Season of the Dragonflies Read online

  Her black hair fell loose from its bun and draped her shoulders. Serena placed the plant on top of her head and wrapped it up with her bundle of hair, the same pompadour style she had worn as a girl of eighteen. The Dayak women parted as she walked past, and a gentle rain followed them out of the forest. A perfumed wind surrounded Serena and her family with every step she took.

  The plant she named Gardenia potentiae had chosen her, and it survived in her nest of hair for the voyage back to the States; it required only a splash of water in the mornings to keep its strength. With every day that passed on the liner, Alex vowed that Serena looked more regal than the day before. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, kissed her neck, and said, “Your skin’s never smelled so good. This is your perfume.” Other people on the ship destined for New York deferred to her in all matters, and the waiters offered her nothing but the best service. Exotic orchids arrived in their room each time the boat docked, and the staff reserved the richest of desserts and rarest of fruits for Serena’s daughters. She was the most powerful woman on the boat. She swore Gardenia potentiae would be the last scent she ever wore.

  The harsh northern winters of New York could not accommodate a plant that Alex deemed the most impressive species of flower he’d encountered in Borneo. They needed privacy for Serena’s flower to flourish, lest people start questioning how and why the plant moved. So they decided to dock early in the Chesapeake Bay, the plant hidden safely in Serena’s hair without raising a single suspicion from an inspector. The family journeyed three days to the fertile ground of Quartz Hollow in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, where Alex had been born. Serena wrote to her father upon settling in their cabin and notified him of her return, but he never responded. Alex turned in his research and gave up his post to take over his ailing father’s farm, where Serena could graft and grow hundreds of acres of Gardenia potentiae. The flower moved only for her hands and the hands of her daughters, and it soon became the secret ingredient in the most enigmatic, expensive, and successful perfume in history. Serena appointed herself president of the perfumery and bestowed upon her business her name—Lenore Incorporated.

  PART ONE

  DISTILLATION

  CHAPTER 1

  Three Generations Later

  JONAH HAD LET his curly black hair grow out the way Lucia Lenore always liked it, maybe even to spite her, and his blue eyes seemed even brighter. He dropped down on their organic futon, sending her side up like a seesaw. This final piece of their shared furniture was destined for the landfill, and with good cause. At least Lucia would never sleep another night on a worn-out cushion.

  Jonah said, “The sublet starts next month. I’ll make sure the paperwork’s straight.”

  “I’m out today,” Lucia said, her thigh touching his knee by accident. She signed her name on the last page and handed Jonah his pen. He placed the stack of papers on the cardboard box she’d set up as a coffee table. A prenup and no children made this transaction easy, almost too simple—like it had been set up to fail. Overall, they’d met little resistance from friends, and as far as family, only Jonah’s happily married parents knew, and they refrained from offering wisdom: “We’d better not weigh in on this” translated into “We agree this is best.”

  Jonah placed one long arm around her and squeezed. She let her head fall on his shoulder. Here was the moment he’d take it back, shred the papers, and finally apologize . . . and what was wrong with Lucia that deep down she wanted him to do exactly that?

  He kissed the crown of her head before saying, “I’ll always be here.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Nina’s?” he said quietly, perhaps to reduce how insulting it sounded that she would couch-surf at a friend’s place, the very same friend who had introduced Lucia to Jonah at his MoMA opening eight years ago.

  “Probably,” Lucia said, but she didn’t know; she hadn’t even asked Nina yet. Silence settled between them.

  Jonah squeezed her one more time and then stood up and said, “Can I go back to get a few things?” Lucia nodded, and Jonah retreated to their bedroom for the final time.

  Lucia would never hear his hangers slide on the short metal rack again or see his beard trimmings in the sink or dropped toenail clippings beside the couch. When they were in love she thought those little memories might comfort her when he died. If only I could see those obscenely hard toenail clippings stuck one more time in the low-pile rug. But for the past year, maybe longer (if she forced herself to pinpoint), wicked arguments about such things had become another tenant in their small apartment. He couldn’t stand fishing her long black hairs out of the tub drain. They felt genuine hate for each other, and that’s all they needed to know.

  What she never wanted to reveal to anyone was how many holes Jonah had punched in their drywall, hidden for so long by his overpriced canvases, and how many times she’d thrown shoes, keys, purses, and infomercial scripts at him. Jonah and Lucia and their marriage had crumbled together like buildings during an earthquake, but no single person or event deserved the blame.

  She stood up from the futon and stumbled over the Persian rug they’d found at the flea market. Four years later it still smelled like dog. Lucia opened the clear five-gallon storage tub that held their liquor, all going to Jonah’s new place. The gin and vodka and whiskey had acted like kerosene for their fires, a sure way to embolden a fight that could’ve been avoided or start a fight if one didn’t exist. Yet they couldn’t keep themselves from drinking together, like it was their only sport. She squeezed the last bottle in and then tried to snap the top into place. But it wouldn’t go. She sat on it and hoped weight and gravity would do the rest.

  Jonah returned from the bedroom and said, “Here, let me help.” With her still seated on the top, he placed an arm on either side of her and closed the top with one forceful push down, his sinewy biceps bigger than she remembered—had he started working out? The sex had been hotter when they had separate apartments and no legal contract promising to be faithful, and suddenly this slight embrace on the storage tub made her horny for the first time in who knew how long. She wanted to tell him this, as if they could try again.

  Jonah stared into her eyes. She let him kiss her, but she couldn’t manage to relax her lips and she kept her eyes wide open. Too much had happened between them now to recover this element of their relationship.

  A dart of indigo flashed by the windowpane; Lucia glanced in that direction and pulled away from Jonah. She saw nothing save concrete beyond the glass, but the moment to make this big mistake had already passed, and she ducked underneath his arms and stood up. “Not my best idea,” she said.

  Jonah traced the corners of his mouth with his thumb and pointer finger, the way he always did when he didn’t agree with her.

  Another bright streak of blue dashed outside the window. “Isn’t that the strangest thing?” she said. Lucia moved toward the exposed brick wall in their apartment. “Are you seeing this?” She pointed to the window in the center, but by this time she didn’t need to; so many blue dragonflies hovered right outside that she couldn’t count them all, their collected mass blocking out the sunlight and darkening the room like a curtain. The insects tapped their jaws against the glass.

  Jonah said, “It’s like they want in.”

  Lucia closed her eyes and clasped her arms together. She couldn’t suppress the smells of wild honeysuckle vining on fencerows and split trunks of cedar and tulip poplars and oaks ushering forth from her memory; the smells of wet leaf mulch on the forest floor and peeled peat moss along creek banks; the smells of girlhood, of her mother and her older sister and the Blue Ridge Mountains; acres upon acres of her family’s flower planted on the hills above the cabin, blanketing the town of Quartz Hollow with a smell richer than jasmine.

  She hadn’t been home in so many years—fifteen, to be exact—and she knew these weren’t random bugs coming down from Syracuse or Albany. These were Lucia’s dragonflies. One dragonfly paused close enough t
o the glass for Lucia to gaze into its bulbous jade-green eyes, each with a black speck in the center. They appeared to gaze right back at Lucia. The yellow thorax tapered into a thin abdomen, the same color as the clear blue sky in the distance. Lucia bent down slightly, and the filament etching inside the wings turned metallic red in the sunlight. Adult dragonflies lived for only a month or so, but the symbol of infinity gave shape to their two sets of wings; they could control each set separately and had the freedom to change directions whenever they wished. Lucia envied them this trait. Then, just as quickly as they had arrived, they darted away; the dragonflies dropped below Lucia’s window and vanished without a trace.

  “I hate summer bugs,” Jonah said, and backed away from the window. With both hands flat on the pane Lucia continued to stare, desperate to catch sight of them again. Jonah placed his hand on Lucia’s shoulder and she turned around. He presented the only canvas of his that remained in the apartment, one she’d purposely quarantined in the bedroom; the real Lucia slept on the futon. It was a muse painting from when they had first started dating. He’d captured Lucia’s bountiful hair, long eyelashes, pale skin, and alert blue eyes with an exaggerated lucidity. He had chosen not to sell it, though now she wished he had. How long had it been since he last painted anything connected to her? Two, three years? Why even count anymore?

  “It’s yours if you want it,” he said. She stared at the painting but didn’t recognize that girl. She’d never existed, not in all that confident glory. She shook her head.

  “You’re sure?” he said.

  Lucia couldn’t bear for him to recommend she sell the painting to the SoHo Corner Gallery, even though they both knew she could use the money. She said, “I’m sure,” before he had the chance to suggest it.

  Jonah placed the painting and a box of supplies on top of the storage bin of liquor and his jeans and sweaters on top of that, then crowned it all with his black-and-white-checkered Converse sneakers. Those sneakers had now become her emblem for Jonah: juvenile and on top of the world. He probably had an appointment with a buyer.

  Jonah tucked the signed divorce agreement beneath his arm like an umbrella. “Call me in the next few days and let me know how you are,” he said, and went to their door and looked back at her one last time before leaving.

  The door clicked shut, and the brake-slamming sounds of the Upper East Side emanated from thirty stories below their small apartment. Those noises used to give Lucia comfort; when she moved to New York City on her eighteenth birthday they were auditory finish lines, a must-have soundtrack to her new life away from Quartz Hollow, but they had morphed into a recursive loop, and all she desired was an “off” button. Now she had another move before her. How had she let herself become so dependent on another person? Or how had they let it happen? Certainly Jonah had a part in it too. Lucia had so many questions for him that he would never answer. Such was the way of divorce.

  Left alone in this apartment for the past few weeks, Lucia had made canned soup in the microwave and drunk Pinot Grigio from a box. Jonah could afford a one-bedroom apartment in SoHo, along with his studio on Eighth Avenue. Without Lucia to support, he had plenty of cash to spend on dating anorexic fashion designers. And only one recurring thought haunted her: If I were as successful as Jonah Little, and on my own like him, then our relationship might’ve survived.

  Lucia Little. She wasn’t comfortable using that name to sign checks or thank-you cards; she especially disliked using it at auditions and casting calls. Ms. Soon-Not-to-Be-Little plopped back down on the futon and opened the faded Forbes magazine she’d tucked underneath the cushion a week ago. Lucia stared at her maiden name on the “400” list, and she looped her mother’s entry with the tip of her finger: Number 27: Willow Lenore . . . Net Worth: $11.9 B . . . Age: 61 . . . Residence: Quartz Hollow, Virginia . . . Source: Diversified. Why had she given up her maiden name? It sounded much better than Little. Lucia tossed the Forbes magazine in the black garbage bag she’d begun for all her soup cans and many boxes of Franzia. A poor effort on her part, considering how many splayed Progresso cans remained scattered on the floor.

  Lucia couldn’t stay in their empty apartment another night replaying the same bad marriage scenes in her head. With tomato soup as her only comfort. The dragonflies were headed home to Quartz Hollow, had to be. As much as Lucia hated to admit it, she had nowhere else to go. She could move into her friend Nina’s place for a couple of weeks, but then what? Her funds were barely getting her by; she was just one nanny job away from eating nothing but one miso soup a day.

  Lucia pulled well-worn yoga pants, one pair of jeans, and two T-shirts off the floor next to the futon and tossed them in a pink duffel bag. She promised herself it would only be a short visit home. A nip of her mother’s moonshine and one of her extravagant picnics in the woods might go a long way toward restoring her, and maybe the quiet away from the city would help Lucia figure out her next move. She gathered her knockoff Coach purse and put on her black ballet flats to go to the airport and take the next flight to Richmond, the last charge on her Visa card before it imploded. Lucia locked the apartment door, headed down the hall toward the elevator, and refused to look behind her at a life she no longer called her own.

  CHAPTER 2

  Sex and Vision

  PINNED BENEATH MYA Lenore’s thighs, Luke rolled from side to side as if he couldn’t lift her into the air and toss her onto the mattress like a sack of soil. She liked him just where he was, caught by choice beneath her. Mya released his arms, only to guide his hands up her bare abdomen so he could cup her breasts. His callused hands roamed the planes of her hips and ribs and collarbone before stopping at her chin. In his husky mountain accent, Luke said, “I never knew a woman like you.”

  “Tsk, tsk,” Mya said like a preschool teacher, and locked his arms down beside him, then eyed the yellow silk scarves on her bedside table and walked two fingers over to snag them.

  “You’re bad,” Luke said. Mya tied his wrists to one of the brass poles of her headboard and proceeded down from there.

  Luke moaned and then said, “Get to it now.”

  “Patience,” she said, and tickled his etched abdomen with her fingernails, dirt still visible beneath them. What she found appealing about a twenty-six-year-old at times also troubled Mya. Luke’s youthful eagerness highlighted their ten-year age difference when she hadn’t had enough rest, like today.

  Luke pulled his wrists free and the scarves dropped to the floor. Mya let her long blond hair create a tent around his pelvis, and he stroked it at the roots. The flowers she’d gathered on her walk and inserted in her hair fell onto the bed. The sweet scent still lingered, but the limp and browning petals no longer looked like a white pinwheel. Luke spread Mya’s hair all over his torso and said, “It’s so fucking long and beautiful.”

  Mya said, “A family gift.”

  Luke pinched her nipple and said, “Don’t bring up your mama. It’s not a good time.”

  “True,” she said, and rubbed her hand along his inner thigh where his thick, curly hair tapered.

  Luke placed one arm behind his head so he could see her better, his biceps curved like a mountain slope. He said, “Your sunshine hair makes me crazy.” He ran his fingers through it, and Mya continued to stroke his thigh and rested her cheek on his abdomen. Luke placed his hand at the back of her head and gently nudged it forward, and she gathered him in her mouth and let all her anxious thoughts drain away like water on a drought-blighted plot of earth.

  Ten minutes later he shouted out, “Holy mother of good God!” Then he rolled over on the red poppy-print quilt and Mya slapped his pale behind before he got up to go to the bathroom.

  Mya left the bedroom and went to the kitchen, where she poured a glass of water mixed with fine sea salt. Luke was still in the bathroom when she returned. What was he doing in there? Mya spread her body out on the hardwood floor and placed the glass of salt water between her feet. She stared at the exposed wooden beams on the ceiling
and then called out to Luke, “I dyed my hair black one summer and it turned split-pea green for three months.”

  After a delay he finally answered, “That was dumb.”

  “It was,” she said. “Lucia had such dark hair and I wanted mine like that.” Her little sister had hair as smooth as an onyx stone, and it smelled of summer rain no matter how often she used shampoo. Hair like Great-Grandmother Serena’s, a point their mother never failed to brag about, like Lucia’s earning straight A’s. So much of a normal life had always come easily to Lucia, but in all other ways she had nothing in common with Great-Grandmother. Lucia might have had her hair, but she had no gift for scent or visions.

  Luke said, “She’s still in New York?”

  Mya said, “Married, acting, that’s all I know,” and she stood up and moved her operation to the bed. She stretched her long legs out on the lavender-scented sheets, balanced the glass of salt water on the bed, and clasped a pillow to her stomach. She stared at the room as a whole—the black rocking chair in the corner beneath an old net that held her stuffed animals, her clothes in a stinking pile desperate to be washed and hung on the line—and then she spotted a stray hair from Luke’s head.

  She caught it with her fingernails, lifted it up like the metal claw in the toy-vending machine at the grocery store, and secured it in her side-table drawer. A single strand of hair, dried chamomile flowers, seven drops of geranium oil, and a black ribbon secured with a safety pin always did the trick. Sometimes only this spell could break the irrational and impulsive bond of sex that so many people mistook for love.

  Luke sauntered back into the room completely nude except for one stray flower pressed on his pelvis and stopped at the foot of the bed. He reached out for the glass, and Mya lunged for it and said, “It’s salty.” She moved the glass to her bedside table.