LINDA is a butterfly.

ELENA is a butterfly too: a drunk one.

CAROLINE is a caterpillar, then a butterfly.

[LINDA and ELENA are center stage with giant butterfly wings.

ELENA is drinking and smoking.]

ELENA

Listen, Linda.

LINDA

I’m listening.

ELENA

I’m not going this year.  You can lead them, you know the way.  I can’t fly after all the shit I’ve seen.

LINDA

But we need you –

ELENA

Seen!  HA!  Like it wasn’t my fault!

LINDA

It’s not!  You’re moved by the wind as much as you move the wind yourself.

ELENA

Wind, don’t remind me.  Fucking tornadoes.  Storms.  Remember Hurricane Hugo?  That was a shit show.

LINDA

You couldn’t have known.

ELENA

No, but storm clouds were forming when I took off.  And by the time I landed, I’d set things in motion for Hurricane Andrew three years later.  Total fucking disaster.

LINDA

We go through this every year: it might have been a thousand times worse if you hadn’t flown that day.

ELENA

I was hungry.  I wanted some lilac.  [LINDA mouths along:] But we had some milkweed in the fridge that was about to expire.  I could’ve just had that for dinner.

LINDA

When are you going to forgive yourself?  For all you know, you’re causing another hurricane right now by sitting here being miserable.  [ELENA takes a swig.]  Besides, migration starts in the morning.

ELENA

Fucking butterflies, huh?  An elephant can tromp through the forest and knock over trees and spray water everywhere like an ASSHOLE, but no one talks about the elephant effect.  But I flap one wing…

LINDA

Your wings are so beautiful. 

ELENA

One wing and everyone’s buying a week’s worth of bottled water and dusting off their diesel generators.  My “beautiful wings” might as well be horsemen 1 and 2 of the apocalypse.

LINDA

On my first trip south I didn’t take my eyes off of them the whole way.

ELENA

I mean I get that things have to move forward.  I’m not trying to uninvent the wheel here.  But every newscast these days makes me feel like I’m on trial.

LINDA

We have to leave when the sun rises.

ELENA

I’m staying behind this time.  I was meant to fly, not decide the course of history.  I’ll take my chances with the cold, thanks.  Play out the string puddling and smoking horseweed.

LINDA

You’ll die –

ELENA

One wing… Cain and Abel walk out of that field together.  After that it was stop moving, or stop caring.

LINDA

But you can’t stop moving.

ELENA

I didn’t.  I flew all over the world.  Never felt as free in my life.  [pause.]  Thought about it, though.  Thought about finding a patch of thistle, eating ‘til it ran out.  And now, that’s what I’m going to do.

LINDA

Butterfly.  That’s what we do.

ELENA

Hurricanes and despots.  We do those too.  I just wished I’d warned you –

LINDA

I knew what I was getting into.

ELENA

You did?

LINDA

You hear a lot when you’re wrapped up in that chrysalis.  I heard you all those nights crying about the space shuttle, the plague… but I had to try it.  I had to –

ELENA

Of course.  The winds were already swelling under you when you first stuck your head out.

LINDA

I thought I could find the right flight path.  Hover just long enough over the right flower, blow the scattered pieces of the shuttle back together… seems so silly now.

ELENA

You go fly, you keep at it.

LINDA

If I had wings like yours, I don’t know if I could stop myself.

ELENA

You’re so sweet.

[CAROLINE emerges.  She has smaller wings and is covered in thick liquid. 

SHE starts to explore the stage/world.]

ELENA

Kid do NOT move your wings.  Stay perfectly still.

CAROLINE

But –

ELENA

I will shove you right back in that cocoon if you so much as flutter.

CAROLINE

It’s not a cocoon, it’s –

LINDA

Hello. 

CAROLINE

Hello.  [THEY look to ELENA, who rolls her EYES]

ELENA

Hello.  [She is extremely put upon.]  Welcome to our habitat.  You’re probably related to us.  Don’t get too comfortable – winter is coming.

LINDA

Come now.  Dry yourself off, have some goldenrod, and stay upright as long as you can.  Tomorrow’s a big day.  [pause] And don’t be intimidated.  [gestures at ELENA.]  She’ll sober up soon, and she’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever met.

CAROLINE

She doesn’t seem sweet.

ELENA

Do whatever you want with your wings, kid.  Just know that if they’re anything like mine, they’ll destroy a whole hell of a lot of beautiful things.  Nothing good can come out of them.

LINDA

Your wings are every serendipitous scientific discovery, all the ink flowing a pen one way instead of another, they’re all the paintings in the world; your wings are penicillin and Leaves of Grass and Starry Night.

ELENA

My wings are atoms splitting and Mein Kampf and paint splashed haphazardly on a canvas.

CAROLINE

Sometimes paint splashed on a canvas is Jackson Pollack.

LINDA

[pause.]  How do you know about Jackson Pollack?

CAROLINE

We learned about him in caterpillar school.

ELENA

No.  Pollack had control over every drip.  He was order.  We are chaos.

CAROLINE

It doesn’t look like he had control over every –

LINDA

Your wings are the reason I wake up from my quiescence every morning.

ELENA

Stop it.

LINDA

It’s true. 

CAROLINE

Is it time for quiescence soon?  I’m getting awfully tired.

LINDA

Soon enough.  [to ELENA]  Come on now, we have to pack.

CAROLINE

Can I help? 

ELENA

How can you help?  You don’t know how important every movement is now.  You can’t just slink around like you used to.

CAROLINE

I can help.  I was voted most likely to… help, in school, and I loved the library so much that I volunteered on my local branch!  I’m very helpful!

ELENA

Well aren’t you just a caterpillar of the community.

LINDA

You did not just say that.

ELENA

I did.  I did!  [laughs, breaks.  ELENA and LINDA laugh.  Maybe embrace.]

CAROLINE

I don’t get it.

ELENA

Oh honey. 

CAROLINE

Who’s Hurricane Hugo? 

ELENA

You heard all that?

CAROLINE

Yes.  He doesn’t sound very nice.

ELENA

Oh honey, he wasn’t.  He was a real, honest-to-goodness hurricane.  And I made –

LINDA

You made straight for the plains the second he started spinning.  His wind was strong, but you pushed back as hard as you could.  And because of the way you flew that night, some people made it into their shelters in time, some people fell in love, and someone made some comment in passing to a nine-year-old.  She’s 34 now, finishing a rotation in oncology.  And in 10 years when she’s sequencing genomes in her lab, the nucleotides will spell out a new word.  A word with new letters.  A word that is the opposite of “metastasize”.  And she couldn’t have read that word – the most important word in medical history since “anesthesia” – but for what she heard when the storm sirens went off in 1989.

CAROLINE

You did all that?

ELENA

A lot happened that night.

LINDA

A lot happens every night.  You can only try your best, and hope it works out.

ELENA

There’s a flight path that will lead to the greatest love shared by the greatest number of people.

LINDA

And there’s a flight path that will lead to immeasurable pain for everyone.  And when that possibility stares you in the face, you have to stare right back.

CAROLINE

So what do we do?

ELENA

We try.

LINDA

We fly.

ELENA

She’s right.  We fly and flutter in all good faith, and hope for the best.  [pause]  This might just be crazy enough to work.

[ELENA goes to the ground to get ready for the next step, which is either…ENDING 1

[CAROLINE is off stage, “hidden”, when this begins.  SHE has shed her wings, and ELENA and LINDA lose them throughout the scene, wind up in clothes of mourning.]

LINDA

You’ve got to get up.  You can do it.

ELENA

Yeah, OK, OK, let’s go.  [THEY start to leave.  ELENA crumples.]  I had his keys in my hand.

LINDA

I know.  And he looked you right in the eye, and spoke as clear as the wind. 

ELENA

I thought I’d… you know… talk to him about it after.  Like, the next morning.

LINDA

You couldn’t have known. 

ELENA

I can’t look at them.  That’s why I came back here, I –

CAROLINE

[ELENA is interrupted by CAROLINE, who’s been listening.]  I know it’s hard for you to see me right now. 

ELENA

I’m –

CAROLINE

[CAROLINE waves ELENA off.]  I know.  I will miss him every day of my life. I loved him more than –

But.  They found another bottle under the seat.  Empty.  And another one in the glove – where the glove compartment used to be.  And another –

Listen to me.  He did this.  Not you.  You don’t know how it would’ve turned out if… I mean Jessica was supposed to get a ride from …  I love him so much, and I hate to say this, but… single car?  No passengers?  And it was instant, they said.  It was instant, they…

[LINDA goes to embrace CAROLINE.]

ELENA

But I could’ve –

CAROLINE

[waves ELENA off]  No.  No.

ELENA

You’re so sweet.  But I don’t know what I’m going to do.

LINDA

Well, the first thing you’re going to do is get off the ground.  After that we can wing it…

[ELENA starts to rise.]

[lights fade to BLACK]

ENDING 2:

LINDA

Let’s go.  Flap those beautiful wings.  [THEY start flying.] 

ELENA

Oh this feels so good already.

CAROLINE

I don’t know how to do it!

ELENA

Don’t overthink, kid.  Just start flapping.

CAROLINE

I don’t want to get lost!

LINDA

You can do this.  Just keep your eyes trained on her wings.

ELENA

Follow her wings, kid.  She’ll show you everything you need to know.  [THEY are flying.]

CAROLINE

Look at those clouds. 

LINDA

You’re as strong as they are.

ELENA

See all those seeds stirring around?

CAROLINE

It’s beautiful up here.

ELENA

It is.

LINDA

It is.

CAROLINE

You guys?

ELENA

Yeah kid?

CAROLINE

Is this the opposite of “metastasize?”

[Lights fade to black]

Advertisement