Cub was brewing a bad mood of his own design. He yanked out a shopping cart and began to toss things in: roach and ant killer, Krazy Glue, Clorox, antifreeze, shopping by the same rules he applied to watching TV. Channel-surfing his way through the dollar store. A quest that made her think of the skinny old man they always saw at the landfill, eternally churning the heap with his hoe, seeking some fortune in the dump where fortunes didn't grow. Some called that living.
"Nice Christmas gifts, honey. If everybody on our list is planning suicide."
He rolled his eyes, shook his head. A wife was to be endured. Men learned that from television, she thought.
"Well, why do I always have to be the police? You're over ten dollars already."
"Oka-ay," he said, too loudly. "Since you already blew forty on your tar and nicotine." He trudged off to put the items back, and shortly returned with two T-shirts, Fire Department and Little Pony, in the correct sizes. Six and ten dollars respectively. She took them to consider, rubbing the pathetically thin fabric between her fingers. The side seams of the Little Pony shirt ran right off the edges, already raveling apart.
"Why is girls' stuff more expensive? Look at this. Half the amount of fabric, half the quality, and almost double the price."
He shrugged. "I don't know, because boys wear their clothes out faster?"
"Oh, please. You think anybody's on our side?" She tossed the T-shirts onto a shelf, entirely in the wrong place, and she didn't care. Let them hire extra help; people needed the jobs. They turned the cart into the seasonal aisle. "Just ask Hester about the ornaments, okay? She's got dump-truck loads. You could go up in her attic and steal some, she'd never know." Dellarobia thought of the wooden ornaments her father made years ago, which must still exist somewhere. What a complicated life cycle those must have passed through: attic boxes, funeral upheavals, yard sales. Like an insect going through its stages, all aimed in the end toward flying away.
Cub picked up a brassy-looking plastic bell with the year on it, labeled "Keepsake," and turned it over. "Two dollars," he said. "That's not bad."
"Here's the thing, genius, do the math. You need more than one. You need twenty or something, or the tree looks pathetic."
He put the ornament back. Like a child, she thought. His consumer skills were somewhat more advanced than his daughter's, but not by much. She looked over the bins of tinselly junk and felt despair, trying to find one single thing that wouldn't fall apart before you got it home. Maybe her father was lucky to die young with his pride of craftsmanship intact. What would he make of this world? Realistically, it probably wasn't slave children, but there had to be armies of factory workers making this slapdash stuff, underpaid people cranking out things for underpaid people to buy and use up, living their lives mostly to cancel each other out. A worldwide entrapment of bottom feeders.
"What about all those things you made when you were little, Cub?" she asked. "Those Popsicle-stick stars and stuff she's kept all this time. Wouldn't Hester at least give you those for our tree?"
"Talk about tacky," he said.
"But it's our tacky. Isn't that the Christmas deal, pass on the love and all that?"
"The true meaning of Christmas is, Turn it over and look at the price tag."
This struck her as the most insightful thing Cub had said in years, although maybe he just meant it literally. They began picking through a shelf of shrink-wrapped DVDs labeled "Previously Viewed." She felt degraded, as if shopping for previously chewed meals. Cub held up one labeled "Monster Machines," but she shook her head.
"That's not really what Preston is into now. He likes nature stuff."
Cub smirked and held up another, showing a gigantic python curled around a frantic girl who was showing a lot of leg.
"Read my lips," she said, and then mouthed, "Asshole."
Cub was aware of Preston's new interest, and she suspected he didn't care for it. He wanted his son to be good at sports. Preston's stature, she knew for a fact, was a matter that Cub addressed in his prayers. Heaven forbid he should grow up to be a smart, nearsighted pipsqueak like his mother. There was a TV show Cub liked about geeky young men in an apartment, all geniuses supposedly, always reduced to stammering fools by the hot blond girl next door. Cub laughed and laughed at these boy scientists in their ill-fitting pants and dim social wits. Dellarobia noticed they had a dishwasher, and a pricey-looking leather sofa the size of an Angus steer.
She squinted to read the small print on what seemed to be a documentary about lions. It was hard to tell what you were really getting. And it was $12.50. For a previously viewed video, that was outrageous. Their cart remained empty as they rounded the corner into the toy aisle. Cub picked up a boxing robot game, registered the $20 sticker, and put it back. Then he picked out a large $5 affair that looked to be some combination of automatic weapon and chain saw.
"Every redneck child's dream!" she carped, eliciting a tight, warning look she rarely saw from Cub. She should rein herself in, she knew that. The eruption of loathing came out of nowhere. It scared her. Who was she, anyway? A girl who got knocked up in high school and scurried under the first roof that looked like it might shed water. Now attempting to hang out with a higher-class crowd, getting above her station.
"Ho-ho-ho, you two! Santa's little helpers?"
They looked up to see Blanchie Bise from church. Dellarobia gestured at their empty cart. "Not much help, are we?"
"I saw you were in the papers again, Dellarobia," Blanchie said, tugging at her tightly belted raincoat. Everything she ever wore was sized for a previous Blanchie, before creeping weight gain took its toll. Dellarobia thought of it as the Wardrobe of Denial. Blanchie glanced anxiously from wife to husband, when neither of them responded about the newspaper article. "Well!" she piped. "What do you think of this weather? Should we start building an ark?"
Their argument hung suspended, like a movie on pause. Blanchie got the message and scurried along.
"I'm sorry if we're raising redneck children on a redneck paycheck," Cub said, in almost a growl. "At least I'm working."
"Oh, and I'm not."
He didn't answer.
"You try running after those kids for a day, then. You'd be flat on your back."
"I babysat them Friday. While you went running after those fancy-pants kids."
"For one day, Cub. Not even a whole day. And you were flat on your back."
"I watched them, didn't I?"
"Is that what you call it? They'd emptied out the whole refrigerator onto the kitchen floor when I got back. Preston was trying to put a peanut butter jar in the microwave and Cordie was walking around with a ten-pound load in her pants. You were on the couch watching 1000 Ways to Die, as I recall."
"When are you going to potty-train her, anyway?"
When am I going to potty-train her, mouthed Dellarobia, to the imaginary audience of her soap opera. Maybe not entirely imaginary. One of the yellow-aproned checkout ladies was pretty much following their every move. "She's not even two yet," Dellarobia hissed. "And what's this about fancy-pants kids? Those students are living at the Wayside."
"Slumming it for a vacation. They'll go home at Christmas and tell their friends all about it."
"I don't know," she said. She was aware that could be true. She felt herself looking at things through their eyes sometimes. A lot of times, in fact. Their days here were like channel-surfing the Hillbilly Network: the potholed roads, the Wayside, the sketchy diner, her tacky house. She herself was a fixture in their reality show, Redneck Survivor. It had altered her sense of things, even in this familiar store where she was examining her purchases with some new regard. As if she could go elsewhere.
"You don't know what?" Cub asked.
"I don't know what those kids are going home to. So don't act like you do."
"Whatever. You're the big shot." He rolled his eyes toward the end of the aisle where they'd met Blanchie.
"What, because everybody saw I was in the newspaper? You bragged a
bout that, Cub. You were ready to sign autographs at work for having a famous wife."
He pretended to study an array of identical dolls dressed in different gauzy costumes. "I didn't think it would turn into a full-time job," he murmured.
She blew out through her nose, nostrils flared, feeling like a horse. "I didn't even want to talk to them the second time. I told you that. I said they needed to interview Dr. Byron, but he was gone up the mountain. I only talked to them for about fifteen seconds. I just posed for that picture so they'd go away." Also, the first one they'd taken was hideous. She was hoping to expunge it from the record.
Spider-Man socks, $3. Spider-Man underwear three-pack, $5.50. Preston needed both, but did underwear count as a Christmas gift? Cub kept saying he wanted the kids to have a "real Christmas," but she felt off balance, wondering what those words could possibly mean. "Oh, and let me tell you, Cordie was screaming the whole time, with those reporters. Just like the first time. I don't think she cares for publicity."
"Not like her mother."
"Will you quit being stupid!"
A shopper at the end of the aisle looked up. Dellarobia dropped her voice. "You started this, Cub. Announcing it in church. I didn't even say half the stuff in that article, about the butterflies being on holy ground and everything. That's your doing."
"I felt the Spirit, Dellarobia. Something you don't understand, I guess."
His sincerity was untouchable, she knew that. Not just in church, everywhere. He'd even offered Ovid a place for his camper. For whatever else he was or wasn't, Cub bore a plain, untarnished humanity. The fact of that now only cut her anger with more self-hatred. She found herself unable to give in. "I was there last Sunday, and you weren't, thank you very much."
She'd had to go it alone with Hester, bearing up under the stares. As a spiritual celebrity she was expected to shine with the Beacons, not slink off for coffee and carbs. The beatitude of Feathertown's miracle had its perks, but some seemed to think Dellarobia was parading herself, and Hester was profiteering. Others weren't keen on the outsiders, Ovid Byron and certain unspoken things he might represent. All this of course was filtered through a couple of screen doors before she heard it, but she could imagine. And she was still trying to figure Hester, whom she'd now seen buckle under three times: first in church under the wide gaze of Pastor Ogle, and again when she got so nervous about his impending visit. And third, when she cried and asked for help in Dellarobia's kitchen. No, four times: up on the mountain when she declared Dellarobia was receiving the spirit. Hester was frightened of something, and she was starting to think it might be God. Church was getting too complicated for comfort.
"So did the spirit move you to agree with your dad?" she asked Cub. "About cutting our mountain down to the stumps?"
"You act like we have a choice. We need the money."
"He needs the money. Bear didn't ask us before he took out that equipment loan. Why is this balloon payment our problem?"
"He didn't know he'd lose all his contracts when this economy crap hit the fan."
"Well, but it was his risk."
"And it's his land."
"And we have nothing? Whatever gets done on that farm, we help do it. Cub, look at me. Will you just look at me when I'm talking to you?"
He stopped and turned with exaggerated annoyance, looking at her with tired, flat, loveless eyes, as sick of this story as she was. She wanted what could not be. She wanted him to choose his team. Not mother and son. Man and wife.
"You know I'm right," she said fiercely. "We work that farm, we're raising our children to call it home, and we don't even get a vote? What am I saying? We don't even get any g-d Christmas ornaments! We just beg for your mother and daddy's handouts. Damn it, Cub. When are you going to potty-train yourself?"
People were staring. The checkout lady in the red turtleneck looked ready to call someone. Having a marital knock-down-drag-out in public was the trashiest kind of humiliation. The whole tired tangle of her life disgusted her. Suddenly, like the flush in the back of her throat she always felt before a virus came on, she had it back: the bizarre detachment that had pulled her in October and November to run away from her marriage. Riding the crest of that wave that shut out everything but the thrill of forward motion. In this moment, here, she was sane enough to be terrified. That whole almost-affair had been like a dream. In real life there were no clean getaways. In this life, she had to line up a sitter just to have a fight.
Cub picked up a sippy cup shaped like a frog, two dollars. She grabbed it from him and tossed it into the cart. So the cashiers wouldn't think they were here to shoplift.
"What did he say, on Sunday?" Cub asked.
"Who?"
"Pastor Ogle. About the mountain."
Cub would go with the prevailing wind, whether it was Bobby Ogle or his mother. He wanted an ally. So did Hester, her ferocity notwithstanding. Everyone wanted to be inside the fold rather than out; maybe life was that simple. "Would that settle it for you," she asked, "if Bobby came out against the logging?"
"I don't know."
"Would it make a difference if Hester did? Or anybody else on the planet, other than me?"
"Everybody on the planet doesn't know about it," Cub said.
"Well, just about. You can't keep a tattoo on your butt a secret in this town. If Bear even wanted to keep it quiet, which he doesn't."
"He's got nothing to be ashamed of. He says it's wrong to break a contract."
"Are we speaking of Bear Turnbow's morals? Oh, just a minute. Let me wave some money in the air and see which way his morals turn."
Cub picked up something called a "whip-around sound wand," just to look at it, but she yanked it from his hand and threw it back at the shelf. A toy whose sole purpose was to drive mothers insane.
Cub was starting to shrink from her temper, the predictable course of things. Whipped, she knew what men called it. All roads in her marriage led to this, the feeling she'd stepped into Cub's life to take over where Hester left off, and that was the most wretched thought of her day. "I'm sorry," she said, handing the wand back to him. He waved it around with no real enthusiasm, and put it back.
"So what does Pastor Ogle think?" Cub asked her again. "About what we should do up there."
"Why should Bobby Ogle decide what we do with our own land?"
Of course she knew why. Why did people ask Dear Abby how to behave, or take Johnny Midgeon's word on which men in D.C. were crooks? It was the same on all sides, the yuppies watched smart-mouthed comedians who mocked people living in double-wides who listened to country music. The very word Tennessee made those audiences burst into laughter, she'd heard it. They would never come see what Tennessee was like, any more than she would get a degree in science and figure out the climate things Dr. Byron described. Nobody truly decided for themselves. There was too much information. What they actually did was scope around, decide who was looking out for their clan, and sign on for the memos on a wide array of topics.
Cub had left the toy aisle but returned carrying the ugliest object she'd ever seen in her life. A big planter box shaped like a swan. "Should we get this for Mother?"
She looked it up and down. The shiny orange beak, the cheap molded white plastic that would fall apart in a season. The seam that ran up the neck and down the middle of its hateful, beady-eyed face. "Sure," she said. "Hester will love it."
He vanished again, leaving her to push that blooming swan in her cart for all to see. The close-set eyes made it look like that killer in Psycho. A gift that would go on giving, she realized, after Hester filled it with petunias on her porch, and she'd meet that evil gaze every time she pulled in their drive. She felt guilty about despising Hester. Even that was getting complicated. They were allies in some sense, given the new backbiting in the flock. Bobby himself might be on the fence. Last Sunday he'd spoken of a throwaway society and things of this world taking on too much importance, and naturally she thought of Bear and his logging, though she could have bee
n reading into it. He said the Old and New Testaments together had over a thousand passages about respecting God's earth, which seemed pretty direct. But later he blessed all those present in the hope of many things including prosperity, which kind of undermined his point. It made her feel hopeless. Not even Bobby Ogle could read those thousand passages and figure things out on a case-by-case basis. In a world of wars and religious fracas, prosperity might be the sole point of general agreement. Honestly, if you waved a handful of money, whose head didn't turn toward it? Only those who'd already paid off their houses, was her guess.
Cub had abandoned her in the toy aisle, still having found nothing that would please Preston. Cordie was easy, she would make wrapping paper a festivity, but Preston was another story. She felt haunted by her son's hopeful gaze and inevitable disenchantment as she looked down the row of married Potato Heads and knock-off Barbies. Her eye landed on a set of green plastic binoculars, shrink-wrapped onto a bright cardboard backing. "Funtastic!" it said. Explore, discover, get close to nature, all for $1.50, carry strap included. Made in China. She held the plastic package sideways up to her eye, trying to peer through, and couldn't even make out the items in her own shopping cart. The quality was exactly what you'd expect for a buck-fifty. It was so tempting to buy a horrible thing you could afford, just because the package said "Explore nature." You could pretend it actually worked, and make your kids shut up and do the same. Child-rearing in the underprivileged lane. She put back the binoculars, feeling so desperate for a cigarette she considered lighting up right there in front of Mrs. Potato Head. She could get in a few good hits before someone made her stop. She knew they wouldn't kick her out of the store. They wanted her damn fifty dollars.
A girl from church, Winnie Vice, entered the toy aisle from the other end with her toddler in the cart. Winnie was a Crystal or Brenda relative, she couldn't remember which. That was another snafu at church: now that Crystal's kids were blackballed from Sunday school, she brought them to the cafe, so forget about sneaking in there for quiet time--the place was bedlam. Other mothers of the out-of-control were lining up behind Crystal, hanging out together while their young were trained by Jazon and Mical in the art of using the juice machine as a spray gun. The congregation was definitely dividing into pro-Crystal or pro-Brenda factions, and it was hard to guess what might compromise your neutrality. Winnie hadn't seen her, so she could make a clean break if she got out of the toy aisle. Still toyless. Dellarobia grabbed a horribly made plush raccoon that didn't even look like a raccoon, and threw it in her cart because it only cost a dollar. She wanted to punch somebody out. The world made you do this.