Shooting Butterflies

by Marika Cobbold

  She shrugged free. ‘Do I scare you?’

  He smiled and stroked her cheek with the back of his rough boy’s hand. ‘A little.’

  Another time, up in the attic, they were lying silent in each other’s arms staring at the whitewashed ceiling. Grace was wondering what it meant when a man makes love to you one moment only to look past you, as if he was alone, the next.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m going in two weeks,’ she said, attempting to make her voice as light as dust.

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  She sat up. He had his eyes clamped closed like someone pretending to be asleep. ‘Is that all you have to say? I mean, what’ll happen about us?’ She knew she shouldn’t demand and fuss and be all needy. She knew that would only make matters worse. But since when had knowing that made anyone stop?

  He opened his eyes. ‘Look, Grace, there’s no point in getting all stressed.’ He zipped up his fly and, sitting up, pulled his T-shirt back on. ‘I mean, we always knew you weren’t staying for ever.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ Grace shrieked. Her heart was beating so hard she thought it might break free, bolt off down the sunbeam on the dusty floor. She took a couple of deep breaths. ‘What I mean to say is, I’d put that to the back of my mind.’ He turned his bright-blue eyes on her, his brows raised in a question. She got to her feet and handed him his shoes. ‘I’ll miss you, that’s all,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Sure, I’ll miss you too,’ he mumbled.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘What d’you mean, what’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong. It’s you who’s acting all weird.’ She looked at his handsome face that was flushed and angry. It was as if he was on the other side of a thick pane of glass; she could see him, he was there, close, but she couldn’t reach him and she did not have the power to break through. So she turned away, saying more to herself than to him, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m telling you, nothing’s wrong other than you hassling me.’

  The right thing, Grace thought, would be to stop pushing and to smile and brush the dust off her knees and leave things be. But she said, ‘That’s not true. There’s something, I can feel it. Tell me what it is …’ And with a ‘please’, she crashed like a suicidal pigeon headlong into that pane of glass.

  He shot her a look close to dislike. ‘All right, you asked for it. Truth is, I’m fed up with you always being on my case.’

  Grace flinched but she put her hand on his shoulder so lightly that he would hardly feel it. ‘That’s not fair. You know that’s not fair. Look at me, Jefferson.’

  He shook himself like a dog with a flea. ‘Cut it out, will ya. I mean, that’s the thing. You seemed really cool, easy-going. But you’ve changed. Take it easy, Grace; I can’t deal with all this heavy shit.’

  Panic made her angry. ‘You can’t deal with it. You can’t deal with anything. You’re weak. And don’t you turn your back and don’t you, don’t you …’ Running out of words, she picked up his sneaker and threw it at him, hitting him hard on his backside. As he swung round, she met his glare with her own, defiant one.

  He lowered his eyes and shook his head. ‘You’re a child, Grace. Grow up.’

  ‘Jefferson …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  She gave an inaudible sigh. ‘See you tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They patched it up, but it was pretty obvious to Grace that they would come apart at the seams at the slightest tug. So she was very quiet. She did not laugh or speak too loud or get excited and flay her arms about. She did not skip and run. At all times she trod carefully, but when she woke in the mornings the sheets in her white-painted young-girl’s bed were damp with sweat and her jaw was clamped together so tight it took real effort just to be able to open her mouth again.

  The following Saturday, her second to last, he worked as usual in the hardware store at the edge of town. Mostly she spent an hour or so keeping him company. This time she had debated whether or not to go. But it was not in her nature to play hard to get, so in the end she went, traipsing the whole three miles in the heat, a flask of ice-cold lemonade in her rucksack. Jefferson had just come in from stacking some asbestos panels out the back. They sold a lot of them, for use in barn roofs and that kind of thing. He was brushing himself down, the sunlight catching the dust rising in the air around him. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said, seeing her standing in the doorway. ‘You didn’t have to come all that way in the heat.’

  She handed him the flask. ‘Aunt Kathleen made it. She thinks that’s what mothers do: make lemonade on a hot day.’

  ‘Well, they do.’ He drank some and passed the flask back to her before turning to sort through a box of screws, placing them according to size in myriad little drawers behind the counter. Grace sat down on a stool on the other side, opening her book, trying to read and not look at him. He dropped a screw and disappeared for a moment, scrabbling on the floor to find it. When he reappeared a few seconds later she felt as if the sun had risen after a long night and she couldn’t stop grinning.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just happy to see you.’

  He shook his head. ‘You’re weird.’

  She knew she should leave him be. She knew that the best thing she could do was to stay just a few minutes more and then put her book away, slip down from the stool and say, friendly but casual, ‘I’m off. Call me when you’re free.’

  Instead she was a gadfly and nothing put her off her gadding. She chatted and picked at the sleeve of his T-shirt. She asked him if she could help when it was obvious he just wanted her to go and sit quietly and let him get on. She told jokes that she knew he would not find funny. The more he wanted her to leave him alone, the closer she went.

  It was about noon when the girl turned up. She looked about Grace’s age and she was dainty. Her white T-shirt was so brightly clean Grace could tell her mother washed it for her in that powder with blue specks, and her jeans were pressed. Grace had never met anyone before who pressed their jeans. Her hair was blonde and tied back in a high ponytail and her fringe was short and curled. Her features were delicate. Her eyes were small with long curly lashes heavy with mascara. She had a button nose and her mouth was painted bubblegum pink.

  ‘Hi,’ said the girl, looking straight past Grace at Jefferson. The hi was slow and as soft as a caress. This time he dropped a whole handful of screws. They clattered to the floor, the last one hitting the lino just when you thought they were all done, like popcorn. ‘Cherry.’

  Cherry Jones, it turned out, had returned from Europe a whole three months earlier than planned. She had been back for a couple of weeks already, mostly just taking it easy on her parents’ farm a few miles outside town. Having been introduced, she shot Grace the kind of smile that killed at five paces.

  ‘I kept asking Jeffy to bring me along to meet you.’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘He did tell you about me?’

  Jeffy? Jeffy! Grace did not even attempt a smile. ‘Not that you were back, no.’

  ‘Oh, I thought I had,’ Jefferson said, looking shifty. ‘Must have slipped my mind.’

  ‘The way these things do,’ Grace said in a tired voice.

  He gave her a wary look. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So you didn’t care for Europe, then?’ Grace said to Cherry.

  Cherry shook her blonde ponytail. ‘No, it was great, really. I just missed this place. I’m just a little ole homebody, me. My mom says she’ll never get rid of me.’ The way she leant on the counter and laughed at her own words, Grace thought that it would never really occur to Cherry that anyone might want to get rid of her, not even for a moment. People like that were lucky. They occupied their space in the world with the assurance of ownership. Grace inhabited hers feeling like a squatter.

  It was decided, although Grace could not remember being asked, that the three of them should go to the movies that night.

  She walked over to Jefferson’s house just ahead of time, around six that evening. A smell of home-bakin
g and vanilla reached her from the wide-open back door. She knocked on the bug-screen and stepped inside as Mrs McGraw, standing by the stove, turned round. Cherry was with her, her tiny hands made to look massive inside a pair of gingham oven gloves. ‘Grace,’ Mrs McGraw said in the voice you use to say ‘rain’.

  Cherry gave a wave with one glove. ‘Jeffy isn’t back yet. He had some stuff to do.’ She turned to Mrs McGraw, sniffing the air like a Bisto kid. ‘Oh Mrs McG, I can’t wait to taste those cookies.’

  ‘Well, you have to hold yourself back a little while yet.’ Mrs McGraw smiled indulgently at the girl. Grace felt Mrs McGraw needed reminding that she liked her as well, so she thanked her for having made scones for tea the other day. Mrs McGraw called them ‘British scones’.

  ‘You’ve thanked me twice already,’ Mrs McGraw said.

  Grace hung around by the door, unsure of whether to sit at the kitchen table or wait until she was asked. In the end, when Mrs McGraw still had not invited her to sit down, she did anyway. She had learnt a valuable lesson: if you wanted to be liked by your boyfriend’s mother it was better to bake cookies with her than swim naked in the river with her son.

  At the cinema Jefferson sat between Cherry and Grace. They each had a Coke and he held the popcorn for all of them. They were watching Don’t Look Now. Grace did not think that Cherry was paying much attention, but boy did she scream when the dwarf showed his face. After that she needed a lot of calming down. Jefferson was really patient with her. Grace was glad when the film was over and they could go home. They stopped at Cherry’s front door listening to the still night.

  ‘Cicadas don’t usually come this far north,’ Grace said.

  ‘Oh yes they do,’ the others said in unison.

  ‘Shall I take you home or do you want to do something?’ Jefferson asked Grace as they drove off, having waited to see Cherry walk safely inside.

  ‘Sex,’ Grace said.

  ‘Wow, you sure are to the point.’ He had said that to her before, but then there had been an admiring note to his voice. Right now he sounded more like his mother’s good son. Still, he didn’t say no.

  They made love in the tall grass behind the sports fields. He had good manners so insisted Grace keep on top rather than get damp from the wet ground.

  It was the absence of love that made her feel exposed lying there in the open, not her lack of clothes.

  They were swimming in the river, Cherry, Jefferson and Grace. This time they all wore costumes. Cherry was wearing a tiny blue and white-spotted bikini. Grace had to admire the way she looked, as if every part of her was wrapped up tight in her polished golden skin. Grace was wearing Aunt Kathleen’s old bathing costume. It was a dull brown and sagged at the bottom where the elasticity had gone. She had ripped her own bikini and had no money to replace it, having spent so much on film and the two albums to stick her photographs in. She thought of those albums now. Jefferson might not want her any more, but nothing could change the loving way he looked at her in those pictures. She dived beneath the surface and came up for air, feeling stunned as she repeated the thought in her head: He might not want me any more. It was so clear all of a sudden. No ifs and buts. The water collected in the seat of her baggy suit, weighing her down. But she was a tall strong girl and it took more than a swimsuit heavy with water to drag her to her death. Anyway, what would be the point of dying? It wasn’t as if anyone would care. Finn didn’t see her from one year to another. Mrs Shield would mind for a bit, but Grace wasn’t her own child. Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Leslie would get over it; Grace had started out well but there was no doubt she had proved to be somewhat of a disappointment in the end. And Jefferson; well, he would probably be relieved. She hit a cold current and shivered. Truth was she really did not matter very much to anyone. At that point she began to cry. She was not the crying type, but this once she made an exception. It was too hard, really it was, to know that the boy she loved so dearly, the boy who had made eleven weeks weigh as much as the entire eighteen years gone before, would feel nothing more than a shrug of regret at her death.

  The good thing about crying in the water is that no one notices. You can turn up as red-eyed as you like and everyone will assume it’s the swimming that has caused it. Grace had been treading water for a while, calming down as she did so. Maybe all was not lost. Maybe he was just a little confused, what with his one-time love turning up so unexpectedly. She hurled herself back on to her front and swam back to shore. Lifting her face out of the water, she watched as Jefferson scooped Cherry up in his arms and ran right up to the water’s edge, pretending to throw her in. She wriggled and shrieked and kicked her little feet and Grace thought how ridiculous those games seemed when you yourself were not a part.

  All three of them were in the water now. Grace swam up to Jefferson and faced him, doing her best to smile, wanting to be kissed. He smiled back without looking her in the eyes and disappeared beneath the surface. She decided to get it over and done with. Walk away before they see the hurt in your eyes, that’s what she always thought. So she helped things along, carrying on in a way she knew would best annoy him. She thrashed and splashed in the water so that no one would want to get near her for fear of getting sunk. She made snorting noises like a sealion, and laughed out loud and alone at how funny she was being. She jumped on Jefferson’s back and pushed his head underwater and while he was under she climbed up on his shoulders and hung on there like a rodeo rider while he thrashed and bucked. When she got bored with that she yelled, ‘Fuck, I’m cold,’ and threw herself backwards into the water and swam for land. Back on shore she shook herself like a dog making everyone’s clothes wet. Jefferson looked at her as if he didn’t know her. Cherry was very kind and that was when Grace knew it was all over. So she lay back in the grass, the sun hot on her face, at last allowing herself a rest.

  For once in her life Grace behaved the way Mrs Shield and the nuns had always wanted her to behave: speaking in a quiet voice, laughing just enough and not too much, holding herself well and keeping her legs and arms and hands under control, not knocking anything over with a wild gesture, or throwing herself down into the furniture.

  Nothing had been said; there was no need. She was leaving and in the meantime he just kept slipping out of reach, waiting for the week to be up, visiting one day, sitting on the porch on the edge of the hammock with one eye on his watch and getting to his feet with a relief he could not hide when Aunt Kathleen called Grace into dinner and he had a good excuse to go, phoning a few times but only to say he was busy. She did not push to hear him say it: It’s over. I don’t love you.

  The day before she was due to leave he dropped by to say he would not be able to see her off; he was needed at the store. He hoped she understood? Grace nodded. She understood long enough to hear him promise to write, to let him give her a brotherly hug and to watch him walk down the path and out of the gate and disappear down the street. Then she walked inside, holding herself straight. ‘Is everything all right, honey?’ Aunt Kathleen asked as Grace passed.

  ‘Fine,’ said Grace as she went up the stairs to her room. Once there she walked up to the window and put her fist through the glass.

  The rest of the day passed quickly, what with the drive to the clinic to be stitched.

  Grace persuaded Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Leslie not to wait with her for the bus that was taking her to Boston and the airport. She told them that she hated drawn-out goodbyes. They took quite a lot of convincing, Aunt Kathleen saying it didn’t seem right for them just to leave her there, Uncle Leslie asking if she had thought about how she would manage with two heavy bags and her hand still bandaged. Grace said she would manage fine, just the way she would at the other end. She said that unless they wanted a scene right there in the middle of the bus terminal in Kendall they’d better be off. That did it. There had been enough scenes. Grace got a long tearful hug from Aunt Kathleen and a loose awkward one from Uncle Leslie and then they were gone. They had barely turned the corner before she misse
d them, but she had her reasons for wanting to be alone those minutes before the bus arrived. She was waiting for Jefferson because, against all reason, she hoped he’d turn up to say it was all a mistake, that it was Grace he loved and that all he wanted was for her to stay so that they could be together. And when this happened, or maybe when it didn’t happen, she did not want Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Leslie to see her cry. She had said it before and she would say it again: she was not the crying type. It was just that sometimes she forgot and cried anyway, and the less people around then, the better.

  Grace had a theory. There were certain things you knew, but could not be allowed to believe, or you would not get up in the morning. God realised that he had made people a little too clever, so in his infinite wisdom he gave us the Dumb-chip. Without it people would give up before they began and He would have no one to play with. The Dumb-chip helps us to believe, against all the evidence, that we matter. One of the prime examples of the Dumb-chip at work is death; however many funerals you attend, you still do not believe, deep down, that one day it will happen to – yes you over there with the private health insurance and a lifetime supply of multi-nutrients; YOU!

  Right now, as she stood waiting at the bus station, Grace’s Dumb-chip was hard at work, making her say over and over again, He can’t not come, he simply can’t. The way he had looked into her eyes when they made love, the way he had a special voice, low and loving, just for speaking to her, the way he had smiled when she entered a room, as if she was a wonderful surprise delivered to his doorstep; all that could not simply vanish like steam in the air? No, he was on his way driving towards the station in his father’s silver Dodge. This is how it would happen: she would hear the engine of the bus as it approached. Her heart would sink; time was running out and she despaired of ever seeing him again. The bus would pull in, doors hissing open. Passengers would alight to be greeted by friends and family. Grace, dying inside, would turn to look for him one last time and then … then she would glimpse the silver car and she would be revived, love seeping into every shrivelled part of her heart until it was red and plump again and she could smile. He would burst from the car, his face anxious, pause for a moment, looking around. Then, when he saw her still there, his frown would clear and he would run towards her, reaching her just in time.