“Time?” asks the girl.
“Yes,” says Ethyl sharply. “It does in fact exist. You’ll know that all too well when the baby arrives.” She points to the rain falling on the North Rim. “The cake, Lulu. People are hungry and the men are beginning to fight.”
“The cake?” Lulu repeats.
“It’s time to cut it!” Ethyl barks in exasperation. Lulu is her goddaughter, and she feels in some way she’s failed the girl.
A cry goes up as the bride and groom clasp hands and sink the knife into the crisp white frosting. “Isn’t it lovely?” Dotty Hedquist whispers to Jane. “Five tiers. Yours, I remember, was three. Or two, was it?”
“Four,” Jane replies.
“A delicious cake,” says Dotty contritely.
The cake is passed around on thick white plates. There aren’t enough forks, and Lulu’s cousin Consuelo starts to eat with her hands. Suddenly she approaches the bride, pushes yellow cake into Lulu’s mouth, smears frosting in the bridegroom’s hair, and steps back, laughing. “Oh dear,” says Dotty. “Here we go.”
The bride moves forward, determined and resilient. She cuts a large piece of cake and hurls it at her cousin. “Ethyl taught her to throw,” says Dotty.
“She has quite an arm,” says Jane.
“I was never involved in sports of any kind.”
“Not Ping-Pong?”
“Well, Ping-Pong. That’s not a sport.”
“I’d say it is. It takes timing and a certain angle and momentum.”
Dotty stifles a laugh. “That sounds more like you-know-what to me.”
Jane gapes at her sister-in-law, as if a pink frog has just jumped out of her throat.
“Oh, don’t be such a prude, Jane. Have a little fun. Life isn’t half as serious as you think it is. Now I’d better go find Oliver and drag him home. He’s potted.” She calls over her shoulder, “Tell that brother of mine to dance with you. Otherwise, divorce him!”
Such an ugly word, divorce. Especially at a wedding. Jane looks for Morris and sees he’s still bending the ear of the lady botanist. The sun is hot despite the clouds that boil across the North Rim, trailing long gray fringes of rain. The bride stands beside her ruined cake, laughing, her tiara skewed, her tulle veil floating around her face. She seems happy, Jane notices with surprise. She doesn’t remember being happy on her wedding day. Relieved and nervous, yes, and aware of the strange animal odor coming from her own body. But happy was something else, for another time. She didn’t expect it that day and wasn’t disappointed by its absence. Though Morris seemed happy, and all day he was very good to her.
As Jane watches, Lulu Delgadillo dips a champagne glass into the punch bowl and lifts it to her lips. Then with a sudden grimace, she flings it at her new husband. “Get away from me!” she screams. “Consuelo, get it away!” She bats the air with one hand and flaps her veil with the other. Her cousin waves her hands and cries, “Shoo! Shoo!” The bridegroom picks up the cake knife and moves slowly toward his bride, swatting at the air around him as if he is clearing a path with a machete. “Yellow jackets!” cries someone in the crowd. “No, they’re bumblebees,” decides a myopic gentleman Jane has never seen before. He must be on the groom’s side. He looks like a foot doctor or a dentist. “Bumblebees?” says another. “Those aren’t bumblebees. Bumblebees are cute and hairy, and they make a buzzy noise.” “Yellow jackets. I’m telling you!” “Stay calm!” “Only the females sting!”
“Run!” Then a voice, reasonable and reassuring, like a rubber boat in a lightning storm at sea. The familiar sound of it causes Jane to turn, and she sees Euell Wigglesworth threading his way through the crowd. He holds his hat high in the air and squeezes forward, calling to the newlyweds, “I’m an entomologist, folks. Coming through . . . Excuse me . . . May I get by you, ma’am? Thank you . . . thank you, sir . . . I’m an entomologist . . . coming through.” He nods at the bridegroom. “Mr. Jones, that knife’s not going to do us a whole lot of good.” He approaches the bride and instructs her to stand still.
“I can’t,” she says, and starts to cry. “There’s bees everywhere. They’re in my hair. They’re everywhere.”
“They’re not bees, ma’am,” says Euell Wigglesworth. “They’re wasps. Same order, different family. And you’ve got a few caught in your veil, that’s all. Bend your head down. Let me take a look. Nope. None in your hair.”
“He called you ma’am,” giggles Consuelo.
“If I could take a look under your veil, Mrs. Jones, I could tell you just what we’ve got here.”
“Mrs. Jones!” whoops Consuelo.
“I’ll tell you why. They look like paper wasps imitating yellow jackets, and if I could collect them I’d get rid of them for you and brighten up your day—it’s meant to be a happy day, isn’t it?—and I’d brighten up mine because I’d learn a little more about what these amazing vespids can do. Would you let me do that?”
Mrs. Lulu Delgadillo Jones nods solemnly and stands very still. The crowd is quiet, watching as Euell slips his hands lightly under the veil, as Jane has seen him do dozens of times, reaching inside his butterfly net. The bride catches her breath as the young ranger sweeps the wasps—there are two or three of them—into a glass and covers it with a napkin. He’s so close, their clothes must be touching. Their faces are almost touching. Jane expects to see him lift the veil and kiss her—they’re that close, and he’s a dreamy, handsome man, and it’s her wedding day. Yet he gives off no feeling of romance. He’s business-like and courteous, Jane can see it in the way he moves. This relieves her and disappoints her at the same time. And she doesn’t know why it matters anyway, what Euell Wigglesworth does or doesn’t do on this day. She only knows that suddenly she feels too hot all over her body and she wants to get out, to get away, to push through the crowd and find a place to be alone and look down into the canyon and perhaps, though her shoes aren’t right for it, walk a short way in, to feel its grandeur and its protection, though from what she doesn’t know. Her feelings boil up inside her like the clouds on the opposite rim. She’s proud of him and torn with a feeling she’s experienced before, and she knows what it is: it’s jealousy. She doesn’t want to be Mrs. Jane Merkle, age twenty-five, going on fifty. She wants to be Lulu, with vespids under her veil.
It starts to rain, a few fat drops falling like stones. She remembers that day in the woods with Euell, how she had drawn his attention to her and wallowed in it like warm mud, then become frightened and pushed it away. All that afternoon she’d wanted him to kiss her. She led him under the canopy of a pine tree—it smelled of butterscotch, almost sickly sweet—and waited there in the rain for the kiss, and when it didn’t come she felt relieved and at the same time furious at him. She felt like a river in flood, boiling and free and certain to destroy everything in its hurtling path to the delta. And yet not free. Because the other part of her wanted tenderness, the slow lap of quiet water, the current gathering and flattening beneath a cliff where sharp-winged birds skimmed her shining surface. She had watched the Mississippi, walked along it many an afternoon while the meat was marinating, and she realizes now she misses it. That is all she misses, the moods of the river. And this other river is far away, a mile beneath her feet, a tan thread in a many-shaded cloth stitched by an accomplished seamstress who knows how to hide her stitches. It is hard to glimpse, this river. People speak as if it is there, and certainly it is, but it ducks and turns and hides—though sometimes it roars—and the greater part of it is all the stories told about it, like a gallivanting uncle who lives on another continent, where he wrestles wildebeests and walks among elephants and captures the world’s smallest antelope with his bare hands. A man who remains exactly the age of the young man in the faded photograph, who happens to be him. A man by his absence frozen in time, until all that is left of him, the only life left of him long after his death, though he is not allowed to die, is story. It is so with the river for Jane. She feels cheated of the source, like a woman who has never seen a gard
en, who admires a bouquet. The whole canyon before her is the work of the river. And the wind and the rain. And time, of course. But the river. This river. It comes to her suddenly that all she needs to do is ask, and Euell will take her there.
A Botanist’s Breakfast
Morris Merkle takes a swing at a big, fat bright yellow butterfly. He thought this would be hard—he was told it was somewhat difficult—but instead, how easy it is! Nothing to it, nothing at all! For days he worried he’d be a clumsy oaf when it came to the actual catching of the things, but here, one swing of the silky little net and he’s hauled in a customer—or at least he thinks he has. For suddenly, to his astonishment, the net that felt like his friend seems to be quite empty. What in the dickens happened to the crafty bugger? He searches the grass around him for an injured butterfly, wondering if they hobble or wobble or limp. He even searches the heavens. He looks away at a patch of prickly purple thistles and his heart leaps, and sinks, for there, with its face stuck in a flower, is the beast—or perhaps it’s a different one. He gives chase but the thing has an unsportsmanlike head start and sails away with a few heavy flaps of its wings and disappears into the woods, leaving him huffing and puffing and uttering profanities but determined to do better next time.
Lunch is a great relief. The grocery sack that so embarrassed him on his first day of work has become a symbol of hope and respite. He’s fond of its large, brown, cleanly creased surfaces. It reminds him of a freshly ironed shirt. Each morning Dotty or Jane packs his sandwiches and fruit into a brand-new sack, which in the evening, after work, he discards. Even this ritual gives him pleasure: the ringing out of the old bag and bringing in of the new. The puffy sound of the bag as it drops into the trash can, whose lid opens and closes by stepping on a pedal. These are things he’s never taken notice of before—like butterflies—and in the discovery of life’s details he feels a renewal.
He wonders if he’s becoming more religious. He remembers the first time he discovered a tick on Martin, an actual tick crawling through the fur behind the dog’s left ear. He’d never seen a tick before and was afraid of it at first, but finally from somewhere came the courage to pick it off. To pick it off and bring it to Jane, who drowned it in kerosene. After that he noticed ticks everywhere and was no longer bothered by them, even when they blew up with blood and dropped off the dog and rolled around like peas on the floor. It was a transformation similar to the transformation caused in him by carrying his lunch in a sack. Or chasing butterflies. Or living on his own (except for meals) at the hotel.
Or perhaps love’s the culprit. He hopes not, because it wouldn’t do, would it, to feel the amorous tug and have to fend it off? In recent decades he’s not been much of a one for amorous tugs, though he certainly felt a nibble when he first met Jane. He’s inexperienced, there’s no getting around it, but he finds himself acting like a schoolboy whenever Miss Elzada Clover enters the hotel dining room, where now and then—and more often now, because he knows her schedule—he takes his breakfast before running off to Dotty’s to pick up his lunch. If he’s not mistaken, she, Miss Clover, seems quite enthusiastic about his presence. He tries to arrive first, to claim the table next to the most desirable table, and after ordering his two poached eggs and coffee, he reads—or tries to read—the paper, glancing surreptitiously toward the dining room door. When she arrives, she is always alone. Her companion, the other lady, seems to be a late sleeper or, perhaps, not a breakfast aficionado. Miss Clover always wears the same clothes—a man’s shirt and a pair of clean, pressed trousers that remind him of his lunch sack—and she moves comfortably and automatically to the most desirable table and immediately sets her reading material in front of her. With a brief yet heartfelt greeting, such as “Good morning,” she commences her perusal of manuscripts or notes jotted on legal pads, and one recent morning she hefted an enormous reference book, something to do with flowers no doubt, onto the table and dove in. And he has his paper, so altogether it’s quite pleasant.
Once or twice he’s taken a stab at conversation, but it seems Miss Clover isn’t much of a morning conversationalist. He would say she was a woman of few words, but at the wedding reception she did more than hold up her end of things, divulging the entire short history of Spanky, her collie. This indicates to him that afternoons are best for her, so he’s decided to invite her to tea. This decision alarms and excites him at the same time, though he tells himself it’s no more than a friendly gesture, and the West is a friendly place. He and Miss Clover hail from midwestern cities settled by Scandinavians, Slavs, and malcontents, but here on the edge of the world, on the edge of a crack in the earth too grand to conceive of if one is not standing beside it, gazing across and down, a different kind of humanity is called for, the kind that reaches out to say hello.
He has a growing list of topics he thinks might interest her, and every night in bed he adds to it. Dogs, dog breeds, dog food and exercise are the obvious subjects of choice, but there might be something to say about midwestern cooking, trees of the Midwest, trees in general, and butterflies. Hopefully she knows something about butterflies. He’s not sure what he knows about them except that they keep vanishing as if through a hole in his net. And today, in a short lesson from Ranger Wigglesworth, the young man in charge of the monarch census, he learned that butterflies and plants are “interdependent.” He finds it compelling, yet horribly embarrassing, to imagine himself as the butterfly and Miss Clover the plant.
To his great relief a conversational opportunity arises the very next morning, which happens to be the morning after the capture of his first bona fide butterfly. The very butterfly that eluded his net and flapped away into the woods circled back again and came to rest on one of the purple thistles, where Morris swept it up, or rather plunked the net down on it, smashing the specimen somewhat in his hasty joy. But never mind. He got it. And though there was considerably less fanfare than he hoped surrounding the event, Ranger Wigglesworth, a taciturn young man if there ever was one, identified the broken creature as a tiger swallowtail. “Good catch,” was all he said.
At breakfast, still feeling somewhat elated, his mind is elsewhere and he makes the silly mistake of sitting at the wrong table. It doesn’t dawn on him until he sees Miss Clover crossing the dining room. Her face wears an odd expression, the look one might give a fellow driver who happens to be traveling on the wrong side of the road. He rises from his chair—or rather her chair—to apologize and correct the situation. “I’m terribly sorry,” he begins.
“Oh, my goodness, Mr. . . .”
“Morris.”
“Ah, yes. Mr. Morris. We are creatures of habit, it’s true, but a little mix-up of our daily routine keeps our brains active, our minds sharp.” She gives a little wave of her hand. “Think nothing of it. Please.” And she sits at his usual table. Instead of her botany tome, she has brought a slim novel to read. A paperback, of all things. A detective story.
He can’t think what possesses him, but he hears himself say, “Do you read, Miss Clover?” He immediately regrets it.
She looks patiently at him. “I do, Mr. Morris. Do you read?”
“I’m . . . well, of course. Yes. I do, in fact. The paper. My habit,” he shrugs.
“And a sensible habit it is. More sensible than murder mysteries.” She leans toward him and whispers, “I’m afraid I’m at the mercy of Ngaio Marsh. Always have been.”
He can’t make sense of that confession, but says instead, “I see you’ve ordered the same breakfast I have.”
“Toast. Is that what you had?”
“Yes, I’ve just finished it. See?” He holds up his plate. “Nothing but crumbs.”
“There’s the evidence.” She smiles. A beautiful, encouraging smile. “I suppose toast in the morning is common enough.”
“Oh, it’s common,” he says quickly, “no doubt about that. But don’t you find the common clues are often the most . . . uncommon ones?”
“Well, now that’s something I haven’t ever g
iven a thought to. Are you a sleuth of sorts, Mr. Morris?”
“No no. Heavens no!” he laughs. “Just an observer of human nature.”
“One and the same, I say. I wonder.” She taps her right forefinger lightly against the rim of her saucer. “Perhaps I might borrow your ear for a moment. I’m trying to work out a puzzle, but I can’t seem to make the pieces fit.”
“You’ve looked on the floor?”
“The floor?”
“When Jane does puzzles, half the puzzle is on the table and the other half on the floor.”
“Jane?”
“My wife. She stays with the Hedquists and I stay here. Rashes,” he adds. “Allergic to the bedcovers. A better arrangement for both of us in the end.”
“Ah.”
“The first piece is the most important one,” says Morris, from a well of wisdom about puzzles he didn’t know he possessed. “It’s often right in front of your nose. Like that toast there. It may take a form quite similar to toast. By which I mean it may look unremarkable.”
“Toastlike.”
“If one is in the realm of toast.”
“And if one is in the realm of, let’s say, mistaken identities, skeletons in the closet, what might that first piece look like, Mr. Morris?”
“Well, it’s fairly obvious, isn’t it? It would look like bone, Miss Clover.”
“Bone.” She nods. “Of course. Why that’s it! We must have a look at the bone. The structure itself may speak to us. Or to someone who knew him well, who knew him as a living man. Though not as well as Mrs. Hed—” She draws a breath. “How foolish of me to leave that stone unturned.”
The Butterflies of Grand Canyon Page 19