Not for the first time, and for reasons Emilia never let herself examine too closely, she imagined wandering over to Dixon’s table, luring him to his feet with another Fun-size Milky Way from the candy bag she kept under the counter, and asking if he wanted to get out of here with her. Hop the bus, take it all the way into downtown Jackson, and do something really dramatic. Something insanely stupid and luxurious and unaffordable. Like maybe see a movie.
After that, she’d bring him back, probably. Depending on the day, they might even make it before his mother showed up.
Reina del Drama, her mother would have snorted, if Emilia had told her any of these things. Then she would have suggested—again—that perhaps Emilia could get dramatic and reckless about something truly exciting, like finding another job. One that let her use her knowledge of books instead of how to catalogue them, or allowed her to live out any reasonable version of the daughter-of-immigrant success stories with which both her parents had filled her childhood.
Briefly, and to her own surprise, Emilia had to stifle an urge to call her parents. Her dad, anyway. Her mom would demand to know why she was calling during work hours, then tell her how much she loved her, then order her to get a new job. Whereas if she caught her dad in his little community college office, and if he’d had a decent day with at least one or two of his nineteen classes (or whatever obscene number they had him teaching these days), and if her mother had packed him a container of leftover sancocho and he’d actually remembered a fork, she might get him talking about flea-marketing. About his latest fifty-cent vinyl discoveries. If he’d had a really good day—if the twenty-year-old microwave in the Comp and Lit Department office was actually working, say—he might even sing to her.
But that would probably make her cry. Though she wasn’t unhappy, most days, and she didn’t feel like crying today.
So she shoved herself away from the desk, grabbed the paper towels and 99-Cent Warehouse Mr. PineyClean from the supply shelf, and wiped the circulation counters even more spotless than they already were. As she worked, she sang to herself. Not one of her dad’s beloved cumbias but a Kacey Musgraves song that she’d been loving lately. The merry-go-round one.
Every now and then, as Emilia cleaned and hummed, she glanced through the metal detectors and the bug-smeared front doors into the parking lot. Out there, she knew, the Mississippi heat lingered. It seemed to do that deeper into October every year, now. But here, inside the Butterfly Weed branch, even with the air already shutting down, the room still looked cool—because it was windowless, because the lights had dimmed—and so it felt cool, at least to her. Comforting, like her parents’ tiny Mississippi house five hundred miles away, where her parents both still came home from teaching, every single day, dropped their books and bags, and played Scrabble to cumbias or Carter Family records deep into the night.
And now here she was slipping from Kacey into the Carter Family. Keeping on the sunny side.
She looked up from her wiping and polishing just in time to see Dixon hurrying for the doors, head down. Presumably, he’d seen his mother or she’d texted him to wait out front. He’d left his sketchpad on the table, of course, and the pencils Emilia had lent him scattered on the floor under his chair like peanut shells.
“Adiós, Dixon,” she called, watched him vanish, and turned toward the office to shut down her own computer terminal.
When the front doors shushed open once more, she didn’t turn back or glance over her shoulder. She knew who it was, and he didn’t like her to look. But she felt her smile creep over her face again. “Hola, Invisible Man,” she whispered to herself. Then—because she was feeling bold today, even a little sassy—she called out, “There’s microwave popcorn left, from Storybooktime. We could share a bag…”
Of course, by then, the Invisible Man had already vanished into the Records and Reference Room in the back, where he always went to rustle around in the file cabinets and microfiche cartons Emilia had never seen anyone else touch during her six years at Butterfly Weed. Not even the librarians.
Right on cue, the last fluorescents winked out, leaving only the tongue of sunlight lolling through the front door, plus the emergency lights over Emilia’s desk. There would be one more dot of brightness left, she knew, though she’d have to creep to the Records and Reference Room door to see it: the little North Star of the Invisible Man’s penlight glowing faintly over whatever papers or files he’d pulled this time. Plus maybe the dim, green glow of the microfiche screen.
Just like that, without any warning, her eyes really did tear up. Apparently, she was indeed Reina del Drama today. Because as much as she liked to joke about it, and as much as she’d always assured her parents she loved her work—and the occasional and surprising conversations with the migrants, and her reading time and riverbank walks, her Delta Cooking classes at the Y down the block—she was still as alone as her namesake (and why, she wondered, for the thousandth time, had her father chosen that particular Faulkner story to pay homage to with his only daughter’s name?).
Soon, possibly even sooner than the date the city had set, Butterfly Weed would close for good. And apparently, she wasn’t finished inhabiting it yet. And neither were the migrant workers, or furious little Dixon, or any of the other Butterfly Weed denizens she barely knew but saw and nodded to every week or every day.
She would never even get to see the Invisible Man’s actual face, on the day those bandages finally came off. Ever since he’d first started slipping in here—Butterfly Weed’s most solitary denizen of all—she’d found herself wondering what was under there, imagining the day he came in without them. As if that day would have anything whatsoever to do with her. As if he even knew who she was.
Still. Solitary they all might be, her fellow Butterfly Weeds. But this place had been their home. At the very least, it had been her home, the first she’d had since leaving her parents to their Scrabble over a decade ago.
How and when had she wandered so far out into the main room?
Right. She’d meant to collect Dixon’s sketchpad and pencils. But the sounds from Records and Reference had distracted her, and now they lured her like a butterfly to color.
Or a moth to light, she thought, glancing down at her beige work blouse threading at the wrists, her dark brown skirt that had lightened in patches with too much washing.
She was fluttering toward the back of the library, humming still more Carter Family. “Will they missmemissme … when we’re gone…”
She could just see him in there, hunched in his long, gray coat that seemed way too warm for the weather, leaning forward over one of the tables, a file fanned open to his left, his bandages less lit than tinted by the penlight in his mouth and the faint green glow of the microfiche machine.
Like a diver underwater, Emilia thought, approaching the doorway.
Like—
The bellow ripped through the room, smacking into Emilia like a wave and actually lifting her off her feet. Staggering back, she felt a cry fill her mouth but somehow snapped her lips shut just in time. Even as she did that, grabbing the nearest empty bookcase to steady herself, she wondered why she was bothering. And why she was more concerned about the sound she hadn’t made than the one the Invisible Man actually had, because that bellow had definitely been him.
Instinct, she thought, getting control of her breath, her heartbeat. Self-preservation.
But that made no sense, either.
Preservation from what?
In the Records Room, the Invisible Man was pawing through papers, scattering them across the table and onto the floor like a cat shredding a newspaper. Or hunting a cricket. The mess annoyed Emilia, and her annoyance steadied her. Dixon strewing pencils for her to collect in the dark was one thing. But a grown man, invisible or not …
At least he wasn’t bellowing anymore. He was grunting, and possibly muttering. She could see the bandages around his mouth moving, but she couldn’t quite catch the words.
Reina, she thoug
ht, edging forward, humming under her steadying breath. Relax …
The Invisible Man never stopped muttering and pawing, never looked up except once or twice at the microfiche screen. He leaned even farther forward, as though he might climb onto the table and into the machine, imprint himself on whatever he’d found there and vanish into history.
As she reached the doorway, Emilia stopped humming. Just to listen, surely, not to keep the Invisible Man from hearing or noticing her. Why should she?
Even this close—less than ten feet away—his words were barely intelligible. Possibly, she realized, his lips still hadn’t healed. She suspected they might never heal, given how long he’d been showing up at Butterfly Weed—months, at least—and how many times his bandages must have been changed and rewrapped in that time.
Maybe that was why he always came so late in the day, when the sunlight had weakened. Maybe, in his horrifically vulnerable condition, sunlight could burn him even through bandages.
Crouching, as the remaining light in the library rose like smoke, leaving more darkness closer to the ground, Emilia tilted her head into the room. She couldn’t help herself.
“Be here,” he muttered through the bandages, again, and again, as if saying grace or casting a spell. After a while, the words changed, or else Emilia heard them better. Not be here. “Be her.” Over and over, interspersed with very occasional interjections of “Come on. Come on.”
All at once, he went still. He stood and stared at the screen, holding a single piece of paper in one gloved hand. He glanced back and forth, back and forth from paper to screen, the movements robotic, completely mechanical. Like a table fan, Emilia thought, imagining she could actually feel a breeze blowing off him, ghosting over her.
His mantra changed again, too. Not be here anymore. Not be her. But “Be you. Be you.”
Had she really meant to slip all the way into the room? And why was she no longer crouching but standing straight, leaning toward him, all but touching his shoulder as she strained forward?
To help, surely. That’s what she was here for, after all. Also, yes, sure, she wanted to see. Because like most people who sensed that their own lives had never quite started—which Emilia suspected was most people, most of the time—she was drawn by desperation, or any unchecked eruption of emotion, really. Lives with color, with stories already imbedded in them.
“Ohhhh,” said the Invisible Man. Dropping his head, he slumped over the back of the chair in front of him without lowering the paper he held or dimming the microfiche screen. And so, finally, Emilia got a glimpse at both.
On the screen was a registry, a list, something official and civil. Marriage licenses or birth certificates. Maybe he was tracing a daughter given up for adoption. Or an ex-lover.
The paper in the Invisible Man’s bandaged hand was a blurry, blown-up copy of a photograph. The photograph might have been a Polaroid, originally, judging by its square, white border, its flat yet garish colors. A Polaroid of a bearded man dancing alone in a grassy place in the Delta somewhere. At least, it looked like the Delta, had that Delta light, that specific shade of green, somehow sloshy and dusty at the same time. In one of the dancing man’s hands was a parasol or something. A bent broomstick or broken baseball bat.
Unless that was an arm?
This time, the gasp escaped Emilia’s mouth before she could stifle it. Before she could duck from the room, raise an apologetic hand—before she could so much as blink—the Invisible Man was on her, the flung photo floating in the air behind him as he grabbed her by the neck and slammed the back of her head against the metal door frame. Sparks exploded in her eyes and breath massed in the suddenly shut tunnel of her throat.
And yet, even then, she found herself more fascinated than frightened. Instead of panicking, she was peering through pain-sparks, shaking her head to clear her vision rather than escape the crushing hand, so that she could finally get a look at the Invisible Man’s eyes. She glimpsed ridges of skin under the bandages that hinted at more ridges, mountains, and canyons, as though she were staring at the surface of Venus through its cloud cover.
But the eyes themselves. They were the loveliest, loneliest eyes …
All at once, to her surprise as much as relief, the pressure at her windpipe lessened. As it did, the bandages ringing the Invisible Man’s mouth seemed to split, pull apart, as though he were a pumpkin carving itself from the inside. Emilia flushed with feeling so intense, so strangely uncomplicated, she thought it verged on love.
Yes, she thought, awhirl in this poor man’s eyes. I could love you. I could love anyone who smiled like that.
Reaching with his free hand back toward the table, the Invisible Man grabbed the Polaroid where it had floated to rest, along with the top papers from his scattered stack.
“I’ve got it,” he said, waving the picture and papers. “I know.”
“You’ve finally found what you’re looking for?”
“It’s him. It’s her. I know!” Abruptly, like a snake striking, his head shot toward hers. She ducked back, banging her head again as loose bandage ends brushed her throat and cheek. His breath swept over her. “I know,” he whispered, and leapt away into the main room like a deer darting into the shadows, taking those tragic, hungry eyes with him.
The words flew so fast from Emilia’s mouth that they didn’t even feel like hers. More like words he’d breathed into and through her.
“Why don’t we celebrate, then?”
He was almost to the front doors already, at the edge of the shrinking spill of sunlight. He’d forgotten, she realized, with a thrill that rippled over her flesh and raised gooseflesh all the way down her skin, that she’d have to unlock those doors for him. And she wasn’t going to do that. Not just yet. Not until she got at least one more of those smiles.
He’d stopped when she spoke, and now he turned. For a long moment, he just stood there, his posture positively regal despite everything he’d suffered, and his eyes, even from across the library in the shadowy near-dark, so lonely. So much lonelier than she suspected her own looked. Once more, he glanced down at the bundle of papers in his hand, the Polaroid, then back up. For the second time, Emilia watched that shy, slow smile carve itself into his face. She fought down a surprising flutter of panic, and at the same instant realized she was tearing up again. Flat-out crying, now. And for what?
For nothing at all. For Dixon and Dixon’s mama. For her own parents, Scrabbling and dancing away their solitary evenings in their tiny living room with the empty turtle tank, because the turtle they’d bought when they first came to this country had died years ago. For herself and her unstarted life. For her parents and theirs. She felt herself moving across the room, now, noted her fingers gripping the empty bookcase to her right as though clinging to it, and commanded them to let go.
“You’re right,” said the Invisible Man, watching her come. “We should celebrate.” His grin got wider still, chiseling through bandages across his cheeks. “We’ll have a party.”
4
Even now, five years after she’d gotten sweet, curly-haired young Dr. James to sew her back together, Sophie couldn’t get walking quite right. She could walk, okay, but weirdly: lurch, shuffle, lurch-tilt, drag. As though her lower half were a balky remote-control car she was driving instead of part of her, and subject to whims. Frustrating as that could be, it had also become its own sort of fun, adding unpredictability even to the most pedestrian activities, keeping them fresh, because she never knew when those neurons wouldn’t quite make it through their kinked pathways to muscles and tendons. And that meant that every now and then, at the most unexpected and amusing moments, she found herself sitting down, or turning into a wall.
That was yet another reason she’d come to love the night ferries. On open water, even when it was calm, she could lurch, tip, catch herself, and when she looked up there’d be someone else recovering from doing the same thing, some sauced-looking grandpa splashing coffee drink all over his Seattle Seahawks
sweatshirt or a windy-haired twelve-year-old who’d lost her balance, then her cell phone as she came unmoored from the deck. They’d grin at one another, then, grandpas and kids and Sophies. As though they were all in the same boat.
See what I did there? she’d think, imagining actually saying it aloud to herself or Natalie. Same boat? Occasionally, on the weirdest, loneliest nights, she even imagined saying things like that to Jess, of all people. Then she’d imagine Jess’s scowl and give herself a little wriggle of pleasure.
Eventually, she’d find her way to a rail, especially if it was raining, which was most of the time. She’d watch islands materialize out of the mist, dissipate into it. On clear trips, she saw container ships and fishing boats clustered on the horizon, sprawling across the expanse between oil derricks, creating what looked like the skyline of some seaborne ghost city. A magical, mist-wreathed place where she might settle someday, if she could ever actually reach it.
But for now, whenever she needed to get off the island, or needed people, for one reason or another, the ferries more than served. She loved the little casual interactions: smiling at random fellow passengers, some late-night business mom or kissing college couple or track-marked street kid; tugging them along behind her for a while like cans on strings as she lurched into the dining cabin, up to the view deck, back toward the stern to watch the white wake in the black, black water; cutting them loose, eventually, leaving them unharmed, shivering and stranded in the misty starlight, a little hungrier and lustier and lonelier than they’d already been, because now they’d seen their deep dreams walking. Lurching, anyway. Because they’d glimpsed possibilities they’d maybe imagined but never imagined possible. Because she’d let them glimpse their deaths and then let them live.
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