This tree told me things: I knew when it was windy because its leaves would shimmer. I knew that it was summer for sure when its branches filled up with green leaves that blocked my window. In the winter it was bare naked, sharp and pointy branches like the end of a witch’s broom, and when covered in snow, miniature icicles formed off its branches. I felt warmer inside looking at the tree outside: it bore the winter in a way that I could not.

Although it was not the healthiest-looking of trees, it did seem to grow. I knew this because each year it seemed to cover more of our window and its branches reached closer and closer to us. In a few years we would have been able to touch them.

So four Tuesdays ago, when I came home from work, my husband had news for me.

“The tree isn’t there anymore,” he said, “a big truck with a ladder came this morning. At first I thought they were coming to fix the phone line but then they pulled up next to the tree and started trimming it. I realized they were doing more than trimming it. Pretty soon there was nothing left.”

I looked out and saw only the windows of the houses across the street. I looked down and saw the stump.

“The guy cutting it was right next to our bedroom window,” Hal continued, “He looked in without smiling. He meant business.”

“You should have said something!” I cried out, staring at the empty space.

“I couldn’t, he was determined. The whole thing happened in five minutes. There were pieces of tree all over the sidewalk. It was awful!”

He explained that our neighbors talked about the tree incident for the rest of the afternoon but that they saw the situation differently: they wanted the tree chopped down. “It was diseased,” they said, “a danger to other trees.”

Later in the week, as I was walking to the F train, I went past what remained of the tree. I stopped to pay homage. I observed the swirls of growth in the wood and their different shades of brown. There was still sap on the frayed edges where the saw had cut. In the middle of the stump, there was a large hole, and I saw that passers-by had stuck various forms of trash in that hole: a crumpled-up apple juice carton, an empty package of cigarettes, and the sports page from The Daily News.

We showed the stump to friends visiting from the country this week and we told them our sad story. Upon one look at the stump, Howard said: “That tree was diseased. Trees aren’t normally hollow.” An entire brick was in the hole this time.

“Oh well,” I said, resigned to my fate of life without this tree, “do you know what kind it was?”

“It looks like it was a Maple,” he answered. I was amazed that he could tell what kind of tree it was from the bark on the stump. People in the country know their trees.

Stephanie suggested that we call 311 and order another tree, and I think I just might do that. Even though I know I won’t be living here anymore by the time it reaches the bedroom window.

There is a man who looks just like Hemingway who lives on India Street in Brooklyn in a building called the Astral, a dismal place with huge arching windows to remind you of its past glamour as an apartment building for international sailors (Mae West is said to have been born there). He lives right above a woman named Maria who cuts people’s hair in her apartment. This man, who I always call “Hemingway”, spends every day, all day long, looking through the trashcans on India Street for objects that he is interested in. Whenever he finds something that he likes, he puts it into a basket that is tied to a string leading up to his apartment. He then calls up to his son, Aristotle, who sticks his head out from the window, screams back in acknowledgment, and pulls the basket up to the apartment. Both are equally excited by the finds.

One day I went up to Hemingway, as he was carefully sorting out pieces of a broken mirror from a bent-up tin of macaroni and cheese, and I told him how much I liked his beard. I don’t know why I had the urge to do this. Perhaps I felt the need to interrupt his persistent activity, to see if he was capable of being distracted and responding to something other than a piece of trash. He slowly turned towards me and made a sound that was a definite expression of disgust and told me that he didn’t care for his beard that much after all. He said the only reason he keeps it is because a woman down the street pays him eight dollars a week not to shave it off. This left me feeling even more curious than I had been before. So now when I look out the window at Hemingway I think about the woman instead of the trash.