"So," Dovey said, "back to his hotness Dr. Butterfly. He's coming when?"
"Tuesday. And b-t-w, there's probably a Mrs. Butterfly. He wears a ring."
"You never know. Widower, maybe. Or she split, and he's in denial."
"I don't think the man's in mourning. Oh, and Pete's coming back too. Speaking of men with wives."
"How do you know all this?"
"He called, day before yesterday. Ovid." Speaking his name aloud altered Dellarobia's pulse. His voice coming through the phone had connected her with an unexpected longing, as if she'd been on hold for a time, and then there he was. "He and Pete are driving from New Mexico with a van load of equipment. They're setting up some kind of lab out there in the sheep shed, believe it or not."
"Are you kidding? A mad scientist in your creepy old barn. I saw that movie."
A flush of defensiveness surprised Dellarobia, on behalf of the scientists or the barn, she was not sure. "It's not as bad as you'd think out there. They're using the room that used to be the milking parlor back when they had dairy cows here, like, fifty years ago." Ovid had checked out the barn before he left, choosing the milking parlor for its enclosing walls and cement floor that could be hosed down. Bear and Hester had drawn up a three-month lease, for a fee that seemed shocking. The balloon payment on the loan was officially covered. "Pete's just staying a few weeks, and then he'll drive the van back. I guess the vehicle belongs to the college. But the equipment stays awhile."
"Equipment for what?"
She reorganized Dovey's wild mane, trying to separate layers in order to flatten them. The faint odor of scorched hair filled her nostrils, but Dovey seemed unalarmed. "I don't know for what. Analysis, he said. Analys-ees," she corrected herself.
"Busy bees, checking out the butter-flees."
"Well, I think it's interesting. I know it seems crazy to put so much work into butterflies, or kind of trivial, I guess. But what's not trivial?"
Dovey leaned into the mirror and intoned, "Hair and makeup."
"You spend your days cutting up meat. How's that saving lives?"
"People have to eat to live."
"They buy chuck roasts for Sunday dinner, but they're hungry again on Monday. We raise sheep for sweaters that will wind up wadded up in people's closets because they've got ten other sweaters and that one's the wrong color."
"Your father-in-law makes guardrails. Not trivial. Sorry to bring that up."
"He used to, before the interstate ran out of money. And if you think about it, ninety-nine drivers out of a hundred never touch the guardrail. Maybe it's not even one in a million that's affected. So to most people, guardrails are trivial."
"You make a strong case. Let me just go jump off a bridge right now."
"I'm just saying you never know what's important. He said he's going to need assistants. Ovid." She blushed again, but Dovey gave her a pass, maybe seeing something important was at stake. Dellarobia needed to close herself in a closet and practice saying that name: Ovidovidovid. "He's putting an ad in the Courier to get volunteers, when school is back in session. But he's hiring, too. He said he'd be training at least one assistant for pay. I feel like he was hinting I should apply for a job."
"Why don't you?"
"Are you kidding? Check my resume. Experienced at mashing peas and arbitrating tantrums. He'll get somebody from Cleary that's gone to college."
"Don't sell yourself short."
"I am short. What do you think I'd sell for?"
"She's a rocket, she was made to burn," Dovey sang alongside Kathy Mattea on the radio with perfect timing, pointing her finger at Dellarobia. "Just make sure you wear that to your job interview." Dellarobia laughed. Her huge black T-shirt had a constellation of holes and a stretched-out neck that slipped off her shoulder. It was one of Cub's, pulled over jeans and tank top as a housework smock. Charlie Daniels Band. It predated their marriage.
"Cub wouldn't want me working," she said. "With the kids and everything. Can you imagine what Hester would say?"
"That right there is why you ought to do it."
"To tell you the truth, Cub and I had a fight about it already. Right after he called."
"What, you told Cub you're going for it?"
"I asked. He said no. It was pretty predictable. 'What will people think? Who will watch the kids?' I told him I could work all that out."
"I don't see why you're not just going for this." Dovey looked her in the eyes, in the mirror. "You are a rocket. You go for things, Dellarobia. That is you. When did you ever not?"
Dellarobia shut her eyes. "When there was nothing out there to land on, I guess."
"Now, see," Dovey clucked, "that's a woman thing. Men and kids get to just light out and fly, without even worrying about what comes next."
"No, Dovey, it's an everybody thing. It's just a question of how well you can picture the crash landing."
"Don't picture it, then."
"It's a strategy," Dellarobia conceded. "Works for some."
"I'd help with Preston and Cordie. Any time I could."
"I know you would. And it wouldn't kill Hester to watch them once in a while, either. Or I could even pay somebody. It's good money."
"How good?"
"He said thirteen dollars an hour. Which is more than Cub's making."
"Ouch. There's your trouble."
"It is. But he can't say that to me, you know? Instead he's on a tear about some stranger raising our kids. 'Raising our kids,' he said. News flash, I told him, your son is in school. Strangers are teaching him his ABC's. As opposed to his father, who is teaching him to watch the Dirtcathlon on Spike."
"Your marriage is inspiring."
"I know, for you to stay single. You sure I'm not burning up your hair with this?"
"Positive. Scorch it till next Tuesday if you want, it'll still want to bounce back."
"Me with a job, Dovey. Can you picture it? Maybe I'd learn something."
"Like?"
"I have no idea. Like, how do those butterflies know where they're going? You want to know something? It's not even the same ones that fly south every winter, it's the kids of the kids of the ones that went last winter. They hatch out up north somewhere and it's just in them. Their beady little insect brains tell them how to fly all the way to this one mountain in Mexico where their grandparents hooked up. It's like they've all got the same map of the big picture inside, but the craving to travel skips a few generations."
Dovey was examining her nails, disappointingly unamazed. Nothing ever really surprised Dovey, but still. "Think about it," Dellarobia insisted. "How do they find this one place thousands of miles away, where they've never been before?"
"I've never been anywhere," Dovey pointed out, "but I could get to Mexico with the map app in my phone. It's probably about the same size as an insect brain. Heck, my brain is probably the size of an insect brain."
"Okay, here's the big question. What if your map thing all of a sudden started sending you to the wrong place? Because that's what's happening here." She pointed her finger to stop Dovey from saying something flippant. "I'm serious. The butterflies can't just go out and get a new brain. Why did they even come here?"
Her friend got the message, and kept quiet.
"I mean, what in the world would make that happen now, when it never did before? Maybe it's something we ought to be worried about."
Dovey reached back and pretended to yank an imaginary ponytail. "Children, get with Jesus, it's the End of Days."
"Dovey," she complained.
"Well, what? You're a downer."
Dellarobia was now making her third pass with the flatiron over Dovey's curls, but they still wanted to spring back. The girl had fortitude, any way you looked at it. Deana Carter came on the radio, singing "Did I Shave My Legs for This?" Once upon a time she and Dovey used to howl this empty-marriage anthem at the top of their lungs, thinking that was funny. The ache in her belly made her want to curl herself into a full-body fist. "Do you know wh
at today is?" she asked.
"National hangover day. Technically we shouldn't be out of bed yet."
"It's the day I had that first baby. That didn't live."
Dovey's face went through several arrangements of surprise. "January first? How could I not know that?"
"You weren't there."
"Well, no, because it's the one month of our lives I was mad at you."
Dellarobia hated the salty burn that sprang to her eyes. This was not planned. She held the hot iron out and up toward the ceiling, like a gun, afraid to aim at anything with blurred vision.
Dovey reached up and held her other hand. "Sweetie, you didn't even tell me for a week or something. You weren't answering your phone. I thought you'd abandoned me for marriage and you guys were out on some monster bender."
"We were at home, asleep. Or whatever you want to call that place. Our one-room marriage at Bear and Hester's house."
Dellarobia turned off the flatiron and set it down, giving up the fight. She glanced toward the door, then opened the vanity drawer that hid her cigarettes and ashtray and scootched Dovey over to sit with her on the one seat. They were both so small they sort of fit, like children squashed on a bench at the grown-ups' table. She lit up, inhaled.
"And it just happened. I woke up with horrible cramps and then we were in the hospital and then it was over. My due date was May--I'd been thinking it might even hold off until after graduation. All I could think was, this couldn't be happening yet."
"What did you know?" Dovey said quietly. "You were seventeen."
Dellarobia nodded slowly. "You know what Cub kept saying? It was going to be the first baby of the year. You get your picture in the paper and a year of free diapers or something. Poor Cub. He's always the last one to get it when the joke's on him."
Dovey picked up Dellarobia's left hand again and stroked it, turning the wedding ring around and around on her finger. "I can't believe we never talked about this," she said finally. "I mean not like, how it mattered. You always said it was for the best."
"Nobody talked about it. Cub and I didn't. You don't get to feel sad about a baby that never had a name and doesn't exist." Dellarobia was startled to look up and see tears streaming down her face in the mirror. She couldn't feel herself being sad. The emotions on Dovey's face looked more real to her than her own. Without a word, Dovey got up and stood behind her. She started taking out the rollers, spilling long tendrils that didn't look like anyone's hair.
"Listen," Dovey said after a minute. "I've never said this, either. But I don't get why you stayed."
"Stayed where?"
"The hurry-up wedding, yes, I get that. But when you guys were living upstairs at Bear and Hester's, you hated everything and everybody. After that miscarriage, why not just walk? You two were so not ready to be married."
"Walk where, into hospice with Mama? Do you even remember what things were like at that point?"
Dovey was quiet, her dark eyes round. It was possible she didn't.
"We'd already let the house go. I put our furniture and stuff in storage, but I couldn't keep it paid up." That's where her father's table must have gone. The self-storage place would have auctioned off the contents of unpaid lockers. All that handmade furniture, what a score for someone. Probably some upscale dealer in Knoxville. Those people would know where to go for their treasure hunts.
Dovey leaned down and lifted the cigarette from Dellarobia's hand, took a drag, and shook her head, exhaling smoke in rapid little bursts as she gave it back. Dovey only smoked occasionally to be sociable, and had a knack for making the enterprise look toxic. "You could have moved in with me," she said.
"Oh, right. Your mom didn't even like me staying for supper. You were sharing a room with your baby brother and had that diaper pail in your closet. I remember you having a fit because your prom dress smelled like pee."
Dellarobia got up and opened the bedroom window a crack for ventilation. The pasture fence ran so close to the house on this side, its wire mesh spanned her view like bars on a window. The day outside was hazy and indefinite, a seasonless new year that held no more promise than the old one.
"Here's the thing," she said, sitting down again at the vanity. "Bear and Hester had gotten the bank loan to build this house. That was such a big deal. They'd poured the footers, and it was supposed to be move-in ready by May when the baby came. Cub and I would make the loan payments. That was the plan."
"Well, it wasn't May when you all moved in here. With your two suitcases and your zero furniture."
"No, it took them longer to finish. Baby was early, house was late."
Dovey squinted at the air. "It was Fourth of July weekend, right? Cub and his friends shot off all those fireworks in the yard. What were their names, those two brothers? They were both missing fingers, which did not seem like a good sign."
"Rasp. Jerry and Noel."
"No offense, Dellarobia, but somebody builds you a cozy little box, and you just move in? That's basically one of the concepts they use in pest control."
"No offense, Dovey, but you've always had a home. Rewinding back to sixteen and getting a do-over wasn't an option for me. You kind of need parents for that."
Dellarobia took a long, slow drag on her cigarette, feeling the chemical rush arrive little by little in her blood, her hands and feet, the answer to a longing that seemed larger than her body. "And anyway I'd felt that baby move. It would get the hiccups whenever I tried to lie down. Cub was the happiest he'd ever been in his life. We were going to be this little family. There's stuff you can't see from the outside."
Dovey stood very still, holding her in the eye in the mirror.
"We had to use up our savings to buy it a cemetery plot."
At that, Dovey sat down beside her and put her head on her shoulder, close to tears, an uncommon and worrisome sight. If they both fell apart at the same time, some greater collapse might follow. "Here's the thing," Dellarobia said. "He'd be turning eleven today. If the child had lived, he'd be that old now. We'd be having a fifth-grader birthday party here. I can't find any possible way to make that real in my head."
Preston suddenly appeared in the mirror behind them, standing in the doorway, startling Dellarobia so badly she nearly dropped her cigarette.
"Mama," he said, "smoking gives you cancer and makes you die."
"Honey, I heard about that too. I ought to quit right now, hadn't I?"
He nodded soberly. Dellarobia made a show of grinding out her unfinished cigarette in the ashtray. She opened the vanity drawer, pulled out her pack of cigarettes, and flung it into the trash basket. It floated like a shipwreck survivor among the wadded tissues and crumpled receipts. Already Dellarobia was plotting its rescue, her mind darting forward to the next time she'd be able to sneak off for a secret hookup with her most enduring passion, nicotine. Who needed hell when you had a demon like this?
"So," Dovey said quietly, after Preston had disappeared again, "how many times have you been through that little routine?"
"I hate myself for it."
"Just don't picture the crash landing in the cancer ward," Dovey said, raising one eyebrow. "Like you say, it's a strategy. Works for some."
"Okay, fine, I'm a jerk, like the rest of them. Lying to Preston, of all people. The congenital Eagle Scout. He deserves a more honest mother than me."
"Who do you think is doing any better? You should see what I do at work--the meat counter is guilty-conscience central. People with 'heart attack' written all over their faces, buying bacon. Or these hateful old ladies commanding me to get them a twenty-pound Thanksgiving turkey, like that's going to bring the kids back home this year. The human person cannot face up to a bad outcome, that's just the deal. We're all Cleopatra, like that Pam Tillis song. Cruising down that river in Egypt. Queens of de-Nile."
The word had weight for Dellarobia, who had been through school-sponsored grief groups after each parent's death. The stillbirth was an unofficial add-on to the second round, in those dim f
inal months of high school she otherwise barely remembered. Denial-anger-bargaining-acceptance, get it over with, was the counselor's advice. "I'm a lot of things," she said, "but not in denial, I don't think."
"Case rests, sugar."
Dellarobia felt disoriented, with all those years inside her that added up to naught. Twenty-eight. She felt so young, especially with Dovey here anchoring her to the girl she'd been at seventeen, and at seven. She and Dovey could make each other over until their hair fell out, but nothing in the core of a person really altered.
"I look like a preteen runaway," Dovey pronounced, startling Dellarobia with her similar frame of mind. But that wasn't it. Dovey's focus was on the flat, flyaway hair. "Who were the little orphan girls in those books we read?"
"The boxcar children."
"Them! I'm a boxcar child."
"You always say that, and you're wrong. You turn out looking like Posh Spice, and I wind up like Scary. Why do we keep doing this?"
"Repetition of the same behavior, expecting different results: that's actually one definition of mental illness." Dovey read a lot of magazines.
"I look like Little Orphan Annie." Dellarobia stood up and shook her curls. Maybe she could get a Flashdance thing going, in the off-the-shoulder T-shirt. But there was no question about which of them was the real orphan. Dovey rolled her dark silk floss around like a shampoo commercial, relishing her own existence in any form.
"Or some kind of hooker," Dellarobia persisted, fussing with the curly tendrils around her face. "You have to admit, I look like I have more hair than brains."
"But here's the thing, peach. You don't."
Dellarobia shot her a look. " 'Peach.' Where'd that come from?"
Dovey laughed. "This guy that comes into Cash Club calls me that. He's tried to hit on me more times than he's bought ground beef. Cute as the devil, b-t-w."
"How long's this been going on?"
"I don't know, a year? I'm just using him as ammo against the guys I work with. They're always drooling over the ladies that come to the meat counter." She deepened her voice and grunted: " 'Hey, I see my future ex-wife out there.' "