The Black Butterfly

by Shirley Reva Vernick

  “Bushes?” My disbelief leaked out as a snicker. “As in former Presidents?”

  “George, George W, Jeb,” he said. “The food is very good here. Very good.”

  “Oh, I know. I mean, I smell it.”

  He poured me a glass of water from a crystal pitcher. “Miss Bubbles and George were looking forward to dining with you, but something…came up. I’m afraid you’ll have the place to yourself tonight.”

  What? Please, Vincent, tell me I heard you wrong. I couldn’t bear the idea of sitting alone through a whole meal here. I felt watched—the glinting eyes of the mirror jewels, the beaded eyes of the wall hangings, the hungry eyes of the sea dragons that swam the oceans of the antique map, they were all on me. I wished my mother were here. I wished this were a real vacation, and we were sitting down to dinner together. But it wasn’t anything like that, not even close.

  “Where are the other guests?” I asked, hopeful for some other warm bodies in the room.

  “You’re it,” Vincent answered.

  “But what about that girl I saw in the parlor?”

  “Girl?”

  “Blonde hair, jeans, my age?”

  Vincent thought for a second and then shrugged. “Don’t know who you saw, but honestly, no one else is staying here. Maybe it was Mike the heating guy’s daughter. She tags along with him from time to time.” He lit the candle in the center of the table, then made a little bow and disappeared into the kitchen.

  I dropped my forehead onto my hands and tried to take a few cleansing breaths. Okay, I told myself, this is going to be okay. Who’d want to eat with a strange girl like that, anyway? Or with George No-Personality Henion? I drank some water from the goblet and began to wonder what could have come up so abruptly. Was George at the bottom of it? Did I disgust him to the point where he refused to come to dinner? A pulse of nausea kicked me in the stomach. All I wanted was to run away, but suddenly Vincent was standing over me again, setting a crock of soup and a loaf of steaming bread on the table.

  “A Miss Rita original,” he said proudly. “Cream, cinnamon, cloves, beer and five cheeses.” He refilled my water and retreated.

  Cinnamon and cloves—so he was right. I was still queasy, but I picked up my spoon and played with the soup—stirring, lifting, inhaling, stirring some more. This had to be a week’s worth of calories in one bowl—not exactly what I needed. Still, Cook Rita had gone to a lot of trouble, and I didn’t want anyone thinking me ungrateful, so I put a spoonful to my mouth.

  Whoa. This was good. Very good, as Vincent said. I ate the rest of the spoonful greedily, then promised myself that would be all.

  I broke my promise. This velvet potion was some kind of magic. I was suddenly ravenous, and a pinch less afraid of the room. If I didn’t look up at the eyes all around me, I could pretend they weren’t staring.

  At one point, Vincent approached with a salad, but he withdrew when he saw I was still working on the soup. I’d have made that soup last until morning if I could, but when Vincent appeared with the salad for a second time, he insisted that I not fill up on the first course.

  The salad. Wilted kale, Vincent explained, and roasted potatoes with plenty of garlic, topped off with a luscious tahini dressing. Who needed a main dish after all this? I did, I realized—once the veal and brandied squash arrived. I don’t know who ever thought up brandied vegetables, but I’d like to shake their hand.

  I had no room at the end for the dessert, a creamy, nutty, not quite cake, not quite pastry thing that called to me from the center of a chocolate-drizzled plate. All I could do was nibble lovingly at the pistachios and the cocoa powder. The finale was an espresso served in a little Art Deco cup. Lingering over it, I knew Mom might be having more adventures than me right now, and Chad Laramy might be getting a better tan in Aruba, but no one was getting a better supper.

  When I finally set my linen napkin on the table and pushed my chair back, I checked my watch. Nine o’clock. I’d spent two full hours here. That’s like ten normal dinnertimes for me. How did that much time go by?

  As I left the dining room, I planned to head straight upstairs, but the caffeine hit me by the time I reached the parlor. Then I remembered a room I’d passed in the hallway on my way to and from dinner, a little room lined with bookshelves and crowded with armchairs and a sofa. A study, I guessed, or a lounge. Maybe it would have some decent magazines to help me while away my wakefulness or even some boring ones to put me to sleep. I turned around.

  The study, softly lit by two table lamps, was windowless, which was a bonus. In here, I could pretend it wasn’t winter outside. I could pretend it wasn’t even Maine outside. This could be the study in some Caribbean retreat. Chad Laramy might be right next door. I liked this room—I didn’t even mind being alone in it—and I had the feeling I’d be spending a lot of time here in the long days ahead.

  The bookshelves were loosely organized by category: travel, spiritual, food, boats, paperback novels, even comic books. I stopped at the paperback section, hoping to find a mystery I hadn’t read yet. I hadn’t read any of them. They were all wonderfully old, outdated and heavily thumbed. Six Parts Joy, One Part Murder caught my eye, and I took it out. The back flap promised a lurid tale of grisly crimes and a first-rate gumshoe—my kind of story. Just as I was turning to the first page though, a loud blare behind me nearly stopped my heart. I spun around and pressed my back against the shelves.

  The face of a woman peered from around an armchair. Its high back had hidden her from my view. “Hello,” she said in a slight accent—French, I thought—and then she sneezed thunderously twice more. “I am sorry to startle you.”

  “No, no,” I panted, heading to the sofa. “I just didn’t see you there.” Plus I thought I was the only guest.

  At least old enough to be my mother’s mother, this woman wore jeans and a loose sweater and sat with her legs curled under her, a thick book crooked in one arm. With tawny eyes, milky skin and silver hair, she’d clearly once been beautiful, and, in fact, still was. I hoped I’d like my elegant inn mate, whoever she was, since we were bound to be tripping all over each other in the confines of the inn.

  “How was supper tonight?” she asked.

  “Great.” I patted my belly, wondering why she hadn’t eaten. Maybe she’d only just checked in. Maybe she was an unexpected arrival. “Really outstanding.”

  “No, it was not. It was bland—mediocre at best.”

  The hair on my nape bristled. I felt personally attacked by this insult to the closest thing to nirvana I’d ever tasted. “I don’t think we had the same thing,” I said, wondering where and when she’d eaten, if not in the dining room at the appointed hour. “Did you have the veal?”

  “No. I cooked it. I am Rita, the chef.” And then she smiled.

  This was Miss Rita? I’d imagined someone bigger, more Italian, wearing white and smelling of oregano. It took me a second to adjust to the reality. “Penny,” I said at last.

  “I know.”

  “Oh. Well, I thought everything was fabulous. Especially the soup. And the dessert—I should have saved room.”

  She smiled broadly, the lines at her temples crinkling into crescents. “I am glad it was all right. You know, I can hardly get anything fresh, really fresh, out here this time of year. All I can do is improvise.”

  “But it was wonderful, really.”

  “I am glad. So, what are you reading?”

  “Pure pulp,” I said, feeling a little embarrassed about my choice of literature. “How about you?”

  “A cookbook.” She held up Cuisine Under the Stars. “It is how I sustain myself in the dreary winter. I decide what I would make if I could get the ingredients. Then I am not so sad about waiting. Let me tell you what would have been on tonight’s menu, no?”

  I nodded.

  “Since I did much of my training in Brussels,” she started, “I would prepare a Belgian supper, goose a l’instar de Vise. It is only worth bothering with if you can find a fresh youn
g bird, in springtime.” Rita described how she’d quarter the goose and simmer it in a garlic and white wine broth brimming with celery, carrots, onions and spices fresh from the garden. Next, she’d fry the bird golden crisp in a batter of eggs and crumbled homemade bread. Then she’d dribble a sauce of mashed garlic, broth, egg yolks, heavy cream and butter over it. “Flemish asparagus, just picked, and boiled potatoes on the side and voilà.”

  I think I actually whimpered, but at least I didn’t drool.

  “And for dessert,” she went on, “gaufres Bruxelloises. Waffles cooked in a pint of beer for crispness, sprinkled with brown sugar and topped with butter.”

  “Sounds amazing,” I said.

  “And you?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “What would you make for supper?” She tried to hand me her cookbook.

  “No, no. The only poultry I handle has been precooked by Frank Perdue.”

  “But you can imagine.”

  So I did. Leafing through her cookbook, I used the photos to create a four-course meal of scallop and mussel bisque, mesclun and persimmon salad, grilled tenderloin with papaya chutney, and something called chocolate melting cake. Not that I’d ever eaten these dishes before, but the words tasted delicious as I spoke them.

  “Bien!” Rita clapped her hands when I finished presenting my menu. “Good!”

  After that, she asked what my all-time most memorable meal was. “Tonight’s supper, definitely,” I said. “And you, what was your favorite?”

  She sat back and rested her head against the armchair, gazing at one of the table lamps. She looked far away, as if she were reliving a memory instead of just trying to put her finger on one. Finally she said, “It was a tuna and potato chip casserole. Tuna, from a can. And the potato chips were stale.” She laughed to herself, still staring at the memory hovering above the lamp.

  “That must’ve been some recipe,” I said.

  “No, the recipe was silly. But the cook, he was extraordinary.”

  “He?”

  “Now tell me. Tell me who you would invite to a dinner party. If it could be anyone, anyone at all.”

  Okay, so she didn’t want to spill about the guy. All right, fine, for now. “Anyone?” I asked. “Even people from the past?”

  “Certainly.”

  For some reason, the first person I thought of was George Henion. What was I thinking? Why would I want to break bread with a guy who either didn’t know how to talk or who didn’t want to talk to me specifically? “I guess I’d want to have some of my favorite novelists,” I said, “like Dean Koontz and Patricia Cornwell and Kurt Vonnegut. And, well, I wouldn’t mind hanging out with Johnny Depp or Channing Tatum. Oh, and the Dalai Lama—he’s got a great smile. I’d put him at the head of the table. Then I’d sit between Johnny and Channing, and the writers, they could all sit across the table from me…is that ridiculous?”

  Rita shook her head. “Not compared to my wish list.”

  “Why? Who’s on it?”

  She looked at me blankly for a moment. “Not too many people. Just my father when he was a boy. My mother as a young woman. My sister as she was the last time I saw her. Myself when I am very old. And you too, I think. Yes, when you are my age now. We would have a lovely time, all of us.”

  “What about the man who made you the tuna and chips casserole?”

  “Ah, you are a clever one. Another time I will tell you about him, maybe. But now I must get some sleep if I am going to make real food tomorrow.” She uncurled her legs and stood up. “Good night, dear. My room is right next door, if you need anything.”

  “Night, Rita. Thanks for dinner. And the talk.”

  After she left, I stayed on in the study to read, happy to have made a friend here at Chez Strange. I’d never had a friend who came from another generation or another country. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I ever really had a genuine friend before, someone to share food fantasies and guest lists with, someone to just laze an evening away with. So this was exciting—pitiful, but exciting.

  By the time I got through the first few chapters of Six Parts Joy, One Part Murder, it was almost one o’clock. I still wasn’t tired, but I decided to go to my room anyway—might as well enjoy the canopy bed and fancy pillows while I had the chance. I left the study and went down the hall, across the parlor, up the curved staircase and past the garden watercolors. It seemed like a long walk. By the time I reached my door, I felt like maybe I’d be able to sleep soon.

  Well, you made it through your first day, I told myself as I headed to the bathroom to perform my bedtime purification rite. One down, thirteen to go. Actually, if the rest of my stay could be half as pleasant as the evening I’d just spent with Rita, I’d be all over this gig. But that was never going to happen—my luck doesn’t roll like that. I sighed and pulled on my pajamas and fuzzy socks.

  We have a dollhouse-size bathroom mirror at home, so I wasn’t used to seeing such a complete, brightly lit view of myself. I wasn’t sure I liked the full-size image. Honestly, I’d happily suffer the eyebrow plucking and the occasional zits, if only they’d come along with a decent chest. But here I was, with a body that hadn’t kept pace with my social aspirations, fumbling for my tweezers and Clearasil, wishing for fuller lips and more mysterious eyes. Oh well, who was I going to try to impress around this godforsaken place, anyway?

  When I climbed into the canopy bed a few minutes later, the sheets, though luxurious, felt cold and a little rigid—or was that just me? It was probably just me. I forced myself to lie still, and sleep eventually overtook me.

  Chapter 3

  December 20

  Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.

  –Jules Feiffer

  Having stretched my stomach out at supper, I was naturally starving the next morning. The dining room door was ajar, and I could see that the room was empty. Then I noticed an envelope with my name on it taped to the maître d’s podium. It was a woman’s handwriting, and for an instant I thought it was my mother’s. She’d come to her senses, she’d realized what she’d done to me, and she was on her way here to beg my forgiveness.

  No, that couldn’t be it. Mom wasn’t diverting a single neuron to thoughts of her own flesh and blood. I slid a finger under the flap and pulled out the paper, Black Butterfly letterhead covered with flowery fountain pen handwriting:

  Penny dear,

  So sorry about dinner last night. Will explain later. I’m off to an appointment on the mainland. Breakfast is buffet-style, and I trust that by the time you find this note, the food will be out. Enjoy.

  I hope to be back by late afternoon or suppertime at the outside. If you need anything in the meantime, Vincent will be happy to help.

  So glad you’re with us –

  Bubbles

  For someone who was so glad I was here, she was doing a darn good job of making herself scarce. Just like Mom. And while we’re at it, where had George managed to hide himself since yesterday afternoon? Whatever was making the Henions disappear all the time, I didn’t like it. Not that I’m normally averse to being by myself—I’ve gotten used to that over the years—but this was getting ridiculous. Well, if I had to be alone, I might as well be alone in a room full of good food.

  Towering with fresh fruit, grains, plus all things decadent, the buffet table was a page out of some slick gourmet magazine, and a good distraction. The food, the tablecloth, the china, the silk flowers—all this, just for me? At least someone seemed to care. I put some pineapple chunks, a strip of bacon, and a cranberry muffin on a plate.

  I went to the same table I’d had last night, between the picture window and the fireplace. In the light of day I could see out the window, and I stared at the cloud covered world before sitting down. Ice-plated armor encased the evergreen bushes hugging the backside of the inn. Beyond, a flat expanse of snow stretched until, a few hundred yards out, it gave way to a steel grey sea. Not a single bird or squirrel skittered around the grounds. Maybe t
hey didn’t live this far north. “Oh, God,” I groaned. I had to endure thirteen more days in a wasteland that even critters with acorn-sized brains knew enough to avoid. I fell into my seat.

  I’d just put the bacon to my lips when I heard a “good morning” from behind. I turned around to see Rita. Thank God, a friendly face. “Morning,” I said.

  “May I?” Rita asked, pointing to the empty chair across from me.

  “Of course.”

  Today Rita was wearing a coral sweater that brought out the bit of pink I hadn’t noticed in her cheeks last night. Her grey corduroys made a trim line down to her suede flats. I hope I’m half that chic when I’m her age.

  “I am wondering, would you like to help me today?” she asked.

  “Help you?”

  “Yes, help me to bake.”

  I was so delighted to have an invitation to spend time with Rita—with anyone, really, but especially with her—I almost forgot to be confused. “But wait, Vincent told me you don’t let anyone in your kitchen when you cook, except for the family.”

  “That is right, usually. But you and I, we are—how do you say—kind spirits, yes?”

  “Kindred spirits, I think you mean.”

  She inched back her chair. “Shall we then?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Today we make pain d’amandes,” she said, standing up. “Take your plate, if you like.”

  “Pen what?” I asked as I followed her across the dining room.

  “Pain d’amandes. It means almond bread, but it is really a cookie made of everything sweet—honey, brandy, brown sugar, almonds.”

  Rita pushed the swinging door, and suddenly we were in her kitchen. Now, don’t picture one of those oversized, steel industrial kitchens that reek like a school cafeteria. This room was snug, all white and blue tiles, with a wooden floor, a large skylight, and the aroma of Tollhouse cookies. Rita went straight to the pantry—a room in itself off to the left—and emerged a minute later loaded with baking supplies. I watched her stack the center island with spices, sugars, a jar of nuts, and all kinds of utensils. The island, part butcher-block, part tile, housed a deep sink and a gas stove that already had a pot bubbling on it.