News:

The first prize winner in The Common Review's Short Story Prize, judged by Gina Frangello. View the full list of winners.

The Cherry Tree

by Lowell Uda

"The moon," said Oscar, "is made of these petals. We're going to make the moon fat again." 

He looked up at the crescent faintly visible in the afternoon sky. He led his two recently adopted children, Susie, four, and Billy, three, over broken branches and through wind-torn leaves. He knelt on the grass beneath the cherry tree to gather up the soft white cherry blossom petals. The early spring storm had blown them down too. 

On the porch Meg, the children’s mother and his wife, sat on the hammock watching them. They called to her, inviting her to come and make the moon fat with them, but she declined, pleading morning sickness.

"See, how thin and pale the moon looks," Oscar said. He lifted first Susie’s chin, then Billy’s, and he pointed to the ghostly crescent floating between the house and the maple trees that lined the street. He worked to fill two plastic freezer bags, one for his new daughter and one for his new son, with "flakes from the moon," as he called the cherry blossom petals. But before he could get the bags full, the attention of three-year-old Billy began to wane. He wanted to go back into the house. Through the window behind Meg Oscar could see the television set glowing in the living room. 

"Not yet," said Oscar, snatching Billy up, his little body solid. He swung his son up into the air, so high up the moon was obstructed, and the boy squealed. He wanted to go higher, and Oscar swung him upward again, as if he wanted to toss that blond head out of this world and up onto the pale sliver haunting the afternoon sky. Susie had wrapped her arms around him, bracing her round, eager face at his belt buckle. He set Billy down in the grass and grabbed Susie, lifting her.

She was awkward in his grip, her little body heavy and elongating with reluctance, and for a moment as he held her aloft, Oscar thought he glimpsed the girl's biological father in her face. The fear in her eyes was the same as the fear in the father's on those former visitation days when Oscar held in his hands the man's latest bad child support checks. He wondered, staring past Susie's body at the moon, whether he really did know the girl’s biological father as well as he thought he did. The intimacies to which he was privy grew each day--the curve of the little girl's back, the bony spinal column, the thin legs were not Meg's, but her ex-'s. He swung Susie down and hugged her.

"It's my turn," said Billy, coming at Oscar's thigh with his head. "It's my turn now."

Oscar leaned over, grabbed Billy by the ankles, and flipped him over. Slowly, he began swinging the boy around, making a wheel under the moon. Round and round he went, and he moved the wheel around the cherry tree. The boy squealed and laughed. The girl dumped the petals on the grass and held the bag in front of her face.

"Oscar . . ."

Round and round. He saw Meg on the porch, calling. He halted, setting Billy down in the grass, and the whole world swung about him. Meg went by on the porch, and so did the entire house with the moon above it. Susie went by, her face still behind the plastic. The cherry tree, the houses across the street, the petals in the grass, the petals in the grass . . . He sank, and lay on his back, and watched the whole world swing by.

Earlier, the children had knocked on the door then burst into the room. Anyway, Billy had come bursting into the room, followed shyly by Susie. Billy crawled between Meg and Oscar and Susie lay on the edge of the bed beside Oscar. Billy tried forcing Meg and Oscar apart; he wanted horseplay, but Meg and Oscar were not yet awake.

Oscar felt closer to Susie, felt a deeper love stir between them. Billy was still, perhaps, hovering between fathers; or cut off from the original one, he was on the loose, and though he liked Oscar, was still looking. It hurt Oscar a bit, but he said to himself, "There's all manner of time." This was only the first spring after the adoption, and there would be other springs. The waters in the cold, bare land would be loosed again, and the land would green, and then the flowers would spring forth, as they did on his cherry tree, and then they would fall, and then the hard green fruit would appear. The sour bitter fruit would put crow's feet on the eyes and shut the mouth.