The Black Butterfly

by Shirley Reva Vernick

  Hand in hand, I led George upstairs to the Foxglove Room and motioned for him to open the door. The room was empty. We tried the Tiger Lily Room next, but that was vacant too. I had to wonder if she was even in the house.

  “Should we try the other rooms?” George mouthed.

  “Are any of them unlocked?” I asked.

  “Not since last summer,” he said. “Except for yours.”

  “Let’s try downstairs,” I said.

  No ghosts in the parlor. Same for the dining room, the study and the kitchen, including the crawlspace. Rita’s room was locked. Maybe Starla had hitched a ride with Bubbles and Vincent this morning. Maybe she wanted a change of scenery, or maybe she wanted to hide out on the ferry so she could get me there. Maybe the universe was telling us this wasn’t the time for a mother and child reunion.

  “Attic?” George asked.

  That was a possibility, I supposed, although it was the only floor where I hadn’t encountered Starla before. “Okay, yeah,” I said, and back we went, through the parlor, up the winding staircase, down the hall, up the second, narrower staircase, onto the third floor.

  Bubbles’s room was empty. Empty and pristine—her bed was made with military precision—although I couldn’t help noticing a lipstick-stained wine glass on her night stand. None of my business really.

  “Maybe we should try the cellar,” George said, running his hand over Bubbles’ dressing table.

  “What about your room?”

  “It’s locked.”

  “Why?”

  “Habit, I guess.”

  “Since when?” I asked.

  “Since I’ve lived in a dorm.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, how long has your door been closed and locked?”

  “Since I left it this morning. Why, you think she went in there last night? To watch me sleep?”

  I shrugged. He shuddered. We left Bubbles’s room and crossed the hallway to George’s door. He had to let go of me for a moment while he jiggled the key with one hand and turned the knob with the other. He gave the door a quick, hard push and stepped inside.

  She was there. Standing in front of his open closet, reading the story it told. She lit up when she saw George, but when I followed him in a second later, her smile crumbled. Then George found my hand, and when he clapped eyes on her, I felt his legs buckle. She was staggered too. She knew he could see her. She could see it in his stare, his shock. Her mouth fell open, and she looked to me. No one spoke.

  George was the first to break the silence. One word. One simple, stunning word. He said, “Starla.”

  He said her name!

  “Wait, you know who she is?” I said when I recovered enough to speak. How could that be? I thought the adoption was closed. There was supposed to be no way for him to know.

  Starla looked astonished, thrilled. Of course she did. Her son was looking straight at her for the first time ever, and he even knew her name.

  “Yeah,” he said, riveted to Starla. “You look just like your picture.”

  Picture? What picture? How did he get hold of a picture? I absently put my hands to my face. George quickly took my hand back.

  “So,” he said, gazing at Starla. “It’s really you.” He took a step closer, with me in tow, and then another. He reached his free hand toward her, then stopped.

  Starla moved her hand to his. They couldn’t touch, but they tried. Their fingers slipped through each other’s, then hovered nearby.

  They put their hands down. “I can’t believe this is happening,” she effused. “I can’t believe you can see me, talk to me.” She glanced at me, and for a flash of a second, I thought she was going to thank me for bringing her together with her son. What was I thinking?

  “You look so young,” George said.

  “Sixteen,” Starla said. “That’s how old I was when I…you know.”

  “How?” he asked. “How did it happen? No one told me anything. Was it because of me–because of the pregnancy?”

  “Of course not,” she said. “I think someone drugged my soda at a party, and I must’ve had a reaction. I’d’ve died whether or not you were on board.”

  “Jesus,” George murmured.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  “I have a thousand questions,” he said. “I…is it okay if we sit?” She nodded, and he walked us to the bed, where he perched on the edge. I had no choice but to sit down too.

  Following his cue, Starla sat cross-legged on the desktop. “Okay, fire away,” she said, “but first answer one question for me. How did you know my name and my face? That woman didn’t tell you anything about me.”

  “That woman?” he asked.

  “Bubbles. Ma. Whatever you call her.”

  “Oh,” he said, shaking his head. “No. Oh—she did give me this though.” He pulled the crescent moon pendant out from under his shirt. “Your parents wanted me to have it, I guess.”

  Starla nodded. “I wore that every day.”

  “I still do. Anyway, your parents wanted me to have something else too. They put together a box of stuff, your stuff, for me to have. Only…”

  “Only what?”

  “My mother never gave it to me. Don’t know why.”

  Starla crossed her arms. “I do.”

  “Yeah, well, I found the box one day when I was snooping around her room to see what she got me for Christmas. I must’ve been around ten or eleven.” He looked at me here and added, “We used to do the regular kind of Christmas presents back then, the kind where you go to a store and buy stuff.”

  I nodded and put my other hand around his arm.

  “I found a couple of video games, an iPod, and then this white box under her sofa. I thought it was another gift, so I opened it up. On top was a note from your mom—I guess that’s my grandmother. It said…I don’t know, how grateful she was that I was getting a proper home, and that even though this was a closed adoption, she wanted me to have something of my birth mom to hold onto, stuff like that.”

  “Really?” Starla looked surprised. “My mother never got flowery like that when I was alive. I guess death changes people. What else did she say?”

  “Nothing I can remember. She just signed her name with big curlicue letters. Audrey.”

  This made Starla laugh and clap her hands. “Now it all makes sense. Audrey isn’t my mother. She’s my sister. We were close. So what was in the box?”

  “Let’s see. A Beatles CD, a fancy barrette, a couple of friendship bracelets. But the most important things were the photos. A photo of you as a baby and a photo of you just the way you are now,” he said. “I used to lock myself in that room and stare at those pictures for ages. Especially the one of the older you. You’re wearing a University of Maine sweatshirt and holding a lit sparkler.”

  “I remember that picture. It was the Fourth of July—summer was always my favorite.” She sighed. “Audrey did a pretty good job with the Starla-in-a-box project. Okay, your turn.”

  George repositioned himself on the bed. I could feel his muscles unwinding just a bit. “First of all, who’s my father?”

  “I was afraid you were going to ask that,” she said. “You aren’t supposed to know, you know. It’s not like you could go knocking on his door saying you figured it out.”

  “I know, but I just need to know, for myself, to put an end to all the wondering.”

  She uncrossed her legs and let them dangle over the side of the desk. “Okay, all right, his name was Bryan, and he was my chemistry teacher.”

  “Teacher?” George asked. “Was it…did he…did he…?”

  “What, force me? No. He was gorgeous and brilliant, and I’d had a thing for him since biology class. He’s who you got those beautiful eyes from, from a thirty-year-old man who would have lost his job if anyone found out, and since I loved him, I never told anyone.”

  “Wait,” I broke in. “Didn’t your parents demand to know?”

  “Yup.” Starla didn’t break her gaze with George, and she dire
cted her answer to him. “I promised to fess up as soon as the baby arrived. I had no intentions of making good, of course, but I figured I’d cross that bridge when the time came. Which it never did.”

  George didn’t care about Starla’s parents though. He cared about his father. “So, about Bryan. Did he step up? Did he at least stay with you?”

  Starla turned toward the window.

  George’s face withered. “Oh. I…sorry.”

  “It’s fine, really. It didn’t change anything in the end.”

  George let out a shallow breath. “Maybe and maybe not,” he countered. “Maybe if he’d been there for you, you wouldn’t have ended up at the kind of party where jerks drop dope in your drinks.”

  “Or maybe he’d have talked me into getting an abortion.”

  I tightened my hold on George’s arm. His muscles were knotted again.

  No one spoke for a while. Starla stared out the window, and so did George. Finally George said, almost to himself, “I just can’t believe it. I mean, I always thought…” His eyes moved to Starla. “So you, like, followed me here?”

  “I wanted to spend some time with you,” she nodded. “I wanted to see you grow up.”

  I felt a slight shudder pulse through George. “Okay,” he said, “so…what exactly have you been doing all these years? I mean, have you been…?”

  Good. Here was the creeped-out tone that Starla’s stalking warranted. George had to be wondering if he’d ever been alone in his life, ever had one truly solitary moment. Or was he always watched, like a prisoner under continuous surveillance? He had to suspect it now, that whenever he thought there was just one person in the room, there were two, and when he thought there were two, it was a threesome.

  Starla didn’t comprehend the extent of her trespass, or else she was hiding it. In any case, a smirk of amusement tiptoed onto her face. “I didn’t follow you into the bathroom, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “I just hung out in the kitchen while Rita taught you to cook. Watched you learn how to ride a bike and drive a car. Listened to your bedtime stories.”

  “All day long?” he asked, working my hand so hard it hurt.

  “Not exactly,” she said, sliding from the desk to the chair. “I did meet someone here. Someone special. I spent time with him too.”

  “Right, Penny told me there was another ghost. Where is he now?”

  Starla’s smirk evaporated. “I don’t know. I haven’t seen him lately. He may have left. For good.” She shot me a glare.

  George looked to me and back to Starla, probably trying to decipher the mutual daggers. “What is it with you two? Penny thinks you hate her.”

  Starla didn’t respond.

  “Well, do you?” he said.

  “I’m not her biggest fan.”

  “Why?”

  “Yes, why?” I dared her. It was all I could do not to blurt out the real story, the hateful, murderous, true story. But she was George’s mother, and maybe he was still trying to find a way to accept her, so I didn’t say a word.

  Starla drew her knees up to her chest. “It’s complicated, George.”

  “Is it because she lets me see you?”

  “No—”

  “Maybe you don’t like that I can tell when you’re around now.” He said it without a hint of emotion, a perfect poker face.

  “You’re wrong,” she said.

  “Then set me straight.” But was he challenging her or trying to help her out?

  When she didn’t answer, he said, “Did you do anything? To Penny?” She still said nothing, so he turned to me and asked, “Did she do…anything?”

  Starla stood up. “George—”

  “She tried to kill me,” I said, and the kid gloves were off.

  His face blanched. I could almost see the wheels turning as he ran the week’s events through the lens of this news. “When you almost drowned,” he said, scarcely audible. “That’s when.”

  “And again when I was out with Vincent, when you were getting your haircut.”

  “It wasn’t like that, George,” Starla pleaded. “It’s not like that.”

  George lowered his head for a long moment. When he raised it again, the color was back in his cheeks, and they were burning. “God, Starla, what did you do, push her off the dock?”

  I answered for her. “No, she can’t push people. She rigged the dock. It was all premeditated.”

  The flame moved from George’s cheeks to his temples. “And the van?”

  “Stowed away in the trunk and took over the wheel,” I said. “Tried to steer us off the road into a ravine.” My heart did the cucaracha in my chest as I remembered my near-annihilation and how Starla had laughed in delight at it.

  George looked at me with glistening eyes. “And you couldn’t tell me because you knew I wouldn’t believe you.”

  That was true, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. This was painful enough without laying a guilt trip on him.

  “George, please,” Starla begged. “You’ve got to understand.”

  “I do,” he said. “I do understand.”

  But what did he think he understood? George stood up, pulling gently on my hand. Together, we walked across the room, stopping within a pace of Starla, and he said to me, “There’s something I have to say.” I blinked. He turned back to Starla and said, “There’s something I have to say.”

  She looked up, hopeful.

  He inched closer to her and said, “Leave.”

  With that one beautiful word, the roof came off and the sun poured in.

  Starla fell back against the desk. “No, George, please! I love you. You’re my son, my everything. I’m your mother.”

  “I already have a mother,” he said matter of factly. “Look, I’m sorry you died the way you did, but after what you’ve done to Penny, you are nothing to me. I don’t want you around. Go cross over like you’re supposed to.”

  “But I can’t!” she moaned. “Penny, tell him I can’t. I know Blue explained it to you.”

  Damn! She was going to make me back up her defense.

  “Tell him,” she implored.

  I rubbed my chin.

  “Tell him!”

  “All right, all right,” I consented. “She’s telling the truth. She needs to be near her remains to cross over, and she doesn’t know where they are.”

  “Okay, fine, don’t cross over,” he told her. “But don’t stay here. I don’t want you anywhere near me or Penny. Not ever…what do you mean, remains?”

  Starla started sobbing, so I explained, “It’s your corpse. Or your skeleton or ashes. Just some part of you.”

  “My parents had me cremated,” Starla managed, “and they kept me on the mantel. I used to visit the box of ashes sometimes. But one day the box wasn’t there. I tore the house apart and no box. It was gone.”

  George narrowed his eyes. “Gone, just like that?”

  “Then I remembered,” she went on. “Audrey once told me—this was back in, like, middle school—she wanted to be buried in a flower garden. I told her I wanted to be scattered over the Atlantic.” Her voice trailed off. “It’s a big ocean.”

  George seemed to be thinking deeply about this. “So that’s why you sent Buddy back to his truck,” he finally said to me.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Starla wasn’t going to let the conversation veer away from her. “George, don’t shut me out,” she choked. “I can’t cross over. I won’t have eternity with you. This is my only time.” The way she said it, even I felt a twinge of pity for her.

  “No,” George said.

  “I’m begging you!”

  “No, I mean, you can cross,” he said. “That baby photo of you. On the flip side there’s a lock of your hair. That’s part of your body, so that’ll work, right?”

  Starla stared dumbfounded at George. “My hair? This whole time?” She forced a smile and a sigh that was supposed to suggest relief, but I knew better. I knew she was even more wretched than I’d given her credit for. />
  “You!” I growled.

  “Did you hear that, Penny?” she said in a fake sweet tone. “George knows where a lock of my hair is.”

  “And so do you,” I said. “Blue told me how it works, how you can feel it if any of your remains are nearby. You lied to Blue about it so he’d feel sorry for you. And now you’re lying to George for the same reason. You are so messed up.”

  Starla shrank back. “But I…I…”

  “No, no more excuses,” George said. “You are going to either cross over or find another house to haunt—you choose—but either way, I’m going to watch you leave.”

  She stood up. Pushed the chair under the desk. Fanned her teary eyes. “And if I choose not to do either of those things?”

  George didn’t bat an eye. “In that case, I’ll destroy the lock of hair, and then you really never will cross over. Not even when I’m dead and gone from here.”

  She gave a nervous laugh. “Well, when you put it that way. You win then. Penny wins too. Congratulations to both of you.”

  “Stop it,” George said. “Just follow us.”

  I was afraid she was going to run away, but she didn’t, which I guess made sense. After all, her one and only chance to cross over was in Bubbles’s room. Her sole hope of seeing George or Blue again was in that room. She had no choice but to tag obediently along with us.

  “I’ve never been in here,” she said when we got to Bubbles’s bedroom. “I never had much interest in that woman.”

  “That woman is my mother,” George pointed out. He let go of my hand while he retrieved the memory box from its hiding place under the pink sofa, the same sofa where Bubbles told me the truth about her and Mom. Then he sat on the bed and lifted the lid.

  Starla, her eyes fixed to the box, stepped toward George. Maybe she just wanted to take a peek at her memorabilia, but maybe she had a scheme. I wasn’t going to take any chances, so I ran over to George and looped my arm through his so he could see her. Two sets of eyes were better than one.

  George pulled out the photo from its plastic sleeve. She was a cute toddler, I’ll give her that, all yellow curls and oversized eyes. There was no guile, no attitude, no hint of the ghost she would become. Just a happy little kid.