The Butterfly Garden

“When they asked her [her name], she just turned away. As far as anyone can tell, this is one girl with no interest in being found. […] Which makes some of them wonder if she’s a victim at all.”

Inara, the novel’s young protagonist, has been singled out by the detectives because of her secretiveness, which makes them suspect that she might be the kidnapper’s accomplice rather than a victim. This distinction gives her a central role in the investigation, and thus in the narrative, because it is through the detectives’ questioning of her that the story unfolds: As in many a police procedural, the detectives serve as the reader’s stand-ins as they slowly unlock the secrets of the Garden, and Inara’s furtive manner tells them that she, as opposed to the other girls, might have insider knowledge of the case. This adds to the story’s suspense because Inara is clearly hiding things from the detectives—personal, perhaps guilty, secrets that are not revealed until the end of the novel.

“And if he survives to come to trial, we need to provide the jury with credible witnesses. A young woman who won’t even tell the truth about her name doesn’t cut it.”

Brandon Eddison, Victor’s partner, provides another reason for the detectives’ relentless focus on Inara as opposed to the other victims: They need to break down her secretiveness so she can be a credible witness at the kidnapper’s trial. They need more from her than just what she witnessed in the garden; for an airtight case, they also need her life story, to ensure that she won’t be caught in any lies or evasions on the stand, or possibly be revealed as a career criminal. Eddison’s remark also reveals that the Gardener has somehow been critically injured, introducing more mystery.

“I was too small to reach for the iron rings and the horse I was on was so wide it made my hips hurt, but round and round and round I went, and I watched my father walk away with a petite Latina. Another time around and I saw my mother leave with a tall, laughing ginger in a Utilikilt.”

Inara describes the pivotal trauma of her childhood, when both of her parents abandoned her at the age of six at a carnival carousel far from home. With this, she realized that her parents cared much less about her than for their casual adulterous hookups. That was the last time, she says, that she was able to cry. Her sense of family, security, and trust in humanity destroyed, she began to see herself as alone in the world. The pain in her hips marks this betrayal as a symbolic violation, while the carousel going “round and round” suggests this abandonment is just the most gutting in a long cycle of abuses and disillusionments in her past and future.

“‘We have an expiration date then?’ I asked quietly. ‘Twenty-one?’”

Inara learns from Lyonette, her friend and fellow captive, that the Gardener is not only a kidnapper but a serial killer, and that Lyonette’s time is almost up. Her cutoff date of 21 hints at the killer’s twisted methodology, i.e., his obsession with “preserving” youth and beauty at their peak. This discovery considerably raises the stakes for Inara, who learns that she and the other captives face not just captivity but a death sentence. Her mercantile phrase (“expiration date”) also reveals her cool, cynical wit.

“Yes, but like most beautiful creatures, very short-lived.”

Lightly referring to the brief lifespan of butterflies, the Gardener obliquely reveals his obsession to Inara in their first encounter, at a gala in the restaurant where she works. His lecherous manner unnerves her, but she assigns little importance, at this stage, to his butterfly remark. Only later, after her kidnapping and imprisonment, do its full implications sink in.

“Sometimes Lorraine looked at those girls on display with such naked envy it was painful to see.”

Lorraine has, in a sense, been cast out of the Garden because the Gardener no longer treasures her as a thing of beauty. Her long life (40+ years) embodies her utter devaluation in the eyes of her captor, who did not consider her worth preserving enough to kill. Her value, to him, is now entirely utilitarian, as a nurse and cook for the doomed, still-young Butterflies, whom she envies because they will always have the Gardener’s “love.” She has internalized the Gardener’s value system, to the point of being jealous of his murder victims, whom he has preserved in a macabre gallery of museum-like cases.

“Then we were all staring at him rather than Evita because he was weeping.”

The Gardener reveals his inverted sense of love and mourning when he weeps over the accidental death of Evita, whom he had intended to kill anyway once she turned 21. This comes as a shock to Inara and the other Butterflies, who begin to understand his compartmentalized view of them as beautiful possessions of his that are tragically fated to die young.

“You seem to have this strange image of me as a lost child, like I’ve just been thrown on the side of the road like garbage, or roadkill, but kids like me? We’re not lost. We may be the only ones who never are. We always know exactly where we are and where we can go. And where we can’t.”

To Victor, Inara argues that children like herself might be more resilient and clear-eyed than kids who have had a more stable life because they have been tested by adversity and thus know their strengths and weaknesses, as well as the true state of the world. Victor disagrees, suspecting that Inara’s harsh upbringing might have made her unduly cynical and untrusting of human nature. The suggestion that Inara has given up on the possibility of a loving family life (as a place she can’t “go”) sets the stage for the novel’s ending, when she is reunited with Sophia, a sort of surrogate mother.

“But what the fuck was the Gardener’s younger son doing breaking into the inner greenhouse complex? And what did it—could it—mean for us?”

One night, Inara spots a black-clad figure who has snuck into the Garden and guesses that it is Desmond, the Gardener’s younger son. Previously, she has only seen Desmond from a distance, walking in the outer garden, but she has reason to believe that he is much different from his older brother Avery, a sadistic killer who has the run of the Garden. Desmond’s (inevitable) discovery of the Butterflies—and of his father’s crimes against them—now becomes the hinge of the story, auguring moral conflict, familial strife, perhaps even romance.

“‘Those who want to believe something badly enough generally do,’ she says simply.”

Explaining to Victor how Desmond could believe his father’s lies about the Garden and its tattooed prisoners, Inara points to humans’ limitless capacity for self-delusion. In this, she includes the Gardener himself, who has convinced himself that he is a loving, benevolent person who does more good than harm.

“You don’t think that at some point the Butterfly names became real?”

Inara suggests—unsettlingly—that humans’ sense of identity is more fragile and circumstantial than we would like to think. For the Butterflies, clinging to memories of their past lives (including their legal names) becomes increasingly pointless, even painful. After months and years in the Garden, with little hope of escape, their Butterfly names—the ones their “sisters” know them by—become central to their emotional bond with their sole companions, on whom they rely for their survival. Their past lives and names become increasingly dreamlike and unreal.

“‘My father collected butterflies,’ he said eventually. ‘He went hunting for them, and if he couldn’t capture them in good condition he paid others for them, and he pinned them into their display cases while they were still alive.’”

As Inara and Desmond become close, the Gardener opens up to her and reveals the origins of his butterfly obsession. His father, he says, failed to protect his own, exquisite butterfly collection, which was lost in a fire: a tragic failing that he believes led to his father’s early death. With the Garden, the Gardener hopes to cement his father’s legacy, in a sense, by eternally preserving his own Butterflies in clear, hard resin. Like his father, he “pins” his captives while still alive, drugging them and drawing out their blood, which he replaces with formaldehyde. It is fitting that Inara’s friendship with Desmond has drawn this disclosure out of him because he looks to Desmond as his “heir”: the next in line to take on his father’s mantle as “collector” (and killer). To be sure, behind his “love” for butterflies lurks the suggestion that he actually blames them for his father’s death, and that his serial murders are actually an elaborate Freudian revenge on the sylphlike beings who took his father from him.

“All of them knew what was happening, not just to themselves but to each other. None of them would say a word.”

Inara reflects on a troubling memory from her childhood that continues to have relevance for her: The foster children of her next-door neighbor (who was a pedophile) never told others what was being done to them. From this, she suspects that Desmond will not report his father to the police. For a young person to give evidence against a father-figure, however abusive, is a big step into the unknown.

“The Gardener’s traits don’t exist in isolation, just in extremes.”

Thinking about Lyonette, who as a child was fascinated by the carousel horses her father designed, Inara sees an innocent echo of the Gardener’s butterfly obsession in her friend’s love and connoisseur-like knowledge of the horses. Aestheticism, or a fascination with beautiful things, is not immoral or murderous in itself, only in the extremes that it takes in some individuals.

“The Gardener clung to his delusions. Desmond eventually confronted the hard truths, or at least the beginnings of them.”

The Gardener carefully curates his own reality (as he does his Garden, its prisoners, and the dead girls on display) by rejecting any “hard truths” that go against his desires and his preening self-image. His son Desmond, on the other hand, is more tough-minded, and shows some fealty to the truth, perhaps because he is not yet morally blinded by his father’s obsessions. As Inara observes, Desmond has begun to acknowledge his father’s evil. The question remains whether he can find the inner strength to oppose his father’s will.

“And now, in the arms of this strange, unaccountable boy, I knew that even if nothing else changed, everything was different. […] Maybe I could change him.”

As Inara and Desmond dance to a romantic ballad, his infatuation with her becomes obvious, and she ponders how best to use this to achieve her (and the others’) freedom. She intuits that, just as the Gardener is largely driven by his physical desires, which override everything else, she might have to use sex to snap Desmond out of his moral paralysis.

“‘Finding out about this…having it all come out…it would kill my mother.’ […] I shrugged. ‘Give it enough time and it’ll kill me too.’”

It emerges that Desmond’s hesitation to call the police has deeper roots than just his loyalty to his father and the family’s legacy. As a loving son deeply attached to his ailing mother, he sees his choice as that between his mother’s life and those of the Butterflies. This increases the pressure on Inara—not only to make a compelling moral argument for her own life, but to make herself emotionally (and sexually) irreplaceable to him.

“‘I brought us a new one!’ Avery announced, his face wreathed in smiles. He shrugged off his burden, letting it drop to the sand. ‘I found her, I got her. Look, Father! See what I found for us!’”

Aware that his younger brother has mostly supplanted him in his father’s esteem and affection, Avery tries to prove his worth by kidnapping a new Butterfly for the Garden. However, acting with viciousness and stupidity, he has beaten, raped, and abducted a girl no more than 12—much younger than his father’s strict minimum age of 16 for new captives. This depraved act horrifies even the Gardener; though (aside from the victim’s age) Avery has simply been following his lead.

“‘I’m not the one who hurt her!’ […] ‘Yes you are,’ I snapped.”

Desmond shows that he has not quite absorbed the “hard truths” of the Garden, e.g., that his continued inaction makes him complicit in his family’s horrific crimes. He is indeed his “father’s son” in his willingness to delude himself, believing that he can sample the pleasures of the Garden (sex with Inara) and still remain perfectly innocent—as long as he doesn’t use force. As Inara again tries to remind him, his knowledge alone makes him complicit.

“We always had to be really careful with the formaldehyde. Even diluted in alcohol, it’s not always stable.”

Sirvat, the “odd,” standoffish Butterfly with a fascination with death, shares her insider knowledge of the explosive qualities of formaldehyde, foreshadowing her action later in the novel. By chance, the Gardener asks her to fetch him medical supplies from the secret room where the formaldehyde is stored. His lack of insight into her character leads to the destruction of the Garden and many deaths.

“‘This is wrong!’ he cried when his father finally took a breath. ‘Taking them is wrong, keeping them is wrong, and killing them is wrong!’ […] ‘That is not your decision to make!’”

After Desmond, goaded by Inara, calls the police, he confronts his father with his decision, at last taking a firm moral stand against the depravity of his father and brother. His father, showing delusions almost of godhood, insists that all moral decisions in the Garden begin and end with himself. He behaves almost as if Desmond were Adam and had just eaten the forbidden fruit. Significantly, the Gardener’s last name turns out to be MacIntosh.

“‘You gave him everything!’ he yelled, pointing the gun at his brother. ‘Your precious Desmond, who never did a thing to help you stock the Garden, and you were so damn proud of him.’”

Avery’s jealousy alludes to another biblical story, that of the Prodigal Son, whose older brother bitterly accused their father of favoring him, despite his being less loyal and hardworking than himself. Avery’s next action—shooting Desmond—correlates him with yet another biblical figure, i.e., Cain, who murdered his brother Abel out of jealousy for God’s love.

“Sophia’s shirt is worn and overlarge, the gaping neck sliding down one shoulder to reveal a bra strap and the edge of a faded wingtip, stretched with gained weight.”

The novel’s final twist reveals Sophia, Inara’s former housemate, to be a former Butterfly, the only captive known to have escaped from the Garden years before. Inara, it turns out, has known this all along, which partly explains why she was so much more resilient and hopeful than the other girls: She knew that escape was possible. It also reveals why she withheld her full story from the detectives—as a delaying tactic, to conceal Sophia’s connection to the case.