Butterfly Soup. Nancy Pinard

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СКАЧАТЬ he wants to withhold what affection he does feel. He rinses the sponge under the tap, squeezes the water out and scrutinizes its intricate structure of cell walls. Outnumbered by women, he feels like one of its holes—surrounded but not connected. When his walls break down, he won’t exist at all.

      He hurries through his shave, musing on places he might like to go. With Rosie at the store, he doesn’t have much time to make his getaway. He’s combing the hair over his thinning crown when he sees the copy of the AAA magazine on the floor next to the john. The Miami Valley insert features adventures on Lake Erie. A sportsman’s paradise waits three hours north, and he hasn’t sampled any of it. A photo of a man harnessed to a yellow-and-orange parachute particularly fascinates him. Parasailing, the caption calls it. The chute is pulled by a speedboat, but the man is flying high in the air. One step short of skydiving, it looks to him. He’s always wanted to know how it feels—that moment of free fall after leaving the plane, before the chute opens. A lot like an orgasm, he suspects, a gigantic orgasm. He’ll do it while he’s still able. And if part of his body gives out while he’s doing it…well, he’ll go down enjoying himself. It will serve Rosie right.

      Everett grabs his duffel from the closet and stuffs it with underwear, another shirt and swim trunks. He stops at Valley’s door on his way by and looks in. On the other side of her latest caterpillar and the phone he added when her friends began tying up his business line, her feline form curls toward the wall. He watches the quilt rise and fall with her breathing. The distance between them grew when puberty hit. Valley became sullen then. Setting foot in her room felt like trespassing.

      Maybe he’ll wait to tell Rosie. There will be plenty of time later. Years. If he tells her now, she’ll strap him to a wheelchair the way she wants to chain Valley to the bedpost. She’ll insist on driving everywhere, and he’ll just sit there watching life pass by as if it’s television. If he doesn’t hold tight to the checkbook, he’ll lose control of everything. Thank God he’s invested their money. Hasn’t let her spend it.

      He scribbles a note before he leaves.

      Rosie,

      I’ve gone out to make a bid. There’s a big one on the line. I may be late.

      Love,

       Everett

      He chuckles to himself. He hasn’t lied exactly, considering what he has in mind. His sense of humor is one thing he won’t lose. Not if he holds on tight.

      As Everett backs out of the garage, he glances at the garden. Small shoots are pushing through the soil, but from a distance he can’t tell if they’re plants or weeds. At the end of the driveway he glances up the road nervously. Just his luck, Rosie will pull into sight before he can make his escape.

      The air’s heavy this morning, laying a haze over the horizon. He’s grateful for his air-conditioning as he speeds out of Eden. He plays with the radio dial. An announcer’s voice tunes in midsentence.

      “…the British in their ongoing countersiege of the Falklands. Port Stanley is defended by some seven thousand Argentine troops.

      “Israeli land, sea and air forces invaded southern Lebanon in retaliation for the assassination attempt on Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London on June third. Ground troops occupy the territory from Tyre on the coast to the foothills of Mount Hermon following Israel’s June fourth air strikes on Palestinian targets near Beirut.”

      Everett turns it off. Air strikes are everywhere.

      Ten miles north, he stops to tank up in Union City—first at the McDonald’s drive-through where he orders two sausage-egg-and-cheese biscuits with a large coffee, then at a Sunoco. Everett eats one of the biscuits, then gets out to pump his gas. It’s hot. Dr. Burns said heat and humidity aggravate his condition, and this June has been a doozy, with all the rain. He checks his oil and tire pressure, though before the diagnosis he wouldn’t have bothered. Now his car has to be dependable in case he has an episode.

      “Find everything you need?” the attendant calls, stepping from behind the raised hood of a Thunderbird. He’s just a kid, nineteen at most, in work boots and a baggy one-piece coverall that says Ben. Hell, if Everett were a car, this kid could rewire his circuits.

      “Just need to pay my bill,” Everett says, feeling connected to Ben by the cord strung across the concrete. He might like to take him aside. Buy him a coffee. Tell him not to waste his youth or take his health for granted.

      Ben would nod his head, say yeah and light up a cigarette.

      Inside the station Everett pays with plastic, buys cigarettes from a machine and heads back to the car. The driver’s door stands open, and Everett is surprised to see a dog lying on the floor on the passenger side. “Hey, Fella,” Everett says and puts his hand out, palm up, to a beagle mutt with brown eyes, droopy ears and a pointy snout. Fella has a biscuit wrapper crumpled between his paws and looks up at Everett with guilty eyes, cowering slightly. Everett laughs. “Teach me to leave the door open.” The dog stops licking the grease-stained wrapper to lap Everett’s fingers. “Good stuff, huh?”

      “Hey, Ben, this your dog?” Everett calls. “A dog jumped into my car.”

      Ben walks over and peers in. “Not mine. I hate dogs. My kid sister got attacked by a Doberman.”

      A lopsided silence hangs between them, then settles on the kid’s end.

      “No shit.” It’s all Everett can think to say. He wants to ask if she’s okay but couldn’t stand to hear that she isn’t. He’d have to feel worse for Ben than he feels for himself.

      This dog is no Doberman. “Must belong to someone,” Everett says finally. He turns up an ID tag on the dog’s collar. “I’ll get him out of here for you. Where’s Morningside Court?”

      “Over there behind the Baptist church,” Ben says and points the way.

      Everett raises the window, lights a cigarette, then circles the block with the church steeple. He parks opposite a brick ranch at 136 Morningside, where a man is out back throwing a football to a gangly boy, six maybe, in a Cincinnati Bengals cap. A Jeep and a riding mower sit side-by-side in the open garage, and a gun rack hangs in the Jeep’s back window.

      Everett watches the ball bump end over end when the kid fumbles it. The kid and his dad lunge after it and roll around in a snarl of bodies that knocks the cap off the kid’s head. Everett takes a drag on his cigarette, watching its tip turn red. He waits while the nicotine floods his blood and blows smoke out his nose. Everett and his dad had played together sometimes, but it was baseball. His father, clad in Sears coveralls, would set his empty Thermos in the sink. “Hey, Rett,” he’d say. His father called him Rett. And if supper wasn’t ready he’d ask, “Want to throw the ball around?”

      Everett always said yes but wished for more players—to have a game. He would ask his mother to play, but she’d say someone had to cook—an odd excuse since she barely touched the meals she made. His mother didn’t sweat. Little lines radiated from her lips in permanent discontent. She never even ate her lipstick off.

      A dog would want to play ball. Everett had asked for one for his birthday. His mother had shuddered and given him fish instead. She hadn’t seemed to get it—that he’d wanted to do more than just look at his pet. Despite his disappointment, he’d spent his allowance on snails and colored gravel and a ceramic castle with turrets for them to swim around. At fourteen, when his shoulders broadened and his hips narrowed and his mother shied away from touching him at all, he took cool baths СКАЧАТЬ