Flight Behavior

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.”

“Briefly? Unseasonable temperature shifts, droughts, a loss of synchronization between foragers and their host plants. Everything hinges on the climate.”

She blinked a couple of times. “Are we talking about global warming?”

“Yes, we are.”

Tina made a downward wave at Everett to stop the camera, and bizarrely her own animation clicked off too, her face slack as she walked across the lab, maybe starting to feel homesick for her average flaming interstate wreck. Tina checked something on the camera, then walked back to her interview spot and spoke in a subdued voice. “The station has gotten about five hundred e-mails about these butterflies, almost all favorable. Is this really where you want to go with this segment? Because I think you’re going to lose your audience.”

Ovid looked genuinely startled. “I am a scientist. Are you suggesting I change my answer to improve your ratings?”

“Not at all,” Tina said frostily. Her composure was losing its smooth edge. She had an irritable way of sucking her front teeth and exhaling through her nose that gave Dellarobia to know this woman probably did have children, after all. After looking down at the floor for a moment, Tina signaled Everett and lifted her features to greet the camera. “Dr. Byron, let’s talk about global warming. Scientists of course are in disagreement about whether this is happening, and whether humans have a role.”