The Imago

Mother was in her dreams. 

“A butterfly,” she said, looking at Mother. “What does a butterfly have to do with it?”

They were in a meadow. Tufts of grass plumed up around them like little green fires. The sky overhead was a deep blue, vast and wide, bluer and fuller than the sky had ever been in the waking world. There were no trees, only plain, undulating meadow for miles and miles, touching the blue horizon like the confluence of two rivers. 

“A butterfly,” Mother said, and as she spoke a richly-colored monarch butterfly fluttered gently down to settle on her finger, antennae whispering in the gentle warm breeze. “A butterfly does not change by force of will. It undergoes its metamorphosis because it must. There is no choice, there simply comes a time where it must be a butterfly. And a butterfly it becomes.”

She tilted her smooth pink fingers outwards and the butterfly rushed once more into the breeze, flapping its magnificent wings, whispering through the empty meadow. She watched it fly away, shrinking and shrinking until it vanished somewhere off in the warm blue ocean of sky. There was no sun, either, she noticed. The light simply was. It came from within every atom that hung in the air around her. It came from her. But most of all it came from Mother, who seemed to radiate light and warmth as does a lit hearth in winter. She was so much warmer and fuller than she had ever been in life or memory. 

“But I do have a choice, don’t I? I’m not like the butterfly. I can stay a caterpillar if I choose to.” 

Mother laughed softly, peacefully. “No, dear. You are already locked away in your cocoon. You are more like the butterfly than you realize. The change has come upon you suddenly, as though from outside your own will, though you are the one bringing it about. Your metamorphosis has begun, my dear. In fact, you are almost finished.”

“What do you mean, Mother?”

“You will understand soon enough. It is a wonderful thing. It’s the reason I’m here now, the metamorphosis.”

“And where is here, Mother?”

The radiant woman closed her full round eyes for a moment, opened them. “It is nowhere, and it is everywhere, my dear. As trite as you may find that. I am with you, still. I am you, to an extent. This is a place outside the bounds of where you have been before. Though from it you were born, and to it you will return. It is the place your mind goes when you are asleep. It is with you when you are awake.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You will, dear. You will.”

“Is this a dream?”

“It is, and it isn’t. You’ll have forgotten it by morning, anyway.”

She looked around herself, taking in the vast, open meadow, feeling the warm sun on her back, stretching out her fingertips in the omnipresent radiance. There was a strange familiarity, a nostalgia to the whole place, to the almost-nothingness inherent in it. 

“I won’t forget.”

“You will, dear. You’ve been here many times before. We’ve talked. I’ve helped you. You remember fragments of it, see. Fragments that you take back with you to the flesh-and-blood world. But I will be here waiting for you, when you are ready.”

“And when will that be?”

“When the metamorphosis is complete. When you and the butterfly are as one.”

“Mother,” she asked, averting her eyes from the warm, bright woman ahead of her. “Do you like it here?”

Mother chuckled. “There are no likes or dislikes here. Everything is as one. ‘Here’ is all a part of me, and I am but a part of it. It is not about whether I like or dislike it. I am. The ‘am’ itself is too much, even. There is simply an ‘I.’ An immortal, omnipresent, unifying ‘I’.”  

She was still looking at the ground. She noticed, as she watched, that the green tufts of the meadow were losing their lustre. Slowly, gently they were being drained of their very essence. She looked up. The sky, too, was being drained; its blue lost its saturation, and even as she watched great swathes of it withered to a lifeless grey. She looked around for her mother. The meadow had grown cold. 

“Mother!”

The old woman in front of her had shriveled, shrunk, diminished so much in size as to become unrecognizable from the scintillating, bright creature that had stood there moments before. She tried to step forward, but her legs were rooted to the ground, were one with the ground. Mother was fading, turning grey, aging at one hundred years a minute. Her skin flaked and cracked, her spine became twisted as she stood, half-crouched in front of her daughter. Mother was losing her color, too. Her hair, now, was grey. Now her eyes. Now each and every part of her. 

“Mother!” she tried to call, but no sound escaped. Mother faded, the meadow faded, the metamorphosis was almost complete. 

She awoke. 

* * *

That morning Eloise received a call from her mother. She wanted to meet that night for dinner. A high-class Italian restaurant, top of the line. It would be her treat, she said, a certain urgency in her tone. The call happened in a whirlwind. Eloise found herself shushed before she could speak. Soon it was over. It was the first time they had spoken in almost fifteen years, since Eloise was twelve.  

Eloise, since that day, had been raised in the care of an aunt, Jackie, her mother’s sister. Jackie did not have any children of her own, nor did she want any, but she had devoted herself to Eloise with a sort of self-sacrificial stoicism for which Eloise felt a great deal of guilt and gratitude.

Eloise spent the morning and afternoon in fits of nervousness. She found herself flitting from one corner of her small apartment to the other, wondering to herself, sometimes aloud. 

“What’s gotten into her?” she murmured over and over again, busying herself with straightening the couch cushions, rearranging her bookshelves, picking loose clothes off the floor. All the while her heart thumped steadily away in her chest, making her aware of its every motion. Her head ached.

Eventually, as it must inevitably do, evening rolled around. Eloise’s hands shook as she tried three times to fit the car keys into the narrow ignition slot. On the fourth attempt she managed it, startling herself with the car’s strangled roaring all around her. She drove with care, hands trembling.

* * *

“My oh my,” Mother beamed, awash in her own exuberance. “Look at how much you’ve grown!” 

Eloise looked at her. A wide leather purse hung heavily from one of her arms. She did not look as Eloise remembered her, but she could not quite place what had changed. 

“You’ve gotten so tall, dear. And so beautiful, too.” Cars thundered along the street behind them. “Oh, come on then.” Mother took her arm and pulled her through the double doors into the restaurant. 

A warm, deep red light seemed to permeate the dully humming atmosphere indoors. A jazz band played somewhere off in the dimness, and there was the quiet, sibilant swoosh of so many hushed conversations taking place in parallel. Rich, buttery aromas infused the very floorboards, hanging in every atom of air around Eloise and her mother. 

A waiter approached them, spoke briefly with Mother, and promptly led them to their table. He shifted from one foot to another as he spoke, and didn’t seem to know quite where to point his gaze at any given moment. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen, Eloise guessed. 

Eloise and her mother took their seats opposite one another at a small table near the back of the restaurant. There were a few moments of silence. Jazz music wafted softly over them, the trumpet speaking to the saxophone speaking to the piano speaking to the silence. Eloise examined the napkin in front of her. It had been folded into the neat shape of a butterfly, wings pointing majestically in sharp triangles. It evoked in her a strange sort of nostalgia whose source she could not place. A certain halcyon feeling. It seemed so familiar, she thought. 

Suddenly, Eloise looked up. “So,” she said, as casually as she could. “Why did you bring me here, anyway. After all this time.”

“Oh, Eloise!” said Mother, a little too loudly. “Does a mother really need a reason to want to see her daughter?” 

“Yes,” Eloise felt like saying. Before she could manage it the young waiter was at their table. 

“Are you ready to order?”

Mother mentioned a type of pasta Eloise had never heard of. It had an Italian name which Mother wrapped her tongue around so lavishly one might have thought she was actually eating it. 

“And for you?”

“I’ll have the same,” said Eloise. She felt very small in the presence of her mother, too embarrassed to attempt the pronunciation of any item on the menu. 

The waiter jotted a few things down in his notepad before retreating to the kitchen with a polite nod at the two women. 

“So,” Mother leaned conspiratorially forward, throwing a dark shadow over her own butterfly napkin. “How’s your love life? Are you seeing anyone?”

“No,” Eloise said simply.

“Ah, that’s a shame.” Mother sank back into her chair, disappointed. 

Eloise considered returning the question to her mother. Was that the sort of thing one asked their mother? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. 

Mother, having seemingly exhausted her sole line of inquiry, occupied herself with her mobile phone, thumbing it rapidly, flickering images throwing harsh light across her eyes. Eloise watched her with a certain curiosity, not sure if she should be speaking.

Mother looked up then, a solemn expression on her face. “Listen, Eloise,” she said, much quieter than before. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Eloise looked at her mother, suspicious of the sudden shift.

“I’m ill, Eloise. I’m very ill. Dying, in fact. They’ve given me four weeks to live.”

“Oh, I--”

“And I have to ask you for something, Eloise. Do you promise you’ll--”

At that moment the waiter returned to the table, empty-handed.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “The chef says we’re all out of the pasta you asked for. We won’t be able to make your order. We’ve had a very busy night, you see, and it’s our most popular dish. If you would like to order something else, though, we can offer you a small discount.” Eloise watched the waiter shift his weight continuously from one foot to the other, as though balancing. “Again, we’re very sorry.”

“That’s not acceptable,” said Mother sharply.

Eloise and the waiter both turned to look at her. 

“Ma’am?”

“You will give us our food for free, or we will be leaving,” Mother snapped, resuming her usual boisterousness. “This is a disgrace.”

Eloise stared very intently at the folded butterfly, still and graceful on the embroidered tablecloth.

“I’ll see what I can do, ma’am.”

“Yes, you will.”

The waiter swallowed and scurried back to the kitchen.

“It’s alright,” said Eloise. “I don’t mind having something else.”

“No. You’re my daughter and you’re getting what you asked for. It’s the least I can do for you.”

“It’s really alright. I don’t mind.”

“Nonsense. We’ll have them fix it. It’s that idiot waiter’s fault, probably. Got our order wrong or something. They can’t have run out.”

“I really don’t mind.”

Mother spotted the waiter walking back from across the room. He reached the table, grim-faced.

“So?” said Mother, impatiently. 

“We can’t do anything, ma’am. We can offer you twenty-five percent off your meal, though.”

“And you’re sure you got our order right?”

“Yes, ma’am. I wrote it down.” He held up the notepad to indicate that the writing had indeed taken place. 

“Don’t take that tone with me, young man.”

“I wasn’t trying to, ma’am.”

Mother thought for a moment, then stood. “Come on Eloise.”

She turned to the waiter. Eloise tried to speak but was quickly drowned out. “I’ve been going to this restaurant for nearly a decade, and this is the worst service I have ever received. What’s your name?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. We’re running very low on ingredients today. It’s a busy night, you see. I’m sure if you come back some other day we’ll have your pasta for you.”

“What’s your name?” asked Mother, raising her voice. “I’ll be mentioning you in my review. And I’ll be contacting your manager. What’s your name?”

The waiter said nothing. He looked as a deer might in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Eloise tried for an apologetic glance, but he didn’t seem to notice her.

“What’s your name?” Mother half shrieked, stepping forward. She looked as though she might cry. Some of the other diners were pointing their cell phones at her, holding them up above their faces. Others whispered, their voices like so many rivers whipping by, crashing over rocks. Eloise felt herself redden. 

“Ma’am, you’re going to have to leave.” 

Eloise stood, tried to grab her mother’s arm, but she was quickly shaken off. Mother backed slowly towards the exit. “All my friends that go here,” she shouted, “I’ll tell them never to come back! This place is going out of business soon, anyway. I’ll them never to come back. You’re going to lose half your business, you hear. I’ll tell everyone I know!” 

“We’re very sorry, ma’am.” said the waiter. 

Dark lines seemed to have set deeply into Mother’s face. She looked down at her daughter. “Come on, Eloise,” she said, much louder than was necessary, her voice aching with contempt. “We’re leaving.”

* * *

Out on the street it was raining. The sky was dark and angry and grey with clouds. The two women had to shelter under an awning to avoid getting soaked. 

Mother glanced forcefully up and down the street, looking for something or other. 

“What was it you were going to ask me?” Eloise released the question that had been gnawing at her mind.

Mother looked at her then. Her eyes scintillated, and somewhere deep within them hid a glimmer of something uncertain, shining through the dark pupils, as though the rain had washed them clean. 

“Well, I meant to do this after the meal,” said Mother. “I’m very ill, Eloise, like I said. Terribly ill. And I know I haven’t been the best mother to you.”

Eloise was silent. 

“I came to ask you,” Mother squinted her eyes slightly, putting a slight tremble in her voice. “I came to ask you for something.”

“What is it?”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Somewhere far away a car honked its horn. Mother looked at Eloise as though expecting her to have already guessed what was coming.

She shook her head, closed her eyes for a moment, opened them. “I’ll just come right out and say it. I need a transplant, you see. A kidney transplant.”

“Oh,” Eloise said. The rain enveloped them, a bellowing from the heavens. Cars, obscured by the downpour, rolled past like so many hundreds of thunderclaps.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it, Eloise. I know I haven’t been the best mother to you.”

“Did you ask Jackie? Wouldn’t that work better? She’s your sister.”

“I asked her.”

“Oh,” Eloise said again. Rain sluiced the sidewalk around her feet in great rivulets, hanging desperately to the curb, dropping, collecting in puddles. It fell around her in torrents, forming thick walls of falling liquid on each side of the awning.

“I’ll give you some time to think about it. There’ll be one or two more weeks before it becomes urgent, they say.”

There was a silence. 

“I know I haven’t been the best mother to you, Eloise.”

Another silence. 

“I’m going to change, though. We can do this as often as you’d like. Seeing each other, I mean.”

Mother looked hard at Eloise’s face. For a few moments, the rain poured around them, uninterrupted. “I’ll give you time to think,” Mother said, after a moment. 

Mother took to glancing up and down the street once more. After a few long seconds she stopped, reached into her purse, and pulled out a cigarette, then a lighter. She held the thing up to her lips, but her hands shook violently. A harsh wind blew, cutting to bone. After another moment she plunged the cigarette and lighter back into the recesses of the purse.  

Rain thudded angrily down above them, in front of them, to either side. “Let me know,” said Mother, “if you make a decision.” She stepped forward and planted a wet kiss on her daughter’s cheek. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

Eloise nodded vaguely. In her mind’s eye she watched her mother dissolve, crumpling, withering from a dreamlike radiance, turning to wet ash. Footsteps. 

When Eloise looked up, she saw only Mother’s retreating form, leather purse swinging angrily, making its way off into the rain, shrinking and shrinking. 

Feeling a short vibration in her coat pocket, she pulled out her phone. There was a text from Jackie. 

“Call me ASAP,” it read. “If your mother tries to reach out to you, don’t respond.”

Eloise, feeling lightheaded, hid the phone in the darkness of her coat, and shuffled off down the street, battered by rain, looking for a taxi to take her home.

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