Gods in Alabama (22 page)

“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 get 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?”

Mrs. Weedy was nodding vigorously. “He sure is! Why, the whole town is in an uproar! And you’ll never guess what I found out.”

Clarice moved towards the doorway, pulling me by the hand.

Florence did not move or even notice us, standing in the doorway as a bastion against all chicken-kind.

Clarice slipped past her and dragged me into the waning sun-light on the porch. She gestured to the rockers and said, “You sit down and tell us all about it, Mrs. Weedy. You want some tea?”

“No, thanks, sweetie,” said Mrs. Weedy, sitting down, “I don’t have the bladder I used to, you know. Now it seems like the minute I have a drink of any little thing, I’m heading for the potty. Let me tell you, I have quite a tale.” Pippa went bobbing down the stairs and started scratching about in the lawn. Florence remained standing stock-still in the doorway, murderously watching Pippa eat up our grass seed.

Clarice and I sat down on the hanging porch swing, our linked hands hidden between us. I did not dare look at her. I couldn’t look anywhere for long. I kept bouncing glances at Mrs.

Weedy, the chicken, Aunt Florence turned to stone in the doorway, my own feet. Nothing seemed to move when I looked at it.

It was like the world was a static slide show that changed only when I blinked. And every time I blinked, I saw another slide from a different show in my mind’s eye. The freshman girl, her ponytail jingling in rage as she stomped down Lipsmack Hill.

Jim Beverly with his back to me, singing with his feet dangling over the small cliff. That sweet-spot moment, the bottle in my hands connecting perfectly. Jim Beverly, waxy and utterly unmoving.

“Please, God,” I whispered, so soft it wasn’t any more than a shaped breath. “Did they find his Jeep?” I said out loud.

“Oh, did someone already tell you this?” said Mrs. Weedy, disappointed. Aunt Florence and Clarice both turned their attention to me. I could feel their eyes like hot spots on my skin.

“No, no,” I said, panicking. “No, I just was wondering if he disappeared alone or maybe with his Jeep.” Clarice squeezed my hand harder, and I managed to shut up before I could ask if they had found his body where I left it or if I still had time to flee town.

“How funny you should ask that, because you know, they did find his Jeep!” Mrs. Weedy said. “But I better start at the beginning.” I died several hundred tiny internal deaths as Mrs. Weedy ever so slowly, and with many asides about what Pippa thought, told us about how Jim Beverly’s father called the sheriff ’s office when Jim Beverly never came home last night. And how even though he was only a week or two away from eighteen, the sheriff agreed to start looking for him without waiting the usual forty-eight hours because, after all, this was Jim Beverly and there was a game on Saturday.

She wound her way endlessly through a protracted search, while my internal slide show ran over and over. Enraged freshman, jingling down the hill. Jim singing. Bottle swinging. Jim dead. And then the freshman started jingling down the hill again. Finally Mrs. Weedy said, “And there was not hide nor hair of him at all, anywhere, until around noon today, you know they found his Jeep.”

My heart stuttered, and I waited for her to say that search parties were even now beating the kudzu looking for his mortal remains, but she said, “It would have been found earlier, but you see, the state police found it first. They found it before anyone knew he was missing, and it was abandoned and smashed. So they towed it to the impound lot, and they checked on who owned it, but that never got coordinated with the sheriff, who was searching for Jim Beverly unofficially because of the football game, without waiting that forty-eight hours they have to wait.”