One balmy day in late July, the sailor returned from one of his walks. He had a book in his broad hand as he passed through the side gate into the garden.
The butterfly lady was on her hands and knees weeding the rosebush beds when he approached.
“Good afternoon,” he said with gentle soberness. “Would you like some help?”
“Oh! Good afternoon,” she replied. She stood and smiled, feeling strangely self-conscious about being covered with sweat and the soil of the burgeoning garden. “No, thank you, I love working with the earth and the flowers. I just wish it were a just a bit cooler today”
He smiled, fleetingly, as though he understood both her discomfort and her point. “Would you like me to bring you some iced tea from the house?”
“Yes, that would be lovely. It’s a warm one today,” she said. As he disappeared through the back door, she began to dust herself off furiously. And then she stopped and laughed at herself...the sailor had been living in her house for the better part of two months and something about him still brought out the coquettish girl in her. It was a scary feeling. And, at the same time, it was an extremely liberating feeling as well.
The sailor came back humming the song as he handed her a frosty glass of tea. She smiled in gratitude and took a long sip.
He took his glass and his book over to the shade of the great tree her grandfather had planted so many years hence. He sat back against the tree and began to read. The butterfly lady returned to her weeding.
In due course, the sailor began to sing the song out loud (albeit with a husky delicateness that reached directly into the butterfly lady’s heart.)
“That’s a pretty song,” the butterfly lady said nervously. “I’ve heard you singing it a lot...”
The sailor was startled and self-conscious. “Hmm? Oh, I’m sorry...I didn’t know I was singing out loud.”
“Is it a song from your childhood?”
The butterfly lady rose and walked over across the yard and sat down by the sailor. “And what was the question you were looking to find an answer for?”
The sailor smiled wistfully and sighed almost inaudibly. “The eternal question,” he said after a long, thoughtful pause, “love.”
The butterfly lady shuddered but she said nothing.
“Why do they call you the ‘butterfly lady’?” the sailor asked after a long, electric silence.
It was her turn to be flustered and self-conscious. “Who told you that?”
“A child I met down by the beach,” the sailor responded. “I was reading and she came up and asked me where I was living while my ship was here. I told her and she said ‘Oh, you live with the butterfly lady! She’s nice.”
The butterfly lady chuckled warmly and shook her head.
He added, “I was going to ask her more but her friends called her to run in the surf and she excused herself.”
The butterfly lady took a deep breath. “Well, the flowers here do attract an inordinate number of butterflies...” she said.
She smiled demurely and discreetly opened the top buttons of her blouse. There on her right breast was delicate violet butterfly soaring gracefully towards the heavens. “...but the nickname was earned for this.”
She blushed and closed the buttons. “Two summers ago, I bought an especially low-cut bathing suit and wore it to the beach. The tattoo was there for all the world to see...and the rest is history.”
The sailor nodded again. “It’s beautiful,” was all that he said.
They sat in silence for a long time until the sky started to shade towards twilight. The sailor suddenly rose to his feet and looked up into the sky. “You hear that?” He asked in a voice colored with soft wonderment.
The butterfly lady was perplexed. “Hear what?”
The sailor held out his great brown hand and she placed her gently tanned hand into it and allowed herself to pulled up to her feet.
He grunted a deep, welcoming laugh and wrapped his arm around her and pulled her close. The sun was muting to orange and looked up as though he was hearing something. “The music of twilight, dear woman,” he said, “it’s all around us...it’s beckoning us to dance...”
The butterfly lady sighed and nestled her head against the great expanse of his chest. His hands, she noted with wonder, were rough and work-callused and gentle and expressive at once.
The sailor began to sway and they were, just like that, dancing in the gathering twilight. The butterfly lady closed her eyes and the sailor began to sing...a different song but a song of gentle love still the same.
The sailor stopped dancing and the butterfly lady opened her eyes. Their eyes and spoke without words. Their lips met tentatively and the night exploded with color once again. He twirled her in a slow, smooth arch and then pulled her close once more. And then they danced until the last crimson rays of sunlight disappeared into the sea.
They spoke not at all during supper that evening. Afterwards they regarded each other with humid apprehension until they could stand it no longer and then they retired to their rooms.
Outside, a sudden summer rain shower began to fall.
The butterfly lady lay in her bed listening as the rain fell...listening as the sailor showered and sang his songs. A bit later, she listened expectantly as his footfalls echoed tentatively up the hall towards her door.
The sailor knocked softly as if he were hoping that she might not hear him and he could forget the madness and retreat back to his room.
The butterfly lady’s throat was swollen with dread and longing. She spoke but two strained words. “Come in.”
After a small eternity, the door creaked slowly open and closed. The sailor said nothing as her slipped into the butterfly lady’s bed. They lay there looking up into the darkness for a small eternity and then the sailor rolled over towards her.
He kissed the nape of her neck and she caught her breath in sudden rush. In the darkness his lips brushed against hers...gently at first, then heated, and then gently again. His head traveled down past her neck to her bosom. He kissed the butterfly on her breast and she shuddered involuntarily.
The butterfly lady was almost overwhelmed by the dark, masculine immensity of the sailor. Her gown melted away and he loomed over her.
Outside the rain had gone away as quickly as it came and the moon was peeking through the curtains.
In the golden moonlight, the sailor and the butterfly lady were joined in tender, brutal, sweet, wild, giving, uncompromising, comforting, terrifying union.
The butterfly lady, who had not been with a man for many, many months, gasped at the quality of his entrance as he gingerly surged into her the first time. She cried out and he stopped. She ran her hands through his woolen hair reassuringly and drew him deeper in one brave thrust.
The sky exploded yet again and they danced the dance eternal inarticulately for what seemed like blissful hours.
In the morning, they awoke entwined in each other’s arms. They kissed and teased and then they lay back and talked. The sailor told her that the sea was going to claim him come September. The butterfly lady told him that she had dreams of her own to pursue as well.
Today, they agreed, was all that they had for sure. Today…and a scant handful of tomorrows…was all they promised each other.
In the weeks that followed, he taught her how to dance to the music all around. And he taught her how to sing the songs he knew.
In the weeks that followed, she taught him how to smile more often and how to laugh at his own foolishness. And she taught him how to accept the now without conditions.
In the weeks that followed, they taught each other how to savor fleeting, eternal dreams.
The weeks ran into one another and the summer went away. And on a gray September morning, the sailor came down the stairs with his great navy coat and his dark knit cap on. His heavy sea bag was hefted casually over his shoulder.
The butterfly lady fussed with the collar of his coat and stood back to look on him admiringly. She was wearing a flowing skirt of violet and blue; the top buttons of her white blouse were open and the butterfly could be seen soaring just above her bodice.
The sailor put his sea bag on the floor. He bent down and kissed the butterfly. And then he pulled the butterfly lady up off her feet and they kissed each other’s trembling lips.
“You’re still an enigma to me,” she said as he set her back on the floor.
The sailor said nothing. He reached into the pocket of his great coat and brought out a small box. He handed to her. “Don’t open it until I’m gone.”
He picked up his bag and then bent down and kissed her cheek. “I’ll send you a thousand and one kisses on the wind from the seven corners of the world,” he said tenderly. “And part of my heart will always be with you now and forever.”
The butterfly lady brushed aside a tear and looked up into his eyes. “Then that will be enough.”
She promised him that she would keep him in her dreams as she pursued them wherever they took her.
“Then that will be enough,” he said, his heart echoing hers.
He took a deep breath and walked through the door without another word.
She stood watching him...tall and dark and proud...as he walked down the path and off down the road towards the sea.
Just as he was about to disappear around the bend, he turned and looked back as she knew that he would. The sailor smiled...and then he vanished into the grey morning.
The butterfly lady turned and walked back into the house. She opened the small box and inside it was a silver ring. On either side of the setting were two gleaming pearls...one creamy and warm, the other ebon and cool...and in the center, delicately and expertly carved, was an amethyst butterfly, its wings stretched out to catch the light.
Inscribed inside were the butterfly lady’s name, the sailor’s name, and the words: “...then that will be enough...”
The butterfly lady slipped the ring onto her finger and held it up. She reached into the closet and pulled out the “Room to Let” sign and walked down the stairs to place it back on the lawn. And as she went, she began to hum the sailor’s song and she knew that on the ship in the harbor, the sailor was singing his song with her.
And again, now in the warmth of a new spring, the butterfly lady gathered kisses windswept from the seven corners of the world and hummed the songs she knew by heart. And, as she held fast to the dreams all her own, that continued to be enough for the time being.
4 comments:
I told you I would come back. Well now...that was a very nice story...very romantic yet at the same time sad. I would like to think they had found true love but I feel that it was but a fleeting moment. I will return to read more....spotted several that caught my eye!
Absolutely beautiful.
Nothing else needs to be said.
Stunning writing!
Red from redsaid.net
Sigh... :-)
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