Butterfly (25 page)

anything,
you give Carmelita a call. You promise?”

Rachel had promised, adding, “And the same goes for you. If
you
ever need
me
, just

send word and I’ll be there.”

Rachel stared out at the passing desert landscape and wondered why it wasn’t in focus.

She closed her eyes and waited for the pain to pass. She felt ill, desperately ill. So she did

what she always did when her body was in an unpleasant circumstance, she removed her

mind from it and concentrated on something that pleased her. San Antonio came into her

thoughts, a city she had grown to love. She recalled now the plazas and cathedrals, the

peppery Mexican dinners eaten in the homely cottages of Little Laredo, evenings along

the River Walk, where spotlights hidden beneath bushes illuminated the new flagstone

walks along the San Antonio, the arched footbridges and the gondolas on the water where

soldiers made love to their girlfriends. Danny had once taken her on a boat ride on the

river, beneath the lights and the romantic moon….

A sudden stabbing pain in her abdomen brought her upright. Clasping herself, dou-

bled over, she threw away the past and summoned up the future. From now on, she was

going to concentrate on what was going to be, not on what had already been.

First she would find her mother, Rachel vowed as more waves of pain were starting to

come. Then, after she had healed and had her strength back, she would go on to

Hollywood, and look for her twin sister….

The morphine was not working. She felt as if she were on fire. She was burning with

thirst. Thinking of the water dispenser at the end of the car, Rachel struggled to her feet.

Strangely, her seat was wet.

BUTTERFLY

107

The train lurched and she lost her footing. Then she thought she heard someone

scream, or was it the train whistle again?

A face appeared above her, fuzzy at first, then coming into focus. The mouth was smil-

ing, but the eyes were not. The eyes were full of concern. “How are you feeling?” the

stranger asked.

Feeling?

Rachel tried to think. Feeling.
Pain.
Yes, there had been pain. A little while ago. But it

seemed to have gone away now. In fact, her body felt strangely numb. She was lying on

her back. And the train was still. Had they stopped?

“Where am I?” she said.

“You’re in a hospital. You collapsed on the train as it was coming into the station.

Don’t you remember?”

“No…”

The stranger sat down on the edge of the bed and studied Rachel’s face. “How old are

you?” he asked.

“Sixteen.”

He looked surprised. What did he think she was? Older? Younger?

“Am I in”—she swallowed with a dry throat—“Albuquerque?”

“Yes. Your ticket said you were getting off here. Was someone going to meet you? Is

there anyone we can call?”

She thought a moment, then wanted to cry. “No. There’s no one. Are you a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“What happened to me?”

His voice grew grave. “You lost a lot of blood, but you’ll be all right now. You’ll have

to stay here for a few days, but you will be all right.”

“I feel so funny.”

“It’s because you’ve just come out of surgery.”

“Surgery!”

“Don’t worry,” he said gently. “You’re out of danger now.”

The doctor came back a few days later to say good-bye to Rachel as she was preparing

to leave the hospital. Finally, reluctantly, he said, “I’m sorry, Rachel,” sounding genuinely

sorry, “but whoever worked on you did a butcher’s job. I’m afraid…” He faced her

squarely. “I’m afraid you’ll never be able to have children.”

It had taken her five days to get well, and when she left the hospital she went straight

to the trailer park that had been her last New Mexico address.

It was winter and snow lay on the ground. A cold wind cut through her sweater as she

stood staring at the dingy little trailer where she had passed the last day of her childhood.

Then she went to the office to make inquiries.

This was a new manager—such people, too, tended to move on. But the woman

had received the park’s history from her predecessor, a woman like herself, given to

lurid gossip. “The Dwyers?” she said. “Yeah. I heard of ’em. ’Bout two years ago it was,

I guess. She murdered him, you know.”

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Kathryn Harvey

Rachel stood in the chilly office while the winter wind shook the thin walls.

“Murdered him?” Rachel said.

“Yeah. A real pair they were, from what I heard. He got drunk one night and she

bashed him over the head with a frying pan. But that wasn’t what killed him. From what

I heard, he recovered from that, although she had clearly intended to do him in then! No,

she finished the job a week later with a carving knife.”

It was as if the biting New Mexico wind had gotten through her skin and was freezing

her bones. Rachel felt numb, as if she were on the morphine again. “What happened to

her after that?”

“Beats me. She disappeared. The police searched for her but she had long gone.”

What was it, Ma? Rachel thought as she headed back to the train station. What was it

he did that finally drove you over the edge? Had you reached your limit at last, just as I

did with Danny? We’re a pair, aren’t we, Ma?

As Rachel bought her ticket for Los Angeles, the end of the line, she thought with

resolve: I’ll find you, Ma. Just as I’m going to find my sister, I’ll find you. And then I’ll

take care of you and we’ll be a family again.

It was a hot November day and smog hung heavy in the Southern California air. The

impressive Union Station terminal reminded her of San Antonio, with its classic Spanish

style. She hurried through it and out into the famous sunshine.

Palm trees, everywhere.

At a taxi stand she asked the way to Hollywood and was told which bus would get her

there. Rachel counted out her change, and sat on the bus bench, ready. It arrived an hour

and a half later. An hour after that she was stepping down to the sidewalk, and her first

thought was: Hollywood isn’t at all how I imagined it.

Of course, she had been listening to Belle, who was an “expert.” Rachel didn’t see any

big houses or swimming pools or women in mink coats. Just rows of tired-looking old

stores, coffee shops that looked like rocket ships, and an endless chain of motor court

apartments. The first thing she did was get herself a room at a very plain little motel, pay-

ing a week in advance—using nearly all the money she had left after paying the

Albuquerque hospital bill—then she went out for something to eat. Hamburger and

strawberry malted. It was her first meal on her own.

In the coffee shop, she asked if they had a job they could give her. Sure, the manager

said. Any experience as a waitress? No? Sorry.

By the fourth coffee shop, Rachel had learned to lie. She found the manager, and told

him she was an experienced waitress who wanted work. He seemed to study her face for

far too long, then he said no.

As she hit the sidewalk again Rachel wondered what he had seen that had made him

reject her. Was it her homeliness? Or the fact that he hadn’t believed her when she said she

was eighteen?

After walking three more miles in the heat and being turned down four more times,

Rachel went back to the motel and drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep.

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109

She awoke the next morning to a ferocious hunger, but restricted herself to coffee.

Then, striking off in the opposite direction from the one she had taken yesterday, she hit

the pavement once again.

Like a ghost, her dear friend Carmelita walked with her. Rachel took comfort in her

imagined presence, listened to her encouraging chatter, and several times caught herself

answering her out loud. If only they could have left Hazel’s together!

Rachel saw that Hollywood was a sort of characterless sprawl that went on forever, its

palm trees hanging limp in the haze, its people rushing by with vacant faces. And every-

where the same peculiar restaurants: shaped like dogs, like hot dogs, like sombreros, with

waitresses who wore phony cowgirl uniforms, or sped about on roller skates, or had out-

sized handkerchiefs pinned to their blouses. And everywhere the answer was the same:

Not hiring.

As she walked beneath the gay lights of Grauman’s Chinese Theater and paused to

watch tourists stand in the cement footsteps of movie stars, Rachel felt loneliness and

despair come over her. But she fought it back. She had to keep going. If not for herself, or

for her mother, then for achieving her goal. When her spirits flagged, she thought of

Danny Mackay. When her stomach growled with hunger, when her feet raised giant blis-

ters from walking, when creeps on the back streets said lewd things to her, when she heard

the people in the next room having a fight and she wanted to run away from this terrible

Hollywood, Rachel would think of Danny Mackay. And it would keep her going.

On the third day she decided to start looking for her sister.

“I can only tell you two things,” her mother had said. “You were born at Presbyterian

Hospital. And the lawyer’s name was Hyman Levi.”

So Rachel went through the phone book in her motel room. There were a few Hyman

Levis in the Los Angeles area. But only one was listed as the name of a law firm. She

dialed the number and got a secretary. She asked to make an appointment.

“What is it regarding?” the secretary asked.

“It’s confidential.”

Rachel was told to come in that afternoon at three.

Because it was such an important occasion, she pulled out her nicest blouse and skirt,

smoothed them as best she could, and got dressed. Then she went to sit on a bus bench

for the inevitable hour.

Miraculously, she got to Levi’s office on Western Avenue right on time.

It wasn’t a spectacular office, not like the ones she had seen on television. But you

could tell it had been here for a long time. She wondered if her sister’s file was in that very

file cabinet over there behind the secretary. The thought of it made her heart race. She

wished Carmelita and Belle were sitting on the Naugahyde sofa with her.

Mr. Levi was momentarily delayed, she was told, so Rachel got up and paced. The sec-

retary kept looking at her. Rachel knew she looked awfully young to be seeing a lawyer on

her own. She hoped she wouldn’t get thrown out. All she wanted was her sister’s address.

Rachel knew what would happen after that. They would have an incredible reunion; they

would catch up on the sixteen years since they were separated; and then her sister, no

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Kathryn Harvey

doubt being rich, would insist that Rachel move in with her family and they would be

true sisters at last.

Rachel came to a halt before a framed diploma hanging on the wall. Hyman Levi, it

declared, had graduated from the Stanford University School of Law in 1947.

Seven years ago.

Rachel stared dumbly. Hyman Levi didn’t even become a lawyer until nine years after

she was born.

He was the wrong man.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled to the secretary, “I’ve made a mistake-—”

Rachel hurried out the door and let it slam behind her.

The secretary was still looking perplexed when, a moment later, a man came through

the same door. “Sorry I’m late, Dora,” he said, looking around the reception area.

“Where’s my three o’clock appointment?”

Dora shrugged. “She was here, Mr. Levi. And then just suddenly ran out. She was only

a kid, though. Maybe it was some kind of a prank.”

He smiled and headed for the inner office. At his door he turned and said, “Has my

father called in yet?”

“He’s still in court.”

“When he does check in with you, would you tell him I have six new adoption cases

I’d like to review with him?”

“Certainly, Mr. Levi,” she said, as Hyman Levi, Jr., went through the door of the office

he shared with his father.

Rachel lay for a long time on the motel bed, sobbing her heart out. She had so

counted on finding her sister. Now there was no hope. Her mother gone, her sister

beyond reach—now she was truly alone in the world.

Then, forcing herself to think of Danny, she got up, changed her clothes, washed her

face, and hit the pavement again.

In a couple of days her rent would be up and she’d be out on the street. She needed a

job. Fast.

Hollywood at night, at casual glance, looked glamorous. But closer scrutiny revealed

the stains. As Rachel walked along the busy street her heart went out to the prostitutes

who hovered in doorways or leaned against lampposts. My sisters, she thought. My only

true sisters.

She went into five more coffee shops and was turned down in all five. At least in one

the manager was honest enough to say she was too young. “Need a work permit,” he said.

“You ain’t eighteen.”

Tired and hungry, she came to the intersection of two heavily trafficked streets. Young

women loitered hopefully on all four corners. Rachel looked up at the lighted street signs.