The Butterfly Effect: An Excerpt

An excerpt from The Butterfly Effect by Rachel Mans McKenny. © 2020 by Rachel Mans McKenny and Alcove Press.

What was it to know the birthday of a woman you hated?

While she was waiting at the airport terminal, the notification had appeared this morning on Greta’s Facebook, with the nudge: Wish Meg a Happy Birthday! If Greta had known it was Meg’s birthday, would she have scrounged up a little less antipathy last night when hearing her voice on the other end of the long-distance call? No, probably not. Meg shouldn’t get credit for being born. She had been as responsible for that event as Greta was of flying this plane. This plane and the birth canal were both about delivering people somewhere they didn’t want to be from someplace much warmer.

Meg’s voice on the phone—Happy early birthday, Meg, Greta hadn’t said—was a rocky sea, too wet and tumbling to get the full story. An aneurysm. Greta processed that much. Danny was alive and asleep. Meg said she would handle it.

It was a decision not to trust her, and Greta made that decision.

Greta stared out the window on the last leg of her journey. Twenty-four hours ago, she had been knee-deep in rain forest mud, watching butterflies circle above like a living mobile. Twenty-four hours ago, her mind was turning over the problem of how to keep their microscopic markers on butterfly wings in the humidity. It was nothing like tracking Monarchs back home in Iowa. Her research focused on the sex lives of glasswing butterflies or, rather, what their migratory patterns and reproduction said about global warming. Out of the one hundred and twenty thousand described species of Lepidoptera, she had fallen in love with the glasswing’s clear scales and distinctive markings.

Bug sex had satisfyingly specific terms—partially why studying it fascinated Greta so much. “Lekking”—that term described the communal release of glasswing butterfly pheromones, one of the species’ unique features. Butterflies were cheap dates, easy lays. A quick suck of nectar, a little body spray, and down to business. They settled down on a couch of leaves, their abdomens touching. “Butt to butt,” Larry—Dr. Almond—had joked on their first day in the field. Butterfly mating didn’t have the intense staring into the eyes that human romance required. Male butterflies also had specific body parts—valvae—which hooked the female during copulation. Luckily, also not comparable to human genitalia.

There were some direct comparisons to be made. Butterfly mating didn’t take long. Like human mating, at least in Greta’s limited experience. Insect peni were called “aedeagus,” which combined the Greek words for “genitals” and “to lead,” and hell if she hadn’t met many men that led with those too. She thought about Meg and wondered if there was a female version of valvae that could trap someone in a relationship?

The glasswings’ limited range made them a perfect test case for the changing climate. Or at least she hoped that would prove to be the case. Two weeks into her semester-long research trip, and now this airplane ride home. Two weeks was about enough time to collect one-twentieth of the data she needed for her dissertation.

Danny was sick, Meg had told her.

Greta took a drink of her Pepsi and returned it to the tray table.

Danny was hurt, Meg had said.

Another sip. The men in the seats next to her held hands on the armrest, the fingers of one lightly unclasping from the other while he fell more deeply asleep.

Danny was in the hospital, and Greta should come home if—in case—

Greta’s hands shook, or maybe it was the plane. Probably turbulence, and her Pepsi sloshed a few sickly droplets onto the carpet.

Greta leaned over with a napkin to wipe up her mess, only to find two things. One, airplane carpet was disgusting. Its patterns must be designed to cover stains like what she was trying to rub out. Two, there was a caterpillar.

“Oh, hi,” she whispered to it. Classically defined, it was a perfectly ordinary Lophocampa modesta, but current circumstances also identified it correctly as a “distraction.”

Greta angled her boot to cage the spiny yellow caterpillar between the wall and the anchored seat ahead of her. Someday, this caterpillar would become a moth with small, dark patches spread over the veins of its tan wings. Unlike its butterfly brethren, moths fold their wings to hide their abdomen, something like the plane they were currently on. While his future dun color would be easy to pass over, now he was bright yellow against the dust-blue industrial carpet.

A plan formed in Greta’s mind. First, she drank the remainder of her Pepsi. Both passengers next to her were now deeply asleep. She reached cautiously across the lap of the man in the center seat to take his cup of melting ice and tip its contents into the almost empty cup of tomato juice on the aisle seat’s tray table. Greta took the two empty cups and moved her foot slowly to uncage the caterpillar. It froze, but Greta didn’t. She caught it between the cups and lifted.

When she pulled the two cups off the floor, she saw the caterpillar suspended on the lip of one, standing astride it like a tightrope walker. Now, the dilemma. Greta knew the airplane was beginning to lose altitude, from the changes in the view from her window, the pressure in her ears, and the roiling turn in her stomach. Now that she had it trapped, she wasn’t sure how to keep it that way while exiting the airplane. Having gone to all this trouble, she wasn’t going to leave it on the plane, like a pretzel wrapper. If nothing else, her friend Max would find it funny, and that was worth something. She needed someone to find something funny today. She arranged her hands so that one palm could “kiss” both cups together, and reached for the call button. Maybe the flight attendant had tape.

The caterpillar waited patiently with her by the baggage carousel. Its fuzzy head swiveled against the plastic cups, but it didn’t seem to be in pain or distress. Whether insects got distressed was not really up for debate. Distress was mostly a human concern—humans had a million ways to be miserable. Generally, insects were either eating, fighting, flighting, or mating. After ten minutes, Greta’s two maroon rolling bags appeared. Though technically old, they were nearly brand new. They had been high school graduation gifts from her father, but—surprise surprise—he hadn’t lived long enough to see how little she had used them. Until now, she had never really gone anywhere besides a few weeklong research expeditions during undergrad. Those had been by car, with light packing emphasized. She had barely needed the items in these newish bags, and now she would unpack them.

Unpack them somewhere. Not her apartment, she realized, which had been sublet. Where she would stay should have been the first question on her mind, but it wasn’t. The fact that her residency in Costa Rica had been paid for and her bank account was pretty much nonexistent only now occurred to her.

Fuck.

From Greta’s spot by the car rentals, she watched the snow flutter past the window in lopsided flakes. She hadn’t expected to return before June and had left her coat with the rest of her stuff in storage. Double fuck.

After a warning text, Max pulled alongside the curb. She saw his bare arms through the window. It figures he was too stubborn to put on a sweater since he didn’t have to leave his car. His T-shirt was black with white lettering that just said, “No.” Greta shouldered her backpack and trailed the rolling bags behind her. She ran as fast as she could, but the hatchback’s trunk wasn’t open to receive luggage. She tapped on it with an open palm, then a fist, and finally the latch released. By the end of the procedure, her ears were cold and her hair was wet with melting snow. Max unlocked the passenger door quickly for her, at least.

Max checked his mirrors and merged just as a police officer seemed to get interested in them. No lingering at the terminal. “Flights okay?”

Max had, she noticed, gotten a trim so that the hair behind his ears was much shorter than the top, which stood suspended. His brown eyes tracked the falling snow from underneath his hair’s dark, tamed wave. She was certain that Max spent more on hair products than she did.

“I found a Lophocampa modesta caterpillar on my last one and trapped it between two cups. The flight attendant got me tape to hold the cups together, and you should have seen her face when she saw what I needed it for—” Then Greta broke off, swearing. “I left it by the baggage carousel. God, I just had so much in my hands—”

“So you captured it?”

She felt a chide in his voice. “I thought I could bring it back to the lab. I wasn’t going to let it run wild or anything.”

“You joke, but maybe that’s how Mothra really happened.”

Coming off the airport road toward downtown Des Moines, the slush pounded against the sides of the car on the turn. “I thought it would be funny to bring home.”

Max laughed. “I mean, it is, but don’t you think it’s funnier that you left it there by the arrivals gate?”

“Okay, you’re right.”

Max glanced quickly at her. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. Do I get an award? I think that is the first time you’ve ever said I was right about something.”

Rather than dignify that with a response, Greta watched Des Moines’s skyline appear and disappear behind closer buildings. Even though she’d left behind brown grass only two weeks ago, the passing landscape now had a thick blanket of snow. “You know, Gary might have wanted to eat it. Apologize to him for me.”

“I will, and you owe him one.” Max said, keeping his tone fakeserious, but his eyebrow raise gave him away. Gary was a six-inch whip scorpion that Max kept as a pet.

“Oh, you bet. Next bug I get, it’s his.”

The traffic moved by them on both sides. Max always rode the middle lane when they drove on three-lane highways, and it drove her crazy.

They merged onto I-35 North and passed the first Ankeny exit. Max turned the radio to NPR, and the hourly news included a weather report. Breaking news: it sucked. Greta’s stomach gave a loud rumble. She had forgotten to eat anything before she left the last airport, and had turned down the in-flight snack. Flying made her feel bad enough without adding food to the equation. The gurgle sounded again, and Greta wanted to hush herself, but then her stomach growled a third time, just as audibly.

“Want me to hit a drive-thru somewhere?” Max asked.

Greta shook her head and then remembered that Max’s gaze focused on the road. “No, I’m okay.”

Silence broken, Max asked, “What happened?”

Greta took a deep breath and was glad to not make eye contact. “Meg told me Danny was teaching band. One of the kids said that Danny’s face drooped, and then the next moment he was on the floor.”

“I’m so sorry,” Max said. The windshield wipers collected and flicked off lines of wet snow. The rubber wiper treads made soft squeaks in the sudden silence. “Did you know?”

“What do you mean?”

He pressed his lips together, embarrassed. “I don’t have a sibling, and I definitely don’t have a twin, but did you feel like you knew before you, uh, knew?”

It was one of those moments where she seemed like a worse person telling the truth than she did constructing a lie. As it was, it felt like she and her twin didn’t even hold one language in common anymore, let alone an emotional, cross-continental bond. When Danny had moved back to Ames after their dad’s death, they ate Sunday dinner as a way of mourning. His apartment, then hers. A seesaw of traded grief. Then dinners were habit, less sad. He was suddenly just there, like the smell of home was always there, but not something she noticed until she had been away for a while. Maybe that was the closest to twin sense they’d ever gotten as adults. But then Meg happened, and it was like any chance of healing had vanished. No. She hadn’t felt some extrasensory zap, some cosmic warning signal. “No. I felt the same, except better because I was there. And this is—”

“Iowa in winter?” he offered.

“Fucking Iowa in winter.”

Max took the familiar sloping off-ramp to Ames, and the line of hotels on the highway welcomed her back. The radio was on, but she wasn’t listening, not really. The mental wall she had built between the possibilities and life as it had been yesterday was crumbling the nearer they got to the hospital. They didn’t say anything else until the car arrived in front of Mary Greeley. “Text me if you need anything,” Max said. His shirt said “No,” but his eyes said something else. His worried look made her feel even worse.

She tried to pay him for the ride. After some awkward fumbling, with “no” and “please,” he accepted the rumpled twenty-dollar bill from her wallet.

The hospital glowered at her from its four-story height. Maybe it was judging her mud-caked boots or her smell. Between the airport dirt and the sweat from yesterday’s research, Greta wished she could have showered before she saw her brother—too late for that. An hour after being picked up from the airport, she climbed into an elevator. Ten hours after jumping onto her first airplane, she checked in at hospital reception.