The Black Butterfly

by Shirley Reva Vernick

  “Mom, you there?”

  “Right here, sweetie.”

  “You said you had something important to tell me.”

  “Yes, something exciting. Are you sitting down?”

  I clasped the comforter. “Uh huh.”

  “Okay,” she said, drawing the word out into several syllables. “Remember when I told you I was going to interview the owner of the Shotgun Murder Mansion? His name is Rex. It was the last time we spoke.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, I did it, and I got it on tape. One of the best pieces I’ve ever done. He was a great interview—funny and knowledgeable, and the camera liked him too.”

  “Don’t tell me you sold it.”

  “Better than that. Rex offered me a job! Isn’t that wonderful? Giving tours at the mansion—it’s a museum now. And doing research. Oh, and getting publicity for the museum. Salary, benefits, three weeks vacation. A real professional job in my chosen field. I’m so excited. I start in two weeks.”

  “What?” A job in Coyote, Idaho, a.k.a. the middle of nowhere. A world away from everything I know. A universe away from George. Two weeks from now. I dropped back onto the headboard and banged my head. No, no, no.

  “Penny, are you still there?”

  “Uh.”

  “Well, isn’t it incredible? This could be a whole new life for both of us. It will be a new life. A better life. Without all the moving and scrimping and mooching off friends. Don’t you see?”

  I saw all right. I saw how Mom got what Mom wanted, and she didn’t care that it was going to ruin my life. Care? She never even thought about it. She never once stopped to wonder how I might feel. Because my feelings, my whole life, didn’t matter.

  “Penny, say something.”

  Corralling every drop of self-control I had, I took a deep, cleansing breath. “Look, Mom, there are real jobs in Boston too.”

  “Not like this one. This is the job I’ve been holding out for.”

  “We don’t have to move all the time or mooch off Gigi. We’ve never had to. It’s been your choice.”

  “Penny.” Her voice climbed an octave. “I made those choices with you in mind, for you.”

  This made me laugh. “So you think I like living the way we do? You think I like having a new address and a new school every time I turn around? No, Mom. I do it because you make me, that’s why.”

  “I make you because that’s how I keep a roof over your head,” she said, her words shaking a little. “But from now on, it doesn’t have to be that way. Now we’ll have one address, one school. There’s a nice little Catholic school –”

  “Catholic school!”

  “Now honey, it’s just that Coyote is so small and out of the way, it doesn’t have much of a school system. Over in Ketchum—that’s about two hours from here—they have a Catholic boarding school for girls, and it’s supposed to be—”

  “Boarding school? Why don’t you just ship me off to Timbuktu while you’re at it? Then I’ll really be out of your hair. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Penny, it’s not like that at all. I just want you to go to a good school, now that I’ll be able to afford one. You’ll come home every weekend, of course. And over the summer, I have an idea about taking a family vacation.”

  “Family vacation—ha. We don’t take vacations, Mom. You take vacations, and you leave me with whoever will take me.”

  “Not anymore.”

  I barely heard her. I was on the rampage. “Why did you wait until today to drop the bomb on me? Is this your so-called special Christmas present?”

  I could hear her breathing fast, as if she were running after the right thing to say. “I only got the job offer today.”

  “Someone made you a job offer on Christmas Day? Where are you anyway? You never told me where you are.”

  “I know,” she said, sounding a little cheerier now. “I’m at Rex’s house. That’s why the connection is good—I’m on his landline. He and I hit it off so well at the interview, we’ve been spending time together. We like each other, Penny. More than like. We’re in love.”

  The phone dropped out of my hand and rolled off the pillow. I spent a long, otherworldly moment staring at the ceiling, watching my life flash before my eyes. Not my life-to-date, like people claim they see just before the oncoming truck hits their windshield. More like my future life, the one that just got pulled out from under me, the one that involved, among other things, George. Mom had a whim and poof! I was going to be living at a Catholic boarding school in Idaho.

  “Penny?” she said as I picked the receiver back up.

  “Mom, you don’t even know this guy. What if it doesn’t work out between you? Then what will happen to your job, to us? What if he doesn’t like me? Then we’d be stuck out there with nothing.”

  “But I do know him. Look, I know this is sudden, but…hey, remember the Parent Trap, how the parents meet on a cruise and get married before they reach shore? True love can happen that fast.”

  “Yeah, and what about the part where they spend the next decade on different continents?”

  “It has a happy ending though, doesn’t it? Look, Penny, Rex is perfect for me. My soul mate. And he’s going to adore you. We’re going to be happy, I just know it. All five of us.”

  “Five?”

  “He has twin sons, Liam and Jared. They go to the boys’ boarding school just across the way from the girls’.”

  Was the entire universe colluding to play a big fat cosmic joke on me, making every possible disaster turn into a reality? It sure as hell seemed that way. I didn’t want to ask any more questions because I was afraid to learn the answers, yet I had to know. “Mom, are you planning on having us move in with this guy Rex?”

  “He’s got a beautiful place, honey. A house, a real honest-to-goodness house. And spacious. You’ll have your own bedroom and bathroom, and there’s a hot tub off the back deck, and I’ll tell you, his TV is bigger than some of the apartments we’ve had. So don’t you go worrying about the living arrangements. It’s all taken care of.”

  She’s flipped. My mother’s precarious sanity has left the building. She’s fallen in love with a stranger, she’s pulling up every stake, and she’s taking me down with her. Nothing could be more obvious. Or more horrifying.

  “Penny, did you hear the part about having your own shower? And that family vacation I mentioned? Rex has an RV that can fit all five of us, and we can go anywhere we want.”

  A little spider on the ceiling caught my eye then. It reminded me of Charlotte’s Web, of the motherly grey spider that must die right after laying her eggs. Salmon do the same thing. I learned that on a school field trip. And male praying mantises sacrifice their heads in the mating process. These creatures give up their lives for their children. My mother, on the other hand, wouldn’t even give up her ludicrous fantasies for her offspring.

  “I know it’s a lot to take in now, all at once,” I vaguely heard her say. “But you’ll see. Once you get here, you’ll see how right it is. I really love him, Penny.”

  Some French guy—I forgot his name—said there’s always a little madness in love, but there’s always a little reason in madness. I read it in one of the first murder mysteries I ever got at the Poison Pen. I hated that book.

  “Mom, can’t you two just, I don’t know, take it a little slower? What’s the rush after all these years alone?”

  She sighed and cleared her throat. “I know, honey, I know. The thing is, well, there are a couple of things. One is, the job opening won’t wait. If I don’t take the offer now, it’ll have to go to someone else, and then what would I do for work around here? The other thing is, I just know we’re meant to be together. As a family. All of us.”

  “But Mom—”

  “I’m taking the red-eye back tonight to start packing up, and you should come home now too. I booked you on the last flight out of Machias tomorrow…wait a minute, honey, hold on.” A sound like ripping paper came through
the phone. “Sweetie, I didn’t realize, we’re running late for church, so—”

  “Since when do you go to church?”

  “It is Christmas Day,” she said. Rex must have been listening in.

  “I repeat, since when do you go to church? Or is this part of the new you? The big-house-with-the-white-picket-fence-and-a-regular-job you.”

  “And what’s wrong with that?” She was angry now. “Didn’t you just say you don’t like the old me?”

  “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth, Mom.”

  “Okay, fine. Look, the boys are already in the car. I’m going to have to say goodbye now, but your flight number is 712, and it leaves from Machias at, hold on, 12:18 tomorrow. You’ll have to take the T back to Cambridge.” Then her voice became softer. “Penny, try to understand, won’t you? Please, try to understand.”

  I would never understand. Instead, I fell back on my pillow and willed myself into the place where I didn’t have to think or feel or know or wonder or worry. As I closed the curtain around my awful world, the pillowcase grew damp with my tears.

  Chapter 11

  Love is a verb here in my room.

  –Incubus, “Here in my Room”

  George had to pound on my door to rouse me. I huddled there under the covers trying to figure out who I was and what year it was, and when the truth found its way into my head, I wanted to go back to not knowing. Turning away from the door, I nestled deeper under the sheets. But George kept banging. “Penny, it’s me.”

  “Come in,” I finally croaked, fumbling for the Tiffany lamp.

  “It’s locked.”

  “Oh, sorry.” I got up, finger combing my hair and praying that I looked better than I felt, and let him in.

  “Sorry I woke you. I just, I got worried.”

  “How long have I been up here?” I asked, sitting cross-legged on the bed.

  “Close to two hours.” He kicked off his sneakers and joined me. “So…how are you?”

  I really didn’t want to talk about it, not even to George. Talking about it meant thinking about it, and thinking about it meant feeling miserable, and feeling miserable meant I was awake, and all I wanted was to be asleep. Asleep and oblivious.

  “You’re a sound sleeper,” he said. “For a minute I thought I was gonna have to call the fire department to axe down the door.”

  “Don’t laugh. When I was eight, someone had a kitchen fire in our building. Mom was working late, and I slept right through the alarms and the sirens, right there on the living room couch with the TV blaring.”

  George’s eyebrows crept together. “Wasn’t someone staying with you, a babysitter or something?”

  “Nope. We didn’t have any free sitters in that place, so if Mom had to work nights, I just stayed up watching reruns until I fell asleep in front of the tube. Here, I’ll prove it. Quiz me on any ER or X-Files episode—I’ve seen them all a zillion times.”

  He didn’t see the humor here, which I guess made sense since there wasn’t any. “That sucks. Anyway, are you okay? You aren’t sick, are you?”

  Such short, simple questions. Such long, complicated answers. His hand was warm and sturdy, the one piece of real life I was glad to hold onto. “No, not sick.” I didn’t want to ruin this moment by dragging reality into it, so I didn’t offer any other explanation.

  He scooted closer and lowered his voice. “And your mom?”

  “What about her?”

  “She called right before you came upstairs, remember? How is she?”

  “She’s fine. Perfect. Delightful.” Then the tears came.

  He uncrossed his legs and pulled me to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “She was informing me that we’re moving to Idaho. Immediately. She thinks she’s in love, and she’s moving us in with some guy and his kids. I have to fly back to Boston tomorrow afternoon.”

  George’s mouth unclasped. He didn’t say anything at first. Then, in a soft, incredulous voice, “Idaho? But I thought we’d be able to…”

  “Me too. Idaho—Jesus. I’ve lived with Mom’s bullshit for sixteen years, and even I can’t believe she’d pull something like this.” I fell supine on the bed.

  “Not exactly the Christmas greeting you were expecting.”

  “Someday I’ll learn to stop expecting anything from her. Anything good, that is.”

  At this, George’s eyes narrowed into slits, and he brought two fingers to his lips. After a pensive moment he said, “I guess now’s the time.”

  “Time for what?”

  He lay back on the bed with me. “Well, I was going to wait until New Year’s Eve for this—I thought it would be, you know, romantic or something that way. But Penny,” and here he smiled a shy, uncertain smile, “you’re invited to stay with us for the summer.”

  “George?” I couldn’t let myself believe what I was pretty sure he just said.

  “I talked to Ma about it a couple of days ago. She thinks it’s a great idea. Which it is.”

  “I-I don’t understand. I mean, how could you afford to have me take up room during your busy season?”

  “We’ll work something out. Besides, it’s not like you’ll be getting a free ride. This is going to be my first season working in the kitchen as Rita’s sous chef. I want you to work with me.”

  “A sous sous chef? But I don’t know how to cook.”

  “You’ll have great teachers.”

  I glanced at the Tiffany lamp glowing pink against the lavender walls, just like a summer sunset. God, summer at the Black Butterfly. Cooking by day, kicking back by night, watching the upper crusty guests do their upper crusty thing. Seeing Rita and the others—and hopefully Blue—again. Best of all, being with George, knowing he wanted to be with me. What a sublime fantasy.

  Except for the Starla factor. Could I survive a whole summer with her? I mean literally—could I stay alive? And was it fair to the other people who might get caught in the crossfire? Someone besides me could get hurt—it almost happened to Vincent already. George was probably the only one who was physically safe, but even he wasn’t out of harm’s way emotionally. If something happened to me, he’d find a way to blame himself, just like he did when I almost drowned. Starla was the one being who could take a summer of paradise and turn it into hell.

  “God, it sounds wonderful,” I said, but I could hear the apprehension outstripping the elation in my voice.

  He took my hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “I, um, I’m just not ready to leave here yet. I really wanted to…I was hoping we’d…”

  “Me too.”

  “And summer is so far away.”

  “Yeah, but we’ve got Skype and phones and email.”

  “And thousands of miles between us.”

  “And June to look forward to.”

  “If I can get Mom to buy in.”

  “Is there any reason to think she won’t?”

  “I don’t know, she’s already talking about taking a Very Brady family vacation this summer. She’s absolutely certifiable, but I’ll work on her.” Then, with more resolve, I added, “Whatever it takes.”

  We fell into silence then, George playing with my fingers, me trying to figure out where Mom’s life went wrong. Did it go all the way back to the Mayan cave? Did The Donor do something to mess her up? Did I wreck her simply by being born? No, Mom’s brand of insanity couldn’t be blamed on a single event or person. It’s like that saying: each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty. You need a lot of flakes working together to produce a snowballing wad of lunacy like hers.

  “Penny?” he said after a while.

  “Mm hmm?”

  “I was just wondering, when you were doing your virtual fortune cookies, did you think of a quote for me?”

  “Why, you feeling left out?”

  “Sort of.”

  For some reason, I reached over and touched the scar on his eyebrow. “As a matter of fact, I did. Here. Are we going to be friends forever? asked Pig
let. Even longer, Pooh answered.”

  He looked at me intently.

  “Well,” I asked, “what do you think?”

  “I think you should know I’m way beyond friends.”

  That’s when I understood what people mean when they say they melted. In that moment, my internal radiator surged. Everything solid inside—every bone, every organ, every inch of flesh—turned into molten desire. I hungered, ached, thirsted, itched and, yes, melted for George. If Starla killed me now, I’d die happy. “I’m glad,” I said.

  We talked for a long time after that—about the summer, about the long months until June, about silly things and important things. And then suddenly we weren’t talking at all.

  Yes, clothes came off. No, we didn’t go all the way. Yes, it was glorious—intimate and somehow beyond physical. No, no one said the L word. And yes, we eventually drifted off to sleep, still wrapped around each other, skin against skin, heartbeat against heartbeat.

  I used to be Snow White—but I drifted.

  —Mae West

  When I woke up, George’s slow, rhythmic breathing told me he was still deeply asleep. I lay there for a while, rocked by the rise and fall of his chest. Then I gently untangled myself from his arms, pulled my clothes back on, and went to break the news of my departure to some of the others.

  First stop was the Foxglove Room, but Blue wasn’t there. He didn’t answer when I called outside the Tiger Lily Room either. Was he just out for one of his walks, or was he trying to protect me from Starla by hiding from me? I couldn’t leave without letting him know I’d be back in June. All I wanted was one last moment with him, just one. Would he really deny me that? “Damn you, Blue,” I muttered as I headed up to the attic.

  Bubbles had a doorknocker shaped like a Buddha. I rapped the handle against the Buddha’s belly but got no answer, so I knocked louder. Finally I heard what sounded like bedsprings and then the padding of feet across a rug. Bubbles was putting an arm through her bathrobe sleeve as she opened the door, her red hair squashed down on one side.

  “Oh Bubbles, I woke you.”

  “No worries, just catching a little snooze,” she said, holding the door open wider. “Come in, dear. Is everything all right?”