The Fig Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Nina Israel Zucker

“A real psycho ward home movie. ”

When my grandfather remarried, it was to Vera, a woman more than thirty years his junior and for sure, he wanted to please her. Vera wanted to get married by water, and though she and Granddad had moved from New Jersey to Florida by then, they lived in a trailer park in the flatlands in the state ’ s center. So Vera ’ s daughter set up one of those blue plastic swimming pools in their backyard, and, to mimic those fancy old hotels in Miami, her son put a spouting whale in the water. The gray plastic whale swam in circles, growled its mechanical little wind-up toy growl, and every few seconds spouted a stream of not so clean water onto the hems of the wedding party.

Even now I can hear how, over that growl, my relatives talked about Vera, about what a gold-digger she was to marry this deaf old man and him with Parkinson ’ s pretty advanced. Really they were angry, my three brothers especially, because we all learned the morning of the ceremony that Vera had been having an affair with Granddad for twenty-two years before Grandma died.

“Jesus Christ. ” Alva hooted, when I described the scene. “As if she wasn ’t going to get the worst maybe two years of your grandfather ’ s life and end up wiping his butt to boot. ” Alva is my go-to girl for perspective, alright.

Later she admitted she only confided her grandfather thing to shut me up about going on a house tour. A house tour of the Edison winter estate was Alva ’ s idea of how God would punish a truly shitty bar waitress on her one day off.

Somehow I prevailed. “Well we gotta

see if you have his eyes. ”

Edison on the docks with his straw bowler and a white linen jacket. Edison with the President of the United States and his friend, Henry Ford, sitting by a campfire his servants built, the great inventor in that white jacket even here.

“You think he left his jacket on and had the servant press his pants while he boinked Grandma?” Alva said, like she knew exactly what I was thinking. I remember how two white-haireds moved away from us then, looking at us like we were something they ’d scraped off their shoes.

But when we got to the inventions room Alva got animated all of a sudden.

“Freya, ” she said, dragging me from phonograph to bulb, from display case to display case. “You gotta ’ seethis. ”

Turns out Alva was a bit of a science freak as a kid, before her father beat it into her that she was a girl and that it was her destiny to wait tables to salesmen for the rest of her life. “Think I could be an inventor?”

That question stayed with me. Alva with ambitions. Who ’d have thought?

“You really wanted to be an inventor?” I asked during our next shift. “I mean, I know you ’ re smart enough and all, but inventor?”

“Sure, ” she said, coloring a little and then looking out over the usual crowd.

“Right now I’ m inventing full heads of hair and decent sports jackets on those guys at table three. This morning I invented a deeply satisfying mouth feel and taste for my Special K and diner coffee. ”

I know she was embarrassed, but I watched the way she held her tray after that. I watched the way she carried her

The Fig Tree

by Nina Israel Zucker

The fig tree has fallen in love with the place in the yard that separates neighbor from neighbor. I didn ’t ask permission

to plant that stick of wood between the two houses. It seemed small and innocent, a foot of broken branch with the only life visible

in the veins of a small white root poking from one end. What did I know of the soil and its minerals, only that I could scoop it

with one hand like cake, and drop the branch into a small warm hole, pat the sides upright, and go on with my laundry.

And here it is now, eight feet tall and wide enough to hide me, full of a ruby-centered fruit, tentacles of crystals, green rocks dripping

with white liquid. If I am too late the head gets so heavy that birds call to me to pick up the over ripened broken flesh. I carry the warm

tear drops into the house and place them on the table. Here is my still life, lush and desired. The neighbor has no idea.

Nina Israel Zucker is a poet and teacher. She has taught Creative Writing at Rowan University and has been a leader for the Spring/Fountain series offered to educators in New Jersey for 10 years. She also teaches Spanish for the Cherry Hill School District. Her work has appeared in US1 Worksheets, the anthology POETS AGAINST THE WAR, ed. Sam Hamill, the New York Times feature on the Dodge Poetry Festival and many other publications. She received her MFA from Columbia University.

head up, too. I thought she was maybe inventing some truth in her being descended from T Alva himself, and I felt something. Pride? In my most secret heart I guess I also have one ambition; I always thought I’d make a good one of those what they call motivational speakers. Lookatthat, I thought, watching Alva that night. She seemed to grow a couple of inches taller after that smart enough remark.

Now, back in Jersey, I’ m wondering when did my motivational speaker ’ s triumph turn so crazy. I have to park back of the Oasis, unlock the kitchen door, and drink my first cup of coffee in quiet before I can face that question.

“You sitting here in the dark for a reason?” Gladys says, flicking on a light. Gladys is my first waitress to show up every morning.

“Yeah, ” I say and get up off my stool, top off my coffee with hot and sit again. “I was just thinking of Alva. ”

“What’ s got you thinking about that nut-job friend of yours?” Gladys is saying. Everyone in my diner ’ s heard a bunch of Alva stories. I flip her the paper, that Ohio thing.

After that first trip to the estate, Alva wanted to go back and then go back again and again. Visiting the relatives, she called it, smirk-faced, while Gee at the bar thought she ’d become all saintly spending so much time with family. I was the only one at Coltrane ’ s who knew.

“You got any family to speak of, Alva?” I asked once when we were hanging at her place.

“God forbid!” The line of ash from her cigarette glowed when she took a pull on it. It dribbled onto her kitchen floor, just missing Leon, her part dachshund, part hell-knew-what, who stood as close to her leg as he could without going up her jeans. “Except, of course, ” and she got hyper-smirky here, “Grandpapa Edison. How about we head off and catch the last tour, Freya?”

Jeezus, but how many times did Alva take that tour, I’ m wondering as the first customers settle into the Oasis booths. I could have spoken the whole guided flaptrap with the docent after my third trip, but Alva went back every Thursday. After a while, even I began to believe it when I heard Gee and the others at Coltrane ’ s talking about how Alva must be at the nursing home visiting that make-believe failing aunt she told Gee of; what a saint she was for putting up with that old woman. It seemed more logical than believing she was back at the estate. How was I to know she was casing the place?

By the time she found the photo, she knew the schedule of every guard and tour guide, knew which bathrooms were locked up first and by when the gate snapped shut. She knew the first moment of opening time and a quick route out while the first visitors came in. I don ’t know how she learned these things, or how she came to evade security. God help me but there are things you don ’t want to know, even on behalf of a really good friend.

“You got to get here quick. ” When Alva called about the photo, it was past midnight and I was just off a shift serving Venetian Blind salesmen and tolerating blue-grass covers. I hadn ’t even pulled out of the Coltrane ’ s lot. “It’ s important, ” she said.

“Otherwise, you know I wouldn ’t bug you. ”

I admit even if she hadn ’t said that, I would have been made curious by her tone. Serious. Excited. So Not Alva.

I drove directly to Alva ’ s and found her wide-awake, her kitchen table strewn with old black and white pictures.

“Look here, ” she said before I had even parked my tired ass in a chair. “Evidence. ”

She stuffed an old photo of a grayhaired woman—sharp, but not too young—under my nose. “Evidence of what?” I asked trying to see the photo like a detective might. It was taken by a cheap camera; that much was for sure. The edges were serrated the way photo edges always came out a long time ago, before processing got so fancy. The woman was pretty, looked a little like

Alva around the eyes and had a sneer on her lips, like whoever took the photo she was probably flirting with.

“Look. Here. And here. ” She pointed to the hand the woman had laid in her lap. She held a magnifying glass over that section of the photo so I could see the ring on the woman ’ s finger. It was a signet with a big E on it. And under the hand lay a straw bowler hat.

“Who is she?” I asked, though my head told me the answer.

“It’ s my infamous grandma, ” Alva said, “And look. His ring. His hat. ”

I knew she wouldn ’t hear any contradictions or what ifs, so I didn ’t offer any. “What are you going to do with this— evidence?” I feared a big scene: Alva chaining herself to the gates of the TAE winter estate until someone acknowledged her genealogy, or Alva hiring a fancy lawyer and taking the family to court, but what she did, well, that just plain astonished me.

“I’ m putting my grandma where she belongs, ” she said.

When I tell this story at the diner, someone always asks didn ’t I ever find out how she pulled it off and the answer really is no. There are times you don ’t ask for too much information. I know Alva left for the Edison estate one late afternoon, telling Gee the old aunt was sick as hell and she had to take off early. And I know she wasn ’t home all night because I did like she asked and went by to feed Leon. Knowing there was no old aunt, I decided I’d better wait at her place till she came home or till the police called, but the police never called. I fell asleep with my head in my hands on her kitchen table and she woke me sometime after 9 a.m., wearing the same clothes she ’d had on the day before.

She never breathed a word of what she did and I didn ’t ask. But the next time

she went to the estate for the tour, she dragged me along and there it was: a really sharp 9 by 12 reproduction of Grandma, ring, hat and all framed and parked along one wall in the photo room. Edison on the dock in a hat and jacket. Edison camping with Henry Ford. Alva ’ s grandmother laughing into the camera. I had to cough to keep her from asking the docent giving us the tour who the woman in the photo was. The tour

cruised right by the picture and for all I know, it hangs there still.

I was afraid Alva couldn ’t leave it at that, and you know she wouldn ’t have, but as luck would have it, before she got herself arrested, I got handed an opportunity to get her out of town. “Holy shit!” I think those were my exact words when I opened the official-looking envelope that was special delivered to Coltrane ’ s during one of the few really crowded lunch rushes I ever recall serving. “Holy good God damn. ” It turned out my grandfather, who ’d passed—not quietly—a year after the infamous nuptials, hadn ’t left everything to his child bride Vera, like the family feared he would. Nope: The Oasis Diner came to me. I’d forgotten about the Oasis, nearly forgotten Trenton, New Jersey. Turns out my grandfather ’ s wife was more than happy to forget Trenton herself once she found herself in Florida, even in the ugly part in the middle. “I told him I’d give away the business rather than have anything to do with that butt-hole city again in my life, ” I think the lawyer said were her exact words. So there I was, an heiress.

I wasn ’t too crazy about making the move north myself, but Alva told me I’d be crazy not to.

“Freya, ” she said, maybe a dozen times before I finally agreed to it. “You can ’t pass up this opportunity to get out from under. Look, Kiddo, your very own business. ” We could both be motivators when we wanted, Alva and me.

“Imagine me as someone ’ s boss, ” I

Stream Off Route 82 by Deena Ball © 2009

said. Alva was probably the only soul who knew I’d actually imagined that once or twice myself. “But you come too. ”

I wasn ’t sorry to quit Coltrane ’ s but I knew I was about to miss Alva something fierce. In the end, it took less convincing than I thought it would to get her to at least drive up with me. I guessed she was going to miss me too.

God we had laughs on that drive, the U Haul towing my Nova behind it and so many really bad songs on the radio. Alva insisted on playing the worst oldies station in every state between Fort Myers and Trenton. “So you won ’t miss the bands at Coltrane ’ s just yet, ” she ’d say.

I put her in charge of the AAA books and finding cheap motels, which is, I’ m afraid to tell you, how she found out about Menlo Park.

The breakfast rush is over. I’ m thinking about Milan, Ohio. Too early to call Alva. If she ’ s back in Florida, she ’ll be out cold after a late night on the drunkards shift. Worse yet if she isn ’t home to answer.

“Alva, you take too many chances, ” I told her when she told me about her plans for Menlo Park and she snapped right back, “What do you mean you? It’ s we , Babe. You ’ re driving the get-away car. ”

Thomas Alva Edison ’ s known in New Jersey as “The Wizard of Menlo Park. ” I wish I’d remembered that when I gave Alva the Mid-Atlantic AAA book. By the time we got to Maryland, she ’d picked up every cheesy brochure on the Edison labs up there in North Jersey and was determined to go. The moment we unloaded the U Haul into my new mobile home out Route 1, she left me to unpack the kitchen and took off for her first tour of what she called “Edison ’ s North. ” The second tour she took me on, and the third, but at the end of that one, at just about closing time, she said for me to go ahead, she ’d meet me outside.

“Just wait by that back alley I pointed out when we came in this time. I’ll be there, ” she said. The voice on the P.A. had announced closing time already and I knew this was not a good sign.

“I just have to go to the bathroom, ” she said. Her eyes were glinting like they were throwing sparks off a disco ball. She had brought a bigger handbag to the labs that day, I noticed, big enough to hold a framed 9 by 12 photo.

“Don ’t go getting yourself arrested, ” I said to Alva. “I hear Jersey cops can be mean sons-of-bitches. ”

There are two of Jersey ’ s finest at my counter for lunch, nice guys really. One of them notices I’ m distracted and even asks if everything ’ s okay.

“Yeah, where are you today, Freya?” Gladys comments after I put the wrong sandwich down in front of the wrong cop.

I don ’t tell Gladys that I’ m back in Menlo Park, watching from the back alley into a locked historic site and praying my best friend doesn ’t find herself in Rahway State Prison by morning.

I watched Alva ’ s shadow pass around the flashlight lit room, saw through the gauzy curtains as her shape moved to the wall opposite the front window and stopped in front of a painting hanging there. For a moment I thought she was about to remove it, but she just straightened the picture, stood back, and straightened it again a couple of times until it appeared she was satisfied and could move on to another part of the room. Then she was out of my view altogether.

The second hand on my watch jerked in large, exaggerated motions, each minute passing as if it was a decade until Alva suddenly appeared at my passenger side.

“Drive. ”

I remember she said it like it was nothing, and then I was off onto the open road.

“What happened?” Silence.

It’ s like a movie in my head when I replay it now: Alva ’ s bottle-red hair has come loose from its clips and is blowing wildly around her face. I’ m afraid she ’ s going to catch a piece of it in the ash of her cigarette but I know better than to say anything about that. I merge us onto the New Jersey Turnpike, am halfway back home before I try again.

“What happened back there?”

Alva ’ s finished two Camels, lit one off the last, and started on a third.

“You do not want to know, Freya. ”

And yeah, I tell my regulars when I retell the story. Yeah, after the tearful goodbye, after Alva took the train ticket I bought her and headed back to Fort Myers, I did drive back up to Menlo Park, and no, I don ’t know how she did it, but sure as shit, Grandma was there.

I turn the dinner hour over to Carmen. She ’ s old and doesn ’t want to do early or late hours; serving up stewed tomatoes and macaroni and cheese, the AARP special I added to the menu, is just about her style. On the drive home, I’ m sitting in traffic as usual, so I’ ve got plenty of time to figure what I’ll tell Alva.

“Hey, Alva, ” I’ll start, casual like, if she happens to be, by some miracle, sitting at my kitchen table when I come home for the day. When she left to go back to Fort Myers, I gave her a key. You never know when someone like Alva ’ s going to need a place to sleep, or maybe hide.

“Hey Alva, what’ s new?” I won ’t let