Butterfly's Shadow (10 page)

‘Maybe it’s time we had a kid,’ he said one day.

They were on the porch, half asleep, while below them Joey squatted with a drawing pad, sketching fat bees homing in on the huckleberry bushes.

‘We could do with a little brother. Or sister. For Joey.’

‘Why not,’ Nancy said, after a pause.

He sensed tension. ‘We’ll work at it,’ he said and brought out a little laugh.

His parents had never laughed much. They plodded along, expressionless. They had cared for their children dutifully, never neglected any aspect of their material needs; but Joe and Martha Pinkerton went through their days at a steady pace, no spring in their step. As a boy Ben had felt disloyal to have these thoughts but there was no tender place in his heart that the two of them occupied.

One day a lifetime ago they took him to the State Fair.
In a daze of pleasure he wandered through the crowd, the music, breathing in the smell of sugar and vanilla. He gazed up at the twirling carousel, but his father declared it to be an unseemly extravagance and walked him towards the cyclorama of the Civil War. Then they went home.

They took his hand when necessary, to guide him safely across city streets. Hugging did not take place. And when Charlie was killed in action, Ben got the feeling that between him and his parents a sheet of glass had grown: they could see one another, but not touch.

Later, when Joey appeared on the scene, they had effectively disowned Ben.

There were moments in his life when he longed for something different: for excess. For freezing cold, driving winds, blinding rain. Fierceness. The sea. Within the house, confined by the yard, he sometimes found difficulty in breathing, needed more air, felt an urge to hit out without having any particular object he wished to punish. Occasionally he snapped at Nancy. He wondered now: were he and Nancy turning into his parents?

As though sensing his thoughts she suddenly stood up and called out,

‘Joey? How about some ice cream? I’ll fix you a fudge sundae, wouldn’t that be fun?’

Sometimes in the early hours, after lying awake for too long, Ben went through the house from room to room, as though checking, like some watchman marking the boundaries of security: doors locked, windows secured. Everything safe. But then again, what did the Good Book say? Forget treasures on earth, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Tonight, hot and sticky, he got out of bed, moving quietly, leaving Nancy sleeping. She lay, as always, on her right side
with one knee bent, the fingers of her left arm lightly clenched on her cheek.

Earlier they had spent a while attempting to produce a kid sister or brother for Joey; nice work as Ben said, and he was grateful for the soft, accommodating body lying beneath him. But afterwards they had disengaged quietly, moved apart, seeking cool, uncrumpled sheets.

He went to the window and stared down at the dark street. He had a sense of other streets, those that ran parallel, those that crossed, stretching out, further and further until the tarmac and the houses stopped and the fields took over, roads heading out into a flat landscape; Oregon all around him, land on three sides that led across borders and mountains to more land, and one border that defined itself in cliffs and sandy dunes and a seashore, the curling lip of an ocean stretching out to the horizon, beyond which lay the rest of the world.

They used to have picnics, family gatherings on the beach; Nancy in her bright pink sundress, lying back, eyes closed, face raised to the warmth, while he padded across the sand to the surf frothing between his toes, tiny mouths sucking at his skin, waiting to engulf him.

He recalled the moment: the racing dive into the water, the cool tingle as it washed over him, the salt catching on the fine hairs of his skin. He would head out, a steady crawl, each arm in turn curving in a beckoning movement as though encouraging a swimmer lagging behind, because he was always out front, turning his head every so often to draw breath, then down, knifing through the waves like the prow of a boat . . .

In Nagasaki he had swum in cold green sea, a small figure in a blue and white kimono watching him, seated on the rocks, waving when he looked back, the sun glittering on her silver bracelet.

At the far end of the market, in tiny roadside stalls he passed as he came and went, he had been offered intricate tortoiseshell work and fancy jewellery. In one shop he had noticed a
bracelet, the metal surface inlaid with linked silver and gold butterflies and brilliantly coloured enamel. He bought it; he had learned by then that Cho-Cho meant butterfly.

When he got to the house he pulled the bracelet from his pocket and threw it across to her. ‘Here you go, Mrs Butterfly. Surprise. A little something for you.’

‘Ah!
Cloisonné
,’ she exclaimed, which meant nothing to Pinkerton, who thought it was a Japanese word to express thanks. She held out the bracelet and waited for him to fasten it round her small wrist. Then she led him to the futon.

He stared down at the street, at the pools of light, the shadows, the houses opposite, lined up side by side, identical. There were differences, of course. One had a swing-seat on the porch that creaked when it moved in the breeze like the sound of cicadas, another, a tree the neighbours considered too tall, liable to come down one day in a storm. The people next to them kept a dog, that barked; one household kept the dog, Ben commented testily, and everyone shared the barking. A little further down the street, new owners had painted the front door yellow. He couldn’t figure out why a man would want a yellow front door. It was an unsettling colour – thunderstorm, headache colour. He could feel a headache coming on now, and headed for the kitchen.

The wooden banister was smooth to his touch. From below, the rugs gave off a smell of warm wool, not unpleasant, though there was something stale about it, something heavy. Light came through the windows, slanting on to the walls. The darkness was soft; he felt it brush his skin and he walked through it almost like moving through water. If he raised his head, he would breathe in air from above the surface, though there was no surface here, the darkness filled the room to the ceiling, and he was a drowned man resting on the bottom.

The image shocked him; he loved water, always had, he was a swimmer, wasn’t he? No risk of drowning. He was as safe in water as he was here in his home.

And he was doing okay.

He lit a cigarette and watched the tip glow in the darkness; glow and then, resting between his fingers, dim into something grey as the heat died. When he inhaled, the brightness returned, casting a glow on his hand. That was the trick of it: keep up the heat; keep the brightness.

In the kitchen he filled a glass from the faucet and drank slowly, feeling the liquid slide down his throat. Then he made his way back through the house. Outside Joey’s door he paused, turned the handle and stepped into the room. The boy was asleep, bedclothes thrown off, a battered wooden spinning top beside him on the pillow. Hunched into an untidy ball, legs drawn up under him, he looked almost as though crouching, a pale frog ready to leap up and go.

Back in his own room, Pinkerton lowered himself carefully on to the bed and stretched out on the now cool sheet.

Turned away, eyes closed, her cheek deep in the pillow, Nancy listened as his breathing gradually deepened and he drifted into sleep.

‘My grandpa’s family lived in Nantucket and he worked on a whaling ship when he was young, and this is a whale’s tooth, a sperm whale’s tooth and it’s carved with a picture of trees and houses.’

The large, decorated whale-ivory tooth was passed around the class, the children less interested than the teacher, who looked pleased. ‘Janet’s grandfather was one of many sailors who made beautiful carvings like this. The work is called scrimshaw.’ She wrote the word on the blackboard in large letters, the chalk squeaking. ‘Scrimshaw. Try and remember the word. And what have we next?’

A red-haired girl had brought along a small bottle of oil. She said the oil was made from little fishes the Cree Indians called ooligan.

‘It was a medicine and valuable. My dad says the name Oregon originally came from that word. So that’s how our State got its name.’

‘That’s very interesting, Sandra. Of course there are many different stories about the naming of the State. Travellers told strange stories about us. On old maps Oregon is sometimes called Terra Incognita – unknown land . . .’

The Show and Tell continued. When it came to his turn, Joey had a photograph for the class to see: ‘This is a snapshot of my dad when he was in the navy. He can navigate by the stars. Before he was in the navy he won prizes for swimming.’

The teacher’s attention sharpened. ‘He was a swimmer?
Joey, would your father be
Benjamin
Pinkerton?’ A nod from the boy. ‘But he was a champion! A hero!’ She addressed the class: ‘Ben Pinkerton won the fifty-yard freestyle in the AAU championship his first year as a contender. He won races in
Europe
; we thought he’d be going for the Olympics!’ She looked down at Joey. ‘What happened?’ She realised the question might sound accusatory. ‘I mean what happened to change his mind about a career as a swimmer, Joey?’

The boy shrugged. ‘He’s never talked about it, I guess.’

‘Well. Tell him he has a fan at your school. Next parents’ evening I’ll be proud to shake his hand. Okay, who do we have next?’

‘She wants to shake your hand. She said you were a champion.’

‘That’s all in the past.’

Joey watched his father carve the pot-roast. His movements were careful; he was a man who never hurried. The man in the snapshot had bright hair, his shoulders were broader than his hips and his smile revealed teeth as brilliant as his white uniform. Joey remembered seeing him wear that uniform a long time ago, the white sharp in the shadows of his mind.

His father had grown more bulky than he was in the picture, and his hair had darkened into a sort of mustard, a dull colour. His eyes too were dulled. Like the teacher, he wanted to say: Dad, what happened? Because he knew what she was really asking: how come Benjamin Pinkerton stopped being a champ? But Nancy noticed Joey staring at his father and reminded him sharply that he should wash his hands.

The snapshot lay nearby on a side table and glancing over, she recalled the day it was taken. There was another photograph from the same day, of the two of them: Ben in his uniform, and Nancy in a mint-green dress with a heart-shaped neckline and a swirly skirt, laughing up at her fiancé. He was about to embark on another voyage and she was enjoying a
secret joke: how amazed he would be when her liner docked in Nagasaki. On the shiny paper of the snapshot, the two of them, laughing, bathed in sunlight, looked young, carefree. And then came the sea journey, and all that followed. It was, she realised, the last time she had been completely happy.

Hands washed, Joey was back at the table.

‘Dad . . .’

Pinkerton knew what was coming and forestalled the questions.

‘I was good. Very good. Winning races came easy. There was a guy I met called Weissmuller at one of the events, he won everything he went in for, swimmer of the year, a world champ. He’s famous now; went to Hollywood. I hear he’s making a movie, but I knew him way back, and he told me how day after day he worked till he dropped; he had to swim for hours, the coach was God and took no arguments. I reckoned life was too short for all that. And if I wasn’t going to swim
through
the water, I’d sail
over
it!’

Pinkerton knew he was talking too much, saying more than necessary, and also less, with no mention of parents who had regarded swimming as fine for a hobby, but no way for a grown man to earn a living. A bank job had been suggested. Ben’s choosing the navy had been their first real disagreement. He pulled back now from awkward places in the past, wrong turnings or turnings not taken. Moreover he had found that life was not too short, life was not short at all, it went on and on and had a way of handing out disappointment.

So Weissmuller had swum his way to Olympic golds, world records. He had done other things. But Ben thought back to how it felt, relived the shining moment, arching upward through the air, slicing into water like a blade, surfacing in a spray of glory. Until one day he had come out of the water and found himself beached, dry.

He studied his heaped plate of meat and potatoes, slick with gravy.

On a low lacquer table delicate fish and vegetables, shaped and razored and layered, one colour set against another, green and dark crimson; amber, pink and white; in porcelain bowls, gleaming like jewels . . .

He picked up his fork and stabbed a potato.

‘Why does everything have to be brown?’

Nancy looked up, startled. ‘What?’

‘Nothing important. Just – nothing important.’

He looked again at his plate: ‘This is fine.’

For Thanksgiving, they went to Louis and Mary as usual, and Ben watched his mother-in-law carry in the shiny bronze turkey. But she was an accomplished cook and he found himself enjoying the tender bird.

Afterwards there was chocolate meringue and pecan tart and apple pie.

‘Like Mom makes,’ Joey said, repeating words he had heard from other kids.

‘There’s too much food here for just five of us,’ Louis said comfortably. ‘Still, I guess one of these days we’ll be sitting down six for Thanksgiving, when Joey gets a little brother.’

‘Or sister,’ Mary put in mildly.

Ben felt the tightness in his chest, that sense of wanting to hit out at some unspecified target.

‘Don’t hold your breath.’ It came out louder than he intended.

Louis and Mary exchanged a quick glance, and Nancy kept her eyes on her plate, her spoon chasing a crumb of chocolate meringue.

‘Well of course, we’re all in God’s hands in these matters,’ Mary said. ‘Now: who’s for more pie?’

The kitchen was filled with a sense of electrical activity: the new coffee percolator bubbling, bread browning in the new toast-maker that scorched both sides at once, eggs frying on a ring, the new refrigerator giving off its high-pitched whine in the corner.