The Butterfly Sister Page 5

  I pointed to the brown bag beside me. “I brought my lunch today.”

  “Eat it tomorrow.”

  “I don’t have any cash on me.”

  “My treat.”

  I thought of Mark that afternoon at the café, when he’d insisted on buying me a latte. “Thanks anyway,” I said, pretending to read the faxes. Really, I was just letting the black words grow fuzzy into the blinding white paper.

  Craig finally walked away, and I looked up in time to see his shoulders slump.

  “Hey, Craig?” I called after him, a knee-jerk reaction at the thought I’d hurt his feelings.

  He doubled back to my cubicle with earnest eyes. “Yeah, Ruby?”

  “You left your pen,” was all I could say.

  That night, Mom worked the evening shift at the hospital and left a sticky note on the kitchen table instructing me to eat the leftovers from Wu’s. I microwaved a serving on a paper plate and ate it standing up next to the garbage can. Ten minutes later, I was sick enough to go searching for stomach antacid. Our medicine cabinet left something to be desired: an empty bottle of Tums and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol so expired, it was orange not pink. Sad, really, considering my mom’s occupation, but she had cleared out all of the other meds like pain reliever and cold and flu remedies back in December, per my doctor’s recommendation.

  Just in case, he’d said.

  I eventually found Rolaids in the top drawer of the foyer console table, which was crammed with pens, coupons, receipts, playing cards, keys that open nothing, and scratch paper. I opened the drawer wide enough for me to grab the antacids and chewed two of the chalky calcium tablets as quickly as a toddler does candy. But when I tried to close the drawer, it wouldn’t budge. I fought with it a good minute, even slammed it with my hip, until I decided I needed to take everything out just to put it all back in again.

  And that’s when I found the culprit, under the pad of scratch paper I’d used to write down Mrs. Richards’s address the day before. Beth’s copy of A Room of One’s Own stared back at me from inside the drawer, like a flask of vodka I’d stowed away in case I fell off the wagon.

  I could have sworn I returned the book to the suitcase, and yet, there it was. How had I forgotten to put it back? I thought then of Detective Pickens, imagined him arresting me for harboring evidence.

  “It was an accident,” I imagined saying in turn. “I didn’t mean to keep it.”

  And yet, I wondered if that was really true. Because instead of calling the detective immediately, I took the book to the front porch swing and began reading it, despite the memories it induced the day before.

  Masochistic, I heard Gwen say.

  Flipping through the book, I realized that if Beth was in fact dead—like the detective implied—the book had preserved her in one very real way. It had maintained her consciousness. In the margins, Beth had taken notes in a rich, blue ink. She had starred a passage here and there. She had written things like “Aha!” and “So true!” On some pages, she had simply drawn an arrow to the margin, where she wrote an exclamation mark. It was enough to make me shiver. It seemed a reason to believe Beth was still alive. The words she scribbled there still had a pulse.

  At first, I thought turning the pages would prove a treasure hunt for me, anticipating more words or symbols to appear. But when I turned the second page of chapter one, all I could do was stare. There, next to the paragraph where Woolf states the importance of having a room of one’s own, Beth had written the words Like Cassie’s Cabin.

  How had Beth Richards known about Mark’s mother’s writing retreat?

  It was possible, I reasoned, that Beth had taken one of Mark’s English courses at Tarble, one where the students read A Room of One’s Own as part of the curriculum. It was probable too that Mark had gotten chatty with his students one day and told his entire class, including Beth, about his mother’s cabin in the woods, the place he and his brother deemed Cassie’s Cabin. It pained me to think he would divulge so personal a story—the story he told me intimately at the café—to his students. But even more distressing was that Beth had scribbled a note down about it in her book. Why would Mark’s story mean so much to her?

  The realization hit me hard, a sucker punch to the stomach. It was a question best answered by a question.

  Why did it mean so much to me?

  Chapter 4

  One Year Earlier

  After our kiss in his Jeep, I spent all of my free time with Mark, and my not-so-free time too, even ditching class twice to see him. It was two weeks of hand-holding, cheek-stroking, and kissing, over lattes and cabernets and late dinners, until he invited me back to his cabin one Tuesday night.

  I had no idea such secluded parts of Kenosha existed. I’d driven down only the outskirt country roads, past barns and cornfields, in the stretch between Lake Michigan and the Interstate. But off the main thoroughfare, just a few miles north of Tarble, a small gravel road beckoned us into an oak forest, where I heard only crickets and leaves rustling through the open window of Mark’s Jeep. No people. No cars, less the sound of wheels crunching the gravel.

  “It’s so quiet,” I said as he parked in front of what used to be his mother’s cabin. Size-wise, it reminded me of a concession stand at a Little League field. “You’re right. It’s like Walden Pond back here. I love it.”

  “I thought you would. Not everyone appreciates its . . . simplicity.”

  And by not everyone, I knew he meant Meryl.

  We stood in silence at the doorstep as he slid the key into the lock and jiggled the doorknob with just the right amount of pressure, the right sequence of turns.

  “Persnickety,” he explained, once the doorknob turned.

  When we stepped into the darkness, I smelled wood—a tangy, sweet odor emanating from the pine walls and floor. The air at first smelled dry, like the inside of a sawmill, but a waft of humidity suddenly hit my nose like an aftertaste. Mildew.

  “Home sweet home,” he said after he flipped a switch beside the door. A lamp flickered, shedding a dim light, equivalent in glow to a jar of captive fireflies. “One step up from camping, actually.”

  “But you have a kitchen,” I argued, pointing at his minimal cooking quarters. “A deep sink. Two burners. A good-size fridge. I camped a lot as a kid, in the bayou with my dad. This is at least three steps up from camping, maybe four.”

  “It’s tiny and needs to be gutted.”

  “It’s cozy,” I corrected, “and needs a little TLC.”

  He pulled me to him then, holding my wrists behind my back, my arms removed from the equation so he could press his body fully against mine. And then he kissed me, softly at first like he sipped wine and then more deeply, as if deciding to gulp the whole glass.

  “What was that for?” I asked when our lips parted.

  “Your optimism. I’m a grown man living in . . . this is a shed, let’s call a spade a spade, and here you are trying to sell me on it.”

  “Show me the rest of your shed,” I said.

  Another lamp and a few floor creaks later, and I’d seen the whole place. A table with two mismatched chairs, one vinyl and one wood. A full-size bed with no frame or headboard and unmade, the sheets twisted with a wool blanket in a striped pattern, a candy cane effect. A stone fireplace. A bulky, lopsided sofa. No television, but a radio. It had all come with the place when he bought it. Rustic Bachelor Pad—that’s what the real estate agent called it in the MLS listing.

  “Do you want something to drink?” he asked.

  “What do you have?”

  “Water.” He cringed. “Well water. Or . . . I think I have orange juice?”

  I realized then why we’d gone out for coffee and drinks and dinner so often in the past weeks, why Mark seemed to live at his office. I was sure a peek into his fridge would reveal a lonely colony of ketchup packets. This cabin needs a woman’s touch, I thought. He needs a woman’s touch.

  “I love orange juice,” I said, making myself comfortable on th
e couch.

  He brought me water. No juice after all. To make up for this, though, he put on a fire. I watched him heft several massive logs onto the hearth and understood why his biceps were so defined. He probably split the wood himself, using nothing but an ax.

  “I can see why your mom liked it here,” I said, once more scanning the room, now soft and hazy under the orange glow of fire light. “No distractions. That’s what you need to write.”

  “It’s quiet and sentimental, yes. But it isn’t romantic.” He sighed. “But we can’t go to your dorm, can we? And my office is too visible.”

  I knew then that a platonic tour of Mark’s home was not the extent of our agenda that evening. I’d probably spend the night; drink coffee with him in the morning. The thought made me giddy.

  “You don’t need to impress me,” I said. To prove this fact, I sipped the water. It tasted like sulfur, but I didn’t dare purse my lips. “I like it here. Because I’m with you.”

  He sat beside me on the couch and kissed me again, hard but sweet; it shot through me like an electric shock, down to my feet and back again. And then he stared into my eyes and brushed his knuckles across my cheek.

  “Come with me this weekend,” he blurted.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I don’t think I can go three whole days without you.”

  My heart melted. Mark’s impending trip to New Orleans, for the symposium at his alma mater, had been hovering above me like a rain cloud. We hadn’t been apart for more than half a day in the past weeks.

  “I can’t imagine how expensive a flight would be on such short notice,” I said.

  “Ruby, I’ll take care of everything. Flight, hotel, meals. Let me do this, let me whisk you away to somewhere picturesque and charming.” He gestured at his unkempt surroundings, as if they were the antithesis of both these things. “I can book us a room in the Quarter. Somewhere historic,” he added. “The Hotel Monteleone, perhaps. They say it’s haunted. If we’re lucky, we can throw back a few pints with Faulkner’s ghost at the bar.”

  I had never stayed at the hotel before—you never stay at the hotels in your own town—but I knew it had been a literary haunt for famous authors like William Faulkner and Truman Capote and served as the setting for short stories by Ernest Hemingway and Eudora Welty. And I wanted to go with him, more than anything. I was romanced by his determination to romance me. But I didn’t know if I could do it, if I could go back home. While a student at Tarble, I had flown into New Orleans twice a year—for Christmas and Mardi Gras, per an agreement with my father. But the very last time I’d flown there was the morning after he died. I’d taken a red-eye flight, and Mom had waited for me past the security checkpoint with churning hands, flattened curls, pale lips, and a vacant stare. She’d embraced me as if I were an emergency floatation device. “I’m so sorry,” she’d whispered selflessly, as if, for a moment, it was my loss not hers. And then we’d driven home in unusual silence, cognizant that we, just the two of us, were now the extent of our family. One of us had been removed from the equation, not from our hearts—never from our hearts—but from the physical realm in which we lived and breathed. We would survive, of course we would, but we had known, even on that very first day without my father, that the wound would never fully heal. It would bleed, and it would scab. But it would scar.

  Could I walk through the French Quarter now, knowing my father’s antiques store was no longer there, probably leased to a touristy patchouli-scented voodoo shop? Would the guilt I harbored about his death overcome me, overshadow my time there with Mark? And what if I ran into someone I knew—which seemed inevitable after living there so long—how would I explain what I was doing there, and who Mark was? And perhaps most important, how quickly would the news of my sordid affair travel a thousand miles north to my mother?

  “You’re making it very hard for me to say no,” I said.

  “So don’t.”

  I exhaled. My reservations came out with my breath. I said yes.

  And then it was settled, and we relocated our conversation—a discussion suddenly made up of actions not words—to the ruffled sheets of his unmade bed.

  By the time we checked into the Hotel Monteleone that Friday night, it was dusk, my favorite hour in the Crescent City, when waves of violet streak the horizon, when day succumbs to night and you know there is no turning back.

  We stood aimless for a moment in front of the hotel doors, and I watched Mark look up and down the street, then take in a big whiff of city air. “It’s exactly how I remembered,” he said.

  My eyes moved down the street. We were on Royal—Rue Royal—and my father’s storefront was just a block away. But New Orleans was not exactly how I remembered. The hues were all wrong. The pink facades appeared more coral than salmon; the green ferns looked more emerald than kelly; the ironwork more espresso than black. Being back in New Orleans was like kissing an ex-boyfriend, simultaneously familiar and foreign. I knew this place by heart, and yet time had passed.

  We had changed.

  “You’re my tour guide,” Mark said. “Where to?”

  I pointed down Rue Royal in the direction of my father’s store.

  As Mark and I walked arm in arm into the Vieux Carré, my heart began to pound, mimicking the sound of my black high heels click-clacking against the sidewalk, a rhythmic cacophony, like horseshoes hitting pavement. By that time, most of Royal’s antique and jewelry shops had closed for the day, but the street remained busy with tourists savoring the afterglow of daylight. To settle my nerves, I watched our reflection in the glass of the shop windows. I saw my black silk dress, my red shawl swept over one shoulder, my curly auburn hair pulled up girlishly on one side. I saw Mark’s black blazer and white shirt tucked into tan trousers. Each window was its own frame, and the distance between shop windows made the frames appear and reappear, flicker like an 8 mm film, as if we were actors in a silent movie.

  The movie played until we reached what used to be my father’s store. It was still an antiques shop, not a voodoo tourist trap as I’d feared, but the gold-framed mirror on display in the front window catapulted me back in time. And suddenly, I was seven years old again.

  It was late summer, and school had just resumed. Dad had taken me to his shop after school. If I behaved, if I didn’t break anything, he’d promised to buy me a naval orange in the French Market, and I’d earned my treat. I was already peeling it as we made our way back to the streetcar, dropping orange rind behind me like Hansel and Gretel’s bread. When we came to an intersection, he’d reached for my hand but pulled back in surprise at my wet, sticky palm.

  “You’re a mess,” he’d said, rubbing the drips of orange juice staining my white button-up shirt, one of two I wore every day to parochial school.

  “I want to see,” I’d said, even though I’d just placed a new orange segment in my mouth.

  He’d lifted me, his hands deep in my armpits, and walked me up to the window of his antiques store, where I saw myself in a bejeweled display mirror. Orange bits dotted both my cheeks, and the juice dripped off my chin. I’d smiled at my reflection. Then, I’d stuffed the last crescent moon segment of orange into my father’s mouth, and the juice came pouring down his chin too.

  “We’re twins now,” I’d said.

  “No telling where you start and I begin,” he’d added. And then my father had lowered me to the ground and held my hand tightly as we crossed the street. He’d never let go, not until we reached the streetcar. And by the time he’d fished for fare in his pocket, our hands were literally glued together by dried juice.

  Mark interjected my thoughts. “Is something wrong, Ruby?” he asked, because I’d stopped walking. “You look so sad.”

  My eyes blurred with impending tears. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  He swallowed. I watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down in a gulp. “Are you having second thoughts, about us?”

  I shook my head no and kissed him then, a soft brushing of lip
s, because he looked so vulnerable, like a little boy hugging his piggy bank, waiting for the ice cream truck to drive by his house on a humid August afternoon.

  “This used to be my father’s shop,” I divulged. “I thought I could do this. Come back here. But the last time I was here was for his funeral and it’s all . . . it’s like it all just happened.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?” He gripped both of my arms, crouching down so he could look up at me from under downcast eyes. “We could have gone to Vegas or New York, somewhere else, another weekend.”

  “But I wanted to. And I’m fine. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

  He studied my face; he didn’t believe me. “I just wish you would have told me.”

  Why hadn’t I told him? Why hadn’t I shared my anxieties about the trip, the impact I feared it would have on my psyche? Because I didn’t want to be that girl anymore, the girl whose father died. I didn’t want to have an emotional handicap. Learning to live without my father had been like learning to live without a leg, and I didn’t want to limp anymore. Mark had become my prosthetic so quickly, so effortlessly—he’d filled that aching, empty space, ever since the night we kissed in his Jeep. And I wanted to indulge in the euphoria of feeling whole again.

  “Do you want to go home?” he asked.

  More than anything, I thought. I want to go home, to a New Orleans that no longer exists, the one where Dad is alive.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “We flew all the way here. We checked into the hotel already. And we have the symposium tomorrow.”

  “None of that matters if you’re not happy, if you’re not comfortable. Say the word, and I’ll book us on the next flight back.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Of course.” His expression was solemn, determined, earnest—the countenance of a knight in shining armor the moment before he rescues the princess.

  I wrapped my arms around the meaty part of his waist and rested my head on his chest as I weighed the decision. “Let’s stay,” I finally said.

  He took my hand then and led me past my father’s shop, our palms bonded by a love as strong, as adhesive as orange juice.