Butterfly Sunday Read online

  Each felt the other must be made of steel at that moment. Neither one of them moved or spoke. They just looked at each other, two metal masks of resolute opposition. Hiding deep inside each of them was the unmitigated will to sacrifice everything to save the other.

  “Why aren’t you in California?”

  “Tell me everything you’ve done since you got out of church this morning.”

  “You can’t investigate this.”

  It was dusky, ethereal. Everything was blurred as if seen through gauze; though iridescent too, like frost-covered leaves on a clear night or the glistening fruit she coated with sugar and arranged with waxy leaves and camellias in silver bowls for wedding receptions and rehearsal dinners. Lovely, it was life’s unexpected last crumb of chocolate truffle. They sat in total silence.

  With nothing to be done about anything, Leona told herself it was better to breathe in this moment, to savor his lime scent, and the unexpected pleasure of Blue’s nearness. For all her folly and youth, Leona would take some memories with her out of this world.

  She had surrendered certain rights with her decision to visit justice on Averill. One of them was regret for things that might have been. She realized now that she had developed the ability to control certain feelings and to direct them toward whatever made the most appropriate sense. Blue’s visit reminded her that she had an enormous potential for loving him. Yet there was no possibility of realizing it. So she experienced the butterfly he stirred in her breast for all the present-tense happiness it gave her.

  She became aware that it was cool in the room. She went to shut the door. As she peered out across the porch, she realized that the scene on the road had faded away. Now it felt like any other night.

  “Where’d everybody go?”

  “I told them to clear the area,” he said. “I’m the sheriff. Remember?”

  “That must have the whole town awake.”

  “Let’s talk turkey, Leona.”

  He’d been a highway patrolman before he became sheriff. He had experienced the creeping unreality of highway wrecks, held hands with the dying, pulled mothers away from the dismembered remnants of their children and watched helpless as an explosion engulfed a trapped victim in his screaming hell. He had followed the circuitous and clever trails of killers and child molesters and bank robbers to innocent-looking American dream houses with manicured lawns. He had arrested men in their Sunday suits as they stepped out of church into the sunshine.

  There were times when he lay sleepless with knots in his stomach waiting for the hard experiences of the previous day’s work to let go of him. Yet he always came back around to the feeling he’d done some piece of good. He’d given a dying kid comfort or locked away some malevolent threat to innocent people. He understood law enforcement. He knew what it meant to protect and to serve.

  Until tonight. Now he didn’t know the meaning of anything. It was ignorant to divide the world into good and bad people, not at least based on their records of arrest and convictions. So-called law-abiding people perpetrated all types of violence and robberies against each other and never felt the threat of arrest and prosecution. Instead they died in their sleep at age a hundred and three. There were a thousand kinds of justice. In the end it was the time they did on earth that brought most people to the limits of their immoralities. It was breathing in and out, not prison, that rehabilitated most dishonest souls.

  “Tell me everything, Leona.”

  “I thought you were in California, I …”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  “Call someone else to handle this!”

  “Tell me everything, Leona.”

  “Averill murdered my baby, so I killed him.”

  The particulars, as Leona imparted them, were of little interest to Blue. He was struggling with another irrefutable fact. He should have fought harder to be with her. He should have been more vigilant. Didn’t he know she was living in a precarious situation? What was he thinking when he agreed with Leona that they had plenty of time?

  He told himself that he was pulling the pieces of his life together after his divorce. His appointment to the office of county sheriff had seemed the most obvious course to follow. He put his focus on getting himself elected the following summer. It was a bitter race. The other two candidates made a mockery of his divorce. He wouldn’t risk gossip about him and a married preacher’s wife. He took it slow. He got sidetracked with criminology courses at night down at the university.

  “It’s as much my fault as yours, Leona.”

  She didn’t acknowledge his remark. Though everything about her demeanor told him this was why she had insisted that they were finished. She was keeping him out of it.

  “At least I know that you still love me,” he said, interrupting her account.

  “Do you know why I couldn’t let that matter?”

  Being with her, hearing her soothing voice, watching the lamplight play off her hair when she moved her head, and knowing her heart hadn’t changed cast an uncanny patina of romance over things.

  Leona told Blue everything while he dutifully scribbled his notes. The truth was, however, that they had stolen themselves one last night.

  A flock of starlings nesting in the thicket across the road made a sudden fluttering storm. She had seen bobcats across the road all winter. One had just seized himself a fowl for dinner. Blue pulled back the shades and stared out into the dark. He did that for a long time while he listened to her breathing.

  When he looked into her eyes after he kissed her, his lips were silver-white from the sun and soft like conditioned leather. When they lay down in the velvet shadows, his lips caressed warm circles of flesh where his tongue had moistened her breasts. When they swayed fast and slow, rolling up and down on the bed, she wept with joy. She was seizing gifts of happiness and storing them for the cold, dark season ahead.

  When their passion was spent, Blue cradled her in his arms and they giggled and whispered and cried until the sky hung white behind the new green woods.

  18

  TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1999

  10:00 A.M.

  Leona had seen Soames at church. She was an arresting sight, at least six feet tall, a patrician-looking woman with high ivory cheekbones and sparkling grayish green eyes. She had an eternally haughty expression dramatized by a magnificent mane of very curly carrot hair.

  She made Leona think of pictures of young Queen Elizabeth I. She wore the uniform of that strange, faded breed of old-guard plantation women—the starched white blouses with pearl buttons, the steam-rolled lace collar under a sweater when it was cool, always an antique broach, a Victorian diamond dinner ring and boots.

  Leona had also seen her on her frequent trips to the cemetery where her husband was buried. If it was muddy she came in a pickup truck, letting the tailgate down so a half a dozen hounds could woof and bay like banshees in the woods while she replaced one enormous faded basket of flowers with a fresh one.

  It was hard not to notice her husband Henri’s grave. It was situated inside of an old-fashioned family plot with an elaborate iron fence surrounding a dozen graves. A twelve-foot granite obelisk rose from the center. It rested on a three-foot square of matching stone into which the name Churchill had been chiseled and sanded sometime during the middle of the last century. A flat rectangle of bronze served as Henri’s headstone.

  It was from reading it one day after she heard Soames’s pickup truck descend the hill that Leona learned that Henri Churchill had died at age fifty-two on Christmas Day—nine months before Averill brought her here. Soames was cool and friendly. She always nodded when she passed Leona, who went most mornings to sit near Tess’s grave. (Though she had taken less and less comfort from the habit as time went by.) Soames had that held-in quality that Leona had observed in British people while traveling in England and Scotland with her mother the summer she turned thirteen. People called it “reserve,” but to Leona it was confusing. The signals were always crossed. You couldn’t read a person�
��s meaning. You never knew where you stood. Leona let people like that approach her first. Or not. They were a case of good fences, she guessed.

  In Soames’s case Leona had guessed all wrong. The occasion of their first real conversation was a cloudburst while the two women were at opposite ends of the cemetery. Soames called through the falling torrent.

  “Get in, sugar.”

  The cab smelled of Chanel No. 5. The seat was made of soft leather. She had Chopin piano music playing. She handed Leona a white embossed hand towel monogrammed in black.

  “I hated to intrude,” Soames said. “If it was just rain, I wouldn’t have, but this lightning is so fierce.…”

  “Not at all. I appreciate it.”

  Soames backed the truck around, guiding it across the road and into Leona’s driveway.

  “The house needs an awful lot of work,” Soames observed.

  “It’s a good house,” Leona said.

  “Henri, my late husband, always meant to make it a jewel.”

  “It’s had a lot of work.”

  It had, of course. Soames had overseen most of it: a new roof and wiring, a porch floor and basic plumbing. Averill had mentioned a time or two that Soames wanted her to call about having some more work done. It was the last thing Leona wanted to do at the moment.

  “Appreciate the ride.”

  “Young lady?”

  Leona was nineteen. Soames looked to be about thirty. That wasn’t old enough to call Leona “young lady.” It irritated her. Still, she appreciated the ride, and she had nothing to gain from being rude. So she went along with it.

  “Ma’am?”

  “You’re spending too much time in that cemetery.”

  That wasn’t a subject Leona had any intentions of discussing with a woman she barely knew. She listened to the music for about ten seconds, then she gave a little nod and she let the door swing open a few inches.

  “Life goes on, angel. It’s as unstoppable as a river.”

  “Just like a river,” Leona replied, trying to sound agreeable.

  “Nobody has any secrets in these woods, Leona …”

  “You think I do?”

  “Henri had timber down in Calhoun County. I know that ol’ reprobate banker London and his liberal ways.”

  Leona blushed, stunned and embarrassed.

  “Sugar, I haven’t breathed a word.”

  “Did Averill tell you?”

  Soames frequently left telephone messages, asking Averill to call her about business relating to the church property. She and Averill seemed to have some friendly rapport, at least by the tone of her messages. Soames looked very troubled.

  “No, I told you. I’ve been in the Bank of Fredonia many times.”

  “You sure?”

  “What can you think of me? Why on earth would you ask me if I had discussed such sensitive subjects with your husband?”

  She’d hurt Soames’s feelings. She didn’t want to do that. Still, Soames might be protecting Averill. Leona finally decided to believe her, mostly because it didn’t matter anyway.

  “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “I thought being childless and losing my husband was unbearable, Leona. But it’s just sad, it’s just hard, it’s just the way it is.…”

  If she wanted Leona’s attention, she had it.

  “I don’t know how a person endures a loss like yours,” she went on.

  “The best way I can.”

  “Why hasn’t that charmless holy roller husband of yours brought you to see me?”

  “I need something to do, a job. If you know of anything …”

  “Let me think about it.”

  The next morning Soames dropped by with a stack of magazines: Vogue and Architectural Digest and Town & Country and The New Yorker. Leona would have had a better time reading People and The Enquirer, which she used to pore over in her father’s drugstore. That afternoon, Soames was back with a heavenly chocolate mint pie, a “Grasshopper” she called it. “From Dihnstul’s Bakery,” she said in a tone that made it sound as if she’d had it flown in from Paris.

  She was rich and young and bored and Leona couldn’t figure out for the life of her why she stayed in the country or what she saw in their friendship, for that matter. Soames lived all by herself in a great fortress fronted by eight twenty-foot Corinthian columns. It sat on a rise at the end of a quarter-mile driveway, a temple of things both privileged and past. Leona would have been terrified to spend one night by herself in that place.

  “Aren’t you afraid of ghosts?”

  “Without Henri, I am a ghost,” she mused.

  She had apartments in New York and Paris. She was on three bank boards and she was CEO, whatever that was, of Churchill Textiles. Soames was lonely. Her husband Henri’s death at fifty-two had been a complete shock. He had died in a freak accident while hunting doves on a section of his property last Christmas.

  “I’m still in shock,” she confided. “He bent down to pass under a barbed wire fence, his .22 gauge shotgun discharged a bullet, killing him instantly.”

  Leona gradually started to read some of the articles sandwiched between the glossy color photographs in all those stylish magazines. Like those images of a storybook world, the features detailed a realm of green-and-yellow silk that Leona visited when she walked through the front door of Soames’s mansion.

  One Sunday Soames drove her to Memphis for a symphony, picking her up in a dark green car Leona took for a Rolls-Royce, but Soames corrected her. It was a Bentley. Leona didn’t see the difference, but then finding out wasn’t likely to become a priority anytime soon. Leafing through the program, she was astounded to see a full-page ad that read: “The 2000 Sunday Symphony Series is generously underwritten by Mrs. Henri Marks Churchill IV in tribute to her late husband, the noted philanthropist and civic leader.”

  When Leona pointed it out, Soames shrugged and touched her bottom lip with her finger. It probably had personal significance for Soames and Henri. Though Leona didn’t really get the scope of Soames’s world until she stopped by her house to return her magazines.

  “Oh, no, sweetie, I don’t want them.”

  “These are five- and eight-dollar magazines.”

  “I don’t pay for them.”

  “How do you manage that?”

  Soames gingerly paged through the front section of Architectural Digest and showed Leona several advertisements for various rugs, drapes and other high-end furnishings. In the fine print at the bottom of each, the manufacturer’s name was identified as “A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of HC Ltd.”

  “HC?”

  “Henri Churchill.”

  Yet whenever Leona brought up the fact that she needed a job, Soames always put her off, saying she still hadn’t come up with any ideas “right” for Leona. Obviously, she had a rich lady’s views on employment. The idea of needing a vocation for the simple basics didn’t seem to enter her mind.

  “I just need a recommendation for something entry-level.”

  “I won’t help you with a job, Leona. You need a position.”

  Averill never said much about anything and even less about Leona’s activities or companions. Yet he shot from the hip when it came to Soames. “That gal and that house don’t go together.” When Soames stopped by, which soon became three or four times a day, Averill made himself very scarce. More than once he’d turned into the driveway before he noticed Soames’s car and immediately backed out and driven off again.

  Averill said Leona was Soames’s latest hobby. That wasn’t a bad way to put it. She taught Leona how to drive a car and took her for the state license exam. When she found out that Leona could sew, Soames put her to work making draperies and slipcovers for her house. When Leona told Soames she was saving the money she paid her toward buying a car, Soames gave her the ’98 Chevrolet Blazer that Henri had ordered a month before he died. She had one of her workmen drive it into town for a cleaning. Then she brought it over after supper.

  Leona just sto
od there trembling. She had no intentions of accepting it.

  “Aw, don’t be so Methodist about it,” Soames joked. “It’s just sitting there going to waste.”

  “I’m so touched, really I am. I just can’t.…”

  “You can’t refuse it.”

  “It’s too much.”

  “You said a few weeks back, you needed a job.”

  “I do.”

  “You can do a lot of things, Leona. Figure out which one and sell it.”

  “I already know,” Leona replied, the wheels in her head turning.

  “Well, you won’t sell them hiding up an old dirt road.”

  “Let’s take a ride.” Leona nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. When Leona gave Soames an impetuous hug, she gave her a tolerant pat on the shoulder.

  “I see how it is,” Soames said with a tilt of her head toward the next room, where Averill was bound to overhear her. “I’m not putting my nose in,” she continued in an ominous tone. “But you better get on with things.…”

  Leona was thrilled. The Blazer only had nine miles on it, a giant four-by-four with leather seats and a custom sound system. Averill’s response was to ask Leona what she thought Soames wanted in return.

  “She said it was sitting in the garage gathering dust.”

  “How hard would it have been to sell it?”

  “Averill, why do you have so much to say about it?”

  After that, Leona saw the tension between Averill and Soames. For his part Averill said she wouldn’t keep her nose out of the church. She was always meddling. She was full of criticism about the way he did everything. Yet she refused to supply him the funds necessary to do things the way she kept demanding. Leona saw the writing on the wall. Averill was making some plans all his own, looking for another church situation. She wouldn’t be a part of it.

  “Averill, you and I don’t have much future.”

  “You and I don’t want one.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Keep on a while.”