Death of a Butterfly (Sigrid Harald) Read online

  “One of her clients is having a baby,” Sigrid said. “Right now.”

  She gave him Bryna’s name and address. “Tell her the contractions are coming every five minutes.”

  “Hang on a second,” said the boy. There was a pause, then he returned. “My grandmother says for you not to worry. This is Bryna’s first, so there’s lots of time.”

  A midwife’s mother would certainly know what she was talking about, Sigrid assured herself, and she followed the stairs up to the large, cheerfully messy loft, relayed the grandmother’s encouraging words, and was dismayed to see Bryna shake her head doubtfully.

  “The books say an average first baby takes five to twelve hours, but I think mine’s going to be quicker. Anyhow, I’ve been having regular contractions all afternoon.”

  Sigrid was appalled. “And you didn’t call anybody?”

  “I thought it might be false labor. The baby’s not due for another week.”

  She had stripped the couch-bed, covered the mattress with plastic and was trying to tuck in a fresh bottom sheet when another contraction hit her. “Jot the time on that pad,” she gasped.

  Sigrid scanned the previous figures. “Every four minutes?” she asked nervously.

  She seemed to recall from that long-ago training film that the tempo really picked up once the pains were down to five minutes apart.

  “Maybe if you’d lie down that would slow things. I can finish making the bed with you in it.”

  Bryna looked around. “There’s so much I should do,” she said.

  “I’ll do it,” said Sigrid. “Will you please—lie—down!”

  Bryna giggled. “According to all the stereotypes, only the fathers flip out. Women are supposed to be cool and efficient. Besides, aren’t you people trained to help in emergency births, like cab drivers?”

  “I’ve never seen a baby born,” Sigrid said tightly. “I’ve heard the theory, but I’ve never had any practice.”

  She bundled up the used linens and found a hamper to deposit them in.

  Bryna changed into a simple short gown and eased herself into bed. “Janey Li will probably get here in plenty of time,” she comforted Sigrid.

  Another contraction washed over her.

  “On the other hand,” she said, when it had subsided, “maybe we’d better be prepared. The pads are in that blue dry cleaner’s bag under the dresser.”

  The sack was heavier than it looked.

  “Each pad’s a folded section of the Times stitched into an old pillow case,” Bryna explained. “They’re to soak up the blood.”

  Sigrid turned white and occupied herself with clearing off the dining table, stacking the day’s accumulation of dirty dishes in the sink, and, at Bryna’s suggestion, scouring out her largest pot, which she filled with water and set on the gas stove to start heating.

  By then, day had waned to twilight. Sigrid switched on extra lamps as she moved around the loft straightening and tidying away some of the clutter.

  “You’re compulsively neat, aren’t you?” asked the girl. She lay propped on a couple of pillows and watched Sigrid’s efforts as if it were totally natural that a police officer should do maid service. “Let the rest go. Come talk to me. Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why aren’t you?” asked Sigrid tartly.

  “Touché. My family thinks I’m trying to prove something. That I’m the new woman, totally liberated.” She shrugged. “The truth is, I can’t forget I’m Catholic.”

  Her hands rested lightly on her swollen belly and she patted it ruefully. “I know that sounds silly. Technically, I’m living in sin and my baby will be a bastard, but a civil ceremony wouldn’t change anything. Even though I don’t go to church as often as I should, I still believe its teachings and there’s no way around it: Marriage is a sacrament and Karl’s still married to Julie in the eyes of the church.”

  She hesitated. “Was married,” she amended in a small voice. “I wish he’d come home. We went to all those natural childbirth classes together, but he paid more attention. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be deep-breathing or panting. Do you suppose I’m second stage yet?”

  “Oh, surely not,” Sigrid said, wondering just how many stages there were. She darkly suspected there might be only two. “Where’s that midwife?”

  “Don’t worry—what did you say your name was?”

  “Lieutenant Harald.”

  “No, I mean your first name. Look, in about twenty minutes, if Karl and Janey don’t get here, I’m probably going to be clawing the walls. I really doubt that I can yell Lieutenant Harald every time the pain hits, so can’t we drop some of the formality?”

  “My name is Sigrid,” she said stiffly.

  “Nice to meet you, Sigrid. I’m Bryna.” The girl spoke lightly, but a fine line of perspiration glinted along her upper lip.

  Sigrid brought a cool cloth for her face and brushed the silver­blond hair back from her high forehead. Training told her that she should be using the girl’s lowered guard to question her about Karl’s relation with his ex-wife, but a sense of fairness prevented her. Not now, not like this.

  “Did you see Julie’s body?” Bryna asked between long, deliberate breaths.

  “Yes.”

  “Funny, isn’t it? The way she affected our life and yet I never once saw her. Not even a picture. She was beautiful though, wasn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “They say Timmy looks just like her. I don’t know. And Karl doesn’t say. But maybe that’s why he and Timmy don’t—”

  She broke off abruptly. “You don’t talk much, do you, Sigrid? And I’m babbling. Sorry. This isn’t your usual social situation, is it? Karl wanted so badly for us to be married before the baby came. It’s the only thing we ever fight about. He hates thinking that I feel he’s still married to Julie. I tried to explain that it wasn’t me really, but the church.

  “I guess there’s a lot of paperwork involved in getting a baby legitimized. Now that Julie’s dead, we could drag Father Ambrose in to marry us right now and everything’d be as proper as white gloves, and yet Karl’s just as much its father now as he’ll be next week. Silly technicalities. Uh-oh!”

  She clasped Sigrid’s hand so tightly that Sigrid winced, and Bryna’s steady, deliberately deep breaths became shallow and rapid.

  “Get some towels!” she panted.

  Sigrid rushed to the bathroom, scooped up an armload from the shelf behind the door and rushed back. “What’s happened?” she cried.

  “My water just broke and I’m sopping!”

  ‘‘I’ll do that,” said a new voice, and Sigrid whirled around to see a pleasant faced Chinese-American woman who’d entered unnoticed in the emergency.

  “Trying to have this baby without me, Bryna?” she teased.

  She slipped the towels under Bryna’s hips, then opened her satchel.

  “Oh, Janey, I thought you’d never get here!”

  Sigrid had not really expected a wizened Oriental with pigtail and Mao jacket, but Janey Li’s youth surprised her. She looked barely twenty and was dressed in crisp white, as befitted someone who was not only a trained midwife but also a registered nurse. To Sigrid’s infinite relief, Mrs. Li also looked beautifully efficient and Sigrid was quite willing to stand aside and let her get on with it.

  In the next instant she wasn’t even needed as a strong hand to hold onto. Karl Redmond came racing up the stairs, out of breath. From three blocks away, he’d seen Mrs. Li enter their shop and had run as fast as he could. Tie askew, he slid into Sigrid’s chair and clasped Bryna’s hand.

  “Pant-pant-blow, darling!” he said, panting himself. “Pant­pant-blow.”

  Neither he nor Mrs. Li seemed to question her presence and Bryna was too occupied to remember anything so prosaic as introductions. She was bearing down now, all her concentration centered on birthing her baby.

  “Bring another lamp,” Mrs. Li called, and Sigrid meekly did a
s she was told.

  While fetching and emptying basins of hot water, she heard Karl Redmond say, “We’ve got a contract, darling! That’s what took me so long. Once Fuselli saw our samples, he wanted the papers drawn up right then. I got Pop’s old lawyer to come over. He said the terms aren’t just fair, they could have been written by my fairy godmother. And Vico’s going to guarantee the loan we need. We could start tooling a production line tomorrow!”

  “Tomorrow’s Sunday,” Bryna murmured.

  “Then Monday,” he said, tenderly wiping her face with a damp cloth Sigrid had handed him. “Right after we get a marriage license.”

  “Stop talking and push!” said Mrs. Li.

  Bryna bore down hard and waves of pain rippled through her body as she pushed again and yet again. From her post directly behind the midwife, Sigrid saw the baby’s head emerge, followed by tiny shoulders and then with a gush of bloody liquid, the rest of the body, entangled in the sinuous cord.

  Almost immediately, and without any help from Janey Li, came the thin, unmistakable newborn crying.

  Sigrid was transfixed and could not tear her eyes away, repelled and fascinated simultaneously. As part of her police training, she had seen films of childbirth, but the reality was both easier and bloodier than she’d envisioned. The umbilical cord was thicker, too, like a living flesh-and-blood cable.

  Half her mind tried to record Janey Li’s actions in case this situation ever arose again, but the other half of her was strangely moved, remembering an old line of Latin: Inter urina et faeces nascent sum—between urine and feces are we born.

  And what could have been disgusting was instead transcendently beautiful.

  Bryna’s fair hair was matted with sweat, but her smile was radiant when Janey Li laid the newborn infant, loosely wrapped in a cotton flannel blanket and still wailing, across her abdomen and said, “Here she is, kids!”

  During the last few minutes, Sigrid had been vaguely conscious of voices and movements in the shadows across the room by the doorway leading to the stairs. At Janey Li’s words, a voice cried, “It’s a girl!” and a noisy cheer went up.

  Six or eight young men and women spilled into the loft. There was a pop of champagne corks and a clink of glasses as the baby’s arrival was toasted by her parents’ friends.

  Sigrid was not so much shunted aside as gently preempted by young women who seemed to have done this before. Soon, Janey Li had finished her work and mother and baby were carefully sponged clean. Afterbirth and bloody linens were whisked away, fresh sheets and pillowcases appeared, and someone had brought an armful of daisies, enough to fill a dozen jars and vases around the big room.

  A wiry youth had begun washing dishes at the sink and a tall bearded man handed Sigrid and Mrs. Li water glasses abrim with amber effervescence. Hushed happiness ringed the bed where Bryna and her infant lay in drowsy exhaustion, but laughter and euphoria enveloped Karl Redmond’s side of the loft.

  Silence fell completely when a young black girl, slim and straight as a hunting spear, detached herself from the group, and, with ritualistic formality, approached the foot of Bryna’s bed.

  Behind her, two musicians began weaving a net of poignant harmony with wooden flutes.

  “What is thy daughter to be called?” she asked. Her English was overlaid with an unfamiliar accent.

  “Her name is Katrina,” said Bryna with matching solemnity.

  “Katrina,” said the girl, “thou art welcome among us.”

  Her voice rose in clear liquid notes and the flutes twined in and around African words Sigrid could not understand.

  “It’s a welcoming song the women of her tribe sing to greet a newborn,” whispered Janey Li.

  Half Gregorian chant, half Dorian mode, the song’s tones shifted like the colors of a taffeta gown in firelight and the wooden flutes dodged behind and above in subtle counterpoint. Bryna smiled at Karl, who bent to touch their sleeping daughter’s tiny face, and a sudden tightness constricted Sigrid’s throat.

  Perhaps it was knowing what the song signified, perhaps it was the simple, uncomplicated friendship between the people here. Or maybe it was only the champagne.

  Whatever the reason, there was such an unbearable sweetness to the scene that Sigrid knew she would remember this spring night forever.

  Blindly, she set her glass on the nearest table and slipped from the loft unnoticed.

  CHAPTER 8

  On the third floor of the Rensselaer Building, Officer Hodson cocked an alert eye as the elevator doors slid open again upon the gaunt frame of one of the Dorritt brothers. Which Dorritt would be hard to say. Like Detective Tildon and Lieutenant Harald earlier, Hodson had been startled to realize that there were two identically tall and elderly doormen.

  “Yeah?” he asked, for this was the second time a Dorritt had come up tonight.

  The man’s gloomy eyes inspected the vestibule’s molding.

  “Thought you might be hungry,” he said. “Thought I’d watch for you if you want to go eat.” His head swung round and bobbled sourly at the policeman.

  “Thanks,” said Hodson, “but somebody’ll be bringing me a sandwich around nine.”

  “Humph!” said Dorritt. He glared at Hodson with those deep­set eyes, then shuffled back into the elevator and was gone without further speech.

  Not exactly the most gracious offer he’d ever received, thought Hodson, returning to his newspaper.

  When Sigrid unlocked her door shortly after nine that evening, the steady tap-tapping of a tack hammer from the depths of her apartment warned that she might not be able to head for a hot tub as directly as she’d planned.

  “Roman?” she called.

  “Don’t look!” answered a deep male voice and a door at the end of the hall banged shut.

  On the cookie-cutter grid in the rental agent’s office, Sigrid’s high-rise apartment was designated a two-bedroom model; but she used the minuscule space of that second bedroom as a catchall for the small amount of clutter she allowed in her life.

  At the moment, the room was dominated by an enormous old chair she’d salvaged off the sidewalk last month. Until then, all her furniture had been legitimately purchased from proper department stores and she’d never quite understood what was meant when enthusiasts spoke of character in a chest or table. And certainly she’d never been tempted to scavenge anybody’s castoffs.

  But then she’d stumbled across the chair parked next to a cluster of garbage cans, awaiting the city trash-removal truck with dignified patience, and she’d succumbed to its massive grotesqueries. It was over five feet tall, the two uprights at the back terminating in a pair of snarling lions’ heads as large as a house cat’s. The broad armrests also ended in the hand-carved heads and clear green agates were embedded in the eye sockets.

  Sigrid had stripped away the cracked brown leather and begun scraping down the wood before being plagued by serious doubts about the way the chair was going to look if she ever got it finished. It certainly wouldn’t match anything in the rest of her apartment. She had repeated her doubts to Roman Tramegra, who came, looked, and immediately co-opted the project for his own.

  “I’ll take step-by-step photographs and write an illustrated article on reupholstering for Flea Market Living,” he announced. “They only pay two cents a word, but it’s twenty dollars for every picture.” He optimistically estimated that he could stretch the work for at least a dozen 35mm color slides.

  Without planning to, Sigrid found herself handing over her extra latchkey so that Tramegra could come and go freely. So far, the arrangement was working better than she’d expected. He seemed hesitant to impinge on her privacy and was usually gone before she returned; yet once or twice, she’d come home to find that he’d cooked dinner—enough for both of them, although he always had to be urged to stay.

  Tonight appeared to be such an occasion. There was an unfamiliar odor emanating from the kitchen, a faintly charred smell of something which had been browned not wisely but too we
ll. Roman Tramegra was an inventive cook. Not all his inventions were divinely inspired.

  “Ah, there you are!” he said, pulling the door shut behind him. As the chair neared completion, he had put the room off limits until the final unveiling. “I was hoping you’d get home before the broccoli casserole completely dried out.”

  Roman Tramegra was another of her mother’s impulsive good deeds. Anne Harald was an award-winning photojournalist and, while on a magazine assignment in Italy, she’d run across Tramegra in rather distressing circumstances. She’d encouraged him to return to the States and had even lent him her vacant apartment while he sorted things out again.

  He was a large, soft man of indeterminate middle age, rather like a well-pampered Persian cat. His light sandy hair was brushed forward over a fast-receding hairline and his soft brown eyes were hooded; yet, like even the most sedentary cat’s, they were watchful eyes, and Sigrid knew that if she showed the slightest distaste for his casserole or his company, he would take himself off, feelings bruised perhaps, but without reproach.

  “Broccoli casserole?” she asked, trying to sound positive. “I hope you made enough for both of us.”

  “Why thank you, my dear, I think it’ll stretch. I used a base of mushroom soup,” he explained happily, “a layer of broccoli, four diced frankfurters and then a can of tomato soup with just a pinch of parsley from your new terrarium.”

  “Terrarium? Roman, I don’t have a terrarium.”

  A sense of foreboding touched her. “You don’t mean that big jar I left on the counter, do you?”

  Tramegra was stricken. “Were you saving the parsley for something special?” he asked. “Really, I only took the teensiest bit, but I’ll go up to the avenue right now and buy you some more if I didn’t leave enough.”