by John Erianne

Created on: January 24, 2009   Last Updated: January 25, 2009

PENNY AND THE ELM TREE

There was an elm tree in the middle of a small garden in the back yard. It was a favorite of the previous owner according to Penny Olsen, the elderly woman who lived next door. Paul Heinz, the previous owner, had died the previous winter. "It was the diabetes," Penny said to the new owner, a young man with a young wife and two children.

The young man looked to be about her grandson's age. He stood there with one of his children - a little boy, and his wife. The young father had an indifferent look on his face and nodded his head as Penny spoke. Penny didn't think much of the new neighbors. The kids were noisy and the wife was always complaining about something. "Paul - Mr. Heinz loved that tree," she said again. "And the garden . . ." Weeds had grown up around the elm tree where flowers once bloomed.

"Okay," said the young father, "But he's gone and this is my house now."

"He wouldn't like it if you cut that tree down," Penny insisted as if repeating her point would somehow change the man's mind.

"My house, my tree. And besides, we're thinking about putting in a swimming pool and that tree is in the way." The young wife smirked at Penny's distress and escorted the toddler back into the house leaving her husband with Penny.

Penny shook her head. "Well, then, I guess there's nothing left for us to talk about."

"Guess not."

Penny wandered back to her own house, next door. She'd lived in her house all of her life, just like Paul had lived in the house next door most of his life. They had grown-up together and played together and been each other's first loves. And when Paul had gone off to Europe as a soldier in Patton's army, she had waited for him, commuting by bus to a nearby town to attend teacher's college. When he returned, she thought they'd marry and eventually join the two properties, but Paul returned from the war with a French war bride. Though she was bitterly disappointed, she swallowed her broken heart like a bitter pill and resumed her friendship with Paul and accepted Melanie, his wife as she would a sister. A few years later, Penny married a fellow teacher at the local high school and the two couples socialized often and raised their children together.

The children grew up and moved away to start families of their own. Penny's husband died from a heart attack while bowling with his team one October evening. A few years after that, Melanie succumbed to breast cancer. Penny thought she'd have a second chance with Paul Heinz. She did and, although he refused to marry her, they spent many more afternoons together under the elm tree in the garden as they had when they were young and carefree. When Paul became sick, she nursed him until the day that he died. Because they weren't married and because he willed the house to his son, Paul Jr., there was no saving the house. Paul Jr. sold it quickly as he could.

The morning the workmen came to cut the tree down, Penny waited and watched from her own back yard. Penny stood there weeping for a long time. She waited until she could no longer stand the whirring roar of the saw and cracking of limbs. She knew it was all over. She went back into her house that day and locked the door behind her, closed all the windows and the curtains. That day was the last time anyone in the neighborhood saw Penny Olsen outside her house. The following autumn an ambulance rolled into Penny's driveway. The young couple stood outside with many of the other neighbors, wondering what had happened. The next thing they knew, it was summer and Penny's grandson was in her front yard with a real estate agent handing the woman a set of house keys. The young couple and their two children were splashing in their swimming pool.

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