"Making pollution," Dellarobia added, thinking a neutral word might head off trouble, but Miss Rose was all over this. They'd discussed it in class.
"And what are some of the things we can do to help out?" Miss Rose prompted.
"Shut off the lights when we're done," one boy said.
"Pick up our beer cans," said another.
Miss Rose laughed. "Whose beer cans?"
"Our dads'," another replied, eliciting general agreement.
They were shy about asking questions, but then got over it. They wanted to know what could kill a butterfly. Dellarobia knew some answers, but Ovid could list many more, including cars! He said scientists in Illinois discovered that cars smashed half a million monarchs there in just one summer. The kids rallied to the word "smashed," yet there was a collective "Awww" for the roadkill monarchs. A boy put up his hand, pulled it down, then put it up again, and finally asked, "Are you the president?"
Ovid laughed heartily. "No, I am not," he said. "What makes you think I might be the president? Is it because my skin is dark?"
The little boy appeared forthright. "Because you're wearing a tie."
Ovid looked startled. "A lot of men wear a tie when they go to work," he said. "Maybe your dad does that?"
"No," said the boy, and Dellarobia could see Ovid taking this in: no on the tie, or no on the going to work, maybe no dad, period. She felt this was a productive meeting of minds. The kids wanted to know a great deal more about Dr. Byron: if he lived in the lab, and if those were his sheep. Preston waited patiently for his turn and asked, a little out of step with the crowd, whether the butterflies were like flying ants that go out and start new colonies. Ovid said that was different, the ants had to stay together almost always because of their kinship system. He said insects have many different ways of being families, and they could discuss it more at lunchtime, which he proposed was now.
It was a good call, given the extent of eruption already under way among the lunch boxes. Dellarobia was surprised at how quickly the kids fell back into their former social groupings: the Chosen, the Beetle Throwers, the Shriekers. One troupe of permanently smitten girls tracked Miss Rose like bridesmaids. The Michelin Man-coat boy sought solitude as if long accustomed to it, finding acorn caps as he went. And, Dellarobia noted, her son left Josefina flat for the chance to talk shop with Dr. Byron. She'd have the loyalty chat with Preston, later. She moved quickly to fill the gap. "I know the best lunch spot," she offered, and Josefina gratefully took her hand. The true best spot, the big mossy log across the creek, was already taken, so they headed to the uphill edge of the clearing and sat on a smooth spot at the base of a fir colossus.
Dellarobia felt buoyant. Everything had gone better than planned. Ovid needed to do this; he was obviously good at public relations but harbored a blind spot, an inexplicable breach in his confidence. A breach she had filled. The word that rose in her thoughts was partnership, and it thrilled and sent her reeling as such thoughts did, in a life spent flying from pillar to post. He was sitting down there on the log with Preston, he had the best seat in the house, he who occupied her thoughts while at work and at rest and probably when she slept. He sat with his lunch on his lap and seven kids lined up like ducks in a row, but it was Preston who had his ear. She could see the two of them chatting it up about insects and the different kinds of families. She looked in her purse for the tuna fish sandwich she'd barely had time to slap together this morning, while Josefina extracted from her little paper bag a fully cooked meal in several parts: the sandwich-equivalent rolled inside tortillas like long, yellow cigars, the sauce in a paper cup covered with cellophane, the brown beans in another. A large reused sour cream carton held crisp, triangular chips.
"Wow, you've got the gold-star mom," Dellarobia said, realizing that might be an obscure way to put it for a newcomer to the language. But Josefina thanked her, seeming to get it. Her English had improved noticeably. Lupe said the time the kids spent together helped. Dellarobia watched Josefina lay out her complicated lunch without self-consciousness on a cloth napkin, and wondered what it would feel like to be in that kind of a family. Or any kind, other than the one whose walls contained her. Whatever incentive she might have for flying away, there it was, family, her own full measure, surrounded by a cheap wire fence built in one afternoon a long time ago. Her Turnbow dynasty. Where she'd never belonged in the first place, according to Hester. What kind of ties were those, what did they bind? She could so easily belong to someone else.
Josefina ate her meal with a fork, but after a moment paused to push her dark hair back over her shoulders and look straight up. Dellarobia was moved by the sight of her throat, the vulnerable little bulb of her Adam's apple, rising from her zipped corduroy coat, and this child's unaccountable poise in the midst of a life that had been wrecked. A house borne away on shifting ground, a world away. Dellarobia looked up too, taking in the dizzying view of the butterfly tower anchored behind their backs. Butterflies prickled all the way up the trunk in perfect alignment, like a weathervane collection. Butterflies drooped heavily from the branches. "What do you call the bunches?" Dellarobia asked.
"Racimos."
She repeated the word, trying to remember this time. She'd asked before. It seemed better than cluster or colonnade or any other word Ovid used. More specific. "Does this remind you of home, being up here?" she asked. "I mean home in Mexico?"
Josefina nodded. "In Mexico people say they are children."
"The caterpillars are the children, though. These are the grown-ups."
Josefina shook her head quickly, like an erasure, starting over. "Not children. Something that comes out of children when they die."
Dellarobia thought this sounded like a horror movie. But she could see it mattered to Josefina, who had put down her fork. "I can't remember the word," she said. "When a baby dies, the thing that goes out." She placed both hands on her chest, thumbs linked, and lifted them fluttering like a pair of wings. "It flies away from the body."
Suddenly Dellarobia understood. "The soul."
"The soul," Josefina repeated.
"They believe a monarch is the soul of a baby that's died?"
The child nodded thoughtfully, and for a long time they both gazed up into the cathedral of suspended lives. After a while Josefina said, "So many."
Cub was cutting firewood at Bear and Hester's and called to say he was staying for supper, but Dellarobia declined to bring the kids over and join them. Hester's confession in the woods had left her with a new and strange detachment ringing in her ears. Not exactly unwelcome, but unbound; there was a difference. She felt invisible and light. It was Friday night. She would fix something she and the kids favored like soup and fish sticks, and they'd watch some program from beginning to end. Assuming they arrived in one piece. Dovey was picking them up from Lupe's and coming over too. The phone beeped on the table, and it was that bad girl, texting: GOT EM, ON OUR WAY.
Dellarobia shot back: TXT WHILE DRIVING IF . . .
:) was the prompt reply.
Dovey wasn't the fish-stick type but would eat gravel to get away from her duplex, where her landlord brother was tearing out tile for no apparent reason. Dovey was seriously moving out, she said, like the boy who cried wolf, his cries ignored by all. She would stay put as long as Dellarobia's place served her so well as a halfway house. Just as Cordie and Preston provided her the option of halfway motherhood.
Dellarobia was surprised to hear them pull up in the driveway so soon. Roy went to the front door and signaled an alert: ears up, tail down. Dellarobia went to look out the little upper windows in the door and was startled to see the white News Nine Jeep in her driveway. Tina Ultner in a belted white coat was out of the car, head down, the corn-silk hair pulsing with each fast step as she came up the walk. Dellarobia dropped to the floor to sit face to face with Roy, her back pressed against the doorjamb. There was not time to run and hide in the bedroom. She heard the hollow tick of a woman's heels on the porch steps, and felt
the shift of light as Tina moved in close to the door's glass panes. Roy looked at Dellarobia and cocked his head to one side, the collie question mark. She held up a finger and Roy stood fast. The house took on the feel of a bomb shelter.
Rap rap, came the little knock. Rap rap, again. Then silence.
Roy glanced from the door to Dellarobia. He licked his lips and yawned, dog signs of nervousness. The tidy knock revived.
Dellarobia remembered she'd pocketed her phone after Dovey's text, praise be. She put it on vibrate before keying carefully: DON'T COME TO THE HOUSE.
The reply from Dovey was immediate: ???
GO AWAY. XPLAIN LATER
WE R HERE. BEHIND JEEP. WTF?
Tina rang the doorbell. Roy yawned again, but didn't move.
I M HIDING. GO!
A minute passed. Roy did an anxious little skitter, stepping back and forward, dancing at the edge of self-restraint. Dellarobia stared at the screen until the reply appeared. PRESTON HAS TO P. ME TOO. CORDIE ALREADY DID.
DO U HAVE DIAPERS?
FOR ALL US???
Dellarobia's mind went blank. The knocking had stopped. Another text came from Dovey. OMG. SHE SEES US.
Then, ten seconds later: DON'T WORRY I'LL HANDLE. COMING IN.
Dellarobia knew not to bet the farm on Dovey's don't-worry-I'll-handle plans. This one failed faster than most. She heard Dovey explaining with fair conviction that Dellarobia wasn't home while Preston opened the door, plunging Dellarobia and Roy unexpectedly into the scene, at eye level with a pair of gorgeous gray suede boots. Dellarobia took them in, then turned her eyes upward into the nostrils of Tina Ultner.
"Dellarobia, hi," Tina said, waiting for Dellarobia to find her feet before extending the cool little hand. The whole effect of Tina rushed her like a hit of some numbing drug. The pale eyebrows and huge, direct eyes, the otherworldly complexion. Her coat was winter white, the color she'd frowned on when Dellarobia wore it that first time. Both kids rushed into the house, followed by Dovey, then Roy, leaving Dellarobia on the porch with Tina.
"I'm not doing this," she said. "Not again."
"Listen," Tina said, "this is a really special thing we do. Hear me out. It's called our 'in-depth' segment. Very few stories get this kind of coverage, just the absolute viewer favorites. When there's a ton of interest, what we'll do is we go back and follow up on a story six weeks later, to see how things turned out."
"Six weeks?" Dellarobia said, thinking several questions at once. Did Tina even have a clue how her camera trickery had upended Dellarobia's life? Had it been six weeks, and had anything turned out? This was in-depth? She remembered Ovid's complaint about the media's short attention span. The living room blinds waggled sideways and Dovey stepped into view in the front window, behind Tina's back. Dovey held up crossed index fingers as if to ward off a vampire.
"Is that Ron in the car?" Dellarobia asked. The figure in the Jeep looked slighter and blonder than Ron, with more hair.
"It's not Ron," Tina said, with some diffidence. "That's Everett."
"Okay, get Everett. Get whatever you need and come with me." Dellarobia strode down the steps and around to the back of the house, leaving it to Tina to get her game on. She did not want to knock on the metal door of the camper, which felt too intimate, so was relieved to see lights on in the lab. She led Tina through the mucky barn, in those boots. If Tina was horrified by her surroundings she was good at pretending otherwise, looking around with the calculating eye Dellarobia remembered, as if storing away all these sights for later. They paused outside the lab door to wait for Everett, and Dellarobia threw down some background info on Dr. Ovid Byron. She spelled the name so Tina could type it into her phone device. Tina stood frowning at the little screen, intermittently tapping it in frenzied bursts with her manicured fingertips. "You're kidding me," she finally said. "You've got this man here? In a barn?"
The diminutive cameraman Everett arrived in haste, organizing and shoving black cables into his coat pockets as he came, disheveled in every aspect except for his hair, which looked shellacked. He gratified Dellarobia with a grimace of frank horror at the barn floor. Dellarobia rapped on the plastic-covered door, and they entered as a group to find Ovid sitting down, writing notes. To accommodate his reading glasses, he had pushed up his safety goggles on his forehead like a skin diver briefly out of water. His look of vulnerable surprise demoralized Dellarobia utterly. He stood up to meet Tina's forthright handshake and quickly shed the goggles and glasses, revealing a small, surprising vanity that fueled Dellarobia's anguish. Astonished, she watched Tina drop her former mom-to-mom allegiance as if it had never been, aiming the force of her charm in a brand-new direction. This lab was so great, unbelievable, she'd wanted to be a science major in college but the math, oh man! After the introductions Tina said they had to go up on the mountain to repeat the shot with the butterflies flying in the background. That was customary for these spots, to help key in the viewer visually to the earlier story. Ovid told her the follow-up in this case was that most of the butterflies were dead. Also it was too cold for them to be flying, and too late in the day. Tina clicked her tongue. They'd planned to get here earlier, but she'd had a breaking spot on a homicide.
She drummed her white-tipped nails on the plywood lab table, looking all around. "You know what?" she finally pronounced. "It's fine. We still have all that great footage from the first interview. We'll just cut the butterflies into this one when we do the edit."
Ovid eyed her, looking piqued. Make the butterflies undead?
Tina set herself to the project of framing what she called a doable shot in the lab. She loved the caterpillar poster on the wall, colorful. She liked Ovid in his lab coat, but not all the mess. The pile of aluminum pans from the last lipid analysis had to go. Tina directed the cleanup with a slightly pained expression, as if confronting grime, though really it was just clutter: glass reagent bottles, blue wire test tube racks, rectangular plastic containers stacked up like blocks, computer printouts. And this was clean. Dellarobia always tidied up on Fridays. Ovid was first reluctant and then unnerved by all the shuffling. When Everett approached the Tissuemizer, Ovid barked at him not to touch it. Tina laughed sweetly at this to make it a joke. Dellarobia suddenly had full recall of that little two-note laugh, and its many uses.
Ovid said, "I think you had better go ahead and take your shot."
Tina and Everett exchanged a consequential glance, and she moved in to clip a little mike to Ovid's lapel and slip its attending box device into a pocket of his lab coat. Dellarobia saw his eyes roll upward as Tina fussed with him, just exactly as Preston's did when Dellarobia knotted his tie for church. Gone was the friendly confidence of the scientist meeting the kindergartners. Tina powdered her nose and cheekbones, then snapped her compact closed and nodded at Everett. She switched on her lubricated news voice. "Dr. Ovid Byron, you've been studying the monarch butterfly for more than twenty years. Have you ever encountered a sight like this?"
"No," he replied. He looked desperate for escape.
Tina waited. Like a store mannequin, Dellarobia thought, with the waxy complexion and flower-stem posture. She'd been too struck, when she herself was in the headlights, to notice that the woman was far from perfect. The bones in her face looked stony under the colorless skin, too prominent. She looked unhealthy.
Tina began again. "Dr. Byron, you're one of the world's leading experts on the monarch butterfly, so we're looking to you for answers about this beautiful phenomenon. I understand these butterflies often flock together in Mexico for the winter. So tell me, in a nutshell, what brings them here?"
Ovid actually laughed. "In a nutshell?"
Tina gave a stern little nod, signaling him to go on.
"That won't fit in a nutshell."
Dellarobia saw the door budge. Dovey appeared, scooting quickly inside with the kids. Dellarobia sidled over to lift Cordie onto her hip for safekeeping, and they all stayed near the door. Tina marched to the table to dispatch a blue
-handled pair of scissors and a roll of tape from the background of her shot, and yanked at the crumpled plastic dust sheath that covered the microscope. Ovid spoke miserably. "It's not a movie set."
Tina eyed him, and he spread his hands. "This is what science looks like."
"Fine," she replied. She returned to her spot and composed herself to come out of the starting gate again. Dellarobia grasped her strategy now, setting up the interview in different ways so it could be cut to ribbons later.
"Dr. Byron, you've studied the monarch butterfly for over twenty years, and you say you have never seen anything like this. It seems everyone has a different idea about what's going on here, but certainly we can agree these butterflies are a beautiful sight."
"I don't agree," he said. "I am very distressed."
Tina's teeth showed. "And why is that?"
"Why?" He ran one hand over his close-cropped head, a nervous habit Dellarobia had seen before, though rarely. "This is evidence of a disordered system," he said at last. "Obviously we're looking at damage. At the normal roosting sites in Mexico, in the spring range, all over the migratory pathways. To say the takeaway lesson here is beauty, my goodness. What is your name again?"
"Tina Ultner," she said, in a different, off-camera voice.
"Tina. To see only beauty here is very superficial. Certainly in terms of news coverage, I would say it's off message."
"You're saying there's a message here. And what is that?"
Ovid shot Dellarobia a vivid, trapped look. She felt sick. He was so good at explanations, he had all that education, he could handle little bony-nosed Tina, that's what she'd thought. She'd been out of her mind. After a long pause Tina tried again. "Dr. Byron, something new is happening here. Most of us are struck by the beauty of this phenomenon. But"--she cocked her head theatrically, as if burdened by keen insight--"do you think it might possibly be a sign of some deeper problem with the ecology?"
"Yes!" Ovid cried. "A problem with the environment, is what you're trying to say. Pervasive environmental damage. This is a biological system falling apart along its seams. Yes. Very good, Tina Ultner."
"And briefly, Dr. Byron, tell us the nature of the problem."