Butterfly Sunday (9 page)

“She never forgave me for talking her into having that baby.”

“That doesn’t matter, Blue. You have to forgive yourself.”

“She tried to love her at first.”

“Then why is she in an institution?”

“Lucy got afraid she’d kill her.”

Everybody lived with something. Everybody had some kind of blood on their hands. How many killed themselves and each other trying to hold the lid down on their secrets?

“Lucy was brave to tell it.”

“I know.”

“Blue, I didn’t think anything could be worse than delivering a stillborn child.”

“Who’s to say, Leona?”

“Lucy is.”

“Why?”

“My loss is terrible and immense, but hers lives and grows.”

“All she had to do was love her.”

“Do you?”

“I have to.”

“From guilt?”

“It’s what fathers do. Mothers too.”

“But Lucy …”

“Refused to love her. That’s what’s twisted her.”

He was no Tyler Crockett. He didn’t need a suit of armor. She had been a thousand percent wrong about him. She was ashamed, but more than anything she was happy, happy to know he was so much more than he seemed. More than that, it gave her all kinds of hope to look into a man’s heart and admire what she saw there.

It was very dark outside. The moon was a strange yellowish blur through the thinning clouds. She didn’t know what it meant beyond the moment, but she had never felt as close to another person, or as safe. She had no idea if he had the same tender inclinations. She didn’t tell him any of that then. She was afraid to breathe out loud, terrified it would scare him away. They sat in close stillness some unmeasured time, then a clap of thunder broke the spell.

“Enjoyed my visit.”

“Stop by any time.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll give you a ride.”

“I know the path like the back of my hand.”

Then the darkness swallowed him. She listened to his footsteps fade. She had no idea when she might ever see him alone like this again. She had no other situations against which to compare this particular lightness inside, so she couldn’t give it a name. One thing she realized with a start, one little star switching on somewhere. She was stunned to know it, but know it she did. She could love somebody again.

Meanwhile, Blue had run about a quarter of a mile up the dark hill and his breath was giving out. He felt silly now that he hadn’t accepted Leona’s offer of a ride. He couldn’t see more than three feet. A cold wind had kicked up and he could smell the rain in it. He stopped to rest. What was the sense of getting soaked? She’d offered him a ride. Why didn’t he go back to Leona’s? The thought made his cheeks burn. But why? She had taken him a little aback, brought him up a bit short, Daddy would say. He couldn’t fit in his head all the things they had said to each other, all the things he had said out loud for the first time. Did she know how right she was about a lot of it? Did he?

He felt better. Yet some things she said practically sliced him in half. A woman who had so much bad to say about him couldn’t hold him in very high esteem. Still, he couldn’t fool himself here alone in the dark, she’d nailed him. And she’d done more good than harm. How much umbrage could he take when he felt like laughing out loud? The cold air smelled clean. The wet bark of the trees glistened silver blue. The warm earth breathed back the chilly mist.

He thought of her there alone, closing her window and slipping on something to keep her warm while she slept. Was it true? Had she married Averill to give his name to another man’s child? What a desperate thing in this day and time. It made him feel very sad for her. Did she know where Averill went at night? Did she know it had been going on before she came to these parts? Was it betrayal or an understanding? Why did she stay there with him, dying of loneliness?

Now an idea took over his mind, an idea so big it smothered all other thoughts. He should rescue her. He should save her from her dark existence. How he’d go
about it, he wouldn’t dare dream he knew. It was just a powerful inclination at the moment. She was finer than people around here seemed to know. Did other people already know the depth of her honesty? Did they appreciate her candor as sincere and second nature? Or did they think she was rude? Did they also see how beautiful she was? Did they realize she played it down because she had the gift of self-possession?

Not these people, not his cousins and his neighbors and lifelong friends. They were good people. They meant well. They just didn’t always look close enough to see all the details that drew your careful attention. What was he thinking? Not these people? No. Not him. That was what he meant. He referred to his own blindness. The woods were so lovely just then that he almost had to retch at their exquisite isolation. Earlier he thought they had never been like this.

Now he felt his heart release a heavy burden. The woods had always been this lovely. He’d covered every square foot of them in much worse weather than this. It wasn’t the rain. He’d easily be at the house in another fifteen minutes if he kept up his pace. It was Leona. He wanted to see her again. As he turned around on the path, the toe of his right boot jammed in a gnarled tree root. He lurched forward, trying to avoid twisting his ankle. He barely had time to see the limb before his forehead smashed into it. Pain burst, searing yellow and splintering into cascading stars that extinguished in the blackness as he fell forward.

THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 1999

1:12 A.M.

Alone in the darkness, Leona was grateful for the rain. It muffled the usual creaking and moaning of the trees and wild dogs barking and owls and such. The showering quiet overspread her thoughts like a luxuriant blanket of peace. She didn’t sleep much since the baby. Though part of that was Averill lumbering in at all hours, startling her. She had never quite settled her mind on what he might or might not do. Tonight, though, there were no thoughts of loneliness and dying to keep her burning eyes peering into the boding blackness until sunrise. Tonight as she had climbed into bed, she had felt a swirling rightness about things, as if a band of gentle spirits hovered close.

Blue’s boot on the porch woke her. She knew it before he knocked. She hadn’t expected Blue to come
back, and not after one A.M., yet she couldn’t say that when she switched on the yellow porch light she was surprised to see him standing there. They had already entered that tender country where inchoate lovers dwell in the same hopeful mystery.

“What’s that welt on your forehead?”

“I hit a tree limb. It knocked me out.”

“Oh, boy … Come on in. I’ll get an ice pack.” She might just as well have said, “I’m so glad you hit your head.”

“I’m fine. I just came back …” He took her hand to prevent her from leaving him there alone. He held on to it. “I just came back.”

“I know.… Let me give you an ice rag.”

He stepped into the living room and waited while she pulled a tray of ice cubes from the ancient Frigidaire. He heard the back door slam, then the hammer. It was a good-sized room, probably the only one of any consequence in the house. The furniture and rugs looked old and expensive. There was a shining black baby grand piano in one corner. It was as if he had stumbled against a door in the night and opened it into an unexpected elegant lair.

Like the woman, the furnishings didn’t go with the house. He read her in the solid, old things in the room, lace-curtain Methodist, merchant types. Solid.

“Sit down, Blue.”

It was too late to call someone for a ride. Though he couldn’t ask her to take him at this hour. Several inches of rain had already fallen. The county hadn’t laid fresh gravel on this section of the road in years. There would be twenty-foot-long mud puddles by now.

She gave him Averill’s best robe and he took a hot bath while she ran his clothes through the washer and
threw them into the dryer. Then she sat in the living room sipping hot tea while she waited for him.

“I feel like one of the wise men in this thing.” His enormous hand dwarfed her mother’s delicate china cup when he took it. “Trying to make a gentleman of me?”

“I don’t know what to make of you.”

If Averill walked in right now, would it look like they had just slept together? It didn’t feel anything like that. There was too much trust and budding affection. Love, she thought, before she had time to consider the implications, isn’t lurid or sensational. From her fragmented experiences of it, she had always imbued the real thing with lurid sensation.

“If it wasn’t so late, I’d light a fire.”

“It’s never too late,” Blue observed, setting down his cup. In less than two minutes Blue had a log on a bed of small flames. The kindling was damp. It hissed and crackled as the fire slowly filled the hearth box. Something rattled near the top of the chimney and a delicate shower of leaves drifted into the blaze. In a minute they heard a squirrel scratch lightly across the tin roof.

“We’ve never laid a fire,” Leona explained. She had battled an odor of mildew in the house since her arrival six months ago. Obviously it had come from the unused fireplace. Blue reached over and switched off the lamp. Now the room was bathed in pink and gray shadows. She had entertained hopes for this room in the first week or two. It needed new windows, the plaster had been repaired too many times, the floor sagged at one end. Still, by design it was an airy room. Painted beams crossed the high ceiling. There were long, narrow alcoves for bookcases on either side of the fireplace. A
row of French doors, their glass panes long painted over, separated the dining room.

“It’s a good house,” Blue observed.

“Nothing wrong here but neglect,” Leona amended.

“It’d be fun to put it right.”

“I’ve considered taking a match to it.”

They sat on the sofa and watched the fire and talked and talked and talked. Leona was like an enchanted flower that kept opening and revealing more and more layers.

“Try as I might, I can’t put you and Averill Sayres together.”

“It’s not a marriage, Blue.”

“You don’t love him?”

“Never pretended to.”

It was a well-made black cotton robe with buttons on the pockets. The fabric was smooth. The collar was made almost like a suit. It was made for smaller shoulders than his, and longer legs. She had never seen a robe like it, except in movies with English lords and Russian princes. The hem lay on the floor under his bare feet. His long, slender toes and narrow heels fascinated her. The masculine refinement of the robe highlighted his animal grace.

Clean bare feet, she kept thinking. Long, lovely fingers and clean cotton and the honest aroma of a hickory fire. Why did people make it so neon bright?

“Why did you marry Averill?” His voice reminded her that she had drifted away into her thoughts.

“I was pregnant.”

“A lot of girls today don’t see that as a reason.”

“Life and death hit me over the head all at once. I couldn’t think.”

Everyone knew Leona’s story in more detail than she
probably even remembered at this point. Though Blue sensed that she was unaware of that. The last thing he wanted to do was upset or humiliate or embarrass her. They were sitting very close. Somehow they had crept comfortably onto tender ground. Yet neither felt the slightest fear of the other. Both understood that whatever happened would be all right. They had reached that velvet plateau of mutual accommodation. Each felt his needs and desires would be best served by facilitating the other’s.

Then he kissed her and the kindness of his lips sent her soaring. Tenderness swallowed every ache and sorrow in her crowded young life. She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom. Before they lay down on the bed, she opened the closet door and showed him which boot to reach down into.

His guileless need and intuitive understanding of hers disarmed her. She had never before experienced this friendly passion. It was impossible to discern conversation from lovemaking. There was as much laughter as there were sighs. It was charming and innocent and pleasant for a long time. Then they were jolted by a climbing need that took them both a little by surprise. There was nothing sordid or secret in it, none of the painful pleasure she had experienced with Tyler and Averill. Blue’s eyes never left hers. His body never imposed a separate agenda on hers. When they burst together, it was thrilling. Yet the hours of soft conversation and comforting flesh that followed were wonderful too.

It all seemed connected, all part of the same thing: love and touch, sleep and talking, moonlight and shadow and dawn. She drifted to sleep with her head on his shoulder and, dreamless, she breathed the opiate balm
of his affectionate flesh. Then it was morning and yellow sun flooded the room.

She opened her eyes and sat forward. Blue was sitting on a small wooden chair next to the bureau with his feet propped up on the footboard. He was so deep into his thoughts that at first he didn’t seem to notice that she was awake. His manner gave her the impression that he had been there for some time.