The Butterfly Effect

Home > Other > The Butterfly Effect > Page 23
The Butterfly Effect Page 23

by Rachel Mans McKenny


  “It’s a little like eating food with a cold,” he said.

  Greta didn’t know why she thought a real concert might awaken something in him, something old and forgotten. “So it’s not in technicolor.”

  “Wizard of Oz, Kansas location only.” After a second, he caught her gaze, and he must have seen something there. He cleared his throat. “But that’s where she sings ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow,’ so you never know.”

  “Right, it’s not like you want to be welcomed to Munchkin land, anyway.”

  “School doesn’t start for a week,” Danny said. “Can I buy you a pack of Twizzlers?”

  They shared the licorice during the second half of the program. One of the songs reminded Greta of the song Danny had been playing in the apartment. A bit, but not quite. She checked the program. “Liebesträume: Nocturne Number Three.” She elbowed Danny and whispered, “Was this what you were playing?”

  His eyes widened when he realized what she was talking about. Somehow in the dark of the auditorium, she felt like she could bring it up. “No,” he whispered. “Debussy. ‘Arabesque Number One.’”

  “Keep looking up,” she whispered back, but his eyebrow quirked in a question mark. Did he really not remember watching Stargazers with her and Jack Horkheimer’s famous closing line? She remembered those nights seeing the universe in her living room, the television volume on low to keep from waking Dad. At a backward glance from a couple in the row in front of her, she didn’t say anything else. She tried to enjoy the concert. Greta could appreciate the technical excellence, the exactitude. Music and science had that in common—when something was right, it resonated. Purposeful placement of notes, of accents, of data.

  At the end of the performance, Eden insisted everyone wait by the stage door. Danny flipped the program against his thigh. The area by the loading dock was dark. Greta checked her nonexistent wristwatch for the fifth time before finally the stage door creaked open. People came out in pairs and trios, and then came Henry, alone, with a black leather suitcase slung between his shoulders. “Henry,” Danny called out before he could get too far away. He probably hadn’t spoken that loudly in months, and the air pressure in Greta’s own diaphragm changed in response.

  Henry turned around and his face broke into a smile. His dark hair was longer than the last time she’d seen him, and his teeth were whiter by at least three shades. “Daniel? Daniel Oto?”

  “Danny most days.”

  Henry pulled Danny in for a hug, hitting him twice on the back like he was burping him. “We missed you. The whole gang of us. We had a little thing out in Portland. Did you get the e-mail?”

  “No,” Danny said.

  “The alumni …” Henry’s face froze. “Shit, I forgot. I’m sorry. The alumni listserv.”

  Danny waved a hand in front of his face. “Don’t worry about it, man. I just wanted to say congrats.”

  “Congrats for touring in Podunk, Nowhere?” Henry laughed.

  “Seeing as I live a little north of Nowhere …”

  “I’m sorry. I’m not getting any of this right.” Henry’s mouth twisted. “You know what? Come out with us for a drink.”

  “I can’t drink and I’m with some people.” Danny gestured behind to where the rest of them stood.

  Greta waved. “Hey, Henry.”

  “No way. Greta? The famous twin?” She obviously was memorable from Danny’s stories, which wasn’t a good thing. His smile didn’t darken, though. “Please. Greta, your friends—you can all come.”

  The bars in downtown Des Moines had a bigger mix of characters than Ames bars. Right away, Brandon and Eden ran into some friends they knew from a young professional group, and stranded Greta.

  The bar bled pretension, exposed brick, and a purposeful mishmash of furniture. In Ames, there were college kid bars—fratty and loud, starting at happy hour—and townie bars like Mikey’s. The thought of Mikey’s pinged her now, pricked at her. Max wasn’t hers to miss, though. Meg had always been good at swooping up people that didn’t belong to her and claiming them.

  “Hey!” Henry clapped Greta on the back, interrupting her thoughts as she nearly fell off her stool. She stood up and pointed to it with an offering gesture. He nodded his head. “Thanks for saving me a place. This place is packed.”

  “Not much to do in Podunk, Nowhere, but drink,” Greta said.

  “Ha-ha,” Henry said, each sound accented. “You know I didn’t mean it.”

  “Yeah, well, you two have fun,” Greta said, excusing herself.

  “No, no, sit,” Henry said. “I’m just glad to talk to people from the old days.”

  Danny tapped a finger against the bar top, unsure. “It’s probably easier to ask what isn’t new than what is, big shot,” he said.

  “Your words, not mine, and certainly not my agent’s.”

  “There you go,” Danny said, letting out his breath. “Isn’t that what we always talked about? And you’re touring solo?”

  “I paid my dues.”

  “At the Los Angeles Philharmonic.”

  Henry appeared pleased. “You heard about that?”

  “It might not be in my subscription of Nowhere Monthly, but I read it somewhere.”

  Henry waved down a bartender and ordered a drink. “So,” Henry said after the bartender had moved on, “I heard some rumors about your health.”

  “Some minor brain surgery. That’s all.”

  “Oh, that’s all,” Henry scoffed. The bartender put a beer in front of him, its head foaming over the rim of the glass. “But you’re okay now?”

  “Depends on who you ask. My doctors think the prognosis is pretty good. My ex-fiancée didn’t, I guess.”

  “Ouch. Sorry. That’s cold.”

  “I pushed her and pushed her. I haven’t been myself.” The pain in Danny’s voice made Greta turn red. It wasn’t that she thought she had been enough for him. She wasn’t a replacement for Meg, but she honestly hadn’t had any idea he still missed her so much. The writing in the comic books came back to her.

  “My boy.” “My tiger.”

  Henry attempted to comfort, to excuse. “God, you had brain surgery.”

  “But not a lobotomy. It was probably my fault.”

  “It’s not,” Greta broke in.

  Danny rolled his eyes. “Oh boy, my sister thinks it’s not my fault, so it must be true.”

  Greta felt a stab. “Well, I’m going to find Eden and Brandon,”

  “No, sorry, it’s just”—Danny paused, taking a sip of water—“I’m kind of depressed, I guess. I have meds—for my condition and for my depression—but they bring me to normal. It’s not like what you have.”

  “Fuck, I’m on them too, Dan. Half the universe is. I have been for years—since before Oberlin.”

  Danny toyed with his soda straw. “They bring me to a middle place. They don’t fix the problems that made me feel this way.”

  “Shit, Danny, talk to her if you miss her is what I’m saying. This is free good advice. Take it. And you can name your first kid after me.”

  “Maybe,” Danny said. “But I’m naming my first kid Prodigy and my second Unrealized Potential. You can have dibs on the third.”

  “Well, the third kid is going to be a genius. And shit, Danny, you like teaching, right? You don’t want to be on the road.”

  “No, I mean I love teaching. It sucks to have your health make all the decisions in your life.”

  Henry took a sip of his beer. “It’s a race to death, and music sets the tempo.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to catch on, but if I see it on T-shirts, I’ll make sure to give you credit.”

  On the truck ride home, Eden fell asleep against the passenger seat window. Greta could hear her snoring, snuffling in her sleep. “She had a few tequilas,” Brandon murmured to Danny.

  “And Greta?”

  Greta’s eyes were closed, too, but she wasn’t sleeping.

  “I think people tire her out,” Danny said.
/>   “They’re so sweet when they’re sleeping,” Brandon said.

  “You’re so condescending when we’re sleeping,” Greta muttered, her eyes opening to catch Brandon’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  The rest of the ride was quiet. Greta watched the scenery, though she couldn’t see anything. In the dark landscape, there were acres of tall corn, like fingers pointing up. Above the highway, lit only by scattered headlights, she couldn’t see the corn, but she could see the stars they pointed at. The constellations.

  “Keep looking up.”

  She was almost home when she realized she never had watched that star show with Danny. Never. It had been Martha, those secret late Saturday nights. That had been Martha.

  PART FOUR

  AUTUMN

  “That we imagine the butterfly effect would explain things in everyday life, however, reveals more than an overeager impulse to validate ideas through science. It speaks to our larger expectation that the world should be comprehensible—that everything happens for a reason, and that we can pinpoint all those reasons, however small they may be. But nature itself defies this expectation.”

  —Peter Dizikes, “The Meaning of the Butterfly,” The Boston Globe, June 2008

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Another month, another birth control shot. If Martha had been around for Greta’s teen years, maybe she would have found out earlier that the debilitating pain she got with her menstrual cycles wasn’t normal, but as the only woman in a house of men, she assumed it was. After three missed classes her sophomore year, a TA teaching the intro bio lab had pulled Greta aside and asked if she was okay. Greta said she hurt, and after describing the intensity of the pain, the TA suggested she go to Student Health. Since starting the shots all those years ago, Greta’s pain had become manageable, as did her understanding that sometimes she had to tell people when things felt wrong.

  Things felt wrong a lot lately, but those things involved the only people she would have talked to. In fact, as Greta adjusted the side mirror in the hospital parking lot after a birth control shot, she recognized the car parked next to her.

  It was Max’s hatchback. She was absolutely positive. Why Max’s car was parked in front of the hospital, though, Greta had no idea. Greta had been congratulating herself at somehow avoiding contact with him in the lab. She was not going to wait around to run into him in the hospital parking lot.

  Danny had not been so lucky. If Ames was a small town, then the middle school was a smaller town. Small towns have gossip; smaller towns have telepathic gossip, so well-known that no one needs to whisper it. No ring on Meg’s finger, separate rides to school—Danny said he knew the conversations must be happening about them, but couldn’t tell when they were.

  On Friday of the first week back, he ran into Meg in the hallway. Literally ran into her. At Sunday supper he lowered the collar of his shirt to show the bruise on his shoulder.

  “So what happened after?” Greta asked him.

  Greta saw the sudden flush in his cheeks, remembered what Danny said to Henry all those weeks ago. She hadn’t told him, but Greta knew where Meg lived now. It had been an accident that Greta found out Meg moved into Brandon’s area. She saw Meg walking Franz Liszt over by the cemetery, and when Greta went back to visit her dad a few days later, she saw fresh flowers there. Greta half-suspected that Danny didn’t mind the bruise if it meant getting close to Meg again, but Greta worried that the real pain wouldn’t just bruise him this time. He was setting himself up for disappointment.

  “Nothing happened,” Danny said. “I mean, we apologized to each other. For the collision.”

  Greta assumed he meant the hallway collision, not the vehicular one that had set everything off.

  “And I smiled at her, but—”

  “Just move on,” Greta said.

  Danny dunked a piece of garlic bread in the leftover alfredo sauce on his plate. “That would be the smart thing to do. But I love her.”

  “We saw her with someone else.” She didn’t mention that someone else was her friend, her once-friend who she now went out of her way to avoid.

  “Could be nothing.” Danny began to clear the dishes. “Could be innocent.”

  Greta made a pfft noise. “Sure.”

  * * *

  Innocent. If Max were innocent, she wouldn’t find anything in his desk to incriminate him. With the excuse of grabbing a few things before she left on Monday for the conference, Greta headed into the cubicles Saturday morning to scope things out. In their years of sharing an office, Greta had never done anything to break the unwritten coworker code of conduct: wash your own mug, stagger office hours, and don’t touch each other’s stuff. He would probably notice if she did touch something. If she didn’t leave physical fingerprints, something might get misplaced if she wasn’t careful—and so she was careful as she worked. She thought about Saturdays watching her father work on a specimen. The dental tools he used to prepare them, the way he squinted at the animals under the light. She had “careful” genes somewhere in her body, and she hoped they would kick in right about now.

  First, she examined the desk’s exterior, its morphology. His desk was always neatly kept and had multiple anchors. A Far Side calendar with tear-away pages stood at the corner. The year and the jokes on the calendar changed, but its location on Max’s desk didn’t. Next, Max’s computer. He dusted the keyboard weekly, using the sprayable air to clean in the crevices even though it didn’t need the attention. Finally, a picture of him and his parents, which Greta had never gotten close enough to really look at before. Absurdly, now that she was close, she realized that, like the picture she had packed in Meg’s stuff, Max’s family was at Disney World. Behind them, Cinderella’s Castle loomed over the trio. Little Max had a buzz cut and wore a red T-shirt, and his face was as round as a tomato. All three of them had the mouse ears, just like Meg’s family. Just another thing they have in common, Greta thought bitterly.

  Max’s desk had a long central drawer for pens and knickknacks, then two big file drawers along the side. Their hulking metal desks were standard issue from the college, probably the same as they were in all the departments, but it was hard not to feel sentimental about her cubicle. Probably like how some shipwreck victims get attached to their lifeboats. Unlike her desk, Max’s didn’t have a pencil-thin scratch along the front edge of the pen drawer, but just like hers, it did require a key to open. Also like hers, the key was the same—standard issue. She clicked it in the lock and turned it.

  Inside was a rainbow assortment of rubber bands, an army of paperclips, several black pens, and a single red one. Hardly worth locking, she thought, even though the high quality of the black pens did make them above average. She didn’t move them from their compartments as she shut and locked the drawer again.

  She opened the top file drawer next; she did so slowly because he kept his coffee mug in there. Breaking a handle off his Insects of North America mug would cost her more in pride than it would in dollars to replace. Behind the mug, and the collection of canned soup he sometimes warmed for lunches, were his class files—labeled and color coded. Insect Biology, Fundamentals of Entomology, and the rest of the assorted intro classes that they had shuffled through during their time at Iowa State, both as students and as teachers. She didn’t think he would hide love notes from Meg in there.

  Was that what she was really looking for? She didn’t stop to ask herself that question. The trappings of their affair were probably all digital, as Danny and Meg’s had been. Traded texts or DMs or whatever. Maybe he e-mailed his stupid forwarded jokes to her as well. That thought stung momentarily, without Greta stopping to think why.

  The bottom drawer held academic papers: printed articles and notes from classes. Greta removed the stack from the drawer and started to sort through it. She recognized his notebook from their Chemical Biology and Behavior seminar, mostly because he had used a Pikachu notebook and she’d teased him ruthlessly about it, all the while battling him between clas
ses at one of the Pokémon Go gyms on campus. She flipped idly through it and saw the scrawl of his handwriting. Up close, the “p’s” looped down and curled in a “q”-ish manner that made her smile. Her own handwriting joined his on some pages, almost unreadable even to herself. During boring lectures, they had played a game at passing the notebook discretely back and forth, each adding a line to a drawing until, incrementally, it became a monster or a flower. She ran a finger over a morphologically correct grasshopper that they’d drawn, line by line, without consulting each other on the project to begin with.

  She replaced the notebook in the stack and looked through the other handouts. Graduate programs don’t have yearbooks to flip through, but this pile brought the same feeling that high school yearbooks were supposed to evoke (probably did evoke for non-Greta people). Here was the paper they helped collect data for during their first year. Here was the feedback she’d given on his dissertation proposal. And here, she noticed, was a paper authored by just Greta. Just a thing about cicadas that she had sent off to a regional publication. She was just mulling over the last item when she heard footsteps behind her.

  On a Saturday? Oh hell.

  She shuffled the papers into a sort of order, but hadn’t gotten everything back in the drawer before Max came around the corner. Her eyes caught his. Though his eyes were dark brown—the color of weathered bronze—they seemed to darken further when he saw what she was doing. “This isn’t what it looks like,” she said, standing up.

  “Greta, I don’t even know what it could look like. What are you doing?”

  She was on firmer ground with anger than disappointment, and his lack of vehemence unnerved her, sending her into honesty. “I was seeing if you had anything from Meg.”

 

‹ Prev