He nodded doubtfully.
“I’m going to college. We’ll both be in school this fall. In Cleary. We can do our homework together.”
“In the same school?”
“No. Different ones. You’ll see. Dr. Byron did this totally amazing nice thing and talked to professors over at CCC. He’s like a superhero. They set me up with a job and stuff. I went over there one day when you were at school.”
“What will you be?”
“I’ll work in a lab, like now. Except not in a barn. It’s work-study, they pay you and you go to college. It’s not very much, so I’ll probably be something else too, like a waitress. We’ll see. We’ll be eating beans and rice, let me tell you.”
“Like at Josefina’s?” he asked, interested.
“Yeah,” she said, a little surprised, unsure she had meant it literally. But he obviously had a taste for the fare. Here she went, one more step down the Mr. Akins lifestyle pledge into the “Not Applicable” basement. If that list was the wave of the future, as he’d declared it, her kids were way out ahead of the game. Thriftiness skills: check.
“But what will you be?” Preston asked.
“You mean, like, when I grow up? I don’t even know. There’s too many choices. Maybe a vet. So people would pay sixty dollars to see me get out of a truck.”
Preston eyed her, his tongue under his lower lip, wary of her spoofing. Which was fair, given the full complement of unbelievables she’d just laid on him.
“Okay, seriously?” she asked. “Some kind of scientist, I think. Like you, Preston. We’re peas in a pod.”
“But will you still be my mom?”
“Well, yeah. You don’t get to fire me.”
Preston’s voice dropped to a different level, registering something new. “Where will Dad sleep in the apartment?”
“Oh. No. Dad stays here. You and Cordie will visit him.”
Preston looked at her as if she had gone insane.
“Not visit. I don’t mean that. You’ll live here too, this will still be your home part of the time. Like on weekends, or after school. And you’ll see Mammaw and Pappaw. And the lambs. All the time.”
“And it will be your home too?”
“No. I’m the apartment. You get to go here and go there, you’ll migrate. Like the monarchs. Alternation is supposed to make you sturdy. You and Cordie will grow up ready for anything.” This was probably beyond him, she realized. But then again, he was Preston. And he wasn’t liking it. He still had one glove off, and now began rubbing his thumb sideways across the grain of his brown corduroys, making a tiny zipping noise.
“Why do you have to go have an apartment?” he said. “Daddy will kill you.”
“Preston, what a thing to say. Your dad wouldn’t hurt a fly. He knows about all this. He thinks it’s an okay idea.”
“Why does he?” Preston insisted, not looking at her. Over and over he ripped his thumb across his corduroy knee, making that sound, like strumming an instrument. Her powerful inclination was to make up a better-days-ahead story. Nobody ever thought kids wanted the truth. And right on from there it went: the never-ending story.
“Well, I’ll tell you,” she said. “Daddy and I got married kind of accidentally.”
Preston’s brow took an angular dive, anxiety tinged with improbable remorse. With that expression and the hair flopped in front of his glasses, he was the very image of his father. That’s what killed her. The laws of biology. She would never escape that particular face. It occurred to her that this was not an ideal choice of words, either: accident. He would be picturing car wrecks, or first-graders wetting their pants.
“It wasn’t the end of the world, that’s the thing, honey. Dad and I made you and Cordie. On purpose, we wanted to. So that part was totally good.”
“And the dead one.”
“Yes,” she said, surprised he already thought to claim this sibling, the dead one. Her mind ran onto forbidden ground: the kind and influential uncle, the sweet twin cousins. She’d finally dismantled one secret on the cusp of another rising. Dellarobia doubted she could sit on all those Ogles as long as Hester had, but they would have to play it by ear. Her children had people, and that was important. Kinship systems.
“Why did you and Dad get married by accident?” he asked.
“People do wrong things all the time, Preston. Grown-ups. You’re going to find that out. You will be amazed. There’s some kind of juice in our brains that makes us only care about what’s in front of us right this minute. Even if we know something different will happen later and we should think about that too. Our brains trick us. They say: Fight this thing right now, or run away from it. Tomorrow doesn’t matter, dude.”
He stopped strumming his knee, and appeared to think this over.
“If I could teach you one thing, Preston, that’s it. Think about what’s coming at you later on. But see, all parents say that to all kids. We don’t follow our own advice.”
He sat perfectly still, staring at snow.
“You know what else? Grown-ups will never admit what I just told you. They’ll basically poop their own beds without saying they made a mistake. Even the ones that think they are A-number-one good citizens. They’ll lie there saying, ‘Hey, I didn’t make this mess, somebody else pooped this bed.’ ”
The tiniest of smiles pulled his mouth out of line, like a snag in a stocking.
“You and Cordie are going to grow up in some deep crap, let me tell you. You won’t even get a choice. You’ll have to be different.”
At that moment the glazed yellow cartridge of the school bus appeared on the road down below. It paused in front of the house, in case Preston should by chance emerge, but he and his mother laid low in their spot in the snowy field. They did not wave or call attention to their truancy, and eventually the bus went on its charted way. Despite everything, the end of the world impending, Dellarobia had a glimpse of strange fortune. The sun was well up now and the sky clear, suggesting some huge shift was under way. Scraps of snow were falling from the trees along the road, silently letting go, drifting down like shredded tissues from the big maple by the driveway. In the woods behind them she heard a quiet steady prickling sound of falling ice needles. A whole melting world surrounded them. She noticed Preston’s eyes wandering back to their house, and could read his thoughts like a book: Mom, Dad, apartment, etcetera, all starting to sink in. The loss or rearrangement of everything he’d ever known and trusted. Bravely he did not cry, though his mouth turned down at the sides and his eyes pinched.