Butterfly Ginger

by Stephanie Fournet

  She walked into the kitchen to find Alexandra Barnes at the stove frying pork chops.

  Blythe would never admit it, but the kitchen smelled amazing. While she had no desire to chow down on a pork chop, the smells of food cooking, vegan or not, still enticed her. If she ever said as much to her mother, of course, the woman would shove a plate under her nose.

  But she needed to eat something. Her interview had started at noon, and she hadn’t had anything since breakfast. Blythe had been dreaming of the second half of her veggie pizza from Deano’s for the last four hours.

  “Did you like it? Do you think you’d fit in there?” her mother asked all in one breath.

  Blythe opened the door to the fridge while she considered the question. The advertising firm was small, but well established, and it was clear that they needed someone with her skills — someone who could design graphics for websites as well as for print ads and billboards. And while Blythe was in no position to turn down a job that she may not like, she was relieved at the feeling that she would like working at The Cory Group. Brothers Ian and Eliot Cory had started the business almost 15 years ago, and it was clear from her separate interviews with each man that they were creative, driven, and exceedingly smart.

  “Well, I like what I saw today,” she answered, moving the milk jug and the pitcher of iced tea to search for her pizza. She’d wrapped it in foil the night before, and it seemed to have gotten lost in the chaos of the fridge.

  “Where’s my pizza?” she muttered, shifting her focus to a lower shelf.

  “You mean the cheeseless mess of olives and tomatoes that was wrapped in foil this morning?” Seth stepped up behind her and seemed to fill the kitchen. His question set her teeth on edge. She spun around.

  “Yes. Where is it? I’m starving.”

  Seth shrugged.

  “I ate it about an hour ago.”

  “You what?! Seth, that was mine!” Blythe heard herself whine, and she knew she sounded like she was about fourteen years old, but her hunger and the injustice of it set her off.

  “I did you a favor, sis. It sucked! I dumped half of it in the trash,” he said, scowling at the memory.

  Blythe’s jaw fell.

  “Seth, you jackass, how could you!?”

  “Blythe Evelyn Barnes!” her mother hissed. “Don’t call your brother that!”

  “Mom, seriously? Did you hear what he did?” Now she felt sixteen. Maybe if she kept at it, she’d return to adulthood by the end of the night. “I was saving that pizza so I’d have something to eat today. Something in this house that I could actually eat. Only a jackass would steal my food.”

  Her mother rolled her eyes.

  “If you’re that hungry, you’ll eat pork chops with the rest of us and be thankful.”

  For a moment, time stood stock-still as anger gave her a kind of otherworldly clarity. Blythe was about to confront her mother when a disheartening epiphany came to her. No matter what she said, nothing would change. No matter how she defended or explained her diet to her mother — or the rest of her family — they would never get it.

  She wasn’t trying to be “difficult” or “different” as her mother had claimed more than once. There were basically five principal reasons to eat a plant-based diet, and she believed wholeheartedly in all of them. Beyond all of those reasons, the way she ate made her feel good. She usually had energy to spare, and Blythe rarely got sick.

  But when she tried to explain these things to her family, they — her mother and Seth especially — refused to respect her choices or even simply accept that this part of her life wasn’t going to change.

  It was one more reason why she needed to get the job at The Cory Group. Living with her family for four weeks was enough to send her over the edge, and if she didn’t get her own place soon, she’d probably need to be committed.

  “Peanut butter and jelly it is,” she muttered to herself. Blythe grabbed the apricot jelly from the door of the fridge and found the peanut butter in the pantry. She was about to reach for the loaf of bread on the counter when Seth dove in front of her and swiped it. With an evil grin, he held it over his head out of her reach.

  “How old are you?” she asked, glaring at him. He was 6′1″ with stretch marks on his upper arms and shoulders that told the story of his journey from 160 to 210 pounds in just six months of CrossFit.

  His crew cut drove her crazy. He was the only one with their father’s blond hair, and he’d cut off most of it. She and Calvin had lost all trace of blond after hitting puberty, and Blythe’s color had settled on a lifeless dirty blond while Calvin’s was a richer chestnut.

  “C’mon, sis, how high can you jump?” Seth spun the loaf in a lazy orbit above his head.

  As much as she wanted to drive her heel into his big toe and elbow him in the solar plexus, Blythe refused to let him rile her. If she regressed into adolescence again, then maybe she didn’t even deserve the advertising job.

  She walked back to the fridge and dug an apple out of the crisper. An apple and peanut butter was pretty darn good.

  “Aw, you’re no fun!” Seth pouted, letting the loaf sag at his knees. “You used to be a lot more fun.”

  “Well, Seth, I grew up,” she said, ratcheting up the sarcasm. “You might try it. You also might try a shower. Flashing that armpit almost made me lose my appetite.”

  Blythe regretted her words as soon as Seth grabbed her in a bear hug and strategically shoved her face under his arm.

  “I. Love. My. Sister!” He squeezed her with each word.

  “Oh! Vile!” she coughed and pushed away from him. He really did need a shower! She scrubbed her face with her sleeve and shuddered, but, again, she kept from launching into hysterics and stooping to his level.

  “Ok, I give up,” she said, picking up her apple, the jar of peanut butter, and brandishing a butter knife aimed at him. “I’m going to retreat to the safety of my room, but, Seth, I want to be clear about something. I’ve lived in New Orleans for six years. I know how to be vigilant against attack. I swear, now, in front of our mother that I will mace you if you touch me again.”

  She backed out of the kitchen, watching her amused brother weigh her words and decide that she was probably telling the truth. Blythe didn’t let down her guard until she reached the top of the stairs.

  She pushed the door open with her hip, ready to dive headfirst into her snack when the sight of a man in her room nearly made her scream.

  “Shit! Calvin! What are you doing in here?!”

  Her youngest brother sat with his back to her at the little desk she used as a vanity.

  When did he get so big? She asked herself.

  “Close the door!” he said, urgently, his face buried in his hands.

  Blythe didn’t hesitate. She shut the door behind her and turned the lock.

  “Calvin? What’s wrong?” she asked in a hush voice. He might have hit a growth spurt, but he was still just a kid.

  “Ohshitohshitohshitohshit…” he murmured, still hunched over the desk. The pitch of his voice made Blythe wonder if he was crying. She set her food on the edge of her nightstand and crossed to the other entrance to her room — the doorway that led to the Jack-and-Jill bathroom. The door only locked from the inside, but she closed it for good measure. Seth was bound to come upstairs soon.

  “Cal, what is it?” She was halfway to him when he stopped her.

  “No! Stay where you are!” Blythe froze. This time, she was sure she could hear tears in his voice, but he wouldn’t turn to face her. Even in the reflection of her make-up mirror, all she could see were the shaft of bangs that curtained his eyes and the back of his hands as he covered his face.

  She found herself thinking about how long his fingers were now, but they still looked so fragile.

  “Calvin…?” she whispered gently, hoping to reassure him. If Seth had done this, she might just have to mace him for good measure. “What happened?”

  She heard him sniff.

  “I don�
��t want you to see me like this,” he sobbed. “Can you please… just please shut your eyes so I can leave?” he begged.

  She blinked at his request.

  “But… but Calvin, I already know you are crying. Why don’t you stay so we can talk about this?”

  Her baby brother gave a bitter laugh.

  “Trust me, Blythe, you don’t want to talk about this. Please just do as I ask.”

  “Fine,” she said on a sigh and shut her eyes. “My eyes are closed, Cal. But we’re going to talk about this later.”

  Blythe could hear him pushing back the little bench and crossing the room. She reminded herself that sixteen had been a difficult year for her, too.

  Not as hard as eighteen, she admitted.

  Still, she’d been awkward-looking forever and, outside of Rae and the other gifted geeks, she didn’t have many friends. She’d spent a fair number of afternoons sobbing behind the closed door of her bedroom.

  And, after all, it wasn’t really her bedroom anymore. She’d evicted Calvin when she returned home, and this left him without a sanctuary. Her heart softened at the thought. As soon as she heard the bathroom door shut, she opened her eyes.

  Blythe stood on her side of the closed door.

  “Calvin? Believe it or not, I remember what it’s like to be sixteen,” she said, trying to console her brother.

  She heard the tap running and, a second later, the sound of splashing came through the door. He must have been dousing his face with cold water to try to mask his tears.

  “Is it Seth? He’s in rare form today,” she offered, hoping to compare stories with him.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he replied, his voice barely loud enough to rise over the sound of the running water.

  This Blythe understood, too. When something really bothered her, she retreated into herself. It was a safety mechanism, but it was one that had served her well in a family where she was often misunderstood or invisible.

  In the Barnes household, there were essentially two factions. Seth and her mother made up one type, and Blythe, Calvin, and her father — in his own way — was the other. Years ago — when Blythe was fourteen or fifteen — she had dubbed them The Outs and The Ins.

  Seth and Alexandra were The Outs, of course. It seemed that they weren’t capable of having a thought without voicing it. But the way they related to the rest of the world wasn’t exactly the same. Blythe’s mother filtered nothing. She was just as likely to say that the broccoli she ate for lunch had given her gas as she was to talk about how many bobby pins she’d used in her chignon that morning. Seth, on the other hand, gave his opinion as though he were handing out chocolate kisses. He truly seemed to think that everyone on the planet would be better off hearing his take on things. Self-doubt or humility was as alien to him as kangaroos on the moon.

  The Ins rarely gave away anything of value. It was easier for Blythe and Calvin to pretend that nothing mattered, nothing bothered them — because to show weakness, to show what was genuine or precious, meant giving an Out permission to talk it to death. Her father, of course, was probably immune to this weakness, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t an In.

  Arthur Barnes spent most of his free time reading. While the front room in the Barnes home was the domain of Blythe’s mother, the den off the family’s small dining room belonged chiefly to her father. There, he would sit for hours, surrounded by his teetering piles of newspapers, magazines, and books.

  This was his chief occupation and his greatest joy, second only to walking. While Blythe had never seen any sign that her father aspired to become a writer, he was a great admirer of Charles Dickens, and she had known for as long as she could remember that Dickens wrote from the hours of 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then the author spent his afternoons walking.

  Arthur Barnes was no modern-day Dickens. Instead, he spent his morning and the better part of his afternoon walking — on his mail route — and once he returned home, he retreated to his tattered, reclining wingbacked chair and read until it was time for dinner. Afterwards, he’d return to the same spot and carry on until he went to bed.

  His exception to this routine was during football season. If the UL Ragin’ Cajuns were at home, he’d be at the game as a lifelong season ticket holder. If they were on the road, he’d tune into KPEL and listen on the radio, his eyes fixed on some distant point across the room where his mind staged play after play.

  Blythe swore there were days when he’d say, at best, five words to anyone. On such days, she wondered how her parents had conceived even one — much less three — children. Still, if one could draw him away from whatever page he was reading to ask about something he’d read — that day or 20 years before — Arthur was like a burst pipe. He gushed with information. It was sometimes overwhelming.

  Blythe shook her head. The people who surrounded her were as familiar to her as they were strange. She knew she belonged to them — among them — that each of them did. Each person, quiet or loud, made them a family, and to remove one from the mix meant that the cohesion of the rest was lost.

  As weird as they were, as Blythe knew they’d always been, the Barnes family worked.

  She picked up her apple and peanut butter and carried them to the vanity desk, the only spot in her room where she allowed herself to eat. She frowned at the cluster of cosmetics that covered its surface. Blythe usually took care to clean up after herself and put her things away, but she must have been too nervous about the interview that morning.

  She tucked her compact, blush case, and mascara back in the drawer and set her makeup brushes upright in the little pewter cup that bore her initials. With a satisfied sigh at the small, tidy space, she swept off the surface with her hand and laid out her snack.

  Everyone in the house — Ins and Outs — teased her about being a neat freak. Nobody, not even Calvin, understood her need to keep her environment clean, orderly, and minimalist.

  Over the years, her roommates had celebrated this trait, but even if they appreciated her neatness, they didn’t understand it, either.

  It gave her control.

  Growing up in a house where noise and clutter were almost inescapable, Blythe’s room became the one place where she could have — at the very least — order and peace. Those were her minimum requirements, but she was happiest when she could also give her space style and, sometimes, even beauty.

  The rental house she’d shared with Ellen on Delachaise — two blocks off Magazine Street — had been so awesome. With their walls covered in Ellen’s photographs and their furniture showing off the best of their yard sale talents and sewing skills, the two had created a home that was funky and stylish, but still comfortable and welcoming.

  Now, most of the cool stuff she owned was in a unit at Stor-N-Lock, costing her $50 a month not to be used. Almost every day since she’d moved home, Blythe would catch herself humming Louis Armstrong’s tune about missing New Orleans. It had gotten to the point where Calvin would pick out the notes on the piano just to torment her — or to encourage her to move back.

  Blythe took the last bite of her apple just as her phone rang. She dug it out of her pocket and nearly choked when she saw the number on the screen.

  The Cory Group!

  She swallowed, cleared her throat twice, and answered.

  “Blythe? This is Eliot Cory. Am I catching you at a bad time?”

  Blythe’s heart started to pound so hard; she feared he’d be able to hear it over the phone.

  “No, now’s a good time,” she managed.

  Please let it be good news. Please let it be good news. They wouldn’t call only an hour after I left if it was bad news, right?

  “Great! Well, Ian and I were really impressed after our meeting with you today,” he said easily. Blythe held her breath. “We’d like to offer you the creative artist position, so we decided to call now to give you the weekend to think it ove—”

  “I’ll take it!” she heard herself blurt.

  He gave a surprised
laugh.

  They’d talked salary and benefits during the interview, and she knew that she would be able to afford a place on her own and begin to rebuild her life with this chance.

  “Well, that was easy. Ian bet me we’d have to play hardball,” he joked.

  Blythe felt herself blush. Perhaps she should have hidden how eager she was. How desperate.

  “I’m very excited, Mr. Cory. Thank you so much.”

  “Eliot, please. We’re very informal, Blythe,” he said kindly. “What about starting

  Monday, then?”

  Happiness bubbled up inside her. It was real. She’d done it. She could start over.

  “Yes, yes, that’d be great!

  They talked for a few minutes about the client they would meet with early next week, a sandwich shop that was opening a second location in town, and Blythe promised to begin thinking about design ideas.

  She hung up feeling giddy; she wanted to tell somebody. Blythe stood up, took, one step toward her bedroom door, and froze.

  It never failed to bring him to mind. Her best news. Her worst news. Whenever she had something to share, Nate Bradley was the one person she wanted to call. Even after six years. Even after everything.

  “So stupid,” she muttered, collapsing on the foot of her bed. The instinct to call him surprised her every time. Why would he be in her head when they hadn’t spoken or laid eyes on each other for six years?

  In the seconds after the stupid punk in the truck had smashed into her Tercel on South Claiborne, Blythe had actually reached for her phone to call him. The impulse had been so strong she had burst into tears. The cop who arrived at the scene moments later had summoned an ambulance, fearing serious injuries. Why else would she be such a mess?

  And even though her head had been throbbing and her neck was already killing her, the ache that pained her most was the reminder that she couldn’t get over him.

  In spite of her happiness about the job, the piercing she felt now deep in her chest was just the same. Blythe closed her eyes to keep the tears from coming, but she inhaled a long breath and let herself remember.