Gods in Alabama (7 page)

“Thanks,” I said. I handed it back and said, “I have to get going now. You have a good summer.”

“Are you okay?” Maria said, but I was already up, grabbing my satchel and heading for my car at a good clip. I’d bought myself some time, but if Rose Mae kept after me, I would eventually shift from acting like a complete lunatic to actually being one. I couldn’t leap around slamming doors in her face and shinnying up trees forever.

I was angry with myself for failing to lie when a single good one would have solved everything. It still could. I practiced it in my head. “Rose,” I would say, “I don’t know anything that could help you. I don’t know what happened to Jim Beverly.”

A passing student raised his eyebrows at me questioningly. I realized that my lips were moving and I had composed my face into a mask of sincerity, widening my eyes and nodding at my imaginary Rose as I walked. I gave him an embarrassed grin and ducked my head down, moving faster. This had to stop. It had to, but I couldn’t do it on my own, and I was driving myself crazy trying.

I needed help. I needed Burr.

I drove over to his condo. I had no idea what to say to him, but I had to make him understand that we absolutely couldn’t be broken up right now. I practiced a speech telling him so, over and over, whipping myself up into a frothy panic as the Burr in my head kept interrupting me and not letting me finish my sentences. I miraculously found a parking space on the same block as his building and wedged my Honda into it.

I took the elevator up to his floor. I didn’t think Burr would be home yet, so I let myself in to wait for him. I had forgotten he often took short days in the May lull after tax season. He was sitting in his favorite leather easy chair with his headphones on, no doubt blasting the blues loud enough to kill his eardrums. He hadn’t heard me coming in, but when the door opened, he jumped to his feet, staring at me. He pulled off the headphones and dropped them on the chair. I could hear Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers, tinny and distant. The armchair was right by the entertainment center, and he reached over and flipped the stereo off.

I closed the door behind me and leaned on it, and we stood staring at each other. I had to have him on my side. I couldn’t lie to Rose Mae Lolley, so I had to make him be with me, because without him at my back, helping me, I didn’t see how I could win. His mother had told me I had to bend and give him something he wanted, but I sure as hell couldn’t take him home to Alabama. I opened my mouth to give the speech I had been working on in the car, but what came out of my mouth was “I think you should have sex with me.”

Burr raised his eyebrows at me. “That’s certainly . . .” He paused, searching for a word. At last he said, “Abrupt.”

“I think you should have sex with me right now,” I countered.

My voice faltered. “Here, on the carpet.”

Burr half laughed, incredulous, and stayed where he was. At last he said, “I think you should have sex with me. Here. On this chair.” He extended one arm like Vanna White, modeling the recliner.

I stamped my foot. “I am being serious, Burr. Let’s go. Let’s do this.”

He searched my face, and then he said, “Baby, what happened?

You’re so pale. Are you sick?” He came over to me and took my hands and led me back past his chair to his big leather sofa and sat me down. “Your hands are clammy. Do you need a glass of water?” he asked.

I shook my head. “I had a Fruitopia.” He was temporarily setting aside the fight and the breakup because I was so obviously in extremis. I was flooded with such relief and gratitude that I sagged against him and said, “You remember that girl? The one on my doorstep last night?”

“The one with the Mace?” he asked. “Yeah. That’s not an easy girl to forget.”

“She’s Rose Mae Lolley,” I said. The name meant nothing to him. I added, “From my hometown. From Alabama. And she’s up here and she won’t stop following me, and it’s like she’s dragged with her everything ugly I left behind me, and she’s dumping it all over me and I can’t make her stop. She knows where I live, and Burr, she’s turned into this relentless, awful girl with political hair and no bra, and she isn’t going to ever leave me alone. I can’t go to my apartment, and then today she tracked me down at school.

There’s no place I can go. I acted like a lunatic just to get away from her, and if the head of my department saw me, oh crap. You know he’s going to hear about it . . . but I don’t know how to get rid of her.”

I was clutching Burr’s arm and pounded his shoulder for emphasis. “I have to get her off me, Burr. She’s stalking me.”

“Take a deep breath,” Burr said. “You need to calm down.

Lena, I’d put you in the ring with any bra-less girl from Alabama.

I have no doubt you could kick her ass. In fact, I’m getting a pretty good visual.”

I smiled in spite of myself, and he grinned at me and continued, “Here’s what I think we should do. Let’s put our fight on hold. We can fight later, after she’s gone. I’ll take you home, and I’ll make you that tea you like that smells like cat pee. We’ll order a pizza. Watch TV. If she shows up again, you can handle her. I’ll be there to back you up in case she gets crazy with the Mace can.”

I nodded, relieved. “Burr? We aren’t broken up, are we?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He shook his head, and I let go of him and sat back to study his face. “Whatever is going on with us, let’s leave it alone for now.”

“I can do that,” I said. “That seems good.”

We caravanned back over to my place, Burr following me in his Blazer. I had a spot in the lot behind my building, but Burr had to drive around and around the block until a parking space opened up. I waited nervously on the front stoop for him. The sun was starting to go down. When I saw him walking up the block, I got up and went to meet him.

“Find a spot?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “In Egypt.”

We headed up the two flights to my apartment together. The stairwell was clear, but when we got to my door, I saw an envelope taped to it. My name was written on it in fat girlie hand-writing, the kind with the overblown vowels and the perky upstroke at the end of each word.

“The stalker?” said Burr.

“Has to be,” I said. “No one in Chicago calls me Arlene.”

I took it down and we went inside my apartment. “Hey. My book,” said Burr. It was still lying on the floor where I had thrown it. Burr picked it up.

I sat down on the sofa and opened the envelope and read the letter.

Dear Arlene,

I’m really sorry for what happened today on campus. Bud
told me on the phone you had not been home in ages, but gave
me no indication you were so troubled. May I suggest, not in a
judging way, but as someone who knows and is speaking from
experience, that you should get professional help?

I am going to do as you ask and leave you alone. I am heading now to Oklahoma to track down Jim’s best friend from back
then. Remember Rob Shay? Well, he is a pro ballplayer now, can
you believe it? Minor league, but still. And then I will be in
Texas where Jim’s brother lives now. I do not know where I will
be staying. But after that, say by next Wednesday or Thursday,
I will be heading to my last stop, which is Fruiton. I am going
 
to try and stay at the Holiday Inn, the one just off the highway
by the Waffle House.

I will be there for at least a week, and I plan to spend the
time mostly in places that were special to Jim and me, meditating and trying to get a feel for where he might have gone. Surely
he must have said something to clue me in back then, and I
think if I go back to our old haunts, I might remember something that will help find him.

I hope you will find it in your heart to call me, especially if
you think of anything that could help me as I follow my quest.

If not, I sure understand, as I have been where you so clearly are
now. Remember, there is help available if you take it!

While in Fruiton, I will also be talking to people who knew
Jim, like your cousin Clarice, but do not worry! I will not say
anything about the enraged black man you were fighting in
your apartment or the tree-climbing, as I know no one can
make you get help. Only you can help you! I will say hey to
Clarice for you.

Remember, it isn’t your fault! You do not deserve it! There are
shelters if you need to hide!

—Rose Mae Wheeler
j
married name (divorced now, but
I will be registered at the hotel under Wheeler if you decide you
can talk to me).

“Shit,” I said, and threw the piece of paper onto my coffee table. Burr picked it up and started reading it. I sat silently, letting him finish, and when he looked up from the paper, I said, “I should have just lied. If I had thought up a good enough lie, I could have nipped this whole mess in the bud. Why didn’t I lie?”

“I don’t know, Lena,” said Burr. “Why don’t you ever lie to anyone? Maybe you should give your cousin a heads-up?” He waved the paper at me. “This girl is not right.”

I groaned and dropped my head onto the back of the sofa.

This was God. It had to be God. Baptists don’t believe in coincidence. I had tried to lie today and failed, even though I wanted to lie. I had tried to fornicate and failed, even though I wanted Burr. God wanted the deal broken for some reason, and the only thing left was Possett, Alabama. God was forcing me back there, step by unwilling step.

My aunt Florence was about to march triumphantly all over her kitchen, lofting her biscuit pans like victory banners. Because the truth was, I had to protect Clarice. I couldn’t let Rose Mae Lolley go down to Possett and start hounding her and digging up the past. Clarice knew just enough to hurt me. At the same time, she didn’t know enough to realize how volatile her information could be in Rose Mae’s hands.

Burr was looking at me meditatively, waiting.

I sat up and crossed my arms. “So, Burr. I’m thinking next week I’m going to go ahead and drive down to Possett before summer quarter starts. I don’t know if I’ll make it to my uncle’s party or anything. But if you can get some vacation time and you want to go down with me and meet my family, now’s your chance.”

Burr’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at me for a long time. I could practically hear the whir and click of his brain as he thought it through. At last he said, “What is in that note that I am not reading?”

I shook my head helplessly at him. “I swore a long time ago I would never go back there, Burr. But now you want me to take you so bad, it’s a deal breaker. And yes, maybe there’s other stuff going on. I don’t want this psycho tracking down my cousin like she was tracking me. And yes, my aunt Florence is still waging her constant campaign to drag me home. This may be three birds with one stone, but you are one of the birds. My favorite bird, actually. The truth is, I don’t want to go at all. But if I have to, then I really do want you with me. I need you with me.”

He regarded me for a long time, weighing it. Then he said, deadpan, “Woo-hoo. Road trip.” 

CHAPTER  4

THERE ARE GODS in Alabama. I know because I killed one. But if you want the truth of it, the way-down-under-everything absolute probable truth of it, it’s this: I killed him for Clarice.

I’m not saying personal revenge was not a part of it. I’m not saying I didn’t hate him on my own account. I’m not even saying that had my cousin never been born, I wouldn’t have eventually made my way up to the top of Lipsmack Hill and laid him out.

I am only saying that I believe firmly and with a true heart that in the middle of the moment, in that second when time slowed and I saw every pore on the back of his neck, when I heard his last breath hissing out of his throat, I could have stopped.

There was a pause before momentum took me, and in that endless second, I could have walked away and let him inhale again, let him blink and stretch and turn and see me, let him maybe smile at me and say “Hey, Arlene” in his low-down, drawly voice. But in that moment, I thought of Clarice, and I 
knew things Clarice would never know. I thought about how innocent she was, how golden, how light seemed to spill out of her and warm everything around her, even me. And I put that up against the hot-eyed, evil way I had seen Jim Beverly watching her, watching with such constancy. I knew what he was, so I did not pause and I did not walk away and he never breathed in again.

I may have dressed my motive up in Clarice’s clothes and lent it her perfume, but I’m not pretending she was to blame. I admit the choice was mine. I’m only saying that how much I owed Clarice was a factor. I owed her everything. She saved my life.

When I was little, I hardly knew Clarice, much less her parents or her brother, Wayne. My world revolved around my immediate family, Mama and Daddy and me. It was a regulation happy childhood.

My father was a compact man, dark and wiry. He was firm and resolute, but so soft-spoken that I don’t have a single memory of him yelling. My mother wore an apron and made cookies and shopped the PX with the other officers’ wives. Sometimes she had nervous spells. She’d lock herself into a closet or wedge herself way far back under the bed until Daddy got home to coax her out. On bad days she became terrified of opening canned foods.

But most of the time she seemed like everyone else’s mother.

We moved a lot, military base to military base, so I did not grow up knowing Clarice or any of my Alabama relatives well. I saw Clarice and Wayne only at the odd Christmas or Thanks-giving. We would stay at Aunt Flo’s house because my daddy did not get along with my asshole grampa. Every morning my father would snap the leash on Wayne’s dog, Buddy, and take me and my two cousins out for a long ramble.

But that all changed when I was seven years old. We were living on post at Fort Monroe. Our building was painted a warm white and had tall ceilings. All the walls had long windows, and the floors were honey-colored hardwood.