But whenever Clarice thought about having Richmond stay the night—a pleasurable thought—an image came into her mind that made her push him out of the door. It was that picture in her head of James trying, and failing, to style Odette’s hair. That image just wouldn’t allow her to step back into the life she had lived for so many years.
It was nearly midnight that first night of the revival and Reverend Peterson was wrapping up his sermon. Reverend Peterson always spoke first on opening night before handing off the podium to visiting preachers. His sermon that night was a good one. He told the terrifying story of the Great Flood from the perspective of one of Noah’s nonbelieving neighbors. The speech climaxed with a vivid description of the doomed neighbor, knee-deep in swirling, filthy water, banging on the side of the ark and begging Noah to let him in. Reverend Peterson added color to the story by imitating the squawks, neighs, and moos of the animals. Of course, Noah could do nothing but wave goodbye to the terrified sinner as he sailed away with the righteous and the noisy animals.
The Noah’s Ark sermon was typical of the Calvary Baptist experience. It was not a gray-area kind of church. Every Sunday, church members sat and listened to their pastor as he gave them the latest message from an angry God. They left the sanctuary certain that Calvary Baptist and Reverend Peterson were the only things standing between them and an eternity of suffering in hell. Calvary’s parishioners fully expected that, like Noah, they would be waving goodbye to everyone in Plainview who didn’t go to Calvary Baptist when Jesus shipped them all off to join Him.
When Reverend Peterson finished, the crowd was in an uproar of shouting, amen-ing, and speaking in tongues. The church nurses, in their starched white uniforms and white gloves, rushed through the tent to tend to women who had collapsed with the Holy Ghost.
In spite of the barn-busting sermon Reverend Peterson delivered that night, Clarice surprised herself by thinking that maybe it was time she left some of this bad news and rage behind. Sitting there listening to the angriest choir in town as they spat out “It’s Gonna Rain,” she thought that maybe she should branch out and give something else a try.
Having ended his sermon, Reverend Peterson made a plea to the unrepentant sinners in the crowd to come forward and receive the Lord’s blessing before it was too late. He walked back and forth in front of the wailing choir and warned, “It won’t be water, but fire, the next time.” As he returned to his lectern to introduce the next speaker, there was a commotion in the back of the tent.
A woman’s voice shouted, “Let me testify! Let me testify!”
Clarice and everyone else in the front row turned around to look, but there were too many people standing and gawking for them to see all the way to the back. The tent grew quieter and a wave of soft murmuring spread slowly from the rear to the front as the woman moved up the center aisle toward Reverend Peterson.
She was young—around twenty-five, Clarice guessed. The woman’s gravity-defying cleavage hovered above a neon-green tube top that was just wide enough that it wasn’t illegal. Below her exposed navel, she wore tight-fitting vermillion shorts that were so revealing Clarice imagined the woman had borrowed them from an emaciated eleven-year-old. The tube top and the shorts she wore were both made of shiny, wet-looking latex. With each step she took, the movement of latex abrading latex caused a high-pitched squeaking noise to pierce the air. Her hair was pulled back from her face into a fall of glossy black ringlets that hung down to the middle of her back.
Clarice leaned close to Barbara Jean and whispered, “Hair weave.”
She replied, “Implants.”
The woman staggered and stumbled up toward the stage and Reverend Peterson. His bushy, silver eyebrows climbed a little closer to his receding hairline with every step she took in his direction. Clarice wasn’t sure if the woman’s staggering was due to her being drunk or due to the fact that she was only wearing one shoe and had a thick layer of mud up to each ankle.
When she reached the lectern, the woman snatched the microphone away from an astonished Reverend Peterson. “I just had a miracle happen and I need to testify.” She yelled her words into the microphone and feedback from the sound system caused everyone to clamp their hands to their ears. “Just a little while ago, after my shift at the Pink Slipper Gentlemen’s Club, I was doin’ a private performance out in the parking lot in the back of a Chevy Suburban when I heard a voice. Clear as a bell the voice said, ‘You are a child of God.’
“Now, at first I just ignored it ’cause I thought it was my customer. He’s one of my regulars and he carries on like that—always God this, Jesus that, Sweet Lord the other.”
Reverend Peterson’s face registered panic and he made a grab for the microphone. But the stripper was faster. She hopped away from him and continued her testimony.
“The voice said, ‘You are a child of God. Stop what you’re doing.’
“I still thought it was my customer, so I got up off the floor of the Chevy and said, ‘Fine. I don’t gotta keep doin’ what I’m doin’? Just give me my damn money and I’ll go home.’
“But then, I heard the voice again. This time it said, ‘Your sinful ways will bring a storm of hellfire down upon you. Come to the Lord and you will be saved.’
“I knew then that it wasn’t my customer at all. It was an angel sent from heaven to tell me to change my life. So I got out of that SUV and I followed a light I saw off in the distance. I crossed Highway 37 and went through a patch of trees, even lost a shoe walkin’ across a muddy field. But I kept goin’ until I found this here tent. Now I’m here and ready to give up my sinful ways like that angel’s voice told me to. If that ain’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.”
The crowd erupted in praise of the stripper’s miracle. People shouted, “Amen!” and the choir started to sing out twice as loud as they had before.
Encouraged by the response of her audience, the stripper went on with her testimony. “The second I walked into this tent, somethin’ changed inside my heart. All of a sudden, I started to think about all the fine things God had done for me. I started to think maybe He seen me safely through all the dangerous, sinful things I did for a reason.
“And believe me, there’s a lot of scary stuff out there. Hell, you go out for one night’s work and you could end up with the herpes, the AIDS, the syphilis, the Chinese chicken flu, or the Ebola virus.” She poked long, crimson nails into the air as she used her fingers to count off the diseases.
Reverend Peterson made another attempt to snatch the microphone away from the young woman, but again she was quicker. Like the performer she was, she gave her audience more of what they wanted. She said, “And I tell you, the way some of these men are, they don’t care about protectin’ themselves, you, or their wives and families. They only care about their own pleasure. They wanna act like it’s thirty years ago, before shit got so serious. I’m tellin’ you, you gotta be a safety-first kinda gal if you wanna live long. You know what I do when some asshole tries to talk me into doin’ something stupid? I look him dead in the eye and say, ‘Honey, you think we’re gonna fuck ourselves right back to 1978? This is some magical pussy all right, but it ain’t no damn time machine.’ ”
On that note, several people moved in to restrain her, allowing Reverend Peterson, at last, to retrieve his microphone. The stripper was promptly helped off the stage by one of the church nurses and two representatives of the New Members Committee. As she was led past Clarice, Richmond, and their friends, the woman stopped for a second, turned toward Richmond, and said, “Hey, Richmond, you getting’ saved, too, baby?” before stumbling away with her keepers.
Everyone near the front of the tent, except for Richmond, who had buried his face in his hands, turned to stare at Clarice to see how she would react to the newly saved stripper greeting her husband like an old friend. But Clarice had something else on her mind. She was thinking about the miraculous voice that had summoned the stripper from the back of the Chevy behind the Pink Slipper Gentlemen’s Cl
ub with the all-too-familiar words, “You are a child of God. Stop what you’re doing.” Clarice wondered how long her mother and her bullhorn had been back in town.
Chapter 29
The morning after Richmond’s stripper friend signed up to have her soul saved, Clarice heard a knock at her door. It was just before nine o’clock in the morning, so she assumed that it was her first student of the day arriving early for her lesson. From the piano bench where she was having her tea, Clarice called out, “Come in.” Beatrice Jordan and Richmond marched into the living room.
Beatrice pointed at her daughter’s chopped-off hair and grimaced. For several seconds, she stood in the center of the room regarding Clarice as if she’d just discovered her dancing naked in a crack house. Richmond wore a smug expression on his face as his mother-in-law said, “Clarice, would you care to explain yourself?”
In the past, this was the point at which Clarice would revert to behaving like an obedient little girl. She would make nice and apologize to her mother for whatever she had done, just to get Beatrice off her back. But living alone in her own house, even for such a short amount of time, had changed her. Clarice found that she couldn’t react like her old self. She said, “I’ve already explained things to Richmond. And I believe that’s all the explaining I need to do.”
Her mother spoke softly, as if she believed someone might be listening in. “Everyone at Calvary Baptist is talking about you. How could you do this? You made a vow before God and everybody.”
“So did Richmond. Did you have a talk with him about his vows?” Clarice said, feeling heat rise from her neck onto her face.
“It’s different for men, and you know it. Besides, Richmond is not the one who ran out on his marriage; you are. But listen, it’s not too late to fix this. Richmond is prepared to go see Reverend Peterson with you to work this out.”
“I don’t think so,” Clarice said. “I’ve seen where Reverend Peterson’s advice leads. And no offense, but I don’t intend to spend my golden years shouting at whores through a megaphone.”
She felt guilty for that low blow when her mother’s eyes began to glisten with tears. But Clarice had been mad for a good long time and a lot nastier things than that were waiting to come out. To keep from saying those things, she took a deep breath and then a drink from her cup of tea. The tea was too hot for the big swallow she took and it scalded all the way from her lips to her stomach. It hurt so much that it took her breath away for a few seconds, but the time she spent recovering from burning her tongue stopped her from saying some of the meaner things that were swirling around in her brain.
Clarice said, “Mother, I love you, but this has nothing to do with you. This is between me and Richmond, and I think I’ve made it clear to him where I stand. I’m done with things the way they were. I’ll go back home, or not, when I see fit.”
Beatrice whimpered quietly and said, “Honestly, when I think about how hard I fought for us both to live when you were born.” She put the back of her hand to her forehead. “It was a horror show.” When that didn’t produce the desired effect, she changed tactics. In the tone of voice she used when delivering her parking lot sermons, she declared, “Ephesians says, ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.’ What do you say to that?”
Clarice snapped, “I say God and I will just have to hash that one out between the two of us. My submitting days are over.”
Richmond spoke for the first time. He said, “I talked to the kids, and they’re shocked that you’ve done this. They’re very upset and confused.”
Clarice said, “You must have talked to four different kids than the ones I talked to. When I told Carolyn, Ricky, and Abe that I’d moved out, they were just surprised that it had taken me so long. And if Carl’s upset, it’s because he’s too much like you and he knows it. The way I see it, I’ve done him a favor I should have done years ago. Now maybe he’ll think about the crap he’s pulled on his wife and realize it might come back and bite him in the ass one day.”
Richmond turned to Beatrice and said, “See? It’s like I told you. She’s talking more like Odette all the time.”
Beatrice nodded. “I’ve always known that girl would cause trouble one day.”
Clarice’s mother believed that a woman showed that she was well brought up by doing three things: dressing impeccably, enunciating like an East Coast debutante, and starving herself to the edge of unconsciousness for the sake of her figure. So, Odette had never made sense to her. But Beatrice had chosen the wrong time to start in on Odette, Clarice’s sick friend who had stepped in time and time again when Clarice needed her and had now even supplied her with a home. The little bit of restraint Clarice had managed to get hold of was in danger of slipping away. She narrowed her eyes at her mother and her husband and prepared to let loose. But just as her scalded tongue was poised to toss forth a red-hot string of long-overdue words, Clarice was distracted by the sound of light tapping coming from the front door. Clarice stood from the bench and said, “My student is here.”
When Clarice rounded the piano on her way to admit her pupil, Beatrice saw for the first time what her daughter was wearing. Beatrice let out a whimper and turned her face away.
During Clarice’s first weekend in the house, she had gone down to the basement to put some things away and came upon a box full of old clothes that had been left behind by one of the previous tenants. Odette had rented the house, furnished, to visiting faculty members at the university. They tended to be an earthy lot and the clothes in the box reflected what Clarice thought of as the academic fashion sense—shapeless, hippie-style items made of cotton and hemp. To celebrate her emancipation, she ran the old skirts and blouses she had found through the washer and dryer and started wearing them.
The skirt Clarice wore that morning was made of a faded blue-and-white-checked fabric. It had a high waist that was embroidered with blue and green stick figures. Strands of puka shells that hung from the fringed hem grazed the floor when she walked and made a rattling noise.
Beatrice pointed at her daughter and said, “Oh dear Lord, first her hair, and now a peasant skirt. Richmond, we’re too late.”
It took every ounce of willpower in Clarice’s body to keep from lifting the hem of her skirt and revealing that she was wearing a pair of Birkenstock sandals that she had purchased a few days earlier at a shop near the campus where young saleswomen who didn’t shave their armpits or wear makeup sold comfortable shoes and artisan cheeses. She continued past her stunned mother and husband and went to the door, where she was greeted by Sherri Morris, a gap-toothed nine-year-old girl whose bad practice habits and resultant sloppy technique gave Clarice fits for an hour each week.
Sherri said, “Good morning, Mrs. Baker. I love your skirt.”
Clarice thanked the girl and made a mental note to put a gold star in her étude book that day no matter how poorly she played. She told Sherri to go to the piano and warm up on some scales while she said goodbye to her guests.
At the door Richmond whispered, “We can finish this discussion at the revival tonight.”
“Sorry, I have students until late in the day today. I’ll be too tired to go back to the revival tonight.”
Richmond sighed and looked at Beatrice as if to say “See what I’ve been dealing with?” To Clarice, he said, “Fine, we’ll talk at church tomorrow.”
“If you really must talk to me, I’ll see you at the All-You-Can-Eat after church. I won’t be at Calvary tomorrow. I’m planning to stop by the Unitarian church for services this week,” she said.
Clarice said that purely for spite. Although she had talked to Odette about maybe giving Holy Family Baptist a try, Clarice had no intention of going to the Unitarian church that Sunday. She was furious that the two of them had come over to gang up on her and preach at her, so she wanted to shake them up. Besides, there was something about putting on a peasant skirt and puka shells that made Unitarianism pop into your head.
Her mother mo
aned and leaned against Richmond for support. Clarice felt guilty for an instant. She knew that her mother would just as soon have seen her hook up with one of the polygamist congregations that were rumored to thrive in the hills outside of town as hand her soul over to the Unitarians.
But even though she had said it out of spite, Clarice started thinking that it might not be such a bad idea to try out the Unitarians. Why not? She was certainly in the mood for something different from the bitter mouthful she’d been chewing on for all those years.
As Beatrice crossed the threshold of the front door, still clinging to Richmond, she said to Clarice, “I’ll pray for you.” Clarice marveled at how her mother had managed to make it sound like a threat.
Richmond mouthed, “See what you’ve done,” and led his mother-in-law back to his Chrysler.
Clarice closed the door behind them and went to her student, who proceeded to brutally massacre a helpless Satie piece. She kept the promise she had made to herself to give Sherri a gold star, and the girl left happy at the end of her lesson.
Clarice’s roster had expanded since her move. The wealthy families of new Leaning Tree were thrilled to have a locally famous piano teacher within walking distance. And Saturday was her longest teaching day. By that evening, she was exhausted. She made herself a fresh cup of tea and went back to the piano to play a little something to wash away the sound of her students’ uneven performances—a kind of musical sorbet.
She had just settled onto the bench when sharp hammering at the front door abruptly ended the night’s quiet. When she looked through the keyhole, she expected to see Richmond or her mother back for another round. Instead, Reverend Peterson stood on the porch. His dark, wrinkled face managed to appear sorrowful, beseeching, and pissed off all at the same time. She reached to turn the knob and allow him in, but then thought better of it.
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