Butterfly

by Sonya Hartnett

  “That’s right!” Plum sits up straighter, charged by the exactness of the phrase. “They don’t respect my decisions! I think I’m old enough to stay home alone at night, but Mums says I’m not. When I wanted more pocket money, Mums said I don’t need it. Whenever I go out, I have to say where I’m going and when I’ll be home. And look at me — I’m fat. But when I told Mums I didn’t want dinner, she made me eat it, even though I’m fat! I’m not even allowed to decide what to eat!”

  “You’re not fat —”

  “I am! Look at me! I’m a whale!”

  The intrusion of this subject causes instant dejection, turns the whole evening monochrome. Mrs. Wilks, however, laughs, although not as Mums would. She laughs like someone who knows what is true. “That’s puppy fat, Plum. I had puppy fat too, at your age.”

  “But I’m ugly,” Plum sulks. “You’re not ugly.”

  “Ugly!” Mrs. Wilks claps her hands. “Who told you that? Only yourself, I bet. You’re not ugly, Plum. You have nice olive skin. You’re already tall. You have rich thick hair, a pure jet color. You’ve got good bones in your face. You’ve got a straight nose and a friendly smile and interesting eyes. You’re exactly the type of girl who could become a fashion model.”

  Plum balks as though bitten. “Really?”

  “Absolutely. You have the features that fashion photographers look for. You should never think you’re ugly. You could be in magazines.”

  Plum lists sideways, dazed. Color is streaming back into the world — enough, and then too much, so the grass is emerald, the sky is mercury, the rug a circus of scarlet and sapphire. The lady’s smile lingers on her; then she looks at her son. “Is it time for the candles, David?”

  Disturbed into life, the child chirps, “Yes!”

  “It’s time for the cake.” Maureen finds her feet like a turquoise doe. David is quick to follow his mother, so Plum is left sitting alone. In private she runs her fingers around the good bones of her face, up the steep slope of her nose, into her rich jet hair. Maybe things are not so terrible as she has believed. Magically, her body already feels less heavy, less sweaty and sluggish. When Mrs. Wilks emerges from the house with the cake, Plum looks at her with something like first love.

  The candles are lit and the song is sung; Mrs. Wilks sings the smell like a monkey version. David huffs air on the four trembling flames, his mother and guest applaud. Mrs. Wilks slices three wedges of chocolate sponge, and again the partygoers dine in silence. There is not much light left in the clouds now, and the sky is empty of birds; mosquitoes hover needfully at the fringe of the picnic rug. Maureen refreshes the repellent on her son, then beckons Plum nearer so she too may be doused. The droplets sizzle on the girl’s sunburned cheeks; she can’t remember the last time her own mother sprayed her with insect repellent. Sucking cream from under her fingernails, Plum gazes around the garden, druggedly content. “It’s much better here than at home.”

  “Life is difficult at your age,” Mrs. Wilks replies. “Everything is fierce, and usually wrong.”

  It isn’t the answer Plum had expected — yet it is also pristine. To be so deeply understood makes Plum’s gaze go watery, and she has to glance away. “Shall I tell you something dreadful that happened to me when I was your age?” asks Mrs. Wilks.

  “All right.”

  “One day, my mother took me to the doctor. My mother knew nothing, or nothing she’d admit to knowing — hardly anyone’s mother did, in those days. So when I got a lumpy chest, she took me to the doctor. Maybe she thought I had a disease — maybe she just couldn’t bear to explain. The doctor prodded and squeezed with his hairy hands. Our old family doctor, whom I’d known all my life, kneading away. Then he looked at my mother and said, Your daughter is going to be a big girl.”

  Plum pauses. “I don’t get it.”

  “A big girl. I wasn’t ill, I didn’t have a disease. I was only growing breasts.”

  The word alone makes Plum hunch her shoulders around the upstarts on her own chest. She never talks about them, their arrival has gone unmentioned in her house: so it’s alarming, yet also interesting, to hear this woman speak so openly of hers. “That must have been embarrassing.”

  “I nearly died.”

  “A big girl.” Plum thinks on it, and gurgles.

  “I came home and cried and cried. I was so angry. I felt utterly betrayed. No one had betrayed me, but that’s how I felt. It’s difficult, isn’t it, being young? Nothing is easy, not for years.”

  This sobers Plum. “Not for years?”

  “Not for me — not for many people. Not for years.”

  “But it’s better now?” Plum suggests.

  Mrs. Wilks shrugs. “Better in some ways. Not in every way.”

  Plum’s eyebrows knit; she thinks of her father, his aggravating sadness. She can’t understand this thread of dissatisfaction that pulls through perfect worlds. “You’re married,” she points out. “You’re pretty.”

  “Things like that don’t make the difference, Plum. You’ll find out.”

  Plum, silenced, looks down at the ruined feast. The mugs are empty, the plates smeared, the fairy bread curling at the corners. David sits without a sound, his hands knotted in his lap. The girl feels the onus to say something wise. “If people aren’t happy with what they have,” she tries, “they should just change things, until they have what they want.”

  Mrs. Wilks smiles. Her eyes are two sleepy panthers that wake up when she smiles. “I wish it were that simple, Plum — maybe it is, and I just haven’t realized. We should be friends, you and me, shouldn’t we? It would make life happier — it would for me, anyway. We could be sisters. I could teach you about clothes and makeup. You could tell me your worries. It might be the saving of both of us.”

  And although Plum has never wanted a sister nor understood why anyone would, for the second time this evening she finds herself accepting an invitation she can’t politely refuse. “OK,” she has to say. Then the prospect of being privy to what this stylish woman knows presents itself like a key: “Yes, OK!”

  “It will be fun,” says Mrs. Wilks.

  Plum has another creamy soda, Maureen has a cup of coffee. David wanders off through the trees, carrying the book that Plum gave him. Plum hears the back door of her house bang shut, then the rasping hinges of Cydar’s bungalow door. Mums will be stacking the dinner dishes, Fa will be filling the sink. “I should go home,” she supposes.

  And with that, piercingly, her fear returns — this is the instant her neighbor will say, You can’t go home, you’ll never go home. Instead Mrs. Wilks says, “Thank you so much for coming. David was so pleased.”

  Plum’s heart beats again. “Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Wilks.”

  “Mrs. Wilks! That’s not who I am. Please, Plum, call me Maureen. I can’t bear old Mrs. Wilks.”

  “OK,” says Plum, who’s honored.

  “And what’s happening at your house tonight? Will it be as quiet as ours?”

  Plum says, “I’ll be watching Planet of the Apes. It’s one of my favorites. Roddy McDowall plays Cornelius, he’s really good. It’s not my favorite favorite, though. My favorite favorite is The Omega Man.”

  “So you’re a film buff?”

  Plum shrugs modestly. “I guess. I like silly science-fiction movies best — Journey to the Center of the Earth, Fantastic Voyage, things like that. Ones where they get a little lizard and turn it into a monster. I like scary movies too — The Exorcist is my favorite, so is Night of the Living Dead. I also like those black-and-white horrors from the fifties —”

  “Those ones about communism?”

  “No, not about communism — about giant ants and swamp creatures and flying saucers. They’re not scary — they’re funny.”

  Maureen nods, the panthers sleep. “I don’t know anything about movies. Maybe you can teach me. I know Alfred Hitchcock, that’s all.”

  “Hitchcock is great! My favorite is The Birds. Most people’s favorite is Psycho, but that�
��s not his best. North by Northwest is his best, although some people reckon Vertigo is better. But The Birds is really good. You should watch it, if it comes on TV. But it’s Planet of the Apes tonight. Usually Justin watches with me — his favorites are Soylent Green and Enter the Dragon. There’s a coincidence between Soylent Green and Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man — do you know what it is?”

  “I have no idea. Tell me.”

  “Charlton Heston stars in all of them. His most famous film is Ben-Hur. Justin says he’s not a good actor, but I think he is. But Justin’s going out with Cydar tonight, so I’ll be watching Planet of the Apes by myself. You should watch it too, if you’re not doing anything else.”

  “All right, I will. And where do your brothers go, on a Friday night? Out on dates?”

  “I don’t know.” Plum staggers upright, shedding crumbs. “They don’t tell me anything I can tease them about.”

  Maureen laughs. It’s a lovely, silky sound. “I’m so glad we’re friends,” she says. “I’ll learn a lot from you.”

  “I’m glad too.”

  “Listen — I’ve had a small idea, one that might help you. I suppose you always take your lunch to school?”

  Plum nods, distracted by a wodge of cream on her sleeve. “Mums makes sandwiches.”

  “Well, then, if you want to lose weight, why don’t you put your lunch in the bin? Monday to Friday, in the bin. Your mother won’t know, so she won’t worry. You’ll be slimmer in no time.”

  Plum frowns down at her. “I’ve never thought of that.”

  “You should try it. It will work. And one other thing: your real name surely isn’t Plum?”

  “No.” The girl hesitates. “It’s stupid. It’s Ariella.”

  “Ariella! Beautiful! I’ve never heard a more beautiful name. Stop calling yourself Plum — it’s absurd, you’re not a fruit! — and start calling yourself Ariella — no, Aria! Aria, like a song. Live life as Aria from now on: be Aria, think Aria. Trust me, it will make a difference.”

  And Plum, dazzled, trusts her, and believes. She goes home that night remade. Even the discomfort of her stomach, a drum swollen convex with sugar and gas, doesn’t prevent her from feeling she’s found her necessary wings.

  SATURDAY IS HOT BY SUNRISE, and will be fiery by midday. Plum wakes full of a child’s Christmas Eve glee. She has made, last night, a new and powerful friend: all awkwardness and uncertainty are behind her now. When Fa brings her breakfast — sweet tea, unstrained, so she can drink the leaves; thick toast, unsliced and heavily buttered, all tumors excised from the strawberry jam — she says, “Thanks very much, Fa,” with such feeling that he is stopped in his tracks. “That’s all right, Plummy,” he says. And it would be too mean to correct him: Aria.

  When she’s eaten her breakfast Plum untangles her sheets and crosses the room to pull up the blind. The morning sunlight drives her backward, making her blink dramatically. Leaning into the glass, she sees something that tears away the edges of her good mood. Parked in the driveway of the house next door is the Datsun Skyline that Maureen’s husband drives. It’s a small blue sedan with a white vinyl roof, well-kept and undented and trim. Plum has seen the vehicle countless times before: each time, it has meant nothing. Now, it’s like a sty in her eye. She can’t visit Maureen while the car is there. There’s no reason why not, but she cannot.

  Now and then, throughout the morning, Plum returns to her window to stare down into the garden next door. The lawn is a clean green rectangle, unoccupied. There’s a flattened area where the picnic rug had lain. David’s wading pool is still full of water — leaves fall into it during the afternoon, and scud about on the glinting surface territorially. The door of the Wilks house is shut tight against the gusting of the north wind. There’s never any sign of Maureen. Plum puts her face to the pane, compresses her nose. “Some useful sister,” she remarks. She bets her neighbor didn’t bother to watch Planet of the Apes.

  The difficulty of her homework stirs her temper after lunch, as does the unwieldiness of her books. She mumbles over her papers and pen until the grandfather clock, bonging in the hallway, provides an excuse for fury. “I hate that clock!” she screams downstairs; but her mother and father have gone to buy more clocks, and Cydar is wherever Cydar goes, and Justin is out in the driveway, hands on hips, considering the grizzled engine of his car. Plum stalks outside, where the breeze peppers grit against her calves and the scorched concrete makes her hop. Her brother does not look around, though he surely hears her approach. Near to him, she steps sideways onto a rockery, into the house’s shadow. “Stupid hot concrete,” she says.

  “Stupid bare feet.” Justin’s own feet are shod with ancient black thongs which bear the impression of his toes. He’s bare-chested, and wings of sunburned skin are peeling from his shoulder blades. The heat has stuck his dark curls to the back of his neck, his palms are grubby with grease.

  “I’m bored,” Plum tells him.

  Justin bows deeper into the engine. Knuckles of spine show beneath his brown skin. “You can change the oil.”

  “I hate cars. I hate oil.” She pokes her thumb through a hole in a monstera’s leaf, and tears through the green platter to its edge. The noisy unzipping sound is satisfying; she chooses and cleaves another leaf. “Your car’s a Holden,” she states.

  Justin says, “Hmm,” under the bonnet.

  “Is a Holden better than a Datsun Skyline?”

  Justin’s knees buckle under the atrocity of the question. Plum snuffles with amusement. She frees the monstera, slouches against the weatherboards. “But is a Datsun Skyline a good car, anyway?”

  The vast steel bonnet is casting a blue shadow over Justin, so she cannot see his face well. “I guess it depends what you consider good. If you want to go and stop, not too fast, it’s good. If you want to be ordinary and reliable and unadventurous, it’s good.”

  Plum nods her head against the house. She can’t decide what this information tells her.

  Justin looks through the shadow at her, socket wrench in hand. “Why do you ask, Plum? Do you like the Skyline next door?”

  “I’m not Plum anymore.” The girl pushes abruptly away from the wall, steps into the white grip of the afternoon. “I’ve changed my name to Aria. Plum was a Skyline. You have to call me Aria.”

  On Sunday morning Mums stops in her daughter’s doorway and says, “You’re not coming to church, then?”

  Plum is sitting up in bed, eating breakfast. She has already seen that the Datsun is still parked in the driveway next door, and the car has come to represent every false promise that’s ever been made. She looks up sourly at her mother, her face still fuggy from sleeping, her hair an angry brawl. “I told you, I don’t believe in God. God doesn’t exist, Mums. I’m not going to visit somebody who doesn’t even exist.”

  Mums holds an impervious silence. Her gaze roves the citadel of Plum’s room, across the posters of cats and the dinky soft toys, over the clothes on the floor and the papers on the desk, along the cast iron of the bedhead. She is dressed in a lilac suit whose collar is crimped like a hibiscus flower — the color and style are in fashion, but Plum thinks, Dowdy. Like the house they live in and the objects with which they surround themselves, Plum’s parents are old — both of them are over fifty, which makes them the most elderly parents she knows. A fact of which Plum is not proud. Their age makes it obvious to everyone who meets the Coyle family that Plum was a mistake which occurred when Mums and Fa were old enough to have known better, and should have been doing better things. “Anyway,” Plum adds, “you can go to church without me. You don’t need me there. You’ll probably like it more. You can drive as slowly as you like. You can listen to your boring radio on the way. You can sing the hymns at the top of your voice. And after Mass you can yack for as long as you like. You only go to church to see your friends, anyway. You don’t go to pray. I don’t even reckon you believe in God.”

  Mums replies, “I’m disappointed, Plummy.”

  “Dis
appointed!” A bead of toast flies from Plum’s mouth and lodges somewhere in the sheets. “I’m the one who should be disappointed! Why don’t you ever just — respect me? Respect what I decide?”

  To which Mums answers, “Why don’t you respect me?”

  Plum gapes, stunned by the lowness of this. “I’m not going,” she growls. “I’ve decided. I’m never going to church again, so don’t bother asking me. And don’t call me Plum, either. That’s not my name anymore.”

  “No? What do you want to be called?”

  The ongoing presence of the Datsun has dissipated Plum’s desire to please Maureen Wilks: but it is as if she is hitched to a terrible train whose track lies across everything that’s brought happiness in the past. “Aria. Not Ariella. Aria.”

  “Aria.” Mums’s face crinkles around the word. “It’s all right. A bit cold, I think.”

  “Cold? Cold!” A crust of toast leaps off the plate. “What do you care if it’s cold? You never call me darling, or sweetie, or anything like that — you’re the cold one, not me!”

  “Plum!” calls Fa from downstairs. “Stop yelling!”

  Mums retreats under the barrage. “Aria,” she says. “I’ll try to remember. But you might always be Plum Pudding to me.”

  She strides away in her churchgoing shoes while her daughter is rendered mute.

  At lunchtime the next day, the topic is the new art teacher. The previous year, when Plum and her friends had been the babies of the school, the girls had accepted all facets of secondary-college life with awe and quiet dismay. Now, in their second year, their inexperience buffed from them, their place at the bottom of the hierarchy passed to a new influx of waifs, they are confident enough to complain about every aspect of the timetable, curriculum, faculty and uniform that doesn’t completely suit them. The new year has brought to their academic lives many changes for the worse, including double periods of mathematics, detention for anyone who doesn’t wear her tracksuit to gym, and a rearrangement of students into different homerooms, a move that has fragmented cliques and separated best friends. The art teacher is not the worst of the year’s changes, but she is one of the more satisfying. There are so many offensive elements to the woman that it’s hard to know where the annihilation should begin. “What about her dress?” Samantha’s roaring. “It was foul! Like she’d spewed!”