The Glass Butterfly (16 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: The Glass Butterfly
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All he said now was, “No. No one special.”
“Just the same, Jack. You're too young to hole up here, spinning your wheels.”
“I know. I'm going to go back. I'll go back when—” He stopped. He had been going to say, “When Mom comes back,” but clearly, that wasn't a good idea. He was the only person in the whole damn world who thought she would return one day. Who believed she was alive.
He wished, suddenly, that he had just one person to talk to, to turn to, one person he could trust not to dismiss this powerful conviction. Ironically, that person would have been Tory.
“Well,” Chet said, though he seemed doubtful. “You can go back in the spring.”
“Right.”
Chet gathered up his jacket and keys, and stood irresolute in the middle of the kitchen. “Sure you wouldn't rather come stay with us, Jack? Kate would love to have you.”
“I'm sure. You guys have been great, though.”
Chet looked around at Tory's pretty things. “Not that I know much about kitchens, but this one is really nice.”
“I know. Mom loves—loved this house.”
“And you have everything, I know—when Kate needed something, she always called Tory. Whether it was a zester—whatever that is—or a wrench, your mom always had it.”
“Everything but an iron. Mom hates those.”
“Didn't like to iron, huh?”
“Nope. Nothing but permanent press in this house.”
“I guess everyone has their little weakness.”
Jack stood, and walked with Chet to the front door. “Tell Kate thanks again,” he said. “The dinner was great.”
“I will.” Chet shrugged into his jacket. The lock on his car chirped, but still he hesitated on the doorstep. “Call us, son. Don't be lonely.”
“Okay.” Jack put out his hand, and Chet shook it with both of his. Finally, with obvious reluctance, Chet went down the steps, walked to his car, and climbed in. Jack waved farewell, then stepped back and closed the front door, grinning cheerfully as he did so.
When the door was safely closed, he let the smile fade. He stood listening to Chet's engine start, then the crunch of tires on gravel as he backed and turned and disappeared down the long driveway. It was a relief to have him gone, but only because of the questions Jack didn't want to answer. The protest he wasn't allowed to make.
Carefully, Jack locked the door, turning the dead bolt before he switched off the porch light. Behind him the house felt like a cavern, full of empty rooms and dark corners. He felt jazzed up by the coffee, and he was sure he couldn't sleep.
He scooped up the mess of mail from the hall table, and carried it into the kitchen. Might as well do something useful if he was going to be awake.
There were two psychology magazines, and he set those aside. He had thought about canceling the subscriptions, which he was sure Kate would have advised. Instead, he had started saving the issues in a grocery bag. It was beginning to fill up, the glossy covers declaring their topics—
Blood Sugar Levels in Depressed Patients, Treating ADHD without Drugs, Counseling Bereaved Children
—from the pantry floor where he stored the bag. Some nights, when he couldn't sleep, he imagined himself presenting Tory with the bag when she came home—not if, but when—as evidence he had known she would return. It comforted him.
There were two long, official-looking bank envelopes, and one from some sort of financial institution. He set those in a separate stack, to go through in the morning. There were Christmas cards in colored envelopes, and those he opened to arrange on the mantelpiece in the living room as Tory always did. He saved the envelopes, in case she wanted to write back to the senders. He sifted through a little pile of concert invitations on four-color postcards. She was probably on the mailing list of every musical organization in the state. Idly, nostalgically, he read several. He could guess what her response to each of them would have been. Mozart Christmas pieces, she would love. A recital of Puccini arias for New Year's Eve, a definite yes. A January evening of Mahler, maybe—she liked “The Songs of a Wayfarer.” Wagner, absolutely not. He said aloud, “Sorry, Mom,” and chucked the whole stack into the recycling bin. As he did so, a hand-addressed envelope that had slipped into the folds of one of the advertisements slid to the floor.
Jack bent to pick it up. He didn't recognize the handwriting. It looked like it might be another Christmas card, though it was a business-sized envelope. A Christmas letter, maybe, one of those photocopied things. He turned over the envelope to slit it open, and paused. A sudden chill stirred the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck.
The envelope had been opened. It hadn't been steamed, which Jack was pretty sure would curl the paper and leave traces of water damage. Someone, he thought, had pried up the flap and then pressed it back down, but whoever it was had left wrinkles in the gummed edge. It was skewed, slightly but obviously crooked. Carefully, he slid his forefinger under the flap to lift it. He pulled out the contents—a Christmas letter, as he had thought—and it, too, showed evidence of having been opened, clumsily refolded, shoved back into the envelope.
Disturbed, he hastened to the pantry for the saved Christmas card envelopes. He looked at each, wondering if he had missed something. He tried to think what it was like to mail Christmas cards. Scrawl a signature, an address, give the envelope a quick lick or a dab with a sponge. They often weren't very well sealed, and he had opened these without paying much attention. He examined them now under the bright kitchen light. It was hard to tell for sure—in fact, he couldn't be sure about any of this—but one or two seemed to have been re-sealed like the letter.
He put them back, moving slowly now, thinking hard. There wasn't much he could do. The letters and cards might look to him as if they had been opened before, but then he had opened them himself, and no one would be convinced by his hunch. He didn't want to tell Kate and Chet, because they were already practically insisting he come and stay with them. If they thought there was something strange going on, maybe something dangerous, they would never let him be.
He picked up the long envelope once again, the pages of the Christmas letter forgotten on the granite countertop. He stood for a long moment, the re-sealed envelope in his hand. He knew what it meant. He had been hoping for someone to believe him, but not like this. This wasn't the support he had hoped for. This didn't feel good at all.
He was pretty damn sure, now, that there was at least one other person in the world who didn't believe his mother was dead.
14
Diedi gioielli della Madonna al manto, e diedi
il canto agli astri, al ciel, che ne ridean più belli.
 
I gave jewels for the Madonna's mantle, and I gave
my song to the stars, to heaven, which smiled with more beauty.
 
—Tosca,
Tosca,
Act Two
T
ory startled when her cell phone rang. It had never rung before. It was a cheap thing, something she'd bought at Costco just because people expected everyone to have a phone. But there was no one to give her number to.
She answered in a hesitant voice, and heard, “Hello? Paulette, is that you?”
Of course. Iris. She had written the cell phone number on her rental agreement. “Yes,” she said, and had to clear her throat. She hadn't spoken aloud at all today. She wasn't sure she had spoken at all the day before, either, or to anyone except a grocery clerk since Thanksgiving. Silence surrounded her, the silence of solitude, filled only by the music from her radio and the rush of waves on the beach. She said again, “Yes, it's me. Hi, Iris.”
“There's a job,” Iris said. “You mentioned once you might want one.”
“Oh. A job?” Tory walked to the window to look out at the rain-lashed ocean. Low clouds obscured the horizon, and the great rock looked as if it were hunched against the storm. “Yes, Iris, I—I might want a job.”
“It's just seasonal. Doesn't pay much.”
“That's okay.” Tory knew she sounded noncommittal. The idea of a job—getting out of the cottage and meeting people—both thrilled and frightened her. The long hours alone made her anxiety rise and intensify until she felt she might jump out of her skin, but—when anyone looked closely at her, or asked her a question, the fear that had become her only companion shuddered in her belly.
She leaned against the cold window, and reminded herself that she'd done fine so far. Her made-up Social Security number and the hastily acquired cell phone hadn't made Iris so much as blink. They could hardly lead anyone to her. And she needed the money. Her little cache of bills was shrinking at an alarming rate. “Where is it, Iris?”
“Flower shop. They get really busy over the holidays, and Betty told me her daughter needs help handling the counter. Don't know if you've been in there, but they sell a lot of decor items, bric-a-brac, souvenirs, that sort of thing.”
“I haven't been in,” Tory said. “But I'm sure I could handle it.”
Iris chuckled. “I'm sure, too. If you're interested, I'll call Betty.”
“Yes. Thanks, Iris. It's nice of you to think of me.”
“Nonsense. What friends are for.”
As Tory pocketed her phone, she puzzled over Iris's remark. It was the second time Iris had implied they were friends, but were they, really? She supposed they could be. It wasn't like it was with Kate, but she and Kate had known each other for more than fifteen years. She knew almost nothing about Iris, while she knew everything about Kate Bingham. They talked about everything—well, almost everything. They were in and out of each other's houses, borrowing, lending, sharing in the way of true friends. Old friends, who understood feelings without having to explain them.
Suddenly, Tory missed Jack with a stab of pain so deep it was as if it were brand-new. It made her heart clench with despair. With an exclamation, as much sob as curse, she seized her coat and knitted cap and fairly threw herself out the front door and through the gate.
She walked as fast as she could across the damp sand, heading toward Haystack Rock. The rock, big and black and dominating, had become her cathedral, the place she went for respite, the place she could pour out her grief and worry, at least for a time.
Cold December sunshine broke through the clouds. The tide was out, but the winter breakers still swelled impressively high before they smashed themselves against the ancient boulders. Tory walked right to the tide line, letting her sneakers splash in the brown foam edging the beach. She gazed out over the restless water, and the pain in her heart eased just a bit, to a level that was almost bearable.
Why did water work that way for her? She had no idea. Except for a couple of beach vacations as a child, before her mother withdrew into illness and depression, she had never lived by the water nor spent much time on it. She remembered the feeling, when she drove the yellow VW right up to the edge of the Pacific Ocean, that her journey was done. In the weeks since, the water had become her solace.
It's okay, she told herself. We take comfort where we can. She wondered if it was because of the water in her dreams, that muddy lake lapping at the edge of the road. Her dream life was twining itself with her waking life, so that every event she dreamed of seemed to mean something profound.
She reached the giant rock, and walked as far around it as the water allowed. She took care not to step in the tide pools or to disturb the miniature beasts that inhabited them, the layered barnacles, the slow-moving sea stars, the curious formations of anemones. She had learned about the aggregating anemones, tiny beings huddled together in communities that shared a single mind and purpose. There was an opposite species, similar, but solitary rather than communal. These little, separate creatures curled in crevices of the parent rock, stubborn and alone.
Like me,
Tory thought.
Stubborn and alone.
She wondered if Jack was lonely. She hoped not, hoped with all her heart that he had friends around him, people to share the burden that had fallen on his young shoulders. She hoped, also, that he would think well of her, in memory. That he would understand that the distance between them had been superficial, something that would have passed in time. She hoped with all her heart that he would know how much she loved him.
She couldn't think of her own parents that way. She remembered her mother's withdrawal into mental illness. She remembered her father's impotent rages. Had they loved her? Or were they too unhappy, too consumed by the tragedy of their own lives, to make room for her?
She wrapped her arms around herself against the cold. Nonna Angela must have suffered, too, in that unhappy household, yet she had never spoken of it. She had simply loved her little granddaughter, and shielded her as best she could. It must have been hard to watch the family disintegrate and not be able to do anything to stop it.
Tory stood for a moment in the lee of the rock, out of the wind, her hat pulled down past her ears and her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her now-shabby coat. She would take the job in the flower shop, if this Betty would hire her. It would give her someplace to go each day, people to talk to, work to take her out of herself.
She had to move forward. Do something. It was exactly the sort of thing she would have advised her clients to do, but it was surprisingly difficult in the actual event. She comprehended, now, the comfort of being still. Of being stuck. Ice Woman understood. She wondered if she would be able to let the ice break apart.
Oh, Jack. Be well, sweetheart. Be safe.
She pulled the collar of her jacket up to her chin, and retraced her steps around the landward side of the great rock, emerging into the wind with her sneakers wet and the hems of her jeans dripping foam. She angled up the beach toward the cottage, thinking she'd better leave her shoes outside, maybe even strip off her jeans just inside the door.
She had just passed the repaired bench when she stopped, and stood motionless.
Something was huddled against the gate of her tiny yard. She couldn't quite make it out at first, just a big, wet mound of brown and white. It took a moment for her to realize it was an animal. Its ears drooped against its matted skull. It was shivering, and when it saw her, the lift of its head seemed to be a gesture of hope. Its eyes, gleaming black from beneath long white eyebrows, pled for understanding. A dog.
Tory stared at it. She couldn't open the gate without making it move. She would have to speak to it, possibly touch it. She didn't like dogs. She had never liked them.
It wasn't that she was afraid of them. She had tried to explain that to her son, when he asked if they could have one. She thought at the time it was part of his attempt to be more like the Garveys, and she had talked too long, explaining that dogs required a lot of attention, company, discipline, space . . . He had stopped listening, she was sure. Finally, she admitted her real reason: that dogs made her feel sad.
“Sad?” he had said, with the disdain only a fourteen-year-old could affect. “That's stupid, Mom. Why should dogs make you feel sad?”
She remembered being caught by the question, pinned like a butterfly on a collector's board by her son's challenging blue gaze. She still wasn't used to that look, though she was to become accustomed to it before long. She said, weakly, “I know, Jack. It is a bit stupid, but feelings are—”
“Yeah, I know, Mom. Feelings are valid. You've said.” He rolled his eyes, and shoved his too-long hair away from his face. It was nearly white-blond then, the way her own had been when she was a little girl, when her mother had still liked to brush it and braid it or smooth it into a long, spun-sugar ponytail. His hair had darkened to pale gold as he grew, just as hers had. He said, “So, aside from the counselor talk, why do dogs make you sad?”
It seemed the right moment to tell him about her mother—his grandmother, whom he barely knew—but it was hard finding the words. She had worked all through it during her training, had achieved a certain peace with the pain of growing up with someone suffering from mental illness. Explaining it to her son was different. It was delicate. She didn't want him to worry that the same thing might happen to her, or even worse, to him.
She had begun carefully. “It's complicated, sweetheart—”
“Mom, it's
always
complicated!”
“You're right about that, I guess.” She wanted to take his hand, to make him sit down and listen to her. He stood in front of her, hands in his pockets. He slouched, shoulders forward, his spine curved over his concave chest as if to keep her from touching him. She said, “You know, Jack, I can't make it
not
complicated.”
His gusty sigh should have warned her, she supposed, that he was in no mood for the family story. It had been weighing on her, though. Kate felt that the sooner he understood about his grandmother, the better it would be. Kate also thought she should explain about his father, and she hadn't done that, either. Kate was great at talking to her kids. Tory didn't seem to have the knack. Her talents as a therapist seemed to evaporate when it came to her son.
She began again. “My mother was sick when I was young,” she said. “Mentally ill.”
“Gramma? Mentally ill?”
“Yes.”
“I figured—I just thought it was that thing old people get. Alzheimer's.”
“Not in this case.”
She could see that, for once, she had his full attention. He was silent for a moment, screwing up his face as if that would help him think. After a moment he said, “What does that have to do with how you feel about dogs?”
“Well—it's an ugly story. We had a dog, a little one. My mother lost her temper one day and—and she hurt it.”
“Hurt it?”
Tory closed her eyes for a painful moment. Even now, all these years later, she could see the little thing, lying limp and lifeless. Only a dead thing could be that still, and even at ten, she had understood it. She opened her eyes again, and tried to speak in a level tone. “She killed it, I'm afraid. She didn't mean to, I'm sure, but—maybe she kicked the dog instead of hitting her child. We didn't know then—none of us understood how sick she really was.”
“God, Mom. That's awful.”
Tory was ashamed at the little spurt of gratitude she felt for his flash of sympathy. She hadn't, in fact, been particularly fond of the dog. It was snappish and cranky, older than she was. It had been shocking, though, to watch her mother lash out at it, and sickening to see its small body sprawled across the gray and white linoleum squares of the kitchen floor. Her mother, sobbing, had vanished into her bedroom, where Tory could hear her weeping all through the afternoon. The dog's body lay where it was, sightless eyes staring at nothing, until her father came home.
Jack leaned forward, and patted her shoulder with just his fingers. “I'm sorry, Mom,” he said. “That really stinks.”
She wanted to catch his hand and press it between hers, but she was already learning such displays weren't welcome. She had to content herself with the brief, voluntary contact. There was more she would have liked to tell him, but she was terrified of becoming one of those single mothers who turn their sons into the man of the house, load their young shoulders with adult burdens. She had counseled too many people who had grown up as a parent's confidante. It was never a good thing, and she didn't want to do that to Jack.

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