Against The Odds (4 page)

Clayton went back to the apartment, feeling betrayed and
alone. He had
never wanted children. His own parents had
been cold and hostile to each other and to him, and he saw no joy
or reason to bring another child into the world. He was trapped,
because he knew that Suzanne would insist that they move and ‘give
the baby the best’. This translated to him leaving his work to do
corporate or criminal work. Suzanne was waiting for him and they
had an argument again. It was the same argument, that he was not
adequately providing for her, that their lives could be better. He
felt tired and bored. What was the point? He was stuck with this
now. He agreed to all her demands.

After
meeting her father, it was agreed that he would join the firm in
six months’ time, by which time Suzanne would be eight months’
pregnant. They had clearly mapped out his life and he had
submitted. Clayton felt dead inside, but Suzanne seemed oblivious
to this. She continued her art and her body started growing
beautifully. Clayton savoured his last months at work and
vigorously pursued all his cases. He worked day and night, because
he could not bear to leave his clients, or to go home to
Suzanne.

One night, it was eleven in the evening when he heard his
office phone ringing. He ignored it, because he knew none of his
clients knew he was there. It had to be Suzanne. He switched off
his cell phone, knowing she would phone him on that number. Tired
but satisfied, he went home at about two in the morning. Suzanne
was not there. There was no note from her and he panicked. Had
something happened to her? He went to the phone and saw that there
were a number of messages. His heart stopped when he heard
Barry’s desperate
voice.

“Please,
Clayton, Suzanne had an accident. Call me as soon as you get
in.”

She was in hospital, her head in bandages and her face
badly swollen. When she saw Clayton, she cried.
“I lost our baby, Clayton. I lost our
baby.”

He
tried
to comfort her, but he felt numb. Everything was
happening in his life and he had no control over it. He told her to
try to get some rest and told her everything would be fine, but he
felt nothing at those words. He stayed at her bedside and must have
fallen off to sleep. He was awoken by a nurse and he discovered
that Suzanne had died while he had slept.

He
remained confused and numb and simply allowed them to take him to
another room. He tried to get his head around the events of the
night. His wife had been in a taxi which had an accident. She had a
head injury, but seemed okay. She was to have tests the next day to
check that all was well. She had seemed alright when she spoke to
him. She had lost the baby. These were the facts for him. When her
mother and father arrived, they were hysterical. They blamed him
for her death and told him that if he had been at home she would
not have taken a taxi and would not have been so desperately lonely
that she had wanted to visit her brother at eleven in the night and
she would not have needed to leave the house. It went on and
on.

It
was only after Suzanne’s funeral that Clayton began to experience
emotions again. He felt ashamed and guilty and he missed her
terribly. He remembered how he had ignored her since she told him
she was pregnant, how he had deliberately hurt her by shutting her
out. He regretted that he had not talked to her or been there for
her during those months. He had been selfish and pig-headed.
Throughout their marriage, he had insisted
that they live
and love on his terms. His shame was sharpened by the realization
that, at the hospital, when she spoke to him, a small part of him
was relieved that the baby had died. He hated himself for having
thought that. He was an animal, a cruel,
evil animal and Suzanne had not deserved that. He
missed her noise and her complaining and felt cold and lonely in
the apartment. He tortured himself every night with pain, guilt and
grief.

It
was during these months that the butterfly had appeared to him. He
knew he saw it, but could never figure out if it was all in his
mind. He liked the way it flew playfully around him and always felt
like it spoke to him. Every night, he sat in the lounge, thinking
and feeling. Every night, it would appear. It seemed
to know
when it was needed and he thought he must be going mad.

That is
exactly what Jonathan told him when he explained about the
butterfly.

“Clayton, maybe you need to get some professional help. I
am your friend and it worries me that you are
now talking to
a butterfly that does not exist.”

Clayton
refused, because he feared it would go away and he would be alone
again.

He
was grateful for Jackie and Jonathan’s support, love and caring,
but he wanted the butterfly to comfort him every night. He
needed
it. Ironically, for him, it
was the ‘imaginary’ butterfly which kept him
sane.

It
was seven months after her death before he was able to go to her
stud
io and look at her
work. Brad Adcock has coaxed him patiently and kindly through those
months, trying to make him get some closure. Brad’s brother had
died and he understood grieving. Brad had eventually pushed him to
take some action after a drinking binge when Clayton could hardly
remember his name.

He
walked into her studio and smelt the familiar spicy perfume she
wore so generously. He packed her belongings and gave her books to
her friends and family. Her family had never forgiven him and he
was saddened by the loss of his friendship with Barry. He carried
her diary home with him and left it on the table. What should he do
with it? Should he throw it away, or give it to her brother? What
was the point? He was pondering this issue when the butterfly
arrived. It seemed restless today and not playful
. He
wondered what it was thinking, or feeling.
Do butterflies have
thoughts and feelings?
It seemed so much like a gentle person
to him that he believed it had thoughts and feelings. It suddenly
landed on the diary on the table and fluttered its wings
vigorously.

“
What, my beauty, what is it?” Then it was gone.

Clayton
woke up in the middle of the night with the realization that he
should read the diary. Hesitant at first, he decided that his
butterfly was telling him something and he was right.

He
read her words and discovered that he had not known the woman he
had been married to. He read her accounts of her affairs, her
descriptions of him as a failure and her general contempt of him.
He read how she would have plans and schemes every time she
wanted something from him, how she had got money from him to buy
present for her lovers, and an array of things he would not have
thought his precious Suzanne was capable of. Her descriptions of
violent sex with Aaron, a sculptor, made him throw the diary away
in disgust. From these readings, he developed a disdain and
mistrust of women. His guilt faded and his anger rose. Driven by
this fresh revelation of the female race, he threw himself into his
work with a renewed vigor. He promised himself that
he would never be fooled by a woman
again.

He
had never imagined he would see the butterfly again. It never
returned after the day he read the diary and he had often wondered
what had happened to it. He never dreamt that he would see it
literally on some woman’s flesh. He remembered how it had soothed
him during the dark, painful months after Suzanne’s death. He had
missed the butterfly and had felt a sense of loss for a while, but
he had eventually convinced himself that he had been
hallucinating
in his grief. It had been a terrible shock to
see it, seemingly so alive, against that woman’s skin, as if it
always belonged there. As she had moved, for a split second he
imagined that it moved with her. That is what had shocked him the
most. The fee
ling that the
butterfly belonged on her, with her. If that was so, who was she?
Why had it been there to soothe him, heal him and help him through
his darkest hours?

~ ~ ~
~

He
tried to phone Rebecca a few times, but she refused to take his
calls. He was growing desperate. But a part of him saw the futility
of his quest. What would he say to her, that it was
his
butterfly on her back? She
would laugh at him. Perhaps he was over-reacting. There was no
reason to believe that anything significant or coincidental had
happened. She was just
a woman with a butterfly tattoo. He
was being silly and should apologize to her. Also, he wanted to
look into those black eyes again, to drown in their power. He
wanted her, he finally admitted, butterfly or not.
But a small voice in his head reminded
him
of a unique feature of the butterfly. It lacked a small
patch of color on its left wing. It was a missing color that was so
conspicuous against the bright blue of the butterfly. The small
colorless patch resembled an hour-glass. Hers had been exactly the
same
with its missing small
hourglass patch.

He
phoned Bradford Adcock in the hope he would get some
answers.

“
Hey there. How are you doing?”

Brad was
pleased and laughed. “Well, well, if it isn’t the lawmaker himself.
How are you doing Clay?”

“Fine,
like I was last week when we spoke. I really have been fine for a
while. Don’t forget we are meeting on Friday.”

“
Yes, yes. I know.”

“I just
need some information, about a friend of yours. Rebecca
Raymond.”

“Oh
sure, you need her help?”

“
No, no. I met her with Jono and I am curious.”

Brad was
silent for a while.

“She is
not a woman to mess around with. Seriously, Clay. She is very dear
to me. She is a really great psychologist and definitely not one
for you to mess around with.”

Clayton
laughed. “Okay, relax, I get it. But she is not your type either,
so I am surprised. But I will back off.”

“
Clayton, I have no sexual intentions with her. She is that
one, you know, that special woman that deserves a decent guy. Yes,
I admit she is very hot, those breasts just call to me and when she
swings those legs and strides off, I admit I get…..”

“
Damn, Brad, I really don’t want to hear that.”

Brad
sighed. “I like her, as a person. What exactly do you want from
her?”

He was
silent for a while. “I don’t know. There was just a connection, you
know, like we knew each other. I want to know who she is. There is
just something….”

Brad was
silent for a long time.

“Okay, she is a child psychologist. She deals mostly with
kids who can’t cope, with life, with family with school, you know?
She helps a lot of my divorce kids, and she is my best expert
witness. She’s sweet, caring and gets on well with most people. She
doesn’t date lawyers,
at all
.”

“
I see. So you have never tried?’

“No. The
first time I met her, I did kind of suggest it and she sweetly told
me to remain professional for our mutual benefit. I guess I liked
the way she handled me, and now, we just chat, or have a drink
occasionally.”

“Okay,
fine, thanks. I will try that too. See you on Friday.”

*****

Rebecca was tired. Friday was always a long day for her.
Today, she had spent most of the morning dealing with one of her
favourite patients, Carl Swain. He was a five-year-old boy
who
, because of the
accidental death of his brother while horse-riding, had developed a
sleeping disorder. She worried about this small, intense boy and
had gone over with his parents to the fateful stables. It had been
a trying morning and Carl was no closer to overcoming his anxiety
about the horses. His parents had been disappointed and she had
gone back to her office feeling a dismal sense of frustration. She
looked at all her messages and tried to call back all, except one,
Clayton. He had left many messages in the last two weeks, but she
had never been able to call him back. She did not want to discuss
her butterfly or anything with him.

She
looked at her diary and was further depressed at the prospect of
spending the next hour in a partners’ meeting. The firm, made up of
eight partners of psychologists, was starting to get unruly.
Perhaps they should not have brought in the two new partners from
the public hospital. They were proving to be exceptionally
difficult and did not seem to understand the vision of the firm.
They were fixated with their working hours and did not regard their
patients as special. They simply treated each patient as an
inconvenience. They also seemed to get into a lot of trouble with
the administrative staff, who did not like their ‘superior’
attitude. There had been many arguments and fights in the last two
months. They would invariably come to the meeting, argue about
petty things, like who would do their photocopying, and make no
meaningful contribution to their discussions. Perhaps she would
raise her concerns about Carl to deflect them from arguing, and
anyway, she needed help. That had been the reason for working from
the same place, each of them bringing in specialist skills and
knowledge. She had spent a few years in a single practice, but,
given all the work she did in court, she had felt pressurised to
bring in a partner. It had been her friend, Jessica, who
specialized in educational therapy, who had suggested they get a
team together. It had taken them two years to finally find
appropriate partners and suitable premises. All six of them had
enjoyed the support and friendship the firm provided. The
introduction of the two new general psychologists had tipped the
balance. This was aggravated by the fact that Tim did not seem to
understand that he could not sexually harass the administrative
staff. He seemed to think that they were all at his ‘pecker and
call’ as her secretary, Denise often said.