Flight Behavior

“I’ve never been anywhere,” Dovey pointed out, “but I could get to Mexico with the map app in my phone. It’s probably about the same size as an insect brain. Heck, my brain is probably the size of an insect brain.”

“Okay, here’s the big question. What if your map thing all of a sudden started sending you to the wrong place? Because that’s what’s happening here.” She pointed her finger to stop Dovey from saying something flippant. “I’m serious. The butterflies can’t just go out and get a new brain. Why did they even come here?”

Her friend got the message, and kept quiet.

“I mean, what in the world would make that happen now, when it never did before? Maybe it’s something we ought to be worried about.”

Dovey reached back and pretended to yank an imaginary ponytail. “Children, get with Jesus, it’s the End of Days.”

“Dovey,” she complained.

“Well, what? You’re a downer.”

Dellarobia was now making her third pass with the flatiron over Dovey’s curls, but they still wanted to spring back. The girl had fortitude, any way you looked at it. Deana Carter came on the radio, singing “Did I Shave My Legs for This?” Once upon a time she and Dovey used to howl this empty-marriage anthem at the top of their lungs, thinking that was funny. The ache in her belly made her want to curl herself into a full-body fist. “Do you know what today is?” she asked.

“National hangover day. Technically we shouldn’t be out of bed yet.”

“It’s the day I had that first baby. That didn’t live.”

Dovey’s face went through several arrangements of surprise. “January first? How could I not know that?”

“You weren’t there.”

“Well, no, because it’s the one month of our lives I was mad at you.”

Dellarobia hated the salty burn that sprang to her eyes. This was not planned. She held the hot iron out and up toward the ceiling, like a gun, afraid to aim at anything with blurred vision.

Dovey reached up and held her other hand. “Sweetie, you didn’t even tell me for a week or something. You weren’t answering your phone. I thought you’d abandoned me for marriage and you guys were out on some monster bender.”

“We were at home, asleep. Or whatever you want to call that place. Our one-room marriage at Bear and Hester’s house.”

Dellarobia turned off the flatiron and set it down, giving up the fight. She glanced toward the door, then opened the vanity drawer that hid her cigarettes and ashtray and scootched Dovey over to sit with her on the one seat. They were both so small they sort of fit, like children squashed on a bench at the grown-ups’ table. She lit up, inhaled.

“And it just happened. I woke up with horrible cramps and then we were in the hospital and then it was over. My due date was May—I’d been thinking it might even hold off until after graduation. All I could think was, this couldn’t be happening yet.”

“What did you know?” Dovey said quietly. “You were seventeen.”

Dellarobia nodded slowly. “You know what Cub kept saying? It was going to be the first baby of the year. You get your picture in the paper and a year of free diapers or something. Poor Cub. He’s always the last one to get it when the joke’s on him.”

Dovey picked up Dellarobia’s left hand again and stroked it, turning the wedding ring around and around on her finger. “I can’t believe we never talked about this,” she said finally. “I mean not like, how it mattered. You always said it was for the best.”

“Nobody talked about it. Cub and I didn’t. You don’t get to feel sad about a baby that never had a name and doesn’t exist.” Dellarobia was startled to look up and see tears streaming down her face in the mirror. She couldn’t feel herself being sad. The emotions on Dovey’s face looked more real to her than her own. Without a word, Dovey got up and stood behind her. She started taking out the rollers, spilling long tendrils that didn’t look like anyone’s hair.

“Listen,” Dovey said after a minute. “I’ve never said this, either. But I don’t get why you stayed.”

“Stayed where?”

“The hurry-up wedding, yes, I get that. But when you guys were living upstairs at Bear and Hester’s, you hated everything and everybody. After that miscarriage, why not just walk? You two were so not ready to be married.”

“Walk where, into hospice with Mama? Do you even remember what things were like at that point?”

Dovey was quiet, her dark eyes round. It was possible she didn’t.

“We’d already let the house go. I put our furniture and stuff in storage, but I couldn’t keep it paid up.” That’s where her father’s table must have gone. The self-storage place would have auctioned off the contents of unpaid lockers. All that handmade furniture, what a score for someone. Probably some upscale dealer in Knoxville. Those people would know where to go for their treasure hunts.

Dovey leaned down and lifted the cigarette from Dellarobia’s hand, took a drag, and shook her head, exhaling smoke in rapid little bursts as she gave it back. Dovey only smoked occasionally to be sociable, and had a knack for making the enterprise look toxic. “You could have moved in with me,” she said.

“Oh, right. Your mom didn’t even like me staying for supper. You were sharing a room with your baby brother and had that diaper pail in your closet. I remember you having a fit because your prom dress smelled like pee.”

Dellarobia got up and opened the bedroom window a crack for ventilation. The pasture fence ran so close to the house on this side, its wire mesh spanned her view like bars on a window. The day outside was hazy and indefinite, a seasonless new year that held no more promise than the old one.

“Here’s the thing,” she said, sitting down again at the vanity. “Bear and Hester had gotten the bank loan to build this house. That was such a big deal. They’d poured the footers, and it was supposed to be move-in ready by May when the baby came. Cub and I would make the loan payments. That was the plan.”

“Well, it wasn’t May when you all moved in here. With your two suitcases and your zero furniture.”

“No, it took them longer to finish. Baby was early, house was late.”

Dovey squinted at the air. “It was Fourth of July weekend, right? Cub and his friends shot off all those fireworks in the yard. What were their names, those two brothers? They were both missing fingers, which did not seem like a good sign.”