Butterfly Tattoo

by Deidre Knight

  I don’t even let him speak when he answers his cell phone. “You were a first-class prick tonight, Porter.”

  “So?”

  “What happened to ‘you need to get back out among the living, Mike’?” I shout, not caring whether my neighbors hear. “What happened to ‘you should start dating again’?” I feel hot anger burn my face, even as the next-door neighbor’s dog whelps like I just kicked him.

  “A guy, you freak,” he counters bitterly. “I was talking about you dating a guy. Not some girl. Some scarred girl, by the way.”

  “I should come beat your face in for that.”

  “I’m serious, man,” he says. “What’s wrong with you? You are gay, Mike. Queer as hell.”

  “No,” I answer with a forced patience that I definitely don’t feel. Voice lower, I add, “I’m bisexual.”

  He groans into the receiver. “Huh—let’s page Alex on that one.”

  “Alex is the first person who would agree with me.” I stop, closing my eyes to halt my churning rage, and notice the sound of a distant siren down on Ventura. “And don’t try and tell me what my own damned partner would say,” I continue. “Matter of fact, you ever try that again, and I will come beat your fucking face in.”

  “He was my best friend,” Casey answers evenly. “And he’d be sick to see what you’re doing.”

  “What I’m doing?” I cry, pacing the length of the flagstones that lead toward the street. “What I’m doing? God, I’m hanging up on you. That’s what I’m doing! I can’t even fucking talk to you right now.”

  “You’re queer, Warner. All the way, and whatever this thing is you’re up to with that girl, it won’t work.”

  “Her name is Rebecca,” I say with blistering quiet. “And don’t ever try and use Alex’s memory against me again.”

  “I’m just here to tell you the truth, man. You may not like it, but that’s what I’m here for.”

  “I like her, Casey,” I answer bitterly. “Really like her. Is that too much for your heterophobic brain?”

  “I’ve got no problem with straight people,” he says, his voice echoing innocently through the cell. “Some of my best friends are straight.”

  “Right, I forgot.” I stare at the roses he planted by the mailbox for my birthday four years ago. “Your only problem is with me.”

  He’s silent a moment, until I nearly think he’s gone, then says, “You can’t go back, Mike. Not after this long.”

  “It scares you,” I hiss, realization dawning. “That’s it. It scares you to see me with her.”

  “You may not believe it, but I’m trying to look out for you.”

  “Know what, Case? I think I’ll fall in love with her just to really piss you off!”

  And with that proclamation, I hang up on one of my last remaining true friends in this world.

  ***

  “So Casey’s disapproval of this relationship upsets you?” Dr. Weinberger probes, scribbling something on his notepad.

  Lying back on his sofa, I stare at the ceiling and think about why Casey’s reaction pisses me off so much. Then I get it. “He should support me. Be my friend.”

  “Maybe he believes he’s being your friend.”

  “He wants me to be a certain way,” I clarify, staring at the soothing upholstered wallpaper—taupe and cream-colored, intentionally neutral. No loud artwork here, no edgy prints.

  “You’ll agree this is a drastic change, you dating a woman.”

  “From what? Being alone all the time?” I ask belligerently. “Damn straight it’s drastic.”

  “Drastic from being with Alex,” he clarifies. “From being in a long-term homosexual relationship.”

  I shrug, settling down again, closing my eyes. Another headache’s brewing, and I can tell it’s gonna be a bad one. “Wouldn’t it have been drastic for me to date a guy, too?”

  “At this point? Not quite so much.”

  “Thanks a lot, Dr. Weinberger,” I grumble, massaging my forehead. “At least Casey’s not taking my money every month.”

  “Michael, please.”

  “I’m serious, I just want someone to let me do whatever the hell I want with my love life.”

  “All I’m saying is that it’s been how long since you dated a woman?”

  Blowing out a breath, I close my eyes again because I have to think hard and do the math. Marti was my last feminine kiss. That’s more than a decade, a few presidents, and some major global conflicts since I last slept with a woman.

  “Thirteen years.”

  “Maybe that’s why Casey thinks you should have a few dates with men first. To find your way back out there.”

  “And you think so, too.” I fold my arms across my chest disagreeably.

  “I’m not saying that,” my doctor explains. “Our sessions here are for exploration.”

  “I want to explore why my daughter calls me by my first name.”

  “You can’t push her, Michael. You know that,” he urges, but all I can hear are Andie’s words from the other day. But you’re Michael. That’s who you have to be.

  “I want to know, for God’s sake,” I mutter, frustration reaching a fever pitch. “For almost a year you’ve told me to wait. Not to push. To be patient.”

  “She is making significant headway.”

  “She calls me Michael.”

  “You know what she’s been through. How traumatized she’s been.”

  “Why do you think she won’t call me Daddy?” Sitting up, I plant both feet on the floor, despite the headache that swells behind my eyes. “Really?”

  Dr. Weinberger smiles at me sympathetically. He rocks in his leather armchair, fingertips forming a thoughtful pyramid beneath the bridge of his nose. “I have some theories about that, but let’s keep giving Andrea time.”

  “No,” I demand, rising to my feet. “You tell me what you think right now.”

  “She’s trying to sort through her grief, Michael,” he says in a lowered voice, staring up at me. “To make sense out of so many emotions. Guilt. Survivor guilt. Abandonment. Loneliness. It makes it hard to connect with anyone, even the people she loves most.”

  “She’s connected with Rebecca.”

  “That’s good. Very good.” He nods enthusiastically. “Why do you think that is?”

  Andrea and I have something in common. That’s how Rebecca put it that day in her office, in her delicate sidestepping of her own obvious ordeal.

  “Andie feels like Rebecca understands,” I explain, collapsing onto the sofa again wearily. “Knows something the rest of us don’t.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Rebecca has some scars. She’s been through stuff. Heavy stuff, and Andie feels like she relates, I guess.”

  “And you feel that way too,” he observes, eyes narrowing astutely.

  “Yeah, I kinda do, actually. Only Rebecca’s stronger than me. I can see that.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” he says. “People handle their grief in all kinds of ways, Michael. Some are just better at coping on the outside.”

  I think of her hand, the jagged rough scar in the middle of it. And I think of how ashamed she is of not being perfect. “She’s lost a lot,” I say, “but she keeps moving forward.”

  “As do you, Michael.” Maybe. Or maybe not until I met her.

  “I have another date with her,” I confess softly.

  “How does that feel?”

  I’m not completely sure how to describe what being with Rebecca does for me, how it’s awakening me for the first time in a year. “You ever see any of Spike Lee’s movies?” I ask after a moment, and he nods. “Well, there’s this weird visual effect he uses. Almost kind of a Hitchcock thing, where the people seem to move forward, but the background recedes, and it’s like they’re not even walking. Ever notice that?”

  “I think I know what you mean, yes.”

  “That’s how I’ve felt for the past year,” I explain, raking my fingers through my hair. “Like I’m moving among a
ll these people, everywhere. My family. Work. My gay friends. Straight friends. Strangers.” Pausing, I gaze up at my doctor for emphasis. “Like I kind of see everyone from the end of this really dark tunnel.”

  “I’ve heard grief described precisely that way before.”

  “But that’s just it. The other night, at the game? The tunnel was gone. The weird Spike Lee effect, all gone.”

  “That’s great, Michael. Very healthy.”

  “Are you sure?” The tunnel was my comfort zone, and like a suicidal man constantly staring down the barrel of his rifle for a year, I’m wary of its sudden absence.

  “You know that it is.”

  “I’m jazzed about the date tomorrow night.” I smile. “But I feel guilty, too.”

  “You’re the one who’s still here, Michael. You can’t feel guilty about that.”

  “I haven’t stopped missing Alex.” That much needs to be clear: Rebecca and Alex exist on two different planets for me. Venus and Mars, I guess. Falling for her hasn’t altered an ounce of how much I long for him.

  “Michael, you will probably never stop missing him,” he answers firmly. “If that’s your goal, it’s an unrealistic one.” This is news to me. I thought Weinberger wanted me to move on, to let the pain go. He continues, “Your loss is a part of you. It’s organic, in a way. Your goal is to learn to live with that.”

  “But it can’t possibly keep hurting so damn much.”

  “I didn’t say it would always hurt. Just that it would always be a part of you.” Like Rebecca’s scars, or my tattoo, I realize. Same as loving Alex will always be.

  “Loss is a natural part of living,” my doctor continues gently. “We have to make our peace with that fact.”

  I nod, and we fall silent for a while; I lie back on the sofa again, watching the bend and sway of the leggy palm trees outside his office window. Dry leaves, dead leaves, still hanging in there though. A lot of crap’s muddling around inside of me, a lot I probably should tell my doctor. Like the fact that lately I have this weird sense that Alex is spying on me. That I’ve developed a mini-obsession with wearing his old clothes, and sometimes I even swear I can still smell his scent on them, too.

  Maybe I should tell the good doctor that I have a midnight tendency to wander into Al’s surfboard room, a small dimly lit spot at the back of our house—little more than a closet really—and just run my fingers along the fiberglass, feeling the rails and fins and concave curves of all those smooth shapes he used to love so damned much. It helps me to go in there, when I can’t sleep, like I’m in some kind of Richardson temple or something. Like a little piece of him is stowed away, too, along with the twelve boards he left behind.

  Sometimes I fantasize about paddling out with him, feeling the swell of icy ocean beneath my body, the foam and spray in my face. I hear him whooping beside me with pure, unadulterated joy just to be back in the water again; we’re together, exactly like we’re meant to be.

  I wonder, too, if I shouldn’t tell Weinberger that I’m thinking of taking Allie’s ring off before my date with Rebecca tomorrow night. Maybe that’s something he should know—or not, because maybe that should remain between Alex and me for now. Like all the other secrets we’ve kept between us, to the very grave.

  Chapter Eleven: Rebecca

  After spending all week negotiating the Julian Kingsley deal—but still not getting it closed out—I’m pretty frazzled by the time Friday night rolls around. I sure hope my overprotective mom doesn’t notice; not if I don’t want another round of proving how okay I am during our dinner tonight. It’s not that she means to hover, but lately all the concerned phone calls and searching glances are wearing thin. I guess worrying about me has become a way of life for both my parents.

  They came from Georgia to take care of me after my attack, when I was vulnerable and broken, and that’s not an image easily dismissed from anyone’s mind, especially not a parent’s. If I’d sat by my daughter’s bed, listening to the hissing click and groan of the ventilator, brushing her hair every day, praying to God that she’d wake up… well, I don’t think I’d have gotten over that memory either. No wonder they hired a permanent caretaker for their farm back in Dorian, and never went home again.

  For some reason, imagining my soft-spoken mother by my bedside, counting each stroke aloud as she brushed my hair, makes me think of Michael. Of how he longs to reach Andrea, but can’t quite make that bridge, and I feel an answering hollow twist of pain in my chest. His anxious love for her is a vivid reflection of my own parents’ worry for me—of all parents throughout the ages, I guess. Sure, sometimes I get frustrated that Judy and Benton won’t go back to Georgia, and I feel smothered and fussed over. But I will be grateful until my dying day that they helped me do this on my terms, my way here in Los Angeles, where I could recover with self-respect. Even though acting is a shadow dream for me now, at least I’m staring at the empty canvas of possibility here in L.A.—not withering away back in Dorian, wondering what might have been.

  With as long as it took me to find a parking space, my mom’s already seated on the patio of the French restaurant where we’re meeting for dinner. Her tapered pianist’s fingers tap a rhythm on her date book as she waits, and she’s unaware of my stealthy approach. The date book is not a promising sign. Translation: I’m about to be shanghaied into something. Somebody’s godson who works at Universal and is oh-so-single and oh-so-adorable, that kind of thing; my mother is a firm believer that everyone on the planet should be knit together, all by the work of her gentle, effortless hands. She doesn’t know about Michael—not yet, because I’m still trying to figure out how to explain him into my picture.

  “Hey, Mom.” I lean down to kiss her cheek, catching a whiff of Estee Lauder, her signature fragrance for as long as I can remember. Embracing me, she holds on a few seconds too long, unwilling to let go until I make the move to pull away.

  “Hey, precious. You look so pretty!” She gestures at my Ann Taylor sundress enthusiastically. “Is that new?”

  “I got it a while ago.” I wave off the compliment, grabbing the drinks menu; I sometimes think if I showed up in a flour sack my mom would beam about it.

  “You seem shaky.”

  “Mom, I am fine,” I assure her, nodding my head vigorously for emphasis. “Totally great. It’s been a very hectic work week, that’s all.” Anything so she won’t worry after we part ways later tonight.

  Her gray eyes narrow in appraisal. “I ran into Dr. Nunnally at Vons.”

  I offer an unrevealing, “Really?”

  “He said you aren’t going to group anymore.”

  “He’s not supposed to tell you that!” Without meaning to, my fingers trace the outline of my facial scars.

  “Oh, Rebecca.” She leans forward, patting my other hand in loving reassurance. “Precious, he knows how worried I stay about you, that’s all. Don’t blame him.”

  “I’m his patient,” I remind her, wriggling my hand free. “He’s not supposed to tell my mother what I’m doing. Actually, Mom, he’s not supposed to tell anyone.”

  “He thinks you should get a roommate. Did you know that? He thinks living alone isn’t a good fit for someone like you.” She sips thoughtfully from her Perrier. “I think that’s how he put it. A good fit.”

  “Well, so I’ll get married.” I watch a daddy with his toddler daughter, chasing after her in the crowd, grasping at the hem of her flowing April Cornell dress. A lifetime of pursuit captured in a single image. If Keats came back, he’d be a screenwriter.

  “Please don’t be sarcastic, Rebecca,” she says, frowning slightly. “I would like to have a real conversation about this for once.”

  “All right, how’s this,” I say, meeting her serious gaze. “And please don’t take this the wrong way, okay? But you and Daddy are like these house guests that came to stay forever.”

  “We came to take care of you.”

  “And I needed that,” I agree, feeling my right hand tremble around the stem of
the glass. “Three years ago, Mama. But I’m ready for y’all to go on back home now.” God, please don’t let my fingers tighten up on me now. All I need is a repeat of the pizza fiasco from the other night.

  “You’re not the only reason we stayed, Rebecca,” she reminds me quietly, staring out at the fountain. Booming classical accompaniment begins, and she leans close so I can hear her over the crescendo. “We love it here. You know that. That’s the great thing about Daddy’s retirement, we can live anywhere.”

  “Mama, I love you and Daddy. And I love you so much for having stayed out here for me,” I say, feeling tears burn my eyes unexpectedly. “But I’ve got to make it on my own now. Because if I don’t, then I don’t think I’ll ever really get past what Ben did to me.”

  My mother’s upper lip blanches, turning white as she bites it, and for a sliver of a moment I see pain in her eyes. Sometimes, her guard drops. It drops and that’s when I know that her endless duties as my Watcher aren’t nearly as joyful as she makes them out to be.

  “I worry about you, Rebecca. That if we weren’t here, you wouldn’t be okay.”

  “I’m thirty-three, Mom,” I remind her, my voice growing thick. “I can make it here on my own. I was fine before everything.” My chest is starting to constrict; breathing’s getting harder. Dang it all to hell. I can’t use my inhaler in front of her, because that would undermine all that I’m saying.

  “Before the accident, precious,” she clarifies, and this time I feel angry at the southern propensity to euphemize blasted everything. So I clarify right back at her.

  “Before the attack,” I say, trying to calm my heart rate. “Let’s call it what it was, ’cause that was no accident, Mama.”

  “You’re right. It was no accident that Ben McAllister crossed paths with you. That evil man,” she mutters, her voice trailing off as she reaches for her planner, her own hands shaking. Really shaking as she stares down at the pages, flipping through them, back and forth without looking up at me. “I wanted to talk about Labor Day weekend.” A lifelong maneuver of hers: changing subjects. But funny thing is, I do want to talk about this topic for once.