Flight Behavior

Preston does get a watch like Mako’s on Christmas morning because Mako gives his watch to Dellarobia as a gift for her son. Although she promises to tell Preston that it was Mako who gave him the watch, she caves in that morning and tells Preston that Santa is responsible for the gift.

On New Year’s Day, Dovey comes over and tells Dellarobia she has a date that night, and the two women set up the hot rollers to do each other’s hair. Cub leaves the house, but not before Dellarobia snidely whispers to Dovey that there will be “No more sex till he quits ending every g—d damn sentence with a preposition” (256). She immediately wishes she were a better wife to her husband.

When the conversation turns to Ovid, Dellarobia tells Dovey that he and some of the scientists will be leaving soon. Ovid is looking for volunteers to help with the next stage of the process, and she feels he has encouraged her to apply for one of those spots. She confesses that she and Cub fought when she told him she wanted to try for the position. Dovey points out that passing on an opportunity like this is not Dellarobia’s style: “You are a rocket. You go for things, Dellarobia. That is you. When did you ever not?” (261-62). Dovey offers to babysit when she is available, and Dellarobia thinks that Hester should offer to help out too. The pay for the research assistants is more than Cub is making per hour, and Dellarobia thinks that is what hurts Cub the most: that his wife would be making more money.

Dellarobia remembers that January 1 is the day her first child, a baby who was miscarried, was born. The women recall that they were angry at each other at the time and weren’t on speaking terms. Dellarobia’s unhealed grief pours through when she remembers that no one talked with her or to her about the lost child: “You don’t get to feel sad about a baby that never had a name and doesn’t exist” (266). The baby was the reason why she hastily married Cub in the first place, and Dovey asks her why she stayed in the sham of a marriage. To Dellarobia, there was nowhere else to go, and the Turnbows had already funded the building of the couple’s house. She had felt the baby move and had thought that having a family was the best she could hope for.

Dovey changes the subject by talking about the man she is meeting that night—a ladies’ man who flirts outrageously. Their conversation comes to a halt when Dellarobia realizes that Dovey is describing Jimmy the telephone repairman, the young man she almost committed adultery with and a serial philanderer.

All night and the next day, Dellarobia criticizes herself for being fooled by Jimmy. She thinks about the other men she has developed crushes, and she is in this state of mind when Tina Ultner, a television reporter, and her cameraman show up at her door. After trying to head them off, Dellarobia gives in and takes her children in the news station Jeep up the trail to the butterflies. She notices that the path has become more evident with the number of tourists who have traveled it and compares herself to the road, calling both “[n]ow paved over” (282).

At the top of the trail, Dellarobia watches as her daughter experiences the butterflies for the first time: “[W]onder and light [come] into her daughter’s eyes” (283). The air is alive with butterflies and a comforting, natural scent. The cameraman sets up his equipment and begins taping as Ultner asks Dellarobia to talk about whatever she feels is important. Stumbling a few times, Dellarobia mentions the scientific importance of the butterflies and then admits that she was “running away from things […] So [she] came up here by [her]self, ready to throw everything away. And [she] saw this. This stopped [her]” (287). The butterflies saved her.

The clip goes viral via CNN, and Dovey calls her to tell her what happened. She mentions that what Dellarobia said on camera made it sound as if she had considered suicide and the butterflies stopped her. The interview prompts a massive response from the community, with people congratulating her for making international news as if being on television were “the peak human experience” (291). Dellarobia and her butterflies have become a worldwide story, and her image appears in saintly form on the internet.

Dellarobia interviews for one of Ovid’s government-funded scientist positions. She inadvertently mentions Cub’s negative response to the prospect of the job but reassures Ovid that working with the butterflies will not be a problem. Dellarobia is distressed to admit that she only has high school experience in science and never attended college. She is embarrassed to think that her lack of education disqualifies her from the job and worried because Ovid seems different from the open, kind person she had met before the holidays. Now, he looks sad and distracted.

Ovid implies that Dellarobia can help with managing volunteers and completing data entry and paperwork. She is amazed to think that workers will come from all over the world and that Ovid is confident that he will find a pool of high school volunteers to pitch in. When he asks Dellarobia what her science classes were like in school, she tells him that the science teacher was also the basketball coach and classes involved the girls working on study sheets while the boys shot hoops in the gym. Ovid questions her about the local secondary education some more, distressed by what she reports. When he angrily asks what school administrators are thinking, Dellarobia tells him they think only of sports.

Ovid confesses that he went to visit the local high school, Feathertown High, to look for volunteers to help with his research. “Things were not what I expected” (307), he states, still surprised that the only response he received was a question about whether the students would be paid minimum wage. Dellarobia tells him that teenagers don’t need to attend high school, as their lives are already planned for them on farms, and the state never sends people to rural schools to make sure that curriculum standards are being upheld. When Ovid mentions that he grew up in Saint Thomas, Virgin Islands, a United States territory, Dellarobia fires back, explaining that not everyone gets the chance to succeed like he has: “[T]here’s not room at the top for everybody” (309). Ovid approves her for the job because he needs to hire someone quickly, which Dellarobia takes as an insult.

Ovid admits that he is worried about time because if winter arrives before the butterflies have the chance to migrate, they will all die. In fact, he states that because of the damage done to monarch butterfly habitats in Mexico, the numbers of butterflies there are greatly diminished. As a result, Ovid believes that the majority of the migratory population of North American monarch butterflies is on the Turnbow family property. Their survival is unlikely at best. He explains that scientists are there to study and record, not to be environmental saviors. Dellarobia understands the reason for Ovid’s sadness: “The one thing most beloved to him [is] dying” (315).

Dellarobia tells Ovid that he should be on the news, sharing this information with the world. His principal assistant, Pete, brusquely tells her they talk to her because they’re not really interested in sharing the information. He adds that people watch the news that they agree with and ignore or dismiss any information that conflicts with their beliefs. He points out that a catastrophic concern like global warming is confusing to the average American, so the news plays up an angle that people will want to see. Ovid exclaims that people aren’t paying attention as the world slowly burns and sinks around them.

Defiantly, Dellarobia tells Ovid that she planned on going to college. She was the only person in her high school class to try, and she even took the ACT. However, her math and science scores were low, and by that time, she was pregnant with the child she would eventually lose. Dellarobia thinks that Ovid is incapable of understanding the limited opportunities that people like her have. Meanwhile, her dawning understanding of climate change means “[s]he [has] so much more to lose now than just herself or her own plans” (319).

Dellarobia hires Lupe as her babysitter for when she works with Ovid. A crowd of young protestors on the front porch of her home causes her to hide Lupe and the children in an abandoned house down the road. She sneaks back to her house, infiltrates the pro-environmental crowd, and then confronts the leader of the protest on her porch. After an initial tense exchange, the leader, Vern Zarkas, asks to see Burley Turnbow to protest his logging activity. Dellarobia points out that Zarkas wants Burley Senior, who lives up the road. As he apologizes profusely, Dellarobia gives him directions to Hester and Bear’s property. She then stands in front of the crowd and tells them they have the wrong house and they need to protest in front of Bear’s home. Then she gets Lupe and the children and brings them back into her home.

At the lab, Dellarobia shares this experience with Ovid and Pete, thinking that she should have taken names to get volunteers for their research. She offers to call Zarkas and ask for the protestors’ help. The three exchange stories about the kind of students in their different worlds: Ovid and Pete’s students are entitled cheaters, while the rural students are unfailingly polite and afraid to break rules. Dellarobia thinks of Preston and “[w]hat would become of him when he had to fight for a place in the world against kids who thought they owned it already” (332).

Dellarobia works in the lab and learns more about the butterflies and the potential reasons why they came to Tennessee. Ovid discusses the difference between correlation and causation as they try to hypothesize about the reasons the monarchs are there: “We cannot jump to conclusions. All we can do is measure and count. That is the task of science” (336). Dellarobia delves into the work while considering that even her poor education taught her that in the battle between humanity and nature, humanity always loses.