the great magnolia

Another short story attempt.  As you may know, I have a slight obsession with trees. Enjoy.

The Great Magnolia

She was leaning over the steel kitchen table, the cool metal a welcome relief from the choking heat of summer.  The girl stared down the hallway and through the open front door, propped open in hopes of inviting a breeze inside.  From here she could see across the street to the neighbor's lawn where two boys were playing catch underneath the great magnolia.  The girl had often wondered at the life of this tree, planted long before any of the homes in the neighborhood had been built.  She liked to imagine it then, a striking pale beauty against the lush greenbelt, its strong slender arms beckoning people to come and live.  On many occasions, when she passed the house, and if no one was in the yard, she would climb just high enough to pick a flower from the lowest branch.  She would hold it there in her cupped hands and gaze into the soft translucent petals.  There was an old book upstairs in her room full of her sketches of the tree in every season, but she often ripped her finished drawings furiously into tiny shreds.  She watched them fall through her fingers and and settle like pink snowflakes into the carpet.  What she wanted to capture more than anything was the way the magnolia smelled.  There was the scent of course, the subtle citrus that hovered in the air along the quiet suburban drive.  But it was more than that; it was the smell of going home, it was the fragrance of her entire life, or the parts that mattered most.  She had read in an article once about the fascinating connection between the senses and memory. She imagined a direct line from her button nose to that soft, sentimental spot of her brain where she kept her most precious images safe - her mother snapping green beans at the sink, her father tediously picking out Johnny Cash songs on his guitar, her older sister brushing out her honey-brown hair in front of the long mirror.  All she knew was that when she smelled the magnolia, her life was beautiful, frozen perfectly in time like the great tree itself.  The girl stood from the table and stepped out to the front porch.  The boys had grown bored of their game and left their baseball in the grass.  They were flying down the street on their bicycles, traveling full-speed toward their next afternoon adventure. It was quiet now.  She crossed the street and, glancing cautiously to her left and right, scaled quickly up the magnolia.  There was a spot in the very heart of the tree that felt like a chair built just for her.  The girl sat there and clutched the pink flowers in her hands.  She buried her nose deep inside until the sweet aroma became her breath, and she knew then, in the safety of her throne, that everything would be alright.  She stayed there a very long time.  Dusk came and cast an amber light on the walls of her childhood home, and she listened to the great magnolia tell the story of the girl who had grown up inside.