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"Right We cut down the trees and get ourselves buried in mud like a bunch of hillbillies, because we’re afraid of raising our kids to be du we just do it because that’s e are," she said, too loudly "Who are we?"
"Dellarobia, for Christ’s sakes, do you have to rees with ht to clear-cut the mountain She told me that, the day she ca Dellarobia watched as he rearranged the whole ga through to the top The woainst him Of course he would see it that way They faced each other, a towering, morose man and his small, miserable wife, both near tears How could two people both lose an argu," he said "For the kids to have their Christmas"
People wrecked their worlds for less She knew that She’d been so keen on her one great day in the sack, she al, kids included What a hypocrite, feeling sorry for herself now because she couldn’t buy theic to Chinese plastic she couldn’t breathe "When you get your one siured out, leta seventy-five-cent sht bleakly She headed for the exit lane, but sos, a cloth potholder shaped like ain a display of incidental iteh and landed there for a moment’s rest The colors made it stand out She reached on tiptoe to take it down and found that it was surprisingly wellelse she’d seen in here The black stripes were accurately placed, right down to the two black dots on the loings Did they even have monarchs in China? She did not know But soet this exactly right She smoothed it in her hands and pictured a real person, a sthe presser foot up and down toScrolling out a ht be Get me out of here
And what if there was no other place?
She strode to the checkout lane and flipped the potholder on the counter The yellow-apron lady picked it up for a closer look, observing the quality "Now that’s real pretty," she said, sounding surprised "That’d ift"
"Actually it’s forup four crumpled dollars from her coat pockets The lady took her h the close-up part of her glasses, exa at the little black dots "Not that anybody probably cares But it’s a h with the Christure, and scolded Dellarobia for her reticence "When did you get to be such a wimp?"
"Am I a wimp?" She racked her brain for evidence to the contrary She thought of herself opening the door that day when Crystal had cowered behind it, hiding froht But co a fox stole to church She did recall what it felt like to turn heads every time she walked into a room, as small as she was, empowered so in her that larger people contained, with no wasted space, and a whole lot more inout in bars pretending to be airline stewardesses or software engineers, whatever they’d cooked up en route It had still seeave credence to their constructions No eous the story, lasses and claimed to be Jane Goodall’s assistant She and Dovey had seen a show on this lady scientist, and had plenty of chi on Dellarobia turned around and asked if she could get him a job He didn’t even pause to wonder what Jane Goodall’s executive tea in Cleary
Today Dovey rocery run for the party when she got off work at three, while Dellarobia dug around in the junk drawers of her for to locate the nerve So up, that here she found it She was sick of begging for orna on a tree, as part of so from heaven with no hard currency as backup Fed up with stories about poor people with good hearts raising their da per, because she was too proud to beg favors in this family That’s how the simple folk lived, in her particular Christ half a tablet fro her nerve, she tro theot back from their day’s work
The scientists knocked off early that afternoon, a rainy day, big surprise, and ca their jackets and ifts for the kids, which could not be opened before Christ the his all-star shtly lapped eyeteeth Dellarobia had gone a tadmultiple trays of cookies shaped like stars and bells, which she’d set up for the kids to decorate at the kitchen table Cordie stood on a chair while Preston knelt on the one beside her, sing his sister’s use of the sprinkles Preston went immediately into show-offan experi a brown-colored product that was not going to be a big seller in any household fahed, scraped it out, and started over, no big deal Powdered sugar was about the cheapest of edible substances It was one of the rocery store economics