Mannequin and Wife by Jen Fawkes

Author:Jen Fawkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LSU Press
Published: 2020-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHRYSALIS

Technically, it couldn’t be classified as a coma. Hypersomnolence, a resident suggested. Trance or spell or sopor, said others. Not even the hospital’s old guard spoke of the girl’s condition with anything approaching certainty. The most she merited at rounds was a shrug of weary shoulders. Hibernation? Hypnotism? Rapture? Inevitably, one of the residents suggested a classic case of colossal torpidity, and everyone sniggered and moved on. Everyone but Dr. Bok.

He’d been on duty the day they found her prone on the waxed floor of the downtown library, A Field Guide to Butterflies of North America clutched in her right hand, index finger marking her place. His grandfather, an avid lepidopterist, had owned the same guide. Vanessa atalanta, about which the girl had been reading before she sank into her stupor, was quite striking, but the girl was no prize: dishwater blond, crooked mouth, wan, pitifully thin. Dr. Bok had intended to return Field Guide to the library when he left the hospital; instead, he carried the book to his cold two-room apartment and tucked it under his pillow. Each night, before removing his glasses and switching off the lamp, he perused the entry on Vanessa atalanta. In his dreams, the girl’s pale eyelids fluttered like polychromatic wings in flight.

He spent his spare time studying catatonia. Stayed abreast of the latest developments. Sat beside Vanessa, as the nurses dubbed the girl, reading aloud from medical texts, mysteries, fairy tales. He shooed away orderlies, turning and bathing the girl himself. He arranged her hair and painted her nails. Dusted her pale cheeks with blusher. The other residents ribbed him mercilessly. When they dared him to wake her Prince Charming style, he rolled his eyes, but he thought about it. Kissing her cheeks and fingertips. Elbows and toes. Stomach. Thighs. Lips. He told her things he’d never told a soul. How his sister’s stillbirth had destroyed his mother. How his grandfather, the lepidopterist, had been denatured by Alzheimer’s.

When he entered Vanessa’s room one spring morning to find the window wide open and the mattress littered with strands of blond hair and skin-hued fragments of casing, Dr. Bok wasn’t really surprised. Before calling in the staff to ready the room for another patient, he sat beside the bed, studying the remnants of Vanessa atalanta. He wondered how long she’d perched on the cusp of her split pupa, damp from the chrysalis, drying her new body, waiting to take flight. She would never recognize him, nor would she recall anything he’d said or done—she was a brand-new being. This did not sadden him, however. Unlike most butterflies, Vanessa atalanta flies on sunny days even in winter, and Dr. Bok was certain that he would see her again. When he bumped into her on the street, whatever her outward aspect, he would know her. This conviction would sustain him for years to come.

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