Free Butterfly by Sonya Hartnett

poor matchstick girl, lonely and trying to please. And he has loved her — known himself, at one time, to be hopelessly
in love
with her. And for a moment he’s captured by what has always fascinated him: her willowy height, her knowingness, her tightly-drawn clothing. Even the fact that she has had a child is inexplicably compelling; even the fact that, most nights, she lies in somebody else’s arms. He can’t go back, can’t revive what has died, but Justin is grateful for having known her. His life, when she’s gone, will absorb the occurrence of her, and bounce on like a ball down a grassy green road: but for some time he will surely feel a loss, the emptiness of the hands of the smoker who finally renounces nicotine.
    Maureen is, in fact, a closet smoker, sneaking a pack’s worth of Alpines into her lungs each week. She smokes in secret for the sheer pleasure of secrecy. She smokes because, smoking, she is nineteen again, on the shore of possibilities.
    These end-of-summer dusks never want to finish. The light lingers until it makes a nuisance of itself. David won’t sleep if there’s a chink of luminance behind his bedroom curtain. He asks for a story and then for another, until she tells him, “No!” He swallows the word like a swordfish, closes his eyes instantly.
    Grayness lies along the fence and gutters; except for this burned periphery, the sky is mango-orange. Maureen is wearing a cream-colored dressing gown which scuds around her ankles; beneath the gown, a white silk slip grasps the curvings of her body. Mosquitoes come to dance attendance on her, lances at the ready. She breathes smoke at them and they shy sideways like knights. She wanders up and down the garden path, lingering at its far reaches, her weight hinged on a hip. Deep in the warm dirt, the crickets say nothing: it’s so quiet that Maureen can hear the cigarette burn, hear the leaves slide against one another. Presumably the neighborhood is bedded down with
Reader’s Digest,
careless of the jewel-like evening beyond the door. It is perfection; and Maureen feels perfect. Her body is washed, her hair squeakily clean. She sniffs the crook of her arm, where Justin had lain, but there’s only the Nordic scent of the bath.
    A light is shining in the girl’s bedroom, the blind liftedand the window open. Maureen knows this is a signal for her. She crushes the cigarette on a stone, slips the stub into her pocket. “Aria!”
    Hardly an instant passes before the girl’s face appears at the window, white and passionate. The blue pajamas she’s wearing look stale as a serviette. “Maureen! I’ll come down —”
    “No, stay there. I’ve missed my Rapunzel.”
    “Did you remember to watch
Planet of the Apes
?”
    “I did. Those vicious gorillas!”
    “And what about the ending? Were you surprised?”
    “I was surprised, and I thought it was sad. What about you, though? How have you been? How was school?”
    “OK.” The girl’s face contorts. “I threw my lunch in the bin.”
    “Oh! Good girl!”
    “And I told my friends what you said about me becoming a model. They all laughed at me.”
    Maureen pauses, hearing the blame. “And these friends of yours know a lot about fashion photography, do they?”
    “. . . No.”
    “Then of course they laughed. They’re jealous.”
    It’s evident that Plum hasn’t thought of it like that. Her shaggy head, framed in the window, bobs avidly. Maureen says, “Don’t listen to poisonous people, Aria. You don’t need friends like that.”
    “No, I know. But — they’re nice to me, most of the time.”
    She’s worrying that Maureen will divine she’s a lesser equal among her friends. So Maureen answers, “I’m sure they are. But don’t forget, I’m here if you need me. And I will never laugh at you.”
    The girl ducks her head, says, “Can I ask something now?”
    “Of course.” Maureen glides nearer the fence.
    “Do you think I should get my ears pierced?”
    Maureen clasps her