They were so beautiful, that was the thing. The hardest work of all was to resist taking comfort. She and Preston gazed up together at their spindly butterfly tree. The wings were mostly still, but a few slowly opened as the sun arrived. A week ago she’d seen the sun come up at seven, and today it was well ahead of that. Dellarobia felt her heart slide, everything moving fast. Today was the day. Every day was the day.
“Mom,” Preston said, sounding anxious. “What if we miss the bus?”
“If we miss it, we miss it. I’ll drive you. Miss Rose won’t care if you’re late this once. It’s your birthday tomorrow!”
Preston seemed profoundly unconvinced. Dellarobia despaired to see her worldly powers already trumped by those of Miss Rose. She persisted.
“We’ll just sit here and yell at those kids when it goes by. So long, suckers!” she yelled aloud, to no one, nonetheless embarrassing her son. She tickled him and he tensed and then relaxed, finally, laughing.
More of the butterflies opened their vanes, drinking light. They looked more purplish here than in the woods, a richer brown, more red. Changeable in the light. She noticed they had covered the trees disproportionately on their eastern sides, where the first sunlight fell, though the butterflies must have landed here in the evening. For the souls of dead children, they were good at planning ahead. She thought of Josefina’s small hands fluttering out from her chest. And the little black lamb blinking its eyes open, drawing its breath, taking hers away. They’d gotten the mother to accept it eventually, after Dellarobia had done the hard part. Preston was still giving it a few bottles a day for good measure. He knew they weren’t out of the woods.
“So. I’ve got something to tell you.”
His happy eagerness looked so complete, she felt something inside her splitting. Like a flowerpot left outside to freeze, some stupid wasted thing like that. Belatedly she identified it as hope, just as the word itself drifted out of reach. She stared downhill at all the snowy little hummocks with meltwater flowing through them, a miniature river in a forest of white, conical, snow-covered weeds that looked like tiny fir trees. A small world, melting.
“I’ve got several somethings to tell you,” she said. “Actually. One’s kind of sad, so we’ll just get it over with. The second one is awesome, that’s your present, a day early. And the third one is, I don’t know what. Kind of a shocker. You ready?”
He nodded earnestly, bobbing the red pom-pom on his stocking cap. His bangs had gotten long, spilling out the front of his cap.
“Your remember what Josefina said about the monarchs, that when a baby dies, it turns into a butterfly?”
He frowned. “Is that real?”
“No. It’s just a story people tell, to feel better. What I want to tell you is, one of those is ours. We had a baby that died.”
He gave her an acute look. “Where is it?”
That was so Preston, wanting the GPS coordinates. “In the cemetery,” she said. “There’s a grave, no stone. But see, Preston, that was your brother. He came first, a long time before you. So you should know about him.”
Down on the road, cars began to pass. People going to work, restarting their lives. Preston looked sober but not really sad, probably maintaining appropriate sentiments for her sake, she realized. This grief was not his.
“You know how every year I tell the story of the day you were born? Going to the hospital and the whole deal. And sometimes I back up and tell you one more thing, right? Like how I was vacuuming under the bed and kind of got stuck under there and had to yell for Daddy because my water broke?”
He nodded.
“We’ll do all those stories tomorrow. We’ll have a cake and everything with Dad and Cordie, after you come home from school. But I’ve been wanting to tell you about the other baby that came first. Because if that one hadn’t come and gone, there’d be no Preston. He cleared the way, with Dad and me. So later on I would get to carry you around in my tummy until you were born on your birthday. Make sense?”
“Not really,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. Stuff doesn’t always. You don’t have to be sad about this. I’m just telling you the whole story. There’s tons of people that aren’t alive anymore, like my Mom and Dad and that little baby, that all helped get you here. The other baby gave us a present, which was you.”
Preston avoided looking at her.
“Ta-daa! Preston gets to exist!” She coaxed out the smallest of smiles. “Okay, now for the totally awesome surprise, your big present from me. This is a snap decision, to give it to you a day early. I didn’t wrap it yet. I just happen to have it in my coat pocket. Reach in.”
She held open her pocket. He gave her a skeptical look and moved his gloved hand slowly into her coat’s interior, as if something rabid might be in there.
“Whoa! A pod-thing!” he yelled, cradling the smooth little tablet close to his face. He pulled off a glove with his teeth and immediately revealed a knowledge of things Dovey had spent half an hour teaching Dellarobia: how to turn it on, touch the tiny icons on its face, brush the screen to move the pictures around. How to reach into the river of all knowledge and pull out your own darn fish.
“It has a little keyboard,” she said. “So you can type in your search.” He already knew that too. She could not imagine kids in his school actually had these. The monthly payment was going to be her biggest expense, after rent.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
“Here’s the deal. I’ll hang on to it when you’re at school, and when you’re home it’s yours. Your own computer. You can go on the Internet, whatever you want. Within reason. But when it rings, you have to give it to me, because it’s my new phone.”
“What’s wrong with your old one?” he asked. Ninety seconds in possession, and already miserly. She laughed.
“Here, give me that, you stinker. I’ve been saving up for three months to get you online, but we have to share.” He surrendered the phone with a good-natured grin, the type of kid who already knew very well, there was no free lunch.
“Surprise number three,” she said. “I need a new phone because we’re moving.”
“Moving! Gaa, Mom, no way.”
“Yes way. We’re getting an apartment in Cleary with Aunt Dovey. We already checked it out, there’s a bedroom for her, and one for Cordie and me, and a kind of a sunporch thing that will be all yours. You get a special bed that’s a couch in the daytime and a bed at night. And get ready for the shock of your life. Ready?”