“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?”