Ashley Bell: A Novel (15 page)

Nancy and Murphy didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, and as usual when torn by conflicting emotions, they succumbed to both, switching back and forth, and back again, from tears of joy to tears that watered a large garden of what-might-have-happened fears. They made such a spectacle of themselves in the hospital room that a nurse stepped in and politely asked them to remember, please, that the other patients needed peace and quiet.

As soon as Bibi had the discharge papers, her parents shepherded her along the corridor, into the elevator, down to the lobby, out to the parking lot, both of them often talking at the same time. They had a thousand questions, and they wanted to hear everything that had happened, but they weren’t able to stop themselves from interrupting her with hugs and kisses and exclamations of relief, some in surfer lingo—“epic, foffing, totally sacred, just a pure glasshouse pipe of a day, stylin’ ”—which for the first time sounded wrong coming from them, as though their daughter’s flirtation with Death had made them desperate to be young again.

Dinner had to be special, celebratory, a night to be remembered forever, an amped-up commemoration of the impossible become possible. Bibi knew too well what that meant: the best combination Mexican-and-burger joint in town, where cheese came on everything and the spices were hot hot hot, too many bottles of icy Corona, too many shots of tequila. But she went along with the plan because she was hungry, happy, still afloat on wonder, and because she loved her mom and dad. They were always sweet, always amusing, and they weren’t alcoholics, only special-occasion drunks once a month or so.

During the dinner, Nancy whispered in Murphy’s ear and left the table for ten minutes. When she returned, giggling, Murphy whispered in Nancy’s ear. Then
he
went away for ten minutes. They were clearly conspiring at something, and Bibi half dreaded what it might be. They were generous and thoughtful, but a surfeit of emotion and too much booze could be a wicked combination that motivated them every so often to drop upon their daughter a wildly inappropriate gift.

To observe the publication of Bibi’s first novel, they had presented her with an illegal tiger cub, which seemed reasonable to them because one of the big cats was a featured player in the book. Of course, she’d contacted animal-welfare authorities, pretended to have found the cub in the park, and made sure that the little fellow went to a first-rate refuge for exotic animals.

She didn’t want another tiger or, God forbid, an elephant, but she said nothing because nothing she said would stop them once they had agreed on a “perfect gift.” Her parents could hit you with crazy when you least expected it.

Bibi had drunk little beer and no tequila while convincing Nancy and Murphy that she was keeping pace with them. Now she insisted they couldn’t drive her to her apartment; she would take them home and, in the morning, return their BMW. They snuggled in the backseat as if they were teenagers.

At the house in Corona del Mar, their attempt to disentangle and clamber out of the car was worthy of Ringling Bros.’ finest trying to exit a joke vehicle the size of a riding lawnmower. Nancy paused in that performance to say, “When you get home, angel girl, just go with it.”

“Go with what?”

Grinning, her dad said, “You’ll see.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t think it would be tonight.”

“It’s just what you need,” Murphy assured her.

“What I need, Dad, is a hot bath and bed.”

“Her name’s Calida Butterfly.”

“Whose name?”

He closed the door and bent down with Nancy to grin at Bibi through the front passenger window. The two of them waved and blew kisses, as though she hadn’t been dying just the day before, as if she were eighteen and going off to college.
It’ll be what it’ll be,
and it had turned out to be some kind of miracle. Even if the good twist might be impossible, inexplicable, Nancy and Murphy would by morning have put all the recent stress and worry behind them, would waste no psychic energy on wondering why or what if. They would grab their boards and hit the beach, so to speak, and respect fate by giving no thought to it until they were slammed by the next thing that would be whatever it would be.

On the drive to her apartment, Bibi repeatedly reminded herself that, having had her ticket taken away and torn up as she waited on the banks of the River Styx, she should be grateful for every breath and accept every annoyance and frustration with patience. Easier said than done when someone named Calida Butterfly was apparently waiting for you with just what you needed.

She parked in one of the two spots reserved for her apartment and switched off the headlights, but not the engine. She considered putting down the power windows an inch, to provide ventilation, and sleeping in the car. That was a childish impulse. She hadn’t been a child even through much of her childhood. She shut off the engine, but took no satisfaction in her maturity.

In the apartment-complex courtyard, in the expectant stillness of the night, the palms and ferns were as motionless as plants in a diorama. Ribbons of steam rose and withered from the heated, eerily illuminated pool, and a young man as sleek as a trout swam laps so effortlessly that his arms sliced from the water only a quiet
slish-slish-slish.

Carrying her drawstring bag and laptop, Bibi climbed the open iron staircase to the long balcony that served the third-floor units. When she came to the door of her apartment, she found it open wide. Beyond the threshold and the shallow foyer, extravagant bouquets of red and white roses dressed the living room, as if a wedding would soon commence, and all the shimmering light issued from candles in glass cups that crowded every surface not occupied by flower vases.

As Bibi hesitated in the foyer, a woman stepped into view from the right. She wore flat-soled white shoes, white slacks, and a short-sleeved white blouse. She might have been taken for a physical therapist or a dental assistant except for the blue-silk sash that she wore as a belt, the gold-star-on-blue-field silk scarf at her throat, dangling silver earrings, each ear with three hoops of different sizes, and enough expensive-looking bracelets and finger rings to stock a jewelry store. She was an Amazon. Five foot ten. Maybe six feet. Formidable but feminine, with a face reminiscent of Greta Garbo if Greta Garbo had looked a little more like Nicole Kidman. She was about forty, with clear, smooth skin, blond hair cut in a pageboy, and eyes that were blue or green or silver-gray depending on how the quivering candlelight revealed them.

In a voice both slightly husky and melodious, she said, “I am Calida Butterfly. Welcome to this first day of your new life.”

Except that her parents were more traditional in some things than they believed themselves to be, except that their beloved and otherwise libertarian surf culture didn’t have much patience for woman-woman or man-man romance, Bibi might have thought that their gift to her would turn out to be her first lesbian experience.

But of course it was far different from that. She was about to learn why she had survived brain cancer.

Calida Butterfly traveled with a folding massage table and a small ostrich-skin suitcase. Featuring two compartments, the case could be opened from either side. Half of it contained the lotions, oils, and items related to massage. The other half held things she needed for her second occupation, which she had declined to reveal until she completed working on Bibi’s tense, knotted muscles.

“If you’re thinking about what comes next,” Calida had said, “you’re not getting the full effect of the massage.”

“If I’m
wondering
about what comes next and why you’re being so mysterious,” Bibi had replied, “that won’t relax me, either.”

“The writer that you are, I guess you’re used to being a kind of dictator, telling the characters in your stories what to do.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“Good. It doesn’t work that way with me, either.” Taking off her rings and bracelets, she said, “Now you lie down and be a good girl.”

Holding a towel across her breasts, wearing only panties, Bibi had done as she was told. Her embarrassment passed quickly because of Calida’s brusque yet reassuring manner. An uneasiness remained, but she couldn’t identify a cause; maybe it was a lingering effect of the cancer scare, the residue of concerns that need no longer worry her.

The table had a cutout for her face, so that she was looking at her living-room carpet, where reflections of candlelight flowed and wimpled almost like water. “Did you bring all the candles and roses?” Bibi asked as she waited for the massage to begin.

“Heavens, no. Your parents asked me to have them delivered at the last minute. I can get anything done on a two-hour notice.”

“How do you manage that?”

“I have sources. Proprietary information. Now shush.”

Calida switched on an iPod. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, whose voice was one of the warmest ever recorded, began to sing a soothing medley of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “What a Wonderful World.”

“How did you get in here?”

“Your mom has a spare key, right? She put it in an envelope and left it with the hostess at the restaurant. I picked it up.”

About five seconds after the first touch, Bibi realized that Calida Butterfly had magic hands. “Where did you learn this?”

“Do you ever shut up, girl? You be quiet and just float.”

“Float where?”

“Anywhere, nowhere. Quiet now, or I’ll tape your mouth shut.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Don’t test me. I’m not your ordinary masseuse.”

In spite of the faintest uneasiness, Bibi got with the program. The candlelight purling and undulating on the carpet proved hypnotic.

Just as she began to float, she wondered if the woman massaging her was in fact Calida Butterfly. Someone could have disabled the real Calida, or even killed her, taking her place in order to…

To what? No. Such a twist was a novelist’s conceit, and not a good one. Bad thriller plotting. Or a movie with shrieking violins and the latest scream queen channeling a young Jamie Lee Curtis.

The rippling, curling candlelight. The music. Calida’s magic hands. Soon Bibi was floating again, floating anywhere, nowhere.

Somewhere. Gelson’s supermarket. An express checkout lane. Seven months after she had dropped out of the university.

Bibi was puzzled that memories involving Dr. Solange St. Croix—such old news, after all—should trouble her twice in two days.

That afternoon three years earlier, she stopped at the market for a head of lettuce, a few ripe but firm tomatoes, radishes, and celery. Carrying everything in a handbasket, she recognized her former professor standing last in line for the express checkout.

Her first inclination was to retreat, explore a few aisles even though she needed nothing more, waste enough time for the holy mother of the university writing program to make her purchases and leave. The encounter she’d had with the woman in that minimalist office with the half-empty bookshelves had left, however, an enduring sore spot on Bibi’s ego. She always stood up for herself, never pigheadedly, never without good reason; but on that occasion, she had backed down with uncharacteristic wimpiness, shocked and confused and unsettled by the professor’s inexplicable fury. If she withdrew now, hiding out in the bakery department, she would suffer a second blow to her self-respect, this one more deserved than the first.

To be honest, there was another consideration. In the seven months since leaving the university, living with her parents, she’d written six short stories. Three had been accepted for publication: by
The Antioch Review,
by
Granta,
and by
Prairie Schooner.
Such prolific production and acceptance were remarkable for a writer not yet nineteen. In one of the smaller rooms of her heart, Bibi harbored the unworthy desire to share her success with her former professor.

She stood in line behind her target, telling herself not to force the moment, to wait for the woman to notice her. She wouldn’t take a snarky tone when disclosing her good fortune. Striving to sound sincere, she would
thank
the professor for all she had learned in those three months, as if being harried out of the university had been a valuable service, had awakened her to her faults, and had brought her to her literary senses. She would be so convincingly humble and ingenuous that Solange St. Croix would be left speechless.

The professor’s handbasket contained nine items, and when her turn came at the checkout conveyor belt, she turned to her left to unload her purchases. She saw Bibi from the corner of her eye and turned to face her with an almost comical expression of astonishment.

The woman seemed to be wearing the same outfit as on the day in her office when she’d breathed fire, a tailored but drab pantsuit and a blouse the gray-green of dead seaweed. Her graying hair was still in a bun, her face without makeup, and her blue eyes were cold enough to freeze her opponent in a smackdown with the mythical Medusa.

Before Bibi could get out a word, the professor said, “You bold little bitch,” spraying spittle with the
B
’s, and her face contorted with what seemed to be both anger and fear. “Following me, stalking me.” Before Bibi could deny the charge, the woman rushed on: “I’ll call the police on you, don’t think I won’t, I’ll get a restraining order, you crazy c—!” In the river of invective that followed, she used the c-word, the t-word, the f-word more than once, and it was impossible to tell whether rage or genuine terror scored higher on her emotional Richter scale. “Get this girl away from me, someone help me,
get her away from me.
”

Three shoppers had stepped into line behind Bibi, making retreat a clumsier bit of business than she would have liked. Maybe they knew who the esteemed professor was or maybe she looked so unthreatening and widowlike that, in spite of her foul language, they were inclined to sympathize with her. On the other hand, customers and clerks and aproned bagboys stared at Bibi,
gaped
at her, as if she’d committed an offense against the helpless older lady that, although witnessed by none of them, must have been malicious in the extreme. With St. Croix still asking for help and warning everyone about her dangerous assailant, Bibi made her way among the shoppers in line behind her and turned left, crossing the front of the store. Rattled as she rarely was, mortified, she didn’t know where she was going—that is until she put down her handbasket of vegetables on a display of Coca-Cola, said “Excuse me” to a young mother and child with whom she collided, and headed for the nearest exit.

So much for floating.

“You tensed up all of a sudden,” said Calida Butterfly.

“Just a bad memory.”

“Men,” said the masseuse, making a wrong assumption. “Nothing we can do about them except shoot them, if it was legal.”

Bibi hadn’t gone back to Gelson’s for a year, although it was her favorite market. Even to this day, she imagined an employee now and then recognized her and, to be safe, kept out of her way.

She hadn’t seen Dr. Solange St. Croix since. Hoped never to see her again. With no slightest clue to puzzle out the reason for the professor’s bizarre behavior, Bibi had decided it must be early-onset Alzheimer’s.

A draft stirred the candle flames for a while, and fluttering cascades of soft amber light spilled across the room, which smelled sweetly of roses. Bibi took slow, deep breaths and exhaled through the face hole in the massage table.