Aunt Florence brought me toast. “You eat that,” she said. “That will help you.”
After breakfast I went back to bed, but for the longest time, I could not sleep. I stared at Clarice’s shams and prayed and prayed and prayed. I had been raised to believe that prayer could move mountains, if only you had faith the size of a mustard seed.
“Mountains be damned,” I whispered to God. “I need a body moved.”
CHAPTER 11
CLARICE FORCE-MARCHED everyone into cheerful small talk all through supper, but eventually she had to leave to get her babies home to bed. That’s when the real cat-and-mouse began. Florence wanted to get me alone so she could peel me like a grape, but Burr and I would not be separated. Burr wouldn’t even take the garbage out unless I came with him to show him where the big can was. And he stayed in the kitchen drying the dishes as I washed. Florence told him to leave the dishes to womenfolk and tried to shoo him out to watch TV with Bruster.
“Real men aren’t afraid of housework,” said Burr, and Florence was halfway to shooting me an approving look before she remembered he was both black and hampering the inquisition and squelched it. Then she told him the dishes didn’t need drying at all, they could air-dry in the drainer.
“All right,” said Burr, “I’ll rinse, then. Shove over, baby.” He bent deep at the knee to bump my hip with his. As I finished scrubbing each dish, I handed it to him, and he rinsed with elaborate care, so close our elbows kept banging together as we tried to work. The message couldn’t have been clearer if he’d whipped up some epoxy and glued me to his leg.
Florence gave up for the moment and sat down at the kitchen table, biding her time. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw Florence the inexorable sizing me up, effortlessly containing five thousand pounds of tension in perfect, coiled stillness.
Burr and I claimed trip exhaustion and fled to Clarice’s old bedroom after Bruster trundled off to bed. Uncle Bruster kept farmer’s hours out of lifelong habit. My mother stayed dozing in the armchair at the back of the den. Florence had already fed Mama her evening meds and relocked the pill cabinet. I pecked at her cheek and murmured, “’Nighty, Mama.” Her eyes were half open, but only the whites were showing, and she did not respond. Florence watched us go down the hall in silence.
I took the bathroom first and brushed my teeth and washed my face. Then I changed in Clarice’s room while Burr was in the bathroom. I had just pulled my sleeping shirt over my head when I heard Florence rapping at my chamber door.
“I’m not decent,” I called, which was true on many levels, even though I was completely dressed.
“Just saying good night,” she said through the door. “I am tucking in your mama.”
“Good night, Mama. Good night, Aunt Flo,” I called cheerfully. Mama said something back, and I heard Florence say, “Here we go, Gladys.” I crept to the door and pressed my ear against it, listening to Florence’s footsteps, like percussion, giving a beat to my mother’s shuffling gait. I got into Clarice’s bed and pulled the covers up to my chin. My mother and Florence were in Mama’s room. The walls were so thin that even with the bathroom between us, I could hear Mama coughing in sharp barks like a trained seal.
A few minutes later, Burr came in. He was wearing the same undershirt and lobster pajama bottoms he’d had on briefly at the hotel.
“The water here tastes funny,” he said. He peeled off the undershirt and climbed in the bed, crawling up from the bottom to take the space by the wall. It was strange to see him lying beside me, bare-chested, in a bed. I had dated him for two years, but barring a few summer pool parties and last night, he had been, for the most part, fully clothed. Now here was this body, tucked into bed with me, smelling of Ivory soap and man. His bare chest was unfamiliar, and yet it had my best friend Burr’s head on top of it.
I was fine with it until he said, “Tight fit,” and put his big hands on me. He turned me away from him, then pulled me back so we were nestled together like spoons in the small bed, his back pressed to the wall. As he moved me, my spine tightened, and my limbs stiffened in an almost automated resistance.
“Lena, relax,” he said. “I feel like I’m holding a mattress spring.”
“I can feel you,” I said. “You’re thinking about it.”
He pulled me backwards, tighter against him, his hand low on my belly. “I’m a guy. I’m always thinking about it. At this point, I have at most four red blood cells bringing oxygen to my brain.”
That made me laugh, and the momentary tension dissipated. Burr’s body radiated heat, and I could feel his breath stirring my hair.
I put my hand over his and settled against him. Eventually Burr’s breath evened and slowed, and his whole body grew heavy and relaxed. I stayed close to him, getting used to the feel of him beside me, counting his heartbeats. Moonlight was coming in the slats between the blinds. It was a full moon, and my pupils were so dilated from staring into the darkness that the room seemed bright as day. Burr stirred a little, and his hand shifted to my hip. He was dreaming. His body was pressed against mine, and I could feel him wanting me even in the depths of his sleep.
I heard a bed creaking, loud in the silence of the house. At first I thought it was Mama getting up to roam, but the firm tread coming down the hall disabused me of that notion. The bedroom door swung open slowly, quietly. I narrowed my eyes to tiny slits and pretended to be sleeping while Florence stood in the doorway of the room, watching us. She stood there for a long time, three or four minutes. In the moonlight her face seemed expressionless. I had no idea what she was thinking.
“Arlene?” she said softly, just a breath above a whisper.
I did not answer.
“I know you’re awake.”
I was absolutely still.
“Arlene, you need to come talk to me.”
I remained silent, playing possum.
“Girl, you best get your little butt out here and talk to me!” she said, louder, and Burr shifted, making a small noise in his throat. Florence froze in the doorway until he settled.
She whispered, “People who are really asleep don’t hold their breath, Arlene.” Then she closed the door, and I heard her heading back to her room. I lay in the darkness for a long time, staring at Florence’s sewing machine in the place where my bed used to be. At some point I fell asleep.
In the morning Florence was filling the house with the smell of eggs frying in bacon grease by the time Burr and I were up. Clarice’s old alarm clock said it was after seven, so I knew Bruster would have already left for work. I wrapped myself in my robe and turned my back while Burr pulled on his running shorts and a T-shirt. When I looked back over my shoulder, he was laughing at me. I grinned back at him and then hid my face in my hands.
We went out through the den and into the kitchen. Florence was standing at the stove, cooking, and she did not turn around or look at us when we came in. Her shoulders were set, and her spine was ramrod straight. She was like the poster child for angry good posture.
“Where’s Mama?” I asked.
Florence shrugged. “In her room getting dressed. She already ate.”
“I came to say good morning, Aunt Florence,” I said. “I’m going to hop in the shower.”
“You can sit down and eat a breakfast,” she said. “Yours is almost done, Arlene.” I obediently sat, and Florence spoke to the window over the stove. “How do you take your eggs, Burr?”
Burr said, “Like Lena’s, over soft.”
Florence said, “Arlene likes them over hard.” She picked up her spatula and lifted two eggs out of the cast-iron skillet. They had been cooked until the edges looked like brown lace. She dumped them on a plate and snatched up some bacon from the drainer and threw that beside them. She slopped grits onto the plate and then grabbed a biscuit so hard she smashed its top in. She marched over and banged the plate down in front of me, but immediately picked it back up, saying, “Or she used to ten years ago. I guess you would know better than me how she likes h
er eggs now.” Her mouth was back in its hard, tight line.
“They look fine, Aunt Flo,” I said. “I like them both ways.” But she was already taking away the plate. She dumped the whole breakfast in the trash and got four more eggs out of the fridge. She cracked them violently into the iron skillet, and they sizzled and popped in the bacon grease.
“I haven’t cooked the girl an egg in ten years,” said Aunt Florence, picking out bits of shell. “It’s not like she would call me up and say, ‘By the way, I like my eggs a new way now.’ It’s not like she was thinking I would ever cook her an egg again.”
Burr raised his eyebrows and mouthed “Wow” at me. I shrugged.
We sat quietly while Florence abused the food and threw it onto plates. Then she slammed the plates in front of us. “I was going to say to you, Arlene, that you can run to bed all tired and hold your breath, but sometime you are going to have to sit down and talk to me. But then, see, I realized, thinking about it, that I am wrong. You seem to have lived just fine ignoring me for ten years long-distance, so what’s a few days ignoring me in my face.” And with that, she headed out the back door towards her garden.
I popped out of my chair and was after her before she left the carport. “That’s not fair, Aunt Florence. I call home every Sunday, and most weeks more than that.”
Burr had gotten up after me and followed us outside. Aunt Florence whirled around to face me, and I took an involuntary step back. I ran into Burr, who stood his ground, a solid wall of warmth at my back.
“You think you are such a smart little missy, but you are not that smart,” said Florence. She was so angry that her grammar cracked and shattered. “You don’t talk to me about nothing, Arlene, not nothing, and you know it. You sit up there all high and mighty in your Yankee town, thinking I am some ignorant old countrywoman, but I know you, smarty britches. I know why you won’t talk to me or come home. And maybe I am dumb like you think, because I keep believing one day you are going to stop punishing me and forgive me. But I guess I am wrong about that, too, you resentful little turd.”
“Forgive you?” I said, dumbfounded. “Aunt Florence, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, and I am certainly not punishing you.”
“Really?” said Florence, her voice flooded with disbelief, and she looked at Burr for a long, ugly moment. “Go hold your breath in the house, Arlene. Nobody wants you out here.” She turned her back on me and stalked off towards her garden, and this time I did not follow her.
Aunt Florence had been filling in blanks. I, more than anyone, ought to have known she would. I managed to go through life never lying by pausing in the right place, and people almost always filled in what they wanted. Clarice had taught me that. So Florence thought I had stayed away from Possett for ten years because I was mad at her because of some ancient fight or something she had made up in her head. And how was I supposed to fix that? I had no way to absolve her except the truth. I saw Jim Beverly for a moment in my mind’s eye, lying in the earth, waiting for his Rose-Pop to come and find him. I shook my head, shook it away. How could I tell her? So far I couldn’t even confess to Burr.
Burr whistled, long and low. “That is one fierce woman,” he said. “I see where you get it.”
“Get what?” I said. “And what am I supposed to do now?”
Burr took my hand. “Now you come eat breakfast, and then you have a shower.”
We went back in and sat down at the table. No one made biscuits like my aunt Flo, and when I made myself eggs, I cooked them in Pam. This breakfast was like eating the sweet parts of my childhood, and it made me choky and regretful.
“By the way,” I said to Burr, “just because I’m sitting here like a dork, weeping over my eggs, don’t think I haven’t noticed what a good man you are. You could make the situation a thousand times worse if you felt like getting shirty.”
Burr shrugged. “This isn’t anything new. I’ve been black all my life, and there are racists in Chicago. All I ask is that you remember you owe me when we get married and my sister Geneva calls you a she-pirate who has hijacked a black woman’s rightful mate.”
I nodded. “Deal.”
After we finished eating, Burr told me he was going to try to run off his three-thousand-calorie breakfast while Aunt Florence was busy in the garden. He headed out the front door, and I caught a quick shower and got dressed. I was brushing out my hair in the bedroom when the phone rang. After six rings, when it was obvious Mama wasn’t going to answer it, I grabbed the Princess phone on top of the desk. It was Clarice.
“I was hoping it would be you. What’s going on, Arlene? You need to talk to me,” she said.
“I just had a screaming fight with your mama, and I need some Excedrin and an early death. Maybe you could come out here later?” I opened up the desk’s top drawer. Clarice’s old pencils and scrap paper were gone, replaced by a local phone book. I pulled it out and flipped through to look up the Fruiton Holiday Inn.
“I can’t this afternoon. It’s Field Day at the boys’ school, and we need to talk somewhere away from my mama,” she said.
We agreed to meet up in Fruiton the next day at the mall. I had to shop for Uncle Bruster, anyway. In the worry over Burr and Rose Mae Lolley, I had forgotten to get him a present for his retirement.
As soon as Clarice hung up, I tapped the button to get a dial tone and called the Holiday Inn. No one named Rose Mae Lolley or Rose Mae Wheeler had checked in yet. But it was only Wednesday. Rose had said in the note that she might not make it down to Fruiton before Thursday night. I would have to keep checking and make sure I caught her before she got to Clarice and Bud. I was relieved she hadn’t shown up yet. I still did not have my miracle lie ready, the one that would make her leave Fruiton and stop searching for Jim Beverly.
I needed Burr’s good brain. If Burr was helping me, the two of us together could figure it out and come up with a plan. If only we were actually married. Once we got married, it would be safe and I could tell him everything.
Burr’s laptop case was sitting at the foot of the bed. Aunt Florence must have thought it was one of our suitcases and brought it in. I got out the laptop and set it up on Clarice’s desk. I knew his log-on, so I signed in and went online. I went to Alta Vista and in twelve minutes had found a site that told me everything I needed to know. Alabama did not require a blood test or a waiting period before issuing a marriage license to people over eighteen years old.
Fruiton was too close. Someone who knew my family might see us. But Mobile was only about an hour away. I went back and found the Web site for the Mobile County clerk’s office. I followed a few links and got to a page that told me that any notary could perform a marriage ceremony in Alabama. For thirty-four dollars, we could get a license and be married that same day in the same building. We could get ten dollars off the license if we signed an affidavit certifying that we had read and understood something called The Alabama Marriage/Family Law Handbook. The handbook was available as a PDF file, which meant they hadn’t transcribed it, they had scanned the actual document into the computer and uploaded it.
I opened the file. The pamphlet had a green cover with a picture of a happy bride and groom, both lily-white and as wholesome as Ward and June Cleaver. I heard Burr returning from his jog and called, “I’m back here.”
He came in the room, sweating and breathing hard. “The hills almost killed me,” he said. “I’m used to running on the flat. Meanwhile, your mother is in the front yard. Doing something. What, exactly, is a mystery to me.”
I scrolled past the cover to the first page of the pamphlet and started reading. “Is she in the street?” I asked.
“No.”
“Is she fully dressed?”
“Yes.”
“She’s probably fine, then.” I half stood so I could see out the window into the front yard. Mama was out there, wearing an aquamarine and yellow muumuu and red galoshes. Over the muumuu she had donned a voluminous clear plastic rain poncho and a matching p
lastic hat. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. She was dragging a large Hefty bag behind her, and in her other hand she had Uncle Bruster’s trash pole, which she was using to viciously stab a pinecone. She had to stab three or four times before the pinecone stuck, and then she put it in the bag and walked a few steps, searching. She found another pinecone and began stabbing at it.
“She gets like that,” I said. “I wonder if Aunt Florence remembered to lock her pills back up this morning. Sometimes Mama gets in her pills.”
Burr was behind me, reading over my shoulder. “Should you go check?”
“Florence has the only key, and anyway, if she got in them, it’s too late. She’ll have eaten some and squirreled more away for later. We’ll keep an eye on her.” I sat back down.
“What’s this?” Burr said, still reading.
“Alabama marital something-something pamphlet.”
Basically the pamphlet said that Alabama was concerned about the rising divorce rate, and if we got married here, the state did not want us to get divorced. In order to avoid divorce, advised the pamphlet, we should communicate with each other. This took about two pages.
Then the pamphlet started to explain in excruciating detail exactly what we would need to do when the communication thing didn’t pan out and we decided to get a divorce. I scrolled down the screen, skimming.
“Twenty bucks says lawyers wrote this,” said Burr.
“Sucker bet, no takers,” I scoffed. I flipped down to the bottom of the document and read, “Published by the Alabama Bar Association at a cost of .085 cents per pamphlet.”
“Lena, why are you reading this?” Burr asked.
“Because Alabama says we have to.” I closed the PDF file and turned around in the chair to face him. He straightened up and looked down at me. “Burr, listen, I was thinking. What if we ran over to Mobile and got married right now?” Burr’s eyebrows went up and I talked faster, making my case. “You said you wanted to marry me, and you said soon. This is soon. And what if I am pregnant? And then it would be done and we could stop worrying about it.”
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