Burr’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at me silently. At last he said, “No.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “That’s it?” I said. “Just no?”
“What else is there to say? Yes, I want to marry you. No, I’m not going to Mobile and get it over with as if it were a root canal. I want to get married in my dad’s church, by our pastor, with my family there—”
“Geneva won’t come, I bet you,” I interjected, but he kept talking.
“My mother will. I would think you’d want her there. I’m sorry you’re having a post-lie panic attack, if that’s what this is, but this is not the solution. We’ll be home in a few days. If you’re pregnant, you won’t be showing next week. We can do it quietly, the way you want. I’m good with quiet. But I’m not good with hasty and ashamed.”
I stared at him helplessly, then turned back to the computer. I closed it down and packed it carefully back into its case.
“I really need this, Burr,” I said in a low voice.
“Why?” he said.
I didn’t have an answer.
He took a deep breath behind me. “I don’t know what your agenda is, Lena. I know you have one. You always do. I don’t mind that when you let me be on your team. But don’t work me. Don’t tell me half the story and expect me to fall in line. At some point you have to decide to trust me.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do. But how can I, if you won’t marry me?”
“I will marry you. But I don’t want a civil ceremony. I don’t want to break my mother’s heart. And I don’t want to spend my wedding night in that bed, listening to your mother cough. I think that’s reasonable. Now I’m going to get in the shower, because this is a bad time and place to have a fight. And believe me, we’re heading that way.”
He walked out of the room. I heard the bathroom door shut emphatically, and then the water began to run. He stayed in the shower a long time. I got up and went to coax Mama in out of the yard.
Burr and I spent the rest of the day being polite and careful with each other. Burr read one of the legal thrillers he’d brought with him. When I went in the kitchen to make lunch, I gave the medicine-cabinet door a tug. It was locked, but then I noticed Aunt Florence had left her keys behind on the kitchen counter. I sighed. No doubt Mama had been in the meds. I took Flo’s keys and went back to her room and tucked her key ring in her pocketbook.
I made tuna salad for lunch and then played cards with Mama. Mama was flushed, and whatever she had swallowed had made her chirpy and twitchy. Whenever I could get a break from her chatter, I went back to Clarice’s room to call the Holiday Inn, but Rose still had not checked in.
At about three, Aunt Florence came in from the garden. Burr was still reading. Florence took one look at Mama’s red cheeks and said, “Gladys, why don’t you go get your scrapbooking things.” Mama joggled off to her room, and Florence said, “I got in it with you and forgot and left my keys out, didn’t I?”
I nodded and told her where I had put them.
When Mama came back, Florence spent the rest of the afternoon helping her do scrapbooking, trying to keep her calm and seated. Uncle Bruster got home at four-thirty, and Florence went to start dinner. Mama was still flying when we all gathered at the dining room table. The clink of cutlery on the plates and Mama jiggling and twisting around in her chair almost made me run screaming into the street.
Burr and I went to bed when Bruster turned in. I called the hotel once more, but Rose was still a no-show. I spent another long night dozing and listening to Burr breathe while my mother and Aunt Florence walked the house. Florence marched Mama up and down the hall until she could get her to go to bed.
The next morning all was quiet. Mama had crashed and was dead asleep in her room, so Florence was systematically searching the house, looking for Mama’s pill stash. My money was on Mama. I offered to help with the search, but Florence shook her head. She remained so cool and distant that her earlier relentless stalking began to look appealing. Right after lunch, Burr and I escaped the house, heading for the mall in Fruiton. I tried the hotel a few times before leaving, but still no Rose.
Clarice was already waiting for us by the mall’s front entrance, just her and the baby. Bud was at work, and the boys were at school. Her mouth was pulled down slightly at the corners, but even so, she looked pretty enough to be a TV mommy. Francie perched solemnly on her hip, staring me down with smaller versions of Clarice’s pale blue eyes. Clarice walked up to meet us and gave me a one-armed hug. Francie used the opportunity to remove a chunk of my hair.
“What are we looking for?” Clarice said, disentangling my long hair from the baby’s fat starfish hand.
“We have to find a present for Uncle Bruster,” I said. “How’s that for procrastination? I figured you could help us find something he would really like.”
Clarice switched the baby to her other hip, and we headed down the mall together. There was one of those knickknack and trophy shops two stores down from the entrance, and we went in. Burr wandered the aisles, picking up business-card holders and pens and desk sets and setting them back down.
Clarice pulled me in the opposite direction. Once we were a couple of aisles over, she said, “What do you mean you’re not married? What happened with Rose Mae Lolley? Why did she want to find you? Why are you really home after all this time, not that I’m not happy to see you, but Arlene, what’s going on?”
“That’s a lot of questions,” I said. “The marriage thing, don’t worry about it. We are getting married. I think. I hope. Next week, at home. But I couldn’t have Aunt Florence thinking he was temporary and picking at us.”
“That almost makes sense,” said Clarice. “It makes Arlene sense, anyway. Still, if Mama ever finds out, I don’t want to be in the state.”
“As for Rose Mae, who knows,” I said. “She’s a nutburger. She tracked me down at my job—”
“She showed up in Chicago?” Clarice interrupted me.
“Yes, at school and at my apartment.”
“What did she want?” Clarice said. Her pretty brow was furrowed, and Francie gave a peeping squawk. Clarice was holding her too tightly. Clarice loosened her grip and dropped a kiss on the baby’s head.
“I refused to talk to her, Clarice. I pretty much closed the door in her face. I had no idea she’d turn around and come down here hunting you.” I was doing it again, telling the truth but not the whole truth. I couldn’t bring myself to tell a flat lie to Clarice. “Don’t worry about it, okay? She’s just your garden-variety loon. She said she was coming to Fruiton mostly on some tour-of-memories thing, so bothering you isn’t even her first priority. And if she does turn up, you can send her my way. Don’t tell her anything, don’t talk to her, just get ahold of me, and I’ll handle her.”
“I can do that,” said Clarice. She wrapped her other arm around Francie, holding her close and rubbing her cheek along the baby’s head. “If she’s crazy, I don’t want her near us.”
“Good. It isn’t much to do with you anyway. I’ll handle her,” I said, and Clarice looked at me, solemn and trusting.
We went to find Burr. He was at the back of the store, holding a brass cigar cutter in the shape of a bare-breasted mermaid. She was leering and holding up a clamshell that held the blades.
“Perfect, right?” said Burr, and Clarice giggled. The three of us wandered the aisles together, chatting, and I found unexpected pleasure in having one family member who seemed interested in getting to know and like my probable future husband.
Francie got fussy, and we left the shop and walked to the center of the mall. We sat down on the benches by the center-court fountain, and Clarice dug around in her diaper bag. She spooned a jar of peas into Francie’s mouth and dragged out some baby toys while we talked a bit more, catching up. Then Clarice started packing up the baby’s things.
“I have to go get the boys at three-thirty. Lordy, but the time has flown. Arlene, you should run down to Wolf Camera and ge
t Daddy a new point-and-shoot.”
“That’s a good idea,” I said.
“I take it the present means you won the fight with Mama yesterday morning?” Clarice asked.
“What?” I said, not seeing the connection.
“I’m glad you guys are going,” Clarice went on. “I was hoping you would, and I know deep down, Daddy would be sad if you didn’t come. Mama is being ornery.”
I said, “Burr and I don’t know if we’re going to the retirement party, Clarice. But that’s not what I fought with your mother about. Why would you think that?”
Clarice paused in her packing and said, “Oh, wait. Never mind. I thought Mama was going to— Oh boy. I guess I put my foot in it. Really, never mind.”
But I was doing the math in my head. “That’s what Aunt Florence was trying to get me alone to talk about? She doesn’t want me to come to this retirement party and shame her in Quincy’s Steak House? That’s it?”
Burr put his hand on my arm, but I shook him off. “No, Burr, hold on. She tortures me for weeks and uses my mother on me, trying to make me come down here for this party, and when I do, she doesn’t want me to come to the thing because, what? Burr? Because of me and Burr?”
“Oh, Lordy, I am so dumb,” said Clarice and sat down again. Francie stood up on Clarice’s legs, tugging at her hair, and Clarice let her. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Yes, you should have.”
“Lena, why are you so angry?” said Burr. “This is what you warned me about from the moment I said I wanted to meet your family.”
I shook my head. In a way, I was relieved to know that Bruster’s party was the reason Florence had been trying to finagle a moment alone with me, away from Burr. But at the same time, I was angry. For ten years I had abandoned her. And in that ten years she’d decided I was still pissed with her over some stupid teen drama or another, and now all she wanted was to ask me to please not bring a black man to Uncle Bruster’s party. Where was the inquisition? Where was the peeling like a grape? Some part of me wanted to be peeled, to tell it all, to irrevocably lay it down at the feet of someone, anyone, who loved me, be it Florence or Burr or both.
But if Burr coming to the party was her biggest issue with me after ten years, then . . . then what? Then she didn’t love me. If there was to be no inquisition, then she did not truly love me at all, and I was shocked by how much that hurt me. But I should not have been. She was the closest thing I’d had to a mother after my father died and my own mother quit the job. And as much as I wanted to avoid Aunt Florence’s questions and recriminations and anger, it was worse, infinitely worse, in fact devastating, for her not to have questions and recriminations and anger.
But probably she didn’t. She had stripped my things, cleaned her house of my presence, and if she had fought to bring me down to Alabama at all, it was probably because her precious Clarice wanted to see me. And for form’s sake, to keep up the appearance of my mother having some sort of vested interest in life. And all that “punishing me” crap that had been on my mind like a weight was drama to make me ashamed. Ashamed of Burr, of all things.
Clarice and Burr had continued talking over my head, but I had missed a portion of the conversation.
“—maybe thirteen or so,” Clarice was saying. She stood back up so she could joggle the baby on one hip. “High school was very different. The middle school and elementary school we went to was almost all white kids, but the high school was bigger. So he takes me aside—”
“Who did?” I interrupted.
“Grampa Bent,” said Clarice.
“The dead one I call my asshole grampa,” I told Burr.
“Anyway,” said Clarice. “He takes me aside and, out loud, not at all embarrassed, he tells me that if I ever date a black guy—and that they are all sure to be after me—no one in the family will ever speak to me again. And this is the man who raised my mama. When she was growing up—”
“That’s just like him,” I said to Burr. “There’s a reason I call him my asshole grampa. But Clarice, he never said that to me.”
“Well, that’s because you’re not . . . well, you know,” Clarice said, blushing.
“I’m not what?” I snapped. “What am I not?”
Clarice looked at me, surprised by my vehemence, but mostly embarrassed. “Blond,” she said. She shrugged and turned apologetically to Burr. “Grampa Bent thought black men would be more likely to go after . . .”
“Blondes,” said Burr.
Clarice said, “Right, because we’re . . .”
“Whiter,” said Burr.
“Right,” said Clarice. She shook her head. “So how could Mama be any other way? That’s who raised her, a man who thought that way, in a time when thinking that way was normal. Oh, crud, I have more to say on this, but I really do have to go. I’m going to be late to get the boys if I don’t run. I do hope I see you at Daddy’s party. I think Daddy feels so special that you would come home for this, especially since you don’t come home for, well, anything else— Lordy, but I can’t say a thing without opening a worm can. Burr, I am sorry my parents are this way, I really am. It’s embarrassing to have them be this way.” She stood up and got Francie installed in her permanent place on her hip and grabbed the diaper bag.
“I don’t think we’ll come,” said Burr.
“Fuck that,” I said.
“Arlene, really!” said Clarice. “Watch your mouth in front of the baby. She is starting to talk, you know.”
“We’re coming,” I said. “Can we pick up the cake or anything? Burr and I want to be really, like, involved.”
“Oh, Lordy,” said Clarice. “You and my mama are just alike, you know that?”
“We aren’t a thing alike,” I said.
“If you say so, Arlene,” said Clarice. “You see it though, don’t you?” she added to Burr.
“I see it,” he said, nodding.
I glared at them both. “We are going.” My hands came together in front of me, almost of their own volition, but I didn’t have a wedding ring to twist.
CHAPTER 12
I WAS STILL praying to God to hide Jim Beverly’s body when I eventually fell asleep. I woke up in a panic. I sat straight up and froze there with my heart thumping an erratic tattoo against my rib cage, not sure why I was so afraid, until I traced back what had awakened me. A noise. The doorbell. Less than twenty-four hours since I had killed him, and already my prayers had failed. They had found him. They had come to get me.
I jumped out of bed and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt. I could tell by the light coming in through the window that it was late afternoon, maybe heading into evening. I crept quickly down the hall to the den to hear what was going on.
Clarice was sitting in the den watching TV, and I put my finger to my lips to shush her before she could give away my presence. She looked at me questioningly. She had a pad of paper in her lap and was holding a pencil. I could hear that Aunt Florence had answered the door and was talking to someone—another woman. A lady cop?
Clarice had some stupid Chinese cooking show on, and I couldn’t make out the conversation over the prattle about how to fold a ball of meat into wonton paper, whatever that was. I crept over and turned the volume down.
I caught Aunt Florence saying, “Not coming in here—” before Clarice said, “Hey!” and used the remote to pop the volume up even higher. I hissed at her like a cat and flipped the TV off, then stood in front of it to block the signal from the remote with my body.
“Move it, Arlene,” said Clarice, outraged, and I flapped my hand at her to shush her.
“—poop on my carpet,” Aunt Florence said.
“Arlene!” Clarice growled.
“I need to hear this,” I whispered desperately. “I may have to go.”
“I wish you would go,” said Clarice. “You’re blocking the TV. Anyway, why do you need to eavesdrop on Mama and Mrs. Weedy?”
“Mrs. Weedy?” I said. “It’s Mrs. Weedy?”
Clarice looked at me like I was brain-damaged. “Arlene, are you still . . .” She dropped her voice and mouthed “drunk” at me, raising her eyebrows high to add the silent question mark.
I shook my head at her.
“Well, it’s just Mrs. Weedy and Pippa.”
Pippa was Mrs. Weedy’s third chicken. Phoebe’s replacement, Greta, had died of old age. Pippa was new.
Clarice said, “Can we please turn my show back on? I want to make those dumplings in home ec for my final project. I was writing it all down.”
By this time I had recognized Mrs. Weedy’s voice, and I could hear her saying, “Because the news I have—well, it’s going to hit your girls pretty hard. Pretty hard. I was trying to be helpful, but I can see where that gets a person in this neighborhood. Anyway, you know Miss Pippa is perfectly house-trained. She uses a litter box just like a cat.”
“House-trained my— What do you mean, hit my girls?” said Florence.
Mrs. Weedy said, “A student at their school. He’s gone missing.”
My eyes met Clarice’s, and she set down the remote and stood up. We walked together around the corner into the hall so we could hear.
“A boy at their school—hello, Clarice, you pretty thing, and looky, there’s Miss Arlene—a boy at your school has turned up missing. I am so sorry to be the one telling you,” Mrs. Weedy said.
“Girls, you better get along,” said Florence, but Clarice ignored her and said, “Who?”
“I know you know him,” said Mrs. Weedy. She was craning around Aunt Florence, her eyes bright and eager, while Flo stood implacable in the doorway. Pippa scratched around chuckling to herself at Mrs. Weedy’s feet. “Everyone knows him. He’s the quarterback for the football team.”
“Jim Beverly?” said Clarice. Automatically her hand reached for mine, and I was reaching, too. We clung hard to each other’s hands, so hard we were hurting each other, but Clarice’s voice sounded right. Normal, interested, disbelieving. “Jim Beverly is the one gone missing?”