Butterfly (8 page)

“Don’t say that, honey. You just don’t know.”

Rachel tried to sit up but found it painful. “Why do you stay with him? He’s a monster.”

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31

“No, he ain’t. In his way, he loves me. He’s just hurtin’ inside. There’s things that hap-

pened in the past, long before you were born—”

“He said you gave the other baby away. What did he mean by that?”

Mrs. Dwyer turned pale. “Dear God,” she whispered. “Did he tell you that?”

“Ma, I have a right to know.”

Mrs. Dwyer gazed at her daughter for a moment, listening to the rain abate outside as

the storm moved on; she came to some private decision, then joined Rachel on the sofa.

“Honey,” she said softly, taking her daughter’s hands in hers. “When I went to the hos-

pital to have you, we were broke. We didn’t have a dime. There was a depression on, and

your Dad, well, you’ve got to realize, he was a good man…once. So anyway, there we were

with twin babies, and no money to pay the hospital bills. So one day a man came to the

hospital. He said he was a lawyer. And he said he knew of a nice couple who wanted real

bad to adopt a little girl. They would pay a thousand dollars, he said.”

Rachel stared at her mother.

Mrs. Dwyer cast a nervous glance at the unconscious man on the kitchen floor, then

went quietly on. “I was against it. But your dad talked me into it, saying we needed the

money and that the baby would go to a good home. If we turned the lawyer down, he

said, we’d have two babies and no money, and what sort of a home could we give them?

He kept after me, honey, until I gave in. I’ve prayed to God every day since that I made

the right decision. I like to think, Rachel, that your sister is living in some nice big house

and going to parties—”

“You—you
sold
my sister?”

“Don’t say it like that, Rachel. You can’t possibly understand. And anyway”—she

looked again at her unconscious husband—“you’ve gotta get away from here now. You

can’t stay here anymore.”

Rachel wanted to protest, but she knew her mother was right. With the shock starting

to wear off, Rachel began to cry.

Mrs. Dwyer took her daughter into a clumsy embrace. “Now, listen to me, honey.

You’ve got to be strong and brave. You’ve got to get away from here. Tonight. And get as

far away as you can. I’ve managed to put away a few dollars that your father don’t know

about. Enough to keep you for a while if you’re careful. Go to California. Go to

Bakersfield. You can stay at the YWCA there. It doesn’t cost much and they’ll take care of

you. But don’t tell them you’re only fourteen, ’cause they’ll tell the police. Now, here’s the

address of a woman I used to know. She owns a beauty parlor. You tell her you’re Naomi

Burgess’s daughter”—she folded a piece of paper into Rachel’s purse—“and she’ll give you

a job. You’ll be okay. You’re a smart girl. Now, there’s a bus that comes through town at

midnight. You gotta be on it.”

“But you’re coming with me!”

“No, I can’t. I have to stay with him.”

“And put up with his brutality?”

“Rachel,” she said quietly, “I love him.”

“How can you?”

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Kathryn Harvey

“You’re too young to understand now, honey. But some day, when you’re a grown

woman, you’ll fall in love and then you’ll understand what it’s all about.”

Rachel sat silently for a long time, feeling her pain, her humiliation, and staring at the

man who had done it to her.

“You’ve got to go,” her mother said with new urgency. “He’ll be coming around soon.”

Rachel regarded her with grave eyes. “What will he do to you, Ma?”

“Don’t worry about me, I can handle him.”

Rachel thought for another moment, then said, “Do you suppose she looks like me?

My sister?”

Mrs. Dwyer gave her daughter a surprised look. “I don’t know, honey.”

“We’re twins.”

“Well, there’s two kinds of twins. There’s the ones they call fraternal, and then the ones

they call identical. I don’t know why, but one kind, the twins don’t necessarily look alike.

I don’t know which you two were.”

“I hope she’s pretty,” Rachel said softly. “And not ugly like me. And you know some-

thing else, Ma? I’m going to look for her.”

“Oh—” Mrs. Dwyer suddenly felt panic. “Why would you want to do that!”

“Because she’s my sister. And if she knows she was sold, then she might be comforted

to know why.”

Seeing the hunger and loneliness in her daughter’s eyes, Mrs. Dwyer softened. She

knew of Rachel’s desperate need to love someone, to belong to someone. She herself had

felt that every day of her life.

“You were born in Hollywood, California, Rachel. I don’t know, maybe she’s still

there. I’ll tell you everything I know about the adoption. But it ain’t much. Now—you’ve

got to get out of here.”

Fifteen minutes later, with her father still lying on the floor, Rachel stood at the door

with a battered suitcase in her hand. There was a P&O sticker on it, but that was some-

one else’s memento. All Rachel was going away with was the photo of her mother with the

two babies, a few scraps of souvenirs she had collected in her childhood, and
The Martian

Chronicles,
a stolen library book.

Both of their eyes held pain; it was as if Rachel and her mother looked into the same

mirror. The storm had passed, the night was calm. Fourteen-year-old Rachel had no idea

where she was going, but she said now, “I’ll be back, Ma. I’ll find my sister and we’ll come

back for you. We’ll leave Dad, and the three of us’ll be a family. I’ll take care of you, Ma.

You’ll never have to put up with—” she looked down at the lifeless body of the man who

had never meant anything to her, “—with
that
again.”

Mrs. Dwyer hugged her daughter and watched her, through eyes filled with tears, as

she trudged all alone through the mud toward the distant highway.

5

The dress, though beautiful, was uncomfortable. It pushed her breasts together and

forced them upward, and cinched her waist in so tightly that she could hardly breathe.

Nonetheless, Dr. Linda Markus liked the look of herself in the full-length mirror. A

“belle” from the past. Fragile, dainty, an object to be worshiped.

My God,
she thought.
Women really felt like this, once.

Walking away from the mirror, she looked around the bedroom. It was like some-

thing from a dream. The satin draperies, the magnificent bed covered in a thick satin

quilt with matching satin canopy cover—all the color of peaches. The plush carpet, the

delicate gilt furniture, the sweet paintings on the walls, and vases of fresh flowers. All

very feminine, all very romantic.

Actually, it was the same room she had been in just the week before, when her “ren-

dezvous” with the cat burglar had been interrupted by a phone call from the hospital. She had

been trying ever since then to reschedule her appointment here at Butterfly. But complica-

tions had intervened. First, she had been unavailable. And then
he
had been unavailable.

It was strange. Linda had experienced a momentary twinge of jealousy to learn that

she could not be with him on a particular night. For the first time in her months of

attending Butterfly, Linda Markus had pondered the reality of her companion servicing

other members. And, for the first time, she had felt possessive of him. Intellectually, she

had told herself:
He’s a hired lover. He takes care of other women.
But, emotionally, Linda

was surprised to find herself thinking:
He’s mine. He belongs to me.

She had been with this particular companion only three times. Before that there had

been a variety of them—none of them satisfying, none of them able to help. And then she

had met “him.” That was on the night of her Venetian fantasy. The early citizens of Venice

used to wear masks when parading in St. Mark’s Square. She had gotten the idea after see-

ing the movie
Amadeus.
A man, all in black—with a black cloak and wearing a black

mask—had stolen into her room and made exquisite love to her.

It was the closest Linda had ever come to having an orgasm.

So she had requested him again.

He was the Highwayman the second time, from the poem. Dashing, forceful, but ten-

der also, stealing into her room, catching her at her needlework, and making love to her.

That time, too, she had come very close to that sexual brink which she had never experi-

enced in her life. And so, the third time, when she had called Butterfly and made the

arrangements, she had requested the same companion, and that time requested that he be

a burglar.

33

34

Kathryn Harvey

But the session had been cut short by her beeper. Tonight he was supposed to appear

in the form of a Confederate officer of the Civil War—at least, a man in a Confederate

officer’s uniform, and masked, as if he were at a costume ball.

No matter what the circumstance, Linda insisted that her men be masked. She did not

want to see her lover’s face. Nor could they see hers. The mask was in place now, protect-

ing her identity.

She glanced at her wrist, then remembered that she had removed her watch. For

tonight’s fantasy she had decided to play it to the fullest. After removing all her modern

clothes and putting on the costume laid out for her, Linda had put her things in the dress-

ing room and closed the door. Closing that door had symbolized a sealing off of the mod-

ern age. By denying all the accoutrements of Today—her purse, watch, beeper, panty

hose—she could more easily step into Yesterday.

Which was necessary for the experiment to work.

From experience, Linda knew that the companion could appear at any moment.

Especially in these historical scenarios. Some club members, she knew, didn’t want to

bother with stage props and costumes. They just asked for a particular model, took a

room, and got down to the sex without any theatrical buildup. Others, like herself,

enjoyed—
needed—
the drama and make-believe.

To cure her, she hoped, of her problem.

That was why Linda was here, at Butterfly, instead of at the hospital or reading med-

ical journals or working on her speech for the County Medical Association dinner.

Normally, Linda’s life revolved around her work; she left herself very little time for social

or recreational activities. But coming to Butterfly really wasn’t for pleasure; she was here

to find help for her problem. But as a physician treating herself she had a difficult time

detaching herself from professional curiosity, which was necessary in order for the therapy

to work, and therefore for her problem to be cured.

Pacing the plush carpet, her crinoline swishing about her, the soft lights of the chan-

delier casting a dreamy incandescence over the objects in the room, Linda tried to force

herself into the role. But she could not.

How many members a day does he see? she wondered.
(We are all
members
here, the

director had told Linda during her orientation. Not clients or customers, but members. And

our men are
companions.) How many times, after all, can a man, no matter how young

and virile, get it up in one day? How many times can he
satisfy
a woman?

He doesn’t have to ejaculate each time,
she told herself.

She tried to stop such thoughts. They served no useful purpose. She was here to be

made love to, not to analyze the physiological logistics of men. Linda had to keep remind-

ing herself to leave her scientist’s curiosity and medical thinking outside the door.

Otherwise, the experiment would not work.

Footsteps in the hall!

She turned and stared at the door. The doorknob started to turn.

And all of a sudden Dr. Linda Markus was breathless. She forgot everything. All

thoughts fled her mind as she watched the golden doorknob slowly turn, as she pictured

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35

the hand that might be turning it, the man who owned that hand, those tight muscles,

that square jaw, and that deep, refined voice.

That first time with him—whoever he was—she had almost, almost…