The Roots Under the Driveway

Agathe stands on her driveway with a cup of tea, looking at a crack she has privately named the River. It runs from the garage door to the street and gets wider every spring.

The cause is no mystery. Her neighbor's oak, which is older than the street itself, has been pushing a thick root under the concrete for years.

"If it were my driveway, I would have sent a lawyer's letter months ago," her brother says on the phone. He has even drafted one for her. It begins with the words "Pursuant to," and it makes her stomach hurt.

"Hedwig hasn't done anything wrong," Agathe says. "It's a tree."

"The tree belongs to her, though. That's the whole point."

Agathe thinks about Hedwig, who has lived next door for forty years. Once, after a storm, Hedwig left a jar of plum jam on Agathe's step. Then Agathe folds the draft, puts it in a drawer, and crosses the grass in her slippers.

Hedwig opens the door with flour up to her elbows. "It's the driveway, isn't it?" she says before Agathe can speak. "I've been lying awake about it all week. I should have knocked on your door first."

It turns out that both of them have been rehearsing speeches. Hedwig admits that she looked up the price of cutting the oak down, and then closed the page as if it had bitten her.

"Nobody has ever cut that tree," she says, "and nobody will while I'm here."

"I don't want it cut," Agathe says. "I just want to open my car door without checking where my feet are."

A week later a paving contractor crouches over the root, whistling quietly through his teeth. The concrete could be laid in a curve, he explains, with flexible slabs that would rise and fall with the root. It would cost more than a straight pour, although the tree would never be harmed.

"Half each," Hedwig says at once. "And I'll bring the tea."

When Agathe reports all this by phone, her brother is silent for a moment. "So you saved a tree, kept a neighbor and spent less money than a lawyer would have cost?"

"Yes."

"I wrote a very good letter, you know."

In the autumn, the contractor leaves behind a stack of spare timber. Agathe and Hedwig build a bench from it, directly under the oak. Hedwig lays a spirit level across the seat and frowns, because the bench leans a little, one leg resting on a root. Agathe sits down anyway, and the bench rocks once. Neither of them reaches for a tool.