Season of the Dragonflies (3 page)

A dart of indigo flashed by the windowpane; Lucia glanced in that direction and pulled away from Jonah. She saw nothing save concrete beyond the glass, but the moment to make this big mistake had already passed, and she ducked underneath his arms and stood up. “Not my best idea,” she said.

Jonah traced the corners of his mouth with his thumb and pointer finger, the way he always did when he didn't agree with her.

Another bright streak of blue dashed outside the window. “Isn't that the strangest thing?” she said. Lucia moved toward the exposed brick wall in their apartment. “Are you seeing this?” She pointed to the window in the center, but by this time she didn't need to; so many blue dragonflies hovered right outside that she couldn't count them all, their collected mass blocking out the sunlight and darkening the room like a curtain. The insects tapped their jaws against the glass.

Jonah said, “It's like they want in.”

Lucia closed her eyes and clasped her arms together. She couldn't suppress the smells of wild honeysuckle vining on fencerows and split trunks of cedar and tulip poplars and oaks ushering forth from her memory; the smells of wet leaf mulch on the forest floor and peeled peat moss along creek banks; the smells of girlhood, of her mother and her older sister and the Blue Ridge Mountains; acres upon acres of her family's flower planted on the hills above the cabin, blanketing the town of Quartz Hollow with a smell richer than jasmine.

She hadn't been home in so many years—fifteen, to be exact—and she knew these weren't random bugs coming down from Syracuse or Albany. These were Lucia's dragonflies. One dragonfly paused close enough to the glass for Lucia to gaze into its bulbous jade-green eyes, each with a black speck in the center. They appeared to gaze right back at Lucia. The yellow thorax tapered into a thin abdomen, the same color as the clear blue sky in the distance. Lucia bent down slightly, and the filament etching inside the wings turned metallic red in the sunlight. Adult dragonflies lived for only a month or so, but the symbol of infinity gave shape to their two sets of wings; they could control each set separately and had the freedom to change directions whenever they wished. Lucia envied them this trait. Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, they darted away; the dragonflies dropped below Lucia's window and vanished without a trace.

“I hate summer bugs,” Jonah said, and backed away from the window. With both hands flat on the pane Lucia continued to stare, desperate to catch sight of them again. Jonah placed his hand on Lucia's shoulder and she turned around. He presented the only canvas of his that remained in the apartment, one she'd purposely quarantined in the bedroom; the real Lucia slept on the futon. It was a muse painting from when they had first started dating. He'd captured Lucia's bountiful hair, long eyelashes, pale skin, and alert blue eyes with an exaggerated lucidity. He had chosen not to sell it, though now she wished he had. How long had it been since he last painted anything connected to her? Two, three years? Why even count anymore?

“It's yours if you want it,” he said. She stared at the painting but didn't recognize that girl. She'd never existed, not in all that confident glory. She shook her head.

“You're sure?” he said.

Lucia couldn't bear for him to recommend she sell the painting to the SoHo Corner Gallery, even though they both knew she could use the money. She said, “I'm sure,” before he had the chance to suggest it.

Jonah placed the painting and a box of supplies on top of the storage bin of liquor and his jeans and sweaters on top of that, then crowned it all with his black-and-white-checkered Converse sneakers. Those sneakers had now become her emblem for Jonah: juvenile and on top of the world. He probably had an appointment with a buyer.

Jonah tucked the signed divorce agreement beneath his arm like an umbrella. “Call me in the next few days and let me know how you are,” he said, and went to their door and looked back at her one last time before leaving.

The door clicked shut, and the brake-slamming sounds of the Upper East Side emanated from thirty stories below their small apartment. Those noises used to give Lucia comfort; when she moved to New York City on her eighteenth birthday they were auditory finish lines, a must-have soundtrack to her new life away from Quartz Hollow, but they had morphed into a recursive loop, and all she desired was an “off” button. Now she had another move before her. How had she let herself become so dependent on another person? Or how had
they
let it happen? Certainly Jonah had a part in it too. Lucia had so many questions for him that he would never answer. Such was the way of divorce.

Left alone in this apartment for the past few weeks, Lucia had made canned soup in the microwave and drunk Pinot Grigio from a box. Jonah could afford a one-bedroom apartment in SoHo, along with his studio on Eighth Avenue. Without Lucia to support, he had plenty of cash to spend on dating anorexic fashion designers. And only one recurring thought haunted her:
If I were as successful as Jonah Little, and on my own like him, then our relationship might've survived
.

Lucia Little. She wasn't comfortable using that name to sign checks or thank-you cards; she especially disliked using it at auditions and casting calls. Ms. Soon-Not-to-Be-Little plopped back down on the futon and opened the faded
Forbes
magazine she'd tucked underneath the cushion a week ago. Lucia stared at her maiden name on the “400” list, and she looped her mother's entry with the tip of her finger:
Number 27: Willow Lenore . . . Net Worth: $11.9 B . . . Age: 61 . . . Residence: Quartz Hollow, Virginia . . . Source: Diversified.
Why had she given up her maiden name? It sounded much better than Little. Lucia tossed the
Forbes
magazine in the black garbage bag she'd begun for all her soup cans and many boxes of Franzia. A poor effort on her part, considering how many splayed Progresso cans remained scattered on the floor.

Lucia couldn't stay in their empty apartment another night replaying the same bad marriage scenes in her head. With tomato soup as her only comfort. The dragonflies were headed home to Quartz Hollow, had to be. As much as Lucia hated to admit it, she had nowhere else to go. She could move into her friend Nina's place for a couple of weeks, but then what? Her funds were barely getting her by; she was just one nanny job away from eating nothing but one miso soup a day.

Lucia pulled well-worn yoga pants, one pair of jeans, and two T-shirts off the floor next to the futon and tossed them in a pink duffel bag. She promised herself it would only be a short visit home. A nip of her mother's moonshine and one of her extravagant picnics in the woods might go a long way toward restoring her, and maybe the quiet away from the city would help Lucia figure out her next move. She gathered her knockoff Coach purse and put on her black ballet flats to go to the airport and take the next flight to Richmond, the last charge on her Visa card before it imploded. Lucia locked the apartment door, headed down the hall toward the elevator, and refused to look behind her at a life she no longer called her own.

P
INNED BENEATH MYA
Lenore's thighs, Luke rolled from side to side as if he couldn't lift her into the air and toss her onto the mattress like a sack of soil. She liked him just where he was, caught by choice beneath her. Mya released his arms, only to guide his hands up her bare abdomen so he could cup her breasts. His callused hands roamed the planes of her hips and ribs and collarbone before stopping at her chin. In his husky mountain accent, Luke said, “I never knew a woman like you.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Mya said like a preschool teacher, and locked his arms down beside him, then eyed the yellow silk scarves on her bedside table and walked two fingers over to snag them.

“You're bad,” Luke said. Mya tied his wrists to one of the brass poles of her headboard and proceeded down from there.

Luke moaned and then said, “Get to it now.”

“Patience,” she said, and tickled his etched abdomen with her fingernails, dirt still visible beneath them. What she found appealing about a twenty-six-year-old at times also troubled Mya. Luke's youthful eagerness highlighted their ten-year age difference when she hadn't had enough rest, like today.

Luke pulled his wrists free and the scarves dropped to the floor. Mya let her long blond hair create a tent around his pelvis, and he stroked it at the roots. The flowers she'd gathered on her walk and inserted in her hair fell onto the bed. The sweet scent still lingered, but the limp and browning petals no longer looked like a white pinwheel. Luke spread Mya's hair all over his torso and said, “It's so fucking long and beautiful.”

Mya said, “A family gift.”

Luke pinched her nipple and said, “Don't bring up your mama. It's not a good time.”

“True,” she said, and rubbed her hand along his inner thigh where his thick, curly hair tapered.

Luke placed one arm behind his head so he could see her better, his biceps curved like a mountain slope. He said, “Your sunshine hair makes me crazy.” He ran his fingers through it, and Mya continued to stroke his thigh and rested her cheek on his abdomen. Luke placed his hand at the back of her head and gently nudged it forward, and she gathered him in her mouth and let all her anxious thoughts drain away like water on a drought-blighted plot of earth.

Ten minutes later he shouted out, “Holy mother of good God!” Then he rolled over on the red poppy-print quilt and Mya slapped his pale behind before he got up to go to the bathroom.

Mya left the bedroom and went to the kitchen, where she poured a glass of water mixed with fine sea salt. Luke was still in the bathroom when she returned. What was he doing in there? Mya spread her body out on the hardwood floor and placed the glass of salt water between her feet. She stared at the exposed wooden beams on the ceiling and then called out to Luke, “I dyed my hair black one summer and it turned split-pea green for three months.”

After a delay he finally answered, “That was dumb.”

“It was,” she said. “Lucia had such dark hair and I wanted mine like that.” Her little sister had hair as smooth as an onyx stone, and it smelled of summer rain no matter how often she used shampoo. Hair like Great-Grandmother Serena's, a point their mother never failed to brag about, like Lucia's earning straight A's. So much of a normal life had always come easily to Lucia, but in all other ways she had nothing in common with Great-Grandmother. Lucia might have had her hair, but she had no gift for scent or visions.

Luke said, “She's still in New York?”

Mya said, “Married, acting, that's all I know,” and she stood up and moved her operation to the bed. She stretched her long legs out on the lavender-scented sheets, balanced the glass of salt water on the bed, and clasped a pillow to her stomach. She stared at the room as a whole—the black rocking chair in the corner beneath an old net that held her stuffed animals, her clothes in a stinking pile desperate to be washed and hung on the line—and then she spotted a stray hair from Luke's head.

She caught it with her fingernails, lifted it up like the metal claw in the toy-vending machine at the grocery store, and secured it in her side-table drawer. A single strand of hair, dried chamomile flowers, seven drops of geranium oil, and a black ribbon secured with a safety pin always did the trick. Sometimes only this spell could break the irrational and impulsive bond of sex that so many people mistook for love.

Luke sauntered back into the room completely nude except for one stray flower pressed on his pelvis and stopped at the foot of the bed. He reached out for the glass, and Mya lunged for it and said, “It's salty.” She moved the glass to her bedside table.

“What weird thing are you up to?” Luke said.

Mya tucked her knees to her chest and said, “My foot chakra's messed up.”

“Your what?” he said, and he gathered his jean overalls and white undershirt.

“I made a mistake,” Mya said.

He looked down at her like she was speaking French. “That got something to do with why we went out molly mooching so damn early?” he said.

She nodded.

Luke hooked his overalls and put his hands in his pockets. “Anything else?”

“That's all,” Mya said.

He looked like he might protest but then gave her that sweet side smile. Luke bent down, kissed her on the neck, and tried to pull her closer for round two, but she said, “Can't. Don't you have fields to plow?”

“Ten,” he said, and laced his work boots. When he stood back up he grimaced and grabbed his right shoulder.

“Your daddy's working you too hard,” Mya said. She turned Luke around and massaged his smooth shoulders, then moved her hands down over his chest muscles.

He dropped his head down and groaned as she worked out his knots.

“When's your mom get back?” he said.

“Tomorrow,” she said. She led him through the pale green linen curtains on the doorway. He reached for her hand as if to hold it, but Mya rubbed her hip instead. Not that close, she wanted to tell him. They entered the reading room—Mya's laundry spilled out from the bedroom and landed in this communal living space. Her mother had grown accustomed to it, and she didn't say anything about Mya's messes anymore. Not that tidiness came naturally to her mother. Mya couldn't remember the last time she'd seen the coffee table free of her office overflow.

Luke moved through the clutter without comment. Six months ago Mya had visited Luke's family farm to contract a year's worth of grass-fed beef. She'd expected to talk to his daddy, but he wasn't home. Luke had been restoring the barn's roof and came down the ladder to speak to her. He was shirtless and smooth and sweating and suspicious of why a Lenore woman had come to visit. Mya knew as soon as his boots landed on the earth that she had to have him. She asked him to deliver each week's portion in person, and on his first stop she asked him to stay for lunch. When Luke first entered the cabin, she wondered what he'd say about her messiness, if he might judge her for having bras and underwear strewn about, but all he said was “How long's it been since a man lived here?” And it had never occurred to Mya that a man's presence in the house might shape the array of items she left out. She told him, “Not since my granddaddy died when we were girls.” That was the only time Luke mentioned the chaos. They could afford a maid, but her mother didn't like having strangers in the house.