Butterfly (11 page)

Only later will the friends realize that they should have applied more ice at this point, for the left ear has considerably thawed; and by the time the needle is partway on its mission Plum has started to bawl, openmouthed like an infant, heedless of snot and drool. “Shut up!” Samantha bellows, but Plum cannot shut up: her body arches, her feet slither, tears rush from her eyes. And when it is over and Caroline says, “Your tongue was waggling like a lizard, Plummy,” Plum has no strength remaining for shame. She slumps on the seat, hands clamped to her head, wondering if she might vomit. And yet, even as she hunches and gasps, the pain begins to withdraw, ebbing out of her skull to pool in her lobes — a fact Plum keeps to herself, for it’s important that she appear ominously damaged. She squeezes her eyes so tears drop to her thighs, and shudders theatrically. “Are you OK?” Victoria asks her. Dash scoffs: “It couldn’t have hurt that much. Your ear is just gristle, it’s nothing. It would hardly have hurt at all.”

But Plum’s face, when she lifts it, is sufficiently stricken
to make Dash close her know-it-all mouth. “Can I see the mirror?”

The mirror is hastily presented, and Plum studies. The two gold studs — perhaps more gray than gold — sit perkily in her lobes. There is no blood, but her ears are scarlet roses planted on each side of her head. She is now a girl with pierced ears. “Thanks, Sam,” she whispers.

It is when she stands that her knees buckle, as had the knees of the lady at Justin’s twenty-first birthday party; and exactly as Justin’s friends had done, Plum’s friends swoop to catch her. “I’ll be OK.” Plum lists groggily. “Maybe if I lie down . . .”

A delicious panic accompanies the girls as they scuttle their casualty down the hall to Sophie’s bedroom. “She’s just feeling faint,” Rachael explains. “She’s not dying, everyone!”

“Do you want water, Aria? Do you want ice cream?”

Plum, on the bed, waves a lank hand. “Just leave me alone for a minute. I just want to rest here a minute . . .”

And her friends abandon their victim with alacrity, swinging the door behind them. For a few minutes Plum lies like a weighty beast slain, her eyes roving Sophie’s bedroom. It is a smaller room than Plum’s, but the flooring is carpet rather than boards, and the cupboard is not a hefty thing like hers, but made-to-measure, with mirrored doors. She imagines her friends huddling elsewhere in the house, recounting the ordeal as if they too had spilled blood, not even allowing her to be the sole possessor of pain. Plum
sniffs and sighs, wipes her nose and sits up. Immediately her gaze falls on what she has endured all this to find.

And when, some minutes later, Sophie knocks gently on the door, she finds Plum propped on her elbows, wan but full of forgiveness, and even pleased about what has been done.

That evening Plum sits on her own bed in her own bedroom, the briefcase open on her knees. A smile crosses her face irregularly, she prods the precious objects with the tips of her fingers. She’s cozy with the smugness of success. Rachael, Samantha, that awful Dash: they think they are incredibly clever, but this afternoon at Sophie’s they had not suspected what was going on. The real Plum had stood untouched, laughing at them. The actor Plum had been so good at almost fainting that she might do it again one day, perhaps when there’s some compulsory school sports gala to attend.

Snug with satisfaction, she closes the case, shutting light from the icons. The latches catch with their safe sound,
chock chock.
Before going downstairs Plum checks to make sure her hair is covering her ears. Her lobes are throbbing, and feel thick as mice. If she squeezes them, fluid swells out from the pinpoint holes. In exchange for what she’s achieved, the mutilation is fair. But she won’t show it to anyone until the redness is gone, the leaking has stopped, and the difference looks like it didn’t hurt at all.

S
HE WATCHES HIM WALK
toward the house, furtive but certain, easy to mistake for a thief. But she is not owned by anyone; what he gets, she gives gladly.

Except, of course, she had not meant to give love. It was meant to be amusement and now it is love, catastrophic as quicksand. She loves him, so much so that even the shirt he wears — a lime polo sporting the image of a cavorting snake-limbed bottle, with the words
Every Day is a Beer Barn Day!
printed across the shoulders — is not repulsive to her.

She can never quite believe the sight of him, his height, his smell, his groomed darkness, here in her hall — yet she feels she was born to see him. They meet at the door, where the carpet is protected by a loop-pile mat. Glancing down
she notes that the skirting-board paint has been chipped. So this is not Paris or a steamy train station; nonetheless, it is wonderful. His presence makes it wonderful. She steps back, her hands enclosing his. She can’t stop smiling in these first minutes, she’s so buoyed and reassured. “We’ve got the afternoon to ourselves. Your sister is babysitting David. The
whole afternoon,
” she marvels: it’s like a year, like freedom. “Let’s go out to lunch —”

“No,” says Justin.

Maureen pauses — freezes, alert to the slightest change in pressure. “Is something wrong?”

“No.” Then, because he knows what’s been detected and because he wanted it to be, “I wish you wouldn’t ask Plum to mind David.”

She breathes again, her blood rushing on. “Your sister is perfectly capable —”

He won’t let her misunderstand. “We shouldn’t drag Plum into this.”

Maureen steps back, raising stringent eyebrows — she knows the effect is like brandishing knives. If she had a knife she would aim it at him, not threateningly but enough to illustrate how close he’s come to hurting her feelings. “This isn’t mud. We’re not
dragging
anyone into anything.”

They are standing at the door of the master bedroom — when Maureen thinks of this room, she thinks of him. When he isn’t here, she can still see him pulling back the bed’s cover. She sees the puddle of his clothes, the opened belt and overturned shoes, his hand on the snowy sheet.
He rests his temple against the doorframe, and she will think of this too. From now on, when she passes the door, she’ll think of him, and what he is about to say. If she had the knife she would press it warningly to the beer bottle dancing over his heart. He says, “You don’t have to send David away.”

Maureen laughs; and hates him a little. “David hasn’t been
sent away.
He’s having a day out with Aria. And we can go out too, like normal people.”

“But we’re not normal, are we? We have to hide all the time. We have to lie —”

“What lies? I don’t lie. I never lie about you. I tell you openly that I love you.”

He has long lashes that dip over his eyes because he can’t look at her, at her coal-cool gaze or at her mouth which is a challenging red line. She stares an instant longer, then smiles, letting him off the hard hook. She had planned to take him to a restaurant, she’s even bought a shirt for him to wear; but something has spooked him today, and it’s clear they must stay with what’s familiar. Maureen knows she tends to rush ahead, but only because the future looks so inviting. “Come,” she says, scooping up his hands. Everything can be repaired. But as she steps into the bedroom, Maureen feels a resistance in his wrists — a moment of refusal which is there and gone so quickly that, were she to confront him with it, Justin could easily deny it, and she would have no choice but to believe.

Cydar is stunned by the sight of the boy. Maureen Wilks’s son is sitting at the Coyle dinner table with a plate of soldier-cut sandwiches before him, tiny against the great pew and the vast tabletop, peaceful as a dust beam, and his presence can only mean that worlds have catastrophically collided — and all the while Cydar has been feeding sea monkeys to the angelfish, unaware of even a tremor. He pauses: “Hello. What are you doing here?”

But instead of demanding that Cydar confess what he knows, all Plum says is, “This is David, from next door. I’m babysitting.”

“He’s just turned four,” announces Fa.

Cydar comes cautiously closer, into the shadows overhanging the table. Mums shuffles sideways, and he sits beside her. “I know David. Hi.”

The boy considers him but says nothing, a snowflake hand feeding a sandwich into his mouth. Plum says, “We’re going for a walk after lunch, aren’t we? Then maybe we can see Cydar’s fishes. Would you like that, Davy? To see the fish?”

“The clown fish?” Fa speaks loudly. “They’re called clown fish, but they don’t look like clowns. They don’t have hats or red noses. And the eel? A big old eel like a long black sock.”

The boy’s gaze cruises his audience while he painstakingly chews up the sandwich. When the child’s glance touches her, Cydar feels his mother twitch. He’s always thought that Mums could have lived happily without her
offspring — there are many things she’s interested in besides them. She is what Cydar is, a distant heart, and her children and husband are things she chooses to tolerate, like rare parrots nesting in the chimney. When the boy looks at Mums, however, Cydar feels something strike in her — something too hot and too tender, a thing that makes his mother look away.
Wishing,
Cydar sees. And in his tightly stoned state he has a profound realization: Everyone in his family is sad. Mums and Fa, living lives that never managed to rise above the ordinary. Plum and Justin, aware of the peril, but neither of them clever enough to avoid a similar fate. Cydar himself, who will achieve enough for all of them, but will never feel rightly made for the world. Through the wide halls and spacious rooms of the house waft sorrows as vintage as antiques. “What do you want to eat at your party?” Mums is asking Plum, while, in the seat beside her, her son expires inside.

“Nothing homemade,” Plum reiterates. “For snacks: Twisties, popcorn, chips. For lollies: Jaffas, Eclairs, Fantales, chocolate aniseed rings.”

“Coke? Lemonade?”

“No, I want the punch you made at Christmas, the one with pineapple and ginger beer. But not too many bits of fruit in it. They get all soggy and disgusting.”

“Not too much fruit,” memorizes Mums.

Cydar’s eyes seek out the child, who is contemplating the last honey soldier. A slim mop-haired boy
like a little old dog
is how Justin described him.
He’ll leave home as soon
as he can pack a bag.
Cydar starfishes a hand on the table, the oak under his palm as slick as kelp; David considers with interest the onyx stone worn on the starfish’s ring finger, the curl of silver in the image of a snake coiling around the finger alongside it. Cydar flexes his hand so the snake strikes — the boy obligingly smiles. Justin will surely see this child sitting in the kitchen for exactly what he is: a black sign. A crack that will tear open to inundate everything, not
if,
but when. “Don’t eat that sandwich if you’re not hungry, David,” Cydar tells him.

“No, he’s probably had enough.” Fa is shouting now. His pleasure in the boy’s presence is painful. It occurs to Cydar that when the truth rushes through their house, this is where his parents’ sympathies will fly: to the son who is not their own. The one whose potential is not yet threadbare, who can yet perhaps offer hope. “We can give your sandwich to the birdies in the park,” Plum tells the child; and there follows one of the oddest moments that Cydar has ever known, when for an instant the whole room seems to quake with a yearning that pours out from the people inside it, a lack that desperately wants comforting but meets only empty air. While the moment holds, no one moves or says anything, and Cydar fears he might stumble from the kitchen like Munch’s screamer, fingers gouged into his cheeks.

“What else?” Mums asks then. “A barbecue?”

Plum looks at her. “What else? Hot dogs!” And everyone is again their enduring selves. “Hot dogs, garlic bread,
vol-au-vents with chicken. Ice-cream cake — chocolate, I hate strawberry. For breakfast the next morning, pancakes. Do you know how to make pancakes? If you’re not sure, you should practice. I don’t want hopeless pancakes at my party . . .” Plum pauses, pulling at her hair. Her gaze skates around the table before fixing on her brother. “Don’t forget you said you’d come to the party, Cydar.”

“Did I?”

“You know you did.” Her voice is iron. “You promised.”

Knowing all, he understands this isn’t just her usual bossiness. Something hulks behind her insistence, and it’s darkly important to her. Some adolescent melodrama is occurring in his sister’s world; the Wilks boy’s presence in the Coyle kitchen testifies to what Justin has allowed
his
world to become. Only Cydar, it seems, lives a quiet life, a garden snail’s honest existence. “It’s all right,” he says. “I’ll be there.”

The ceiling of the bedroom is elaborately mapped with a plasterwork pattern that reaches out geometrically into the corners of the room. Justin studies the interlocking rectangles while Maureen talks. She, too, is facing the ceiling, but only Justin sees it. He knows Maureen dislikes the decoration — it doesn’t suit what she’s trying to do with the house. She needs smooth ceilings, canvas light-shades. The ceiling
survives the way it is only because her husband likes it. The fact, recollected, makes Justin look away, like an altar boy encountering a sleeping priest. He hardly knows Bernie Wilks and doesn’t think of his neighbor often; but when he does, Justin does not see him as an enemy or even a rival, but rather as a confederate. A picture sometimes comes to Justin, of himself and Bernie Wilks talking through the dense stone of a cell wall. It is
Papillon,
it is
Cool Hand Luke,
it’s
The Great Escape.
It is strange.

Maureen has said something. When Justin turns his head to her, the pillow sighs a vanilla scent. “Barcelona or Rome or Berlin?”

It’s easier to simply choose than to query what he’s choosing. He selects what seems the most unlikely, the least trampled road. “Berlin.”

She rolls over to face him, her mouth very close. “Let’s catch a plane to Berlin. We’ll rent an empty warehouse near the zoo. It will have big dirty windows and a timber floor, and high ceilings like a cathedral. We’ll have no furniture except a bed, and we’ll wear nothing but black — black suits, black hats, black boots. We’ll only be friends with artists. In winter we’ll hibernate in the only room we can afford to heat, eating sauerkraut. We’ll have a little stove for boiling water, and we’ll grind our own coffee beans.”