A One-Handed Novel by Kim Clark

Author:Kim Clark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Novel, Fiction, Multiple Sclerosis, Sex
ISBN: 9781773860350
Publisher: Caitlin Press
Published: 2020-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

We’ve been sitting in Leo’s old convertible—top down—outside the concrete home of Butterfly World for hours, wonderful hours, just talking and laughing and talking. It doesn’t matter that we’re in an empty gravel parking lot in the middle of nowhere or that the establishment is closed for another week. We imagine the butterflies inside, busy erupting from their cocoons, their life cycles adjusted for the coming tourist season. It doesn’t matter that he had to dismantle my scooter—in record time—to fit into the trunk amidst his work-related wheels and belts and boxes. It doesn’t even matter that I briefly thought him unattractive.

This charming and resourceful man produces a bag of nuts and dried apricots, a bar of dark chocolate and cool water from his various pockets. He looks the other way while I pee—perched on the running board—then offers me a tissue and quotes Chuang Tzu into the spring breeze grazing the parking lot: “I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.”

He shares fascinating lepidopteran tidbits, random facts: that many butterflies can taste with their feet, that they can’t fly if their body temperature drops below 86°, that they see red and green and yellow, that the sphinx moth—not a butterfly—in Madagascar has a twelve-inch proboscis.

I chime in, attempting to show my intelligence and interest. “And there’s that butterfly that builds a tiny nest out of petals, a rainbow nest for every single egg.”

“That’s not a butterfly either. It’s a bee,” Leo gently corrects me. “An Osmia avosetta. But, yes, they use nectar to glue the petals together.”

“Oh, right…the bee,” I say and decide—on this subject, at least—that I’m a more intelligent listener than talker. I encourage him to tell me more, and he’s happy to oblige.

When Leo talks about butterflies, he transforms into someone strangely compelling, an extraordinarily sensual creature emanating heat. I want to stroke his heavy eyebrows, run my finger down his short broad nose, nibble his dangly misshapen earlobe.

We talk about Costa Rica, our serendipitous meeting there, his trip—searching out morpho butterflies and glasswings. I tell him about my Liberation procedure and my bad hand—which only creeps over to the driver’s side twice—and even how I’d become a sporadic apotemnophiliac.

“What does it mean, apo-temno-philia?” he asks.

I sound matter-of-fact. “The overwhelming desire to amputate a perfectly good limb.”

“Or other parts of the body?” He leans toward me, all intense curiosity.

“I guess so. I only know about limbs.”

He strokes my bad hand, turns it over, runs his fingers over the palm.

I like it. I lean closer. “It’s better now, my hand. It’s coming back.”

“Good for you. And your hand.” He closes it, looks into its little face, and kisses it on the mouth.

I can feel it all the way up my arm. It is delicious.

And he can tell. “It’s perfectly understandable.”

I smile and look into his eyes.

“That overwhelming desire…” he says, placing my hand in my lap and starting up the car.

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