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    Tree/House
    Tree/House
    Tree/House
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Tree/House

    By Jessica Knauss

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    About this ebook

    Emma isn't sure what to do with her life. She isn't sure what her Shakespeare professor wants from her, even after they get married. Even after he dies. Their country estate becomes a kind of prison. Then Geraldine appears. She kills the cat, aims for thestable boy, sleeps in the trees, and brags about sleeping with her boss. But she's the best thing that ever happened to Emma. With a help of a ghostly apparition, Emma understands that the only prison is in her mind. Does she have the courage and the strength to move on and create her own life, by her own rules? This edition also contains haunting black and white photographs of the Pennsylvania wilderness where most of the story takes place.

    A fast and fascinating read that will leave you wondering about the pink kitchen sponge!

    The perfect gift for the reader in your life.

    Reviews from the print edition:

    "This book reminded me that I once was a free spirit."

    "I loved the characters."
    "I could not put this book down!"

    "A provocative page turner."

    "The descriptive detail makes you feel that you are right there with Emma."

    "An interesting look at human behavior."
    "This author's talent for writing is rare."

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJessica Knauss
    Release dateNov 20, 2015
    Tree/House
    Author

    Jessica Knauss

    My epic novel set in medieval Spain, SEVEN NOBLE KNIGHTS, will be published by Bagwyn Books in 2016. I’ve published short stories and poetry in many venues. I’m also an exacting editor who prefers historical and literary novels with a flair for fantasy. In times long ago but not forgotten, I worked as a librarian and a Spanish teacher. Visit my blog for book reviews, excerpts from my writing, and links to my publications. Find enchanting books in English and Spanish at acedrex.com. Follow me on Facebook or Twitter or find me on Goodreads and Smashwords.

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      Book preview

      Tree/House - Jessica Knauss

      "Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not.

      We are multivolume sets."

      — Clarissa Pinkola Estés,

      Women Who Run with the Wolves

      Pic1Pic2

      The Mexican Pavilion at Epcot

      I.

      The funeral procession Emma had always imagined involved slow pallbearers winding through narrow streets, drizzle, and many women in black cloaks choking back their grief. She had planned in great detail the way Franklin’s cedar coffin would slide into the ground and the way the moist earth would sound as it fell on top. She would carry white lilies and her grandmother would be there to support her should she faint. Maybe she would carry smelling salts. After that, her plans ended abruptly because what does one do after a funeral, after all.

      The true funeral had involved only Franklin’s mother, the servants, and Emma, without lilies. The day was exceptionally bright. The white clouds seemed cheerful. The pastor had regretfully told about Franklin’s profound contributions to humanity. Emma had said nothing at all. She didn’t even faint. Of course, the most surprising fact about the funeral was that it had taken place. Even in her darkest fantasies, Emma had never really wished Franklin would die.

      Afterward, everyone stood in the kitchen, expecting Emma to finally realize that the sudden death was real and to burst out with the grief of a bereaved wife. They all wanted to be there to see it.

      She went to Walt Disney World without having felt bereaved. She spent a lot of time in Epcot Center, collecting desires, and later making plans to travel to every continent on the globe. Franklin had never permitted the idea of travel, and now Emma’s mind was boggled by the idea that these exotic pictures depicted actual places, these foods were eaten somewhere else on a regular basis, there was a real place where these alien people belonged and where this incredible language was the only way to communicate. She didn’t care how inauthentic or touristy it all was. These fantastic symbols represented real places, not fictional ones, not something inside someone’s head that would expire with the flesh. These places were not only real, but eternal. Emma wanted to learn about them all.

      When she went to the Mexican pavilion, she found nothing that was not to her liking. It all seemed natural—the spicy food, the impassioned people speaking urgently about everything there was to discuss, from ice cream cones to political parties (which, now that she thought about it, wasn’t such a wide range after all).

      The chef in the Mexican pavilion kept her coming back day after day, not only to try every variety of lunch he could prepare, but even more to hear him talk. When Emma first struck up a conversation with him, he revealed within minutes that he had been an officer in the US Navy, and that experience, single and at the same time diverse, seemed to have been integral in every decision and action he had taken since. But what fascinated Emma most was not his egalitarian everyone-should-work-for-their-own-food mentality, but his stories about his travels. He had been from Istanbul to Gibraltar and everywhere in between, around the Horn (Emma needed to look up which Horn he meant), and had even had a long shore leave in Bombay. Hong Kong was one of his favorites, but he would never forget Jamaica.

      Emma wiped her mouth every few minutes as she listened to make sure she wasn’t drooling. She couldn’t help but feel respect for someone who had seen so much. Which was why, when she heard two boys whispering and giggling, making fun of his accent within earshot, she ran after them as fast as she could. As they escaped, she threw a hot tamale at them. She hoped it left a burn where it hit the kid’s back.

      After two weeks she went home, unable to wait any longer to apply for her passport. She got a new haircut for the picture and put down that she was traveling as a student—of life!—she thought.

      While she waited the six weeks for it to arrive, she noticed coyotes crouching around her with hollowed out eyes and slavering mouths. They were hungry for a particular kind of meat, one Emma wasn’t willing to share: they wanted her time. A lot of it. The lawyers especially, in the first few weeks. As soon as she would hang up the phone from the travel agent, another call would be waiting about the distribution of the resources listed in Franklin’s will.

      In Walt Disney World, she had almost forgotten who Franklin was and that he ever existed, and when Carin, the maidservant, mentioned his name for the first time, it gave Emma pause for a few moments. This lapse made her feel subhuman, because he had been her husband, after all, even if he was twenty years her senior and so completely absorbed in the running of the estate that he hardly had time to see her, much less to tell her how to run it should anything happen to him.

      She joined her cat, Cordelia, in looking out the picture window at the long meadows they called the lawns, and the little copse beyond it and the even larger gardens, full of fruit trees and vegetables, long rows of corn, and some decorative flowers. She looked at the roses and irises the gardener had planted at her request when she’d first arrived there. She looked at it all and thought, Franklin did this. But the thought didn’t move her at all. What persisted in her mind was a picture of what the estate had looked like before Franklin had bent the land to his will: shady, brambly, wild. She reached out to stroke Cordelia, but the cat had silently disappeared, as usual.

      Some of the coyotes would come in person to the house, and even disturb her in these moments of reflection. These usually represented another coyote who preferred not to be seen: Lisa, Franklin’s daughter.

      She had run away long before Emma had arrived. Emma had the feeling that Lisa had survived her first nights on the street as a prostitute. That would explain the way Franklin used to tear at the pages when the newspaper would have features on the prostitution problem, and why he would sometimes wipe away a tear when someone like Franklin’s mother would thoughtlessly mention Lisa’s name.

      You needn’t worry about Lisa causing us any problems, Franklin had said when making his case for marriage to Emma. I have decided she is not my daughter any more.

      Lisa, however, having survived her first nights on the street and started her own printing business in the city, still felt very much Franklin’s daughter. Not enough to attend the funeral, just enough to inherit some money. When her lawyers came to Emma, Emma would look deep into their eyes for some trace of Lisa’s presence. She had never met Lisa, but her curiosity was so embarrassing that she didn’t even propose a meeting. Besides, Lisa shouldn’t feel that Emma wanted to be friendly when she wasn’t going to get any of the money. That was the way Franklin had wished it. One must respect the dead.

      No respect for the living, of course. Here was a lawyer, waiting.

      I can’t see you now, said Emma. She cast her gaze down, hoping to look grief-stricken.

      Why not?

      What gall. Because frankly I’d rather not have to deal with this right now. Didn’t anyone ever tell you to respect the rights of widows?

      The lawyer left, but Emma remained in the doorway, stunned by the word that had escaped her mouth. She was a widow. She had had a husband and now he was dead. And she was left. At thirty, she figured she had maybe forty more years to go. Why didn’t they cremate wives with their dead husbands anymore? She shivered and retreated to her bedroom.

      Emma swiveled the dial around and around, looking for a radio station that Franklin wouldn’t have listened to. It was jazzy, and at first it made her feel it was raining outside. She looked out the window and the night was clear and black. The stars blinked their

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