise hopes never to have kids of her own. I discovered that last month when Louise told me, you try raising a family without a job or a career, and I went along with it. It was just a hope, not a plan.
Then there is a knock at the door and a man asks if Sunny is home. How do you know her, I ask, and he says, just at the coffee shop down the street. I say, let me check because she is supposed to be bathing the boys this morning. The boys, he says. Yes, the boys, I say. All four of them and you should see it, it’s quite the scene. And he says he will come by later when it’s more convenient. It will be more convenient in twenty years is the real answer. Sunny thanks me later and says I am a good person, and that she is trying hard to be a good person.
The phone calls are a different story. If Sunny answers after saying hello her first words are no, I’m Sunny, then, hello, hello. With me it’s different because there is just dead air. I’m going to have to check with the phone company. We pay our bills on time and we don’t deserve this kind of service.
Sunny has a new regimen with oils. Morning oils go on after the boys are washed and dressed and playing. Afternoon oils are catch as catch can. Evening oils are after dinner if Louise is traveling. Which she usually is now. I bring that up with her, but she says, you must understand that travel comes with the job. How come I don’t come with the job, I ask. You wouldn’t like Kansas City, Louise says. Nothing there for you to do. I ask her if she gave Sunny the idea about the oils. That is my original question as Louise comes home one day with a whole bag full of fancy oils but never uses them. I have more than travel on my mind. Where do oils come from in Kansas City when you are in wall-to-wall meetings and you never use them anyway? Samples she says. You always get samples. I decide to let it go because I don’t travel like Louise does. And what kind of man brings home oils after he travels. Unless it’s to give them to a woman and he has ulterior motives…
I decide to landscape light the citron tree. Nothing fancy, just a couple of ground-level floods that shine upward and into the foliage like stage lights under a stripper. Give Louise something to think about when she’s sitting there in her car at night talking into her smartphone. I ask Sunny if she’d like to help me between oil applications. Sure, she says she can wear Louise’s onesie with the cut-off legs and arms and V-neck that breathes when you do. I’ll do the electrical bits, I say. I’ll do the placement, Sunny says. Teamwork, we say in unison. Since it is another travel day we can install fixtures during daylight and inspect the effects at nighttime without Louise to interfere. Proper placement is everything in landscape lighting. That’s what I tell Sunny as I instruct her to get on her hands and knees. Get down with the lights while I get a good feel with my eyes for how it will look to me later, in the dark, as the light spills upward through the foliage at hip-level and lands lightly on the two same-size crowns at eye-level. Of the citron tree.
Sunny’s placement is flawless as we discover later that night with the after-dinner oil, in the shadow of the citron tree. I want to tell Louise, but I also want to keep it to myself. I want Louise to see what I can do without her having to tell me, but I think it’s best to leave things where they are. Although I think she has had something to do with this. Because now I learn that Kansas City is a long-term proposition. Am I not clear now? There is the apartment. Much better than a hotel room for the lengthier stay-overs. More like a home away from home to the weary executive. A phone gets installed, utilities are put in her name. She asks me to send her the contents of the hall closet that is filled with new clothes from last month’s trips. The apartment is a new thing she says. New as in Who knew she would get the commitment so soon? I want to tell her that the citron tree thrives. Its three crowns grow fast, like children’s limbs. The fruit is big and ugly and inedible. Sunny seems to have learned from her mistakes. But I still go with the flow. It’s how we stay a couple.
