The Butterfly Plague (18 page)

Instead, she maintained her silence, which was rather like sucking one of Miss Bonkers’s comfits. The longer it nested on her tongue, the deeper the flavor became. And the comfort.

Book Two

The Chronicle
of the Wish

Tuesday, September 27th, 1938:

Topanga Beach

11:45 p.m.

Ruth could not sleep.

She pulled open the glass doors and stepped out.

Further down the beach someone was giving a party. The sound of gramophone records needled her ears. Youthful laughter mingled with blown words, careless and maddeningly innocent. Several people were dancing tangos a la Bully.

Her mind began to play with the distant sound of the music and the postures of the dance. The wash of the waters—sibilant as whispers—and the stiff-arm of the tango harried her with echoes she could hardly bear.

She closed her eyes.

Slowly, she fled indoors.

11:50 p.m.

“Mother?”

“Yes, dear.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what, Ruth?”

“For waking you up.”

“No. No. You didn’t. That’s all right. I heard you walking and I thought perhaps you might come in.”

“Are you in pain?”

“No.”

“I wondered…”

“No. I’m not in pain.”

“May I sit down?”

“Of course.”

“Mother?”

“Yes, Ruth?”

“Alvarez Canyon…”

There was a pause.

“Yes, dear?”

“Alvarez Canyon didn’t happen?”

“No.”

“We weren’t there?”

“No, dear. We weren’t there.”

“Not any of us?”

“No.”

Silence.

The curtains fingered the edges of the rug. The breeze was seaweed scented.

“May I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

Naomi waited.

“I don’t know how to ask. It’s so personal, Mother, and I can’t think of the right words.”

“Ask it just as it occurs to you.” Naomi waited again, and when Ruth did not speak, she said, “Is it dying you want to know about?”

“Yes. But dying in your mind.”

“In my mind…” Naomi paused. “That’s impossible to answer, because it isn’t in my mind.”

“Where is it, then?”

Don’t say your heart
, Ruth begged,
don’t say your heart. I want to know the mind
.

“I guess it’s around me somewhere. Still outside of me.

Gathering. I don’t know—like a crowd, I was going to say. But gathering like an event—the days and weeks before the event takes place. You know? The way anticipation fills the minds of everyone concerned, and yet they go on doing what they do. The women make cakes and eat meals and scold their children and the men read papers and listen to radios, but the event is always there, waiting to happen. My death. It takes on a personality all of its own, you know. It has a face. And legs and arms and…hands. It even has a way of talking. In a sense, that’s really true. I talk with my death. I listen to it and I pay attention to it. Because soon it will have me and that is the subject of our conversation and that, I suppose, is the way I look at it—sizing up the size of it—seeing what sort of match it will be.”

“You still haven’t said you’re afraid.”

“I am.”

“Why don’t you show it?”

“I’m surprised to hear I don’t.”

“Are you brave, then? Is that courage? Is courage silence?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. I haven’t the foggiest notion.”

“Mother?”

“Yes?”

“I want to have a baby.”

So.

Even the sea seemed to stop for a moment.

This is the last thing I expected, Naomi thought, lying propped on her pillow in the wavering dark, watching her daughter, who was far across the room smoking cigarettes, picking at the edges of her nightgown, broken in some mysterious way that Naomi did not fathom. Ruth, who had always been strong, had been weakened—even to the point of wanting the child she knew she must never have. It was impossible.

“Ruth—I have told you a million times—I cannot have this conversation.”

“Mother. Please. I must talk about it.”

“Talk about it. Go ahead. But I cannot help you. I cannot tell you yes or no. I had to make those answers for myself…”

“And were you sorry? Once you’d made them? Sorry your answers were yes?”

Now. What do you say to the product of the wrong answer?

“I got you. And Adolphus.”

“But were you sorry?”

“You are here now. No parent knows any other answer than that.”

Ruth closed her eyes. “You love me.”

“Yes. I love you. And Adolphus.”

“But are you sorry? Do you wish you hadn’t? Please, Mama! I need answers.”

Naomi thought. “May I have one of your cigarettes?”

“Of course.” Ruth stood up and crossed the room.

“I don’t smoke. But…why shouldn’t I smoke?” Naomi puffed. And puffed again. “I like it.”

She looked up at Ruth, standing near the bed, depositing the match in a cold cup of coffee that sat on the table. There was no ashtray.

“Do you want to sit over here? Sit on the foot of the bed.”

Ruth sat.

Naomi held her cigarette like an amateur. Very slowly she began to speak.

“Let me tell you something. The world is round. And you swim. And I was a picture star. Your father is a world-renowned producer. And your brother is a brilliant young director. All these things are facts. Correct?”

“Yes.”

“Well. You no longer swim. And I don’t star in pictures and your father doesn’t make movies. And one day, suddenly, we all know, Adolphus will hurt himself and die. Nothing lasts. But in the meantime, these things form a portion of reality. Right? They are—they were—facts. And vehement facts, at that.”

“Yes.”

“And what else? What other ‘facts’? Well…I married your father. He married me. We had two children. You married Bruno, and Dolly is—whatever he is—perhaps afraid of any kind of sex—of love. O.K.?”

“Yes.”

“Well. So, my children are unhappy. My daughter married an older man whom she revered…”

“I loved him.”

“Yes. But as a schoolgirl loves her teacher. Admit it is true.”

Naomi waited, but the admission did not come. So she continued.

“You won prizes. You won them because this man you married was extraordinary and he could make you win them. The way, exactly, that your father made me make pictures. I didn’t really want to do it, but that didn’t matter. I learned to do it well and I learned, almost, to enjoy it. I had this face and I had enough talent, and above all, the world wanted to take its look at me and it was ready to pay for it. So, there is no difference between us. None. You had a good strong body. Long and lean. Extraordinary. And natural. And you had, too, an inclination not to worry about distance and drowning. You loved the water. You belonged in it. You were born that way. It had nothing to do with choice. And Bruno said, ‘You will win,’ and you won. And he said, ‘You will win again,’ and you won again. And he said, ‘Now we will go to the Olympics,’ and you went, and when you got there you married him. Here I interpret, but let me interpret…a little. He wanted you to win for him and that would be good for him. And then he said, ‘It is time to have babies…you have won…you have won everything…and now while you are still young, you must stop winning for a while and give birth to other winners—winners of mine…you are,’ he said, ‘
perfect.
’ And you said, ‘I love you…but I cannot have your babies,’ and he looked at you amazed and maybe he even laughed at you because, after all, you are six feet tall and strong and beautiful and you have won a million prizes including the Olympics. And so he just sits there and laughs at you and you say, ‘No…don’t laugh…because I love you but I cannot have your babies.’ And he says (let me interpret), he says, ‘You are only afraid…so I will
make
you have my babies.’ Right?”

Ruth did not speak.

Naomi’s eyes were round as marbles, black and hard, seeing nothing in the darkness but the story she told and knew was true. Enough.

“And you,” she said, “didn’t tell him why you couldn’t have his babies. This is what you were really afraid of. Telling him you weren’t perfect. That you possessed and were possessed by flaws. And you let him make love to you.”

“Yes. I did.”

“But you didn’t have the baby.”

“No. I didn’t. There was none to have.”

“So. Whose fault was that?”

“Mine,” said Ruth automatically, and then, “I don’t know.” She didn’t. She had merely blessed the fact.

“Come into bed with me, Ruth. Come on. Lie here and let me put my arm around you. There.”

They lay still. Side by side.

“Do you remember this—the way we used to do this?”

“Yes.”

“I’m so glad I had you. Yes, I’m glad I said yes. But that is my gladness. I cannot answer for yours. I wish you could understand. My gladness, my life, my facts have nothing to do with you. Just with life.”

Ruth did not answer this. Or try to.

Naomi went on.

“I had an abortion once. Twice, in fact. No. That’s a lie. I had so many abortions, I don’t remember. I did it all without your father’s knowledge. Miscarriages, we called them. I’ve even wondered if that’s why I suffer this cancer. I did so many dreadful things to my body. I don’t know. No one knows these things. But it could be. I had the help of a doctor. He told me what to do and he did things and I did things. I aborted my babies for a long time. But, finally, I gave it up and I had you. And then Adolphus. And then, after that, your father discovered about Adolphus. The day of your birthday party. I tried not to tell him. Adolphus was his son and it was unavoidable. I had to let him see the truth. It was there to see. I couldn’t avoid it forever.”

“Would you have told him if you’d had another daughter, instead of a son?”

“There’d have been no need; you see, I knew that telling him was tantamount to losing him. But I told him.”

Naomi butted her cigarette in the coffee saucer.

“Later,” she said, “I had to bring the doctor. And the doctor had to bring the lawyer, and the lawyer had to bring us to this—the life George and I have led—the separated life we’ve led—apart—and the rest you know. But…babies. Will you have babies? Should you have them? That is your life and I can only tell you that I love you.”

Ruth lay, childlike, against her mother’s breasts. She looked at the curtains blowing across the room.

“Is it right, then,” she said, “to say that facts are what you can’t help living? Not what you know?”

“No. Facts are what they are and have nothing to do with you.”

“Whom do they belong to, then?”

“To themselves.”

“And if the facts become militant…what do you do then?”

“Then you watch and wait. You bide your time.”

“Until they change?”

“They don’t change. The combinations of factual things change. But not the facts themselves.”

“Oh, Mother. I’m so afraid.”

“The wish for a baby isn’t all that’s troubling you, is it?”

“No.”

“Then tell me.”

“Alvarez Canyon is part of it.”

“But Ruth, you were not there.”

“I was there. My mind was there. And something—something happened.”

Naomi thought, I’d better listen to this. And see what can be done. And call in a doctor, or one of those psychiatrist people if I need to.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They put out their hands,” said Ruth, “and asked for our attention. They were there. Begging for their lives. But apparently we didn’t see them because you say we weren’t there. The truth is, we are looking at two different things and calling them both extraordinary.
They put out their hands to us
, Mother, and I was watching. But you turned away to watch something else.”

“What else?”

“What you call real life,” said Ruth.

“It is real.”

Ruth stiffened. An angry cry began to swim up inside her, but it did not surface. All her cries, it seemed, fell back before they broke free of her; they drowned, or were drowned, she did not know which. All her life she had tried to bring them out, but her fear reabsorbed them. These cries were about the things she saw and experienced, and when she produced her evidences of them, people just said, “There she goes again…Ruthie dreaming.” In childhood, Dolly had never believed her, and Naomi had only listened attentively as a kind of precaution against laughter. Ruth’s “dreams” had been the cause of much amusement. Ultimately she had fallen silent. She rarely included her opinion in what she said.

Now. She watched the ceiling above her. It wavered. An arm of shadow billowed and beckoned. Her attention focused on something else. Desire.

“I’m being followed,” she said.

Naomi shivered. “Are you certain of that, dear?”

“Absolutely,” said Ruth. She spoke through barely parted lips. “I have been followed for weeks. All the way from Germany.”

Naomi relaxed a little. She apparently considered this story quite plausible. With a touch of almost gauche realism, she produced the fact that “Your father’s mother was Jewish. They might follow you for that. Especially since Bruno has remained in Berlin.”

“No. That isn’t why. I’m sure that isn’t why.”

“Why then? Or do you know?”

“No. I don’t. But I see him everywhere. Even in my dreams and nightmares, Mother.” (This was the way to tell it: tell the truth as a Nightmare.) “And in my nightmares, Mother, this man who follows me is…Race.”

“His name is Race?”

“No. No. I mean—he represents Race.”

“And have you really seen him?”

“Yes. That’s what I’m trying to say.”

“And what is this about Race?”

“Well. Just that.” The words are now stones and Ruth drops them, careful not to throw.

“Germany, you see. The Olympics.”

“Yes.”

“My medals. My superiority.”

“Yes.”

“Bruno.”

“Yes.”

“And, as you said, I was a winner.”

“Yes.”

“A breeder of winners.”

“Yes.”

“In Bruno’s mind.”

“Yes.”

“And…”

“Yes?”

“I couldn’t. Because I didn’t want to be a breeder of winners. Not Bruno’s winners. But now…”

“Yes?”