Frozen Butterflies Read online

  I ordered pizza and returned to my apartment to read and take notes for the interview. The streets were crowded, busy, noisy. I was alone. There was an old radio in my apartment. I checked to make sure it worked, and I tuned it to a jazz station. The jazz slowly silenced the noise so I could finally start reading.

  The narrative of Lies was built around short dialogues, and the drawings were intense, evocative. Like his journal, Lies described Andrew’s first meeting with Emily in that café. In his drawings, she looked like I had imagined her, a beautiful ballerina. Andrew looked more clumsy than in person. This must be how he saw himself, I thought. Or perhaps he had changed after Emily’s death.

  I read and saw Andrew’s initial romance with Emily, their later misunderstandings, their silences, the things he thought but didn’t tell her, Emily’s performances, the parties after the shows, their fights, his sleepless nights after an argument, the time she left to sleep at Christine’s place. And then Emily’s strict diet, Andrew’s obsession with junk food, her discipline, his disorder, her clarity, his confusion. The story didn’t allude to Emily’s death.

  I looked at the clock. It was almost nine p.m., but it felt later. I looked outside my window. A couple, holding hands, passed by and made my solitude bitter. I thought about Nick, and I checked the phone to see if there was a message from him. I leaned against the couch, closed my eyes, and imagined receiving a text or a call. When I opened my eyes, there was even more emptiness than before. I poured myself some scotch and drank enough to numb my feelings. When the noise in my head seemed less loud, or at least softer, I started reading How Did I Get Here?

  The story described his agent’s reaction to Lies, how Andrew was upset and looked to his friends for support. But then, discouraged, he decided to leave and go to New York. The narrative proceeded slowly, revolving around a few significant events. Andrew with a woman who had no name other than “my love.” This woman reminded me of Emily, but I knew it wasn’t her. They met in front of her ballet school, talked about the past, and ended up in bed that very night. She was fragile, insecure, disciplined, demanding. Andrew was attentive to her. He attended her performances and the parties. He stuck to her diet and sleeping routine, read magazines and newspapers, watched documentaries. He appeared happy in his drawings, but that happiness seemed forced, faked. I thought those drawings described too many compromises with the person I thought he was. But the story also described his rediscovered passion for art, and that felt real. The last drawing was clearly for Emily: Andrew sitting on a bench in a park, smoking a cigarette, his gaze wandering into space. There’s no one around, just him and his thoughts. He thinks, “I could have been a better person for you.”

  When I finished reading, I closed the empty pizza box with the ugly leftovers and trashed it. I opened the window to cleanse myself with some fresh air, and I stayed there for a while, enjoying the cold on my cheeks and forehead until it almost hurt. I put Janis Joplin on and raised the volume as high as I could. I screamed. Someone yelled at me from the street. I laughed.

  I went to bed sometime after two. My LP was stuck on a passage of one of her songs. It was on the same passage when I opened my eyes. It was four. I drank what was left of the scotch and then trashed the bottle and my notes. I should have started writing a list of questions for my interview, but I was too tired. I sent Andrew an email and told him I had just finished reading his two novels and that I could meet him later that day. I didn’t know what I would ask, but I felt ready. I had entered his chaos.

  I wrote to Matt.

  I’m OK. Don’t worry about me.

  I turned off the light and went back to bed.

  I woke up at noon. The sun was piercing the window.

  I checked my emails. There was one from Andrew confirming our meeting, and one from Matt saying he would come to New York in two days. He asked me if he could stay with me. I thought about telling him not to come, but I felt too sleepy to even think about an answer. I made some coffee and worked on my questions for Andrew. I stayed at my desk for a while, jotting ideas and notes, random thoughts, and I stopped only when it was time to go. When I arrived at the café Andrew was sipping coffee and reading a novel by someone whose name I didn’t recognize.

  “A new author,” he said, showing me the book. “I like to support new artists,” he added.

  “Of course you do. Is it any good?”

  “He has potential,” he said and smiled. That was the first full smile I had seen on his face since we first met. From his journal and novels Andrew seemed incapable of smiling. But there he was, smiling.

  The waiter came. I ordered some coffee and pulled the notebook from my backpack.

  “Are you recording or typing?”

  “I’ll just take notes. I’m old-fashioned.”

  “Old-fashioned is my world. So you read my novels . . . What do you think?”

  “Wait a minute. I’m supposed to interview you, not the other way round.” I smiled.

  “Yes, sure. I’m just curious.”

  “You have a way of pulling me into your life that is unbelievable. I walk with you, become one of your friends, I’m there sitting on the bench with you, sharing your thoughts. The drawings are art. I love your use of shading, your dialogues. Your work is exceptional. And it calms me down. Makes me breathe.”

  “Really? How?”

  “By slowing down the pace of life, by making things look more natural, less fake.”

  I’m not lying to you, Andrew. Let me in, my eyes spoke. I think he listened. Then the waiter came with my coffee, and I started asking my questions.

  “Ready?”

  He nodded.

  “How were you as a kid?”

  “Solitary,” he said, and stopped there, as if he were waiting for me to ask more, but I didn’t. That wasn’t enough. He knew. I waited.

  “I lived inside my comics,” he added, as if every word were painful. “I grew up reading Peanuts and thought life looked much better and more interesting in those cartoons than it did in reality. I spent my time reading and collecting comic books, and I isolated myself from my classmates, my family. My father taught psychology to grad students at NYU. My mother was interested in politics. I never understood that. We lived here, in New York. This is where I grew up.” He took a deep breath and continued. “My mother volunteered here and there, taught students with disabilities, was often away. I always wondered why she spent so much time with other kids and families rather than with her own. She never volunteered with us. Ironic, no?

  “I have a brother and a sister. Both older. I didn’t talk much to my brother. I talked more with my sister, but not that much. She married when she was sixteen, and so I didn’t spend my teen years with her. She was also very different from me anyhow. She was all about acting, on the stage and in real life. She was loud and extroverted. We probably talking more now than we did then. Not that any of us has changed. We’re probably just lonelier now and need each other more than we did back then.”

  “Are your parents alive?”

  “My mother died a few years ago. She was an alcoholic.”

  He didn’t seem sad.

  “We tried to help her, but it was impossible. She was a great liar. She’d go to rehab, tell us it was over, then start drinking again. I remember that stench of alcohol every time I went near her. She repulsed me.”

  His gaze wandered, and he seemed to have drifted somewhere else. I tried to imagine what he was thinking, where he was.

  “What about your father?”

  “He left her, remarried, had two children. His second wife died too. One of his sons has some serious mental issues. So his new life wasn’t easy either.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t know? Don’t talk to him?”

  “I haven’t talked to him in years. I don’t resent him or anything like that. I just don’t feel anything for him.”

  Andrew answered my questions without questioning the
m. He seemed to have surrendered to me. He seemed to trust me.

  “When did you start writing novels?” I asked.

  “As soon as I learned to write and draw. Second grade maybe. My teacher told us to write a Christmas story. She said, ‘Be creative, surprise me.’ I made a series of cartoons. In my story, I ran away from home on Christmas eve and boarded a fishing vessel. The captain found me only after the vessel had set sail, and he let me stay and help in the kitchen. I spent Christmas on that vessel with the crew, and saw killer whales, sharks, and all sorts of big fish that I dreamed of seeing in an aquarium. That was my story.”

  “Wow.”

  There had been colors in his mind, and hope, and dreams.

  “How did you come up with that?”

  “I wanted my mother to take me to an aquarium that was far from home. She promised she would, but she didn’t have a car, and my father was working. The next day my relatives would come to visit us for Christmas. I knew nobody would take me to the aquarium then, so I took myself there.”

  “That’s beautiful.”

  He smiled.“Maybe.”

  “Did anyone finally take you there though?”

  “No,” he said, and looked into his coffee.

  “Do you think you became more truthful to reality as you grew up?”

  “Is there a truth? I’m not sure any more. I think I just try to be truthful to myself. Like in that Christmas story. Isn’t that what matters?”

  He was right, I thought. I became temporarily lost in my own thoughts as he continued.

  “My relation with reality, with the present, is complicated. I’m fond of the past. It looks more real to me. It makes me feel safe. It talks to me about myself more than the present does. Interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Lies seems to be built on that idea too, the idea of a present focused on the past. Am I right?” I asked.

  “In a way. Sometimes, when I was with Emily, I felt stuck in the past and it was hard to live the present with her. It was as if we were living on separate temporal planes. That created distance between us.” A loud ambulance passed, and I lost him momentarily. Then he continued.

  “I kept my struggles and my doubts to myself, and that was wrong. I felt I was the victim of a scam, that I was someone out of space and time. I built assumptions about people’s behavior, about Emily’s behavior, and I didn’t really try to understand her. I blamed all our issues on her. I never compromised. She was wrong. I was right. And then she left me.”

  I wanted to ask him what he meant by that, but I wasn’t sure he was ready to talk about it. Or perhaps I wasn’t.

  “Your agent didn’t like Lies, but judging from your journal that mirrors the novel and from the comments of those of us who have read it, it seems that your agent missed a prize.”

  “I don’t know about that. I never won a prize.”

  “The pages of your journal resonated with so many readers,” I insisted. “Nick and I received hundreds of emails from people who wanted to talk about your stories, people who asked about you.”

  He listened but didn’t seem interested.

  “What do you think about How Did I Get Here?” He asked. He still seemed more interested in my reaction.

  “It’s disturbingly real, even when you don’t fit my idea of you.”

  He looked like he wanted to ask me what I meant by that, so I asked, “Who’s the woman in the story? Christine?”

  “I’m not sure, actually.”

  “The woman in the story seems to believe in your art. What about Emily?”

  “I don’t know. I hope she did.”

  “Why not publish Lies?”

  He didn’t respond. We finished sipping our coffees, and then talked more about his life in New York and how it felt to be back.

  “Did you have more questions for me?” he then asked.

  “Not at the moment,” I said. “I think I’ve got enough to work on, but I’ll call or email you if I do.”

  “Could I read your piece before you publish it?”

  “Of course.”

  We got up and walked to the door.

  On the way home, I thought about the interview and what I should write, and everything around me disappeared. The Thalia Theatre was showing Rear Window, the Hitchcock classic from the 50s with James Stewart and Grace Kelly. I was too tired to work so I decided to stop there. I needed to let Andrew’s story sink in. His family, his past, Emily, Christine . . . Had he completely rejected Emily’s death? Was he in love with Christine?

  “How many?” the guy at the box office asked.

  “Just me.”

  He issued the ticket, I paid, and entered.

  There were only a few people in the audience, each sitting far from the others, perhaps trying to create the illusion of being there alone. I wanted to feel the same, and so I sat at the back corner of the room. The movie was beautiful, a rip in time that reminded me of Andrew’s novel. Their slow pace and its intensity were similar. I felt good, somehow safe from the chaos of the city. Maybe now I understood what Andrew had described. Feeling safe in the past. Life seemed so simple back then. Or perhaps it did, just because I wasn’t part of it.

  When I left the theater I decided to walk a bit before going home. I walked for a while, longer than I thought I would, until I was too tired to keep walking, until I lost sense of time. And when I realized I had, I looked around, and it was dark. When I passed by an Italian restaurant, I thought about that dinner with Nick at his place, and his story of the Italian chef. I suddenly felt colder. I walked fast to the subway, then fast from the station to my apartment, and soon I was home. I closed the door, crashed on my bed, and dreamed about neighbors, murders, dancers, pianists, and parties. A life that was simple compared to mine. Nick wasn’t there. I had lost him.

  Little And Big Lies

  The next day I stared at a blank screen on my computer for hours. Nick wasn’t the reason. I wasn’t ready to think about him, I didn’t want to. There was something else. I felt there were missing pieces to Andrew’s story, something I had seen, heard, read that didn’t feel right to me, and I didn’t know exactly what it was. So many questions were buzzing in my head in a confused order, with no thread and at times no logic, it seemed. Too many questions to be able to write. Perhaps some of those questions were not about Andrew and his story. But some were. Some were questions for Christine. I remembered she said she was working at Julliard, so I headed there, hoping I would meet her. I waited on a bench in front of the main entrance, but after a while I felt tired and stood up to leave.

  “Who are you looking for?” a guy in his early twenties asked me.

  “Is it so clear I’m looking for someone?”

  “If you are, maybe I could help.”

  “I’m looking for Christine Bass.”

  “Christine’s in my class. We’ve just finished today’s session. Unless she stops to talk with someone, she should be out any moment.”

  I thanked the guy and waited. Christine didn’t come out as soon as he had predicted though, and after waiting for her for quite some time, I left. As I was walking to the subway, she passed me by.

  “Susan? What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Actually, I came to see you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “I have some questions about Andrew.”

  “I think I’ve told you everything I know.”

  “Like the fact that the two of you are dating?”

  She froze.

  “How do you know?”

  I looked at her. She was truly thin.

  “Andrew told me.”

  She was about to say something, but I cut her off.

  “Why did you lie about that?”

  She turned and started walking away. I grabbed her wrist.

  “I need your help. Actually, I don’t even know why I’m here. You lied to me. You’ll probably do it again.”

  “I don’t think I can help you, Susan. I’m sorry.”

  “Nick c
heated on me . . . with Elinor.” I didn’t know why I said that. I wasn’t looking for her pity or anything like that. I just wanted her to feel my misery. Maybe we had something to share. She turned toward me.

  “What? That’s not true. Elinor is not interested in Nick. She’s dating someone.”

  “What can I say? Maybe she changed her mind.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t say a word.

  “What about the work you guys were doing together?” she then asked.

  “We’re no longer doing it together. I’m writing the piece on my own. And I met Andrew.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “I’m trying to help him.”

  “I don’t think Andrew needs your help.”

  “Really? Has he realized that Emily’s dead? Do you talk about it?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “But what? Do you know that in his journal he keeps referring to Emily as the woman who broke up with him?”

  “I haven’t read his diary.”

  “You don’t need to. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.”

  “I . . .”

  “You do, right?”

  She looked down, and started biting her fingernails, or what was left of them. She looked at me, perhaps trying to decide what to do.

  “Let’s get a cup of coffee. I need caffeine.”

  I nodded, and we headed to a café a few blocks away.

  “This is where Emily and Andrew met the first time. She always talked about that meeting,” Christine said.

  She ordered a double espresso and sat at a table outside.

  “When Emily started dating Andrew, she and I were together. I mean, she and I were dating.”

  She stopped to check my reaction. I can’t even say whether I was surprised to hear that. I guess I was more overwhelmed with her pain than surprised. She must have sensed that, as she continued.

  “Nobody knew that we were dating, but everyone knew we had a special bond. Then Emily met Andrew, and we were over. But that was nothing compared to her death. At times I feel I died with her. You can’t understand. I wouldn’t know how to explain.” She turned to hide her tears.