"Are we coming to any kind of a stopping place?" Dellarobia asked, wondering if Crystal might get the hint and start helping. "Because I can't stay much longer."
Hester and Valia ignored her. They were discussing the details of the upcoming visit of Pastor Ogle. "Do you think I should move this table out and get a better one in here?" Hester fretted. "Mommy's antique one is up in the attic, we could bring that down. It's smaller, but it's not all scarred up like this one."
The scar she meant was a darkened crescent in the center of the table that now stared at Dellarobia like an eye. During the brief time she and Cub had lived in this house, between their hasty wedding and the rushed completion of their home, Dellarobia had marred the kitchen table with a hot skillet. She'd been seventeen, for Pete's sake. The skillet was burning her hands through the potholders. For these many years that burn mark had remained for Hester what might be called a conversation piece.
"Could you use a tablecloth?" Valia asked. "What are you going to serve him?"
"I thought we'd have coffee and cake. A jam cake, I'm thinking."
Valia nodded thoughtfully, as if foreign policy were on the hook here. "That caramel icing is a dickens to make. But you're right, I bet Bobby would love that. You could use placemats on the table. A centerpiece or something."
"Do you think just coffee and cake will be enough?"
"Alien alert," Dellarobia muttered, finally getting Crystal to glance up from her phone. "Hester just asked your mom for advice."
Crystal's eyebrows arched. "So?"
So, Dellarobia thought, she's had a personality transplant. The idea of Pastor Ogle visiting her home was cranking her into nervous overdrive. It was surprising, actually, that Hester hadn't had him in before. Bobby visited parishioners and their jam cakes with gusto. But the real shock was seeing Hester cowed by the prospect.
"Poopoo!" Cordie shouted again, kicking her legs vigorously to get her mother's attention. She was reaching toward the table with her fingers stretched as wide as they would go, like little starfish.
Dellarobia followed her gaze to a jar of dye powder. "Oh. Purple?" she asked.
"Pupuw," Cordie replied, giving her mother a look of exhausted relief.
"Sorry, baby. Like, hello, you're trying to say something here." She kissed her fingertips and reached over to touch the sugarplum nib of her daughter's nose, provoking a blinky grin. Dellarobia picked up another jar. "What's this one?"
"Geen!"
"Hester, did you hear that? Cordelia knows her colors."
Hester appeared unimpressed with her genius grandchild, as only Hester could. Apparently she only had eyes for Bobby Ogle. Dellarobia studied the label on the jar. It had so many warnings, if you read all the way to the end you'd probably want to run for your life. She took a second look at Hester's giant kettles, wondering if they were the same ones they used for the tomato and pickle canning in summer. "You think it's okay for Cordie to be eating applesauce in the presence of"--she studied the tiny print--"tri-phenyl-methane?"
"Cub used to just about drink this stuff whenever we dyed the wool," Hester replied curtly. "And look at him."
No one responded to this. In the awkward moment, Cordie flung her spoon across the table and let loose a string of vowels that made both the dogs look up, wondering if they'd missed something. Dellarobia leaned over to retrieve the spoon. "Maybe we should try doing different colors this time," she proposed. As colorful as Hester was, her dyeing was uninspired. She stuck with the packaged colors, which had alluring names like Amazon and Ruby, but came out plain old green and red. Much like life itself.
"What's wrong with my colors," Hester asked, not really asking.
"We could mix it up a little. I'm sure you could blend these powders together to get in-between colors."
Something between tomatoes and a ladybug, he'd said, touching her hair as if its color alone held exquisite value. Sometimes this still came over her in surprise attacks, the illicit flattery. And all the shame she had to bear, looking back on that, wondering how she'd been taken in. Again. She'd fallen before, never that hard maybe, but that stupidly. Two years ago, the man with sky blue eyes at Rural Incorporated who'd helped her week after week with the Medicaid papers when she was pregnant with Cordie. Before that, the mail carrier, Mike, who sometimes subbed their route. And Cub's old friend Strickland with the biceps and his own tree-trimming business. She knew there was something wrong with her. Some insidious weakness in her heart or resolve that would let her fly off and commit to some big nothing, all of her own making.
Hester and Valia had returned to their earlier topic of the visitors who'd been showing up to look at the butterflies. Hester became herself again, begrudging the presence of a miracle in her vicinity. Bobby's impending visit had let loose the floodgate of his followers, and Bear and Hester seemed to be butting heads over their next move. The miracle was whatever it was, but a logging contract was money in the bank.
Cordie had meanwhile discovered the game of Make Grown-Ups Jump. She threw her spoon on the floor next to Crystal's green Crocs, and watched Crystal's face closely for results. Crystal declined to be distracted from her phone's tiny keyboard, working so desperately to communicate with her two thumbs that the gesture struck Dellarobia as somehow monkeylike. It also struck her that there was no cell signal in this house.
"Crystal, if you can work it into your agenda, could you pick up Cordie's spoon?"
Crystal looked at the floor. "You want me to wash it?"
"Eat a peck of dirt before you die!" chimed Valia, without looking up from her sums. She had to keep track as she weighed the skeins, penciling her numbers in careful columns, and was doing it with what Dellarobia felt to be a desperate air, as if keeping score of some game she was bound to lose. What a mother-and-daughter pair, those two. Valia had no opinions of her own, apologized to her shadow, and did exactly as she was told, all of which signed her on as Hester's BFF. Whereas Crystal lived the whole mistake-parade of her life as the majorette, bowing to the applause, ready to sign autographs. Crystal put the con in self-confidence. How could two people get the same set of parts and make such different constructions? But then, there was raising. That had to be taken into account. What could a doormat rear but a pair of boots?
Crystal announced suddenly, "Here's what you ought to do, about all these people coming up? You should charge them."
"See, that's what I told Bear," Hester said. "We both think that."
"What's stopping you, then?" Valia asked.
Hester raised her eyebrows and pointed her chin at Dellarobia, as if her daughter-in-law were a child, oblivious to the codes of adults.
"Hey, don't look at me. Your son's the one that spilled the beans in church, blame him." Dellarobia got up and dumped an armload of tied bundles into the sink. Brethren, fix your thoughts on what is true. Bobby's words came to her out of the blue, and she nearly spoke them aloud. Instead she said, "Let's blame Bobby Ogle, while we're at it. And Jesus, why not Jesus? Credit where credit is due."
"Missy, you are asking for it with talk like that."
"It's Mrs. And you know what? I never said it's the Lord's divine hand at work up there. Go ahead and charge people if you want. Why wouldn't you?"
Hester met her eye, and they held a moment in deadlock. The words born again rose to Dellarobia's mind, and she contemplated a world where Hester no longer scared her. To turn her back on permanent rebuke, and find other motives for living, wouldn't that be something. Like living as a no-heller, as Bobby was said to be. All recent events considered, Dellarobia didn't mind this part. She turned away, untying the dishtowel that held Cordie in place and using it to scrub the worst of the applesauce from the creases around her chubby wrists. "Sorry to run," Dellarobia said, "but we are out of here. I've got to meet the school bus in front of my house at twelve-seventeen."
"You let Preston ride the bus?" Hester challenged.
"Yep. He wants to ride the big-boy bus. So today I let him. I've got to get o
ver there so he won't wander off down the road. I'm taking Roy with me, okay? That will thrill Preston, to see Roy waiting for his bus."
"Take both the dogs," Hester said.
"No, the kids get too cranked up with both of them." She gave the high chair a lick and a promise with the dishcloth and lifted Cordelia out of it by her armpits, inhaling her sweet-sour baby scent like smelling salts, a bracing relief. With Cordie on her hip, Dellarobia whistled softly and called Roy by name as she left the kitchen, telling Charlie to stay down. To her dismay, Crystal rose as if she too had been whistled up, announcing she had to go get her boys too. She followed outside and stood by as Dellarobia opened the back door of her station wagon for Roy, then buckled Cordie into her car seat. Dellarobia could feel the rain in little icy pricks on the gap between her sweatshirt and jeans when she leaned into the car.
"You buckle her in, even just to go to your house?" Crystal asked.
"Ninety percent of accidents happen within one mile of home." Dellarobia had no idea if this was true, and honestly might not have bothered with the car seat if she hadn't had the world's laziest mother in attendance. Someone had to set an example.
"It's not a mile to your house. It's like, two hundred feet."
"What's up, Crystal? First and third grade don't let out until afternoon. Don't tell me Jazon and Mical got demoted back to half-day kindergarten."
Crystal rearranged her face, going for wide-eyed and perky. "I just thought we could talk for a few minutes."
"What would you like to talk about?"
"Nothing. Just, stuff."
Dellarobia got in the car and sat with the door open, hands on the steering wheel, waiting. She knew Crystal wanted something; the girl was permanently set on intake mode. Dellarobia went for preemptive. "I am not babysitting your kids."
"I'm not asking!"
"Could I get that in writing?"
The rain was starting to pick up, but Crystal remained planted. People always laughed at rain and said, "You won't melt," but Crystal's body mass was probably 35 percent makeup and hair products. She actually might melt. Dellarobia sighed. "Get in."
Crystal walked around to the passenger's side, flopped in, and conspicuously clicked her seat belt. "Do you really have to be so . . ."
They completed the ninety-second ride to Dellarobia's driveway before Crystal had advanced this line of inquiry. Roy's black-and-white body poured out of the car and swirled in figure eights on the lawn, eager for whatever project he was here to begin.
"Roy, down," Dellarobia said, and he lay flat on the watery lawn before she even had both syllables out. The grass was still faintly green, not yet winter-killed, as they'd had no snow or even a hard frost. Cordie didn't have a proper winter coat, just doubled-up sweatshirts. It wasn't negligence--the kids truly had not needed bundling up yet, the weather had failed to nudge them to Target or the Second Time Around shop for that purpose. The idea of December seemed impossible. A few times when people had asked if she was ready for Christmas, she'd actually drawn a blank: ready for what? And of course felt idiotic afterward. People automatically estimate a mom's IQ at around her children's ages, maybe dividing by the number of kids, rounding up to the nearest pajama size. But the weird weather must have bewildered everyone to some extent. On stepping outdoors she sometimes had to struggle a few seconds trying to place the month of the year, and Cub had said the same. It felt like no season at all. The season of burst and leaky clouds.
Dellarobia set her mind to the worries at hand: Preston's first time on the bus. The driver wouldn't know his stop unless she stood out here by the road. It might even come early. The rain was getting serious, but she couldn't risk going in the house for an umbrella. A five-year-old was too young for the bus. What had she been thinking? Sending him off among strangers was chilling enough, without some distracted bus driver in the mix. She planted herself at the end of the drive between their mailbox and a big old maple, and sent Crystal after the umbrella.
Crystal went in the house and took her sweet time about it. Dellarobia unzipped her hoodie and draped it over Cordie, who was getting soaked. The cattle in the waterlogged pasture across the road raised their heads in brief attention, welcoming her to the sad-sack club. Her phone buzzed, and she fished it from her shoulder bag left-handed with Cordie on her other hip. A text from Dovey: MOSES WAS A BASKET CASE. Dovey swore these adages were genuine, sighted during church drive-bys, usually on her way to work, and maybe that was true. The commercial-type marquees seemed to draw churches into the same competitive cleverness that ruled all advertising. But she suspected a Dovey original here. With her one free thumb she texted back: U R 2.
At length Crystal arrived with the umbrella and they huddled under its greenly lit shelter. It was close quarters in there, given the dimensions of Crystal's hair. Roy sat obediently at Dellarobia's knee but sidled close against her leg as the dampness grew. Cordie, from her hipbone perch, waved at the passing cars and rhythmically kicked her muddy shoes against Dellarobia's thigh. Every pair of jeans she owned was stained with footprints. If she was already a doormat, were her kids then doomed?
A red Chevy pickup slowed almost to a stop, at such close range they could hear the slapping windshield wipers and see the guy inside, checking them out on the drive-by. For heaven's sakes, mothers of children, waiting for a school bus.
"That was Ace Sayers," Crystal said, when the truck had passed. "Somebody told me he had a colonstopy."
"Thank you for sharing."
"So," Crystal said. "I was going to ask you something."
"Imagine my surprise."
"Dell, I swear. Just because everybody at church thinks you're a saint? I'm sorry. But I don't see why I have to kiss your butt."
"Alrighty then, don't. Don't call me Dell, though. I got burned on that one when I started going out with Cub."
"How come?"
She sang it: "The farmer in the dell!"
"Oh, right. Ick."
"Ick is one way to put it. And not Dellie, either. That would be one of those places where they hand you a sandwich."
Crystal gave her a worried glance. "What is this, the sign-up sheet for hanging out with you?"
"Yes."
They stood in silence while two more vehicles passed, both driven by elderly women, thankfully. Dellarobia wished she were not defensive about her name. In high school when the popular girls all won pert little tags like "Liz" or "Suze," she'd hoped for something snappier too, but that never worked out. Dellarobia she was to be, like the wreath in the magazine. Not a biblical heroine, just a steady buildup of odds and ends.
"Since you brought it up, is that what they're saying at church?" she asked Crystal. "That I'm a saint?"
"I wouldn't know."
She knew Crystal would try to be coy for about ten seconds, then dish the dirt. Three, two, one . . .
"Yeah, some of them are saying that. A whole slew of them, actually. Not the Worshams. The Bannings, the Weavers, and the Worshams? They don't believe it."
"Glad you took a poll."
"No, you know. People just talk. Some of them resents it, you know? That you're in Pastor Ogle's good graces without . . ."
"Without?"
"I guess, not being all that churchy."
"The wild girl that got kicked out of Wednesday discussion group, you mean."
"You did?" Crystal appeared amazed. Her entry into the fold was relatively recent.
"It was a long time ago. I thought 'discuss' meant open your mouth, my mistake. And it was Hester that kicked me out, just so you know. Not Pastor Bobby."
"Did you used to wear some kind of fox thing to church? Tammy said it was like this little shawl that went around your neck and had the head biting the tail."
"A fox stole. Dovey found it somewhere. I can't believe people are still holding that against me. Wouldn't there be, like, a statute of limitations on wardrobe offenses?"
"Okay, but there's other ones, like Sister Cox? She's all, love your neighbor and eve
rything. I think they do believe something happened up on that mountain. Like, you know, a miracle. That's why they're all wanting to come up and see."
"Well, it's something to see. You'd be amazed."
Dellarobia had not been back up the mountain since the day with her in-laws. Hester had taken full charge of the traffic of visitors, which seemed unfair. Suddenly the butterflies belonged to Mountain Fellowship. The church and Hester had their own pet miracle. Not that tour guiding was a career option for Dellarobia, they wouldn't let her show up wearing a toddler as a pendant and a kindergartner for a shin guard. But still, when the groups passed behind her house to get to the High Road, Dellarobia snapped down the blinds, feeling something had been stolen from her, and flaunted.
"Listen," Crystal said. "What I was going to ask you? It's no big thing. I wrote this letter, and I wondered if you would look at it? You're good at spelling and stuff."
From the base of the big maple a squirrel darted out to the shoulder of the road, hesitated, then dashed across in little hops. Roy watched with keen attention, heaving a sigh of self-disciplined anguish.
"A letter, to?"
"To Dear Abby."
Dellarobia hooted, startling both Cordie and the dog. "You want me to proofread your letter to Dear Abby. What's it about?"
"That thing with Brenda. She's the one that thinks I--"
"I know, Brenda with the broken fingers and the whole family that wants to break your face."
"Okay, here's the thing, nobody's heard my side. I found out Brenda's mother was writing to Dear Abby asking her, you know, to settle it once and for all? But she's just going to play up Brenda's side, right? You know she will. I have to write one too."
"Where in the heck does Dear Abby come into this? I mean, jeez, Crystal, some old lady that lives a million miles from here. Who cares what she thinks?"
Crystal gave her a have-your-head-examined look. "Everybody cares what Dear Abby thinks. How do you think she gets in the paper every day?"