Butterfly

by Sonya Hartnett

  The mantel clock strikes six with a ladylike chime. The clock is new, still foreign enough to make Justin and David look around at its sound. Maureen, stretched out on the ice cream, smiles: Justin knows why. She tends an ever-changing flock of costly periodicals, and every lounge room in their burnished pages features a small chiming clock on a mantel. Other things she sees there can make her less happy. “Yellow doesn’t suit me, does it? But everyone seems to be wearing it. My skin’s too pale for bright colors, isn’t it? But colors are so much in fashion. Yellow is awful on me, I shouldn’t have worn it.”

  “It’s not awful,” he assures her. “It’s fine.” Over the past year he’s said this or something similar so often he hardly hears himself say it. In the beginning, he had thought her worries touching. It was as if she was trying to rise to a standard Justin had unintentionally set. Justin is twenty-four years old: the world will never be more suited to him than it is now, he will never feel more embraced by life or have greater faith in his right to exist. The earth and the oxygen, the cities and lights, the nights and the beaches seem created for him and for those like him. Maureen Wilks is thirty-six, married for most of that differing dozen years, a mother and a housewife. It would be tempting for someone like her, Justin supposes, to stop trying. Instead, in her relentless reaching for what’s fresh and new, she’s almost more youthful than he is.

  But in the last few months something has changed, smudging his view of her. Something has leaked from a pool of indifference that Justin hadn’t even noticed was filling, and everything he’d once craved has become less vital to him. The hankering he’d felt at the start is subsiding as it has subsided before, away from other girls he’s loved, for no more scurrilous reason than that he’s too restless to be in love for long. And although he’s been aggrieved by the fickleness of his heart, Justin is also relieved. He is still free. He won’t spend his life with this woman. He’s embarrassed by the Justin who had once, boyishly, wanted to.

  Embarrassment is like the fatal stick in KerPlunk — with the smallest tweak, everything falls. Justin now finds odious what once flattered and entranced. Maureen’s conversation, her pride, even her attempts to please: all these irritate. Her battle to stay at the forefront of what’s fashionable is pathetic in someone living her life. She doesn’t seem willing to accept that she’s just a middle-aged housewife. She speaks with dissatisfaction of the house, its furnishings, the neighborhood, the stores. And if she never exactly states that her husband and child also rank deficient in her world, she often tells Justin, “You are my fine thing. You’re what’s worth living for.”

  Such words had once sounded like poetry. Now they slide off Justin forgettably. His immunity makes him pity her. To which Cydar had said: “That doesn’t sound like love.”

  “I should have chosen the square face instead of the oval.” She’s referring to the clock, which is still trilling prettily, liking the sound of its own voice. Justin doesn’t reply. If he’s shanghaied into one more conversation about the price, prospects and quandaries posed by yet another piece of tat he will, without question, be sick.

  David, overcome with weariness, stretches out on the carpet, resting his cheek on Justin’s right shoe. A flame of affection lights up for the child, but Justin stamps it down. He leans closer to the window, searching out Plum. She’s sitting on the Coyles’ veranda, tooting a recorder. Through a scrum of camellia he glimpses her kicking foot, the back of a hand, the edge of her downturned face. If Justin were to leave through the front door, his sister would certainly spot him. Yet her presence isn’t imprisoning — he could slip out the side door, jump the fence into the next property, walk from there to where he left his car. Plum would never see him, the buildings would block her view. Escape is not only possible, but easy, especially for one used to subterfuge — dressing for work he’s not rostered to do, inventing the details of afternoons spent playing pool, learning another man’s routine, memorizing the sound of a particular car. Never so much as a sidelong glance when there was a risk someone shrewd might see.

  But instead of escaping, Justin simply stands, as if the weight of the child’s head has compressed his feet into the ground. He feels the exhaustion of doing what he hasn’t yet attempted.

  For a year they have played their game. A year of hands clamped to mouths, lipstick buffed from shoulders, care taken not to bruise. For much of that time, Justin’s blood has run fast. Not so long ago, he would have loved Plum for sitting on the veranda and making an obstacle of herself. Now, though, he’s bored. Now, he’s longing for the freedom to leave through the front door. . . . The sight of his sister on the veranda swing is oddly beckoning. She must be waiting for Fa, or for Justin himself. And he wants to go and wait with her: if he could sit beside her, waiting for Fa, rightness would be restored. As long as he’s here, behind a gauze curtain, nothing is as it could be.

  Justin is not like Cydar, brilliant and tightly-wound. He is not clever in the way a successful man needs to be. He has bumped through life like a brightly colored ball — laughing, disorganized, freewheeling, easily pleased. Sweet-natured, he almost always meets sweetness in return; and is not hurt when he doesn’t, but baffled and forgiving. Every aspect of his world has made Justin vibrantly happy. But the situation with Maureen has become the kind of darkness that’s never shaded his existence before, and Justin has started to resent her for it. Shut up, he wants to tell her — he, who’s never had to be cruel.

  “A king.” There’s something of the dying swan in the crook of her neck, the mammoth surrounding of whiteness. “We had everything a birthday has to have — candles, cupcakes, fairy bread, the song. David really wanted you to be there. So did I, Justin.”

  “I know. But I told you I wouldn’t be. I told you not to make an effort for me.”

  “I didn’t make an effort for you. I made an effort for David. And we had Plum as a guest, which was nice.”

  Justin thinks on this. “Plum didn’t tell me she came to the party.”

  Maureen lifts her chin. “Why should she?”

  There’s no short answer, so Justin says nothing; but distantly he realizes something that is difficult to put into words. If his sister becomes friends with Maureen, the darkness in Justin’s life will spread.

  Then Maureen smiles, and the unease falls from Justin as swiftly as it had flared. She is just a poor matchstick girl, lonely and trying to please. And he has loved her — known himself, at one time, to be hopelessly in love with her. And for a moment he’s captured by what has always fascinated him: her willowy height, her knowingness, her tightly-drawn clothing. Even the fact that she has had a child is inexplicably compelling; even the fact that, most nights, she lies in somebody else’s arms. He can’t go back, can’t revive what has died, but Justin is grateful for having known her. His life, when she’s gone, will absorb the occurrence of her, and bounce on like a ball down a grassy green road: but for some time he will surely feel a loss, the emptiness of the hands of the smoker who finally renounces nicotine.

  Maureen is, in fact, a closet smoker, sneaking a pack’s worth of Alpines into her lungs each week. She smokes in secret for the sheer pleasure of secrecy. She smokes because, smoking, she is nineteen again, on the shore of possibilities.

  These end-of-summer dusks never want to finish. The light lingers until it makes a nuisance of itself. David won’t sleep if there’s a chink of luminance behind his bedroom curtain. He asks for a story and then for another, until she tells him, “No!” He swallows the word like a swordfish, closes his eyes instantly.

  Grayness lies along the fence and gutters; except for this burned periphery, the sky is mango-orange. Maureen is wearing a cream-colored dressing gown which scuds around her ankles; beneath the gown, a white silk slip grasps the curvings of her body. Mosquitoes come to dance attendance on her, lances at the ready. She breathes smoke at them and they shy sideways like knights. She wanders up and down the garden path, lingering at its far reaches, her weight hinged on a hip. Deep
in the warm dirt, the crickets say nothing: it’s so quiet that Maureen can hear the cigarette burn, hear the leaves slide against one another. Presumably the neighborhood is bedded down with Reader’s Digest, careless of the jewel-like evening beyond the door. It is perfection; and Maureen feels perfect. Her body is washed, her hair squeakily clean. She sniffs the crook of her arm, where Justin had lain, but there’s only the Nordic scent of the bath.

  A light is shining in the girl’s bedroom, the blind lifted and the window open. Maureen knows this is a signal for her. She crushes the cigarette on a stone, slips the stub into her pocket. “Aria!”

  Hardly an instant passes before the girl’s face appears at the window, white and passionate. The blue pajamas she’s wearing look stale as a serviette. “Maureen! I’ll come down —”

  “No, stay there. I’ve missed my Rapunzel.”

  “Did you remember to watch Planet of the Apes?”

  “I did. Those vicious gorillas!”

  “And what about the ending? Were you surprised?”

  “I was surprised, and I thought it was sad. What about you, though? How have you been? How was school?”

  “OK.” The girl’s face contorts. “I threw my lunch in the bin.”

  “Oh! Good girl!”

  “And I told my friends what you said about me becoming a model. They all laughed at me.”

  Maureen pauses, hearing the blame. “And these friends of yours know a lot about fashion photography, do they?”

  “. . . No.”

  “Then of course they laughed. They’re jealous.”

  It’s evident that Plum hasn’t thought of it like that. Her shaggy head, framed in the window, bobs avidly. Maureen says, “Don’t listen to poisonous people, Aria. You don’t need friends like that.”

  “No, I know. But — they’re nice to me, most of the time.”

  She’s worrying that Maureen will divine she’s a lesser equal among her friends. So Maureen answers, “I’m sure they are. But don’t forget, I’m here if you need me. And I will never laugh at you.”

  The girl ducks her head, says, “Can I ask something now?”

  “Of course.” Maureen glides nearer the fence.

  “Do you think I should get my ears pierced?”

  Maureen clasps her hands. “Why not? You’d look lovely.”

  “Lovely.” Plum scoffs. Something in the distance catches her eye and makes her scowl. “Your — Mr. Wilks — is coming. I can see his car.”

  Maureen says, “Poor Bernie. He works late.”

  “I’m writing invitations!” The girl beams. “I chose the ones with silhouettes.”

  Maureen smiles up at her, though she has no idea what the girl means. She says, “Aria, would you be interested in babysitting David occasionally? Playing with him, taking him for walks? He likes you, and I want him to have friends. I’d pay you, of course. You could save to have your ears pierced.”

  The girl hesitates as the Datsun swings into the driveway and rushes up the concrete guides. Maureen hears the hand brake secured, the driver’s neat door eased open. “I would, I will,” Plum decides swiftly. “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  Cydar pauses, stilled as a prowler hearing a lamp switched on. The door to Plum’s bedroom is unlatched, and through the gap he sees a sliver of cupboard festooned with stickers and pictures cut from magazines. Only his sister’s voice carries through the gap, but he guesses who she’s talking to. When the window rumbles down its frame he uses the noise as a thief uses darkness, to proceed.

  Justin is lying on his bed wearing a pair of Fa’s old trousers and a set of headphones, each cup the size of a muffin. The room is dark, the blind is down, his arms are folded across his chest; Cydar thinks of an Irish farm boy laid out on the kitchen table. Seeing him, Justin pulls off the headphones and drops them to the floor, where they bark out tiny noises like furious miniature dogs. Cydar asks, “Why don’t you turn on a light?”

  Justin’s glance goes to the window; Cydar looks wry. “You’re a rat in a wall,” he says.

  “Yeah.” Justin smiles, in Cydar’s mind transforming from dead farm boy to dying matinee idol. “A rat in a wall.”

  Cydar takes from his pocket a snugly bound parcel of marijuana and tosses it onto the bed. The drug will wreak havoc on Justin and his laconic friends, but Cydar is nobody’s keeper, and charity is a trait that, from childhood, he’s understood to have its own rewards. He hesitates before stepping over the threshold — he doesn’t often come into Justin’s room, this attic-space of maleness and dog-eared car manuals, its walls hung with glum oil paintings that Justin didn’t choose; but when he does, Cydar makes a beeline for the single curiosity. On the chest of drawers is a shallow bowl that has a rotating base. The interior of the bowl is divided into six compartments, each with its own flip-top lid. The lids are inscribed in copperplate: cuff links, rubber bands, spare change; paper clips, safety pins, keys. A manly ornament from two decades earlier that attracts Cydar like fireworks. He spins the bowl, the lids whirl around — then stops it sharply with a jabbing finger. Paper clips. Lifting the lid reveals not paper clips but a purple button entangled in cotton. Pleasing nonetheless, and Cydar smiles. Justin says, “Just have it. Take it.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Well, I don’t need it. I don’t even know how it got here.”

  Cydar knows: Fa had brought the bowl home from a junk shop, and put it in Justin’s room without even considering that his younger son might appreciate it more. But Cydar tells Justin, “If I take it, you’ll have nothing. Nothing except that cat outside the wall.”

  Justin draws breath to reply, but doesn’t; his chest falls, his fingers close around the crackly bag of dope. Cydar waits, spinning the bowl. Beneath them the house sighs, shifting wooden bones on its stumps. They feel the weight of the dust that coats the roof joists and sloughs from the plaster and lies between the floors; they feel the presence of their mother and father in the den downstairs, their sister moving in her bedroom down the hall. Cydar keeps his voice low, as if the house is one of cards. “I told you you’d regret it. I said you were an idiot.”

  Justin says, “You’re not helping.”

  Safety pins.“Have you ever owned many safety pins?”

  “You’ve asked me that before.”

  Cuff links, spare change, rubber bands. If the bowl is spun fast enough it makes a turbulent sound, and its wants become cuff change, key links, spare paper bands.“Plum was talking to her just now. Hanging out the window like Juliet.”

  “They’re friends.” Justin tucks the dope under his pillow, resumes the corpse position. “Plum went to David’s party, and now she and Maureen are friends.”

  Cydar lifts his head, and across the dark room the brothers exchange the kind of glance that might have passed between brother gunslingers, or brother mobsters, or brother politicians. They understand one another’s inconveniences; they are uncommonly reliable; they are faithfully in-league. “She saw your car in the street today. She thought it had broken down.”

  Justin says nothing immediately; under the bed, the minuscule dogs continue to bark. Cydar hears the squeak of the tape that’s rolling in the machine. Kiss, Dynasty, Justin’s playing it to death. “The situation is becoming complicated,” he eventually acknowledges.

  Cydar cannot help but be angered. “It’s not for nothing they advise against shitting where you eat.”

  “Yet again,” his brother sighs, “you’re just not helping.”

  The bowl spins like chance, round and around. “Maybe it will be all right,” Cydar suggests. “It might be good for Plum to have Maureen as a friend. Someone older. Smarter. I don’t think Plum . . . does very well.”

  “It’s a complication,” Justin says shortly.

  “Well, what are you going to do about it? Lie here and hope it goes away?”

  “Will that work?”

  Cydar’s lip hooks; he halts the bowl with such suddenness that it tips. “Rubber bands.”


  “My least favorite.”

  “More useful than safety pins.”

  “Debatable,” says Justin.

  Cydar idles a moment longer before turning his back on the siren bowl. “Well, good luck with all that,” he says, moving to the door. “You know where I am if you need me.”

  “Yeah,” his brother answers. Sleeping with the fishes.

  THE RUBBISH BINS weren’t emptied overnight, and the dented metal drum contains a vile mess of orange peel, squashed banana, shattered crackers, snapped laces, balls of cling wrap, icy-pole paddles, torn foolscap, masticated chewy, sucked and spat-out sweets. Flies loop the inside of the bin like racing cars; there is the odor that is the universal companion of garbage, subterranean and punchy, innately unclean.

  Plum stands beside the bin, lunch in hand. Today it is Strasbourg with sauce. If she breathed the sandwich deeply she might smell the kitchen at home, the blade of the knife, the scarred chopping board. She might smell Fa eating breakfast, Cydar smoothing the headlines, Justin asleep upstairs. More than anything she might find her mother’s hand laying out the Strasbourg so it doesn’t overlap the crust, tamping the bread lightly, cleaving the sandwich in two. Binding the meal in rainbow wrapper, pressing out the air so the bread will be soft when Plum eats it, with no gritty scalp of staleness.

  She thinks of Maureen, who in the garden last night had looked like a white angel pacing a heavenly cemetery. Plum wants to be thin, but mostly she wants the angel to look at her with pride. Still, after she’s laid the sandwich in the bin, she has to move away quickly, thinking sturdy thoughts. The assembly bell is ringing, so she has an excuse to run.

  At recess she meets her friends underneath their tree. Something exciting has happened overnight: Rachael has seen the Youth Group leader walking on the street. “But what did he do?” Victoria urgently needs to know. “Did he remember you?” Of course the boy-man had remembered Rachael — he’d been staring at her throughout the entire Youth Group meeting just nights before. He hadn’t stopped to talk on the street, he’d seemed busy, as if he was going somewhere — but he had smiled and said hello, and asked if Rachael would be at the next meeting. Plum listens avidly to this report, veering as they all are between excitement and jealousy. Apart from a childhood crush on one of Justin’s friends, and a current, less sustainable besottedness with David Bowie, she has not yet encountered any men to really like. She’s nervous at the prospect of what will happen when she does. She doesn’t know how to kiss, nor trusts that she’ll be able to do so when the moment comes. At home, there’s a book about boys-meeting-girls, a book Mums bought for teenage Justin, who’d never needed advice. Plum has read it countless times, but every time she does she becomes a little less sure. How to get from meeting a boy to . . . that . . . It’s a relief to change the subject when Rachael’s story peters away. “Invitations,” Plum says, passing out white envelopes.