Flight Behavior (34 page)

“Well, you’re hardly the first,” he said. “People always want the full predicament revealed and proven in sixty seconds or less. You may have noticed I avoid cameras.”

“You did well, though,” she insisted. “Explaining it to me. I’m not saying I
don’t
believe you, I’m saying I
can’t
.”

“You underestimate yourself. You have a talent for this endeavor, Dellarobia. I see how you take to it. But choose your path carefully. For scientists, reality is not optional.”

“Are we at least allowed to hope the butterflies will make it through this winter?”

He leaned forward, peering up at the sky. “That is not a little hope,” he said.

She thought of other times, other dire news. Pregnancies, wanted or not. It was never real at first. She recalled the day of her mother’s diagnosis, holding her bone-thin arm, its yielding skin, walking her out of the doctor’s office onto the crumbling, shaded parking lot. Little humps of moss that swelled along a scar in the asphalt like drops of green blood. All these vivid external details suggesting nothing had changed. They’d decided to go to the grocery with no more mention, that day, of the end of the world.

Suddenly she felt an acute craving for the Diet Coke she knew to be in her purse. She dug it out with little trouble, cracked it open, and offered Ovid the first sip, but he held up a hand and shuddered as if she’d offered a bite of dirt. “My wife drinks those diet things,” he said. “Aspartame, or whatever it is. It tastes like soap to me.”

She threw back a slug of the fizzy, tepid liquid, noting that it did as a matter of fact taste a little soapy. But caffeinated. She pictured an obese wife chugging diet sodas and burning toast in the kitchen. “What’s your wife’s name?”

“Juliet,” he said.

Give me a break, she thought. “So, Pete says I need to hang up those pillowcases indoors, to give the sleepers a chance to wake up. I count the ones that crawl up the sides, and keep track of numbers, and then what? Do I bring them back up here?”

He clapped his hands together, smiling. “No. This is good, you will like this. We give the sleepers one last chance to sink or swim. It can be a lot—maybe two-thirds of these bodies on the ground are actually alive. But you have to give them every chance.”

She thought of Preston’s veterinary book, with its surprising advice on lamb resuscitation. “What do we do, butterfly CPR?”

“We pitch them into the air one at a time. It’s sink or fly, really. Last winter in Mexico we launched them from the balcony of our hotel over a courtyard where people were dining. Everyone was cheering for the flyers.” His smile grew, remembering that happier place. Dellarobia wished she had been there with him, or anywhere at all, even if it meant flinging herself to the void. To be given the same chance.

“I will come back down to the lab while we still have enough light,” he said. “To help with that. I don’t suppose you have any balconies at your house.”

She raised one eyebrow. “Not hardly. Do you?”

She should let him speak of his home and his wife, if that’s what he wanted. His Juliet. She did ask. But he merely said, “No balconies.”

So that’s how it would be. She would go home to make soup that was better than Juliet’s, and return here as queen of this tribe. At dusk she and Ovid would climb together to the barn loft. They would stand in the open door of the haymow and take these butterflies in hand, one at a time, and toss them into the air. Some would crash. And some would fly.

11

Community Dynamics

D
ellarobia’s phone buzzed. A text from Dovey, one of her church sightings:
GET RIGHT OR GET LEFT
. Dellarobia texted back:
LTS GO
.

She was nowhere near ready to go, still in her bathrobe and ratty yellow slippers. But Dovey was one of those people who traveled in a medium-size pod of tardiness on which others came to rely. Dellarobia poured herself a second cup of coffee and pulled out a kitchen chair to put her feet up. In a lifetime of hearing people celebrate weekends, she finally saw what all the fuss was about. By no means did her workload cease on Saturday, but it did shift gears. If her kids wanted to pull everything out of the laundry basket to make a bird’s nest and sit in it, fine. Dellarobia could even sit in there with them and incubate, if she so desired. Household chores no longer called her name exclusively. She had an income. She’d never before understood how much her life in this little house had felt to her like confinement in a sinking vehicle after driving off a bridge. Scooping at the toys and dirty dishes rising from every surface was a natural response to inundation. To open a hatch and swim away felt miraculous. Working outside the home took her about fifty yards from her kitchen, which was far enough. She couldn’t see the dishes in the sink.

A steady ruckus rose from the living room, where Cordie sang at the top of her lungs,
“Lo mio lo mio
,” something she’d learned from Lupe’s little boys. It meant “mine” in Spanish, Preston had explained, astonishing Dellarobia with her first sense of being an outsider to her children’s lives. Preston was now making vocal crashing noises, each followed by howls of make-believe pain from Cub. She scooted her chair forward to peek through the doorway. Cub lay on his back on a blanket outstretched on the living room floor, with Preston beside him arranging an armada of vehicles: Matchbox cars, a red plush fire engine, a plastic tractor.

“What in the Sam Hill are you all doing?” she called out.

“It’s a parking lot,” Preston replied. “I’m running over Daddy with everything.”

“Poor Daddy. Does your victim need a refill?”

Cub lifted his coffee cup. She carried in the coffeepot and kneeled on a corner of the blanket to fill his mug. “Should we call this a blood transfusion?”

“Nah,” Preston said. “He’s just smooshed.”

A far cry from veterinary medicine, she thought. But Cub was good about letting the whole boy out for a run, where Dellarobia would have reined him in. Cub was not always in the mood, but when the kids did get him down on the floor he gave himself over wholly, letting them direct their play, however silly or tedious or grotesque.

“Lo mio lo mio!” Cordie’s voice bounced with her fast little steps as she came running from her bedroom carrying a board book, which she pretended to stuff into Cub’s mouth. Cub made chomping sounds,
gnowm gnowm
, and Cordie shouted gleefully, “Dat’s hay!” She dropped the book and ran to fetch another bale.

“I’m not just smooshed,” Cub informed Dellarobia. “I am also a cow.”

“Husbands with secret lives. I’m calling Oprah.”

Through the front window blinds she saw Dovey’s vintage Mustang slide into the driveway. Her double honk set the kids to shouting, “Dovey’s here!” Dellarobia ran to get dressed. The kids were ready an hour ago, far keener to meet a blue convertible than any school bus, all keyed up for a wild ride with Aunt Dovey. Dellarobia heard the clamor as they tackled her at the door, begging to ride with the top down.

“Brrr, no way! It’s freaking February the second, you guys,” Dovey said. “Hey Cub, what happened to you?”

“Same old same old,” he said. “Vehicular homicide.”

Cub planned to help Hester move the pregnant ewes today while Dellarobia took the kids shopping with Dovey. They were headed for Cleary to check out a huge new secondhand warehouse. Dellarobia’s usual haunt was the Second Time Around, a store so tiny it was actually in the owner’s house, but Dovey disliked it on the grounds you were sure to run into people you knew, or their stuff. Admittedly, Dellarobia often saw items she recognized, including suits made by her mother, and once, in full sequined glory, the very magenta prom dress worn by the girl for whom her old boyfriend Damon had dumped her. This was years after Damon had married the girl, and in fact also divorced her, yet there hung the dress, glistening like a stab wound. Cleary seemed a long way to go for bargains, but she had to concede, exchanges could get intimate in Feathertown.

Dovey looked jaunty in a suede newsboy cap and maroon turtleneck, well put together as usual.
Duggy and Stoked
, they used to declare this, as if they were their own cable show: two girls dressed and ready for action. A worldlier, female version of
Wayne’s World
, in which all things came off as planned. Dovey’s convertible, on the other hand, always seemed provisional to Dellarobia, especially with the top closed, flapping as if something important was about to come loose. It had no shoulder harnesses in the backseat, only lap belts, so the kids’ car seats fit in a sigoggling way that was probably unsafe. The kids of course adored this.

“Hey, look!” Preston shouted. “A smooshed groundhog, like I did to Daddy.” Dellarobia was amazed he could see roadkill from the backseat. The animal was as flat as a drive-through hamburger.

“And here it is Groundhog Day,” Dovey said genially. “Sorry, Mr. Hog, not much shadow there. I never can remember, does his shadow cause there to be more winter, or less?”

Dellarobia considered and dismissed both cause and correlation. “Neither,” she said. “It’s just something people made up to get themselves through the homestretch.”

“Right.” Dovey had an endearing habit of nodding once, curtly, an assent of bobbing curls. “There’s going to be exactly six more weeks of winter no matter what. Because it is freaking February the second.”

Six weeks. The butterflies would have survived to fly away by then, or they would have died. His large hope, her job, the whole deal soon departed. Sometimes everything hit her, as in
everything
, the approach of flood and famine, but mostly she could not see a day past the middle of March. Dellarobia gripped the door handle as Dovey took the curves a little fast. This road was fifteen miles of hateful, winding around the mountain from Feathertown’s outer pastures through intermittent woods and hamlets of mobile homes. She was surprised when they passed the infamous Wayside, meaning they’d already crossed the county line. Cleary was not that far away, but Dellarobia couldn’t say when she’d been there last. It had the college and a lot of restaurants and bars, and might as well have been located in another state, as far as her married self was concerned. Obviously Dovey thought of it as no distance at all. She had roaming capabilities.

“Okay. I am so moving out of that stupid duplex,” Dovey announced.

Dovey had been so moving out of the duplex for nine of the last ten years, while her brother drove her crazy with his never-ending remodel. He was the ambitious one, Tommy. He’d bought that house on Main as a fixer-upper when barely out of high school and extorted an obscene amount of rent from his siblings in the decade since, capitalizing on their desire to leave home at an early age. The parents were all for it; they’d cosigned Tommy’s loan. Dellarobia didn’t really get it—the boys were still crammed in and bunked up together, two of them sharing a bedroom to this very day, as men in their twenties. Dovey at least had a whole side of the duplex to herself, but still. The walls were thin. They knew more about each other’s lives than adult siblings should.

“How’s Felix?” Dellarobia asked.

Dovey sighed casually. “I need to get Felix over with.” Dovey did love life the way Cub watched television. “Shoot,” she added, “I need to text him. His wallet’s been in my kitchen for two days.” She reached for her purse, but Dellarobia snatched it away.

“No, ma’am, not with my kids in your car. ‘Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.’ ”

Dovey actually claimed to have seen that one on a sign, and probably regretted having conveyed it. She rolled her eyes. “So what’s new in the Land o’ Science?”

I have a talent for the endeavor, she thought. His words. Dellarobia was concealing nothing specific, but felt a capacious welling of things she couldn’t talk about. The sensation was physical. “Pete left yesterday. He packed up a bunch of frozen butterfly samples and took off driving back to New Mexico.”

“Back to the missus he goes,” Dovey sang. “And what about the good doctor? He seems to be kept on a longer leash.”

“There is a wife, Juliet. She exists. She’s a bad cook.”

“So bad he has to live in a different time zone?”

“I guess people have their reasons,” Dellarobia said. “But I don’t see it. Why be married and live apart?”

Dovey shrugged. “Do I look like Ask Miss Marriage?”

She hadn’t yet told Dovey about Cub’s confession. With the kids always around, she hadn’t had a chance to get into the Crystal Estep saga, nor any real zest for the telling. She felt embarrassed, both for herself and for Cub. And anyway, nothing had happened.

Dellarobia was surprised by their hasty arrival. They pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall and zoomed into the perfect space, courtesy of Dovey’s muscular engine and belligerent driving, right near the sliding front doors. The Try It Again Warehouse was big-box-size and a tad dilapidated, with piles of recently dropped-off items spilling like dunes over the pavement in front of the plate-glass windows. A green toilet sat primly upright between boxes of wadded coats and plastic toys. “What is this place,” Dellarobia asked, “some charity, like the Salvation Army?”

“No, it’s somebody’s business they started up. The ads say they’ll come clean out your attic or whatever. I’d say they make their money on volume.”

Dellarobia found it odd that people would donate their discards to a private enterprise instead of a charity. Passers-by must see the stuff piled up here and automatically eject their own castoffs, a townie equivalent to the wildcat landfills that grew alongside country roads. Some universal junk-attraction principle.

Dovey was not a secondhand shopper by nature as Dellarobia was, but she’d heard this place had racks of worn-once designer dresses. Appearances did not suggest that Vera Wang was on the premises. Inside the dusty storefront they met a boggling display of items that were all going for twenty-five cents. Salt shakers, unmatched but decent flatware, a cheese grater, a set of cast iron skillets of the type Dellarobia had never been able to afford. She set a dollar’s worth of high-quality cookware into an empty cart and lifted Cordie into the fold-down seat. The twenty-five-cent shelves went on and on. Dellarobia was stupefied by the bargains.

“Why isn’t everybody we know here?”

“Mama, you could put Daddy’s picture in this,” Preston suggested, holding up an overlarge canary yellow picture frame.

“You are so right,” she said. Preston moved on to a tape recorder. Dellarobia examined a big meat platter with a treelike gravy gutter built into it, exactly like one her mother used at Thanksgiving and other big-deal family meals, occasions that had always left Dellarobia feeling their family was insufficiently large. Why hadn’t her parents had more children? As a child she’d never thought to ask, and now she would never know. So much knowledge died with a person.

Cordelia was determined to climb out of the cart, which she called the “buggy.” Where did she learn that? Dellarobia lifted her out of the wire seat, kicking, sending one blue plastic clog flying, which Preston ran to fetch and put back on his Cinderella sister. She accepted the compromise of standing up in the cart. “Buggy mama buggy mama,” she chanted, grabbing both sides and rocking, her pale hair a wild waggling halo. Her unassailable wardrobe choice today was her favorite striped summer dress, with corduroy pants underneath and sweaters over it. Dellarobia thought of those ragtag campers with the knitting needles she’d seen up on the mountain. She could see Cordie running off to join that tribe.

Dovey moved out of twenty-five-cent range to nab a pair of silver high-heeled sandals. She and Dellarobia gravitated toward a long rack of wedding dresses, mostly in majestic plus sizes, just to run their hands over those expanses of satin and organza with their pearl-encrusted bodices. So much whiteness, perfectly seamed. “They’re all in such great condition,” Dovey said reverently.

“Duh. This is not a garment that gets a lot of wear.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dovey laughed. “Hey, is there a maternity bride section?”

“Ha ha. Actually there should be.”

Cordelia started up a weird double-time stomping routine in the buggy, like something from an exercise class. The child seemed energized by commerce. As they cruised between close-set racks of women’s clothing, she chirped continually, “Like dis, Mama?” Dellarobia wasn’t looking for herself, but noticed the vintage jackets with interfaced collars and lined sleeves. So much quality going for nothing, like those cast-iron skillets. The older merchandise here was better made than literally everything in the dollar store. She tried on a fitted corduroy blazer, forest green, circa Angie Dickinson. It made her feel like a higher-quality person. She decided to wear it around the store. Her daughter set herself to pulling down every flowered, sequined, or otherwise gaudy blouse from the racks, tilting each one cornerwise off its hanger and asking, “Dis cute?”

“She has her own sense of style,” Dovey observed. “You’ve got to give her that.”

Dellarobia did give her that, but wondered why. Preston was indifferent to fashion. He had drifted downstream, floating out the mouth of the clothing aisle into an estuary of household appliances where he was trying everything out: pushing all the buttons on the blender, popping the toaster, ironing with the iron—something he must have seen at Lupe’s house, not hers. All other appliances here were greatly outnumbered by the irons, a whole battalion of them lined up like pointy-headed soldiers at attention. She was getting the gist of this place: long on items that people were ready to part with.