The Glass Butterfly

by Louise Marley

  After twenty minutes of this, when she was beginning to think she would need to buy gas for the Beetle, she found herself on a windswept, narrow dirt lane lined with beach grass and the occasional boulder. She passed a broken bench, obviously meant to face the big rock and the ocean. It had collapsed on its concrete apron, tilted off its iron frame. “Someone should fix that,” she said. The houses here were small, built close together, with postage-stamp yards and no garages. They were shuttered, garden gates locked, yards empty, everything put away for the winter. “I don’t know,” Tory mused aloud. “Maybe we should go back—”

  But there it was. Its shingles were worn to a silvery gray, its white shutters in need of paint, its tiny square of yard worn down to the dirt. One of the shutters hung askew. A waist-high picket fence surrounded it, with crooked posts and a wooden gate missing two boards at the bottom. A sign tacked to the fence read “For Rent by Owner.”

  Tory turned the Beetle into the short driveway and turned off the engine. There was no garage, or even a carport, but the Beetle wouldn’t mind. It would do for now.

  “Where are your things, Ms. Chambers?” Chambers. Chosen because there were a lot of them in the telephone book of the last motel she had stayed in.

  The owner of the cottage was Iris Anderson, a lean, weathered-looking woman of about sixty. She eyed the empty Beetle as she unlatched the battered gate.

  Tory hadn’t thought of this. “I’m having them shipped,” she blurted.

  Of course she needed things. Everyone had them, carted them around in satchels and boxes and luggage. It wasn’t normal not to have cartons to unload, suitcases to unpack. She had nothing but the fake-leather drugstore purse with her few possessions in it. That, the butterfly paperweight, one client file, and a coat full of cash. It was an assortment sure to cause comment.

  Iris Anderson assessed her with a sharp gray gaze. “Knew you were coming to Cannon Beach, then?”

  Lifting the corners of her lips in a smile felt to Tory like lifting heavy weights. “I’ve always wanted to live here,” she said.

  Iris Anderson nodded, evidently satisfied. “We hear that a lot. Not usually in the wintertime, though.”

  “I love the water in all weather. And please call me P-Paulette.” She should have practiced saying that more. And should have chosen a name that didn’t come from an opera, but it was all she could think of. There hadn’t been a Paulette Chambers in the phone book.

  “I will, thanks. You can call me Iris.” Iris produced a heavy, old-fashioned key from her cloth shoulder bag, and unlocked the front door. “I always keep one key, just for emergencies. This is for you—” She held it out. “I hope you won’t lose it. There are only two.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  Tory stepped in through the front door of the cottage, and knew without a doubt she had done the right thing.

  “There’s only one bedroom,” Iris said. “And one bath. Do you have much company?”

  “No. Not really.”

  Iris glanced over her shoulder. “No family?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Hard to believe. A pretty redhead like you.”

  “Well, thank you. But I’m all on my own.”

  Iris raised one iron-gray eyebrow, but didn’t say anything else. She stood aside so Tory could take in the room.

  It was impossibly simple, even austere. It was as different from her own home as it could be, but that gave Tory a sense of security. A worn armchair faced the picture window. A floor lamp stood near it, beside a wood-burning fireplace. A short sofa, even more worn, faced the fireplace, with a low and obviously cheap coffee table in front of it, all of it supported by a braided rug. The kitchen opened directly to the right, and a door that must lead to the bedroom opened to the left. Tory crossed to this door, and looked in to see a double bed covered with a beige chenille bedspread. Beyond the bed a door stood open to a bathroom just big enough to hold a chipped porcelain clawfoot tub and a sink with a mirrored cabinet.

  Iris came to stand behind her. “No shower, I’m afraid,” she said. “I rent mostly to summer people, and they’re only here a week or so at a time. They don’t mind, and they use a hose out back to wash off the sand.”

  Tory’s smile felt more natural this time. “I like it. I’ll just glance at the kitchen.”

  The kitchen was simple, too, but the stove was gas, which was nice. To say that the refrigerator was old was an understatement, but it was spotlessly clean. Iris said, “There are a few pots and pans, and some dishes. Probably you’ll want to push those to the back and use your own, since you have things coming.”

  “Probably.” It seemed safest to agree. Tory began to wish Iris would leave. She seemed nice enough, but she wanted to be on her own, to taste the house, to gaze out through the front window at the waves rolling against the beach and splashing the sides of the big rock.

  Iris saw her glance at the view, and led the way to the window. The two women stood side by side for a moment, watching the water. “This is why people come,” Iris said. “And why I keep the place.”

  “Have you had it a long time?”

  “It belonged to my folks. They lived in Portland. Used to bring us out here weekends.”

  “It’s perfect for me,” Tory said. “I don’t need much room, and I can manage the price.”

  “The rent goes up in the spring,” Iris said.

  “I understand. Maybe by then I’ll have a job.”

  She wished she hadn’t said that. Iris turned to face her. Tory saw the older woman measuring her again. She was curious, but she had the right. It was, after all, her house. “What kind of work do you do?”

  Tory looked away from Iris’s canny glance, back to the constant movement of the water. “Anything I can get,” she said.

  “Really? I would have guessed you were a professional of some kind. Teacher, nurse, maybe a librarian.”

  Tory shook her head, keeping her gaze on the ocean. “No.”

  Iris was even more curious when Tory went into the bedroom to take off her coat and hang it in the closet, then came back with the deposit and the first month’s rent in her hand. “Cash?” Iris said when she saw it.

  “Is that a problem?”

  “Well, no, of course not. It’s just—usually people write a check, since I don’t do credit cards.” Her brows drew together suddenly, furrowing her forehead. “I don’t do things under the table,” she warned. “Everything goes on my tax forms, just so you know.”

  Tory hadn’t begun to think about taxes, Social Security, any of the myriad other details that constituted modern life. “No problem,” she said. Her throat felt dry, and she was suddenly very, very tired. Too tired to be clever. “I’m just between banks right now, that’s all. It might take me a couple of weeks to find a new one.”

  “You took your money out in cash?”

  In other circumstances, Tory might have been impressed by the woman’s tenacity, but she wanted nothing more than to be alone, to soak in the bathtub with its rust stains and old-fashioned faucets, and then sit in the rented armchair and stare at the surf. She said, a little more sharply than she intended, “No. Not all of it,” and turned away from her new landlady.

  “So,” Iris said after a moment’s pause. “There are sheets on the bed, and towels in the bathroom. There’s a charge to change them each week, though, so if you have your own—”

  “I do,” Tory said. “They’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Good. That’s good. Then I just need a signature on this rental agreement.” Iris still looked a bit wary, but Tory took a motel ballpoint from her drugstore bag, carried the form to the kitchen table—Formica-topped and much-scarred—and signed it. She had created a former address and memorized it, and she wrote that in.

  Iris took the form and glanced at it. “Georgia?” she said. “You don’t have a Southern accent.”

  “I was raised in the Midwest,” Tory said smoothly. This much, at least, she had rehearsed. She had also in
vented a college degree from a tiny school she had seen on her trip, and imagined a family background. She hoped that for now she wouldn’t need her made-up history. She was beginning to feel she couldn’t stand on her own two feet any longer.

  Iris seemed to sense this. She put out her hand, said an abrupt good-bye, and was gone a moment later, spinning down the dirt lane in a fairly new white Acura sedan. Tory looked down at her copy of the rental form, and saw that Iris also lived in Cannon Beach. She could stop by the cottage at any time. Tory would have to be ready.

  She folded the rental agreement and tucked it into a kitchen drawer next to a pair of rusty scissors and a pizza delivery menu. She pulled the faded cotton curtains across the picture window, shot the dead bolt on the front door, and turned toward the bathroom.

  She slept without dreaming, without even turning over. Rain woke her in the morning, a steady, rhythmic beating on the flat roof of the cottage. Lacking a bathrobe, she pulled the chenille bedspread around her and padded to the window to open the curtains. She couldn’t see the collapsed bench from this vantage point. Rain obscured the beach and the surf, and made muddy rivulets in the dirt lane. The little yard soaked up the water as if it had been yearning for moisture. Tory thought she might even be able to get a little grass to grow there, if she tried. Odd, that she was thinking of a lawn. Did ice women plant gardens?

  She drew the curtains again, and went to put on her clothes. She couldn’t remember exactly when she had last eaten, and her jeans were so loose she was afraid they might not stay up. First, she thought, food. Then, with some calories to fuel her brain, she would think how to acquire the things that would make her seem respectable. Make her character come alive.

  She found a tiny restaurant on the main road of the town, and ordered eggs and coffee and toast. It tasted so good in her mouth it surprised her. It tasted like—life. Like she was still alive. She ate everything. When she had drunk a second cup of coffee, she paid her bill—breaking another fifty—and went back to the Beetle. She turned north, back on the coast highway, where she had spotted a sign for a Costco store the day before.

  Three hours later she possessed a new Costco card, four place settings of china and flatware, a set of thick glass tumblers, a skillet and saucepan, towels, a radio, and a prepaid cell phone issued to Paulette Chambers. She found a pair of jeans a size smaller than the ones she had on, and two thick sweaters to go with them. She chose two novels from the laden tables of books. She bought frozen pizza, some frozen fish and vegetables, and three bottles of red wine. She paid for it all with hundred-dollar bills. No one seemed to care if Paulette’s birth date and Social Security number were fictional. No one blinked at the cash. Her identity was established.

  She was on her way back to the highway when she spotted an antiques store just off the road to her right. On an impulse, she turned the Beetle into its muddy parking lot. There were only two other cars there, and it occurred to her that she didn’t know what day of the week it was. She had lost all track of time.

  The sign on the door said the store was open, so she parked and climbed out, taking care to lock the car with all her new things stuffed into the backseat. If anything was stolen, she could hardly call the police. It gave her an odd sense of vulnerability, of being without a form of protection she had always taken for granted.

  The interior of the antiques store was the exact opposite of Costco’s. Where Costco was full of the smell of new plastic and cardboard and the rubbery reek of tires, the antiques store smelled of age and dust and history. A middle-aged woman in an acid-green pantsuit nodded hello from behind a glass cabinet that served as her counter. It was littered with small pieces of paper, a telephone, and an oversized calculator. Tory nodded back, then turned to stroll down the first aisle she came to.

  She immediately regretted buying her dishes and silverware at Costco. This place was stuffed with things she could have used, and some of them had no fault except their age. Partial sets of dishes, of silverware, of Depression glass, filled the cabinets. Tory gazed at them, struck by the thought that once they had been as new as the things now packed into the back of the Beetle. People had bought them, used them, incorporated them into their lives. What had happened to the woman who stirred bread dough in that pottery bowl, or the child who drank milk from that pink glass?

  She touched the glass, thinking of Jack when he was small, laughing at her across the breakfast table. They hadn’t laughed together in such a long time. Oh, Jack. Sweetheart. I’m so very, very sorry.

  She clenched her teeth with a jolt of alarm at the rush of emotion that swept over her. She couldn’t allow it. She could not feel. She didn’t dare. She pulled her hand away from the pink glass, and breathed sharply to release the tightness in her throat.

  When she felt she was in control again, she turned to another display. She picked up a soup bowl, and her fey sent a faint vibration through her fingers, as if the users of it had left an imprint, an invisible mark of history in the simple implement. She kept the bowl, and picked up a matching one to nest inside it. She found a ladle, and a rolling pin that resonated with memories of Thanksgiving pies and Christmas cookies. She picked up a saltcellar with a tarnished silver lid and a tiny matching spoon. The woman from the counter, seeing, came and took the things from her, carrying them back to the cash register to wait for her to finish shopping.

  Tory bought six vintage cloth napkins and an embroidered apron with only a tiny stain at the hem. She chose two wineglasses with twisted stems that had no doubt once been part of a full set. She hesitated over a box of old LPs. She saw a precious recording among them of Risë Stevens’s Carmen, but she made herself resist. She had no way to play it, and she had resolved to avoid that link to the past. Surely there would be a classical music station out of Portland. She would content herself with that.

  She wandered around the store one more time, trailing her fingertips over tasteless vases and lamps without shades, eyeing cabinets full of bric-a-brac. She was turning back toward the counter when a collection of framed photographs caught her eye. She picked one up, a picture of a woman in a dress from the forties, framed in Bakelite. Behind it was a photo of the same woman in a wedding gown, surrounded by a family in dress clothes. Tory gazed at the pictures for several moments. She could imagine, looking at the face of the woman, someone who was kind and maternal and sensitive. Someone she dared talk to.

  Though she knew it didn’t really make sense, Tory piled the pictures on top of the napkins and the apron.

  It all seemed too easy. She could create an entire history with such things, invent a background made up of the bits and pieces of other people’s lives. Could she create a future, too?

  “You have some great things here,” the woman said when she went back to the counter. She used the big calculator to add up the total. “Do you buy a lot of antiques? Would you like to be on our mailing list?”

  “Oh. Oh, I don’t . . . I’m not from here, actually.”

  “Tourist?”

  “Yes—sort of.” Tory thought she could have handled that better, but the woman didn’t seem to notice. Probably saw dozens of tourists every day.

  “I’ll wrap everything so nothing gets broken.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.” Tory counted out the money from her drugstore handbag.

  “I love your hair,” the woman said, as she began wrapping things in butcher paper. “I wish I could wear that color red. And wear my hair that short.”

  Tory touched her hair. She kept forgetting what she had done to it. She said, “I’m not all that sure I pull it off, either.”

  “No, you do! Really. Your skin and those eyelashes—I wish I had the courage not to wear makeup.”

  Tory’s cheeks flushed. She could hardly connect herself with the person the woman was describing.

  Her cheeks were still burning as she loaded her new-old possessions into the Beetle, and backed out of the parking lot. Her character must be working. Her new persona was as different f
rom the old one as she could make it.

  The rain had stopped by the time she got back to the cottage. She made half a dozen trips from the car to the house, then spent the afternoon stowing things. As Iris had suggested, she pushed the vacation-house utensils to the back of the kitchen cupboards, and put her own plates and glasses near the front. She found an empty drawer for the silverware, and a closet for the towels and sheets. She set the radio on one corner of the kitchen counter, where she could plug it in. She stowed her frozen food in the tiny freezer compartment. She stuffed the boxes for everything into the recycle bin behind the cottage, hoping no one was going to look in and realize almost everything she had was new.

  Finally, she began unwrapping her antiques store purchases. Napkins went in a drawer, and the little saltcellar beside the stove. She hung the apron on a hook beside the refrigerator. She unwrapped the photographs, and carried them into the living room. She arranged them on the flimsy coffee table and stood looking down at them. They gazed back at her from their happy days, smiling, looking proud and—

  Normal, was the word that came to her mind. It made her feel wistful, and then foolish. She, of all people, knew there was no normal. It wasn’t just her own life that was fragmented and strange. She had counseled hundreds of people, and not a single one thought their lives were normal. These people, too, must have had their problems, their sorrows, their losses.

  She turned resolutely away from the smiling faces of strangers. They were simply part of the set she was creating. The backdrop for the illusion she had invented, against which she would act out her new role. It would be good to remember that.

  Nonna Angela’s paperweight had been waiting on the kitchen table. Tory picked it up, cradling its cool, familiar weight in her hand. She carried it into the bedroom, and set it on the narrow bedside stand, beneath the lamp, where she could see it when she was reading in bed. It felt good to have it with her, though its elegance was out of place in this rustic house. She touched it with her forefinger, and said, “I guess we’re home.”