“Are you kidding? A mad scientist in your creepy old barn. I saw that movie.”
A flush of defensiveness surprised Dellarobia, on behalf of the scientists or the barn, she was not sure. “It’s not as bad as you’d think out there. They’re using the room that used to be the milking parlor back when they had dairy cows here, like, fifty years ago.” Ovid had checked out the barn before he left, choosing the milking parlor for its enclosing walls and cement floor that could be hosed down. Bear and Hester had drawn up a three-month lease, for a fee that seemed shocking. The balloon payment on the loan was officially covered. “Pete’s just staying a few weeks, and then he’ll drive the van back. I guess the vehicle belongs to the college. But the equipment stays awhile.”
“Equipment for what?”
She reorganized Dovey’s wild mane, trying to separate layers in order to flatten them. The faint odor of scorched hair filled her nostrils, but Dovey seemed unalarmed. “I don’t know for what. Analysis, he said. Analys-ees,” she corrected herself.
“Busy bees, checking out the butter-flees.”
“Well, I think it’s interesting. I know it seems crazy to put so much work into butterflies, or kind of trivial, I guess. But what’s not trivial?”
Dovey leaned into the mirror and intoned, “Hair and makeup.”
“You spend your days cutting up meat. How’s that saving lives?”
“People have to eat to live.”
“They buy chuck roasts for Sunday dinner, but they’re hungry again on Monday. We raise sheep for sweaters that will wind up wadded up in people’s closets because they’ve got ten other sweaters and that one’s the wrong color.”
“Your father-in-law makes guardrails. Not trivial. Sorry to bring that up.”
“He used to, before the interstate ran out of money. And if you think about it, ninety-nine drivers out of a hundred never touch the guardrail. Maybe it’s not even one in a million that’s affected. So to most people, guardrails are trivial.”
“You make a strong case. Let me just go jump off a bridge right now.”
“I’m just saying you never know what’s important. He said he’s going to need assistants. Ovid.” She blushed again, but Dovey gave her a pass, maybe seeing something important was at stake. Dellarobia needed to close herself in a closet and practice saying that name: Ovidovidovid. “He’s putting an ad in the Courier to get volunteers, when school is back in session. But he’s hiring, too. He said he’d be training at least one assistant for pay. I feel like he was hinting I should apply for a job.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Are you kidding? Check my résumé. Experienced at mashing peas and arbitrating tantrums. He’ll get somebody from Cleary that’s gone to college.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I am short. What do you think I’d sell for?”
“She’s a rocket, she was made to burn,” Dovey sang alongside Kathy Mattea on the radio with perfect timing, pointing her finger at Dellarobia. “Just make sure you wear that to your job interview.” Dellarobia laughed. Her huge black T-shirt had a constellation of holes and a stretched-out neck that slipped off her shoulder. It was one of Cub’s, pulled over jeans and tank top as a housework smock. Charlie Daniels Band. It pre-dated their marriage.
“Cub wouldn’t want me working,” she said. “With the kids and everything. Can you imagine what Hester would say?”
“That right there is why you ought to do it.”
“To tell you the truth, Cub and I had a fight about it already. Right after he called.”
“What, you told Cub you’re going for it?”
“I asked. He said no. It was pretty predictable. ‘What will people think? Who will watch the kids?’ I told him I could work all that out.”
“I don’t see why you’re not just going for this.” Dovey looked her in the eyes, in the mirror. “You are a rocket. You go for things, Dellarobia. That is you. When did you ever not?”
Dellarobia shut her eyes. “When there was nothing out there to land on, I guess.”
“Now, see,” Dovey clucked, “that’s a woman thing. Men and kids get to just light out and fly, without even worrying about what comes next.”
“No, Dovey, it’s an everybody thing. It’s just a question of how well you can picture the crash landing.”
“Don’t picture it, then.”
“It’s a strategy,” Dellarobia conceded. “Works for some.”
“I’d help with Preston and Cordie. Any time I could.”
“I know you would. And it wouldn’t kill Hester to watch them once in a while, either. Or I could even pay somebody. It’s good money.”
“How good?”
“He said thirteen dollars an hour. Which is more than Cub’s making.”
“Ouch. There’s your trouble.”
“It is. But he can’t say that to me, you know? Instead he’s on a tear about some stranger raising our kids. ‘Raising our kids,’ he said. News flash, I told him, your son is in school. Strangers are teaching him his ABC’s. As opposed to his father, who is teaching him to watch the Dirtcathlon on Spike.”
“Your marriage is inspiring.”
“I know, for you to stay single. You sure I’m not burning up your hair with this?”
“Positive. Scorch it till next Tuesday if you want, it’ll still want to bounce back.”
“Me with a job, Dovey. Can you picture it? Maybe I’d learn something.”
“Like?”
“I have no idea. Like, how do those butterflies know where they’re going? You want to know something? It’s not even the same ones that fly south every winter, it’s the kids of the kids of the ones that went last winter. They hatch out up north somewhere and it’s just in them. Their beady little insect brains tell them how to fly all the way to this one mountain in Mexico where their grandparents hooked up. It’s like they’ve all got the same map of the big picture inside, but the craving to travel skips a few generations.”
Dovey was examining her nails, disappointingly unamazed. Nothing ever really surprised Dovey, but still. “Think about it,” Dellarobia insisted. “How do they find this one place thousands of miles away, where they’ve never been before?”