Butterfly (21 page)

“Berlin!” She blows the words past her teeth with the first heave against the swing. David arcs forward, legs stiff as tongs. “Do you know where that is, Davy? Miles away. Far across the seas . . . That sounds like a fairy-tale place, doesn’t it?
Far across the seas.
”

The boy is whisked high by the strength in Plum’s arms and hangs his head as the swing swoops skyward, laughing enchantedly. Plum steps away as she reaches for the swing, steps forward again with each push, settling into a rhythm that keeps the child soaring at a steady height and pace. Out in the dark distance, the wave has begun to move — David, so unobtrusive, can’t fend it off forever. The black water is yawning like a monster’s maw. “I think
she’s mean, your mother,” says Plum. “She’s mean, mean, mean. I thought she was my friend, but all this time she’s been scheming to go away and leave me.
And
to take my brother. And she wants me to be happy about it!
You can visit during school holidays:
yeah, sure, I bet that won’t happen. Who will be my friend now, Davy?
Nobody.
I won’t even be able to push you on the swings, because she’ll take
you
away from me too.”

The boy replies with a gargle of laughter — Plum curls her lip, reaches up, shoves the swing as she’d like to shove the world. “Your mum is always saying,
You can tell me anything, Aria. You can trust me, I’m your friend.
But she keeps secrets — secrets about stealing all my best things from me. That’s not what a friend does, is it, David? That’s not being trustworthy. That’s sly, isn’t it? She said she was my friend, when she was really my enemy. She’s a liar, your mother. A dirty
liar.
”

The edge of the swing slams into her palms, and she puts her weight into sending it away. The boy, who has no weight, flies like a feather in a hurricane, his hands clammed to the chains. “I thought she liked me.” The tidal wave is boiling and cluttered. “But she’s as bad as Sophie. Deserting me. She’s as bad as Caroline, running away. She reckons I can look after myself, but that’s
easy
for her to say. She’s not the one being
left.
She’ll have everything
she
wants. And she’ll — she’ll — she’ll have Justin.”

Plum hasn’t yet given thought to the romantic aspects of the situation: now, with the afternoon sun on her head
and the air steamy with vaporizing rain and the swing returning reliably and the tidal wave looming just off the shore, she cautiously considers the matter.
Justin and I love one another.
The words have a cartoon-like horror. Justin and Maureen kissing, twining their limbs, dreaming of each other, taking off their clothes: Plum’s mouth twists at the idea, she pushes the image away. Into its place springs something more sinister, a realization so scorching that it makes Plum gasp. It is
Justin
whom Maureen has cared about all this time. Justin was loved, and Plum was . . . used. The invitations to the garden, the soft drink and cupcakes, the sisterly concern, the understanding smiles, the earrings, the blue dress: “It was for Justin,” she tells the boy, who doesn’t reply, his legs whipping loosely at the knees. “Not for me — for
Justin.
She was using me to send messages to Justin.”

And Plum gulps with the sorrow of it, remembering the bearish affection she’d felt for the woman, how deeply she’d laid her trust in her. She feels blood pooling in her cheeks, water leaking from the corners of her eyes. The swing flies upward, trailing giggles like ribbon: “Higher!” yips the boy. Plum grits her teeth, pushes harder. The tidal wave is overhanging her head now, a massive black crest, a nightmare. “Your mother’s a bitch,” Plum hisses. “Can you say that, Davy?
Bitch.
” And the water is coming down on her now, crashing green water which carries in its depths all the agonies of fourteen and which sweeps her up easily, throws her head over heels. In her whole life, the only
thing that shines is Justin, the only thing Plum wants to keep is Justin, the one thing she’d lie down and
die for
is Justin; without Justin, there’s no rescue, no escape, no point. Everything else she can survive — she can survive without friends, without Maureen, with living a little life, she can
thrive
— but not this, not Justin, not her best and favorite thing, her Justin . . . Plum thinks, then, something unspeakable:
she
would prefer it if he died.
Rather than lose him to Maureen, Justin could die. Such a loss would have tragic beauty. This loss is too ugly to bear. That loss would be everyone’s. This loss is only hers.

“I hate.” Plum tumbles over and over, malevolent and afraid. “He is not hers, I hate.”

“I am flying,” says David.

“He can’t be hers. I hate her. I wish she’d die. I wish she wasn’t born.” Thrown about in the water, she’s battered and dizzied; words pour out with each breath and race like bubbles to the surface. “It’s crazy, isn’t it? It’s crazy. Your mother is crazy, David. Justin doesn’t
love
her — how
could
he? He never talks about her. They never go out together. He never visits her house, she never visits ours. And she’s
married,
don’t forget. She’s already
got
a husband. So how could he like her? He
couldn’t.
It’s just stupid. It’s Maureen being stupid. Probably she was drunk. I’m not going to be friends with her now, even if she
was
drunk. She’s too much of a schemer. She’s an awful person —”

Plum surfaces, snatching at air — she sees the swing flying over her head, sunlight glinting across the white sky.
Moving along swiftly in the grip of the wave, she thinks over what she’s just said. Most of it is true. The idea of Berlin and a love affair makes no sense at all. It couldn’t happen, and it won’t.

But Maureen is never stupid, not in any of the ways the word can mean. And there’s something more, something elusive that the tidal wave hauls from Plum’s grip every time her fingertips brush against it. Something that runs off when her memory calls it, but is also being deliberately chased away. Dread freezes in her spine at the thought of what she’ll know once this slick thing stops running and reveals itself. “That’s enough swinging,” she abruptly tells David. “You’ll sick up your coconut ice.”

The boy climbs awkwardly from the stopped swing. His cheeks are colored like apples, polished by the cold wind. He smooths his clothes and smiles up at her. Noticing the diamonds in her ears, he points and smiles again. “Twinkle.”

“Yeah.” The idea of stealing him crosses her mind — lifting him up and hurrying off in a new direction, thieving him as Maureen wants to thieve Justin, never returning to that stinky old house or to that evil school, but forging for both of them fresh lives. They could run away to the countryside, where nobody would recognize them. People would think she was his mother, and David would forget he’d ever had a proper one. It is what Maureen and Justin deserve. Except, of course, that it isn’t
true,
Justin doesn’t deserve anything because logically
none of this can be true
— it’s a
huge relief to remember the impossibility of it being true. “Hold my hand,” she tells the child.

“Can we see Justin’s car?”

Plum’s head whips around, she stares down at the boy. The elusive thing that is running skids to a smoky halt. She sees Justin’s car parked in the shade of a paperbark in an out-of-the-way street, and no reason that she could guess for its being there.

The tidal wave has left her beached, breathless and dripping. The sun seems too bright for this wintry day, the air sharp like the edges of paper. “Davy,” she says, “does my brother Justin ever come to visit you at your house?”

The boy squints.
Don’t answer,
Plum wants to say. “One day,” he sighs. “Sometimes.” And Plum, heartbroken, looks away, grappling with the small hand. Justin, and Maureen. And Cydar — even Cydar, in whom she’s always had faith. All of them have lied, letting her think that she can be safe.

“Liars,” she whispers. “Lie, lie, lie.” David’s fingers knot inside hers. Justin’s car, Plum recollects, had been parked beneath the paperbark on the afternoon she babysat the boy because Maureen
needed the afternoon.
“You and me.” She rubs her eyes and peers down at him, and can’t bear to look at anything except the face of the child. “They used us, Davy. We’re just nothing to them. They don’t care about either of us. You and me, we should go away.”

J
USTIN STEPS OUT OF THE BUNGALOW
as Plum and the boy are coming through the garden, both children keeping to the track that weaves through the miscellany of thistle and destitute flower-beds. She’s marching so determinedly that the boy must jog, captured by her grip on his wrist. Her face is set in anger, and the first thing Justin thinks is that it’s the child who is the subject of her rage; and although it’s dangerous to speak to David and invite the disasters of what the boy might say, a volt of protectiveness spears Justin: “Don’t drag him, Plum,” he says. “He’s only got short legs.”

Plum stops, a wasteland of weeds and geranium scrawling between herself and her brother. She pulls the child to
her hip. “What do you care?” she says loudly. “You don’t care about him. You don’t care about anyone.”

In all his life Justin has never been the subject of her rancor. Mums and Fa, and sometimes Cydar, and her teachers and sundry others who cross her path: but never him. He shades his eyes, as if he’s not seeing her properly. “What?”

“Maureen told me about you and her, and how the two of you are going away.”

The bald, somehow untidy statement leaves Justin and even Plum herself vaguely staggered. “What?” Justin says again.

“Don’t act stupid!” Plum shrieks, and David flinches but can’t hide, and Justin feels her loudness like a punch against the jaw. “You know what I’m talking about! Were you ever going to tell me? Were you ever going to tell Mums and Fa? Or were you just going to sneak away like a — a
rat
?”

The bungalow door wheezes and Cydar steps out, a cigarette sloping between his fingers, his black-snake eyes aware of everything. “You’re scaring him,” he warns, meaning the boy, and Plum understands: but it is Justin who spins toward him, grateful. “What are you screaming about, Plum?”

Plum kicks a skin of soil from the path. “You shut up, Cydar! Don’t pretend to be dumb. You know what’s going on. Well, I know it too now. Maureen told me the big stupid secret. She and Justin are
in love,
and now they’re
running away.
”

Justin laughs like he’s been shockingly slapped. Cydar takes a long draw from his cigarette, sliding his eyes to his brother. “Is that true?”

“No!” Justin cries. “Of course not!”

“Well why would she say it, if it wasn’t true?”

Justin wheels to his sister. “I have no idea!”

“Maybe because she’s crazy?”

Justin grabs it like a drowner. “She must be!”

Plum smiles gruesomely, flexing her fingers around David’s wrist. “Yeah, that’s what I reckoned. That would be silly. You wouldn’t be in love with her. But then I asked David, and he said you visit their house sometimes.”

“David’s a little kid, Plum! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about! He’ll say anything you want him to say!”

“Yeah,” Plum agrees stonily. “I thought that too. You can’t trust what a kid says. But then I remembered your car.”

Justin, standing under the open sky, holds up his hands defenselessly. Unpracticed at having to protect himself, nothing comes to his aid. The brothers and their sister stare at each other in silence while a brown myna ticks its way across the bungalow roof and a cabbage moth dips from flower to flower. Justin looks to Cydar, and when he sees the darkness in his brother’s face he laughs in astonishment. “Cydar! You’re joking!”

Because Cydar, who has always distrusted the world, is suddenly seeing there’s no reason why Justin shouldn’t prove himself untrustworthy as well. Deceit is such an
ordinary thing, and Justin is an ordinary man. He gives his brother the thinnest of glances, taps ash into the ash-ridden dirt. “What did Maureen say, Plum? Don’t scream it, just say it.”

Plum raises her chin. “She told me that she and Justin love each other — that they’ve loved each other for a long time. That they’re probably going to get married, and that they’re going to live in Berlin.”

Justin gives an incredulous bark. Cydar’s gaze crosses the weeds to his brother. “That sounds very happily-ever-after.”

Justin goes to reply but only gapes, empty hands hanging. A strange calm moves through him, and when he speaks, the panic has been smoothed from his voice. “Cydar, it’s not true. Believe me. I don’t know anything about this. There’s just me — you know me.” And although Cydar ponders him for another instant, Justin sees him remembering that they do know each other — that this family which has never fitted quite snugly together is nonetheless bonded and reliable. Relieved, he turns back to his sister and says, “I don’t know why Maureen told you those things, Plum. But why do you believe her? Just because she said it, that makes it true?”

Uncertainty flickers inside the girl, she almost takes all her accusing words back; but the Holden is evidence made of steel, and she says, “I’ve seen your car parked near the playground on days when you were supposed to be at work. What was it doing there?”

Justin hesitates; a smile scratches his face. “I work in a bottle shop,” he replies. “I deliver flagons to old ladies who can’t carry them home on the bus. I deliver cartons of beer to men who get the shakes if they leave the house. Sometimes I stay and talk to them, because, besides something to drink, what they want is someone to talk to while they’re drinking. That’s probably what I was doing when you saw the car: talking about grandchildren and eating fruitcake. That’s what I am, Plum — a delivery guy. Not someone who runs off to Berlin.”

Cydar looks away, blows smoke from his nose. Plum stands swaying slightly, depleted by confusion. Beyond the geraniums is
Justin,
the brother of whom she is so proud. The one who races her up the stairs, eats the unwanted food from her plate, teases her about rock stars, lets her carry off his spare change. “Why would I like Maureen?” he is asking. “Why would I want to
marry
her, let alone go away with her? She’s already got one husband who can’t stand being in the house with her. She’s
old,
too — she’s an old married housewife with a kid. Why would I like that, Plum? What’s in it for me?”