Dellarobia followed her gaze to a jar of dye powder. “Oh. Purple?” she asked.
“Pupuw,” Cordie replied, giving her mother a look of exhausted relief.
“Sorry, baby. Like, hello, you’re trying to say something here.” She kissed her fingertips and reached over to touch the sugarplum nib of her daughter’s nose, provoking a blinky grin. Dellarobia picked up another jar. “What’s this one?”
“Geen!”
“Hester, did you hear that? Cordelia knows her colors.”
Hester appeared unimpressed with her genius grandchild, as only Hester could. Apparently she only had eyes for Bobby Ogle. Dellarobia studied the label on the jar. It had so many warnings, if you read all the way to the end you’d probably want to run for your life. She took a second look at Hester’s giant kettles, wondering if they were the same ones they used for the tomato and pickle canning in summer. “You think it’s okay for Cordie to be eating applesauce in the presence of”—she studied the tiny print—“tri-phenyl-methane?”
“Cub used to just about drink this stuff whenever we dyed the wool,” Hester replied curtly. “And look at him.”
No one responded to this. In the awkward moment, Cordie flung her spoon across the table and let loose a string of vowels that made both the dogs look up, wondering if they’d missed something. Dellarobia leaned over to retrieve the spoon. “Maybe we should try doing different colors this time,” she proposed. As colorful as Hester was, her dyeing was uninspired. She stuck with the packaged colors, which had alluring names like Amazon and Ruby, but came out plain old green and red. Much like life itself.
“What’s wrong with my colors,” Hester asked, not really asking.
“We could mix it up a little. I’m sure you could blend these powders together to get in-between colors.”
Something between tomatoes and a ladybug, he’d said, touching her hair as if its color alone held exquisite value. Sometimes this still came over her in surprise attacks, the illicit flattery. And all the shame she had to bear, looking back on that, wondering how she’d been taken in. Again. She’d fallen before, never that hard maybe, but that stupidly. Two years ago, the man with sky blue eyes at Rural Incorporated who’d helped her week after week with the Medicaid papers when she was pregnant with Cordie. Before that, the mail carrier, Mike, who sometimes subbed their route. And Cub’s old friend Strickland with the biceps and his own tree-trimming business. She knew there was something wrong with her. Some insidious weakness in her heart or resolve that would let her fly off and commit to some big nothing, all of her own making.
Hester and Valia had returned to their earlier topic of the visitors who’d been showing up to look at the butterflies. Hester became herself again, begrudging the presence of a miracle in her vicinity. Bobby’s impending visit had let loose the floodgate of his followers, and Bear and Hester seemed to be butting heads over their next move. The miracle was whatever it was, but a logging contract was money in the bank.
Cordie had meanwhile discovered the game of Make Grown-Ups Jump. She threw her spoon on the floor next to Crystal’s green Crocs, and watched Crystal’s face closely for results. Crystal declined to be distracted from her phone’s tiny keyboard, working so desperately to communicate with her two thumbs that the gesture struck Dellarobia as somehow monkeylike. It also struck her that there was no cell signal in this house.
“Crystal, if you can work it into your agenda, could you pick up Cordie’s spoon?”
Crystal looked at the floor. “You want me to wash it?”
“Eat a peck of dirt before you die!” chimed Valia, without looking up from her sums. She had to keep track as she weighed the skeins, penciling her numbers in careful columns, and was doing it with what Dellarobia felt to be a desperate air, as if keeping score of some game she was bound to lose. What a mother-and-daughter pair, those two. Valia had no opinions of her own, apologized to her shadow, and did exactly as she was told, all of which signed her on as Hester’s BFF. Whereas Crystal lived the whole mistake-parade of her life as the majorette, bowing to the applause, ready to sign autographs. Crystal put the con in self-confidence. How could two people get the same set of parts and make such different constructions? But then, there was raising. That had to be taken into account. What could a doormat rear but a pair of boots?
Crystal announced suddenly, “Here’s what you ought to do, about all these people coming up? You should charge them.”
“See, that’s what I told Bear,” Hester said. “We both think that.”
“What’s stopping you, then?” Valia asked.
Hester raised her eyebrows and pointed her chin at Dellarobia, as if her daughter-in-law were a child, oblivious to the codes of adults.
“Hey, don’t look at me. Your son’s the one that spilled the beans in church, blame him.” Dellarobia got up and dumped an armload of tied bundles into the sink. Brethren, fix your thoughts on what is true. Bobby’s words came to her out of the blue, and she nearly spoke them aloud. Instead she said, “Let’s blame Bobby Ogle, while we’re at it. And Jesus, why not Jesus? Credit where credit is due.”
“Missy, you are asking for it with talk like that.”
“It’s Mrs. And you know what? I never said it’s the Lord’s divine hand at work up there. Go ahead and charge people if you want. Why wouldn’t you?”
Hester met her eye, and they held a moment in deadlock. The words born again rose to Dellarobia’s mind, and she contemplated a world where Hester no longer scared her. To turn her back on permanent rebuke, and find other motives for living, wouldn’t that be something. Like living as a no-heller, as Bobby was said to be. All recent events considered, Dellarobia didn’t mind this part. She turned away, untying the dishtowel that held Cordie in place and using it to scrub the worst of the applesauce from the creases around her chubby wrists. “Sorry to run,” Dellarobia said, “but we are out of here. I’ve got to meet the school bus in front of my house at twelve-seventeen.”
“You let Preston ride the bus?” Hester challenged.
“Yep. He wants to ride the big-boy bus. So today I let him. I’ve got to get over there so he won’t wander off down the road. I’m taking Roy with me, okay? That will thrill Preston, to see Roy waiting for his bus.”