The Girl Who Threw Butterflies

by Mick Cochrane

  She had grabbed her backpack and headed downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen, sitting at the table with Mrs. Rybak. Mrs. Rybak?

  Her mother looked as Molly had never seen her before. She'd been crying; her eyes were red. She had a crumpled tissue clutched in her hand. But beyond that she seemed utterly different. Transformed. She looked almost bruised and raw somehow, as if she'd been beaten. She looked as if she'd been peeled.

  “Sit down, Molly,” her mother said.

  Suddenly, at that moment, the geography of her own little world shifted. Something fixed and vast, a continent, had in an instant disappeared. An ocean dried up. Suddenly she had become an island.

  6. IT COMES FROM A COCOON

  o did you wow 'em?” Celia wanted to know. “Did you make an impression?”

  They were at the lunch table, working their way through a stack of crackers, Celia tossing them across the table to her one at a time, like a blackjack dealer. They were nutty-tasting, stone-ground, multigrain wafery things, a little scary-looking but good. But Molly felt like she should tease her friend anyway.

  “How about some normal food once in a while?” Molly asked. “How about a normal cracker? Something a little more in the mainstream. Not so left-of-the-dial. I mean, what have you got against Ritz?”

  But Celia blew her off. “They're Swedish,” she said, as if that explained everything.

  “An impression?” Molly said. “I would say, yes, I definitely made an impression.” Molly told her about her space launch of a pitch at the end of practice.

  “Big deal,” Celia said. “One pitch. It doesn't mean a thing.”

  “I guess not,” Molly said. When Celia said it, it sounded true, irrefutably, self-evidently true. One pitch doesn't mean a thing. Of course. It sounded like something from a book, like something Ben Franklin might have said.

  Molly told her about all the stretching—she was sore as could be—and the boys’ muttering gripes about it. She told her how Lonnie House had stepped up to play catch with her—Celia raised an eyebrow, about to say something, but Molly kept going. She told her about Lloyd Coleman trying to skip.

  “I love it,” Celia said. “Your coach should make him do Pilates. Wouldn't that be hilarious?” From her lunch bag she produced a block of suspiciously pale, ripe-smelling cheese and started slicing off hunks with a plastic knife. She offered Molly a piece.

  Molly just looked at it.

  “Don't ask,” Celia said. “Just eat it.”

  Molly spotted Mr. Morales patrolling the lunchroom in his yellow short-sleeved shirt. Now, to Molly, who'd seen him on the field the afternoon before, he seemed a little like Clark Kent or Peter Parker. It was as if he had once again assumed his everyday identity, knotted his tie again and become boring and mild-mannered. But Molly knew what she knew. There was more to Mr. Morales than met the eye.

  He strolled over to their table and smiled. “Molly Williams,” he said. It was partly a greeting, but it almost sounded like some sort of announcement or introduction. Probably he was just testing himself, trying out her name.

  “Hi,” Molly said. Here, she didn't know what to call him, wasn't sure whether he was “coach” or “mister.”

  “You threw the ball well yesterday,” he said.

  “She's an awesome pitcher, you know,” Celia said.

  “I'm sure she is,” Morales said.

  “She's got a secret weapon,” Celia said. “A mystery pitch.”

  “Is that so?” Morales asked. He looked mildly curious, amused.

  “It is so,” Celia said. She looked over her shoulder and leaned forward conspiratorially. “The mothball,” she stage-whispered.

  Molly had a mouthful of juice, and it was all she could do not to spew.

  Morales looked puzzled.

  “A knuckleball,” Molly said. “The butterfly ball.”

  Morales had seemed to be sort of humoring Celia, but now he was definitely interested. “You throw a knuckler?”

  “My dad taught me,” Molly said.

  Morales looked at her as if he were recalculating some-thing, adding “throws knuckleball” into the equation of who she was. “This afternoon you can show it to me,” he said. “Your secret weapon.” And then he strolled away, a lunchroom cop back walking his beat.

  “Mothball?” Molly said. “Mothball?”

  “What's the big deal?” Celia said. “What's the difference?”

  “Mothball?”

  “It comes from a cocoon, it has wings, it floats—”

  “You,” Molly said. “You are so …”

  “What?” Celia asked. “I am so what? Tell me. I can take it. I can handle the truth.”

  “You are so … Swedish.”

  At practice that afternoon Molly was once again invisible, almost. She timed her arrival carefully, got on the field exactly at three-thirty. By this time the boys were already tossing balls back and forth, and Morales, back in baseball mode, was on the diamond with a rake, along with another man, smoothing the dirt around second base.

  Molly stood behind the backstop and stretched a little, twisted her trunk back and forth. It was gray and misty, the sky dark as dusk practically. But in Buffalo this was typical. In Buffalo, any day in April without snow was considered spring. Molly's mother used to take some perverse pleasure in pointing out that Seattle had fewer cloudy days than Buffalo. You can look it up, she used to tell Molly's dad during their regular half-playful, half-deadly serious debates: Buffalo stinks, yes or no. The great gray gloom, her mother called it, depression on a stick.

  Morales called them all together briefly and introduced the new guy—Coach V, he called him—and said he'd be helping out when he could. He had an old, weathered, leathery-looking face and a mustache that truly was pencil thin. He had a toothpick in his mouth.

  “Grandpa,” somebody whispered.

  Once again they did the long warm-up routine, stretching and hopping and skipping. Molly liked it, the tug and pull of it, even though it hurt, maybe because it hurt—she was that weird. She remembered hearing that to get stronger, you destroyed old muscle cells and made new. She liked to imagine that she might be reconfiguring herself from the in-side, getting quietly, invisibly stronger.

  When it was time to play catch, Lonnie House appeared, his beat-up Bisons hat still off-kilter, holding up a ball, a wordless invitation, which Molly accepted.

  They started tossing it back and forth. Molly hoped that Lonnie didn't feel sorry for her. She didn't want to be the object of charity. She hoped he wasn't a Boy Scout or some-thing using her for a good deed. He didn't seem like the type, but what did she know?

  Lonnie was a little bit of a puzzle. He didn't fit into any easily identifiable group. He wasn't a jock or a nerd. He was smart, though—Molly knew that. He didn't raise his hand, but he always knew; he was one of those. He wasn't a punk or a Goth or a stoner. It was hard to get a handle on him. On a standardized test, he was answer E: none of the above.

  The one thing everybody knew about Lonnie was that he loved to draw. And he was good. Last fall Ms. Jacoby, the art teacher, invited or permitted him—Molly didn't know whose idea it was—to paint a mural on her classroom wall. What he produced was pretty amazing. It was a green landscape, a kind of dense rain forest, with a canopy, all kinds of fantastical animals half-hidden in the dark foliage, bush baby eyes peering out of the shrubbery, mole-ish creatures snuffling along the jungle floor, bright macaws perched in the branches, hummingbirds hovering. To Molly, it felt humid; she could almost hear the twitter and caw, the soft breathing. It wasn't real, but still, it was a place Molly would like to visit. It was like one of the places on the other side of her dad's globe; it was like her idea of Fiji.

  Molly was thinking about Lonnie's rain forest, feeling her arm loosening up nicely, noticing that Lonnie's form was better today, he was coming over the top now, when all of a sudden she saw a look of alarm cross his face. “Molly, look out!” he hollered, and she thought, crazily, it was some-thing from the
sky, a bomb, a missile, some piece of debris.

  A ball bounced up and hit her square in the shinbone. It rolled away, and Lloyd Coleman came over to pick it up. He had a nasty smile on his face.

  “Sorry,” he said, still smiling.

  “Sure,” Molly said. Her shin was killing her. She could feel a welt forming, but she didn't look. She wasn't about to give Lloyd that satisfaction. “No problem,” she said.

  “Better watch yourself,” he said. There was something cold and hard in his face, something unfamiliar, something she couldn't immediately assign a name. But then it hit her, after Lloyd had turned and walked away, after she'd assured Lonnie she was fine, and she'd resumed throwing and catching with him. The word came to her, what it was called. It was hatred, that's what it was. Hatred, pure and simple. And it was directed at her.

  Morales broke them into groups and set up various stations around the field. They charged grounders at one, fielded fly balls at another, practiced leading off and getting a quick jump at a third. Morales moved among the groups, a bat in his hand, which he sometimes used as a pointer, performing little demonstrations, making small corrections and adjustments in technique, keeping up a constant stream of encouraging patter. There were quick switches, balls flying, very little standing around, no time to chat. Molly did sneak a peek at her shin and found a nasty-looking knot about the size of a golf ball. She kept Lloyd Coleman on her radar. She raised her personal alert level to red. She didn't intend to get caught by another sneak attack.

  Later Coach V threw batting practice. He had a short no-windup delivery: one quick step, and the ball came in straight and true, middle of the plate, half speed. He worked at a constant rate, regular as a metronome. Step and throw, step and throw, step and throw. Molly had never seen any-thing like it. He was a pitching machine with a mustache.

  When it was Molly's turn, she stepped in and performed respectably. She had a short, compact swing from softball and usually made contact. She didn't try to kill it. She whiffed on the first pitch but connected on all the rest—sent two ground balls to the right side, a decent line drive over third base, and, on her final swing, a line drive up the middle. V gave her a little nod, a sign, Molly wanted to think, of approval.

  Near the end of practice, Morales called Molly over to the right-field line, where he was working with pitchers and catchers. She jogged over, and he handed her a ball. “You loose?” he asked.

  Molly nodded. The ball felt good in her hand. She stepped onto the pitcher's rubber positioned in the grass and looked in at the masked boy who was squatting behind a makeshift home plate. She couldn't tell who it was, not Lonnie, but whoever it was, he was set up solidly and giving her a good target.

  “Let's see what you got,” Morales said.

  It was an audition, no doubt about it. What did she have? Molly had no idea, really. She took a deep breath and thought about throwing in her own backyard, all those games of catch with her dad, all those imaginary games. It was no different, really. The ball was the same.

  She wound up and delivered a strike, which landed with a satisfying pop in the catcher's glove. The catcher, whoever it was, held it there for a moment. Was he surprised? Molly threw a few more pitches, not rockets by any means, but all of them in or near the strike zone with decent velocity. She felt good, smooth; she could do this.

  “Okay,” Morales said. “Show it to me.” Molly looked at him. “You know,” he said. “The floater. The mothball.”

  Molly couldn't help but smile. Celia's Swedish crackers and her big mouth. She gripped the ball with her fingertips, just the way her dad had taught her years ago, just as she always had. She wound up and let it go. Molly loved watching one of her knuckleballs in flight, but what she felt was not self-admiration at all, just simple curiosity. What is this one going to do? This ball started to come in high but then made a sudden swoop, a birdlike dive. It skittered past the catcher, who remained fixed in his squat, looking a little stunned. He got up and chased it then, and Molly glanced at Morales. He'd turned toward the infield diamond, where Coach V was still throwing BP.

  “V!” he hollered. “Over here. Come have a look at this.”

  While Molly's catcher chased down the ball and returned it to her, Coach V ambled over and positioned himself next to Morales, both of them with their arms folded identically across their chests, waiting for her.

  Molly felt beyond nervous now. “In the zone” is how she'd heard professional athletes describe that feeling of being right, in synch, and that's how she felt. She gripped the ball, reared back, and let another knuckler go, this one coming in waist high and at the very end making a hop, a little aerial hiccup, just enough to throw the catcher off—the ball glanced off the side of his glove and bounced off his kneecap.

  The catcher took his mask off, and Molly saw that it was Ryan Vogel, her saxophone partner. He was shaking his head and seemed to be talking to himself, making some unhappy noise, gesturing accusingly in her general direction.

  Coach V had a big crooked smile on his face. “Well,” the old man said. “Well, well, well.”

  7. HARDBALL

  t was almost nine o'clock. Molly was sitting with her mother in the family room. It was an addition to the house, built when Molly was maybe five or six. She still remembered it vividly as her dad's big project. She could recall him studying the plans for what seemed like months, and once the work had actually begun, Molly remembered how every day he inspected what had been accomplished. Together they looked at beams and drywall. He took photographs. Molly loved the smell of lumber. Though not a handyman at all, her dad did some painting and last-minute finishing. It was just a room, carpeting and a couch and television, a sliding patio door and a fuel-efficient fireplace, but he was so proud of it. To her father, it wasn't just a room, it was an idea. He would never spell it out, but Molly understood that the idea involved bowls of popcorn and cups of hot chocolate, lounging on the couch, the Sunday newspaper. It was a place where you could wear pajamas and not worry about spills. It was where they decorated the Christmas tree and hung their stockings. It was where they watched sappy movies and baseball games together.

  His own father, Molly gathered from bits and pieces over the years, was the man who wasn't there, a briefcase and martini and newspaper. He had died when her dad was in high school. He never talked about him. There were no warm stories. Molly somehow understood that his father was the man her dad didn't want to be. The family room must have contained his own idea of fatherhood.

  The family room. That's what they'd always called it, but now Molly thought of it in quotation marks, the “family room.” So-called family room. The two of them, Molly and her mother, didn't seem to constitute much of a family these days. Two people at Celia's would be considered an empty house, nobody home. Two people—if they were a club, they wouldn't have a quorum. If they were a team, they'd have to forfeit.

  Molly's mother had established a position on the couch. She was a woman who needed gear—equipment, accessories—in order to watch television. Herbal tea, magazines and catalogs, daily planner, hand lotion. Not to mention her purse, in size and shape exactly resembling a horse's feedbag, that big, that deep, virtually bottomless, from which she might extract almost anything: lip balm, reading glasses, cell phone, restaurant leftovers, office supplies—paper clips, Post-its, a mini-stapler, you name it.

  They were watching—not watching, that sounded way too focused—they were absorbing a cable news program, angry middle-aged men in red power ties hollering at each other from studios in different cities. One guy was making dire predictions about dirty bombs and subway smallpox, smiling a little bit with self-satisfaction, looking pretty pleased that terrorism was so good for his career. Molly was looking over her science notes, and her mother was writing something in her planner, but they were taking it in, both of them, secondhand current-events anxiety. Molly thought about making a comment to her mother, attempting a joke: What are the ill effects of twenty-four-hour cable news? Hasn
't it been shown to cause nausea in laboratory animals? They used to laugh together sometimes about all the junk on television, the scandals and hypes, the stupid graphics, the snarly hosts. But there was something about her mother's demeanor. She had that do-not-disturb look. Molly let it pass, the urge to banter. She decided not to bother.

  Her mother was right there in front of her, and still, somehow, Molly missed her. It didn't make sense, but it was true. She missed her mother who laughed, her mother for whom life was not one tedious task after another. It was as if that woman had been kidnapped—she might be tied up in a basement somewhere. And in her place there was this mother, a joyless impostor wearing her real mom's clothes.

  Her mother was busy now sorting through a big pile of what looked like store receipts, yellow and pink duplicate something-or-others. Her stuff was spread out all over the place. It filled the couch; it spilled into little satellite piles next to her on the floor. If her dad had been present, Molly wondered, where would he even sit?

  It had always been her mother's nature, Molly believed, to expand—to get bigger, louder, bolder, to fill up more shelves, spread out, invade new territory. Her father's personality was just the opposite. Under pressure he contracted, hunkered down, shrank back, grew silent. Because of that, to some kind of neutral observer—the woman who came once a month to clean, say—he wouldn't have seemed all that present. You couldn't miss her mother's stuff, acres of clothes and miles of shoes, her file-folder and magazine mountains, all the decorative doodads—wood carvings, wire-sculpture thingies, baskets and vases, ceramics, framed prints—that came and went and moved around constantly, and that Molly, taking her cue from her dad, never commented on and certainly never complained about.