Butterfly Soup

The vision of Joey fades and she is playing for Mr. Moore, but his chest is expanding, his face reddening from inhaling for her without exhaling into a flute. She plays on, weaving through the andante. Mr. Moore’s face is purple now, but still she plays on, bewitched by the sound she’s making—until he turns blue and keels over. She drops her flute and runs downstairs. In the refrigerator are two bottles of her father’s beer. She uncaps them both and downs the first, not thinking how she’ll replace them. The taste is nasty, but she doesn’t care. She’s after the drowsy, calm effect she’s seen on her dad, the way he cares less with each beer as a Reds game wears on. She holds her nose to down the second bottle. She takes the bottles out to the garbage can, not quite able to be as quiet as she’d like to be, though nothing like calm has come over her yet. She buries them deep in a green plastic bag. Her mother is nowhere in sight. The backyard is empty.

Their two-story Victorian rises behind her like an empty tomb. She wonders where her mother is, why her father is gone on a Saturday. The company of a caterpillar isn’t enough. The spring inside her chest begins to tighten. Her breath comes in spurts. She can’t go inside. It’s better to fly apart in the wide world, where she’ll bounce off the soft blue of the sky’s dome. She heads down the driveway, one step, then the next. She’ll keep walking, forever if she has to. It’s the one thing she’s certain she can do.

Walking helps. She focuses on her breathing. Inhale one, two, three, four; exhale one, two, three, four, walking and breathing in 4/4 time. She changes to 3/4, bending her knee on the accented first beat and then taking the next two counts of the measure on her tiptoes. She sings a polonaise and is surprised at the end to find herself in town. In front of the movie theater, a long-haired boy leans up against the brick, a boy she can’t remember seeing before. He’s watching her with a blurry, bemused expression, one thumb hooked in the waist of his beltless jeans. His mouth curves up in a lazy grin.