The Glass Butterfly

by Louise Marley

  He thought of his sports equipment, stacked in his bedroom closet. He ran up the stairs, opened the closet door, and found his old baseball bat standing in the corner. He ran down again, a little breathless with hurrying, and dropped the bat lengthwise into the base of the sliding glass door. It fit as if it had been designed for the purpose.

  That would stop her, he thought.

  But stop her from what? He wished he knew.

  8

  Si, mi chiamano Mimì, ma il mio nome è Lucia.

  Yes, they call me Mimì, but my name is Lucia.

  —Mimì, La Bohème, Act One

  “Iguess you haven’t gotten around to opening that bank account,” Iris said. She stood in the doorway of her pretty Cape Cod house, her arms folded, her gray gaze bright and piercing.

  Tory held out the envelope with the cash in it for her second month’s rent. “No,” she said, a little huskily. “Not yet.”

  Iris accepted the envelope, but her eyes never left Tory’s face. “That’s a lot of cash to have lying around.”

  “I know. That’s why I brought it over, instead of mailing it.”

  “I haven’t seen you in town at all.”

  “Oh,” Tory said, striving for an offhand tone, “I’ve been around. The market, you know. The library.” At least she had gotten a library card. And with that and her rental agreement, a driver’s license.

  Iris nodded. “It’s small, our library, but I like it.”

  It was tiny, in truth, a building of weathered wood nestled in a grove of trees. Tory had stocked her cottage with books from the Friends of the Library sale, most costing no more than a quarter. There had been CDs, too, but she hadn’t bought any. She had nothing to play them on. “It’s very nice,” she said now, a little stiffly. She found, suddenly, that she wanted to get away from the piercing gaze, get back to her cottage and her view of the wintry ocean. It had surprised her, this morning, to hear the date on the radio. She had vanished herself more than a month ago.

  Jack’s fall quarter would be almost over, a time she had always looked forward to. Strained as their relationship was, she loved having him home for vacations. Even though he spent most of his time with his friends, it had been a comfort to her to know he was in the house, was up in his room dropping clothes on the floor and leaving his bureau open with T-shirts and socks hanging out of the drawers. She had learned not to touch any of those things while he was still home, but to wait until he had gone again to put things to rights.

  She wondered where he would go now. And if Ellice knew that, too.

  These thoughts rushed through her mind all at once, a little tide of them, and she blinked to push them away.

  Iris misunderstood the blink for tears. Tory could tell by her voice when Iris said, “Paulette. Are you all right?”

  “Yes! Yes, I’m quite all right. Thanks.” Tory’s voice sounded tight in her own ears, even angry. She hadn’t intended that. She took a step back, down the first stair, and turned toward the driveway where the yellow Beetle waited, a spot of color against the green and gray landscape.

  “Wait, Paulette.” Iris came out of the doorway, pulling her worn cardigan closer against the sharp wind from the ocean. Her house was several blocks from the beach, about a half mile north of the cottage, but she had a good view of the water and even a glimpse of Haystack Rock. The rock dominated everything in the town. From Iris’s porch, the rugged tip of it was easily visible, and with that access came the wind, straight off the water. Tory felt it on her neck and nipping at her ankles. Iris’s gray hair spun in lank strands in front of her eyes. “Wait a moment. Come in and have a cup of coffee with me.”

  Tory hesitated, searching for a polite way to demur. There would be questions, not just about the cash, but everything else. The only way she knew to be safe was to be solitary. To be silent.

  She had tried, once, to do something about Ellice. It had been bad, standing in a pay phone box on the main street of town, where anyone could see her and wonder why she didn’t use her own telephone. She had leafed through the pages of the phone book until she found the government listings. She chose the FBI. Who else could she call?

  The woman who answered wouldn’t take her report. “Just give me your name,” she kept saying, until a rush of anxiety stilled Tory’s voice and made her slam the receiver down. Now, with Iris’s curious gaze on her, her throat closed again.

  “Come on,” Iris repeated, and Tory knew she had waited too long. Iris put out her hand. She touched Tory’s arm, but briefly. “Cold out here,” she said. “I’m ready for another cup.”

  Tory found herself, a moment later, stepping over an enormous gray cat just inside Iris’s door. She let her black coat slip from her shoulders as Iris reached for it. Iris hung it on a vintage mirrored coatrack, and gestured with her thin arm toward the kitchen. Tory, feeling tense and defensive, walked through a living room furnished with a deep gold sofa and a mahogany armoire into a kitchen shining with hanging copper pans and sparkling glassware on open shelves. A bird feeder in colored glass, empty now, hung just outside the window above a big stainless-steel sink. All of it reminded her, painfully, of her own modern kitchen and carefully designed living room. She could see why Iris preferred to rent the rustic cottage and have a more formal home for herself.

  Iris waved her to a stool at a long granite-topped island. As Tory slid onto the stool, her hands swept over the cool stone, and a wave of nostalgia made her blink again.

  This time, Iris was busy with the coffeepot and didn’t notice. Tory cleared her throat. “Your house is beautiful,” she said.

  “Thanks,” Iris said. “Cream?” She turned, a vintage pottery creamer already in her hand.

  Tory had to smile at the creamer. It was made in the shape of a dairy cow, black-and-white spotted, with exaggerated eyelashes and full red lips.

  “There, now,” Iris said in her dry voice. “You look better when you smile.”

  Tory looked down at her linked fingers on the speckled granite. “I’m sorry if I seem unfriendly,” she said. “I haven’t had much to smile about lately.”

  “I guessed that.”

  Tory braced herself, sure that the questions were now to come, but her landlady brought down coffee cups, took spoons from a drawer, set four homemade cookies on a saucer, and laid out napkins. She braced her hip against the counter while the coffeemaker gurgled, and looked out her kitchen window at the branches of a spruce tossing in the wind. Light refracted through the glass bird feeder cast red and yellow spangles on the angles of her face. “Big storm coming,” she said. “I think I’ll send Jimmy Wurtel over to repair the broken shutter on the front window of your cottage. I should have done it earlier, but our weather’s been so mild. The shutters help to block the worst of the storms, keep a bit of heat in. You’ll be glad to be able to close them.”

  Tory said, “Iris, I can fix a broken shutter. Do you know what it needs?”

  “Not really. I just noticed it was hanging loose when I met you there.”

  “I can figure it out. Let me do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I’m used to repairing things.”

  The corners of Iris’s mouth lifted a bit, and Tory was tempted to tell her she, too, looked better when she smiled. “I’ll bet you can do it yourself, at that,” Iris said. “You look the type to do your own chores.”

  “I’ll just need some tools. Maybe some nails, or screws if that’s what’s broken.”

  “Everything’s in that little shed in the backyard. Tools are on the wall, and hardware is in the drawer of the workbench.”

  Tory, thinking about shutters, had a sudden vision of the house in her dream. It blocked out Iris’s bright kitchen, and she saw, as if she were sitting in the little garden, the painted shutters and the iron-framed entryway baking in the summer heat. She had forgotten that image until just this moment, but now it was so vivid she could almost feel the sun burning her shoulders. It was so real. For one disorienting mo
ment, it seemed more real than the cozy kitchen she was sitting in.

  “Too strong?”

  Tory, startled, looked up at Iris’s raised eyebrows. “Sorry?”

  “Your coffee. Is it too strong?”

  Bemused, Tory made herself lift the cup, taste the brew. “No, it’s delicious. Thanks.”

  “We like it strong here,” Iris said. “Something about the cold and damp, I think.”

  Tory bit her lip to try to ground herself in the moment. Cold and damp. That was real. The burning sun of her dream wasn’t, but it felt—she felt—

  She shook her head sharply, and put down the cup with a bump. It didn’t break, but coffee slopped over the edge onto the speckled granite. She dabbed at it with her napkin.

  This shouldn’t be happening. She had done so well, kept it all at arm’s length, but now these dreams—they shouldn’t be troubling her waking hours, too. She dropped the napkin, and pressed her fingertips to her forehead. “Sorry, Iris,” she said again. “I think I may be coming down with something.”

  “I think you came with something, honey. Something you already had when you arrived in Cannon Beach.”

  Tory looked up at her. Her mouth opened, her lips parted to speak a denial, but the remark was so unexpectedly cogent that she couldn’t find the words.

  Iris, sipping from her coffee cup, lowered it and gazed at Tory with her sharp gray eyes.

  Tory wondered fleetingly if she had looked that way when she sat behind her desk and watched her clients, listening to them, listening to her fey. She felt a prickle of alarm in her chest. She swallowed, and said faintly, “I—well, I—”

  Iris put up a narrow hand. “It’s okay, Paulette,” she said. “None of my business. I just wanted to give you coffee, honest.”

  Tory said, with a rueful twist of her mouth, “I like the coffee.”

  “Better have a cookie with it.” Iris pushed the cookie plate toward Tory with one finger. “You don’t look like you’ve eaten much this month.”

  “Well—no, not a lot.” Tory obediently took one cookie, and bit into it. It was perfect, sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, soft and crunchy at the same time. Her mouth suddenly watered, and she ate the rest in two big, swift bites.

  Iris took one herself and nibbled at the edge. “Our storms can be exciting,” she said casually. “High winds, a lot of rain, sometimes thunder and lightning. But not to worry. If it were something big—tsunami or something—there’s a warning system. You’d know.”

  “Tsunami?” Tory brushed crumbs of sugar from her sweater, and took another cookie. “That sounds dramatic.”

  “Would be, if we ever had one.”

  “You haven’t, then?”

  “Not since seventeen hundred.” Iris got up to pour more coffee. “And despite what you may think, I was not around then.”

  Tory chuckled, and bit into the second cookie. She felt, for a moment, almost normal. The moment of danger had passed, and the richness of the cookies felt good in her stomach, the sugar soothing the raw edges of her nerves. “Seventeen hundred—there wasn’t anybody around here then, was there?”

  “Natives. Stories of a whole tribe being wiped out. Tree rings fixed the date.”

  “Well, I’m not worried about a tsunami. But I’ll do the shutter today, just the same.”

  “Great. Saves me having to pay Jimmy. I appreciate it.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t have much to do right now.” Iris fixed her clear gaze on her again, and Tory wished instantly she could call the words back. It wasn’t smart, surely, to imply—to reveal—that she was used to being busy. She remembered Iris saying she thought she must be a nurse, or a librarian—

  Had the news from Vermont reached here? Was anyone looking for her?

  Jack . . .

  Tory’s sense of feeling normal subsided, and the cookies that had tasted so good suddenly felt like stones in her belly. It felt more normal, more usual, to be tense and withdrawn.

  Jack—oh, no. This isn’t safe.

  Tory got to her feet, and carried her cup to the sink to rinse it. Over her shoulder she said, “I’ll get to the shutter now, Iris, before the storm reaches us. Thanks again for the coffee.”

  “Any time.” Tory wasn’t sure how she managed to get back to the hall, retrieve her coat, say good-bye, and make her way out to the Beetle. She hoped she had been polite. Iris hadn’t done anything, really, but give her coffee and chat with her a little. She was friendly, that was all. And she really hadn’t pressed her for more information.

  Tory gunned the noisy motor of the Beetle as she drove back to her cottage, fighting a mixed reaction of remorse and embarrassment at how she had behaved in Iris’s kitchen.

  At least she could do a really, really good job on the shutter.

  She had been hammering nails when she and Jack had their first real falling out. As she chose some small nails to repair the crosspiece of the broken shutter on the cottage, the details of that day came back to her in all their unpleasantness.

  Jack had been just fourteen, beginning to get tall, shoulders widening, a wisp of mustache appearing on his upper lip. His feet seemed to have become enormous almost overnight, and he had begun to spend a lot of his time with his friend Colton. She had asked him to stay home that afternoon to help her put together a lean-to for a cord of firewood that was coming.

  “I don’t know anything about building,” he had said.

  “You can learn,” she answered, digging through a paper bag of nails she had picked up at the hardware store. “I don’t know much, either, but we can figure it out.”

  He grumbled a bit about playing ball with Colton, but she didn’t pay much attention. When she began to fit the pieces together, hammering nails while he held the wood in place, he said, “That doesn’t look right.”

  She had just barked her elbow on a board, and she snapped, without thinking, “I thought you didn’t know anything about building!”

  He dropped the end of the board he was holding. It splashed in a leaf-strewn puddle, soaking his jeans and his sneakers. His voice broke in that way it had begun to do, in that way that later seemed to foreshadow the rift between them. “You think you know everything, Mom! Well, you don’t!”

  She looked up at him, her little boy on his swift way to manhood. He stood above her like a stranger, his hands on his hips, his mouth drawn into a scornful line, his cheeks suddenly blazing with color. Her lips parted to say, I know I don’t, sweetheart. I know that, but he didn’t give her a chance.

  “Why can’t we be like the Garveys?” he demanded.

  She stared at him in dismay. Her son, her sweet, easygoing boy, was glaring at her, and his breath was coming too fast. His eyes were suspiciously bright, and she thought for a moment he might burst into tears. That would have been the Jack she knew. “Jack,” she began. “Tell me what this is about. The Garveys? Is there something about them you—”

  He interrupted her, his voice squeaking, then dropping so he sounded like a strangled frog. “Don’t go all therapist on me, Mom, I’m telling you! I just want to have a normal family!”

  What could she say? She was a therapist. It was the way she thought, the way she reacted. That didn’t mean that the anger on his face, in the tone of his voice, didn’t hurt. It did. It hurt too much to put into words.

  She had promised herself she would never be the bitter, complaining parent her father had been. She would not make her child responsible for her happiness, or blame him for her troubles. Now, surprised and wounded, she crouched on the carpet of wet leaves, any words she might have spoken frozen in her mouth. She stared helplessly at the hammer in her hands, and the tears, it turned out, were in her eyes, not his. She had to bite her lip to stop them from falling.

  The Garveys. Mr. Garvey was a salesman of some kind, maybe insurance. Mrs. Garvey seemed to spend all her time in the garden, or buzzing around town in her station wagon. Tory had only been inside the house once, and that had been chaotic, cluttered, full of shou
ting kids and a blaring television no one seemed to be watching.

  Be like the Garveys? It wasn’t possible. Not for her.

  Jack stamped away, leaving her to deal with the pile of lumber on her own. She didn’t call him back. It would pass, she thought. It was one of those sudden rushes of hormones, a flood of heat and feeling, and it would subside. Her boy would be restored to her.

  She struggled on with the lean-to, finding ways to brace the supports, to nail one end of the boards and then pivot them up to nail in the other. She scraped her ankle—at least on the other side, to balance out the bruised elbow—and she broke two fingernails, but she managed to get the frame up. She stood back to look at it, knowing it was no thing of beauty, but feeling certain it would do the trick when she got the roof on. Maybe Jack would help her finish it.

  When she thought she had given him enough time, she dusted the leaves and sawdust off her jeans and went in through the sliding glass door. She washed her hands in the little powder room, where she had towels and soap ready for clients, and then she went upstairs.

  Jack was sitting in front of his computer. When she came in he blanked the screen and jumped up. “You could knock, Mom,” he said.

  “You’re right.” She stopped inside the door, resolutely ignoring the clothes-strewn floor and unmade bed. “You’re right, I should knock.”

  He rolled his eyes, as if her compliance was yet another irritation. She felt a flicker of anger in her chest, but she repressed it. “I just came to apologize.”

  He stood beside his desk, one hand on the back of his chair, the other thrust into the pocket of his jeans. He said, without quite looking at her, “Yeah. Me too.”

  If only she had let it go at that. If she had backed out of his room, gone back down the stairs, left him to come to her when he was ready.

  But he looked so gangly and out of proportion, so awkward and vulnerable and—and lost—she just wanted to gather him into her arms, comfort him, assure him this difficult time would pass. She crossed his room, and reached for him.