The Black Butterfly

by Shirley Reva Vernick

  “I’m not going to last long out here.”

  He led me slowly forward. “Yeah, I’d have held off for a milder day if I could, but…”

  “Don’t remind me. Are we in the road? This feels like pavement.”

  “No, not the road. Keep going. Almost there.” We went on for what felt like ten yards or so, then he stopped. “Okay, you can open.”

  I lowered my hand and blinked a few times. At first, I had no idea where we were. Then I saw George’s old school off to one side. We were standing on a footbridge over a frozen stream. The kissing bridge! And it was just the two of us. Just me and George, his blue-green eyes flashing, his cherry cheeks dimpling, his breath making cotton ball clouds around his face. “I’ve been thinking about this all week,” he said.

  God, he was enticing, but I decided to play a little coy. “You never answered my question, you know,” I said.

  “What question?”

  “The one about whether you’ve ever crossed paths with a girl here when no one else was around…and kissed her.”

  “I’m a footbridge virgin.” Abruptly, he pulled me to him and kissed me so tenderly and strong, my heart melted straight into my toes. A car drove by, but that didn’t stop us. We stood there kissing in the cold bright air of the footbridge until he finally tore his lips away and whispered, “I’m going to miss you.”

  “Me too.” With my head on his shoulder and our arms around each other, my mind was whirring. “I still don’t know how I’m ever going to survive what’s ahead of me.”

  “Maybe you’ll surprise yourself. Eleanor Roosevelt said a woman is like a tea bag—you never know how strong she is until she gets in hot water.”

  “How did you know that?” I asked in amazement.

  “It was printed on my tea bag that day we ate at the Grindle Point,” he said, and we both laughed.

  Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt was right. Maybe I could turn the impending upheaval into a point of strength—into a bargaining chip with Mom. I wouldn’t grouse about the move or Rex or that boarding school if Mom would green-light the Islemorow summer. I could fake the compliant daughter routine if it got me out of the family road trip and into the Black Butterfly with George. I could put up with anything for that.

  And then all at once it hit me—the understanding of what I needed to do, right now, right here. The knowledge that I couldn’t wait forever—or even until the summer—to do it. The dread at the very thought of it. Suddenly my whole weight was leaning against George.

  “Penny, are you okay? Let’s get you in out of the cold.”

  “I’m fine. I just realized something. Something I have to say.”

  “Okay, but let’s do it in the car. Your lips are blue.”

  “Good idea.” I was going to need to sit down for this one, and so was he.

  We went back to the van, and George turned on the engine for some heat. I absentmindedly flipped on the radio, then shut it off.

  “George,” I said, but nothing more came out.

  “Do you want me not to look?”

  “What?”

  “I thought it might be easier for you to talk if I weren’t looking.”

  “Nothing is going to make this easier.”

  He reached across the cup holder and put his hand on my knee. I cleared my throat.

  “George, I—what I mean is…” It was so hard to string words into sentences.

  “I’m listening.” He was holding my hand now.

  I allowed myself a long moment to soak up the irresistible allure of his eyes. How I loved the way he studied me! How I feared the possibility—no, the probability—that I might never see that look on him again, not after what I was about to tell him. Then I just said it. “George, there are ghosts at the inn. There really are.”

  His hand went limp in mine.

  “It’s not what you think—or thought. Mom didn’t send me here to prowl around. And I wouldn’t have done it even if she’d asked. I don’t—didn’t—believe in ghosts.”

  George was a study in perfect stillness. I waited for him to exhale or cough or lick his lips, but he didn’t. He didn’t do anything.

  “But then I met them, two of them. Two ghosts. Down to one now.”

  He let out a long breath, as if he were trying to blow my words away. His eyes were different now. Sharper. Darker. Colder.

  “It’s true. I saw them. Talked to them. I don’t know why I can see and hear them and you can’t. Mom can’t either, by the way. Just me.”

  He looked down at our twined fingers. Squeezed them.

  “I’m sorry, George. I know I’m rattling your cage here, but it’s true, it really is. Do you believe me?”

  Silence. Then, “No. I don’t know. No.” His face was all pain.

  “Oh.” I started to take my hand away, but he wouldn’t let go.

  “Penny, no. Look, I don’t know what you think you saw. All I know is, I almost lost you once already when you fell off the pier. I’m not going to lose you a second time, not if I can help it, not just because you believe in…Jesus, Penny, it sounds so crazy. If I could just see one of them, you know? Just one glimpse. One solid shred of evidence.”

  “Carl Sagan said the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

  “Carl who?”

  “Sagan. He was an astronomer.”

  “Oh.” He traced the outline of my hand with a slow, attentive finger, as if he were searching for a Braille message on my skin. “Look, I can’t promise I’ll ever believe in ghosts. But I believe in you. Can that be enough for now?”

  “More than enough. For now.”

  I kissed him then—his lips, his temples, the little scar on his eyebrow, the corner of his eye—not caring that I didn’t know what lay in wait for me tomorrow or next week or this summer. In this moment, I was with George. I’d lobbed the first bomb, and he still wanted to be with me.

  Snow started falling, melting at first on the warm windshield, then dusting it white. We kissed until there was half an inch of snow on the windows, and then we kept on kissing. It was probably nearly time to get going to the ferry, the place we first met, but neither of us said anything. Not yet.

  I could have stayed here just like this until June.

  Chapter 13

  Here’s to words that tell the truth

  When it’s easier to lie.

  Here’s to staring into the sun

  When you should close your eyes.

  —“Untangle Me” by The Maine

  We pulled into the small parking area by the wharf, and, just like on the night I arrived here, ours was the only car there. We could see the ferry chugging its way toward shore, spitting smoke and chopping the water. “Looks like we’ve got a couple minutes,” George said, turning off the ignition and unbuckling. He took my hand and leaned toward me—I think we were going to pick up where we’d left off—when suddenly a man was standing right outside of George’s window. I gasped and grabbed George’s hand tighter.

  George turned to see what I was looking at. “Hey, it’s Buddy,” he said.

  “Buddy?” I asked.

  “From the Grindle Point Shop, remember?” George said, winding down his window and letting the polar air inside.

  I guess I didn’t recognize Buddy out of context. Plus, he wasn’t smiling and animated and rattling on about baseball, the way he was that day at the shop. In fact, he looked downright solemn, and by the looks of the flimsy windbreaker he was wearing, he was probably going numb.

  “Hey, Buddy,” George said, waving to him with the hand that held mine.

  “Hey,” he said glumly.

  “Fancy meeting you here,” George offered. “Where’s your truck?”

  The question seemed to puzzle Buddy. He scratched his cap and looked around the parking lot. He opened his mouth as if to say something but only shrugged. George glanced at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “It’s cold out there,” I said through George’s open window. “Why don’t you come in and warm
up?”

  Buddy looked at me hard, as if trying to grasp the meaning of my words but not quite getting it. “I…I…” Now he was staring off in the direction of the ferry.

  “Are you all right, man?” George asked. “Here, let me help you in.” He let go of my hand and was about to open his door when he stiffened, letting out a kind of cough-gulp before going silent.

  “George, what’s the matter?” I asked.

  When George turned to me, his face had lost its rosiness. “Where did he go?” he asked.

  I looked up at Buddy, who was shaking his head. “Who?” I asked.

  “Buddy,” George said with an agitation I hadn’t heard from him before.

  “He’s right there,” I said. I took George’s hand again and pointed out his window. “See, right there.”

  “Uh…oh,” George said. “I, I don’t know what happened there. Buddy, did you…?”

  Buddy blinked back at him, and the two of them just stared each other down while the van turned into the Arctic Circle.

  “Okay,” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on with either one of you, except that you’re both probably hypothermic. Buddy, you stay there, and I’ll help you into the car.” I kissed George’s hand lightly before opening my door.

  “Jesus!” George shouted as I stepped out of the van. “What the hell is going on?”

  Now I was the one getting agitated. “What?”

  “He’s gone again,” George said. “Look. He’s just…gone.”

  Buddy leaned against George’s door and stuck his head inside. “I feel the same way you do, pal,” he said softly.

  A feeling of dread and astonishment jumped on my chest. Buddy had something wrong with him, and I knew what it was. George had something wrong with him too, or maybe something right—though I could scarcely believe it—something bad and good at the same time.

  “What’s going on?” George repeated, more quietly this time, like a mantra, not like a real question.

  “George,” I started, my eyes still on Buddy. “George, this is incredible but…” Wait, no. I had to be completely certain first. I’d already freaked George out enough for one day. I didn’t want to add to the mayhem unless I was absolutely sure.

  I walked around the front of the van to where Buddy stood. He pulled his head out of the window and blinked at me blankly. “It’s okay,” I told him, and then tried to rest my hand on his shoulder. My hand fell right through him. This wasn’t Buddy. This was Buddy’s ghost.

  “What are you doing?” George asked me.

  Good question—what was I doing? I didn’t want to put George through this, and yet it might be the only way to get him to accept the truth. Then again, did he really need to confront reality now, in December, a full six months before I’d be back to stoke Starla’s vengeance? Still, if I didn’t do this, George would have to learn about Buddy’s death through the grapevine, and then he’d put two and two together and figure out that we saw Buddy after he died. I didn’t want George to be alone when he found out how the universe really works.

  I sucked in some of the icy air. “Take my hand, George,” I said, reaching my hand through the open window. As soon as we made physical contact, he jumped, his eyes darting from Buddy to me. Now there was no doubt: George could see Buddy’s ghost as long as he was touching me.

  “What happened to you, Buddy?” I asked.

  Buddy stood up a little straighter. “So you can see me, hear me? No one on the ferry could.”

  I glanced at the ferry, which by this time was only a hundred yards or so from the dock. “What happened out there?”

  “I don’t exactly know,” he said. “I was coming back from my sister’s on the mainland, just sitting in my pickup, fiddling with the radio, and, I don’t know, my head started pounding like hell all of a sudden, like sheer hell, and I got woozy, and, and…I don’t know. All at once nothing hurt anymore. I felt okay, so I got out of the truck to say hello to Thaddeus and Cliff, and they just ignored me. Only, I don’t think they were ignoring me. I think they really didn’t know I was there. And then, I don’t know, here I am with you.”

  “My God,” George breathed.

  Buddy shifted. “Am I…dead?”

  I didn’t answer, and neither did George, but we didn’t need to. Buddy knew the answer to his own question.

  “What do I do now?” he asked, lost.

  “I think,” I said, “I think you go back to your body. You go back to it, and then you’ll be able to cross over.”

  “Cross over,” he said, his eyes brightening a little. “Cross over, yes, that’s what I need to do. But how…?”

  “No idea,” I confessed. “But I’m pretty sure you’ll know. When you’re there with your body, you’ll know.”

  The ferry, carrying five or six cars and trucks, bumped against the dock with a thud. “I hope you’re right,” he sighed, then smiled dimly. “Well anyway, there’s not much to lose at this point, is there? So long, Penny. So long, George.”

  George couldn’t speak, so I said goodbye for both of us. “I’m sorry,” I said as he turned to go.

  “Me too, sort of.” Then he was gone.

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to believe.

  –Laurence Peter, misquoting Sir Walter Scott

  If words existed that could comfort George, I’d have used them, but there weren’t any. All I could do was climb back into the van and sit with him while he struggled to take everything in. Ghosts are real. He can see them when he’s touching me. Buddy is dead. There was so much for him to absorb, so many assumptions to discard, so few notions left to hold onto, and no words to do the revelation justice. Absolutely none.

  I sank into myself. Part of me was terrified that George would resent me for forcing his eyes open, but another part of me felt relief not to be alone with this otherworldly world. I wondered if it only worked with George, or if anyone I touched could see a spirit. Wait—yesterday when we were exchanging gifts, didn’t Bubbles put her arm around me when Starla came downstairs? Yes, and she asked me if I was feeling faint. Rita came over and put her arm around me too. Neither of them had a clue that I was gawking at the ghost of George’s birth mother. So it didn’t work with just anyone. For whatever reason, it only worked with George. We were entangled.

  The blast of horns on the ferry jolted George and me from our separate trances—not the ferry’s own horns but the horns of the cars on board, all honking.

  “I think,” George said, squinting at the ferry. “Yeah, the first truck in line is Buddy’s. No one else can get off because he’s blocking the way. They don’t know he’s…”

  I could see Buddy again, standing next to his pickup, looking inside, probably looking at his slumped body. A man with a beard came out of the pilothouse and rapped on Buddy’s window, probably telling him to wake up and head out. Finally the man opened Buddy’s door and leaned in. A moment later, he was pulling out his cell phone and shouting for the other passengers to help. Buddy looked on as a handful of men lay his body on the deck.

  They were probably going to try CPR while they waited for an ambulance. Hold on, did the island even have an ambulance? I didn’t know. All I knew was that any efforts would be futile. Buddy was already dead.

  “That ferry is going nowhere,” George said. “Those are Buddy’s good friends on board. They’re going to stay, and it could be hours before a medic can get here. We might as well go back home, try again tomorrow.”

  Not exactly the way I wanted to finagle some extra time. I sighed and let my head fall onto the seatback.

  “Besides,” George added, starting the ignition, “I need to meet this ghost you say is hanging at the inn.”

  The dead can be more alive for us, more powerful,

  more scary, than the living.

  –Jacques Derrida

  Oh no, oh no, oh no. That’s all I could think on the ride back to the inn. I wasn’t ready for this, not yet. The idea of introducing George to his own mothe
r—to the girl who wanted me dead—was more than I could handle. But there was no way out. I couldn’t deny George access to his birth mom any sooner than I could make him un-know about ghosts. This was the moment of truth.

  We parked in the driveway, but neither of us made a move to get out.

  “Is there anything I should know first?” he asked.

  His question was so loaded it almost made me laugh. There was so much he should know, but it didn’t feel like my place to tell him. What if Starla didn’t want George to know she was his mother? Should I even care what she wanted? My only concern was for George…but I didn’t know if he’d be better or worse off if he knew the full story in all its pain and misery.

  “Penny?” he said.

  “We might not even be able to find her,” I said. “She can hide. She can go places.”

  “Okay, so it’s a female,” he said. “That’s one thing. What else?”

  “She’s young. I mean, she was young.”

  He nodded.

  “She hates me.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged. “Because I can see her.”

  “So she’ll hate me too?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I-I just don’t think she will. No one could hate you.”

  “Well, there’s only one way to find out. Let’s do this thing.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but can I use your cell first to text my mom? I don’t feel like talking to her right now.”

  “Sure.” He pulled his phone out and showed me what to do.

  “Ferry not running,” I typed aloud. “Will try 2morrow. Will let u know.” I pressed Send. “There,” I said, handing back his phone. “She can’t argue with the ferry, can she?”

  “You ready then?”

  Hardly, but I got out of the van anyway. George came around and took my hand.

  We stepped into the lobby, which felt strangely quiet without anyone puttering around. Bubbles and Vincent were stuck on the mainland, and Rita must have been back in the kitchen or her room. “Follow me,” I whispered. “No talking.” I had the feeling Starla would take cover if she knew I was around.