Butterfly (20 page)

Sure looked to me this morning like it was going to rain.”

“No,” she said a little breathlessly. She watched his nicely shaped hands set out a wine-

glass and fill it from a bottle. His shirt was tight across the chest and shoulders and had

little pearly buttons. The top ones were undone; she could see his chest. “It’s not raining,

yet…”

“Never could get used to California winters,” he said with a smile as he handed her the

wineglass. Their fingertips touched. “Where I come from, we’d be knee-deep in snow by

now!”

She looked away. She didn’t know what to say.

He came from behind the bar and picked up his beer. They stood for a long moment

in silence, Jessica trying to avoid looking at their reflections in the mirror, he studying her.

Finally he said, “Guess we got the place to ourselves to night.”

She nodded.
How her pulse raced…

Something slow and moody came out of the jukebox and the cowboy said, “Would

you like to dance?”

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John was the only man she had ever danced with, the only man whose body she had

really felt. Hugs with her brothers had always been brief, and she couldn’t remember what

her father felt like. That was why it was so strange to feel this man’s arms go around her,

to feel him so near, to feel the warmth of his skin through his shirt. John had a firm body;

so did this cowboy. But in different, subtle ways. And he smelled different, too. He

guided her over the floor with a very firm step. They barely touched. Jessica didn’t look at

him but focused on a point above his shoulder. There was decor on the walls, she realized

now; Western stuff like stirrups and saddles and old-fashioned signs advertising a shave

for five cents. She kept her eyes on the walls, read all the signs, as he slowly turned her

around the floor, as the song got sadder and lovelier, as he began to draw her closer to him

so that they finally were touching, chest to chest, pelvis to pelvis, and she felt her shyness

start to melt away and she allowed her arms to go around his neck and abandoned herself

to the fantasy.

How good he felt.

When the song was over they returned to the bar. They talked for a few minutes,

about the weather, about things that didn’t count, and then Jessica heard herself suddenly

asking him what his name was.

“You tell me,” he said.

“What?” she said. Then, remembering the club rules, she said, “Lonnie,” surprising

herself. She vaguely recalled a movie, an endearing cowboy character named Lonnie. It

had just sprung into her mind.

“Well, ma’am,” he said, “my name’s Lonnie, and I was wondering if you’d care to

dance with me again.”

It was another slow song, and this time Jessica started out by holding on to him. As

the sad country-western ballad carried them around the room, their embrace became

tighter, until she was burying her face in his neck and thinking,
This is it. This is really

it…
.

When his lips finally met hers, it was at exactly the right moment. Jessica was no

longer afraid or nervous or shy. John was the only man she had ever kissed; it was as if he

had molded her mouth. And now a tongue and lips other than John’s were reshaping her

mouth, showing her a different way to kiss, a
better
way.

Then he whispered in her ear, “Tell me what you want.”

Her eyes flew open. She had no idea what she wanted. John had never asked; he always

took the lead in bed and she mutely followed. But now that Lonnie was asking her, Jessica

was suddenly excited. She felt her inhibitions falling away like old clothes. She was begin-

ning to feel free, truly free, as if she could fly, as if she were invincible, as if there was noth-

ing she could not do. “Anything,” she said deliriously. “I want you to do anything and

everything—”

They continued to dance, to sway to the music, clinging to each other, while his hands

went up under her blouse and unhooked her bra. He massaged her breasts as he kissed

her; she pressed herself against his hardness with a passion she had never before felt. There

were no rules here, no conventions, no sins to confess, no husband to disapprove. Jessica

was suddenly unfettered; she was free to revel in herself, in her sexuality, in Lonnie.

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And then he had her stretched back over a table. He pulled her panties off, pushed her

skirt up around her waist, and he entered her, so abruptly and with such force that it took

her breath away.

It was happening so quickly. Her head reeled. She felt herself racing to that delicious

brink she so infrequently experienced with John, but before she could reach it Lonnie

withdrew, and then he was on his knees and making love to her in another, totally new

way.

Jessica drove her hands through his hair and cried out.

Then he was inside her again. He reached up under her blouse and half-lifted her; he

bent forward and pressed his mouth over hers as he rocked her. She clung to him. She

wanted to devour him. She felt her body opening wide, wider, until she wanted the

moment never to end. And when it did he held her for a long time; they joined the music

again and moved dreamily around the floor, exhausted, holding each other up, still kiss-

ing, but gently now, tenderly.

Something had happened here tonight, Jessica realized as she prepared to leave.

Something more than just one woman’s discovery of terrific sex. It was as if, while in the

throes of ecstasy, with Lonnie inside her, holding her, she had finally been able to reach

down into some deep, secret core of herself and tap a buried spring. Sex with Lonnie had

been more than physically gratifying; she had come away from it feeling—emancipated.

As she rode down in the elevator Jessica experienced a strange illusion: she felt as if she

were growing tall. She felt inexplicably filled with power, her own power. And she knew

that an irrevocable step had been taken, a step that was going to have far-reaching effects.

She had defied John, once. Having done it once, she could do it again.

12

San Antonio, Texas: 1954

When Rachel turned sixteen she was still living in Hazel’s house. The girls threw a

party for her and invited several of the regular customers. Hazel uncorked the cham-

pagne, which didn’t fizz, and poured it sparingly into Dixie cups. “Here’s to our favorite

girl,” she said magnanimously, and they all drank. Everyone present agreed that Rachel

looked so happy that she positively glowed.

The glow was because she had a secret.

And this was her best birthday ever. When she was a little girl, her birthdays had come

and gone, just like ordinary days. Once, her mother had remembered and had promised

Rachel that she would make her special hamburgers that night as a special treat, and

Rachel could help with the little jars of spices, and even pinch some into the meat. But

Mrs. Dwyer had gone off with her husband to spend the day in the local bar, and by the

time they got back late that night, finding Rachel just where they had left her that morn-

ing, sitting on the sofa, ready to make hamburgers, they had had a fight and Mrs. Dwyer

was already showing a black eye and was in no mood to cook.

But nobody let Rachel down on
this
day.

Not even Danny was going to, for once.

The girls had had a special breakfast and Eulalie had baked an extra-rich chocolate

layer cake with mounds of strawberries on top. And a present had been bought with

money collected from all the girls: the new
Lord of the Rings
books. Rachel cried with

happiness. She had found her family at last.

Those early days of sorrow and throwing up were now but a memory. She had pushed

them back to a dark place in her mind where she kept such things. The men went there,

too, the ones who continued to use her every night. That part of living in Hazel’s house

hadn’t changed, but Rachel had learned to separate herself from it. When she gave them

her body, she kept her soul. They did what they liked to her physically while she retreated

into fantasy. And when she awoke the next morning, all would be forgotten and Rachel

would join the other girls.

They were her sisters, and she loved them, even Frenchie, the one Negro girl who was

so bitter and had such a chip on her shoulder that she was difficult to like. Rachel had not

forgotten her mother and her vow to find her someday, but for now the girls in Hazel’s

house were Rachel’s family. They stuck together. They helped one another. Whenever one

was in trouble, they all rallied to her aid. If one needed money, a collection was taken.

Lipsticks and stockings were freely loaned. A sorrow was shared, a joy celebrated. And if

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anyone had asked why such a dreary, desperate place such as Hazel’s sleazy brothel could

have any happiness in it, Hazel herself would have been the first to admit that an awful lot

of it had to do with Rachel.

For one thing, Hazel said when asked, how could anyone feel sorry for herself with

that homely little thing around? No matter how bad things got for the girls, how low they

sank, they still had decent looks—and a few were actual knockouts. But Rachel Dwyer

had arrived homely and was growing homelier by the year. Yet it didn’t seem to bother

her. And that would be the next thing Hazel said that contributed to the congenial atmos-

phere in the place—if Rachel could be so accepting of the way she had been constructed,

well then Hazel supposed that a person could accept just about anything life dished out to

them.

And Rachel did things for people. She liked to please people. Like cooking things no

one else could quite duplicate, which the girls gobbled up and even the customers were

now buying. And like teaching Carmelita to read, which was as big a miracle, Hazel

thought, as any ever performed.

But don’t think for a minute, Hazel would hasten to add, that Rachel Dwyer was per-

fect. Far from it. She dreamed too much. She buried her head in books all the time. She

sometimes forgot to do the chores assigned to her so that someone else had to cover for

her. And the customers, Hazel would sigh, still complained. She was too listless in bed,

she didn’t participate, she didn’t give a customer any encouragement or praise for his per-

formance. When a man shells out five bucks for a woman, he expects a little enthusiasm,

a little acting, for God’s sake, to make him feel like a man. That certainly wasn’t asking so

much, was it? But Rachel was obsessed with Danny Mackay; she saved her love only for

him. And that wasn’t a healthy thing—in any woman.

But what the hell, Hazel thought now as she gave in and opened the second bottle of

champagne. Can’t begrudge Rachel her bit of happiness. And she certainly did look

happy, even if Danny hadn’t yet arrived.

Hazel did not know that Rachel was happy because of a secret.

Although Hazel’s house had become Rachel’s family, and the girls her sisters, and

Danny her father/brother/husband, there was still an emptiness in Rachel’s love-hungry

heart. She wanted a child.

Ever since she could remember, she had thought it would be wonderful to be a

mother. Even on that day when Rachel was thirteen and her period had started and her

mother had explained about bleeding and pain and babies, and had made childbirth

sound so awful, even then Rachel had secretly thought:
No. It’s a wonderful thing to have a

baby.

It came out of your own body! You felt it move inside you, you felt it living within

you, depending on you, needing you, and then when it came out it was so helpless; it

cried for you to hold it and it fell asleep in your arms and was just so hungry for all the

love you could give it. Someday Rachel was going to have a baby of her own—that was

her cherished dream—and when it arrived, she was going to make it the best-loved baby

in all the world.

Well, that day was coming sooner than she had expected.

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It was not in Rachel’s nature to be devious. Just as it had never entered her mind to