Return of the Butterfly

by Sharon Heath

  But before I could exit the kitchen, I was stopped in my tracks by the phone sounding off yet again, this time with the custom ringtone I’d set up for Mother: Will.I.Am’s “I Got It from My Mama.” As I felt the wetness spread across the front of my blouse, I answered impatiently. “Yes, Mother?” Didn’t anyone bother these days with the custom of not calling after 10 p.m.?

  “Listen, will you do me a favor, love? Could you and Sammie keep your eyes open for Cesar tomorrow? Fidel phoned to say he was intending to come back to town for the march.”

  I sighed. “I’m not going. Sam’s sick.”

  “Oh.” She sounded disconcerted. “Well, do you know anyone else who might be going?” The fact that Mother didn’t ask what was wrong with my friend spoke volumes.

  “Isn’t Fidel going?”

  “No. He’s afraid he’ll get deported.”

  “For God’s sake, isn’t he legal?”

  “It’s not a question you ask.” No, I supposed you didn’t. Especially not now. “Mother, you’ve tried with Cesar. You’ve got to let it be. With any luck, he’ll call you at some point. You obviously can’t force it.”

  “I realize that, but I’m afraid I’m a bit of a basket case. It’s just that I never had to really worry about you, so I have no practice managing this kind of anxiety.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  “Not really.”

  Speaking of feeling gut punched, I struggled to catch my breath. Adam must have wondered why I’d taken so long downstairs, as he entered the kitchen now, carrying Callay. He was staring at me with concern.

  I kept my voice in a purposeful monotone. “When I was flapping and screaming and pinching myself? When you couldn’t find a school that would take me? When I got arrested in the middle of the night after the Boy Who Called Me Beautiful talked me into taking off my clothes in a stranger’s backyard?” Purposely ignoring Adam’s hand signals, I went on, my face feeling unusually hot. “When I had to have an abortion?”

  There was a long pause. I saw Adam leave the room, throwing me a worried glance as he clasped Callay tightly to his chest. Mother still sounded unperturbed. “Please don’t think I’m stupid, but it’s true. I never really worried about you. Not deep down. Not to the point of sleeplessness. You had this lucky innocence, as if nothing could really touch you.”

  I was so stunned that I sat down, grateful that there was a kitchen chair to catch me.

  “What about when I gave that disastrous speech at the Nobel ceremony? Talking about Grandfather’s balls in front of the King of Sweden?”

  “But that was funny.”

  “Not for me. The press treated me like a fool. And the Cacklers had a field day with it.”

  “But you just kept going. You’re so resilient.”

  I stifled the temptation to pinch my inner thigh. I promised myself I’d never do it again after Callay was born. I couldn’t bear to set her such an awful example. What could I possibly say now? Mother had clearly perfected a way to protect herself from the kind of worry that had dogged me ever since I’d learned I was pregnant. She’d managed to blind herself to the fact that her young daughter had been perpetually gripped by a terror of the Everlasting Void of Eternal Emptiness.

  I managed to get off the phone with the plea that I had to feed Callay, but the fact was, my milk had dried up during our conversation like an old sponge. I fetched a bottle from the fridge. Thank God for pumping.

  My daughter was kind enough to sleep through that night, though the beneficial effect on my state of sleep deprivation was blunted by a series of nightmares involving Father, our truculent new president, and a knife-wielding, evil twin of Uncle Bob. I fed my little girl the next morning with great gratitude for her purity, then dozed off again until an unheard of 11:00 a.m.

  Listening patiently and (wisely) without commentary to my rant about Mother, Adam offered to scrape me up some breakfast. I lumbered out of bed. Leaning against the marble bathroom sink counter, I stared at my sleep-swollen face in the mirror. Extracting a strand of dental floss, I went at my gums with a little too much force. As I rinsed my bloody mouth, I wondered what made for a good mother, really. Nana had been like a mother to me in my early days. She had a grip like a Mack truck and the vocabulary of a marine, but I knew I was safe with her. Gwennie had a generous heart, but she always held back just a bit, as if she were afraid of intruding; she felt more like an auntie than a mother. So many of us humans had been forced to make do without the intimate claiming that I’d seen between Dhani and Angelina, Aadita and Sam. Adam himself had had no mother at all, yet he was the most tender man on the planet. Next to Grandfather, of course. And then there was Stanley—as odd duckish as could be, but profoundly protective of me. It occurred to me that I’d gotten some of my sweetest love from men. But male and female alike—Grandfather, Nana, Adam, Gwennie, and Stanley: I knew that each of them had at times felt worried sick about me. Unless you had the equanimity of the Buddha himself, wasn’t that part of the deal?

  As if to corroborate that line of thought, I heard Adam running up the stairs shouting loudly enough to wake the dead. I hurried into the hallway, and Makeda did, too, ordering the girls back to their bedroom.

  “Oh Jesus, Fleur!” Adam cried. “Thank God you didn’t go!”

  I managed to wrest from my distraught husband the news that someone had driven his car straight into the middle of the march. CNN was showing videos of bodies flying everywhere and one particularly nauseating photograph of a baby stroller upended on the sidewalk of Santa Monica Boulevard. Hunkered together in front of the TV, Adam, Makeda, and I learned that at least ten people had died, with many more wounded, and that the driver had been apprehended hiding in the bushes behind an apartment building on Kings Road. A previous mugshot showed an exceptionally pale man with a Swastika tattooed on his neck and a look in his hazel eyes that spelled nothing but trouble. I found myself wondering what kind of a mother he’d had.

  It would later be reported that Dustin Eagleton had been a follower of a man named Craig Cobb, who’d splintered off from something called the Creativity Movement to establish an enclave in North Dakota he’d dubbed Creativity Trump, two misnomers that fairly took the breath away. Cobb had evidently gained some local media attention for his claims that the word “gay” had been created by Jews to distract white people from the perfidy of homosexuals. Well, maybe the guy was creative after all: he’d managed to defame two birds with one stone.

  The phone, needless to say, was ringing off the hook. In a kind of daze, I listened consecutively to a sobbing Sammie, a ranting Gwennie, and an uncharacteristically confused Stanley H. Fiske.

  When Adam finally flicked off the TV in disgust, a moist-eyed Makeda sat silently for a moment, as if gathering herself. Muttering that she’d promised the girls a late breakfast of enqulala tibs with spiced butter, she made for the stairway. Soon enough, the smells of grilled onions and jalapeños and cardamom wafted up to the second floor. Adam and I stared at each other wordlessly for what felt like eons before the baby monitor signaled that our Monkey was fussing. He went to fetch her as I woke from my trance enough to check on the older girls.

  The air felt understandably tense. In the furthest corner of the room, seated with her back against the wall with her legs splayed in front of her, Sofiya wrapped her plump arms around her less robust younger sister. Melesse’s bunna eyes were as wide as saucers. I managed to coax them toward one of their unmade beds and navigate them both onto my lap—well, as good as—to tell them that something had happened, but not to anyone we knew, and not to worry; everything would be okay. I wondered how many generations of adults had made such hollow promises to their children. Was that one more requirement of motherhood, a mastery of the lie?

  As if to prove my point, Makeda appeared at the doorway, an unconvincing smile plastered onto her face. Taking it all in, she said resolutely, “You need to eat first, then we will talk.” Her words sounded harsh to my ears, perhaps to theirs, too. Sliding
from my lap to the floor, they looked from one of us to the other with questioning expressions.

  “Darlings,” I found myself saying, “sometimes we grownups get scared, too. Bad things do happen occasionally, and we don’t like that, either. But I really can promise you this: I know that your enat and Adam and I will do everything in our power to make sure you are safe.” Makeda and I locked eyes, and she gave a slight nod. I could sense, if not actually hear, all of us breathing a bit more deeply. Lord knew that in acknowledging that awful things could happen, I wasn’t telling these girls anything they didn’t already know. But I’d just discovered something myself: it was our commitment to each other that somehow made even the darkest void more bearable. Why hadn’t I recognized that before? Wasn’t it how I’d first fallen in love with Adam?

  As the girls slid down the banister to get their food and my own mouth watered a little, reminding me I hadn’t eaten, I sought out my husband. I found him in Callay’s room, where he was changing her diaper. “Who’s my little stinka?” he said cheerily, folding up a diaper containing what had to be the smelliest poo on the planet into a tight ball and sticking it into the bin by the side of the changing table. I made a mental note to empty it very, very soon. We’d both marveled more than once that such a small being could poop so frequently and with a volume and odor that rivaled one of the larger carnivores.

  He carefully fit her little limbs inside her lion-patterned onesie and was about to pass her to me when I heard the familiar strains of “I Got It from My Mama.”

  “Grand fucking central,” I muttered, aiming for my phone.

  “He’s safe!” Mother’s voice exulted. “He texted from Guatemala. He’s found his mother, and he’s staying with her an extra week or so. He wanted to reassure me that he hadn’t gone to the march, that he hadn’t come back to LA after all. Oh, Fleur, he’s okay!”

  “Yes, Mother,” I replied, my voice less than enthusiastic. I found myself taking some pleasure in adding, “But a lot of people aren’t.”

  Mother sounded embarrassed. “Of course. I’m such an idiot. But, Fleur, you understand, don’t you? I’m just so relieved. Wasn’t it kind of him to call?”

  I realized that my voice sounded as dry as dust as I responded, “Mmm. Very kind.” I couldn’t resist the final jab, “You realize Sammie and I could have been there if she hadn’t gotten sick.” I didn’t even let her reply before I cut the connection.

  Adam, who’d been listening, raised an eyebrow. “You know, the Green-eyed Monster comes in many shapes and sizes.”

  “Don’t,” I said, putting up a hand. “The last thing I need right now is a lecture on what a jerk I am.”

  I was so disoriented that I ignored my promise to spend some quality time with Adam. Instead, I began packing up Callay’s gear, thrusting a diaper bag and Dhani’s cinnamon buns into her stroller, and announced I wanted to take a walk with her to Stanley and Gwennie’s. Adam looked hurt, but he let me go without remonstration, only reminding me to take care at intersections, as I was understandably distracted. I assumed he’d return to the TV as soon as he shut the door.

  It was a warm day, and I began to sweat after a couple of blocks. I stopped to admire a lavender bush spilling over someone’s perfectly painted picket fence. I tugged off a fuzzy, purple-flowered sprig of it and held it my nose, unaccountably reminded, not of my own garden or of Mother’s, but of Father’s Main Line estate—its vast invisible beds of roses and its lavender bushes tended with loving care by Ignacio in the days he competed with Father for Dhani’s affections. It struck me that, if he were still alive, my father would have been one of the people fulminating against the recent successes of the LGBTQ movement. I flung the lavender away and resumed pushing the stroller.

  The baby woke just as a flock of wild parrots flew in irregular formation overhead, making their inevitable racket. I knew that the question of how SoCal came to be home to so many species of this non-indigenous bird family was subject to some dispute. SoCal had seen a certain amount of illegal bird importation in the ’40s and ’50s and then again in the ’80s, with smugglers tending to release their contraband when they feared getting caught. But some old timers claimed that the preponderance of wild parrots was either the result of the Bel Air brush fire of 1961, where people released their pet yellow-heads to save them from the conflagration, or the similarly released seven hundred or so birds who’d been kept at Simpson’s Garden Town in east Pasadena before their own disastrous fire. Others insisted that they were the collateral damage of the closure of Van Nuys’ Busch Gardens Theme Park, where some birds escaped in the transfer to new facilities and others were consciously released.

  Whatever their roots, they were a hardy bunch; their transformation from domestication to the urban wild was solid. And brazen. I recalled seeing a particularly beautiful lilac-crowned parrot land on Mother’s pool decking to have a nice drink on a sizzling June day while she and I sat within arm’s distance, laughing with delight on our chaise lounges. I couldn’t wait to talk to Callay about such things, but for now I had to be content with the languages of touch and smell and nonsense syllables.

  No one answered when I rang the Fiskes’ bell, so I used my key to let us in. Gwennie was just walking toward the front door as I struggled to get the stroller over the threshold. Its back wheels went all hinky on me, wanting to aim straight for the door. I smiled apologetically after a crankily muttered, “Get in there, you fucker,” slipped out of my mouth.

  Gwen’s head was turbaned in a thick white towel. She was grinning broadly, a living testimony to the human body’s ability to spring back from near disaster.

  “You’re walking!” I exclaimed.

  “I know. Isn’t it a hoot?” But Gwen wasn’t wasting any time. She flung the towel from her head, damp strands from the shower she’d obviously just taken forming a pixie parade across her forehead. Eagerly reaching into the stroller’s cavern to lift out Callay, her joy was palpable. She’d only seen videos of the little Monkey. Now that she held her in her broad arms, it looked as if she’d never let her go.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that, in setting out for this visit, I was going to offer Gwennie such pleasure. Asshole that I was, I’d thought only that she and Stanley might be a comfort to me.

  As it happens, Stanley had gone off to the lab to distract himself from the awful news, so Gwennie had Callay all to herself. I headed for the kitchen, heated up the oven for the cinnamon buns, and put the kettle on for tea.

  Gwennie appeared at the doorway, murmuring, “You know, I think you’d better take her. She’s a bit heavier than I might have suspected.”

  “Oh my God, of course!” I swept over and relieved her, took the baby back to the stroller—where she seemed content to repose with wide-open eyes—and backed it behind me right up to the kitchen door. I wasn’t even going to try to navigate the damned thing over that narrower threshold.

  I pulled out a chair for Gwennie, who was standing over the stroller with wet eyes. “You’re barely up and walking, and I shove a baby into your arms.”

  Gwennie sat down, panting just a little, replying dryly, “You didn’t shove anything except that giant stroller, and I grabbed her myself, so enough with the guilt trip. How are you doing? I can’t believe you and Sammie could have—”

  “Don’t,” I said, lifting the kettle to pour boiling water into two orange and white Caltech mugs. “We weren’t, thank God.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Or goddess.”

  I grinned. Gwennie was the most spiritual agnostic I knew.

  The room was beginning to smell like heaven. I pulled the buns out of the oven and placed them on a serving plate, then set down forks, dishes, and napkins in no little haste. I realized I’d eaten nothing so far. I was ravenous.

  Later, the two of us reclined comfortably on the old sofa with Callay at my breast and a down pillow under Gwennie’s head. A little hesitantly, I broached the topic of her miraculous rebound.

  “Honestly, I di
dn’t think I was going to make it,” she confessed.

  “I was a little worried, too,” I admitted.

  “I think it was Robert Frost who wrote about the afternoon knowing what the morning never conceived of. Or something like that, anyway.”

  “What do you think he meant?”

  “That time and age bring surprises you’d never have imagined.” She paused, a hard glint in her eye. “Like Herr Drumph.”

  “Oh no, let’s don’t. My milk’ll dry up.” We both laughed, but it took discipline to avoid that dark alley. “I think he was talking about wisdom.”

  “Oh, I’m not very wise. Not like you guys. Just got the one BA from UCLA all those years ago. Never got further than clerical jobs, really. Glorified ones—working for worthy non-profits and such, but clerical jobs, nonetheless.”

  “You don’t have to have a PhD to have wisdom.”

  “Well, Miss Scientist, I think Stanley would ask you to explain how wisdom is different from knowledge.”

  “Wisdom is knowledge of the heart.”

  Gwen cocked an eyebrow. “Deep.” I shrugged. “My heart’s pretty rusty, Fleur. Didn’t have many boyfriends after Jack Green.” She gave a wry grin. “As in one. So I don’t know how much wisdom my heart has accrued.”

  “Romantic love isn’t the only path of the heart.”

  Gwennie’s chuckling seemed to delight the baby. Pulling away from my nipple, Callay gave a series of coos. Gwen rubbed a finger against her cheek and then kissed her stockinged foot. Sitting back again, she said, “Fleur, you’re too kind. I know that being a spinster might have a certain cachet in literary and scientific circles. Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Louisa May Alcott, Rosalind Franklin, Rachel Carson. Even your Jane Goodall fits the bill these days, though she’s technically a divorcee. But they each had something fine and precious to recommend her. Me—my biggest claim to fame is serving as caretaker of my brother Stanley’s home life and being a kind of mascot to the physics team. As I age, I find it annoying that so many clichés come true. Older women, particularly if we’re not accomplished, are pretty much invisible. When I walk down the street, nobody notices me. I’m just a plain woman in a doughy box of a body.”