The Butterfly
Today we fly away.
Noah climbs in bed beside me and slides back toward sleep. Even after the excitement of last night’s party he has kept himself dry. “Is today the day, Dad?” I don’t answer; he knows. Not the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow. Today. We fly away.
But this morning I sleep and dream again. Through some accident I am back at Middleton Junior High. The classroom is boiling over with the uncontainable energy of adolescence, and I have no lesson plan. I try shouting, but the kids only laugh. A greaser bigger than I am is backing into the corner by the aquarium like a desperado, holding a loaded fountain pen to the head of a squirming goldfish. Just then the vice-principal walks in and I faint into day.
Noah’s head is just visible, a hairy peach between the quilt and the pillow. I lie still and stare at the frost that creeps through the wall between the window and the ceiling, telling myself no, I don’t have to teach today. Snow plasters the glass behind the landlord’s bamboo blind. It isn’t supposed to snow today; I’m supposed to be flying.
Joy will meet us at the airport with her new yellow car. The grass will be green, the sea air soft and fragrant ... And we will have to wait until Noah is asleep before we can really talk. If she lets me stay at all. Wouldn’t it be better to get a room first, then call her? Call her this morning, tell her not to meet us.
No. I put my feet on the cold floor. Today I will face Joy, face everything spoken and unspoken between us and refrain from breaking her or myself in two. I’ll make no phone calls. I will see her.
She couldn’t say everything on the telephone. And I— I couldn’t say anything but, “You’re all right? We’re still here.” I may never tell her how close we were to not being here. Now it is happening I realize how impossible Noah would have made it to move out of this apartment, unless to be with his mother.
I dress quickly, go into the empty kitchen, and put water on to boil in a corroded saucepan we will leave behind. Spots of bright yellow paint stare down from the walls where the pots used to hang. I feel like a trespasser in a place I have already vacated. A chipped china cup waits on the counter with the spoonful of instant coffee I put in it before giving Laurie the jar yesterday, and there are two plastic glasses for orange juice. Leaving one on the counter for Noah, I take the other to the bathroom and stare into the mirror until I am absolutely convinced I don’t have to teach today.
It’s odd how a dream will come back like a letter than can’t be delivered. Some students dream they are sitting in an examination hall unable to read the name of the exam subject or remember their own names; I dream myself into a classroom with no lesson plan.
If this were a teaching day, I would be breathing exhaust fumes by now, scraping frost off the windshield, the car’s heater overworked just to clear the patch of glass in front of the driver’s seat. I’ll have to warm it up all morning to melt the caked ice from the windows. I hate to risk a good friendship with Laurie by cheating her or, worse, endangering her life in that car. I’ve given her a good price, told her to get it checked over. But the fact is, I wouldn’t have trusted the heap to drive Noah and me south of winter the way I said I’d do. Now I’m selling it to one of the few people I will regret leaving behind. Laurie was a neighbor who cared when I didn’t care myself. Sometimes when she took Noah for the afternoon she saved us from each other. She became a friend when I didn’t want my old friends to see me.
The week Joy left I let go all the old rules. I am still suffering the consequences, trying to convince Noah we are still civilized. We use a spoon when there is milk on the cereal, we don’t sit pantless on the table to eat. Noah wouldn’t hear any of it. He would kick, pinch, bite, pull, gouge and hit me, then cringe in a corner shrieking rather than let me touch him. Charming company to take bumming around the country. Some dream.
