Butterfly

by Sonya Hartnett

  “Ooh!” Plum has not expected this, and hunkers forward. “Yes! Tell me!”

  “All right.” Maureen smiles. “Aria: your brother Justin and I are involved. We have a relationship — do you understand? We love one another. We have done for a long time.”

  She tells it plainly, so the girl won’t be confused, yet Plum stares as if she’s never possessed a brother Justin, never encountered this word love. Bafflement crosses from one eyebrow to the other: she asks, “Are you going to get — married?”

  “I think so. Probably.”

  “But what about your husband?”

  Maureen grimaces. “These things happen, Aria.”

  Plum feels as if she’s opened her bedroom window to discover not the familiar view of roofs and mountains, but a world weirder than the deepest sea. The tea towel, the kettle, the shining sink are all utterly bizarre. The blackbird calling outside is a sound she’s never heard. Even Maureen is suddenly a stranger, a woman about whom Plum knows nothing. There are probably grand things that should be said, but she doesn’t know what they are. “What about him?” she asks, of the child at her elbow.

  Maureen frowns. “David will be fine.”

  The jabbering discord of Plum’s confusion clears for an instant: “I’ll be his auntie,” she realizes. “I’ll be your auntie,” she tells the boy. “You’ll be my nephew, Davy! And your mummy — she’ll be my sister-in-law! Won’t that be good? You can live here, and I’ll live next door, and we can see each other every day!”

  The boy smiles uneasily, looks across at his mother. “I’m not sure about that, Aria,” says Maureen. “It might be Bernie who stays in this house.”

  “What?” Plum gapes. “What? No! I want you to stay here! Where would you go?”

  “Possibly to Berlin,” Maureen replies. “Justin and I have discussed it.”

  It takes Plum a moment to locate the city on the map, but when she does she is appalled. “But — that’s so far away! How will you and Justin be together, if you go to Berlin?”

  Maureen laughs fondly. “Aria, you’re so quaint. Justin will be coming to Berlin too. We’ll be going together. We’re going to rent an apartment. We’ve discussed it, I told you.”

  The girl stares while the revelation runs through her like spillage down a drain. “Justin can’t go to Berlin,” she says.

  “No? Why can’t he?”

  “Because —” Plum fumbles. “Because he’s my brother!”

  “Aria,” says Maureen. “You can’t keep him forever.”

  Plum peers, dumbfounded, into this new upturned world. Words lunge out of her: “When? When are you going?”

  “As soon as we’re able. Very soon, I hope.”

  Plum’s mouth opens and shuts. Everything is helter-skelter. Her eyes feel pulled unnaturally wide, her ears hear a hollow ring. Her whole body hurts like it’s been thrown into a wall. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to her. “I don’t want Justin to go away,” she says, in a voice like a gravel road. “I don’t want you to go away, either. What about me?”

  “Oh Aria, you’ll be fine. I know you — I know how strong you are. You think you’re not, but you are. And you can visit during school holidays — wouldn’t you like that?”

  “No,” says Plum. “I’d like it better if you stayed here.”

  “I know.” Maureen winces. “But it’s all planned now. Maybe, when you’re old enough, you could spend a few months with us, or even a year? I’d love that — wouldn’t you?”

  The prospect sparks no enthusiasm in Plum: she sits like a toy that’s been too tightly wound, packed with energy yet paralyzed, her gaze flat and unseeing. “I didn’t know about any of this.”

  “No, but you almost did! Do you remember thinking that Justin had a secret? Well, I’m his secret. Everything I’ve just told you is our secret. No one knows about any of this yet — you’re the first. Isn’t that exciting?”

  Plum is being hit by waves of shock that are knocking her down and tumbling her over, making it difficult to think; in the distance is rising the greatest wave, which will arrive in wrath and thunder. This tidal wave is sucking the oxygen from the room, leaving her, for the moment, muted and suppressed. “I was going to take David to the park,” she says.

  “Yes, you were!” Maureen stands quickly, as if she too senses the coming torrent. “David, go with Aria. It’s a nice afternoon for the park.”

  Plum waits outside on the porch while the child’s shoes are found. The tidal wave is coming and she doesn’t try to escape it, but waits with a simmering calm. She squints up at the sky, which has lost its cloudiness and cleared to pale blue. “Be a good boy for Aria,” Maureen tells her son; and the great wave blocks the light of the sun when Plum thinks, I hate that name, Aria.

  Justin stays out of the way while Cydar makes the deal, strolling alone down the dim corridors as he does every time his brother persuades him to come out to this warehouse which is as temperate as an island, surreal as LSD. Hundreds of fish tanks line the aisles along which Justin walks, hands in pockets, stopping occasionally to admire an octopus or a turtle or, on one memorable occasion, a medium-sized crocodile. “Buy the crocodile,” Justin had urged, but Cydar had said, “No,” without even trying to pretend he might. This place is all business, for Cydar. If Justin listened to the conversation being conducted between his brother and the undefinably distasteful man who owns the warehouse, he would hear numbers slamming their heads together like rams, bargains driven home like fists. The first time he’d heard such cool gray language from his brother, Justin had been startled. He’d assumed the fish were pets to Cydar. “Won’t you miss them?” he’d asked that day, trailing his brother out to the car; Cydar was riffling through a wad of notes and didn’t look up to answer, “Nothing’s irreplaceable.”

  In every visit since, Justin has walked the aisles with their concrete floors and their walls made of glass, saying little and thinking less, feeling the weight of wet air in his lungs, slowing but not stopping when some peculiar creature catches his eye. The tanks are glowingly lit, stacked high upon one another like ingots. If he passes the gangly kid who cleans the tanks, Justin will say, “How you doing,” and the kid in his damp T-shirt will answer, “G’day.” Other than this, Justin bites back his opinion, for it’s that kind of place, like a cemetery. The churning of filters is like the reciting of prayers. He hears but makes no comment on what’s being said in the corner near the till; he waits for Cydar to find him among the heavenly aisles, then asks, as if it isn’t obvious, “Ready?” Sometimes, on the way to the door, he’ll point out an interesting specimen. Cydar assesses the beast in a glance, unfailingly keeps walking.

  Today Justin’s thoughts won’t be stilled, as they usually are when at the fish dealer’s. He casts his mind off like a boat, only to have it nudgingly return. He should not have talked to Maureen in the front garden this morning. She’s in his life the way the warehouse air is in his chest, invasive, too heavy. He should have turned his back on her. From now on he will; he’s impatient to. But he should have done so this morning.

  “Let’s go.” Cydar’s suddenness makes Justin jump. In this aquatic world, he is a cat. The twin white buckets are swinging empty at his knees, his pockets will be plugged with cash he’ll use not in a free and joyful way, but coldly, reasonedly. Justin waves a hand down a fog-lit aisle: “Come and see. There’s this fish called a sargrassy or something —”

  “Sargassum,” says Cydar. “No. We’ve got things to do.”

  Justin sighs, and heads for the door; but he could do with a touch of Cydar’s hard-bittenness. It would make life cleaner, less tatty. And Cydar, thinks Justin, has some ruthlessness to spare.

  Plum walks David to the milk bar because she needs something sugary in her mouth: two slabs of coconut ice are dropped in a paper bag, along with three Sherbet Bombs that use up the last of her change. They go then to the playground in the park, where Plum and the boy sit side-by-side on the bench in the shade of the plane t
ree. The grass looks fresh and glossy, and at the edge of the tanbark bees chug from daisy to daisy. “Be careful of the stings,” Plum warns the child. “Here,” she says, pushing into his hand a chunk of coconut ice. David feeds it without hesitation into a corner of his mouth. “Do you like it?” Plum asks — he nods and answers, “Hmm-hmm.” His small mild presence is keeping the cataclysmic wave at bay, but the longer it waits, the stronger it grows. The children both eat methodically, contemplating the empty playground. “Swing?” Plum suggests, when David’s finished the confection and is shaking coconut from his fingers in a finicky, disgusted way. They cross the tanbark to where the swings dangle from their chains, and he fits himself with neatness onto the wooden seat.

  “Berlin!” She blows the words past her teeth with the first heave against the swing. David arcs forward, legs stiff as tongs. “Do you know where that is, Davy? Miles away. Far across the seas . . . That sounds like a fairy-tale place, doesn’t it? Far across the seas.”

  The boy is whisked high by the strength in Plum’s arms and hangs his head as the swing swoops skyward, laughing enchantedly. Plum steps away as she reaches for the swing, steps forward again with each push, settling into a rhythm that keeps the child soaring at a steady height and pace. Out in the dark distance, the wave has begun to move — David, so unobtrusive, can’t fend it off forever. The black water is yawning like a monster’s maw. “I think she’s mean, your mother,” says Plum. “She’s mean, mean, mean. I thought she was my friend, but all this time she’s been scheming to go away and leave me. And to take my brother. And she wants me to be happy about it! You can visit during school holidays: yeah, sure, I bet that won’t happen. Who will be my friend now, Davy? Nobody. I won’t even be able to push you on the swings, because she’ll take you away from me too.”

  The boy replies with a gargle of laughter — Plum curls her lip, reaches up, shoves the swing as she’d like to shove the world. “Your mum is always saying, You can tell me anything, Aria. You can trust me, I’m your friend. But she keeps secrets — secrets about stealing all my best things from me. That’s not what a friend does, is it, David? That’s not being trustworthy. That’s sly, isn’t it? She said she was my friend, when she was really my enemy. She’s a liar, your mother. A dirty liar.”

  The edge of the swing slams into her palms, and she puts her weight into sending it away. The boy, who has no weight, flies like a feather in a hurricane, his hands clammed to the chains. “I thought she liked me.” The tidal wave is boiling and cluttered. “But she’s as bad as Sophie. Deserting me. She’s as bad as Caroline, running away. She reckons I can look after myself, but that’s easy for her to say. She’s not the one being left. She’ll have everything she wants. And she’ll — she’ll — she’ll have Justin.”

  Plum hasn’t yet given thought to the romantic aspects of the situation: now, with the afternoon sun on her head and the air steamy with vaporizing rain and the swing returning reliably and the tidal wave looming just off the shore, she cautiously considers the matter. Justin and I love one another. The words have a cartoon-like horror. Justin and Maureen kissing, twining their limbs, dreaming of each other, taking off their clothes: Plum’s mouth twists at the idea, she pushes the image away. Into its place springs something more sinister, a realization so scorching that it makes Plum gasp. It is Justin whom Maureen has cared about all this time. Justin was loved, and Plum was . . . used. The invitations to the garden, the soft drink and cupcakes, the sisterly concern, the understanding smiles, the earrings, the blue dress: “It was for Justin,” she tells the boy, who doesn’t reply, his legs whipping loosely at the knees. “Not for me — for Justin. She was using me to send messages to Justin.”

  And Plum gulps with the sorrow of it, remembering the bearish affection she’d felt for the woman, how deeply she’d laid her trust in her. She feels blood pooling in her cheeks, water leaking from the corners of her eyes. The swing flies upward, trailing giggles like ribbon: “Higher!” yips the boy. Plum grits her teeth, pushes harder. The tidal wave is overhanging her head now, a massive black crest, a nightmare. “Your mother’s a bitch,” Plum hisses. “Can you say that, Davy? Bitch.” And the water is coming down on her now, crashing green water which carries in its depths all the agonies of fourteen and which sweeps her up easily, throws her head over heels. In her whole life, the only thing that shines is Justin, the only thing Plum wants to keep is Justin, the one thing she’d lie down and die for is Justin; without Justin, there’s no rescue, no escape, no point. Everything else she can survive — she can survive without friends, without Maureen, with living a little life, she can thrive — but not this, not Justin, not her best and favorite thing, her Justin . . . Plum thinks, then, something unspeakable: she would prefer it if he died. Rather than lose him to Maureen, Justin could die. Such a loss would have tragic beauty. This loss is too ugly to bear. That loss would be everyone’s. This loss is only hers.

  “I hate.” Plum tumbles over and over, malevolent and afraid. “He is not hers, I hate.”

  “I am flying,” says David.

  “He can’t be hers. I hate her. I wish she’d die. I wish she wasn’t born.” Thrown about in the water, she’s battered and dizzied; words pour out with each breath and race like bubbles to the surface. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s crazy. Your mother is crazy, David. Justin doesn’t love her — how could he? He never talks about her. They never go out together. He never visits her house, she never visits ours. And she’s married, don’t forget. She’s already got a husband. So how could he like her? He couldn’t. It’s just stupid. It’s Maureen being stupid. Probably she was drunk. I’m not going to be friends with her now, even if she was drunk. She’s too much of a schemer. She’s an awful person —”

  Plum surfaces, snatching at air — she sees the swing flying over her head, sunlight glinting across the white sky. Moving along swiftly in the grip of the wave, she thinks over what she’s just said. Most of it is true. The idea of Berlin and a love affair makes no sense at all. It couldn’t happen, and it won’t.

  But Maureen is never stupid, not in any of the ways the word can mean. And there’s something more, something elusive that the tidal wave hauls from Plum’s grip every time her fingertips brush against it. Something that runs off when her memory calls it, but is also being deliberately chased away. Dread freezes in her spine at the thought of what she’ll know once this slick thing stops running and reveals itself. “That’s enough swinging,” she abruptly tells David. “You’ll sick up your coconut ice.”

  The boy climbs awkwardly from the stopped swing. His cheeks are colored like apples, polished by the cold wind. He smooths his clothes and smiles up at her. Noticing the diamonds in her ears, he points and smiles again. “Twinkle.”

  “Yeah.” The idea of stealing him crosses her mind — lifting him up and hurrying off in a new direction, thieving him as Maureen wants to thieve Justin, never returning to that stinky old house or to that evil school, but forging for both of them fresh lives. They could run away to the countryside, where nobody would recognize them. People would think she was his mother, and David would forget he’d ever had a proper one. It is what Maureen and Justin deserve. Except, of course, that it isn’t true, Justin doesn’t deserve anything because logically none of this can be true — it’s a huge relief to remember the impossibility of it being true. “Hold my hand,” she tells the child.

  “Can we see Justin’s car?”

  Plum’s head whips around, she stares down at the boy. The elusive thing that is running skids to a smoky halt. She sees Justin’s car parked in the shade of a paperbark in an out-of-the-way street, and no reason that she could guess for its being there.

  The tidal wave has left her beached, breathless and dripping. The sun seems too bright for this wintry day, the air sharp like the edges of paper. “Davy,” she says, “does my brother Justin ever come to visit you at your house?”

  The boy squints. Don’t answer, Plum wants to say. “One day,” he sighs. “Som
etimes.” And Plum, heartbroken, looks away, grappling with the small hand. Justin, and Maureen. And Cydar — even Cydar, in whom she’s always had faith. All of them have lied, letting her think that she can be safe.

  “Liars,” she whispers. “Lie, lie, lie.” David’s fingers knot inside hers. Justin’s car, Plum recollects, had been parked beneath the paperbark on the afternoon she babysat the boy because Maureen needed the afternoon. “You and me.” She rubs her eyes and peers down at him, and can’t bear to look at anything except the face of the child. “They used us, Davy. We’re just nothing to them. They don’t care about either of us. You and me, we should go away.”

  JUSTIN STEPS OUT OF THE BUNGALOW as Plum and the boy are coming through the garden, both children keeping to the track that weaves through the miscellany of thistle and destitute flower-beds. She’s marching so determinedly that the boy must jog, captured by her grip on his wrist. Her face is set in anger, and the first thing Justin thinks is that it’s the child who is the subject of her rage; and although it’s dangerous to speak to David and invite the disasters of what the boy might say, a volt of protectiveness spears Justin: “Don’t drag him, Plum,” he says. “He’s only got short legs.”

  Plum stops, a wasteland of weeds and geranium scrawling between herself and her brother. She pulls the child to her hip. “What do you care?” she says loudly. “You don’t care about him. You don’t care about anyone.”

  In all his life Justin has never been the subject of her rancor. Mums and Fa, and sometimes Cydar, and her teachers and sundry others who cross her path: but never him. He shades his eyes, as if he’s not seeing her properly. “What?”

  “Maureen told me about you and her, and how the two of you are going away.”

  The bald, somehow untidy statement leaves Justin and even Plum herself vaguely staggered. “What?” Justin says again.