He said, “I’ll call you later, Arlene.”
“Why?” I said.
“I thought, I mean I just . . .” Bud and Clarice were looking at him now, too. “I thought we could be lab partners,” he fumbled out. “Chemistry.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m taking bio.”
“Yah, well,” he said. “Okay, then.” He drove off abruptly in blushing confusion.
Clarice poked me in the side with her elbow and said, “Walter Fiercy totally likes you!”
I shrugged. “Well, I don’t like him.” And that was the end of it.
After that, every one of the boys I led astray was another roadway to Clarice that I saw as closed. I admit the logic was flawed. But at the time it gave me a sense of control. It was like I was protecting her in the only way I could. And also, I admit it, the sense of power was addictive.
For a few moments, I owned every boy in my class, one by one, and in an order of my choosing. They lost themselves in me while I remained grounded. From each boy I stole a moment where I was totally myself and they were dissolved, not even people. And each time I stayed myself a little longer. The Arlene Clarice had made me become after she found me mooning over a dead roach, this smart and smart-ass girl, became less of a lie with every boy. I was a battery, charging myself up with them.
Until one day I was strong enough to follow Jim Beverly and some stupid little frosh I didn’t even know up Lipsmack Hill. And I killed him.
I said fucking those boys was effective. I never said it was healthy.
CHAPTER 7
I WOKE UP lying in the crook of Burr’s arm, feeling shy in only my panties, with the hotel sheets pulled up to my chin. The digital clock beside the bed said it was barely past five, but Burr was awake, too. When he felt me stirring, he took his arm out from under my head and propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at me in the dim light. He wasn’t embarrassed or shy at all, and I longed to stay right where we were, in the hotel, as if I had no relatives waiting to dissect me and no past rising to destroy me.
I sat bolt upright, clutching the sheet to my chest. “Shit,” I yelled. “Burr, I forgot to call my folks last night and say we were stopping over to sleep!”
He slapped himself in the forehead. “I meant to remind you. We’re about eight hours late. Your mama’ll be worried.”
“Mama nothing,” I said. “Aunt Florence will have burst something by now. Hand me the phone.”
“Won’t they be sleeping?” he said.
I shook my head. “They’re all up. Aunt Flo may have already headed out to her garden by now, if she isn’t pacing the house and calling upon the Lord to send a rain of fire down upon my head.”
He rolled over to his bedside table and flipped on the lamp. Then he rolled back, bringing the phone with him and resting the base of it on his chest.
He picked up the receiver and held it out to me.
I took it but paused before dialing. Burr was sprawled in the bed beside me wearing nothing but a sheet. He was long in the torso and lithe, with broad shoulders and narrow man hips. He was perfectly at ease. Hell, he was perfectly everything.
Burr caught me looking at his body and grinned, again propping himself up on one elbow, setting the phone on the bed in between us. He waggled his eyebrows like a lech. “Why don’t you call later?” he said in a low-down, nasty voice.
“Behave,” I said sternly. “Listen, Burr, you have to be quiet. I mean dead quiet. And none of that ‘I think it’s funny to torment my lover when she’s on the phone with her parents’ crap you always see in the movies. Swear?”
He held up three fingers like a Boy Scout and nodded.
“The problem is that I don’t know what to tell her,” I said.
Burr shrugged. “Tell her the truth.”
“Are you on crack?” I yelped.
“I meant, tell her we stopped over because you were too tired to drive. You don’t have to tell your devoutly Southern Baptist aunt the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”
“Right,” I said, and I took the phone.
“Why do I feel like I’m back in high school?” he said, grinning. “Scared Mom’ll find out what I’m doing.”
That irritated me. “You’re a Baptist, too, Burr. You’re not supposed to have sex before you’re married, either. You want me to call your preacher’s-wife mama and tell her what we did last night? You know good and well it’s a sin—”
“People sin, Lena,” Burr interrupted. He sat up and reached for my hand. “People in love sin a lot. God invented sex. He knows how it works. Don’t forget, we also believe in forgiveness.”
“Not if you do it on purpose,” I said. “You can’t just say, ‘La la la, this is what I want to do, and I can always get forgiven later!’ There’s a moment, Burr, a moment where you can choose, and if you choose what you know is wrong, on purpose, how can you ever come back from that?”
“Lena, that’s some hard-ass screwed-up theology you’ve got there. I’m willing to sit here naked in the bed with you and debate redemption, but only if you can look me in the eye and tell me truthfully that the only reason you never threw down with me before last night is because we’re Baptists.”
I looked away, trying to take my hand back, but Burr wouldn’t let me go. He said, “The first time I kissed you, you leaped off the sofa like it was on fire and said, ‘Did I tell you that I’m celibate?’ But you didn’t want to talk about it. You’re still not ready to talk about it. That’s fine, but let’s not pretend it’s not there. Something you won’t say is between us, in this bed, and it’s important for me to say I know it’s there.”
I wouldn’t look directly at him. I shook my head, but I kept my hand in his. “I have never lied to you, Burr. Not once,” I said.
“And we both know what that’s worth,” Burr said, but he was smiling. He tugged at my hand until I met his eyes. “You’re no liar, but you’re devious enough to be a litigator. Don’t worry. You picked a man who can read tax code and date a celibate for two years. That’s some serious patience. I have zero doubt in my ability to wait you out. And I have zero doubt that you’re meant to be my girl.”
I nodded. Then I lifted the phone and dialed. Florence picked it up before the first ring was halfway over. “Arlene?” she said.
“Hey, Aunt Flo.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m—”
“Are you hurt?”
“No, we’re fine, I—”
“Hold, please,” Aunt Flo said. I heard the clatter of the receiver being dropped on the counter on her end, and then I heard her calling my mother. She was loud enough to make sure I caught every word. “Gladys? It’s your daughter. She must be calling to tell you she is dead and in hell and to ask you to dip your finger in the water and come and cool her tongue, as she is tormented in the flames. Surely she is dead and in hell, because nothing else would explain her not showing up and not even calling you, her own mama, to keep you from pulling out all your hair with worry. I am so sorry she is dead and in hell, but at least they have phones there . . .”
From farther away, I heard my mother yell back, “Tell her hey for me.”
Florence picked the phone back up and said in a tight, angry voice, “Your mama says . . . hey.”
“Tell her hey back?” I said.
“I can only assume,” said Florence, “that this call means you are not coming, and it’s so late because you did not have the courage or courtesy to at least tell us earlier and save us the agony.”
“No, Aunt Florence, we are coming. We’re more than halfway there. Burr doesn’t see well driving at night, and I got so tired we had to stop over at a hotel. I was so punchy I forgot to call you, and then I fell asleep.”
“I assume Burr is this boyfriend? This boyfriend you say you are bringing?”
“Yes, Burr is my boyfriend.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Aunt Florence. “So. You’ll be here later today?”
“Yes, ma’am,?
?? I said, feeling twelve years old.
“So if and when—and I mostly mean if—the two of you show up, I hope you know he will be sleeping on the sofa, while you will be in your old room.”
“Yes, Aunt Flo, or if you’d rather, we could get rooms at the Fruiton Holiday Inn.”
Aunt Florence inhaled and said, “You can stay here. For now I suppose there is nothing for me to do but begin my vigil anew.”
“We’ll be there today, I promise.”
“I will believe it when I see the whites of your eyes,” said Florence.
“We’ll be there,” I said.
“What sort of a name is Burr, anyway? It sounds unreliable. Does this ‘Burr’ have a job, or is he at that school of yours?”
“He’s a lawyer, and it’s his last name. His last name is Burroughs.”
“Arlene,” said Aunt Florence, “later today, if and when I see the whites of your eyes?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I am likely to start shooting.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
She hung up.
I released a shaky breath and set the receiver gently in the cradle. Burr took the phone and put it back on the bedside table. He turned the lamp off while he was over there, and then flopped backwards onto the bed.
I stayed sitting up with the sheet still clutched to my chest. “Burr?” I said. “I hope you know last night was a onetime thing. It was probably a bad idea, but we did it, and I’m not sorry, and I don’t blame you. But don’t start thinking we’re going to frisk around fornicating like rabbits all the time.”
“All right,” said Burr, but he reached up and took me by the shoulders, turning as he pulled me down so that we were lying face-to-face. He kissed me, and it was a serious kiss, filled with intent.
When he came up for air, I said, “I mean it, Burr. Don’t get ideas.”
“I’m not having ideas,” said Burr. “I’m just kissing you. While you’re naked.” He grinned wickedly, and then he bent his head to me again, rolling me onto my back as he trailed a warm string of kisses down my neck to my collarbone. He dislodged the sheet as he went.
I lay beside him, a little stiff and a little wary, but I did not move away or get up. I should have, but some secret place in me did not want to, and anyway, I had broken my side of the deal with God for real now. I had been on the way to Possett, and planning to lie to Rose Mae, but nothing had really been done until last night. The pact was broken, and I couldn’t unfornicate by saying no now.
“Once we leave this hotel room, all this stops,” I said.
“Sure, baby,” Burr murmured into my throat.
I had meant it as permission, but Burr, the king of the roving hands, was behaving himself mightily. He kept his free hand in the Baptist-sanctified safe zones, on my waist, my shoulder, and my hip, where he paused, probably surprised to find the panties I had slipped on in the night. Then he stretched out his arm across my body and put his hand in mine, squeezing briefly before turning his hand over so the back of it was cradled in my palm.
“Put it where you want it,” he said.
He was kissing me again, and I realized he was inviting me to play the game we always played when we made out. It was the game where his hands roved and my hands moved them, controlling them, placing them where it was safe for them to be. But this time it was backwards. He moved his hand and placed it palm down on my waist again, with my hand over it. I pulled it up to my breast. He lingered there briefly before sliding on past, up to the innocent flesh of my shoulder.
I kept moving him, placing his hands on all the off-limits places I had spent so much time and energy defending from these same hands. As always, the power of it got to me. The ability to make his big hands do what I wanted, to go where I pushed them, was an aphrodisiac. I closed my eyes.
He stayed quietly beside me, not moving anything except the hand I controlled as it moved on my body. As he touched me, my grasp on his hand loosened, until my fingers rested on his as lightly as they might rest on a planchette. I couldn’t tell if I was moving him or he was moving me. Then I was sure it was him, and I was clinging to his wrist, digging my nails in a little. His big body was still and quiet, innocent, but his hand was moving, and it did not stop moving, and I dug my nails into his wrist, and then I came, my eyes opening, surprised.
As I was coming against his hand, he was already moving over me and into me. That was surprising, too, that he could feel so good to me, pushing slow inside of me in the aftershocks of my orgasm.
I wrapped myself around him as he moved, and he smiled at me and said, “Don’t look so shocked.” Then later he said, “I think you should marry me.” Before I could answer him, he took my hips and pulled me up tight against him and buried his face in my long hair, shaking. We lay together, very still.
He rolled off of me and pulled me with him so I was lying half stretched across his chest. His eyes were sleepy and sweet, drifting closed.
I dug the point of my chin into his chest, hard, and his eyes opened. “We have to get on the road pretty soon,” I said.
“It’s not even six,” he said. And then his eyes closed again and he was gone. I lay beside him, wide awake, feeling his body become warm and heavy as he drifted deeper.
“Burr?” I whispered. He did not answer. “I will marry you,” I said. I waited another full minute, but he did not respond, so I knew he was really out.
I would tell him yes when he woke up. I would tell him I would marry him because I loved him, and that was true. But more than one thing can be true at the same time. We were almost to Alabama. And there wasn’t a statute of limitations on murder. I knew this from Burr’s books. I also knew from these same books that it was sheer insanity to return to the scene of your crime. And being in Alabama, vulnerable and distressed, I might accidentally tell him.
The truth was, I wanted very badly to accidentally tell him. If we got married, I could relax in the knowledge that a husband cannot be forced to testify against his wife. Boyfriends can be forced to testify against you all day long.
Until Burr, I never wanted to tell. I didn’t even want to tell Clarice, who had been present for my motive and alibied me during the crime. I never had any need to tell Aunt Florence or Bruster, much less Mama. I had no desire to confess to my preacher, cry on my youth minister, or whisper salaciously to his virginity-obsessed wife. I didn’t want to discuss it with God, although of course, God had seen everything.
In a seminar I took on Greek mythology, I read about a cursed king who whispered his secret to the river. Ever after, the rushes murmured “King Midas has donkey ears” whenever the wind blew. He deserved it. He was an idiot.
But the day I realized I was in love with Burr, I also realized I wanted to tell him. Underneath it all, I was an idiot, too. I wanted to cup his ear in the dark and whisper it to him. I knew how to begin.
“There are gods in Alabama,” I would say. “I know. I killed one.”
I imagined it as a game. Burr and me playing What Have I Got in My Pocketses, this time for keeps. Begin at the end, with the murder itself. Tell him about the walk up the hill and the bottle. Then I would move to motive, tell him everything Clarice had meant to me, and how I had to protect her from the things I understood. Then I would tell him about the dark summer I spent sweating it out in black clothes, weeping over roaches. I would tell him about all the boys, starting with screwing Walter Fiercy in his daddy’s sedan while Clarice had some ice cream and fell in love with her future husband. I had practiced those parts of my story for over a year now, waiting for the time when I could finally tell Burr. I had the back half of my tale down letter-perfect, knew it word for word.
I would stop in the middle, and Burr would tell me the beginning. It ought to be easy for a tax attorney with a romantic yen for criminal law. “What have I got in my pocketses?” I would ask, signaling that it was time for him to take over. Burr was good at the game, and in this case, hadn’t I made it easy for him? My motive, my cata
lyst, though unspoken, was laced all through the endgame of my story. I had crafted my portion carefully, so there was only one place he could begin.
Burr would tell it to me the way he always did. He never said, “Once upon a time.” He liked to lay out the facts in orderly rows, as if delivering a closing argument. I saw him in his dove-gray suit, performing to an empty courtroom. No one there but me, both judge and witness.
“—Fact one: Jim Beverly did something very bad to you at the end of your freshman year at Fruiton High.
“—Fact two: Aunt Florence did not allow you and Clarice to date as freshmen, unless both of you went—it had to be a double date.
“—Fact three: Jim Beverly was a god at that school, and Clarice was a goddess. If he had asked out anyone, it would have been Clarice. You were just along for the sake of the rules, probably with some boy who owed Jim Beverly a hefty favor as your date.
“—Hypothesis one: Your date would have ditched out early, trying to peel you away with him as per Jim Beverly’s plan. You, extremely protective and enamored, almost worshipful, of Clarice, would not have abandoned her.
“—Fact four: Jim Beverly, as we saw on Lipsmack Hill, drank to excess, and when he drank to excess, he became crude and sexually aggressive.
“—Hypothesis two: He became sexually aggressive with Clarice in some remote area. Only you were there, your date having ditched you back in hypothesis one. You tried to protect her, both of you fighting him. There was violence, and there was blood. Perhaps Jim Beverly hit Clarice in the fray, and she fell back. Perhaps she banged her head on something. It may have knocked her out. At any rate, she went down, leaving you to fight Jim Beverly alone. And then the fight changed, didn’t it, Arlene?
“Which leads us to a conclusion. Doesn’t it, Arlene?”
And there my fantasy stopped, because the real Burr never called me Arlene, and even in my fantasy, I couldn’t make him speak his conclusion aloud. Sometimes I could get his mouth to move, lips forming the words “Jim Beverly raped you.” But I could never hear his voice. In my head, he wanted me to say it instead of him.