Flight Behavior

by Barbara Kingsolver

  "What in the Sam Hill are you all doing?" she called out.

  "It's a parking lot," Preston replied. "I'm running over Daddy with everything."

  "Poor Daddy. Does your victim need a refill?"

  Cub lifted his coffee cup. She carried in the coffeepot and kneeled on a corner of the blanket to fill his mug. "Should we call this a blood transfusion?"

  "Nah," Preston said. "He's just smooshed."

  A far cry from veterinary medicine, she thought. But Cub was good about letting the whole boy out for a run, where Dellarobia would have reined him in. Cub was not always in the mood, but when the kids did get him down on the floor he gave himself over wholly, letting them direct their play, however silly or tedious or grotesque.

  "Lo mio lo mio!" Cordie's voice bounced with her fast little steps as she came running from her bedroom carrying a board book, which she pretended to stuff into Cub's mouth. Cub made chomping sounds, gnowm gnowm, and Cordie shouted gleefully, "Dat's hay!" She dropped the book and ran to fetch another bale.

  "I'm not just smooshed," Cub informed Dellarobia. "I am also a cow."

  "Husbands with secret lives. I'm calling Oprah."

  Through the front window blinds she saw Dovey's vintage Mustang slide into the driveway. Her double honk set the kids to shouting, "Dovey's here!" Dellarobia ran to get dressed. The kids were ready an hour ago, far keener to meet a blue convertible than any school bus, all keyed up for a wild ride with Aunt Dovey. Dellarobia heard the clamor as they tackled her at the door, begging to ride with the top down.

  "Brrr, no way! It's freaking February the second, you guys," Dovey said. "Hey Cub, what happened to you?"

  "Same old same old," he said. "Vehicular homicide."

  Cub planned to help Hester move the pregnant ewes today while Dellarobia took the kids shopping with Dovey. They were headed for Cleary to check out a huge new secondhand warehouse. Dellarobia's usual haunt was the Second Time Around, a store so tiny it was actually in the owner's house, but Dovey disliked it on the grounds you were sure to run into people you knew, or their stuff. Admittedly, Dellarobia often saw items she recognized, including suits made by her mother, and once, in full sequined glory, the very magenta prom dress worn by the girl for whom her old boyfriend Damon had dumped her. This was years after Damon had married the girl, and in fact also divorced her, yet there hung the dress, glistening like a stab wound. Cleary seemed a long way to go for bargains, but she had to concede, exchanges could get intimate in Feathertown.

  Dovey looked jaunty in a suede newsboy cap and maroon turtleneck, well put together as usual. Duggy and Stoked, they used to declare this, as if they were their own cable show: two girls dressed and ready for action. A worldlier, female version of Wayne's World, in which all things came off as planned. Dovey's convertible, on the other hand, always seemed provisional to Dellarobia, especially with the top closed, flapping as if something important was about to come loose. It had no shoulder harnesses in the backseat, only lap belts, so the kids' car seats fit in a sigoggling way that was probably unsafe. The kids of course adored this.

  "Hey, look!" Preston shouted. "A smooshed groundhog, like I did to Daddy." Dellarobia was amazed he could see roadkill from the backseat. The animal was as flat as a drive-through hamburger.

  "And here it is Groundhog Day," Dovey said genially. "Sorry, Mr. Hog, not much shadow there. I never can remember, does his shadow cause there to be more winter, or less?"

  Dellarobia considered and dismissed both cause and correlation. "Neither," she said. "It's just something people made up to get themselves through the homestretch."

  "Right." Dovey had an endearing habit of nodding once, curtly, an assent of bobbing curls. "There's going to be exactly six more weeks of winter no matter what. Because it is freaking February the second."

  Six weeks. The butterflies would have survived to fly away by then, or they would have died. His large hope, her job, the whole deal soon departed. Sometimes everything hit her, as in everything, the approach of flood and famine, but mostly she could not see a day past the middle of March. Dellarobia gripped the door handle as Dovey took the curves a little fast. This road was fifteen miles of hateful, winding around the mountain from Feathertown's outer pastures through intermittent woods and hamlets of mobile homes. She was surprised when they passed the infamous Wayside, meaning they'd already crossed the county line. Cleary was not that far away, but Dellarobia couldn't say when she'd been there last. It had the college and a lot of restaurants and bars, and might as well have been located in another state, as far as her married self was concerned. Obviously Dovey thought of it as no distance at all. She had roaming capabilities.

  "Okay. I am so moving out of that stupid duplex," Dovey announced.

  Dovey had been so moving out of the duplex for nine of the last ten years, while her brother drove her crazy with his never-ending remodel. He was the ambitious one, Tommy. He'd bought that house on Main as a fixer-upper when barely out of high school and extorted an obscene amount of rent from his siblings in the decade since, capitalizing on their desire to leave home at an early age. The parents were all for it; they'd cosigned Tommy's loan. Dellarobia didn't really get it--the boys were still crammed in and bunked up together, two of them sharing a bedroom to this very day, as men in their twenties. Dovey at least had a whole side of the duplex to herself, but still. The walls were thin. They knew more about each other's lives than adult siblings should.

  "How's Felix?" Dellarobia asked.

  Dovey sighed casually. "I need to get Felix over with." Dovey did love life the way Cub watched television. "Shoot," she added, "I need to text him. His wallet's been in my kitchen for two days." She reached for her purse, but Dellarobia snatched it away.

  "No, ma'am, not with my kids in your car. 'Honk if you love Jesus, text while driving if you want to meet up.' "

  Dovey actually claimed to have seen that one on a sign, and probably regretted having conveyed it. She rolled her eyes. "So what's new in the Land o' Science?"

  I have a talent for the endeavor, she thought. His words. Dellarobia was concealing nothing specific, but felt a capacious welling of things she couldn't talk about. The sensation was physical. "Pete left yesterday. He packed up a bunch of frozen butterfly samples and took off driving back to New Mexico."

  "Back to the missus he goes," Dovey sang. "And what about the good doctor? He seems to be kept on a longer leash."

  "There is a wife, Juliet. She exists. She's a bad cook."

  "So bad he has to live in a different time zone?"

  "I guess people have their reasons," Dellarobia said. "But I don't see it. Why be married and live apart?"

  Dovey shrugged. "Do I look like Ask Miss Marriage?"

  She hadn't yet told Dovey about Cub's confession. With the kids always around, she hadn't had a chance to get into the Crystal Estep saga, nor any real zest for the telling. She felt embarrassed, both for herself and for Cub. And anyway, nothing had happened.

  Dellarobia was surprised by their hasty arrival. They pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall and zoomed into the perfect space, courtesy of Dovey's muscular engine and belligerent driving, right near the sliding front doors. The Try It Again Warehouse was big-box-size and a tad dilapidated, with piles of recently dropped-off items spilling like dunes over the pavement in front of the plate-glass windows. A green toilet sat primly upright between boxes of wadded coats and plastic toys. "What is this place," Dellarobia asked, "some charity, like the Salvation Army?"

  "No, it's somebody's business they started up. The ads say they'll come clean out your attic or whatever. I'd say they make their money on volume."

  Dellarobia found it odd that people would donate their discards to a private enterprise instead of a charity. Passers-by must see the stuff piled up here and automatically eject their own castoffs, a townie equivalent to the wildcat landfills that grew alongside country roads. Some universal junk-attraction principle.

  Dovey was not a secondhand shopp
er by nature as Dellarobia was, but she'd heard this place had racks of worn-once designer dresses. Appearances did not suggest that Vera Wang was on the premises. Inside the dusty storefront they met a boggling display of items that were all going for twenty-five cents. Salt shakers, unmatched but decent flatware, a cheese grater, a set of cast iron skillets of the type Dellarobia had never been able to afford. She set a dollar's worth of high-quality cookware into an empty cart and lifted Cordie into the fold-down seat. The twenty-five-cent shelves went on and on. Dellarobia was stupefied by the bargains.

  "Why isn't everybody we know here?"

  "Mama, you could put Daddy's picture in this," Preston suggested, holding up an overlarge canary yellow picture frame.

  "You are so right," she said. Preston moved on to a tape recorder. Dellarobia examined a big meat platter with a treelike gravy gutter built into it, exactly like one her mother used at Thanksgiving and other big-deal family meals, occasions that had always left Dellarobia feeling their family was insufficiently large. Why hadn't her parents had more children? As a child she'd never thought to ask, and now she would never know. So much knowledge died with a person.

  Cordelia was determined to climb out of the cart, which she called the "buggy." Where did she learn that? Dellarobia lifted her out of the wire seat, kicking, sending one blue plastic clog flying, which Preston ran to fetch and put back on his Cinderella sister. She accepted the compromise of standing up in the cart. "Buggy mama buggy mama," she chanted, grabbing both sides and rocking, her pale hair a wild waggling halo. Her unassailable wardrobe choice today was her favorite striped summer dress, with corduroy pants underneath and sweaters over it. Dellarobia thought of those ragtag campers with the knitting needles she'd seen up on the mountain. She could see Cordie running off to join that tribe.

  Dovey moved out of twenty-five-cent range to nab a pair of silver high-heeled sandals. She and Dellarobia gravitated toward a long rack of wedding dresses, mostly in majestic plus sizes, just to run their hands over those expanses of satin and organza with their pearl-encrusted bodices. So much whiteness, perfectly seamed. "They're all in such great condition," Dovey said reverently.

  "Duh. This is not a garment that gets a lot of wear."

  "Oh, yeah," Dovey laughed. "Hey, is there a maternity bride section?"

  "Ha ha. Actually there should be."

  Cordelia started up a weird double-time stomping routine in the buggy, like something from an exercise class. The child seemed energized by commerce. As they cruised between close-set racks of women's clothing, she chirped continually, "Like dis, Mama?" Dellarobia wasn't looking for herself, but noticed the vintage jackets with interfaced collars and lined sleeves. So much quality going for nothing, like those cast-iron skillets. The older merchandise here was better made than literally everything in the dollar store. She tried on a fitted corduroy blazer, forest green, circa Angie Dickinson. It made her feel like a higher-quality person. She decided to wear it around the store. Her daughter set herself to pulling down every flowered, sequined, or otherwise gaudy blouse from the racks, tilting each one cornerwise off its hanger and asking, "Dis cute?"

  "She has her own sense of style," Dovey observed. "You've got to give her that."

  Dellarobia did give her that, but wondered why. Preston was indifferent to fashion. He had drifted downstream, floating out the mouth of the clothing aisle into an estuary of household appliances where he was trying everything out: pushing all the buttons on the blender, popping the toaster, ironing with the iron--something he must have seen at Lupe's house, not hers. All other appliances here were greatly outnumbered by the irons, a whole battalion of them lined up like pointy-headed soldiers at attention. She was getting the gist of this place: long on items that people were ready to part with.

  Dovey had paused to commune with her phone, probably remembering to text Felix about his wallet and while she was at it, check the weather in Daytona Beach or something. Dellarobia knew little about Internet devices, except that her son's hunger for information was already pulling in that direction. Since the day of her first paycheck and last last smoke she'd paid up the mortgage and opened a bank account in her own name. Cub knew about the former, not the latter. He didn't even know exactly what she earned. Dellarobia handled the finances.

  She followed Preston around the corner into a world of housewares, somewhat randomly assembled, shockingly cheap. The linen section had uniform pricing: blankets, bedspreads, and curtains all two dollars each; sheets one dollar. She couldn't believe her eyes. New sheets, even of the worst quality, cost a fortune. She found twin sheets for Preston's bed and a set for their double plus two crib sheets, six bucks total, and stuffed these finds around Cordelia, who was not taking kindly to being hemmed in. Briefly Dellarobia confronted the thought of Cordie outgrowing her crib, the kids getting too old to share intimate space. Everyone in their little house was going along with the story they could afford: that no one would grow, nothing would change.

  Dovey wheeled her cart up to join them. "Whoah. You're buying used sheets? You don't know who's slept in those."

  "As opposed to the sheets at your house. Where I do know."

  "Good point," Dovey said. "Nothing a little Clorox won't cure."

  An elderly woman pawed through sheets while the little boy at her side yanked down slick bedspreads from a pile, inciting waterfalls of polyester. The woman crooned in a steady voice without ever looking up: "You're a stinker, Mammaw is going to give you to the froggies. Mammaw is going to throw you in the garbage can." Dellarobia pushed Cordie out of earshot, not that she was above such thoughts, but still. They should be the accent pieces of a parenting style, not wall-to-wall carpet. At the far end of bedspreads, a leather-skinned man was unfolding comforters to assess their heft. He picked out two extra bulkies and wheeled toward the checkout with nothing else in his cart. Homeless. So free enterprise was standing in for the charities on both ends here.

  "Look at this," Dellarobia said, amazed to find handmade quilts and afghans tucked between ratty blankets, all in the same two-dollar category. She spread out a crocheted afghan in hues of blue and purple. "So much work went into this, and now it's lying here begging. Why would somebody give this away?"

  "Mammaw died," Dovey proposed, "and the kids are trying to forget her."

  Dellarobia put the afghan in her cart to save its dignity. Dovey arranged a pair of crocheted watermelon slices over her shirt like a bikini, but tossed them back as Preston approached. He was carrying a pillow that looked like a pig wearing a tutu.

  "I thought Cordie might like this," he said. Cordie reached for the ballerina pig and let out a howl that earned some attention from nearby shoppers.

  "Tell you what, Preston. Let's get her out and you two can poke around together. But stay right with her, okay?" Dellarobia knew he would. Cordie threw her arms around the pig and ran after her brother. Dovey perused a shelf of exercise tapes: Atlas Abs, Bun Buster. The floor beyond was crowded with exercise equipment in like-new condition, cast aside in haste. This place was a museum of people's second thoughts. Dellarobia clucked her tongue. "New year's resolutions didn't last a month."

  "Christmas presents," Dovey agreed. "All those husbands and wives dreaming of a slim, sexy version of the old ball and chain."

  Cordie and Preston were about thirty feet away, trying out what he was calling the "exercise things." Dellarobia heard him say, "Mama won't get that for you, we can't afford it." She kept the kids in her radar as she and Dovey ambled past a row of Venetian blinds and bathroom items. The categories were mysterious.

  "Here you go." Dovey brandished a rolling pin engraved with the words "Husband Tamer."

  "Now see, they should sell that as a package with the exercise equipment. To help keep the old ball and chain on the bike. Like an extended warranty."

  They exited the aisle and encountered a sobering wall of crutches hanging on a huge pegboard. Wooden crutches, aluminum walkers, items the previous owners were definitely glad to g
et out of the house. Some were barely used, souvenirs of some kid's brief hiatus from school sports, while others had a deep gloss of wear on the hand grips, and rubber tips as worn as the oldest of shoe leather. Whoever gave those up had moved into some other mode of transport. By wheelchair or by pallbearer.

  At the end of another aisle, a couple of college-age kids were removing everything from a shelf, presumably because they wanted to buy the shelf. They wore shorts and flip-flops, and the girl had a tattoo that resembled barbed wire encircling her ankle. Dellarobia imagined their lives, setting up some little apartment. Unmarried.

  "What's with these kids running around half naked in winter?" Dovey asked.

  The maternal tone surprised Dellarobia. "Maybe winter's not that big a deal for them," she suggested. "They probably don't have to be outside their cars or buildings that much." She found herself fascinated by this young pair. A store employee materialized and began to argue with them, putting items back on the shelf with exaggerated fatigue as he shook his head. Evidently this was routine. College kids were all over the clothing racks too. She'd watched a girl with an expensive haircut and highlights try on the same green blazer Dellarobia was now wearing around the store. Maybe that's why she'd kept it on, competition. That girl had a fat, sparkly diamond on her necklace and probably a daddy paying her tuition. She didn't need to be here.

  Preston appeared, with Cordie in tow, making his way down the aisle carrying a box with a handle that was much too heavy for him. A slide projector, she could see from the picture on the box. One of those carousel things they used in ancient history.

  "I thought Dr. Byron could use this," Preston said.

  "You know what? Maybe he could. Let's leave it here, but I'll ask him." She checked the tag. "Ten dollars is a good price. You can tell him about it Monday."