I don't know if Georgine saw it. She was a long way off.
It's the end of April now. The bluegrass on the Green is still mostly dead, and the board still hasn't decided what to do about it, and the amendment I drafted passed in January by a vote of fifty-one to nine. Our own yard has come up green on its own, the blue grama and buffalo grass rising out of the lion-colored stubble in tight little tufts after the April snow, without a drop from the hose, exactly the way the seed company said it would. The red maple came through the winter with most of its branches. Fidel came by last Saturday on his day off, in jeans and a Broncos cap, and stood with us for a while and looked it over, and bent down a twig from one of the lower branches and scraped the bark with his thumbnail to see if it was green underneath, which it was. He said that was good. He said the buds on the south side looked fat and the buds on the north side looked thin, and that a red maple in this country was always going to be a gamble, and that this one had been through more than most.
"Will it make it?" Pia asked him.
Fidel rubbed his goatee and looked at the tree for a long time, the way I imagine he looks at a meter that's reading something it shouldn't.
"Ask me in June," he said.
So we're waiting for June. Every Saturday we carry the buckets out. The buds on the south side have started to split, and there's a little red showing at the tips, which might be leaves and might be flowers, and might be nothing at all, and Pia checks them every morning on her way to the bus. The bronze plaque on the bench still says HE PLANTED THINGS. Somebody, I don't know who, has been polishing it.