Excerpt from The Butterfly Garden
Inhale, hold. Exhale, whoosh. Inhale, hold. Exhale, whoosh.
Jenny Romano kept her eyes closed, inhaled again, reached for the handle on the middle desk drawer, yanked it open. Exhale, whoosh. She fingered her way over the Snickers bar, the packet of M&Ms, the half empty package of Chips Ahoy cookies, skimmed past the chopsticks, a half dozen matchbooks and a tube of toothpaste. Where was it? Where? Inhale, hold.
Damn it, where was it?
Exhale, whoosh. She opened her eyes, plunged both hands into the drawer and started rummaging. Stefan promised her it would work, he promised, said he’d gotten it from a reliable source. Just a sniff, just one, and it’ll make every bone in your body loose, your mind relaxed, mellow, he’d said. Well, she needed to feel loose now, needed mellow. Now. She scooped up a handful of the drawer’s contents, tossed them in another drawer. Come on, come on, where is it? There, in the bottom corner of the drawer, hidden under a CopyPlus coffee mug was a small dark brown, glass bottle.
Just a sniff, girl, that’s all, just a sniff and it’ll take you away. Stefan’s words floated in her head as she snatched it up and unscrewed the stopper. Inhale…inhale…inhale…hold. Ahhhhh. She closed her eyes. Inhale…inhale…inhale…hold.
“What are you doing?”
Jenny’s eyes flew open, landed on the tall, lanky figure standing in the doorway. “Didn’t you ever hear of knocking, Gino?” She took another whiff from the contents of the bottle.
Gino ignored her question, took three long strides and folded himself into a leather side chair. He was wearing his usual preppy-grunge attire; wrinkled khaki’s, button down cotton shirt, Eddie Bauer, no doubt, and scuffed, brown loafers, no socks. “What’s in there? Is that another one of your concoctions? You get that from Fredo on the corner?”
“Stefan gave it to me. It’s aromatherapy, lavender and chamomile.”
“Ah, aromatherapy.” She didn’t miss the sarcasm in his voice. “So what did your gay neighbor tell you this…aromatherapy…would do?” He laughed, rubbed his stubbled jaw, “win you a shoot for the cover of Time?”
Jenny closed the bottle, set it aside. “Gino, everything isn’t about getting that damn cover for Time.”
“It’s not?” Gino Strandelli’s thick brows pulled together. “And here I thought we were in for a little friendly competition.”
“And don’t talk about Stefan that way. He’s my friend.”
Gino held up both hands, “Hey, I have nothing against the guy, but you have to admit, he comes up with some very… queer ideas. No pun intended.”
Jenny took a deep breath. Inhale, inhale. Gino Strandelli was not going to drive her crazy today with his fifty zillion questions. Underneath the Vinnie Barbarino ‘Who, What, Where’ persona, was a decent guy, nosy, but decent. Jenny told him she thought he missed his calling, he should’ve been a reporter instead of a photographer, but the truth was, he was a damn good photographer, too. When you looked at a Gino Strandelli photograph, you weren’t just looking at a random shot of a face with a famous name attached; you were inside the person’s head, peering into their thoughts, touching their souls, all with the help of a camera lens.
“So, Jenny, I’m curious, if you’re not trying to work some potion to score big with Time, what the hell were you doing with that stuff in the bottle?”
She straightened a stack of papers on her desk, avoided his gaze. When she spoke, it came out more mumble than word, “Relaxing.”
“What?” He leaned forward, rested his long arms on his knees. “What did you say?”
Jenny cleared her throat. “Relaxing,” she repeated, a decibel higher.
“Relaxing.” He said the word as though it had a foreign element to it. “Relaxing. You. Jenny Romano, the original Energizer Bunny?”
She looked at him, cracked her knuckles, frowned, “Well, I was trying not to think about the Italy assignment. It’s so big, the Pope and all those cardinals, and the Vatican. And Rome. God, that would be so incredible.” She rubbed her neck, tried to massage the knot on the right side. “Joe’s supposed to decide who’s doing the shoot later today, and since you’ll be in Greece, I figure I’ve got a good chance of landing it.”
“You’ll get it,” Gino said. “Relax.”
“That’s what I was trying to do, Gino, I was trying to relax, until you barged in on me.”
“I think I liked it better when you smoked.”
“Me, too.” Jenny rolled her eyes. “Don’t let anybody ever tell you that once you’re over the hump, you forget about it. That’s just not true. Five months and I’m still leaning next to people in the elevator, trying to catch a whiff of cigarette smell on their clothes.”
Gino laughed, shook his head. “Well, just think of how many alveoli you’re expanding in your lungs and how much healthier you are.”
“That’s not why I haven’t picked it back up,” she said, thinking of the two packs of Doral in the bottom of her drawer. “It’s because of Stefan and Gerald. They bought me a stack of ‘kick the habit’ audiotapes, fixed me all these herbal remedies, home grown concoctions that Gerald created and swears by, and then, if that wasn’t enough,” she opened her top drawer, pulled out two eight packs of Strawberry Bubble Yum, “they bought me two cases of Bubble Yum. How can I start smoking again? They’d be crushed.”
Gino said nothing, just cocked his head to the side, and nodded.
“Do you realize,” Jenny went on, thinking about the little glass bottle of lavender and chamomile beside her on the desk, “that everything we do revolves around our breathing?”
“Really?” He shook his head, “Now there’s a revelation. Everything we do revolves around breathing,” he repeated the sentence, rolled the words around on his tongue. “Jenny, tell me the truth, what’s really in that bottle?”
“I told you. Lavender and chamomile.”
“Then either it’s relaxed your brain as well as your nerves or you need a vacation, bad.”
“I’m fine. And my brain’s fine, too. I just…I just needed a few minutes to… quiet myself.”
“Oh, God,” he groaned, “don’t tell me you’re taking that Yoga class again.”
“I’m not.”
“Thank God.”
“I’m taking Tai Chi.”
“Can’t you just,” Gino started, stopped, “can’t you just sit still on your own? You know, just close your eyes and …drift, no smells, no instructions, no music…no props…just you?”
Jenny looked at him as though he were speaking Portuguese and said, “You mean like meditation? I’ve tried that, it didn’t work.”
“Because you can’t meditate listening to Led Zeplin.”
“It was the symphonic version,” she said, “no words, and I had headphones on…quietly. That wasn’t the problem; I just couldn’t do it.”
“Please tell met there isn’t another one of you out there somewhere,” Gino said, pulling his hands through his jet black hair. Today he wore it long but he usually tied it back in a pony tail with a shoestring, another grunge concession.
“I’m it. My parents stopped after me.”
“Surprise, surprise,” he said, but there was a smile on his face.
“Of course, I do have an older sister. Grace. You’d like her, she’s nothing like me.”
“Ah, she’s normal.”
“Yeah, she’s normal, husband, kids, car pool, minivan.”
“Stifling.”
“She doesn’t seem to mind, Grace is used to taking care of everybody, me included.” Jenny shrugged, ripped open a packet of M&M’s, poured a handful in her hand, popped them in her mouth. “It’s just what she does,” she said, chewing. “It’s just Grace.”
***
Grace folded another pair of Blues Clues underwear, looked out the kitchen window. Spring in Ohio was usually soggy and gray mixed with brown sludge, but today, the sun was bright, the sky was clear, the palest robin’s egg blue, and the earth was dry and dark, sprigs of life sprouting from the trees, poking out of the ground. A patch of crocuses by the swing set burst alive in shades of purple, yellow and white.
This time of year reminded Grace of birth, and newness…and starting over. She looked away, her chest tight, grabbed another pair of Natalie’s underwear, Cinderella in her ball gown.
It was wrong of parents to let their little girls believe in princes and happily ever after. Happily ever after what? Grace knew there was no such thing, had known it for a while now, three years and two months to be exact. Most of the time, lives were just made up of the ‘after’ part; after the argument, after the pain, after the nothingness, after the heartache…the heartache…she’d buried it deep, so deep that no one would ever know…especially, not Grant.
Breathe, she told herself, just breathe.
The phone rang but Grace didn’t pick up, not until the answering machine kicked in and she heard Jenny’s voice, loud and demanding on the other line. “Hey, Gracie, where are you? Hey?”
Grace lifted the receiver, flicked off the answering machine button. “Jenny. Hi.”
“What do you know about lavender and chamomile?” And before Grace could answer, she went right into, “do you think they really make you relax or is that other stuff, patchouli, better?”
“Jenny, you’re not taking those herbal supplements again, are you?”
“No, of course not. This is just something Stefan gave me, said it would put me in a ‘mellow’ mood.”
“He gave you the herbal supplements, too.”
“Those were to quit smoking, remember? This is different.”
“If you want to mellow out, stop drinking five cups of Starbucks a day, and cut out the M&M’s.”
Silence.
“And the Snickers…and-”
“Okay, okay,” Jenny said, “I get the picture.”
“You still planning to come for Natalie’s birthday?”
“Uh…sure, sure I am.”
“You forgot, didn’t you?” Of course, she forgot. Grace knew her well enough to pick up the half-second hesitation in her voice, the awkward sway of vowels as she tried to force them together into words that sounded natural, confident…like the truth. It didn’t matter that Jenny was only three years younger than Grace, their lives were worlds apart, their responsibilities to themselves and others wider than the twenty-four hundred miles that separated them. It had always been that way, even in elementary school; Grace sitting at the kitchen table, practicing her alphabet in cursive, writing each vowel with such care, such precision. Dog, cat, run, stop, making a round motion with her hand, circle, circle, until the sharp tip of the #2 pencil formed the word. And then, Jenny, three years later, pulling out a torn piece of paper, and a few stubby pencils, the eraser tips worn down, scribbling the letters with speed and deliberateness. They were the same words, dog, cat, run, stop, but their formation was cramped, smudged with attempted eraser marks, a rip where she’d pressed too hard.
That was Jenny, moving through life fast, faster yet, trying to get to one place, then the next, not always a goal, just an experience, making an occasional correction, but always moving. Grace was a planner, she plotted, thought about it, considered, took polls, adjusted her opinion, thought about it again…and yet again…so that when she finally moved off her mark, the goal had become indistinct, nebulous, less intense…often, it had become someone else’s goal…
“Okay, so, I have it marked down here…the 31st of July, right?”
“The 30th is Natalie’s birthday,” Grace said, shaking her head.
“Oh, right…what I mean is, the 31st is the day the girls and I will have our own party so you and Grant can do something together.” The words came out fast. “I knew that.”
“What day is your flight coming in?”
“Well … I haven’t booked it yet. I’ve been … preoccupied lately, waiting to see if I get this really huge assignment in Italy. That’s why I was using the lavender and chamomile, to make me relax, so I won’t think about it. Joe’s making his choice later today and I really want it.”
“Good. Great.” Jenny wouldn’t be here for Natalie’s birthday, she knew that. Oh, she’d mean well, even promise the girls they’d do fun things, but in the end, she’d call, last minute, say the plane was delayed, the assignment got extended, the taxi driver drove around in circles for an hour jacking up the meter and she missed her flight. “I see.” And she did. Grace loved Jenny but she also knew her, knew she couldn’t depend on her.
“I’ll be there. Hey, come on, Grace. Have a little faith, okay? Just as soon as I find out about this assignment, I’ll book the flight. Okay? Trust me. I’ll be there.”