The Butterfly Sister (7 page)

“I think my dress is ruined,” I said after exhausting all efforts.

Mark tossed me a playful wink. “So you'll take it off.”

We didn't say more about my father. I think Mark sensed I was emotionally drained from the conversation. Instead, we ate and we drank, listened to the saxophonist, enjoyed the ambiance of the café, the high ceiling and twirling fans, the cup and saucer clinks, the noisy chatter of people out in the wee hours of the morning.

When we finally left the café, we had to pass the college students and the transvestite and the origami artist but first, the woman and her notebook. She lifted her eyes as we went by, but I could not look into them. I feared they'd remind me too much of my mother's, of the guilt I'd somehow escaped in my affection for Mark. I saw only the corners of her mouth turn down, her head shaking.

“Tsk, tsk,” I thought I heard her say under the café murmurs and clanking dishes.

Or had she said
mistress
?

Once on Decatur Street, I tried to concentrate on the night sky, on the spires of St. Louis Cathedral aiming for the stars. But I lost the image. The woman's disgust was all I could see. I rubbed the front of my dress once more.

“There's no use.” Mark reached around my waist. “What's done is done.”

I knew it would wash out. I knew no one would see it that time of night. But until we reached the hotel room, I kept my hands before me, hiding the powdered sugar stains on the front of my dress: the letter
A
the woman from the café had placed there with one hard look.

I
opened my eyes to a dark hotel room. The heavy curtains worked so well, I didn't know if it was morning or the afternoon of the following day. But soon, I saw a thin stream of hazy early light where the curtain met the wall.

Mark was still asleep on his stomach, his arm curled over the pillow. The position revealed his muscular arms and toned obliques. I wanted to slide my arm around his waist and kiss him softly on the shoulder, not only for how handsome he looked in slumber, but also for breaking the ice about my father. How could I repay him for his kindness at the café? He'd been so sweet, so strong. He'd seen through my facade. He'd asked the hard questions. He'd listened. How could I wonder if he loved me? Was that not evident in his actions?

I decided not to wake him and instead, slipped out of bed. I'd fallen asleep reading Virginia Woolf's
A Room of One's Own
. The book, my alternative to sleeping pills, was still in bed with me, and I placed it on the nightstand. And that's when I thought of Leonard Woolf.

From my research, I knew Virginia Woolf's husband had been equally as kind, caring for her during the bouts of depression and nervous breakdowns that inevitably followed her completion of a novel. Leonard had given his wife so much time, so much understanding, that she'd come to feel like a burden, that she was ruining his life. In addition to hearing voices and the sensation she was going mad, it was one of the reasons Woolf took her own life in 1941.

“You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good,” Virginia had written to Leonard in the suicide note she penned just before she drowned herself in the River Ouse. “I can't go on spoiling your life any longer. I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.”

I didn't want Mark to see me as a burden. I didn't want to take advantage of his compassion. And I vowed then not to cry about my father the rest of the weekend, not to appear weak, injured, needy, or emotional. I would prove to him that I was strong. Stoic. I would be fun and easy and carefree, the kind of woman he deserved.

I approached the window then to witness the dawn of a new day. Pushing the curtains aside, I saw the foggy courtyard below. Fog, especially first thing in the morning, is as characteristic to New Orleans as jazz or seafood, and I watched the hazy cloud of white as it revealed tables, chairs, and a chaise lounge, all enjoying the tranquil aftermath of a light morning rain. I reached for Mark's watch—he had set it on the writing table near the window—and found it was quarter to six. I had slept a mere three hours. We'd made love again after the café au lait and beignets and powdered sugar spill. But somehow I felt refreshed enough to venture out for a coffee from the hotel lobby and a courtyard stroll. I would bring Mark back a fresh cup, fixed just the way he liked it. We would start the day off right.

Sunlight slowly penetrated the veil of fog and continued to lift it as I walked through the courtyard that morning. After only a few minutes, the humidity cooled my coffee and it became chalky, but it was a nostalgic taste, actually, like chicken soup. It reminded me of the many Saturday mornings I'd sat with my mom at the kitchen table talking about everything and nothing. I longed to call her, to burden her instead of Mark, but she had no idea I was in New Orleans with him, with my professor, a married man. She would certainly disapprove of my relationship with him, but somehow that seemed a secondary issue to a more unpardonable sin: I went back to New Orleans without her.

I decided to return to the hotel room then, and I was on my way to the lobby to fix Mark's coffee, when I stopped abruptly at the sight of a woman standing just below our hotel room window. Even in the haze of fog, her profile struck me immediately. I recognized her, but in a vague way, like seeing a childhood friend all grown up. Her hair, the color of muddy water, was pinned at the nape of her neck and appeared unkempt and yet refined. Perhaps it was her blouse, white with a frilly lace neck, which suggested reservation. Or her brown ankle-length skirt. Or the narrow, pointy nose of a nun.

I closed my eyes, then reopened them, but still she was there. I stared at her in the silent courtyard, watched her hands fiddle inside the pocket of her cardigan, and tried to place her. She did not look well; her skin was pale, or was it the whiteness of the fog still lifting?

“Hello,” I said.

She did not startle, but guided her eyes toward mine with a languid turn of her neck. Her lips parted, but not into a smile. More like a smirk; an all-knowing smirk, almost condescending, as if she knew things I could only read about. And then she simply sauntered away, vanished into the hallway leading to the hotel lobby.

I stood there a moment, numbed by her expression and the ease with which she'd left. I had not heard footsteps. But I soon followed into the hotel's marble-floored lobby. No one was there, except a hotel desk clerk.

“Did someone just come through here?” I asked him. “A woman?”

He twisted his lips and eyebrows together in puzzlement.

“I just saw her. She went this way.” I looked back into the courtyard. How could the woman have disappeared so quickly? “She was . . . I think she was wearing a costume?”

The clerk nodded. “This hotel is haunted. We have many resident ghosts,” he said rather coolly, as if he'd said the hotel had many available suites.

Ghosts are a part of New Orleans culture as much as parades and pralines; there are ghost tours, cemetery tours, and voodoo tours. But there was something so striking about the woman I'd seen. Her hair, her nose, her outfit. Why had she looked so familiar and yet unable to place? And then the realization exploded in my mind, and I rushed upstairs.

I opened the hotel room door with stealth, but Mark stirred anyway. After looking next to him in bed, he craned his neck to find me. “I thought I heard you leave,” he said. His voice was scratchy, as if he'd been in and out of the bars on Bourbon Street all night.

I went straight to the bedside table, where I'd set the copy of
A Room of One's Own
I'd been reading, and flipped to the back cover to study Virginia Woolf's picture. In it, she is young; her hair dark and pulled back at the nape; her skin smooth and white like porcelain; the collar of her blouse feminine and lacy. It is a profile shot, so her nose is prominent and pointy. In contrast, the woman I saw in the courtyard was not so young. She was wrinkled. No, weathered. But the similarity of the two profiles—the Woolf in the photo and the woman in the courtyard—was so striking, a wave of pinpricks swept down the backs of my arms.

“What is it? What are you looking at?” Mark asked.

I didn't answer. My mind was still replaying everything I'd seen and hadn't seen. The woman had looked so real, and yet she'd vanished faster than humanly possible.

“Ruby?” he almost shouted. His voice was forceful, authoritative. It reminded me of that first afternoon in his office, how he'd addressed that girl Madeline and snapped her out of her sadness.

“I saw a woman in the courtyard,” I finally divulged. “She looked just like her,” I added, pointing to the picture of Virginia Woolf on the back of my book.

Mark rubbed his eyes of sleep, then studied the photo. “If memory serves me right, this city is crawling with characters,” he offered. “Lots of people dressing up in costume for no good reason. You probably saw one of those street performers who stands perfectly still for hours, just to get a few quarters.”

“But she didn't look like a real person,” I argued. “She was pale and white and muted. And she disappeared so quickly. The front desk clerk didn't even see her, and there's no other way out than through the lobby.” I paused. “Do you believe in ghosts, Mark?”

“Ghosts. God. I see a lot of gray.” He narrowed his eyes. “You think you saw a ghost?”

“No,” I said, and then: “I don't know.”

“Weren't you reading this last night?” He tapped the book I still held in my hands. “Before you went to bed?”

I nodded.

“You didn't get much sleep,” he added.

He was right; I was sleep-deprived.

“You probably saw a woman, someone staying here, who kind of looked like Virginia Woolf,” he offered. “And it was foggy, and you were tired, and you only imagined the woman was Woolf.”

“It was foggy,” I said.

“Well, see. There you go.”

His tone was casual, but I noticed the wrinkles of concern forming beside his eyes.

Don't burden him,
I thought.

And so I let it go, chalked it up to fatigue and fog. Looking back, I should have known foreshadowing when I saw it. The repercussions of seeing Virginia Woolf in the courtyard did not fully occur to me then.

I had no indication of the dark, twisted path I was about to follow.

Chapter 5

I
knocked softly—an apprehensive bumping of my knuckle to the metal screen door—and waited for Mrs. Richards to answer, waited for my courage to emerge.

This is a stupid idea,
I thought, staring at the peephole, imagining a discerning eye on the other end.
What possessed you to drive to Milwaukee—during rush hour no less—to see someone who may or may not be home, who may or may not welcome your visit?

Mark.

Well, Beth and Mark.

I'd finished reading Beth's copy of
A Room of One's Own
Monday night, hunting for more notes in the margin, more clues as to Beth's possible relationship with Mark, and found nothing as incriminating as
Like
Cassie's Cabin
. And yet, I couldn't shake the notion that Beth Richards had been in love with Mark. I admit, it was illogical thinking. Three words—a simple reference to his mother's writing retreat—was not proof of her affection. And yet those words, the deep indigo hue of the ink, the whimsical, curly tips of the letter
C,
connoted an emotion I understood at my core, a sick-to-your-stomach aching to love and be loved. I had to know.

And that is why I stood outside Beth Richards's home at dusk on Tuesday evening, despite logic.

Curiosity trumped logic.

I rapped on the door again, this time more deliberately, but my knocking was met with silence, less the flutter of a light breeze. I waited another minute before walking back to my car in defeat.

I was putting my car into reverse when I saw the front door of the brick bungalow swing open, and a woman—her shoulder-length blond hair a shade darker because it was wet—dash down the porch steps toward my car, so quickly, she skipped a step and almost slipped. She waved a yellow towel at me, then mimicked a crossing guard by raising her hand in an effort to get me to stop. She was mouthing something too, but I couldn't hear her over the car radio.

By the time I put the car into park and rolled down my window, she was beside my driver-side door.

“I was in the shower,” she blurted between huffs of breath.

“I'm sorry.”

She shook her head so adamantly, drips of water fell from her hair to the men's flannel shirt she was wearing; it was two sizes too big, more like a nightshirt, and something I imagined she threw on just to answer the door.

“No,
I'm
sorry. I was in there all of about three minutes.” She spoke feverishly, still coming off the adrenaline rush from her Olympic feat of answering the door. “Of all the times for you to come . . . Is this . . . Are you here about Beth?”

The woman needed no introduction—she was Beth Richards's mom. I knew that the moment our eyes met. She looked exactly like her daughter, only older, in the uncanny way my mother and I looked alike, and I immediately recalled Beth Richards, something I had up to that point been unable to do without access to my college yearbooks. My memory of her sharpened—the long blond hair, the calm blue eyes, the lean and athletic build of a runner, and a natural beauty, one that did not depend on lipstick or eyeliner but rather a healthy glow similar to the pink-cheeked aftermath of exercise.

But Mrs. Richards did not have that glow. Her eyes—rimmed by puffy, dark circles from a combination of sleep deprivation and tears—danced wide and focused with desperate anticipation. A bead of water ran down the side of her face, but she didn't seem to notice. The towel remained in her grip.

I opened the car door to address her more directly. “I'm Ruby Rousseau,” I said before adding, “I had Beth's suitcase.”

“Yes. Yes. Ruby.” She nodded too many times, reminding me of a bobble head, before furrowing her brow. “Didn't the detective get it from you yesterday?”

“He did. You haven't seen it?”

“I can't, not until they ‘process' it.” She used air quotes to illustrate her frustration.

I was about to explain what I was doing there, but she continued her rant.

“And the Pittsburgh Police don't seem to be doing anything either. You know, I wanted to go out there, to Pennsylvania, and they told me not to. I offered to call Beth's friends or people she knows, and Detective Pickens told me to let the police do their job. I told them I wanted Beth's picture on the news, and they said we needed to wait. Wait for what? We don't have time to wait.”

After looking into Mrs. Richards's desperate eyes, hearing the anxiety in her voice, I chastised myself for even being there. This woman's daughter was
missing,
presumably dead, and I had the audacity to bother her, drag her out of the only shower she'd probably taken in days—the only three minutes in which she'd thought of herself—just to snoop into Beth's private life, just to find out whether something I “sensed” from reading the margin of a book was true. Mrs. Richards wanted information, clues to her daughter's whereabouts. That's why she'd rushed out the door with sopping wet hair, almost breaking her neck on the steps.
What a disappointment,
I thought,
when she discovers I have nothing concrete to offer.

I swallowed the lump of guilt in my throat. “I can't imagine how hard this is for you, Mrs. Richards,” I said, preparing to leave. “I'm so sorry to have bothered you.”

She stopped me.

“I want to be bothered.” Her voice boomed. “The police haven't bothered me enough. I'm going crazy, Ruby, just waiting for things to ‘process' or ‘solidify' or ‘come to fruition' or whatever police jargon the detective is using today.” She looked back at me, her eyes suddenly soft and tearful. “I need to talk. To a human being, someone other than myself. Can you . . . can you come inside?”

Stepping into the foyer of the house, I took in the smell of burnt coffee and stale air, a home in desperate need of a cracked window. A volcano of unopened mail had erupted on the console. Several newspapers, still in plastic sleeves muddy from a recent rain, sat on the yellowed linoleum just inside the door.

Mrs. Richards threw her wet towel on top of the pile of newspapers. “There's all this shit in this house,” she blurted. “And yet without Beth, it feels so empty.”

I found her vernacular both startling and endearing, yet I didn't know what to say, or whether I should say anything. Suddenly I felt the need to lie, to give a solid reason for my impromptu visit. But just as I was about to speak, Mrs. Richards let out a sigh, took my hands in hers, and patted them hard several times, as if to absolve me of a lifetime of sins.

“Should we have something warm to drink?” she asked.

I was about to say “I don't want to bother you” but remembered she wanted to be bothered. Instead I followed her to the kitchen.

Mrs. Richards cleared space for me at the table, and I stole a glance at the plethora of sticky notes and maps and papers and photos that had not only overtaken the tabletop, but also grown like a vine up the adjoining wall. It seemed Mrs. Richards was running her own investigation on Beth's disappearance, and the table served as headquarters.

“I keep going over it, every detail, thinking I'll see something different than last time,” she explained as she pulled her damp locks up into a ponytail before moving to the stove to put on a teakettle.

A Room of One's Own
—Beth's notes in the margin—could be the
something different
she is looking for, I thought, but I decided to take the book out of my purse later, when the time was right. We would baby step our way there; we would meet her needs before mine.

I eyed her collection of sticky notes and maps again and imagined my own mother doing the same if I were the missing girl, that she would not rest—physically or mentally—until she found me. My curiosity mounted.

“I don't know much about what happened,” I said. “The detective was pretty tight-lipped about Beth's case.”

Mrs. Richards pulled a canister of tea bags from the countertop and set it on the table. “I'm Beth's
mother,
and I can't get information out of him.”

“It wasn't in the newspaper either,” I added.

“Thank you.” She plopped down in the chair across from me then, as if I'd finally given her permission to do so. “I just don't understand why Beth's face isn't all over the television. I mean, how can people find her if they don't know she's missing? How will they spot her if they don't know what she looks like?”

I remembered asking Detective Pickens a similar question, and his answer had been elusive. Like Mrs. Richards, I couldn't fathom why Beth's story had not made it to the national news stations.

Beth's mother reached past me for a manila folder, pulled a photo from it, and handed it to me. “This is the one I picked out for the news broadcasts,” she said.

It was Beth's senior picture from Tarble. “She was beautiful,” I said.

“Was.”
Mrs. Richards's lips trembled as she stared at her daughter's picture over my shoulder. “I can't get myself to use that word.”

“Is,”
I blurted, damning the obituaries for conditioning me to use the past tense. “She
is
beautiful.”

She gave me a forgiving smile, not big but perhaps the most she could manage.

“Do you want to go over it again?” I offered, trying to repair the damage of my earlier word choice. “I actually work for a newspaper in Chicago.”

“You're a journalist?”

I nodded, then shrugged, then nodded again. Given the circumstances, it would be inappropriate, I thought, to tell her what I really did for a living.

“I've got a fresh pair of eyes and ears,” I added.

Mrs. Richards let out a long breath, as if she'd been holding it under water for weeks.

“It was Friday. Just this past Friday,” she finally said. “I dropped Beth off at Mitchell—that's the airport here in Milwaukee—just past three o'clock. She was going to Pittsburgh for the weekend for a photography workshop. Did you know Beth was an amateur photographer?”

I shook my head. “I thought she majored in science.”

“She did. Biology. She's in medical school now, here in Milwaukee. But her dad bought her a thirty-five millimeter when she was five, and I guess you could say photography has been her artistic outlet ever since.”

Beth's mom went on to tell me that the workshop, the one Beth was going to in Pittsburgh, was on wedding photography. Beth thought she could shoot ceremonies on weekends and during the summer to help pay her steep tuition.

“I didn't understand why she had to go to Pittsburgh of all places,” her mother noted. “But I know better than to question Beth when she sets her mind to something, though I am the one who convinced her to fly. She wanted to drive, and I told her it wasn't safe. A woman alone driving on the Interstate for ten hours.” She rested her chin on her hand. “It's my fault.”

I recognized the guilt contracting the muscles of her face. “But how could you have known? My mom would have said the same thing,” I offered.

She nodded, but unconvincingly. “I made Beth promise to call when she got there,” she continued. “Her flight was at five, and it's an hour-and-twenty-minute trip, give or take, so I expected a call no later than seven. But hours went by, and she never called. So I started calling her, a dozen or so times, and it just kept going to voice mail. I thought maybe her flight had been delayed, and she couldn't answer her phone because she was still in the air. But then I checked the status of her flight on the computer—Beth showed me how to do that once—and that's when I found out her plane had landed on time, many hours before. And so I called the hotel, it was nearing midnight by then in Pittsburgh, and they said she hadn't checked in yet.”

She paused only to take a breath. I didn't interrupt.

“I knew something was wrong. I just did. It wasn't like Beth, but I told myself to be rational. You know, I didn't want to overreact. I started thinking she had missed her flight and took another one, a later one. And maybe she hadn't charged her phone and that's why she hadn't answered it. But I watched the sun come up, and I
still
hadn't heard from her. I didn't know who to call. So I dialed 911 and they connected me to Detective Pickens.”

I recalled my conversation with the detective the day before. “And he found out she was on the plane, after all?”

“Her ticket had been processed, and the flight attendant remembered her.” Mrs. Richards's eyes teared then, and she pulled a crumpled tissue from the pocket of her jeans. When the tissue gave out, she used the back of her hand. She crossed her arms then, as if warding off a chill, the remnants of what no longer looked like a tissue dangling from her hand. “So Beth is somewhere in Pittsburgh. But where? What happened to my daughter?”