Flight Behavior Read Online Free Page B

Hester who loved roses. For Dellarobia their cloying
scent and falling-apart flowerheads opened a door straight into the memory of
her parents’ funerals.
    When she got out of the car she noticed one bright
spot of color in the whole front yard, a tiny acid-green sock on the stone step
where she must have dropped it this morning when she brought the kids. She
swiped it up and pocketed it on her way up the steps, abashed to confront the
woman she’d been a few hours ago, dying of a sickness. She opened the door
without knocking.
    Cramped indoor odors met her: dog, carpet, spilled
milk. And the sight of her kids, the heart-pounding relief of that, like the
aftermath of a car accident narrowly avoided. The two of them sat close together
on the living room floor in a tableau of brave abandonment. Preston had his arms
around Cordie and his chin nested on her fuzzy head while holding a picture book
open in front of her. The collies stretched on either side in alert recline, a
pair of protective sphinxes. All eyes flew up to her as she entered, keen for
rescue, the grandmother nowhere in sight. Preston’s dark, plaintive eyebrows
were identical to his father’s, aligned across his forehead as if drawn there by
a ruler. Cordelia reached both hands toward Dellarobia and burst into tears, her
mouth downturned in a bawl so intense it showed her bottom teeth. The TV drone
in the kitchen died abruptly, and Hester appeared in the doorway, still in her
bathrobe, her long gray hair coiled around pink foam curlers. On her children’s
behalf Dellarobia gave her an injured look, probably just a slightly less toothy
version of Cordie’s. It wasn’t as if she asked her mother-in-law to watch the
kids every day of the week. Not even once a month.
    Hester crossed her arms. “The way you run around, I
wasn’t expecting you back so soon.”
    “Well. I thank you for keeping an eye on them,
Hester.”
    “I wasn’t in there but a minute,” she pressed,
tilting her head back toward the kitchen.
    “Okay, you weren’t. It’s fine.” Dellarobia knew any
tone she took with Hester would be the wrong one. These conversations wore her
out before they began.
    “I was fixing to heat up some chicken fried steak
and greens for lunch.”
    For whose lunch,
Dellarobia wondered. It sounded like one that would require more than baby
teeth, not to mention some table knife skills. She said nothing. They both
watched Cordelia stand up precariously, red-faced and howling. She was wet, and
probably had been all morning. The diaper bulge inside her yellow footie pajamas
was like a big round pumpkin. No wonder the child couldn’t balance. Dellarobia
took a drag on her almost-finished cigarette, trying to decide whether to change
Cordie here or just get out of Dodge.
    “You shouldn’t smoke when you’re around them kids,”
her mother-in-law declared in a gravel voice. A woman who’d probably blown smoke
in Cub’s little red face the minute he was born.
    “Oh, my goodness, I would never do that. I only smoke when I’m lying out getting a suntan on
the Riviera.”
    Hester looked stunned, meeting Dellarobia’s gaze,
eyeing the boots and the chenille scarf. “Look at you. What’s got into you?”
    Dellarobia wondered if she looked as she felt, like
a woman fleeing a fire.
    “Preston, honey, say bye-bye to your Mammaw.” She
clenched the filter of her cigarette lightly between her teeth so she could lift
Cordelia to her hip, take Preston’s hand, and steer her family toward something
better than this.

2
    Family Territory
    O n shearing day the weather turned cool and fine. On the strength of that and nothing more, just a few degrees of temperature, the gray clouds scurried away to parts unknown like a fleet of barn cats. The chore of turning ninety ewes and their uncountable half-grown lambs through the shearing stall became a day’s good work instead of the misery expected by all. As far as Dellarobia could remember, no autumn shearing had been so