The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (13 page)

“I was going to tell you,” Molly said. “I was just waiting for the right moment. I know how busy you are.”

“If you don't talk to me, if you keep secrets from me, how can I trust you?”

“Mom, I've been playing baseball, not shooting heroin.”

“I deserve better.”

Naturally,
Molly didn't say,
it's all about you, what you deserve.

Molly picked up her colored pencil and went back to tracing the river in her country. She pushed too hard and snapped off the tip. Didn't she deserve better, too?

Molly felt her mother's hand on her shoulder. “Playing baseball won't bring him back,” her mother said quietly.

Her mother's touch was kindly, but still Molly recoiled a little. It could go either way.

“I know baseball was special to the two of you,” her mother said. “Playing catch. Watching the games on television together. It was sweet. It really was.”

Molly despised the word “sweet.” She had been on the brink of breaking down, but that one word pulled her back. It was a pat on the head. She loosed herself from her mother's grip.

Her mother said, “Molly, you need to …” She paused.

Molly fixed her mother with what she hoped was a glare.
Need to what?
she wondered. Move on? Get over it? If her mother used the word “closure,” Molly believed, she would launch herself at her and claw her face.

“What?” Molly demanded. “What do I need to do? I'd really like to know. Please tell me. I'm all ears.”

Her mother took her measure. “I'm going to start some dinner. You need to pick up your schoolwork and wash up. That's what you need to do.”

Her mother did in fact make dinner, chicken and rice and steamed broccoli, which was a pleasant surprise. They ate, mostly in polite silence. But there was a softness in her mother's manner, a gentleness. She inquired politely whether Molly wanted more of this or that. She refilled her water glass. She smiled.

Molly decided to take advantage of her mother's mood and ask something she'd been stewing about.

“Was he sad?” she asked.

“Your father?”

“Yes,” Molly said. “My father. Your husband. Peter J. Williams. Was he sad?”

“Sometimes. Everybody is sad sometimes.”

“How sad?”

“There's no Richter scale, Molly. Sometimes he was sad. Mostly he wasn't. Was he depressed? Is that what you're getting at?”

“Maybe,” Molly said. “Something like that.”

“Was his accident not an accident? Is that what you're asking me?”

“No,” Molly said. Now her mother was the one who was glaring.

“Because if you are, I can tell you. It was not intentional. It was an accident.”

“Okay,” Molly said.

“He didn't crash his car on purpose.”

“How do you know?”

“I know because I know.”

“He drove on that stretch of highway year after year, hundreds and hundreds of times. And then one night he goes off the road at full speed.”

“The police think he might have dozed off,” her mother said. “Fallen asleep.”

“But he was always drinking coffee.”

“I know, I know. Go figure.”

“It doesn't make sense,” Molly said. “Why?”

“Don't you think I've asked myself the same thing?” For once her mother didn't sound composed. Beneath her buoy-ant new hairdo, her face was twisted with confusion.

“And?” Molly asked.

“There is no
why,
Molly. There's just
is.”

Her mother cleared the dishes from the table and returned with a cup of hot water and a tea bag. “There's something I want you to think about,” she said.

“Sure,” Molly said. “I'll think about anything.”

“Good,” her mother said. “I want you to think about moving.”

“Moving?” Molly said. At first Molly didn't understand what she meant. It seemed like a weird thing to say. “As opposed to standing still?”

“As opposed to staying in this house, in this city.”

Her mother had never liked Buffalo. She'd come because it was where she and Molly's dad both found good jobs after college. She'd thought they'd just be passing through. Buffalo would be a short, funny line on her résumé. For her, just like for the rest of the country, it was a punch line, the city of snow and Super Bowl losers, the city of chicken wings and unemployment. It was part of the Rust Belt. Where the big ideas for urban renewal were casino gambling and a fishing tackle superstore. It was what people hoped didn't happen to their cities. It was like Siberia, a place you'd go to disappear, to be punished.

“Moving as in van,” Molly said.

“Back to Milwaukee,” her mother said. The house would be just one more thing to be discarded, just like her dad's clothes.

“Milwaukee,” Molly said. It was where her mother grew up, where they made car trips every other summer to pay a visit.

“We would be near Grandma. A new job for me, a new school for you. It could be a fresh start. For both of us.”

Molly felt too exhausted to say anything. Where would she even begin? She didn't especially want to be nearer to her grandmother. To Molly, Buffalo was no joke. For better or worse, it was home. She didn't want a fresh start. Maybe her life was messed up, but she wasn't ready to trade it for a new one.

Molly stood up. With her new haircut and hopeful offer, her mother seemed like some kind of sales agent.

“I'll definitely think about it,” Molly said. She felt as if
she and her mother maybe were supposed to shake hands at that point, like shady business partners contemplating some kind of greasy deal.

Later, alone in her room, Molly looked out her window and studied the blinking red light of the distant radio tower. She thought about little Caitlin next door, snug in her bed, and remembered the view from her room. Molly couldn't think of a single wish to wish. She was completely wishless.

She thought about what her mother had told her about her dad's accident. Why was she not relieved to hear that what she had feared most was not what had happened? Was a terrible explanation better than no explanation? How could her dad have fallen asleep? What was he thinking? How could he have done that to her?

Molly's life felt like one of those impossible knots she got in her sneaker laces when she was a little girl. The more she worked at it, the harder she pulled, the worse it got. She was part of a team that didn't seem to want her; annoyed with a boy who was maybe her friend, maybe just a catcher; obsessed with a crazy pitch taught to her by a father who fell asleep at the wheel; at war with her mother, who wanted her just to get over it and move on, whatever “it” was.

She looked down below, stared into the darkness of the lawn, her old playground, where, just a couple of weeks before, after her last blowout with her mother, she'd thrown that one magical knuckler. So much had happened since then. It seemed so long ago.

But even now Molly didn't want to get over baseball, and she sure didn't want to get over her dad. She didn't even want to get over her grief, that aching sadness in her
chest. It connected her to him. It was a painful connection, but it was a connection just the same, and she would never willingly give that up.

Molly opened the window. There was a breeze, which felt good. She tried to imagine herself down in the yard, winding up, her dad crouched and giving her a target. She squinted into the shadows and could almost see it. The white ball, released from her hand, floating, dipping and rising in impossible waves, riding the air current like a hawk, floating, floating, floating.

o Eva Schmidt's mother spilled the beans,” Molly told Celia. “Told my mom all about it.”

They were at Celia's house, down in the basement, a big family rec room full of interesting stuff—baskets of laundry, a drum set, a Ping-Pong table piled with boxes of old books, a stationary bike, skis and skates, a pair of crutches. Celia's parents stayed out—if they needed something, they shouted down the stairs. It was like a clubhouse, an independent nation.

Celia was sitting on a folding chair, holding her tuba, the big mouthpiece covering her lips. She conveyed her sympathetic disgust by shaking her head slowly back and forth.

“Busted,” Molly said. She was standing with her back to Celia. She brought her hands together at her waist and looked over her shoulder at her. In Molly's hand was a rolled-up pair of sweat socks. She was practicing pitching from the stretch position, going through the motions so they would become automatic, second nature. With runners on base, she couldn't use the full windup she knew best—if she did, they'd steal. Instead, she had to use this modified motion, including a pause, during which she was supposed to look at the runners, fix them with a stare. If a runner strayed too far from the base, she was supposed to throw over and pick him off.

“She was going to find out sooner or later,” Celia said.

“I know,” Molly said. “But still.”

Celia squinted at the music on the stand in front of her—she needed glasses but was in denial about it—and blew a funky-sounding bass line. Molly stepped forward and tossed the sock-ball across the room. She followed through just as she would have for real.

The team's first game was just a week away. It seemed impossible that she would ever be ready. It was one thing to practice, one thing to do it right in Celia's basement or in a drill with no one watching, when you had the chance to do it over if you messed up. It was something else entirely to do it when it counted, against kids you didn't know, on the varsity field, in front of a crowd.

“Does she know about Lonnie?” Celia asked.

“Know what about Lonnie?” Molly said. “What is there to know about Lonnie?” There'd been no more visits to her house. But he always caught her at practice. They had a few
awkward telephone conversations. He waited for her after practice sometimes, and they talked, a little. “
I
don't know about Lonnie,” Molly said.

After the last practice he had called her to see if she was okay. Molly had been a little short with him, she wasn't sure why. He seemed concerned, but maybe not concerned enough. Or not concerned in the right way. Or something. The thing about Lonnie was that on the phone he was not a real live wire. He was no chatterbox, that was for sure. All those words written across the back of his hand, but put him on the phone and not that many came out of his mouth. Plus, in the background there was always some unhappy static, some kind of miserable Muzak—the grinding of what sounded like his mother complaining, droning on unpleasantly about something. It was not as if Molly was looking to import more unhappiness into her life at this particular point.

“What's the matter?” Celia asked. “You two have a tiff? Are you breaking up?”

Molly went through the motions of her stretch windup again. Brought her hands together. This time she looked back over her right shoulder, at an imaginary runner leading off second base.

“I'm not sure we were ever together,” Molly said. “So how could we break up?”

“Why is your hand like that?” Celia said.

“Like what?”

Celia pointed. “All weird and clawlike, all crumpled up.”

Molly had to laugh. “That's my grip,” she said. “For the knuckleball.” Even if it was only a rolled-up pair of socks, that was how she held it. That much at least had become automatic. “Remember? My secret weapon?”

For the next twenty minutes or so, each of them kept practicing. Celia blew her horn, the same basic rhythm with some Jamaican-flavored variations. If anyone could play reggae tuba, it would be Celia. Molly kept working from the stretch, checking imaginary runners on the bases, holding them close.

They were together, but they didn't speak. For that time, Molly felt as almost-happy as she had in a long time, at peace even. She liked being with Celia, she liked the music, she liked going through the pitching movements without having to think, she liked not talking. Maybe her trouble with Lonnie wasn't too few words, maybe it was the need for words in the first place.

The next afternoon Molly threw an inning in a practice game. Her knuckleball was maddeningly inconsistent. It started out fine, and she got a couple of quick outs. But then it turned into a wild, willful child. It wouldn't listen to her. She walked the bases full.

Lonnie, who'd been brought into the scrimmage along with Molly, came out for a conference. He was breathing hard but didn't seem upset. He raised his mask and shrugged. If her knuckleball was going berserk, he wasn't going to hold it against her.

“I know,” Molly said.

“Okay,” Lonnie said.

He was a weird kid, but he had a good heart, and Molly couldn't stay mad at him for long.

With runners on base, at least Molly felt comfortable working from a stretch. All that practice in Celia's basement must have paid off. She checked the runners, at third,
second, and first. She noticed that the runner leading off first, Eli Krause, had wandered pretty far from the base and didn't seem to be paying all that much attention to her. Everett Sheets, the first baseman, had sneaked in behind him and was flapping his mitt. He wanted Molly to throw it over.

She took a breath, then, just as she'd been coached, pivoted hard toward first and threw to Everett. It was a strong move, except that what Molly threw to Everett was a knuckleball. Molly watched, horrified, as the spinless ball started shoulder high, then dove. Somehow, though, Everett snagged it in his mitt and applied the tag to Eli, who didn't even slide back into the base—he'd been caught flat-footed. Molly heard someone on the bench cackling with delight—it sounded like Coach V—and just like that, Molly was out of the inning.