Frozen Butterflies

by Simona Grossi

  “When I saw Andrew again, it was like having her back. They had been together for four years, pieces of her were all over him, some of her sayings, her comments on people and food, her reactions to jokes. When I saw him, I saw her, or maybe I just wanted to see her. Whatever it was, I felt almost whole again. He flirted with me and I gave up, confused as I was. I haven’t told anyone else about this because I know it won’t last. I wish it could. It’d be so much simpler.” She turned, looked somewhere far away, and puffed her cigarette.

  “Does Andrew know about you and Emily?”

  “No. She wouldn’t want that. I would never tell him.”

  “Don’t you think Andrew should know?”

  She inhaled deeply on her cigarette, closed her eyes, and swung her head as if she were following some music I couldn’t hear. And then she stopped and stared at me.

  “I’m sorry for you, and I’m sorry for Andrew,” I said. And I was sorry for myself. She looked straight to me, then turned, got up, and left. I didn’t try to stop her. Didn’t need to. I had had enough.

  I walked for hours without any direction or plan. I walked until I felt my body was about to collapse. I think I wanted it to. I sat on a bench and called my father.

  “Hi, it’s Susan.”

  “Susan? What a nice surprise! How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m in New York.”

  “You are? When did you arrive?”

  “I’ve been here for a few days now.”

  “Are you here for work?”

  “Yes and no. I’m writing an article about an author, but it’s not for school.”

  “Then why are you writing it?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “How long are you going to stay?”

  “Maybe until January. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight?”

  “OK,” I said, surprising myself. “Is your address the same?”

  “Yes, I’m still here.”

  “Is . . . Are you and Evelyn still together?”

  “Yes. She’s here as well.” There was some silence. I really didn’t know what to hope . . . for him, for myself . . .

  “What time should I come by?”

  “Let’s do five, but come before if you like.”

  “Five? That’s early.”

  “Well, it’s for the baby.”

  “A baby?”

  There was more silence, and then he said, “We had a baby five years ago. Evelyn was pregnant when you visited last time, but she was only in her second month, and preferred to keep it confidential.”

  “I see. Basically she’s been in her second month pretty much for the past six years or so . . .”

  “Susan, wait.”

  I hung up, took the subway, and returned to my apartment. When I arrived, I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. I must have been there for a long time, since I saw the light in my room change from bright yellow, to lighter yellow, to dusk, to shades of pink, orange, and blue, darker blue. At first there was so much noise, confused images having nothing to do with each other, and pressing the sides of my head. They seemed not to want to let go. They seemed not to want to let me go. But then the room became dark, and exhausted. They gave up, or I did.

  I think I was half sleeping when I remembered or dreamed about my mother. We were playing hide-and-seek in our courtyard and when she saw me, she jumped high with wild enthusiasm. But then the dream became confused. She looked sad, very sad. “Mom, why are you sad?” I asked. “I’m here with you.” She didn’t respond, and she disappeared. I looked for her everywhere in the house, and finally found her, hanging with her head bent on the side, her eyes half-open.

  I woke up covered in sweat. It was early morning. I freed myself from the clothes of the day before, took a long hot shower, and thought about how my life would be if my mother were still alive or if I had better memories of my time with her. My past didn’t feel safe, and I had been trying to run from it all my life. I made some coffee and checked my emails. There was one from Nick.

  Hey,

  * * *

  How are you? Are you in New York or LA? I still have trouble figuring out what happened between us. I can’t ask you to forgive me. I don’t deserve that. I just need you to know that I miss you.

  I sipped my coffee and read those lines again and again. I wondered whether I should answer. But what would I say? My email would be an outburst. And I didn’t want him to know how I felt. Unfortunately, I wasn’t doing that well. And, sadly, despite everything, I missed him too.

  I stared at a blank screen for what seemed an eternity, trapping my hands under my thighs so as not to write. And then I pushed myself outside the apartment, hoping Nick, his email, or both would not follow me. But they did. I looked for distractions. Could Andrew or Christine help?

  Despite my interview with Andrew and my chat with Christine, I still felt there were gaps in their story. I felt some important pieces of their puzzle were still missing. And yet I wasn’t sure what they were, and at times wondered whether they actually might be pieces of my own puzzle. Had my story become so intertwined with Andrew’s that I needed to figure it out before writing about him?

  A Missing Piece

  Andrew had said his father taught psychology to grad students at NYU, and the more I thought about it, the more his name sounded familiar. Pratt. I didn’t take a class from him, but I think he was there when I was a student. I did some research and found that Henry Pratt, Andrew’s father, was still teaching at NYU. He was no longer full-time, but he taught a seminar in the fall. There was a photo of him on his profile page. Andrew looked so much like his father. A more artistic version of him. Or was it the tie in his father’s photo that made the older man look more serious? I couldn’t say. The profile photo had not been updated in years and showed a man in his late fifties. I thought Andrew’s father should be in his eighties by now. His list of publications was scarce to say the least, mainly what appeared to be a few short essays on very technical themes. I looked for them online, but they were not available. One of them that was part of an Oxford collection on personality disorders, though, seemed to be available at the NYU bookstore. Partly driven by my curiosity, partly by my memories, I decided to go to that bookstore to check it out. I used to go to that bookstore when I was in school. I may have even worked on that Oxford collection, but I wasn’t sure.

  Once at the bookstore, I found Henry Pratt’s article on personality disorders. I pulled a used copy of the collection from the shelf. Someone had written notes in the margins and seemed to have underlined sentences with a ruler, almost obsessively. There were also a lot of questions that seemed to be addressed to the author. I read the essay, then the questions. The questions were sharp, harsh, and sometimes they sounded personal.

  I checked again to see whether there was more of Professor Pratt’s work that I could read, but there wasn’t. There was, though, a phone number and an email address. I stuck the book in my purse and decided to call him. I dialed the number, but nobody answered. I left a voicemail. I said who I was, mentioned his article and my interview with Andrew, left my phone number, and said I’d love to meet for coffee if he had the time. I doubted he would ever call back. I sat on a bench and read Nick’s email once more. I had no response for him, but I knew he wasn’t looking for one. That email was his way of saying sorry, although, I thought, perhaps what had happened was not really anybody’s fault. We were simply not meant to be. A homeless guy passed me by, and my throat suddenly hurt as if I were in someone’s grip again, like that time with Nick. I remembered Nick’s eyes and their expression a few hours later. How could I misread his eyes? His feelings? The phone rang.

  “Susan? This is Henry Pratt.”

  He had called.

  “Hi, Professor Pratt. Thanks so much for returning my call.”

  “You said you talked to Andrew. How is he?”

  “He’s OK. He’s here in New York. Perhaps you knew that.”
r />   “No, I didn’t.” I heard him breathing heavily.

  “I could meet you for lunch today?”

  He gave me his address, and we agreed to meet in front of his apartment building, a university building. I had a friend who lived there when I was in school. I knew exactly where the building was. I walked fast, excited to see him, and soon I was there. A couple holding tennis racquets came out of the elevator and blocked my view of him. He walked out behind them, slowly. But then the couple moved, and I saw him. A man in his eighties. Tall, pale, with a few strands of white hair on his otherwise bald head. So different from the photo on the school’s webpage. His eyes had not changed though. They were exactly as in that picture and reminded me of Andrew. He shook my hand when he saw me, and he put his wool hat on. He seemed frail.

  “It’s so cold these days.”

  “It is,” I said, and I realized I had not dried my hair that day.

  He walked surprisingly fast. It was hard to keep up with him. He seemed to know where he was going. I tried to start a conversation about his work, but soon realized he was too focused on getting to his destination, and so I gave up.

  When we arrived in front of a café he thought might work, he ushered me in, and asked if the place was fine with me. I said that it was, and a hostess came to ask us if we wanted a table for two.

  “Yes, that one,” he said, pointing to a table close to the window.

  “That one’s reserved,” she said.

  “How can it be reserved? That table’s mine. I come here every day at noon. That’s my table.” He looked around seeking confirmation.

  “Did you make a reservation, sir?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve been coming here for almost thirty years, and almost every day. I don’t need to make a reservation.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but didn’t sound so.

  I looked to see if there was another table we could take, but he seemed to be obsessing about that particular table.

  “Maybe you could give us that table and give another one to the people who made the reservation?” I tried. After all, there were several empty tables.

  The hostess looked overwhelmed by my request, said she would have to check, and left. A man then approached us.

  “Good morning, sir. The usual?”

  “Yes,” he said. “She was going to give me another table.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Here’s your table.” He removed the “Reserved” tag and gestured for us to sit.

  “I read your article on personality disorder in the Oxford collection,” I said.

  “Oh, that was a long time ago.”

  “It’s a wonderful piece.”

  He sighed and seemed disinterested in talking about it. Perhaps he just didn’t remember what the article was about, and I was just making him uncomfortable.

  “When I started teaching, we didn’t need to write much to get tenure, and I didn’t have much to say anyhow.”

  “It seemed that you did, though. That article is full of ideas and original insights. I haven’t read anything that original and humble in such a long time.”

  “You’re too generous.” He smiled.

  He was so dignified, profound. And the more he spoke, the more I saw Andrew in him.

  “I was more interested in thinking than in writing,” he continued. “Once you write, what you write is locked. But then you may change your mind, see things differently, and you can’t change what you wrote.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “And then what do you do?”

  “You stop reading what you wrote, I guess. Sometimes you even pretend you never wrote it in the first place.”

  “Exactly. But someone else might read it and rely on it. So what’s the point?”

  “Yes, that’s a . . . that’s a risk.”

  “That’s why I stopped writing. Also there’s enough out there. You don’t need another article or book from me.”

  He smiled, looked more deeply into my eyes, and then asked about my work. I told him about my book and my dissatisfaction with it.

  “It happens,” he said. “We write to learn, so we often don’t know much about the topic we write about, and most likely won’t know enough when we complete our work either. So it’s the search we fix in writing, not the truth. The readers, though, they are not interested in that. They want truths. And they believe they find them . . . in our work. Isn’t that crazy?”

  I had never thought about that. If I read my book looking with that in mind, maybe it would look less nonsensical, and maybe it would reveal more than I could possibly expect.

  “I bet you have so much to share, the searching process, I mean, your search” I said. “I agree with you on writing and changing ideas, but I wonder whether there are truths that you own now, that you have built on over the years. There must be some other things you won’t ever change your mind about, right?”

  “I don’t remember things as well as I used to. I have Alzheimer’s. It’s not that bad yet, but it’ll get worse, and my fear is that I won’t even notice.”

  Suddenly I felt immensely sad.

  “Does Andrew know?”

  “No, he doesn’t. I’m sure he’s busy dealing with his own issues. He doesn’t need to hear mine.”

  “He looks so much like you.”

  “Yes, he does.” He smiled and looked down. “He and I share more than just our appearance.”

  “I had that feeling,” I said, and he looked at me as if he were wondering who I really was.

  “You care about him, don’t you?”

  “I do. We’re not together or anything like that. But I do care.”

  “You’re studying him?”

  “No, no. We just clicked,” I said.

  “I can see why.”

  “Really? What is it?” I asked, wondering whether he had some of the missing pieces in Andrew’s puzzle or mine.

  “Something about you reminds me of him. Andrew would probably agree.”

  Before I asked why that was, he asked a question. The meeting wasn’t about me anyhow. He wanted to hear more about Andrew.

  “How is Andrew?” he asked again.

  “He’s doing OK. His girlfriend died of cancer over a year ago. That was harsh on him.”

  “Emily, I know. I heard that.”

  “Did you know her?”

  “I met her once. She came to New York for a show and looked for me. I thought she was lovely. She cared about him.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “She came to one of my classes too,” he said, somehow looking deeper into his past, “and stayed until the end. She introduced herself and we spent some time together that day. She asked me questions about Andrew.”

  “What type of questions?”

  “She said she thought he was sick and needed to see a doctor. She wanted to know whether he had been in therapy before, and what she should do. I asked her about his behavior, what concerned her. She described his obsessions, his isolation . . . I told her to let him be, that she shouldn’t do anything.

  “When I started my career as a teacher, I didn’t know anything about personality disorders, but I thought I did, lost as I was in a theory of life of my own fabrication. I would have handled Andrew differently then. I would have sent him to a therapist, fed him pills, talked to him about his disease ad nauseam, made sure that he understood what his problem was, and ultimately tried to convince him that he was different, that he was sick. Now I see things differently.”

  “How so?”

  “He doesn’t fall into our traditional categories. He’ll suffer, he’ll struggle, but he’ll see things that you and I don’t see. And that’s OK.”

  “What exactly do you think Andrew’s problem is?”

  “I can’t use labels. Our colleagues love labels. We’re trained to use them. It should be this or that. Labels would help us choose the right therapy, or so we think. But sometimes labels and therapy don’t work.” He was silent for a while, and then ad
ded, “My approach is different now. I don’t see labels. I see the person, with her own issues. I listen and think about what could help her live well with herself. But I don’t try to change the person, make her like anyone else.”

  “So how would you describe Andrew?”

  “He’s fragile. He loves deeply, feels deeply, and will often be hurt by someone or something. There’s nothing you and I could do to shield him from that.”

  “How long did he live with you?”

  “Until he was ten. His mother and I broke up shortly after that.” He took a breath, and said, “I couldn’t take care of her. I had my own issues. I thought it’d be better if I left. So I did.” He paused, and then added, “I remarried, but my wife died five years later of cancer. We had two kids, a boy and a girl. One of them has Andrew’s issues . . . and mine.”

  Right. I had that feeling.

  When the waitress came back, we finally looked at the menu and ordered. We talked about school, colleagues, boring workshops, terrible food, and winter in New York.

  “I did write something else,” he then said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s my reflections on Andrew, what I learned as a father, things I wanted to tell him and never did. The essay doesn’t mention Andrew or me by name. Only Andrew would know I’m talking about us. Would you like to read it?”

  “I’d love to.”

  “It’s in my apartment. I could go back, get it, and return. You could wait for me here if you like.”

  I said there was no need for that, and that we could walk there together, as I’d love to chat more. We left the restaurant shortly after, and I followed him back to his place. I thought I’d wait for him downstairs in the hall, but he offered to show me his apartment, and that made me happy. The apartment was that of an artist. It had the same vibe as Andrew’s place, but it looked more lived in. There was a huge living room at the entrance, with wide windows overlooking the city. And there were paintings all over. Mr. Pratt said he had inherited some from his wife’s family, and some he’d bought when he was younger. Then he paused in front of one and said how much Andrew loved it.