A Tree Falls in Corning

It is inevitable that those to whom is vouchsafed a long life of usefulness should outlive the friends of their youth.

Cleveland Abbe

Peg and I were enjoying a postprandial cocktail and a showy, Southern-style nocturnal thunderstorm out in the Solarium when my cellphone sprang to life, displaying a New York area code. I usually let calls go to voicemail when I don't recognize the number, but this time I swiped right and took the call.

It was Chad, our landlord.

Chad is a nice young man in his late 30s, with two little kids at home and a wife whose aggressive breast cancer leaves him constantly distracted and his bank account constantly drained. He has a wobbly track record when it comes to making repairs he can't afford, but I tend to give him a pass because I can't imagine what his world must feel like every day with that Sword of Damocles hanging over his family's head.

I figured the call was about the refrigerator, still beeping and holding a temperature maybe five or ten degrees below the ambient kitchen air. Earlier in the week P had sent him a rather scathing demand that he resolve this issue soon, as our groceries gradually rotted inside.

"Hey guys, just wanted to let you know New York Electric and Gas says they'll have a crew out there as soon as they can to deal with the tree."

"What tree?"

"The one that fell across the power line. You haven't been in the backyard yet? Don't. It's probably not safe until the power guys get out there."

So of course we strode immediately down the stairs and into the backyard. Southerners are a predictable tribe.

In the darkness we could tell that a huge, dark shadow had fallen across the carriage house, but we couldn't make out the direction the tree had fallen in the flashes of light from the nearby storms. P surmised it was probably rooted next door.

The dusk revealed a different story altogether.

This was our tree, a huge old hardwood that anchored the whole backyard. Apparently during those sunny afternoons when P and I sat on the iron lawn furniture in the foreground of that photo to enjoy its shade and the breezes from the valley below, the old tree's roots were rotting away such that, when the breezes turned into gusts as the line of storms crashed through town last night, the roots gave way and the oak tumbled into the carriage house and across the power lines.

And the Sinclaire House mourned. Trust me on this. The old mansion's grief was reflected in the almost supernatural effect on our electrical system. The tree had killed the powerline alright, but the power selectively remained coursing randomly through some of the outlets in the apartment.

The lamp in the family room was dead. The lamp in the bedroom worked fine.

The kitchen lights were stone dead, but the nightlight on the stove stayed illuminated.

This morning was even weirder. As I went through my routine of bargaining with our espresso machine, which in true Italian fashion performs brilliantly when it doesn't randomly decide not to work at all, for no reason, I noted that the machine's blinking red light told me it was receiving power. I flipped on the coffee grinder. Nothing. Two plugs within maybe three feet of each other, no doubt on the same circuit, but only one worked. And now the lamp worked in the family room, but the air conditioner plugged into the next outlet was dead.

I don't see how this is even possible, for power to be interrupted to random outlets around this crumbling old edifice. But that's exactly what happened, as I walked around the kitchen testing plugs so I could make P a cup of coffee and a plate of eggs and toast.

I figure it's the house's way of grieving at the absurdity of the moment, the absurdity of any moment when we're confronted with death. That tree was probably over a century old, massive and stately like this mansion back when the tree was just a sapling and this room smelled like fresh cut lumber and drying plaster. The tree grew up to become the centerpiece of the yard, and it and the house saw generations of children and young couples and dowagers pass through and into their own absurd oblivion. The tree and the house grew old together, until this place turned into a decrepit shadow of itself, a chopped-up apartment building, as the tree kept throwing shade while below the surface it was dying. Two old folks with their best years behind them, but sharing this last, lonely season together.

Until that day when the tree just, well, died. One of the last old friends this house had left, gone with a crash on a stormy night.

Of course the Sinclaire House grieves this morning, and displays its pain with an absurdly impossible response to its electric line being yanked out of the wall as its best friend crashed to the ground, never to return.

The air conditioner sprang to life with a beep about a quarter after seven. Time for me to do the same on this gloomy morning that beckons a nap.