Butterfly (15 page)

Maureen begins crying, one tear at a time. The tears drop from her jaw and spatter the gold-rimmed edge of the plate.

The knock on the door startles her, yanks her out of her chair; she is up and moving instantly, she’s flying down the hall. The house is an indecipherable maze, the door torturously far away. “Wait!” she whimpers, terrified she won’t reach it before he disappears. She wrenches the handle and pulls the door, and the sight of Plum and David is inexpressibly cruel, her hands flutter up in fear that she’ll be sick. “Darlings!” she cries. “Come inside! Has it been raining? Have you had a lovely night? Has David been behaving? Have you had a lovely night?”

She backs down the hall with her son in her arms, her mind a runaway horse. The girl must not ask questions, she mustn’t see the dining table. There cannot be silence,
or Maureen will disintegrate. She chatters all the way down the hall, David sagging against her shoulder, ice-creamed face on the spotless jumpsuit. In the nursery Maureen lays the boy on the bed and tucks the blankets around him. “Wait,” she says, “let me get you some money,” and darts from the room leaving the girl beside the child, and skitters down the hall.

In the kitchen she clutches her stomach, gouging at the soft flesh there.

Her head is already hurting when she returns to the nursery. Plum is fiddling with the Smurfs that squat along the windowsill. “Aren’t they awful?” Maureen says. “Bernie buys them for him. Such ugly little things. So what did you two do together? Did you have a nice time?”

“We watched television —”

“And how are your ears? Have you been using the methylated spirit? Show me — no, wait, just stand there a moment. Something about you looks different.” Maureen cocks her head, brows tensing. “Aria, I think you’ve lost weight!”

The girl is thrilled. “Really? Really?”

“I’m not joking! You have! I told you you would, didn’t I? Come here, let me hug you!”

And the knowledge that Plum is not the hugging kind makes infinitely more satisfying the fact that she flings herself without hesitation into Maureen’s arms. They embrace deliriously, noses pressed against each other, Plum the
padded totem pole, Maureen bony as a goat. “I’m going to buy you an outfit to wear at your party,” Maureen promises, holding on to Plum tight. “You deserve something pretty, you wonderful girl! I’m so glad we’ve become friends! Aren’t you?”

Later that night she’ll remember this moment, and wonder if she’s ever hated anyone more.

T
HE FINAL WEEK OF
P
LUM’S YEAR
is golden. It reminds her of a fairground ride she’s seen in black-and-white movies, where a swan-shaped boat glides through a tunnel on submerged tracks. She would like every day of her life to be lived inside a cup-like swan that knew where it was going, and where it would end.

The weather, of a sudden, loses its brashness; the north wind stops blowing, the sun retreats, and summer is finally done. Plum’s school dress stops catching on patches of sweat, her armpits aren’t muggy as tea. Her stomach is used to deprivation now, and no longer writhes noisily; when Caroline asks, “Where’s your lunch gone, Plummy?” she’s confident enough to say, “You don’t need three meals a day.
Lunch is why people are fat.” And her friends ogle her, and she feels the bread turn to sand in their mouths.

Classes are good; she does well in a math test; the Youth Group leader had sat beside Rachael at the meeting on Saturday night, so the friends have something over which to thrall. When Rachael had told him she’d miss the next meeting because of a friend’s slumber party, the leader had answered, “That’s no good,” and there’s much to discuss about
how
he’d said it, whether sadly or indifferently. “I think it sounds like he was disappointed,” Plum generously tells her friend. In recognition of the approaching birthday, the girls treat Plum with deference in small ways. They laugh at her jokes and collect her rubbish with their own. On Wednesday, Rachael, Samantha and Dash announce that they’ve bought the present toward which they’d clubbed their money. “You’ll love it,” Samantha promises; “You need it,” says Dash.

If none of them is curious as to the state of her ears, it’s a silence that Plum welcomes. Now that the swelling has nearly subsided and the pain almost gone, it’s embarrassing to recall how close she’d come to failing to be a girl with pierced ears. Twice a day she sluices her lobes with methylated spirit before feeding the blunt end of a needle into the holes to keep the piercings open. When she recollects the scarlet agony of infection, it’s easy to believe there’s something miraculous in her recovery. Maureen, like a nun, had divined what to do.

Plum starts dabbing methylated spirit on other parts of
her body that need fixing, and goes to bed each night feeling slightly parched.

The Datsun Skyline is in the Wilks driveway on Monday and Tuesday nights, but both evenings Maureen comes out into the garden and waves at Plum in her window. “David keeps talking about you, Rapunzel. Every day he asks,
Where’s Aria?
” The thought makes a proud feeling bloom inside Plum, brings a loopy smile to her face. The same thing happens on Thursday when Maureen sings the birthday song to her, David mumbling several words behind. It is the eve of Plum’s birthday and they are sitting at the counter in Maureen’s kitchen, and in Plum’s hand is a purple velvet box containing Maureen’s present to her: a pair of silver earrings sporting the sparkle of two tiny but genuine diamonds, the receiving of which had rendered Plum teary. After the cake is cut there is a second gift, which Maureen fetches from her bedroom. It’s a cornflower-blue, elastic-waisted dress, with no straps to hold the top half up, only another line of elastic that clings perilously to Plum’s underarms when she tries on the garment in the bathroom. She stares at herself in the mirror, sees a strong-looking girl with black hair thick as horsetail falling to her bare shoulders. Partway down her arms begins what remains of her tan, and the piece of her chest that is exposed by the dress is pallid and spotty. “Don’t worry about that,” Maureen reassures her, and shows Plum how to use makeup to disguise the piebalding. From her cupboard Maureen takes a pair of strappy silver sandals, and somehow these Cinderella shoes
harness Plum’s ugly-sister feet. Her hair is brushed, lip gloss is applied, the earrings are pushed into place. “Stand up straight, shoulders back, nice cheery smile.” Plum gazes at her image, breathing shallowly. The sandals, the dress, the diamonds in her ears seem to quiet the bleat that her heart has been making for months. She’s seeing, in the mirror, the bird inside the box. She looks up at Maureen, face pinched with emotion. Maureen chuckles: “Shush, you deserve it. You’re worth more than you think, Aria.”

When Plum wakes the next morning, there’s a large square present sitting on the end of her bed. Although diamonds could easily throw all other gifts into the shade, Plum is delighted with the roller skates her parents have given her, two smart white leather boots sporting chunky red wheels. In pajamas and dressing gown she tries on the skates; wobbles tectonically across the floor of the bedroom; takes them off again.

The day passes like a dream. Everyone is kind to her, as if a relative is dead. Her friends sing the birthday song when they gather under the tree. At dinner that night, Justin gives her a big paperback called
The Films of George Romero.
Inside are dozens of black-and-white photographs of the living dead. Cydar says callously, “I haven’t had time to buy anything, sorry.” Plum is hurt, but manages to stuff it down. She’s too clever to spoil her day, or, worse, her tomorrow.

What she does do — because she’s fourteen, because the redness is cured, because she has diamonds in the pocket
of her cargo pants — is reveal to her family the fact of her pierced ears. Her brothers and parents crane across the table to get a better look. “Cool,” says Justin. “What’s done is done,” says Fa. “They’re your ears, I suppose,” Mums tells her. Cydar sits back against the pew, turns the purple jewel box to the light. “Are these real?” he asks. “Why would she buy you diamonds?”

The smile falters on Plum’s face. “I don’t know. She’s my friend.”

“My friends don’t give me diamonds.”

“It’s too much, isn’t it?” realizes Fa.

Plum chews her lip, feels something recoil inside. By rights she should rush to Maureen’s defense — Maureen who understands her, who respects her opinions, never treats her like a baby, doesn’t laugh off and forget what Plum says — yet oddly her instinct is to conceal her instead. “I have a new dress too,” she says. “A blue one. I bought it with my babysitting money. I saved up.” And no one queries this, or possibly even hears. The earrings are passed across the table to Justin, who considers them impassively and remarks, “At least they’re something you can pawn.”

Plum retires early that night, having spent some time alone with the briefcase, holding each item in her hands. Rattled by the questioning of the diamonds and the lie about the dress, she requests of the objects, “Share your strength, share your strength. Today and tomorrow, share your strength.” And although she does indeed feel some strength moving through her like soup, it’s only when
Maureen comes into the garden, and Plum sees her lovely face and hears her reassuring voice, that her certainty returns, brawny as concrete — as if Maureen is a thousand times more powerful than the objects, and all that Plum really needs.

She goes to bed cleansed, having smeared methylated spirit on the marred parts of her body. Her bed has fresh sheets on it; in the corner, where she can see them, sit the roller skates and
The Films of George Romero.
Balled in her blankets, Plum is cozy with the sense that things have finally become good. Thirteen and all its bad luck is behind her. Fourteen will be the best.

Her guests arrive at four o’clock. Bowls of Twisties and Maltesers are waiting for them in the den. Sophie’s gift is a little carousel. When a knob is turned, the skewered horses parade and a tinny “Edelweiss” plays. Victoria gives a fountain pen, which feels too classy for anything Plum would write. Caroline gives her an umbrella printed with quavers and treble clefs. Plum does not mention that she already owns an umbrella. The girls sit in the den, trying on Plum’s earrings and admiring the new dress, stroking the crimps baked into Victoria’s snowy hair. They talk about the essays they’re working on, the nuisance of younger siblings, and whether or not Plum should be ashamed about the antique furniture. But all this is only killing time, and nothing important is said. They know they are waiting for
Rachael, Samantha and Dash. Until these arrive, the party can’t begin.

They knock on the door just as Plum is starting to feel stretched and panicky. “It’s Dash’s fault!” caws Samantha, and Dash says, “It’s Sam’s fault!” The gift in Rachael’s hands attracts buzzing attention: no present has ever been the wellspring of so much plotting and whispering. When it’s passed into Plum’s ownership the girls gather around the coffee table, shuffling close on their knees. The gift is small, as bumpy as a criminal’s cranium, and the wrapping paper is not secondhand and creased from another present, but crisp and new. Plum peels the tape off carefully as the friends exchange lightning glances. “What is it?” asks Caroline, as though it’s obvious to everyone but her. “Shut up,” says Samantha. “Just watch.” Plum folds back the paper, and there, lying in the cup of golden wrapping, is a tube of mascara, a pot of blue eyeshadow, a compact of blusher and a canister of lipstick. “Wow!” Plum lifts a pleased face. “Thanks!”

“It’s for when you’re a model.” Samantha smiles creamily.

“Told you you’d need it,” says Dash.

“We thought you could start practicing now —”

“Even though you’re already such a goddess,” injects Dash.

“— and then, when you’re in magazines, you’ll remember us.”

“Rach! Aria will be too famous to remember us!”

The smile clings leech-like to Plum’s face. She cannot let it fall. The merest hint of weakness will begin the unraveling of the day. She knows how to lessen the impact of hurt: pretend it isn’t happening, that the words aren’t said and the deed not done. “Thanks,” she says again, and when her hand closes around them the cosmetics knock together as richly as yachts. “That’s great.”

“That’s mean.” Caroline looks across the coffee table at Rachael, Samantha and Dash. “You’re mean.”

“It’s not mean,” corrects Plum. “It’s great.”

Samantha plucks the lipstick out of Plum’s fist, pulls the cap with a pop. “If Aria’s going to be a model, she better start practicing now. Pucker, Aria.”

So Plum, on her knees, is forced to make a ridiculous face, her mouth a tight circle while the lipstick is scuffed from lip to lip. The cosmetic feels like wet soil as it’s applied, and smells reptilian. Although the process is quicker and without pain, it is strangely worse than her ears. There’s nothing about it that is courageous, there’s only Samantha’s gigantic fingers and Plum’s cravenness, and the silence that descends on the five witnesses. There is her party, already spoiled, and the realization that, at fourteen, nothing will change. She won’t tell Samantha that, this close, her face is as hairy as a fly’s; she won’t squeeze the lipstick like butter in a fist, or jump to furious feet. She will let them treat her how they like, because the alternative is worse. “There,” says Samantha. “How’s that?”

Sophie tips her head. “Oh, she looks pretty.”

“She does!” Victoria laughs marvelously. “Aria, you do!”

“It doesn’t look super-good,” Dash tells Plum.

“I think it does,” says Caroline. “You look like a model, Aria.”

The door opens, and the friends look up like daisies: but it is only Mums wheeling in the drinks table, on which sits a vat of ginger-beer punch. “Hello Mrs. Coyle,” chorus Samantha, Rachael and Dash. “Thank you for having us.” They help themselves to scoops of punch while Mums tops up the Twisties bowl. Plum sees her notice the lipstick on her daughter’s mouth, sees her keep the observation to herself. As soon as the door closes and Mums is gone, Samantha asks like a whipcrack, “Are your brothers home?”

“Cydar is. He’s in his bungalow. Justin is at work.” Plum had been aghast when he’d driven off that morning, though he’d promised and vowed and sworn to be home in time for dinner. She has walked near the park, and his car wasn’t there, which has given her hope that he has told the truth. “He’ll be here later.”