Breaking Butterflies

by M. Anjelais

  The memory of my first day at Leigh’s house, of Cadence and me out on the swings, came back to me immediately. He had yelled at me for hiding my scar with concealer and asked me that question, the one that would ring in my ears for the days to come: Don’t you know that you have been touched by an angel? Perhaps it was true for Leigh. He was her baby, her broken, fallen angel. Perhaps she wanted any touch he could find it within himself to give her, even if it was a scar. And perhaps Leigh and I were more alike than I’d ever thought.

  All of a sudden, I realized I didn’t know what I would leave behind for my own mother if I were to die. Just my clothes, my things in Leigh’s house? The little painting of the crooked table that I had done up in the attic that day when we all painted together? Or would the countless pictures she had of me suffice? Stop it, I told myself.

  Cadence came downstairs a moment later, breezed into the kitchen as though there were nothing wrong, as though nothing had happened in the night. His eyes studied the cut on Leigh’s forehead for a few seconds, but quickly moved on. He stood leaning against the kitchen counter, the sunlight from the window throwing shadows into the hollows of his face; he had his painting shirt on, a rainbow of colors smeared over the fabric.

  “I see you’re planning on painting today,” Leigh said, in that soft, soft voice.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he answered casually.

  “Are you almost done with that big blue canvas?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said.

  “But there’s only a little bit of white left,” I said, remembering how far he had pulled the blue across the last time I had been up there. He tossed his head, flinging a few stray waves of hair out of his eyes.

  “I know,” he said, and strode out of the kitchen.

  “Don’t you want breakfast?” Leigh called after him, but he was already gone.

  “Did the art gallery guy call you, by any chance?” I asked Leigh as she slumped back against the counter, gripping her tea with both hands. She shook her head, her lips flattening out thin as she did so. “Oh,” I said. “Well, I bet he will, soon.” I was trying to keep things positive in front of her, to make it easier for her. I didn’t want Cadence to bring her down with him, and I didn’t want to bring her down with me, either.

  The phone rang while I was helping Leigh make breakfast: homemade waffles on her old, heavy griddle. I went to check it and recognized my home phone number on the caller ID. Reluctantly, I picked it up, dreading what was to come.

  “Sphinxie,” came my father’s voice when I put the phone to my ear. He hardly waited for me to greet him back before bursting out, “I know you want to stay, but you’ve dragged this out long enough. I want you home. You’ve already fallen through a glass table, and I’m afraid something else will happen. Put Leigh on the phone, I want to tell her to make flight plans for you tomorrow.”

  This was it. This was my chance to escape, to leave, to live. My dad wanted to make flight plans for me tomorrow, the very next day. I would be home and safe and there would be no more of these thoughts that I was having. I would go back to school. I would decide, eventually, on a college and a career and countless other things that I wanted to do …

  But I was supposed to stay, until the end. I had told my mother that. This was the new plan. I was meant to be here.

  “Okay, Dad,” I said shakily. “Okay, but can I … can I talk to Mom quick?”

  He sighed. Then I heard the phone being passed from hand to hand.

  “Mom,” I began when she got on the line. My voice was caught in my throat. “Please, Mom.” I didn’t know what I was saying please for. I was asking her to take me home and I was asking her to leave me where I was, all at the same time. And I expected her to understand what I had to do. She would have done the same for Leigh, after all.

  “I know it’s going to be hard for you to leave,” she told me. “I know what you wanted to do. But your father wants you home, and I want you home. We’ve had a lot of discussions about this, and we’ve made our final decision on the matter. That’s all.” I was silent, biting my lip, feeling a lump grow in my throat. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to die. The tiny little girl who would always be there inside me wanted her mother to save her.

  “I love you,” my mother said gently. She didn’t even know what was happening to me, but she’d said I love you in a way that made me feel like she did. I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “Yeah, I love you too,” I managed to say. Slowly, slowly, I handed the phone to Leigh. I was painfully aware of it slipping out of my hand, of my fingertips brushing against it as Leigh took it away and raised it to her own ear.

  It felt like there was a crushing weight on my back as I went over to pry the waffles out of the griddle before they burned, as I heard Leigh move away from me and try to plead for me, as I heard her voice grow softer, her sentiments changing from protest to reluctant agreement. She went into the living room and turned on her laptop, beginning the process of purchasing a plane ticket for me, still talking to my mother as she did so. And I stood in the kitchen with a plate of new waffles in my hands, feeling like I might crumple to the floor.

  I needed to stay. Cadence needed me, he was coming so close, it was coming so fast. We had called the art director, he might call back, and I needed to be here and go to the art show if he did. Leigh wasn’t taking care of the budgie anymore, I was doing that.

  And time was going, and I was going to have to make my decision. I was going to do something meaningful here. I was trying to make a choice, to decide what was going to happen to me, what being strong meant, what my life meant. But now my flight was booked.

  Suddenly there was no choice, no time.

  When Leigh hung up with my mother, she thanked me for staying as long as I had. She hugged me and took the plate of waffles from me, put the biggest one on a plate for me, asked me if I wanted syrup. I nodded and she drizzled it over, and it glistened like wet amber on a tree trunk in the morning sunlight. She perched a fork on the edge of my plate and began to get a plate ready for herself.

  “I’m going to take my breakfast up to the attic,” I said. “I want to see if Cadence will let me eat up there with him. Is that okay?” I thought maybe she might need me to stay with her. Maybe she needed to cry to someone again, just one more time. Soon I would leave and she wouldn’t have anyone to be with her — well, except for Vivienne, I remembered. Even so, I didn’t want to abandon her. With only one day left, I knew I should probably focus more on Leigh than on Cadence. She was the one who would truly miss my presence in the house, after all.

  “That’s totally fine, Sphinxie,” she said reassuringly. “You go right ahead.”

  “Okay.” I took my plate and walked upstairs, past the book in the hallway, still lying on the floor like a permanent tribute to what had occurred there. And then, up the attic steps I went — halfway, because suddenly I remembered the digital camera, and realized this was my last day to film Cadence. I went and got it out of my room before I went to the attic, shaking slightly.

  I didn’t know what he was going to do when he heard that I was leaving him, that I wouldn’t be there to get that knife out of his desk. I wondered if he would give me some sort of grace because it was not my own choice anymore, because it was my mother who was taking me home. But that was silly; Cadence didn’t do things like that. I felt a tremendous sense of apprehension building in my chest as I ascended the attic staircase. I wasn’t crying, but my eyes were stinging, moisture forming at the corners.

  Cadence hadn’t yet started painting when I entered the attic; he was standing in front of the shelves of paint, mixing this blue and that one. The huge canvas was even fuller than the last time I’d seen it: Only a thin strip of white about four inches wide was left, the rest dominated by those familiar blue swirls, an ocean of nothing. I sat down near to the stairway and put my plate down next to me, softly, so that it wouldn’t make a sound. Then I took the camera out of its case and turned it on, press
ing the button to begin filming. I watched him through the little screen, choosing his colors, with a terrible sadness in my chest.

  There was no way I could leave tomorrow, it simply wasn’t possible. I had to be here. I had to see this through to completion. And if that meant dying along with him, then that was what would happen to me. We would be in his bedroom, white and still, surrounded by his art — art in and of ourselves. Our mothers would heal eventually, they would see us in sunsets and trees and blue skies and old videotapes and crumpled photographs, they would move on. The plan was out of their hands. It was our plan now, Cadence’s and mine, and only we could decide what we were meant to do.

  And yet the decision had been made for me, stolen from me. I was going home. I didn’t have to die. My parents were insisting and my flight was booked for tomorrow.

  I turned off the camera before he stopped selecting and mixing, not wanting to get caught filming. I put it back into its case and set it down behind my back, out of sight. And he turned around, the palette balanced delicately in his hand, a paintbrush held like a cigarette between his middle and forefingers.

  “Hey,” I said. “Sorry for not telling you I came in.”

  “I knew you were there,” he said dismissively. “You can’t startle me, Sphinxie.” He walked over and stood in front of the canvas, his head tilted to one side. Slowly, he dipped his brush into one of the blobs of blue. His hand was shaking slightly, I noticed, like my grandpa’s hands had before he died of a heart attack. I cut my waffle up and took a bite, and Cadence touched his brush to the canvas, lightly, gracefully, drawing out a string of ocean blue.

  “I’m leaving tomorrow,” I said, forcing the words out. “I have to go home. My dad’s insisting this time, and my mother agrees with him.” My waffle was stuck suddenly, somewhere deep inside me.

  “Oh,” he said, and I was sure that he hadn’t really heard me, that he was too absorbed in the painting. It was more of a grunt than an oh, in any case. He was too busy drawing out those strands of blue, pulling them out longer and wider, covering the remaining white of that canvas.

  I took a few more bites of my waffle and then set it aside, feeling the furthest from hungry that I’d ever been. I took the camera out from behind my back and started filming again, even though I already had a clip of him painting. His hand was still shaking, even though he managed to make all his brushstrokes smooth and flawless, flowing as perfectly as all the rest. All of a sudden, his entire body seemed to waver, and I leaned forward slightly, half expecting him to fall over backward, for his legs to give out from under him.

  “You okay?” I asked, hoping both that he was fine and also that he wouldn’t turn around and see me filming. He moved his feet, spreading them wider apart, as though to stabilize himself more. His head shook slightly from side to side, like he was chasing a wave of dizziness from his vision, and then he lifted the brush again.

  Across the white it went, bringing a new blue with it. Mixing and blurring with the others that he’d already put down, reaching out further and further. I held the camera steady, but his hands were trembling, the palette wobbling, the brush dipping up and down. He was practiced, though, and he didn’t falter. I edged slightly to the side, moving around so that I could get a view of his face, and slowly his profile came into view. I was taking a risk, filming in the corner of his eye, but he was focused completely on the painting. I moved the camera, following the arcs and lines, following the quivering hand, the slender, bony fingers.

  And then suddenly I saw every line as a lifeline, a mark for everything that had happened to him, everything that he had been. A line for when he had woken up this morning. A line for looking in the mirror and seeing the bruises spread over his body, his white skin, his hollow face, bones pressing outward in protest. A heavy line for screaming, for anger, for confusion, for throwing the book at Leigh and then slamming the door. One for every time he had ever looked at the clock, at the calendar, and realized he was that much closer. One for when he had petted the bird so viciously, trying so hard to find what he could never grasp — that line started out thin and eager, and then exploded into a thicker swirl, for when he had gotten angry, for when we had fallen through the table.

  A line for that day when he had asked me, if there was something meaningful to do with my life, would I do it? A line for when he had walked across the room and spoken so softly to me, and filled my mind with all of the terrible, beautiful images of what he wanted to come. Two lines to match the ones he had painted on my wrists, warnings, orders, vanishing scars, didn’t I know I’d been touched by an angel?

  There was a line for the day we saw my mother off at the airport, for when he had tried to bring a knife through the security checkpoint. A line for watching the raindrops course down the window in the restaurant. A line for pushing me down when he caught me in the attic alone, a line for us out on the swings, him whispering into my ear, and me remembering that we were supposed to be married. A line for the things he had left in the car, the brown shoes and the scarf and The Metamorphosis. And the blue spread out, and out.

  A line for the pictures of him at my house, the one of him in front of the Mona Lisa, the blurred Christmas tree one that my friends had seen. A line for the phone calls Leigh had made about him, a line for the fancy private school and the teachers and the headmaster, and the doctors who had told Cadence that he was a monster for life, incurable, a sociopath.

  His hand shook, and something behind his concentrated eyes clenched. He dropped the brush on the floor, and it rolled a few feet away from him, spattering thin drips of blue over the floor. Carefully, with decision, he dipped his forefinger into the paint on the palette and used it instead of the brush, finger-painting.

  Lines for his childhood appeared, for the innocence lost, for the times he yelled at me and used me and lied, over and over again. A line for when we were outside with my father and the butterfly, and the second it was crushed between Cadence’s little palms. A line for the switchblade in the desk in his room, a line in the shape of the scar on my face. A line for the sound that echoed in the room. Click, click, click. The blue went on, bigger and bigger. There was only a small space left now.

  A line for when he was a baby, for when nothing was wrong with him yet. A line for him crying, for food, for warmth, for a new toy, like an ordinary child. A line for the first glimpses of shining talent, of the mask of good and perfect and beautiful. And then one for being new and formed and growing in the womb, floating upside down in a warm, mysterious ocean, while at the same time I too was floating, growing, elsewhere.

  A line for the eggs underneath the fort in the backyard. For the plan.

  There was a line for everything that had happened to him, everything that he’d done — and my presence was interwoven through each one. I felt tears stinging my eyes. It was impossible to tell the story of his life without telling mine too, so how could it be possible for my life to continue onward without him?

  My own hands were shaking now, making the camera screen shiver and blur for a split second. And I looked over it, past it, at the full blueness of the canvas. There was no more white. Beep. I looked back down at the camera. A little black box had appeared over the screen, cutting off my video. Memory card full.

  In front of me, he dropped the palette, and amazingly, it landed paint side up. He stood there for a moment, his blue-stained hands hanging limply at his sides, dripping paint onto his fitted jeans. The canvas seemed taller and bigger now that it was completely full of blue, and it surrounded him like a body of water. He was framed there by the blues, by the emptiness, by the nothing, and by the lines that represented everything, a paradox.

  And then he fell, crumpling to the floor like a doll, carelessly thrown, a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  There, done.

  Leigh flew up the stairs when I screamed; in an instant, she was there in the attic, and the footsteps echoing on the second floor told me that Vivienne had arrived for the day and was close
behind. I sat where I was on the attic floor as they rushed past me, knelt on the floor next to Cadence, as Leigh put her hand on his head and shook him. The digital camera was still in my hands, the little black box still proclaiming that there was no space left in the camera, that the memory was gone. I wanted to get up and run over to the rest of them, to see if there was anything I could do to help, but I was frozen within my own body. It was as though what I was watching wasn’t even real, and went on before my eyes in stop-motion; I gripped the camera and blinked stupidly, feeling helpless.

  For a moment, I thought he had died in front of me. Left without me. I thought I was safe, and at the same time, my throat was constricting because it meant I had not gone with him, I had not done what he asked of me. My hand was aching because of how hard I was squeezing the camera. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do.

  In front of me, Leigh kept shaking him, trying to wake him. She grabbed his hands, covering her own with smears of blue paint in the process, and it almost made me nauseous, as though they were smears of blood instead of paint, as though they were linked to those lines that had been on my wrists. Leigh’s never going to get that off, I thought distractedly. I had momentarily forgotten that you could wash paint off; it all seemed permanent.

  “Sphinxie, go get the phone,” Vivienne said, and her voice was quiet and serious. It was more frightening than if she had yelled for me to get it. I turned the camera off and ran down the attic stairs with it flopping from my wrist by the strap, slapping against my hip.

  Vivienne stayed home with me while Leigh went to the hospital with Cadence. They wouldn’t let her in the ambulance; she had to follow behind in her own car, and I imagined her driving after them, blind to the speed limits, her knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel, the color gone from her face. For some reason, I desperately wanted to know what was playing on her car radio, if she had it on at all. And did they have radios playing in ambulances? They should, I thought, they definitely should. If someone was slipping away in the back of an ambulance, there should be music playing, any music, just something to send them off. Something for their semiconscious being to concentrate on before they fell away into darkness.