“Truly.”
We hugged then, but he didn’t say that rotten terrible word, and either did I.
By the time I got back to my room, something got me thinking about Bubbles in a different light. Maybe it was the talk with Vincent, maybe it was the fuller belly, maybe it was resignation. Whatever the reason, I started feeling the beginnings of forgiveness. I mean, sure, she did a bad thing to Mom. But did she really deserve full blame for what happened with my father? It takes two to tango. If The Donor was so easily seduced, he must have been prone to roaming. Maybe he’d cheated on Mom before. Maybe he’d have kept on doing it. How happy would Mom or I be living with that?
Realizing that I had to do something to fix things with Bubbles, I dug my pen and notebook out of my duffle bag, flipped past “The Purple Agony” pages, ripped out a sheet, and started writing.
Dear Bubbles,
I just want to say that, regardless of what happened in Chicago sixteen years ago, I am grateful to know you and to call you my friend. I think my mother feels the same way.
Thank you so much for taking me into your home this Christmas. I hope I wasn’t too much trouble (although I’m pretty sure I was).
With love,
Penny
There. After folding the letter in half, I left it on my nightstand so I’d remember to slide it under Bubbles’ bedroom door tomorrow. I fell asleep for a while after that. It was daylight when I woke up, time to break my news to Rita.
Chapter 12
December 26
I’ve turned my life around.
I used to be depressed and miserable.
Now I’m miserable and depressed.
—David Frost
“Just drink it,” Rita said.
“But it smells awful,” I complained. I was lying on the bed in her sparse, monkish room, and she was standing over me with a steaming cup. That’s what I got for looking “like an unripe banana” when I stumbled into the kitchen for my morning coffee. I’d spewed the news of my exile to Idaho, and when I got on a coughing jag, Rita had me flat on my back with a pillow under my feet before I knew what hit me.
“It is just tea,” she insisted, her voice so warm, so open, I wanted to tell her everything else—about the ghosts, about the murder attempts, about not being able to find Blue, not even this morning, even though he must have heard the news from Starla by now.
But I couldn’t tell her any of those things, so instead I said, “It smells like medicine. Or cabbage.”
“I put a few special herbs in it, that is all. Drink. It will help you.”
I did need help, no doubt about that, plus I was too exhausted to protest any longer, so I lifted my head and let her pour a little into my mouth. It was strong but not unpleasant. I took another sip. It actually tasted good—sweet and pungent—sort of like pain d’amandes, or Belgian hot chocolate, or was it praline fondue? Definitely nothing like the way it smelled. I wondered for a moment if Rita had ever nursed Vincent in this way, in this room, on this bed. Yes, I could picture them like that, being a couple together, being intimate. But of course I’d never let on that I knew.
“Good?” she asked.
“Good,” I said, dropping my head back onto the bed.
She sat on the side of the bed and held the teacup on her lap. “Now tell me,” she said, “what is really so bad? Okay, so you are leaving earlier than you planned. That is only a problem because you had a much better time than you bargained for, no? And you will come back this summer. What is so bad?”
“I don’t know. For starters, how am I ever going to deal with Idaho and a new instant family?”
“You did pretty well with your new instant family here. You can do it there too.”
“Rita, you might as well give up,” I said, turning on my side to face her. “If you think I’m going to go skipping and singing to Idaho, you’re wrong.”
“You do not have to dance and celebrate, but you do not have to be sick over it either. You, who are so used to moving around. Now drink,” she said, and I did. It went down hot and slightly thick. I felt a little better.
“Look, I’m sorry for being whiny,” I said. “It’s just, I don’t know. The time I’ve spent with you, it’s felt more like home than at home. And even home isn’t going to be my home for long. God, Idaho!”
Rita got up and walked to the other side of the bed. “You know, I think this place has felt more like home to everyone since you have been here.” She pulled out her nightstand drawer, took a small red box from it, and came back to her place next to me. “I want you to have this.”
“Not another gift.”
“Just a small memento, that is all.”
I sat up, and she set the box on my lap. Inside, I found five picture postcards that showed off different Islemorow attractions: the beach in summer, a cliff overlooking the sea, fishing boats, a bike path through the woods, and of course the Black Butterfly.
“I started putting this together a few days ago. Of course, I thought I had more time, but anyway, these pictures will help you remember the island. And the flip sides will help you remember me.”
I turned the postcards over. Each one had a recipe handwritten on it—brandied mango chutney, pain d’amandes, tiramisu eggnog trifle, artichoke hearts with risotto, and Rita’s coffee. It was like a diary of our time together. Brandied mango chutney—that was from my first meal here, just before I met her in the study. The pain d’amandes was our first project together in the kitchen, followed soon after by the hunt for the artichoke hearts. Rita was making the trifle—and I was eating her chocolate—the day after my second dream journey. And of course Rita’s special coffee was my hopeless new addiction—who ever would have figured she put aniseed and cardamom in with the coffee beans?
“I hope you will add your own special recipes to the box,” Rita said. “That is what this is for, for your own special recipes and the memories that go with them.”
“Thank you, Rita, so much,” I choked. I placed the postcards back in the box and wiped my eyes. Just then I became aware that George was calling my name out in the hall.
“She is with me,” Rita called back.
“Sorry to interrupt, but we’ve got to head out of here pretty soon.”
“George?” I said weakly. I wasn’t ready. I needed to say more to Rita. I needed to find Blue. I needed more time.
He said, “We’ve got to allow time for the ferry and the car ride to Machias, plus parking and security.”
“Go,” Rita said. “Go be with George. Go see your mother. Maybe you will write to me.” She stood up, and so did I. We hugged tightly.
“Thank you for everything. And for the tea. I think it helped.” I wanted to tell her I loved her, but I was crying too hard.
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road…
—Green Day
George was waiting for me in the parlor, the Christmas tree lights twinkling behind him. “Ready?” he asked.
“No.”
“I have the van warming up. It’s bitter today.”
“Bitter is right.”
We walked through the parlor and on into the lobby, where George held the front door open for me. “Go ahead,” he said, and it was only then that I realized I’d stopped in the threshold. I felt like I was about to jump out of a spaceship with no spacesuit or tether cord. Who in their right mind would take that plunge without a push?
When I finally took the last step out of the inn, the arctic air grabbed me by the throat. My impulse was to run straight back to Rita’s snug room, but George was holding my arm, and the humming van was just a few feet away. We hurried down the steps and jumped in.
While George rummaged through his pockets for his ferry pass, I turned to look at the Black Butterfly one more time—the gunmetal garrets, the charcoal gables, the pale icicle lights. The first time I saw that façade, barely a week ago, I was a different person. Back then I thought the world was black and white, not silvery grey. I thought people were either all good or all ba
d, wholly alive or completely dead and gone. I didn’t believe ghosts existed. My most frightening experiences had been vicarious, in the stories I read. I’d never been in love. Never been torn. Never had a true friend. I’d been sleepwalking.
I had to look away.
When I turned back around, Blue was standing outside my window, just inches away. God, I wanted to talk to him! I wanted to leap out of the car and tell him how happy I was to see him. I wanted to ask him his plans. Thank him. Tell him why I was leaving. I reached for the door handle, but Blue shook his head. He placed his hand on my window and nodded. I knew what he wanted me to do.
I pressed my hand to the window, directly against his. It was the closest we’d ever get to touching. I closed my eyes and tried to feel him, to feel heat or pressure or any sensation at all. I couldn’t feel a thing.
But I did hear something. Drum beats. Softly at first, barely perceptible above the sound of George’s hunting around for the ferry pass. Then louder, more insistent, until the beats were a desperate plea inside my head. I felt shaky and somehow blurred. I think I tried to call George’s name, but nothing came out. And then I was gone. We were gone—Blue and me.
We were standing outside on a summer evening, the sky deepening into bold purples and greens. In front of us hung a thick haze, or was it a curtain? Whatever it was, it made it impossible to tell where we’d landed, or when. Blue shut his eyes, and I followed suit, although it made me feel unnervingly wobbly. “Hold steady,” Blue said—or maybe it was the drumbeats talking—so I planted my feet and waited for whatever came next.
I didn’t have to wait long. A hot wind picked up from nowhere, spinning around us and howling so loud it drowned out the drumbeats. I couldn’t have kept my eyes open if I’d wanted to, the gales were so powerful, so hot, so oppressively hot. Then, just when I thought I’d melt, the furnace blasts abruptly stopped.
“Oh,” I heard Blue say.
I opened my eyes. The mist was dissolving, and we began to see what was in front of us. We were standing on a lush lawn ornamented with topiaries and flower-lined walkways. A croquet game was set up near a fountain. Adirondack chairs dotted the grounds. It was quiet, peaceful, and I dared believe this dream journey had taken us to a magnificent garden for our goodbye. Everything was so lovely, so serene—that is, until the last curtain of mist lifted, and a mansion came into view. It was on fire.
This place, these grounds, this mansion, suddenly felt familiar. With the drums beating faintly in my head again, I knew where I was. The Legacy Resort. The place where Blue had met his death, his imprisonment, his impossible task.
On the outside, the mansion still looked intact, but on the inside, I knew it was collapsing. Velvet wallpaper and brocade curtains were blazing. Crystal chandeliers and diamond-paned windows were shattering. People were choking on smoke, panicking, scrambling for their children. And all I could do was look on.
An instant later, throngs of people started spilling onto the lawn. Most of them were streaming out the front doors, but a few were climbing out of the windows. Everyone was wild-eyed and shrill. The smaller children seemed to think this was exciting, and they started to dance and do cartwheels in their nightshirts until their mothers pulled them away. It could have been a night circus if it weren’t so deadly. Then I saw him. His caramel skin and his jet hair. He was on a crowded second-floor balcony, dropping terrified children down to a group of men who caught them in an outstretched blanket. He was alive, not ghostly. He was a real 21-year-old man, not a century-old specter of one. He was my Blue.
The drumbeats quickened, and the flames climbed. On the lawn, families clambered to find each other, babies cried, men futilely aimed garden hoses at the burning mansion. Despite the chaos, everyone looked angelic in the surreal light of the inferno, their faces glowing with the relief of escape, of taking that first gulp of the cool night air. Blue wasn’t among them though. Of course he wasn’t. He wasn’t going to make it out.
We watched the windows burst, the roof crash, the smoke swallow the treetops. I wanted to reverse time. I wanted the smoke to fall off the branches, the roof to rise, the jigsaw pieces of glass to reassemble themselves into windows, the flames to squeeze back into that one cigarette in the dining room. I wanted it to revert to the way it should have been. But that was impossible. This had all already happened. There were no do-overs.
Suddenly a shout on the lawn rose above the uproar. Someone was calling, “Is everyone out? Is everyone all right?” I squinted into the crowd until his image emerged. It was Blue! Glassy eyes, wild hair, his body swaying. He kept walking up to the other men and asking if they had anyone left inside, but they wouldn’t listen, and with each snub his voice grew more frantic.
The next voice we heard was a woman’s scream. “Noooooo!” she wailed. “No, no!” She was running toward a man hunched over a blanketed bundle, sobbing. Everyone cleared a path for her.
“My baby!” the woman bellowed, grabbing the bundle from the grieving man. “My boy!” She lifted a corner of the blanket and went white, collapsing to her knees and pressing the bundle to her face. A limp arm fell out of the blanket as she shuddered.
Blue raced to the woman. He knelt beside her and bowed his head. “I’m so very sorry,” he whispered. “So very sorry.” But she didn’t hear him. He tried to hold the baby’s hand, but he couldn’t do it. He stood up and talked to the father for a long time, but the man was oblivious. Finally, defeated and despairing, Blue simply staggered away, beyond the crowd and into the woods bordering the lawn.
Instinct told me to follow him, but somehow I was rooted in place, as if an invisible hand was forcing my attention on the newly childless couple. I hated being tied to puppet strings, and I struggled against the unseen chains, first with small tugs of my head, then with desperate jerks of my arms and legs. It was no use. I was stuck, and I was going to miss whatever was happening to Blue in the woods.
But here’s what I didn’t miss. Here’s the thing that was going to be much more crucial: the stocky maid who plunked herself down on the grass next to the crying mother. Of course, I didn’t know then that she was going to make everything change. I thought she was just the sideshow, the anti-climax, so at first I paid her only partial, grudging attention.
“Now darling,” the maid said with a brogue, “what’s the trouble here?”
The mother only cried harder.
“Come, let me see now,” the maid persisted, reaching for the bundle, which the woman refused to relinquish. “Now look here, mum, I’ve had seven babes of me own and raised half me nieces and nephews. If you’ve a peck of sense in you, you’ll let me examine this child.” She said it with such force, such assurance, the woman relented.
The maid uncovered the baby boy’s fair face. Harumphed. Put her ear to his face. Swung him over her shoulder and rubbed his back. Laid him on her lap and lifted his chubby little legs. Lightly rubbed the side of his neck. The baby’s head fell to the side and his lips parted, a thin stream of blood trickling out of his mouth. Then he coughed.
He was alive!
The mother froze. She seemed frightened, as if she were looking at the ghost of her dead baby, as if she’d already shrouded and buried the child only to have him show up at her doorstep. She didn’t know what to do, how to react.
The maid, however, was unfazed. “There you go, darling,” she said, handing the boy back and standing up. “He just got a little too much smoke, is all. Made his breathing shallow, put him to sleep. Might’ve bumped his jaw, as well, but don’t you worry. You’ve got yourself a strapping one there.”
The baby gazed starry-eyed at his mother. Then he took a deep lungful of air and belted out the sweetest, loudest cry his parents had ever heard.
Only, Blue hadn’t been there to witness it.
I had to tell him. I had to find him in those woods and let him know the baby hadn’t died in the fire. The baby was safe and sound with his parents. Everything was all right. Blue didn’t have to save someone�
�s life because he hadn’t caused anyone’s death. He was a free man. I couldn’t wait to share the news.
Except that suddenly I was back in the van, my hand pressed to the window. Blue was still standing outside, and from his expression, so full of wonder, I knew he’d seen everything I had. He’d heard that baby boy pierce the air with his cry. He knew he was free.
“Bingo!” George said.
“Hmm, what? You found the ferry pass?” I asked, turning to him.
“Yeah, it slipped into the lining of my parka. All set now.” He put the van into drive.
When I turned back, Blue was gone. Really gone—I could sense it. And I think I was glad.
The trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
–Erica Jong
We drove silently for a while, past naked trees and heaped snow. The drifts on the road rippled with the wind, making it feel like we were traveling on a milky river. I saw a boy on ice skates shoveling snow off a frozen pond, while another, smaller boy stood on the edge swinging a hockey stick. All of it, all the colorless bare sameness of it all, reminded me of goodbyes. I sank into my seat and ached.
Then George said, “You have to cover your eyes now.”
“What, why?”
“Because it’s a surprise.”
I folded my arms. I wasn’t in the mood.
“Oh come on,” he said, dodging a fallen branch in the road. “Humor me.”
“Fine,” I sighed and closed my eyes.
“Are you peeking?”
“Nope.”
“Good. It won’t be long.”
It felt long though. I felt every bump in the road, every tap on the brakes. “How much farther?”
“We’ll be there in a few seconds.” The van slowed, turned to the left, edged forward and stopped.
“Can I look now?”
“Not yet.” His door opened and shut, and then he was opening mine. “Okay, you can get out now, but keep your eyes closed.”
“You’re going to make me walk blind?”
“Don’t worry so much. It’s hardly any distance at all, and I’ve got you.” He took my free hand and helped me out of the van. We must have been in an open space, because the wind was so fierce, I thought my face might shatter.
The Black Butterfly Page 17
