Tag Archives: Butterfly

Butterfly Continued

Posted on by
Reply

Swallowtail: “In the East, adults fly primarily in late spring and summer, but this butterfly is more common in late summer and fall in the South and Southwest. Where lack of freezing temperatures permit, the female adult may fly continuously. In lowland tropical Mexico, they may be found in any month.” – Encarta

Emerging abruptly from a deep sleep to respond to the insistent tone of his phone, Michael heard, “I miss you, Michael.  I’m lonely for you.  I’m lonely for Moses.”  Her voice, a low purr, curled into his ear and sent blue electric currents crackling through his body. 

“No, Janie, not again,” Michael struggled to keep the groan out of his voice. He got up in the dark from the rumpled king-sized bed and walked into the living room, his phone to his ear.  He couldn’t bear to have her in his bedroom again, even on the phone.  He turned on the lamp and slumped onto the couch.  The cat followed him, stretching and yawning.

“What?  Not again, what?” she asked.

“Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“I don’t know what your clock says, but I know it’s time for me to hear your voice, smell your sweet sweat, touch your warm skin, and roll up next to you in bed.”

“It’s 5 AM.” 

“I want you here with me.  I need to be close to you.  Everything is good, but with you it would be great.”

“Funny, Moses and I had a long talk just last Sunday, and we decided to move on.  We took every trace of you to the dump.”  He reached across the coffee table and turned her smiling photograph onto its face. 

“We can start over.  I’m ready now.  I found the right place.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in San Diego this week, but the place is Santa Lucia.  It’s a few kilometers south of Puerto Vallarta.

“You must be some kind of witch.  You call just when I’ve reclaimed my life; when I finally decided I can live without you.”

“Oh baby, that’s….”

“No, Janie, I mean it.  I’m not following you anywhere again.  You left Memphis for Canyon, Texas, and I followed. When you suddenly up and left Texas, I followed you to McCall.  When the tall pines of the Idaho woods smothered you, you took off again.  I followed you here to Tucson, and this is where I’m staying.  Trying to keep hold of you is like trying to catch mercury between your fingers.  It’s impossible not to mention dangerous.  I’m done.”

“Do you still have my paintings?”

Michael looked to both sides of the new tin mirror at the intensely colored acrylics. One was of a woman looking through an archway toward distant purple and rose-colored hills, stroking a green cat.  The other showed a naked woman with long black hair astride a vivid scarlet horse galloping across a field of bright orange and blue poppies.

“No,” Michael said.  “I replaced them with seascapes, the calm of crashing blue and gray waves.”

“My pictures might be worth something someday.  I wouldn’t throw them out just yet.  I’m in California for a one-woman show at the Smithson gallery in La Jolla.  I have an agent.  I’m selling prints to tourists in Mexico.  I mean, really selling.  I finally found the place I imagined and have been painting since I was twelve.”

“You found the place with purple mountains, red horses, and green cats?”

“Don’t be obtuse.  Mexico is bursting with colors. And smells and laughter and…I’m home now.  This is what I’ve searched for.  Now all I need is you.  You and Moses.”

Michael looked down at the big gray-striped tomcat that had been weaving in and out of his legs.   Moses sensed he was the topic and flopped down on the top of Michael’s bare feet, his white mittened paws around his ankle, looking up at Michael.

“Moses isn’t interested in more travel.  He told me he likes Tucson. I like Tucson. I’ve got a good job here.”

“You’re a poet, Michael.  You are a poet who writes stupid technical manuals for a company that produces war machines for an oversized, out-of-control fascist government.”

“How do you know I still work at Raytheon?”

“Did you quit?”

“No.”

“There.  Come to Santa Lucia with me.  Poetry will fair drip from your pen.  It’s magical.  It’s cheap to live.  And I’m making money now.  Bring the trailer down.  We’ll park it on the beach.  We’ll eat mangos and shrimp.  We’ll make love on the beach in the afternoon.  We’ll play in the surf.  We will…”

A momentary image of Jane, naked on a beach, nearly scuttled his resolve.  He pulled back with a snap.  “I don’t live in the trailer anymore.  I sold it.  I live in a real house.”

“You bought a house?”

“Well…lease-purchase.”  He squinted out the window to the backyard, where dawn was beginning to streak the sky with pink and gray.  “I have a yard, a saguaro, a lemon tree, and a brick wall.”

“Brick walls enclose tiny brick minds.”

Michael cringed a little.  “If just once you had told me you wanted to move, we could have discussed it.”

“I didn’t need a discussion.  I needed to leave.  You would have planned and plotted. You are so anal.  No sense of adventure.  That’s what’s wrong with your poetry, too.  You need Santa Lucia.  It will break down all that shit in you and set you free.  I was suffocating.  By the time you made an analysis of our situation, I would have been dead.  I didn’t know where I wanted to go…just away.  It took me a while to find Santa Lucia.”

“Two years.  Why did you call now?”

“It’s not two years.”

“Yes, Janie, it is.  You left three Augusts ago, and it’s now September.”

“Clocks and calendars, calendars and clocks, tick tock, tick tock,” she chanted.

“Real world stuff,” he replied.

“Please, please come see me in San Diego, just for a day or two.  I’ll be here this whole week and next weekend.  It’s only a few hours’ drive, or I could pick you up at the airport.”

“Are you still living in the goddess-mobile?”

“Umm-hmm, mostly.  But I have a studio on the second floor of a building in Santa Lucia.  Its balcony overlooks the street, and I can see the ocean.  Some days I paint outside, sometimes inside, depending on the light.  I walk everywhere, so my rig stays parked by the beach.  I’m sorry you sold the trailer.  It worked so well in my daydream.  We won’t both fit in the goddess-mobile long-term.  We need more room than that.  There’s a house not far up the beach from where I park that’s for sale.  I’ll look into it.”

“Don’t bother.  I’m not coming to Mexico.”

“I think you’re being too hasty.  You should at least come for a visit.  A teeny short visit.  Then if you loathe it, you…”

“Hear me out.  I’m not going to Mexico for a week, a day, or a minute.  You can sell any dream to me if I give you enough time.  Your time is up.  I’m staying here.  I’m happy, even proud, that you are selling your paintings.  But you broke that last little piece of my heart when you left this time.  I don’t have one to give you anymore.” 

“There’s a marina too.  We could buy another sailboat like we had on Payette Lake.  Only we’d be warm all the time and could sail every day.”

“You’re not listening.  I don’t care how beautiful it is.  I don’t care how much you want to be with me.  I don’t want to be with you anymore.  I’ve broken the habit.”

“What happened to soulmates and undying love?” Jane asked.  “You promised me you would forever be my family.  Remember all those nights when I had the nightmares without end about when my parents died.  You held me and told me you would never turn away.” 

“You left me, remember?  More than once.”  Michael started to pace the kitchen, dining room, and living room with the phone to his ear.

“I didn’t leave you. I went looking for me, and unfortunately, I was always out of town,” Jane said.  “But now I’m found.  I promise I can stay put now.”

“Your promises aren’t worth much anymore.  You promised that the desert would be your eternal home when you came to Tucson.  Now you’re by the ocean for Christ’s sake,” Michael paused.  “And I don’t speak Spanish.”

“You’ll pick it up.  I did.  It’s so musical, it’s easy.”

“The answer is still no,” Michael said.  “I’m going to hang up now.  Please don’t call me again.  Have a nice life and congratulations on your success.”

Michael ended the call.  He didn’t want it to ring again and, in his heart, prayed it would.

He couldn’t go back to sleep.  It was Saturday, and he planned to play golf with Keith at 10:00.  He fed Moses and let him out for his morning prowl.  He shaved, got into the shower, and washed his hair.  As hot water ran full force over his scalp down his back and legs, he let himself imagine lying beside Jane in the warm white sand with salty waves lapping over them, making love to her in the sunshine.  He thought he heard the phone ring but when he turned off the water, he heard silence.

“Get yourself together, man,” he said aloud.  She’s a figment of your imagination, a phantom.  Just when you think she’s there, she’s gone again.  It’s never going to work out. 

Butterfly

Posted on by
1

Swallowtail Butterfly: “In the East, adults fly primarily in late spring and summer, but this butterfly is more common in late summer and fall in the South and Southwest. Where lack of freezing temperatures permit, the female adult may fly continuously. In lowland tropical Mexico, they may be found in any month.” – Encarta

Michael remembered when he met Janie at a diner on a Memphis spring morning ten years ago.  She was 18 and he had just celebrated his 21st birthday the night before.  His head felt a little thick, and his eyesight and hearing were not too dependable. She offered him coffee, but he didn’t hear her the first time.

“Hi, I’m Janie. I say, you look like you could use a whole pot instead of a cup,” she said, bending down a little into his line of sight, her scoop-necked tee-shirt allowed a peek of her breasts.

“What?”  Oh, yeah.  Give me some coffee, please.”  There was a caring look in her gray-green eyes.

“I hope it was a good time you had, not a bad one,” she said over her shoulder as she went back to the kitchen.

He watched her sashay away, swinging her tightly jeaned bottom in a deliberate invitation.  His head hurt, but not too much to read the proposition.  It was 4 AM, and he hadn’t been to sleep all night.  His friend, Tim, brought him to Jim Bob’s All-Night Diner for a birthday breakfast, then left him in a booth while he sought out the facilities to relieve a churning stomach.  Tim, the sober one, the designated driver, had eaten something during their all-nighter that sent him into the bathroom every twenty minutes.  The other partygoers had been dropped at their homes to sleep off the celebration.  All five planned to meet again at the racetrack later that day.

“Here you go,” she said when she came back with a pot of coffee, two cups, and a bottle of aspirin.

“How do you want your eggs?  With eyes or without?”

“No eggs, just toast.”

“You need protein to sop up some of that barley pop.  How about scrambled and a side of country ham?” 

“No, I really don’t want eggs.  Thanks for the aspirin, though.”  He took two pills and swallowed them with some coffee.

“Is your friend coming back?”

“He’s feeling a little rough, but he’ll be back.”

“Shall I bring him eggs, too?”

“Just the toast, toast only.”  Michael looked around the restaurant.  He was the only customer.  He could see the cook through the pass-thru window at the kitchen.  A few minutes later, she was back with a plate of scrambled eggs, hash browns, ham, and two plates of toast.  She put them down in front of Michael and stood with her hands on her hips. 

“Now, you eat as much as you can.  The sooner you get something in your tummy, the faster you’ll feel human again.”

“What is your problem?  I said I just wanted toast.  Take the rest of this back.  I’m not paying for what I didn’t order.”  His head throbbed at the exertion of making this statement.

The girl slid into the booth across from him.  “It’s okay.  I paid for it.  Just eat what you can, I’ll eat the rest.  What’s your name?  I’m Janie. I don’t think you heard me when I told you the first time.”

She sat and watched him eat, taking bites off the hash browns herself.  The cook yelled at her once to get back to work, and she ignored him.  He said he’d call the manager, and she said that was fine. 

“You don’t want to lose your job, do you?” Michael asked.

“Not much of a job. I was just doing this until something better came along, and it has.”  She looked directly into his eyes and smiled.

Tim came out of the restroom, looking pale green, glistening with sick sweat. 

“I can’t drive, old buddy.  I’m too fucked up.  Can you get us both home?”

“Don’t worry.  I’ll take you home,” Janie said, taking the car keys Tim held out to Michael.  “Hey, Howie.  I quit.  See ya in the movies.”  She undid the apron and laid it on the counter. 

The cook came out sputtering oaths. “Damn it! You can’t just quit like that.  The breakfast crowd will be starting in a few minutes.”

“Call Shirley. She likes the overtime. Bye.”

She dropped Tim off at his apartment, then took Michael home to sleep off the beer.  She sent him out with his friends for the afternoon while she stayed at his apartment.  He figured she’d be gone when he got home and was surprised to find a birthday cake, ice cream, and a tiny gray and white kitten when he returned at 9:00 that night. 

“What’s with the cat?” asked Michael.

“He was hanging out in the parking lot at the grocery store when I walked over to get the cake mix and ice cream.  He said his name was Moses and he was wandering in the wilderness.  I decided to bring him home for your birthday.  He might not want to stay, but he’ll let us know later.”

They made first time love for hours that night, discovering the pleasures of each other’s bodies.

“Are you homeless?” he asked the next morning.

“Not entirely.  I could go back to my Uncle Bill’s, but I’d rather not.  His job is done now that I’ve graduated from high school.  He is the school drama teacher and a sweet old queen, who loves everything Elvis. But I’m tired of hanging out in fairy land.  You will find I’m very useful around the house, I can cook, and I don’t eat much.  I do think Moses is homeless, though, so why don’t we offer him a permanent gig?”

She and Moses stayed with him for the next year.  She exaggerated the ‘I can cook’ part of her resume.  She was good at boxed cakes and boiled hot dogs, but Michael decided to do most of the real cooking.  Nevertheless, she didn’t eat much, and she was handy around the house.  She could fix any appliance that got sideways, and she was fun between the sheets. 

Janie had no end of interesting stories to tell of her adventures as an orphan in the custody of various relatives and near-relatives. She was born in Texas but lived all over the U.S. Her parents were murdered in a home invasion when she was six. She witnessed it from a hiding place in a closet through the louvers on the door. The effects of that trauma were still showing up in her life, even though she had been cared for by a loving family.

“They all tell family stories from a different point of view, and the heroes and villains change depending on the narrator.  I’ve been shuffled around several states.  I have a very complex view of my family.”

Janie got a job at a craft store while he continued working at the local newspaper and finished his degree in creative writing.  She bought materials for painting and showed him on canvas the colorful world that was in her head. She said she had painted since she was a little girl, and it was as important to her as breathing.  He read her his poetry and introduced her to his parents. 

Then one day, he came home from work to find a note.

Gone Greyhound back to Texas, maybe, it read.  I’ll call when I find out where I am.  Moses will keep you company until then.  Love, Janie

That was the first of her escapes.

“I wasn’t abused or a sex slave or anything exotic,” she once told him.  “My relatives were good to me, but because of one circumstance or another, no one could give me a permanent home, so I was passed around.  I lived with five families until I stayed with Uncle Bill, who got me through high school. I’ve been on my own for a while now. Aunt Betty in Louisiana was my favorite.  She bought my first art supplies when I was ten and encouraged me to draw and paint.  She gave me my passion.”

Michael thought Janie would eventually settle, and they might even get married, but like a nomadic butterfly, she would only light for a short time, then fly off again.  They rarely fought, and she never left mad.  She seemed to have little capacity for anger.  He never knew why she left.  She just left. 

It was to Texas that he first followed her, a little town called Canyon. And it was in Texas that they acquired the goddess-mobile.  It started life as a used 1982 Toyota truck with a camper shell.  Inside the camper, Jane hung beaded curtains, made devotional alters for her Buddha, golden plastic Ganesh, serene Vishnu, and an eclectic collection of saints.  She was ready for any possibility, if the hereafter came calling.

Michael installed a foldout bed, camper-sized refrigerator, and a sink with a 50-gallon water tank.  He put in outlets for a microwave and hotplate.  In the cab, Janie glued statues of saints, Joseph and Francis, a St. Christopher medal, a plush Garfield with rosary beads around his neck, assorted rocks, leaves, and seeds she collected in her travels, on a piece of green faux fur that covered the dash.  She painted designs and quotes around the outside of the truck and camper:

“In Goddess We Trust”

“In the morning, I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta…Henry David Thoreau

“I’ve always wanted to be somebody, but now I see I should have been more specific.” — Lily Tomlin

“Mediocrity thrives on standardization.”
“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.”
“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” — William James
“Reality is just one of my many options.”

They used the goddess-mobile for camping trips and inspirational journeys to cleanse their minds from everyday humdrum.  Michael drove the Camry his father bought him after college, and Janie had custody of the truck.  It amused him when curious strangers approached Janie when she parked her unique vehicle near a grocery store or in a shopping mall.  He knew she loved the attention.  

Michael got a job again with a small local newspaper, and Janie taught crafts at an elderly care center.  Moses kept his people supplied with affection and dead rodents. 

“Mrs. Whipple, our ninety-year-old Scrabble champion, has a sharp tongue on her,” said Janie one day after she came home from the center.  “She scolded me today in front of the entire ‘Natural Materials for Greeting Cards’ class for living in sin.  She said a woman’s only security is a good marriage, and why wouldn’t my young man commit to me?”

“And what did you tell her?” asked Michael.

“I said commitment is for institutions, and I wouldn’t put anyone I love in an institution.”

It felt like a normal life to Michael, and after nearly three years, he had begun thinking in terms of marriage. 

“Janie, why don’t we get married?”

“Is that a proposal or a real question?”

“Well.”

“Well.”

“Okay.  Janie, will you marry me?”

“Nope.  But I’ll love you to the end of my days on this planet and beyond.”

“I think we should get married.”

“I don’t.”

“What’s your reason?”

“No reason in particular, but ‘no’ wins the discussion – no marriage.  I don’t see the point.  People get married to please other people.  We’re happy just the way we are.  Aren’t we?”  She gave him a meaningful stare.

“I think people get married because they want to tell the world they promise to share the rest of their lives and love together.”

“Let’s hire a sky-writer.”

“Don’t be flip.  I’m serious.  I think we should consider the idea.  What about having children?  We’ve never talked about it before.  Do you want to have kids?”

“Maybe.  I don’t hear your parents clambering for an official ceremony and grandchildren from your loins.  I think they secretly hope that you will eventually find some nice girl and have a real family.”

“What makes you think they don’t like you?”

“Oh, I think they like me, okay.  But I don’t think I’m a prime prospect for official daughter-in-law.  I’m not like Judy or Helen, your brothers’ wives.  I’m a little too out there for them.”

“They treat you with the same respect as they treat Brad and Mark’s wives.  They love you.  They always talk about how clever you are, and talented.  They hung that huge picture you painted them for Christmas last year in the living room for all to see.  I think showing off a picture of persimmon, teal, and gold coyotes prowling a shopping mall is telling the world they approve of the painter.”

“It matched the throw pillows on their white leather couch.”

The next day, he came home to find the note. 

Need to see evergreen trees and mountains.  I’ll call you when I find them.  Love, Janie.

She took the goddess-mobile and left Moses.

This is part of a short story about Michael and his wandering love, Janie. The story continues in the next post.