The Glass Butterfly (7 page)

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Authors: Louise Marley

Tags: #Romance

BOOK: The Glass Butterfly
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Of course the
signora
had behaved shamefully to Corinna, and in the most public place. The enormous umbrella she had used to strike her rival, in full view of everyone on the street, still rested in the stand beside the back door.
Doria turned the shirtsleeve to iron the other side. A drop of perspiration slid from her cheek and fell on the linen, and she dabbed at it quickly with the hem of her apron.
Puccini expelled a wreath of smoke that rose slowly through the hot air. “Doria, you know, sometimes . . .”
She looked up at him from beneath her eyelashes. He was staring out the window at his garden browning in the relentless sun. “Signore?”
He took another drag on his cigarette. When he breathed it out, the kitchen filled with the toasty scent of tobacco. Doria inhaled, savoring the taste, liking it because it had been in his lungs, had been exhaled through his lips.
“Sometimes we make bad decisions, but we have to live with them. You're young. You don't know that yet.”
“I'm nearly twenty-one,” she said.
At that he turned to look at her. “So young!” he repeated. “Half my age—less, even.” His eyes were liquid and shadowed, like the depths of the lake where the sun seemed never to reach. She liked looking into them, and she was sure his thoughts were deeper than hers, more complex, more knowing. “You should be out in the village, Doria, spending your time with young people, not here with old folks like us.”
“I don't want to be out in the village, signore. I like it here.”
He twinkled at her. “No young man, my little nurse?”
She tossed her head. “The village boys are boring,” she said crisply. “They talk of nothing but how well they shoot, how much they can drink—how many girls they go to bed with!”
He laughed aloud. “You always say what you think, don't you, Doria?”
She dropped her eyes. “Oh, no, signore. A girl like me doesn't dare say what she thinks.” She could have said that what she wanted was not to go into the village, but to go to school, to study in Milan, the way the maestro had. She would never speak such a desire aloud. The whole idea was laughable.
He gazed at her, still smiling. “Sometimes, my little nurse,” he mused, “I wish I were young again. Just like you are! If I had known what I know now, I might do things differently.”
“But, signore, you—you are—” She couldn't think of the words. Surely he, who had everything, who had achieved so much, should not entertain regrets. She looked down at the shirtsleeve, and ironed the same spot again.
“I,” he said, “am old and tired.”
It was ridiculous, but how could she say so? It was precisely as Mamma had said. She was only a housemaid. She had no authority to scold the great Puccini, to point out how wrong he was. She could only wash his clothes, run his errands, clean his studio. Admire his music from a reverent distance.
He ground out his cigarette in one of the ubiquitous ashtrays, nodded to her, and picked up the shotgun. The two dogs, grunting, lifted themselves from the floor, and followed him out of the kitchen. There was a bit of banging and bustling as he racked the gun. A moment later the piano sounded through the hushed, overheated house.
Doria paused, the iron in her hand. He had gone back again. Back to
Butterfly
. It must be comforting to him, that great aria, the one everyone had been singing before the opera even opened. Un bel dì vedremo . . .
She pictured the devoted Cio-Cio-San, little Butterfly, kneeling at the doorway of her house, looking down on the bay with Sorrow beside her. “One fine day we will see the smoke on the far horizon . . . the white ship sails into the port . . .” Butterfly, not knowing yet that she had been betrayed, sang her beautiful song of waiting for her beloved, pouring out her longing for him to return to her.
Doria took the shirt from the ironing board and folded it neatly. Butterfly had dared to dream of something beyond her station, a happiness not granted her by birth. Doria understood perfectly. She and Butterfly were both village girls, born to do as they were told and accept what came their way.
Doria couldn't go to school, but she could at least hold on to what she had. She could stay here, in Villa Puccini, where she had a room to herself, enough to eat every day, an ordered house. She could listen to the music coming from the studio every night, and serve the genius who created it. It was a small ambition, surely, a modest wish! Hardly the stuff of grand opera.
She pulled another shirt, stiff with starch, from the basket, and shook it out on the ironing board. She took up an iron, spat on it to test the heat, and began again, keeping her ears pricked to any sound of fresh trouble from abovestairs.
 
Tory woke with perspiration beading her forehead and her neck. A drop had rolled over her cheek to fall on the hood of the sweatshirt, and that had woken her. The sun slanted directly onto her face, and her legs beneath the chenille were hot and itchy.
She couldn't remember ever having resumed a dream after being interrupted, but then she couldn't remember ever dreaming repeatedly about the same people, the same place. The whole thing was so strange, as was the feeling of anxiety that stayed with her even as she got up to return the comforter to the bed and pour out the cold tea. She put the kettle on the stove again, and moved briskly about the cramped kitchen, taking eggs from the fridge, putting bread in the toaster, staying busy until the unwelcome feeling passed.
As she settled her breakfast on the cracked Formica of the table, it occurred to her that now she understood what her depressed clients had tried to explain, what it felt like to have no feelings of your own. It was what her own mother must have felt, this flatness. This disconnection. It was too bad that she understood it more deeply now, when it was too late to help anyone else. She hoped some other therapist had taken her practice, contacted her clients, claimed her files.
All except one, of course. That one lay where she had stowed it, hidden in the bottom drawer of the rickety bureau in the bedroom. She hadn't looked at it. She hadn't wanted to think about it, but she remembered the look on Ellice's face, the weight of that cruel black gun, the horror of an innocent man's death....
And she had done nothing. Nothing but run away.
She spread jelly on her toast and took a bite, but her appetite faded at the taste of the food in her mouth. She abandoned the eggs, left the toast uneaten, and went into the bedroom.
She opened the drawer, and stared down at the file folder. Her conscience flailed beneath the ice that encased her. Someone else could suffer. Some other therapist might be at risk. She had to do something, to take some action—but what?
There was Jack, and Jack came before anything. Whether he knew it or not.
She shoved the drawer shut with her foot, and stood for a moment, thinking, then hurried to pull on jeans and a sweater. She took the hammer and screwdriver from the kitchen drawer, and carried them out into the little yard. She knelt beside the gate in the picket fence, and began to pull nails from the broken slats.
7
Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire,
o una sola, ma grande come il mare.
 
I've so many things I want to say to you,
or one only, but big as the sea.
 
—Mimì,
La Bohème,
Act Two
J
ack squatted before Tory's personal filing cabinet and pulled open the top drawer. He had put off this chore for too long. It was past time to face what was in it, deal with the mortgage and the bank and the insurance company, get it all to the lawyer's office. The lawyer said she would inform everyone, make arrangements for payments and cancellations. Kate had offered to help. He had told her he could manage, but now his heart quailed at the orderly row of folders with their official-looking names. It was all meticulously organized, of course. That was Tory. Everything about her was disciplined: her appearance, her house, her practice—just not her son.
He closed his eyes for a moment, his elbows on his knees, his forehead on his closed fists. “Jeez, Mom,” he muttered. “I feel like such a shit.”
He had been thirteen when he'd started spending all his time with his friend Colton's family, the Garveys. There was hardly anything left of his own family. His crazy grandmother had finally died, and his grandfather, too. His great-grandmother, the Italian one from some little village in Tuscany, had been gone long before he was born. If he had ever met his father's parents, he couldn't remember them. He thought he remembered his father, but he had been just a toddler, and he knew it was possible he had created that memory.
The Garvey family seemed perfect to him. They had three kids, a dog, a rambling, messy house, and two parents. There were pictures of relatives stuck here and there, grandparents, cousins, aunts, and uncles. Colton's dad liked to throw a football and watch sitcoms. Colton's mother worked in her garden all the time and never, to Jack's knowledge, vacuumed her house or folded laundry. They didn't listen to music, they didn't go to church, and they didn't have regular meals or bedtimes or—it seemed to Jack—any rules at all.
Jack had really liked that dog. He remembered a time when his mother had come to pick him up, and the dog had rushed up to her in a flurry of muddy paws and unwashed, shaggy coat. She had drawn back from it, pulled her coat hem away from it as if it might have fleas.
In fact, she always seemed edgy when she came to that house where he had so much fun, where there was a father and boys to roughhouse with, where no one asked him to pick up after himself, where they ate pizza from the freezer and chili from cans. He had said something snotty to his mom in the car on the way home that day. Tory had glanced at him, and her eyes reddened, but she didn't say a word. When they got home, she asked him to put everything he was wearing into the washer.
Colton's family fell apart when Jack and he were both sixteen. The Garveys moved away, taking the dog with them. By then Jack had fallen into the habit of excluding Tory from his life. He didn't tell her about his baseball games or class projects. She went to Parents Night right up until he graduated from high school, but they never talked about his teachers or his class work. She tried to help him with his college applications, but he took them into his room to work on, bringing them out only when he needed a signature. She tried to explain once, when he was a junior, about his father, but he told her he didn't want to talk about it. She subsided into her customary silence, and that was the end of it.
He never told her that he already knew all about his father. He and Colton had looked him up on the Internet, something Tory wouldn't think of because she didn't use a computer. It had been ridiculously easy, because he and his father had the same name.
Colton had been impressed that his friend's father had gone to jail, as if somehow that made Jack tougher, cooler. Jack hadn't felt any tougher, though. Going to jail for embezzlement was lame and embarrassing, and dying in a car crash two weeks after he got out was just stupid. Jack made Colton swear not to tell anyone.
Jack had thought his mother must be relieved when he went off to school in Boston, but now he wondered. He lifted his face from his hands and looked around her office. There were pictures of him everywhere, a snapshot, two school portraits, a copy of his prom picture with—God, he couldn't even remember the girl's name. He had only dated her twice. As soon as she started calling his cell phone, he lost interest.
On the filing cabinet, in front of where he now crouched, his senior picture looked out from a braided leather frame. He had posed against a maple brilliant with fall colors, head to one side, a cocky grin on his face. “Arrogant bastard,” he told his image.
A memory surfaced, suddenly, of a kid in his English lit class. He hadn't thought of that guy in years. They were discussing some nineteenth-century novel with a protagonist who was an orphan, and the kid had said that losing a parent made you grow up overnight. He wished he could talk to that guy now. He'd been right.
Jack blew out a breath, and started stacking the folders on the floor beside the cabinet. The phone on the desk rang, but he had stopped picking up, because most of the calls began, “Hi. I was one of Tory's clients, and I'm just wondering . . .”
He sat back on his heels, waiting to hear who it was.
“Jack, it's Kate. Are you there, honey?”
With a humiliating jolt of relief, he lunged for the phone. He raked his thigh painfully on the corner of the file drawer as he picked up the handset. “Kate,” he said. “Yeah, I'm here.”
“Hi.” She waited a moment in sensitive silence, and he thought she must hear the stress in his voice. “Are you all right?” she asked at last.
“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine.”
She gave a small laugh. “Jack, you sound just like your mom. She would never admit to being upset.”
That gave him another twinge, and he sagged against the desk, rubbing his smarting thigh with his palm. “Well,” he said. “I finally got around to her—to Mom's—the files.”
“I'll come get you, then, and we can go to the lawyer's.”
“Kate—the clients keep calling. What do I tell them?”
“The police have all of Tory's client files for now—but you can refer them to the lawyer. She'll know what to say.”
“There was a notice in the paper.”
“I know. And Tory left specific instructions for her clients to be notified should anything happen to—to disrupt her practice. I'm pretty sure they should all have received the lawyer's letter by now. I'm told not all therapists are that careful. She seems to have thought of everything.”
“Instructions? You're talking about her will.”
There was a little pause, and he sensed Kate trying to find the right words. She gave a click of her tongue, and he thought, wryly, that she had given up the search. “Jack, I'm so sorry. There's just no easy way to talk about this stuff. Do you need to see someone, maybe? Father Wilburton, or a counselor?”
“No. I'm good.”
She was silent again, and he knew she was feeling helpless and worried. Just as he was. He said, “Don't worry, Kate. I can manage here, I really can. Everything's in perfect order.”
“No surprise there, right?” she said. “I always told Tory she should leave at least one mess, somewhere. Something to make her human.”
“Yeah. Well. She had my bedroom,” Jack said, and managed a little chuckle.
“I heard about that! My kids were just the same, believe me.” Another laugh, just light enough, just short enough so he knew she had not forgotten, that she understood he was struggling. Kate Bingham was an awfully nice woman. He wondered why he hadn't appreciated that before. He'd always just thought of her as Tory's friend, older, fatter, duller. Another mistake to add to a growing list.
“So, did you—did you want something?” he asked. He stared down into the open file drawer, and saw a fat, neat file with his name on it. He looked away.
“Honey, the police called here, and they spoke to Chet. I guess they—well, it was the sheriff's office, and I suppose they thought someone older should talk to you first. They're done with your mother's car.”
“Oh.” Jack straightened, and walked to the window of the office to look past the oak tree into the woods beyond. A pretty hummingbird feeder, empty now, twirled on its chain just beyond the sliding glass door. November sunlight, cool and faintly yellow, sifted through the stand of cedars. The sugar maples had shed most of their leaves, and the ground was thick and bright with them. Tory had loved this time of year, gathered huge armfuls of leaves to fill baskets here and there around the house, filling the place with the scent of the woods. He wondered what she put in the hummingbird feeder, and if he should refill it.
“Chet can help you decide what to do with it,” Kate went on. “It's a good car, and it's only two years old. You probably want to have it repaired.”
“Will the insurance cover it?”
“It should. There will be some paperwork.”
Jack chewed on his lower lip, watching a gray squirrel dash through loose red leaves. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I think I'll get it fixed. Do I have to go get it?” The idea of seeing the car, with its crumpled hood and broken door—the door, presumably, his mother had fallen through—made his belly go cold.
“Chet can do it,” Kate said. “Okay if we handle that for you, then? I'll call the sheriff back. Chet will make the arrangements.”
“Thanks, Kate. And thank Chet for me. I really appreciate you guys helping me out.”
“It's nothing,” she said, with firmness now, and a touch of briskness. “Now, listen, honey. You've been staying alone over there for too long. Won't you come and have dinner with us? And Chet was asking when you're going back to school. He offered to drive you to the train when you're ready.”
“Look, Kate, it's really nice of you. Both of you. I'm just—I'm okay here, for now.”
The squirrel reached the trunk of a sugar maple, and scrambled up, its fluff of tail swinging behind. Jack turned back to face Tory's desk, with its photos and its big calendar blotter, dotted with notes in her cramped, precise handwriting. The chill crept up from his belly and into his heart. He felt as if he had a rock in his chest. A cold, unforgiving rock.
Suddenly, he wanted nothing more than to get off the phone, to go to his mother's collection of CDs, and play something, anything. He wanted to hear her music.
Kate released him in a few moments, saying she would let him know about the car, making him promise he would call her in the morning. He promised, as much to get off the phone as because he would have anything to say by morning. He went into the living room, leaving the file drawer open in the desk. He walked to the cabinet holding his mother's collection, and pulled down a CD at random.
Mahler, Symphony no. 5. He popped open the jewel case and lifted out the CD. Mahler was as close as his mother would allow herself to get to Wagner. She had said so often. He put the CD into the Bose, and wandered into the kitchen as the attenuated melodies and ponderous harmonic progressions began to fill the house. He felt a bit better with the music playing. He felt connected to Tory.
Was his hunch right, or was it wishful thinking, guilt over having been a bad son, a difficult teenager, a distant young adult? He found a picture of the two of them behind a row of cookbooks, and took it down to hold in his hand. Kate had snapped it at his graduation, and he remembered the moment. His mother had put her arm around him, pulled him close to her. It had been a long time since they had been that close physically. He remembered often feeling as if there was a fence between them, a barrier of some kind, not of their own making, but holding them apart. He gazed at the picture, wishing he could call back that moment, turn and hold his mother in both arms, let her hug him as tightly as she wished.
She looked nice in the picture, her hair clipped up, a simple short dress showing her trim legs. It was only two years ago, and he looked with fresh eyes at her fair hair, her clear, smooth skin, the faint lines around her eyes, the deeper ones around her mouth. He couldn't remember ever looking at her as a person. As a woman.
But maybe young men didn't do that. Maybe if he sat down with a therapist—like Tory—that's what he would hear, that young men were that way, that their mothers weren't women, they were . . . mothers.
His had done the best she could. He wished he could tell her he understood that.
He put the photo back on its shelf behind the cookbooks. No, it wasn't wishful thinking. She wasn't gone. He could—he could
feel
her. Wills, police, the wrecked car, the lawyer—none of it changed anything. Jack wandered into the living room and gazed out at the mountains of the park, their wooded peaks going blue with early dusk. He listened to the swell and crash of the Mahler symphony, and wondered what he should do.

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