The Butterflies of Grand Canyon by Margaret Erhart

Author:Margaret Erhart
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery, Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780452295490
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2009-12-29T12:00:00+00:00

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Jane Merkle cannot understand why he doesn’t call. Does he not think of her? Tomorrow Morris will arrive and that will be the end of her freedom. Though perhaps she’s lost her freedom already. Perhaps one’s freedom ends when love arrives.

Oliver, meanwhile, has invited her to pin butterflies, and the strange process so engulfs her, it’s the only thing that takes her mind away from Euell. Just this morning she pinned up thirteen Schellbach’s fritillaries, captured a week ago at Kanabownits Spring, yet in the delicate spreading and pinning of the wings—and the antennae, which Oliver insisted on—she never once fell into nostalgic reminiscence or felt poetry leap to mind. No tragic songs of sitting beside her handsome ranger in the meadow. No. The Speyeria atlantis schellbachi, as she has learned to call them, seemed to draw her down to the pinning board, draw her down into their caramel browns—their velvet wings still in death, yet rich in beauty, alive. And she lay with them, pinned and happy. Still. So still. Free from desire and love and not-love. A butterfly herself.

But there is nothing left to pin, a situation that ought to please Oliver, who has never had an extra pair of hands, especially hands as capable as hers. But it alarms him instead. He makes quite a fuss. They must get out and collect, for goodness’ sake! The season is flying by (as well as a fair number of Nabokov’s satyr, with its two pretty little eyespots). He suggests an early morning outing. “But Morris is coming,” says Jane. She is standing in his study, leafing through Holland’s The Butterfly Book. She feels quite lost, and yet quite found in the mute, colorful pages.

“Morris?” asks Oliver.

“Yes. My husband,” she says, and starts to laugh.

“I remember, my dear. But when is he coming?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Drat it all. We’ll go the day after. Or the day after that. We’ll drag him along. And if that’s not—”

“Oliver,” she says suddenly, the book a pleasant, anchoring weight in her hands. “What would you do?”

“What would I do?”

“If you were married to Morris. If you were me.”

“If I were you. Yes, I see.” He rubs his chin, his throat, his chest.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says, dropping her eyes.

“Oh yes, my dear. It does. It matters very much. That you ask me, that’s what matters. My answer, of course, is only inadequate.”

“Don’t feel you have to—”

“I don’t feel I have to anything. I would like to give you a helpful answer. It would please me very much. However, I’m not sure I can. I’m not you, you see. Well, I’m you and I’m not. I mean I . . . Well, I’ve been on both sides of it, haven’t I?”

“I don’t know!” cries Jane.

“Well, I have. On Morris’s side and on what we will call yours. I too had a . . . a temptation once. It was years ago, when I was a bit more dapper and feeling my oats and generally worth a thing or two—”

“Oliver.

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