Flight Behavior (24 page)

“Preston and Cordelia, I am so glad to meet you both,” Tina said, turning completely around in the passenger seat. “What great names!”

“Preston was my dad’s name,” Dellarobia offered.

“And Cordelia is from
King Lear
. Of course!” Tina reached over the back of the seat to extend her hand to each of the kids. Preston gave the slim fingers a shake, but Cordie just stared, probably mesmerized as Dellarobia was by the manicure. Once again she wondered about Tina’s children. Where were they now, while their mother was gallivanting around? She had no idea where these folks had driven from with all their gear. Knoxville? They didn’t sound like it. Tina had turned back to Ron and was speaking in a totally different voice, more businesslike.

King Lear, of course!
Dellarobia couldn’t vouch for having known that, she just liked the sound of Cordelia. Maybe, like her own mother, she had gleaned the name and forgotten the source. She heard Tina ask Ron in a low voice, “Do you think the white will go okay on camera?”

Dellarobia put a hand to her chest, realizing Tina had been scrutinizing her sweater during the introductions. “Should I have worn something else?” she asked.

“No, it’s great. Beautiful. Sometimes white goes a little dancey on the camera, is the thing. White, and stripes.”

“Actually it’s ivory,” Dellarobia said. The color of her wedding dress, worn for an audience that was very clear on the difference between off- and white. Maybe Tina wasn’t. Dellarobia could have spent all day studying the construction of her coffee-colored trench coat, which had neat parallel lines of white topstitching on the placket and belt and cuffs. Probably designer.

“So, the neighbors,” Tina said, again turning backward in the seat to use her let’s-be-friends voice. “What’s up over there? They don’t seem to be on great terms with your family.”

Dellarobia was embarrassed about her relationship with her neighbors, or lack thereof. Tina probably knew more about the Cooks now than she did. “Really the bad blood is between them and my in-laws, I’ve got nothing against them. They’ve had a run of terrible times. Their little boy came down with cancer, and it got them kind of born-again about using chemicals, so they’re into the organic thing. They lost their whole tomato crop. And they put in that peach orchard, which is dying. My father-in-law says when it rains so much you have to spray those kinds of things, or they’ll just rot.”

“So your father-in-law is not keen on the organic thing.” Tina had her left elbow cocked on the back of the seat, her other hand in her lap. Earlier, when they’d gotten in, Dellarobia saw she had a small tape recorder. She wondered if it was running.

“Well, that’s kind of typical with farming, people are slow to take up new things. You know, they have to be. When you could lose everything in a season, it’s not smart to gamble. I think my in-laws resent the healthy-and-organic business because it makes it sound like what we’re doing must be unhealthy and unorganic.”

“And your in-laws’ view of what’s happening up here, with the butterflies. Can you talk about that?”

“I don’t know. I mean, their view is their view. You should probably ask them.”

Dellarobia was distracted by the renovated road, which she hadn’t seen yet. She knew Cub and his father had squared away a lot of downed trees and flood damage, but it was the thick layer of new, whitish gravel that altered everything. They’d turned this little wilderness track into a road, with clean, defined edges against the muddy surroundings. Just a country road like any other, inviting no special expectations, its wildness tamed. Against her will, she thought of Jimmy. And of the person she must have been that day, full of desire, full of herself. Now paved over.

She began seeing the butterflies before Tina did, but soon they couldn’t be missed, they were everywhere: the
phenomenon
. At the overlook, the road had been widened into a compact turnaround spot, and Ron stopped the Jeep there, facing out. Tina stared, still belted into her seat. Cordie and Preston also sat up straight and took notice, as they did when a favored program came on television.

“Dat,” Cordelia said, pointing through the windshield.

The cavernous valley before them was filled with golden motion. Cordelia had never seen the butterflies, Dellarobia realized. And Preston just the once, on a rainy day when they weren’t flying around. She let Preston get out of the car.

“Stay close, honey, and don’t go near the edge where it drops off.” She pulled open the door on her side and shifted Cordie to her hip, leaving the diaper bag. “Yes, ma’am, there’s the King Billies,” she said quietly, “just like at Grandma’s.” She didn’t want Tina to know her kids had not seen this before. It seemed so lazy and housebound or something. It made the butterflies belong to her less. Tina wouldn’t understand, the road was new, prior to this week there had been no way to bring a toddler up here.

She watched wonder and light come into her daughter’s eyes. Preston stood with the toes of his sneakers at the very edge of the gravel road and his arms outstretched, as if he might take flight. Dellarobia felt the same; the sight of all this never wore out. The trees were covered with butterflies at rest, and the air was filled with life. She inhaled the scent of the trees. Finally a clear winter day, blue dome, dark green firs, and all the space between filled with fluttering gold flakes, like a snow globe. She could see they were finding lift here and there, upwelling over the trees. Millions of monarchs, orange confetti, winked light into their eyes.

“This is your shot,” Tina said, out of the car now and suddenly bossing Ron around bluntly, calling into doubt Dellarobia’s earlier impression that Tina was afraid of him. She pointed to where he should set up his tripod, and stood Dellarobia on the precipice, so to speak, with the view of the valley and backdrop of butterflies behind her. Tina patted Dellarobia’s face with a powderpuff so she wouldn’t shine, and explained that they would talk for a while with the camera on Dellarobia, then briefly move it around to shoot Tina as well. Later they would patch it together into one conversation. It didn’t matter if Dellarobia said things in the wrong order, or made mistakes. They could cut and paste, Tina said. They would make it all look good.

Dellarobia was flattened with anxiety. The questions Tina asked were mostly personal: Who was she, where did she live, how did she and her family feel about what had happened here? To her shock, even Tina knew the circulating story about a miracle involving Dellarobia and some kind of vision or second sight. Did she want to talk about that? Not especially, was Dellarobia’s reply.

“Then say whatever you want. Whatever you think is important,” Tina said.

“Well, here’s what I think is probably important. Usually these butterflies go to Mexico for the winter. They’ve never come here before, in something like a million years, and now all of a sudden here they are. As you can see. He said . . . okay, wait. Stop. Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“There’s a scientist that came here, Dr. Byron. You need to talk to him, he’ll be back in a few days. He knows everything there is to know about these butterflies. Could you come back maybe later this week and talk to him?”

“Maybe, sure. Absolutely. But for right now, let’s just be here.” Tina gave Dellarobia an indulgent smile. She felt the depths of her own incompetence.

“Okay, sorry. Can I start again?” She stuck her hands in her jeans pockets and tried to calm down. She was supposed to be good with words. Cub always said she could argue the wire off a fence post. She’d done speech and drama in high school.

“As many times as you want. No worries. Just be you.” Tina put up her hands and waved them, as if to chase everything away and start all over. “What we want is to be up close and personal with Dellarobia. Tell me about the first time you saw the butterflies. What did that feel like?”

“The first time.” She glanced at her kids. Cordie was safely tucked into the Jeep now, playing with her plastic barn, but Preston was inching his way out to the edge of the overlook. “Preston!” she yelled. “Not one more inch, mister! I mean it. Or else you will go sit in the car with your sister.” She winced apologetically at Tina, who was still smiling. The patience of a saint. “Sorry,” Dellarobia said.

“Nothing to be sorry about. Go ahead.”

“What I was going to say before is that these butterflies migrated to the wrong place this year, for the first time ever. I guess in the history of the world. So even though it looks really pretty, it might be a problem. It could actually be terrible.”

“And why is that?” Tina asked.

Why was that. Words left her mind. Her hair was slipping out of its tie, the curls around her face moving in the breeze, distracting her, and suddenly she felt completely sure her sweater was buttoned wrong. Or not buttoned at all. This day was crazy. She touched her chest with one hand, checking the button placket. “Hang on a sec, can I just, is my sweater buttoned wrong? I’m sure I look horrible.”

Tina cocked her head, a little gesture Dellarobia was starting to recognize. “Do you know what I was thinking just then? Honestly? That this is probably the most gorgeous shot we’ve set up in I don’t know how long. Months. You, that gorgeous hair, the butterflies behind you. It’s just about killing me. I’m going to look like a corpse next to you and all that ambery light. You’ll die when you see it. How’s the light, Ron?”

“Gorgeous,” Ron said from behind the camera, startling Dellarobia. Since when was
Ron
on her side? Gorgeous. She wondered if Jimmy would see her on the news, and felt a simmering fury, largely the result of nicotine deprivation and not entirely at Jimmy. But partly at him. Flirting with everything in a skirt. Had he never been serious about her at all? Just because she was older, and married, he’d seen her as a sure thing, sex without risk of attachment. Did he even care that she’d ended it? She hoped the sweater looked as good on her now as it had in the store, the rare dressing-room event. She did not have the vaguest idea what Tina had just asked her. “What was the question?”

“Start wherever you want,” Tina said, possibly with a pinch of impatience.

She wished she could just tell the truth. The whole of it. That Bear was about to clear-cut this mountain for cash, and that they really did need the money. Which some people could never understand. Being boxed in. Which is really what brought her up here in the first place, not a man but a desperation. Defective as that impulse may have been, it got her here. She was the first to see.

“This phenomenon is very special to you,” Tina said. “The story we’re hearing in this town is that you had a vision. So Dellarobia, what happened that day, when you first knew the miracle of the monarchs had come to your farm?”

“I was running away from things. That’s the long and the short of it,” Dellarobia said. She wanted Jimmy gone, out of her story. Would he see this on television?

“From what?” Tina asked with a softer, concerned voice.

Dellarobia turned her head a little to the side so she could see the butterflies. Just like the first time, it felt like a dream to see that cold fire rising. It was impossible to believe what she saw was real. The end of the world, as good a guess as any. She slowly exhaled. “My life, I guess. I couldn’t live it anymore. I wanted out. So I came up here by myself, ready to throw everything away. And I saw this. This stopped me.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. I was so focused on my own little life. Just one person. And here was something so much bigger. I had to come back and live a different life.”

Tina blinked, casting a glance at Ron.

“Okay, that was, I don’t even know what that was,” Dellarobia said. A turn down a wrong-way street in crazy town, was what it was. She held up her hand like a cop, shaking her head. “Way too personal. If my family heard that, can you imagine? My kids?”

Thankfully, she saw that Preston had inched his way down the road until he was probably out of earshot. “So, that’s off the record, we cut all that and start over, right?”

“Absolutely,” said Tina.

B
oth their phones rang at once, at around ten after nine. Cub had worked late and passed out on the couch watching television, so his phone jangled on and on in his pocket while Dellarobia ran to her purse to get hers. It was Dovey, incoherent. Dovey screaming to turn on the TV.

“It’s on,” Dellarobia said, her heart lurching. Had she missed some disaster?

“It’s you,” Dovey kept saying. “Go to CNN.”

This was the sort of thing that happened in movies, Dellarobia thought. But movie people could always find the remote control. Dovey kept yelling through the phone while her search grew more frantic. Under the cushions, under Cub, under the couch. The people in movies didn’t live with petty criminals who dismantled small electronics for parts and batteries. “Hang on!” she yelled back, abandoning the hunt and going to kneel in front of the television set itself. Sure enough, she found there was no way to control it from the object itself, not even an on-off switch. What sense did that make? A TV set was a modern God! You could only send it your requests from afar.

“What do you mean, it’s me?” she asked, trying to calm down.

“That thing you did yesterday! That interview with Barbie. But they’re not showing her. It’s all you, Dellarobia.”

Dellarobia stood up, surveyed the room. Cub was still out cold. She could actually hear the murmur of Dovey’s television through the phone.

“Oh, my God,” Dovey shrieked. “This is crazy. They’re saying you tried to kill yourself!”

Shock began to fill Dellarobia with its watery weight, starting from her feet and nearly taking her out at the knees. She shoved at Cub with all her strength to make room for herself on the couch, and kept the phone to her ear while she slid one hand around underneath him, again, unable to call off her hopeless search. Cub’s phone had stopped ringing and made the sharp little beep of a new message.

“This is crazy,” she said to Dovey. “Say that again. What you just said.”

“You were on your way to jump off a cliff or something, and saw the butterflies and changed your mind. It’s gone now.”