“Well. A fine disaster,” he said finally, without looking up.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Dellarobia said, feeling dumb as a cow.

“I could have tried to work with her. You are always telling me that, work with people. Show them we’re not the enemy. I know this was important. And I threw it.”

She realized he was looking around for his puffy green coat, which had fallen onto the floor near the refrigerator. Dellarobia fetched it up and handed it to him.

“But everything you said is true. Technically. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No,” he agreed. “Except to make sure she will run over that cartridge with her vehicle. Repeatedly.”

“But that’s her nickel,” Dellarobia said. “That’s everybody’s loss. I’m actually sorry nobody will ever get to see that.”

“Yo, guys,” Dovey said, holding up her phone. “Don’t worry, I got it all. Posting it now. YouTube.”

13

Mating Strategies

“March fourth,” Dellarobia said.

“To where?” Preston asked.

She laughed. “Not forward march. It’s the fourth of March. Friday. Your birthday is in one exact week.”

Preston smiled broadly, though his spectacled gaze remained fixed on the road. They stood facing east, the direction from which the bus would come, along with the light of morning in its own good time.

“I have such a big surprise for you, you won’t believe it,” she added, causing his smile to broaden and compress, as if containing a significant internal pressure. They watched the sun break over one of the stippled backs of the wooded hills that swam along the horizon. First it was a shapeless fire blazing through bare trees, quickly gaining the yolk of its sphere, and then they could not look at it directly.

“Today smells like the time when the lambs get born,” he said.

“It does. Like spring.” She closed her eyes and inhaled. “What is that, dirt?”

They stood together drawing in the day through their noses. At length Preston said, “I think it’s worms. And baby grass.”

“Yeah, you’re right. So. Do you want to see the lambs getting born this year, when they come?”

Preston nodded firmly.

“You could help other ways, you know. You wouldn’t have to be there right when they’re coming out.”

“I want to see them get born,” he said.

She was not afraid for him to see the writhing, fluid-soaked arrival of life, but also knew he might see death instead. That was the risk. “You might have to stay home from school,” she warned. “When a ewe starts going into her labors, you have to stay with her. We’ll call Miss Rose. She’ll let you be excused.”

“We’re allowed to know about it,” Preston said.

“About what?”

“Babies getting born from their mothers.”

“Is that right?”

“Yeah. Isaac Frye’s big sister did a baby on the toilet.”

“Oh gosh, Preston. How did that come up?”

He shrugged. “It’s okay. He made some of the girls cry, but Miss Rose made him stop it, and then she talked to us. About the family life.”

Once again Dellarobia had to salute the spirited Miss Rose. “And you’re okay with all that, for the time being?” she asked

He shrugged again. “Yeah.”

It was hard not to press the question of Isaac Frye’s sister, whose misery Dellarobia could imagine all too well, unfortunately. Another pregnant teenager sliding the loose broken latch on a bathroom stall, trying to stave off the unyielding future. She wondered if it was really born in the bathroom. And if it lived. Preston would never imagine his own family was forged through events hardly more graceful than these.

They watched the sun paint pink light across the belly of every cloud in the eastern sky. Preston suddenly pointed up into the middle distance. “Look.”

A pair of monarchs fluttered together above the road. A surprising sight so early in the day, and not ordinary flight, but a persistent buffeting of one against the other. The pair moved up and down as if trapped in a vertical column of air. Eventually they locked together and dropped on the road, flapping. Soon they disconnected and rose again, returning to their aerial tango.

“Are they fighting?” Preston asked. “Or is that family life?”

A question for the ages. “I’m not sure,” she said.

In a moment she added, “Wow. You know what?”

“What?”

“They might be coming out of their long winter’s nap. Dr. Byron’s been telling me to watch for this. If they wake up and start trying to mate, that’s really good news for the monarchs. And you spotted it, Preston. You were the first one.”

They watched the spiraling duo move up their path as if drawn along by invisible threads. If this was a pair, if they mated, if the female lifted her sights and went out to the vernal hills to secure the right unfurling leaf. If, then.

“Dr. Byron says the males go a little bit crazy,” she confided. “They’ll start going after anything that moves, trying to grab hold.”

“How come?” Preston asked.

“You know. Girlfriend stuff. Smooching!” She grabbed Preston and planted kisses all over his head, against his roaring grunts. Then let him go.

Both the butterflies fell into the road again, very close to where they stood, and for a moment the two insects lay stunned, open-winged. Then the one crawled slowly atop the other and they flopped around a bit. Preston and Dellarobia crept close enough to see the underneath partner, female presumably, stretch out her long black abdomen in a taut, expectant way. She’s the one with the stiffy, Dellarobia thought, keeping that one to herself. The guy on top was using his abdomen more like an elephant’s trunk, probing the tip around, feeling for its target. The search seemed to take a long time, and was weirdly erotic. Enough for Dellarobia to have reservations about crouching in the road watching an act of copulation with her kindergartner. Who was riveted.

“Gaa,” he said quietly when the clasp connected. There was no mistaking the plug in the socket, both members stiffened with a visible energy. For a moment they all froze, mother and son, butterfly and mate. The male began to flap, still linked, trying for liftoff. His helpful wife folded her wings and consented to be dragged as he pulled their weight a wobbly few feet above the road, then dropped. Then lifted again.