The Girl Who Threw Butterflies

by Mick Cochrane

  “Mom,” Molly said. She tried to sound just a little exasperated, pained but patient, willing to school her mother. “Nobody does that anymore. People don't ‘go out.’ They don't exchange rings and go steady. We're just friends, boys and girls, we hang out together, all of us. Lonnie's my friend.”

  When Molly heard herself say that—”Lonnie's my friend”—it sounded surprisingly true. She was pretty sure she liked the sound of it.

  “Of course,” her mother said, and dried her hands. When she felt dated, she would usually back off. Molly didn't en-joy making her mother feel old and out of it, but it worked. Right now she was willing to do what she had to in order to protect her privacy.

  Once the kitchen had been restored to order, they made themselves sandwiches, peanut butter on whole wheat. Molly poured a couple of glasses of milk and they ate at the kitchen table.

  “How was practice?” her mother asked.

  Molly knew her mother meant softball, the girls’ team, but she hadn't said that, not specifically. “Fine,” Molly said.

  Technically, she was telling the truth, but she felt like she was lying, and she didn't like the sensation. She felt guilty being deceptive. But she didn't feel ready to go there, not yet, not with her mother. Molly didn't know what words she would even use to explain what she was doing.

  When she first went out for baseball, she'd talked to Tess Warren about it. Molly was a little afraid that her softball friends might be hurt that she'd abandoned the team. Rejected them somehow. What Molly said came out part explanation, part apology. “Go for it” was what Tess said. She didn't sound cold exactly, but she didn't sound all that warm either.

  When Molly tried to imagine telling her mother, it came out sounding stupid. Maybe it was stupid. So Molly took a big bite of her sandwich, filled her mouth with peanut butter, nodded, and made some agreeable noise.

  On Friday, for the first time, Molly threw to hitters in a scrimmage. The batters wore helmets. On the bench players spit sunflower seeds nervously and kept their eyes glued to what was happening on the field. There was no joking around. Everyone understood that what happened could decide who made the team and who got cut.

  Coach V stood behind the mound and called balls and strikes. Molly knew some of the boys thought he was just a weird old guy. They rolled their eyes behind his back. They called him “Gramps.” There were rumors about him. Who was he, anyway? some of the boys wanted to know. Why didn't he use his full name? What was he hiding? He was a Cuban defector, somebody said, a former Olympic ball -player who floated into Miami on a raft. Somebody else said he was a criminal, and this was his court-ordered community service.

  Molly tried to think of him as a Zen master, a teacher trained in the old ways, a sensei, someone whose long experience was worthy of respect. He didn't say much, but when he did, it often had that slow-burning Zen quality. It would be something you might have to take some time and think about.

  Molly got off to a shaky start. Her first knuckleball didn't knuckle at all: it spun rather than floated, and Ryan Vogel, her bad-breathed saxophone buddy, hit it to left field for a solid single. She walked the next batter on four straight pitches, all knuckleballs, none of them close to being strikes. She threw one decent floater to Lloyd Coleman, who swung under it and popped out softly to the second baseman, but then she got wild again and walked another batter.

  Bases loaded now and one out. If Lonnie let a ball get past now, a run would score. The pressure was on both of them. Molly took a deep breath and tried to recall the les-sons she'd been reading in her Zen book. In archery the secret was letting go. There was a whole chapter about that. Shooting an arrow was not about gritting your teeth and trying hard. Neither was throwing a knuckleball. It wasn't about getting mad or all pumped up and red faced, none of that kill-kill football mentality. Don't think, the master says. Be like a child.

  “Just play catch,” Desmond Davis hollered at Molly from shortstop. Desmond was probably the best athlete on the team, fast and strong with a rocket arm. He was quiet, not shy but self-contained. He mostly kept to himself. It pleased Molly that he would offer some encouragement. “Just play catch.”

  It was a baseball cliché, one of the oldest. It was what you said to a wild pitcher. But this time Molly heard it, really heard it, for the first time maybe, and realized it was great advice, brilliant even. The batter didn't have to be part of the equation. In the backyard, that was what Molly had done with her dad, she'd just played catch. The batters were imaginary, so they never bothered or distracted or frightened her.

  Molly played catch with Lonnie. She threw two knucklers for called strikes, one for a ball, and then one more that the batter swung at and missed. The pitch did a little hop at the end, but Lonnie held on. Two outs.

  “That's the way!” Desmond hollered. “That's how it's done.”

  Next up was Grady Johnston. Molly had known him forever. She remembered that in the third grade they sat at the same table and once worked together to make up a secret code, a complicated bunch of numbers and letters they used to spell out their names. These days he was all attitude and posture. Sometimes Molly would walk past Grady and his pals on the school lawn, and they'd be draped across their bicycles like little hoodlums in training, smirking and swearing, whispering and pointing at girls.

  Now, at the plate, Grady was energetically chewing a big wad of bubble gum. He pawed at the dirt and tugged at his batting gloves. When he finally assumed his stance, his bat kept moving in tight, menacing circles.

  “That boy looks awfully eager,” Coach V said.

  Molly knew it wasn't about eagerness. It wasn't about bluster. It was about waiting. She decided to make Grady wait a little longer. She motioned for Lonnie to join her on the mound for a conference.

  Lonnie pushed his mask off his face and Molly noticed some fresh writing on the back of his hand. It was practically covered in blue ink, not just a word or a phrase, but long lines of tiny letters, whole sentences. It looked like a paragraph—it could have been the first chapter of a novel.

  “Aren't you afraid of ink poisoning?” Molly asked.

  “Everybody asks that,” Lonnie said.

  “I wonder why.”

  “Ink isn't poisonous,” he said.

  “You better hope not.”

  Molly was trying to read his hand, but it wasn't easy to do, not upside down, written across the contours of his skin. But she saw her name. Maybe it was her name, or something like it. But that's all. She couldn't make out the rest. If it was in a full sentence, and she was the subject, she didn't know the predicate. How did she feel about that? Her name on his skin. She wasn't sure.

  “Okay,” Coach V said. “Enough chitchat. How about we play ball?”

  Lonnie resumed his position behind the plate, and Grady stepped into the box, still chewing and twitching and tugging and waggling.

  Lonnie asked for a knuckleball, and Molly gave him one. This one came in high but dropped into the strike zone.

  Coach V raised his right hand. “One,” he said.

  Grady kept up his little ritual of digging and wagging. It was what her science teacher called display behavior: what an animal does to show off and to appear fierce. A guy like Grady was all about display. Molly tried her best to ignore him. She was just playing catch. Her second pitch did a little wiggle and came in over the outside corner.

  Coach V raised his right hand once more. “Two,” he said.

  Be like a child, Molly told herself. She ignored Grady. She looked at Lonnie's mitt and imagined it was her dad's big floppy Wilson. She imagined she was in her backyard on a summer day feeling happy and carefree. She didn't aim, she just wound up and let the ball go.

  If it were possible for a pitched baseball to have a sense of humor, this one did. It came in belt high, nice and slow, right over the middle of the plate. It looked like the fattest, juiciest pitch imaginable. That was the setup of the joke it was going to tell.

  Grady's eyes got big. He lunged forwa
rd and took a huge swing. But while Grady was lurching forward, the pitch de-livered the punch line of its little joke. It veered off toward Grady's shoe tops, where Lonnie scooped it up on one hop just as Grady was following through from his mighty whiff.

  Grady stood frozen for a moment, as if stunned. Coach V raised his thumb in the air—”Batter's out,” he said matter-of-factly—and Lonnie stood up, a big grin on his face.

  Grady came to then. He looked a little wild. He ripped the batting helmet off his head and sailed it in the general direction of the bench. It bounced and skidded toward Coach Morales, who was standing there alone, his arms folded across his chest.

  Morales calmly stepped aside and watched while the helmet spun and came to rest in the dirt.

  “All right,” he said. “I've seen enough.”

  11. GLOW-IN-THE-DARK STARS

  riday night Molly babysat for the Rybaks, the family next door. Even though she'd done it many times before and knew the drill, Mrs. Rybak ran through her excruciatingly detailed list of instructions and list of telephone numbers. Molly knew Kyle was allergic to walnuts, she knew Caitlin's bedtime was eight o'clock. They were just going to dinner and a movie, but Molly got the full briefing. She nodded attentively and responsibly. She liked Caitlin and Kyle, and liked the extra money, and she really liked the chance to be out of her house for a while, if only next door.

  As soon as the Rybaks left, Kyle hunkered down with his Game Boy, and Caitlin dragged Molly off into her room to play Pretty Pretty Princess. It was a dress-up board game, like Candy Land, only with plastic jewelry, which players earned, piece by piece—rings, bracelets, earrings. Caitlin never got tired of it. She could play Pretty Pretty Princess all night. For Molly the fun of the game was watching Caitlin's face: how excited she was to put on a bracelet, how solemn she looked when she won a game and put on the cardboard crown. Molly liked lying on her belly on the carpeted floor of Caitlin's pink girly-girl room. She could be as silly or as stupid as she liked. It was like being on vacation from her real life, her serious self. No one was watching her, no one was grading her, no one was judging her.

  After she performed the bedtime routines with the kids—bath, snack, and books—Molly went downstairs and called Celia.

  “What's the food situation there?” Celia wanted to know. “Have you looked in the fridge yet?”

  Molly walked the phone into the kitchen and looked around. A bowl of fruit on the counter, jars of pasta, milk and yogurt and eggs in the refrigerator. Nothing unusual.

  “You know what I like to do when I sit?” Celia asked. “I pig out on the kids’ cereal. Cap'n Crunch, Frosted Flakes, anything with those little marshmallows.”

  “You do?” Molly couldn't believe it. Celia scarfing up Lucky Charms? It seemed so unlikely. “You? Miss Health Food?”

  “You know why?” Celia asked. “Nostalgia. Other than the smell of Play-Doh, cereal is the fastest way to bring back childhood. One taste of Cocoa Puffs and I'm a little kid again. It's a blast from the past.”

  “My mom wouldn't buy me sugary cereals,” Molly said.

  “All the more reason then to dig in and taste the for-bidden fruit,” Celia said. “But you better be careful.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You might OD on all that sugar,” Celia said. “If you've never done Trix before, you might start to hallucinate. The toaster might talk to you. You might think you can fly.”

  “If I do,” Molly said, “I'll call you.”

  “You do that,” Celia said. “I'll talk you down.”

  Later, when Molly looked in on Caitlin, she remembered what Celia had said about childhood. For Molly, the feeling didn't come in a cereal box or a can of modeling clay. For her, it was right there in Caitlin's little-girl room: the canopy bed, the frilly pillows, the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, her collection of stuffed bears and poodles. Molly's childhood bedroom had looked different—not so pink, not so frilly. But it felt the same, just as safe and secure and carefree. Caitlin was sound asleep. Molly had heard the phrase “not a care in the world” and understood now what it meant. It was in the rhythm of Caitlin's breath. Molly en-vied her a little: her innocence, her cocooned, protected happiness, which she did not appreciate, which you could not possess and appreciate at the same time. To love it, you first had to lose it.

  Molly looked out Caitlin's window and saw the blinking red light of a radio tower in the distance. When she was a little girl, she used to watch that same red light outside her own bedroom window. She remembered that sometimes she used to make a wish—not on a star, the way you were sup-posed to, but on that stupid light. What did she wish for? She couldn't remember. Did her wishes come true? They must not have.

  From Caitlin's window, Molly could see her own house. It looked serene and safe. There was a light on in the family room, a light shining in the kitchen. It could be where a happy television family lived, a place where all problems could be solved within thirty minutes.

  Molly saw her mother's figure cross by the kitchen window. And then she was standing at the sink, rinsing a dish. From her perch at Caitlin's window, Molly could see her mother plain as day. She wasn't that far away from her. Molly tried to think of her mother neutrally, objectively. What if she were not her mother? What if she were just the woman next door? At this distance, from this perspective, she seemed smaller somehow, less intimidating, less annoying. Less everything. She looked tired. Her head was bobbing a little, as if she might be humming a tune. What song would her mother hum? Molly had no idea. There was a lot she didn't know about her.

  Molly impulsively knocked on Caitlin's window. “Mom?” she said. “Mom!” But her mother couldn't hear her. Molly watched as her mother stepped away from the sink and turned off the light.

  Downstairs, Molly walked through the house and listened to its foreign noises. The hum of the fridge, the whir of the dishwasher in the dry cycle, a clock ticking somewhere. She decided to give Lonnie a call. She didn't have anything particular to say, she just wanted to hear a friendly voice. Lonnie's mother answered, sounding exhausted and frazzled. With her impeccable telephone manners drilled into her by her mother, Molly identified herself and asked whether she might please speak to Lonnie. Mrs. House muttered some-thing that Molly couldn't make out and set the phone down. There was a television playing in the background, some-thing loud and possibly angry, something that definitely didn't sound educational or informative.

  “Hey, Lonnie,” Molly said when he picked up. “It's me.”

  “I guess the mighty Grady struck out,” Lonnie said.

  “He wasn't too happy, was he?”

  “You should have seen him in the locker room.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Monday is when Coach is gonna post the list,” Lonnie said.

  “I know,” Molly said.

  “Are you worried?”

  “I'm trying to not think about it.” Of course, Molly didn't say, it was impossible to not think about something. The harder you tried, the more you thought about it.

  There was some background noise on Lonnie's end, an unhappy voice. It might have been the television, it might have been Lonnie's mother. Reality TV, or maybe just reality. Molly felt bad for Lonnie, but what could she do? The show he was living in was a complicated mess. “I'll let you go,” she said. “See you Monday.”

  “Fingers crossed,” Lonnie said.

  The house was quiet now, the kids were asleep. The toys were picked up and put away. In the family room, Molly flicked on the television and cranked herself back in Mr. Rybak's recliner. It reminded her of being at the dentist. She tried one of the beanbags, where Kyle and Caitlin watched their cartoons and Disney videos. She slid off at first, and though she finally managed to get perched on one of them, she just couldn't get comfortable. She felt like Goldilocks. In the Rybaks’ house she was a restless intruder.

  There was a big wooden desk with a rolling chair. Molly tried that. She took a seat and immediately felt i
mportant. She could imagine making major decisions here, paying some big bills. There was a leather blotter on the top of the desk, file-cabinet drawers built into the sides.

  She pulled open a drawer and took a peek. There was a yellow envelope of family photographs and some paperwork for appliances, instructions and warranties. Some bills and bank statements.

  Molly didn't mean to snoop. It didn't occur to her that the Rybaks harbored any secrets. They were an all-American family. Their life was an open book.

  She didn't think she was looking for anything. And then she found it: her dad's obituary cut from the newspaper. Already it looked old, aged, historical. Was it a tribute to her dad that the Rybaks saved it, or just an oversight?

  Along with the story, there was a photograph of her dad, which Molly didn't like. Her mother had insisted on a closed casket at the funeral, wanting, Molly assumed, to spare them all the pain of seeing his lifeless face. But in this obituary photograph he looked lifeless, too. He was smiling, but in a stiff, unnatural way. It was like a bad school portrait. He was wearing a tie. That's not how he looked, Molly thought, not how he smiled. She was afraid to look at it for too long. She didn't want it to replace the pictures in her head, her memory's snapshots of how he really smiled. His crooked grin when she used to tell him the kind of corny jokes he never tired of. The conspiratorial smile when he and Molly pulled something over on her mother—when he'd slip her an extra cookie or spring her from bedtime to watch the last few innings of a ballgame with him. When he smiled for real, his eyes got narrow and his nose crinkled.

  Molly's name was in the article: she was the daughter he was survived by. It was probably written by one of his friends from the newspaper, maybe his best pal, Milt Hedstrum, whom Molly had always called Uncle Milt. At the wake he had looked so broken down and red eyed, Molly had felt the urge to comfort him. The obituary reported the fact that her dad had died in a single-car accident. It was a phrase Molly had heard repeated again and again at the time of her dad's death. When she heard someone say it, “ single-car accident,” it sounded sinister and secretive. It was like a message in a code she could never crack.