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She sat on the windowsill of her bedroom and looked out at the sparkling blue water of the Caldera. The lost city of Atlantis was supposed to be under there. She imagined Tibby under there. She imagined the Traveling Pants under there. She imagined the ring that Kostos had bought for her when he still thought he loved her under there.
Her vision of the world under the water represented a beautiful stillness, a version of heaven. It was the lost city of Lena, her alternate universe, the life she yearned for but didn’t get to have.
Later in the week, after a few morning hours in the creek, Bridget and Bailey found a bunch of wooden boards in the shed and tried to construct a tree house in a bush. After an hour it collapsed, which seemed to both of them much more entertaining than its staying intact. They built it again and again, shoddier each time, and laughed when it fell down.
That same evening, Brian worked late, and after dinner Bridget and Bailey went out to the back steps to watch the last of the sun fading away and the sky turning dark. They saw two bats, and then in the gloaming, the first zap of a firefly. Bridget shouted like a two-year-old and pointed. “Lightning bug! Did you see it? The light flash in the air?”
Bailey watched the air with suspicion and interest. Bridget could see her trying the words out in her mouth before she said them aloud. Even at this tiny age she was like her mother in not wanting to get out in front of something before she had a feel for it.
“Let’s get a jar and we’ll catch one,” Bridget said excitedly. She ran into the kitchen with Bailey following. She found a glass jar on a high shelf. Bailey watched in wonder as she jammed a few holes in the lid with the point of a sharp knife. Bridget vaguely wondered how many decent knives she’d ruined over the years in this enterprise.
Bailey followed her back out to the yard. Standing on the grass in the falling dark, Bailey looked tentative. Bridget wondered if she’d been outside at night much.
“Let’s pick a few blades of grass and put them in the jar to make it a nice home for when we catch one,” she said ambitiously. “Here, like this.” She plucked a blade of grass, unscrewed the lid, and put it in the jar.
This Bailey could do. She leaned down and plucked the blades one at a time and carefully put each one in the jar. It was hard to get her to stop.
“I see one,” Bridget said. “Look.” She pointed there and there and there. Bailey stood frozen in her white pajamas and bare feet in the middle of the grass. Her eyes were large and attentive.
“Watch this,” Bridget said, putting the jar down. She chased a bug and grabbed it out of the air with cupped hands. She brought it back to Bailey, kneeled down, and opened her hands slowly. Bailey was eager to see but didn’t want to get too close. “See it?” Bridget said when the bug’s posterior lit up.
“See it,” Bailey said, awed.
Bridget let it go and Bailey followed it with her eyes. Then Bailey started jumping around. “Catch! Catch!” she yelled.
Bridget ran around the lawn. Bailey ran around too, but in aimless excitement. “Got it!” Bridget cried when she caught another one.
Bailey rushed over. This time she peered down very close and made a little scream when it flashed.
“We could let it go or put it in the jar.” She pointed to the jar lying on the grass.
Bailey made an excited mangle of sounds ending with “jar.”
Bridget wasn’t sure Bailey knew what it meant. Kneeling down so Bailey could see, she trapped the bug in one closed hand and opened the jar with the other hand while holding it between her knees. She opened her closed hand onto the top of the jar and held it flat until the bug flew in. She could hear Bailey breathing. “Now, quick, you put the lid back on so the bug doesn’t fly out.”
Once the lid was screwed shut Bridget handed the jar to Bailey. Bailey held it with two hands and gasped and dropped it as soon as the bug lit up. Bridget laughed and picked it up off the grass. She put it back in Bailey’s eager hands.
“Pretty cool, huh?”
Bailey stared into the jar and then looked up at Bridget. “Again?”
“You want me to catch another one?” Bailey nodded.
“Okay. You can try to catch one too.”
Bailey was loath to let the jar go for the sake of catching, but finally relented. They both ran around the grass. Bailey flailed at the sky with cupped hands in rough imitation of Bridget.
As soon as Bridget caught and captured another one in the jar, Bailey looked at her greedily. “Again?”
“Another one?”
“Other one!”
They kept at it until there were nine lightning bugs in the jar. Bridget found it so thrilling that it was hard to stop, and Bailey was relentless.
“It’ll get too crowded,” Bridget finally said, laughing.
“Other one!” Bailey shouted.
“Too many in there. They might get in a fight.”
Bailey paused and looked interested in that.
“They might bite each other.”
Bailey looked concerned.
“No, I’m just kidding. They don’t bite.”
“No bite,” Bailey proclaimed, snapping her jaws together.
“No bite.”
Brian came out onto the back steps. “What are you doing out there?” he called.
Bailey went rushing for the steps, nearly hyperventilating in her eagerness to show her dad the bugs and the jar.
Bridget smiled and stood around, a little awkward about her own zeal, but proud at having caused the excitement and pleasure.
Bailey’s words collapsed into such an eager muddle you couldn’t understand one thing she was saying, but the blinking jar spoke for itself.
“Wow,” Brian kept saying, carrying her into the house as she held the jar, still sputtering with her story. “Wow. Wow.”
Bridget cleaned up the kitchen with a feeling of satisfaction, listening to Brian calming Bailey dow
n and putting her to bed.
Yawning on her own way to bed an hour or two later, Bridget stopped at Bailey’s bedroom and opened the door very quietly. She walked a few steps into the room and smiled to herself at the sight of Bailey in her crib, still clutching the lightning-bug jar, and the bugs still flashing faintly between her arms.
Bridget hoped for another long innocent night of sleep, but it didn’t come. The longer she lay in the little twin bed in the extra room of this house that had been Tibby’s house, the more agitated she felt. There were so many obvious sources for this feeling, she didn’t feel any desire to dig. But her mind didn’t go to the obvious things like Tibby or Eric or Nurse Tabitha or Carmen or Lena, it went further back, to her mother. The memories opened not in any logical order but in flashes, some sweetly nostalgic and others devastating.
And then, without warning, her mind skipped all the way back to the present. It flashed on the glass jar in Bailey’s arms and then flashed ahead to the very near future, the morning right in front of them. The thought of it made her so restless she sat up in bed and put her feet on the floor. She imagined Bailey waking up and finding the bugs dead or dying among the bits of grass in the jar.
Bridget had killed enough lightning bugs in her life to know how it went. Whatever light they might muster in the context of the morning sun looked tawdry and pitiful, so you couldn’t believe there had been any grandeur to it at all.
She couldn’t tolerate the idea of Bailey’s discovering them in that state. What would Bailey’s delicate heart say about that? What would she think of Bridget’s magic then?
How could Bridget have ever thought the lightning bugs were a good idea? What business had she to try to capture life and light? Why was she incapable of thinking anything through? She belonged in the lower orders with the termites and cockroaches. She belonged in a jar, small and powerless, where she couldn’t do harm.
Bridget crept out of her room and into Bailey’s. She carefully pried the jar from between Bailey’s arms and crept back to the hallway. She went through the back door out onto the dampening grass. She unscrewed the lid and showed the poor bugs the sky, imagining they would fly to freedom. But they didn’t. They were apparently so stunned by their twisting fate, the only way to get them out was to dump them on the grass. She watched them trying to reorient.
