Mama let out an exaggerated sigh. “I won’t get you arrested, Miss Priss. Get dressed and come on with me.”
Once we were in the car, Mama guided me along the familiar route from my house to her and Daddy’s old place in Leaning Tree. She instructed me to park the car on the street, rather than in the driveway, and follow her around to the back. She led me and Mrs. Roosevelt behind the house and toward what remained of her once-magnificent garden. It had been a damp spring and my feet sank into the wet ground as we walked. I could hear Clarice playing the piano inside and I was thankful that she was occupied. I certainly didn’t want her to see me sneaking through the yard and ask me what I was doing: “Oh, hey, Clarice, my dead mama, Eleanor Roosevelt, and me were just heading out back to fetch some marijuana.”
We stepped onto the cobblestone garden path and passed the gazebo. It was already green with clematis and honeysuckle vines, though they hadn’t bloomed yet. We passed the roses and alliums and walked through the vegetable garden, which was untended and going wild that season. I hacked with my forearms at the tall reed grass and miscanthus Mama had grown at the back of her garden to keep prying eyes from spotting the illegal crop that James and I had pretended not to know about. A sad thought came to me then that brought our entire journey into question.
With as much gentleness as I could muster, considering I was panting with exhaustion by then, I said, “Mama, you do realize that you’ve been gone for a long time now and nobody’s taken care of your special plants in years. I don’t think we’re gonna find anything still growing back there.”
“Hush,” she said. “We ain’t goin’ there.” We trudged on several more yards and then turned. Ahead of us was an old tool shed that I’d forgotten all about. It was a short structure, more the height of a child’s playhouse than a work shed. But Daddy had been a small man and he had made this shed for himself. It made me happy to see that it still stood and that, even though the vestiges of its white paint were long gone, leaving the bleached pine boards exposed, it looked solid. My daddy built things to last.
Mama instructed me to open the door of the shed. It took some effort because, although only a sliding wood bolt kept the door shut, reed grass and honeysuckle—which would smell divine in a month, but was now just an invasive pest—had nearly swallowed the building. I yanked repeatedly at the door until it opened just wide enough for me to squeeze inside.
We entered the shed to the rustling sound of small creatures scurrying for cover. Mama said, “Over there,” pointing at the back wall.
I climbed over an ancient push mower and a rusted tiller, and then stood staring at the wall. All I saw were cobwebs, mouse droppings, and corroded garden tools hanging from a pegboard. I asked Mama what exactly I was looking for and she said, “Just slide that board over to the left and you’ll see.”
I curled my fingers around the edge of the pegboard and gave it a vigorous shove. I didn’t need to try so hard, as it turned out. The board slid over on its metal track so easily you’d have thought it had been oiled that very day. Behind it, I saw an old plastic spice rack that was screwed into the wall. In the cubbyholes of the rack were small glass jars, each of them filled with brownish leaves and labeled in Mama’s neat, loopy handwriting with a name and a date.
I picked up random jars and read the labels: “Jamaican Red–1997,” “Kentucky Skunk/Thai Stick Hybrid–1999,” “Kona–1998,” “Sinsemilla–1996.” There were around two dozen of them.
I reached for a jar that read “Maui Surprise,” and Mama said, “Oh no, no, honey, put that one back. That Maui’ll blow the top of your head clean off. We’ll start you off with somethin’ tamer.” She pointed an index finger at a jar in the lower right-hand corner of the rack and I pulled it out.
“Soother–1998,” I read aloud from the jar. “They’re all kind of old. You think they’ll still be good?”
“Trust me. An hour from now you’ll wanna kill anybody standing between you and a bag of pork rinds.”
I slipped the jar into my pocket and was about to slide the pegboard back in place when Mama stopped me. “Wait a minute. We need that and that.” She gestured toward a small shelf below the rack. On the shelf, I found rolling papers and a box of wooden matches. I grabbed them, covered Mama’s secret stash with the sliding pegboard, and left the shed.
Mama suggested that I take my herbal cure in the gazebo, but I had another idea. I stomped through more reeds and climbed the hill at the back end of the property. I stopped when we stood beneath the sycamore tree where I was born fifty-five years earlier.
Mama and I sat on the cool ground and rested our backs against the tree. Mrs. Roosevelt, who seemed to have been energized by our walk in the spring air, spun in a circle like Julie Andrews at the beginning of The Sound of Music, and then did some cartwheels.
Mama said, “Pay her no mind. If she gets your attention she’ll never stop.”
When I opened the jar, the vacuum seal broke with a noise that sounded like someone blowing a kiss. I lifted it to my nose and inhaled. It smelled like rich soil and newly cut hay, with a dash of skunk spray laid on top. It was as fresh as if it had been picked that day. Mama might not have been able to cook worth a damn, but she sure as hell knew how to can.
Mama started in instructing me. “What you need to do is grab ahold of one of the bigger buds and roll it between your fingers to get the seeds and stems out. Then—”
I interrupted her. “Mama, I think I watched you do this enough times over the years to figure it out.” Then I began to roll the first joint I’d rolled in my life.
To my embarrassment, it turned out to be a lot harder to do than I’d imagined. Mama had to guide me through the entire process. It was made worse by the fact that the papers were so old that they cracked whenever I bent them, and the saliva-activated adhesive refused to activate. But I finally produced a functional cigarette. The old sulfur matches worked just fine, and soon enough I found myself inhaling the sweet, pungent fumes of Mama’s Soother.
I had never smoked marijuana before and had only smoked tobacco once in high school, when Clarice and I had proclaimed ourselves bad girls for a day and each coughed our way through a quarter of a cigarette before giving up. But in ten minutes that tinny taste in my mouth was fading away, and I was starting to feel pretty damn good. I had to hand it to Mama: she had named the Soother just right.
I looked up at the leaves of the tree. They were still the pale green of spring, and they shivered in the breeze against the background of the blue sky.
“Beautiful,” I said. “It looks like a painting. You know, Mama, I think it’s all like a painting.”
“What is?”
“Everything. Life. It’s like you’re filling in a little bit more of a picture every day. You stroke on color after color, trying to make it as pretty as you can before you reach the edge of your canvas. And if you’re lucky enough that your mama had you in a sycamore tree, maybe your hand won’t shake with fear too bad when you see that your brush is right up against the frame.”
Mama said, “You’re stoned.”
“Maybe, but I think this is the loveliest spot on my canvas. When the end comes, I think this is where I’d like to be. Right back here where I started out,” I said.
“I don’t like to hear you talk like that. Makes me think you’re givin’ up. You probably won’t have to think about dyin’ for a long time.”
Mrs. Roosevelt, who now knelt beside me after tiring of turning cartwheels, shook her head and frowned as if to say “Your mother may think you’ve got time, but I say you’re a goner.” Then with the grace of a jungle cat, Eleanor Roosevelt hitched up her skirt and scrambled up the trunk of the sycamore and into its branches until she was nearly at the top of the tree. She put a satin-gloved hand up to her brow to block out glare from the sun and proceeded to scan the horizon—looking for mischief to get into, no doubt.
I said, “I don’t dwell on it, or anything. But when I think about it, this is always the place t
hat comes to mind when I imagine the end. I like the idea of making this big ol’ jumble of a life into a nice, neat circle.”
Mama nodded and looked up at the sky with me.
I don’t know how long we sat under the sycamore staring up at the passing clouds, but I called a halt to it when my behind started to go numb and the damp of the ground began seeping through my hose. I pushed myself up, using the tree trunk for leverage. After I straightened and stretched, I brushed the dirt from my rear end and said, “Well, I guess we’d better head on home.”
Mama and I—Mrs. Roosevelt chose to stay up in the tree—began to walk back through the garden. My first few steps on the soft, uneven ground were not too steady. Mama commented, “I think your nerves might be a little too soothed for you to drive right now. Let’s go sit in the gazebo for a spell.” I agreed, and we walked back toward the house.
The open side of the six-sided gazebo faced the rear of the house, so we couldn’t see into it as we approached it from the back. Even from the front, it was impossible to make out more than a narrow slice of the dim interior from outside. So we had no way of knowing who was inside when we heard the unmistakable sounds of lovemaking—a man’s low grunts, a woman’s sighs—emanating from the gazebo as we came closer to it.
Mama said, “Sounds like Clarice and Richmond are gettin’ along better these days.”
I turned away from the gazebo and walked as fast as I could toward the house and the driveway that led back to the street. I was even less eager to come across Clarice and Richmond in this situation than I was for Clarice to catch me foraging for marijuana.
I had just about made it to the driveway when I heard the back door of the house open and then heard the sound of Clarice’s voice. She called out, “Odette! Glad you came by. I was just going to call you to ask you over for lunch.”
Confused, I looked back at the garden. Clarice followed my gaze and then we both heard muffled voices. A head stuck out from the entrance of the gazebo and looked back at us. Clarice came and stood beside me and we watched a young man come in and out of view inside the gazebo as he hopped from one side of the structure to the other, struggling ungracefully to get back into his drawers. The young man was Clifton Abrams, the fiancé of Clarice’s cousin Sharon.
Mama shook her head with pity as she watched Clifton hurry to cover his nakedness. Holding up her thumb and forefinger spaced about two inches apart, she said, “Poor boy has the curse of the Abrams men. Did you notice?”
A woman’s head popped out and peered at us, then receded into the shadows. We heard more shuffling as the two of them bumped around, climbing into their clothes. The young woman was not Sharon.
I glanced at Clarice, wondering, but not saying, Who the hell is she?
Clarice read my mind. “Her name is Cherokee.”
“Like the Indian tribe?”
“No, like the Jeep. Come on in and I’ll tell you all about her. I’ve got some leftover turkey breast. You hungry?”
My stomach growled at the mention of roast turkey and I was surprised that I was able to honestly answer, “Yes, as a matter of fact, I am hungry.”
We left the garden and strolled back toward the house. Mama came along, saying, “Told you your mama knew how to fix up that appetite.” With that, the three of us stepped together through the back door of Mama’s old house.
Chapter 32
Barbara Jean’s AA sponsor was a man named Carlo who taught speech therapy at the university. A pudgy tanning booth devotee whose carrot-colored skin had the texture of an alligator purse, Carlo was a few years younger than Barbara Jean, but he looked a lot older. He had an unusually long, pointed nose, a wide jaw, and eyes that bulged a little. Still, in spite of having an odd collection of features that seemed to be fighting for dominance of his face, Barbara Jean thought he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Somehow it all worked together, the different unpleasant facets canceling each other out.
Carlo lived with his partner, another former drinker who sometimes came to meetings with him. Barbara Jean chose him to be her sponsor because he was gay. During some of her late nights, she watched television shows that featured gay guys who were perpetually shopping and making witty conversation. She thought a sponsor like that would be a lot of fun. Barbara Jean was disappointed to discover that Carlo must have been watching different TV shows. She liked him enough, but, blunt and serious, he was as different from those men as she was from the sassy, wisecracking black women who populated TV Land. Carlo, as it turned out, was a big gay pain in the neck.
Right about the time Barbara Jean convinced herself that she had fully mastered the AA thing, Carlo called and asked her to meet him. They arranged to get together at a coffee shop near the campus. It was a dark, cramped place with bookshelves lining every wall, designed to cater to the student population. Their meeting took place early in the day, just after the morning rush of harried graduate students had left. Barbara Jean came armed with a shopping list, ready to begin the fun part of their relationship.
She arrived at the coffee shop first and found a seat at one of the tables, which were all made from recycled industrial cable spools. When Carlo sat down across from her, she greeted him by saying how happy she was that he had called and that she had been thinking it would be nice for the two of them to get together for brunch, but hadn’t gotten around to asking him over to the house.
He interrupted her. “Barbara Jean, it doesn’t appear that I’m the right sponsor to help you to take your recovery seriously.”
“Why do you say that?” she asked.
Carlo crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her. One of his eyebrows rose. “Your eyes are fucking bloodshot and you’re drunk right now.”
She put her hand to her chest and gasped to let Carlo know how offended she was. She would have stood up from her chair and stormed out of the place if she hadn’t been just the tiniest bit buzzed and afraid that she might fall on her face in front of him.
“I can’t believe you would say such a thing to me.” Barbara Jean slipped her sunglasses onto her face, blowing a quick breath into her hand to check for the telltale odor of liquor as she adjusted the frames. “I don’t know how much more seriously I can take my sobriety. That damn Serenity Prayer is on my lips practically all day long. And I’ve been going to three meetings a week for two months now. Three meetings.”
He scrunched up his long nose and said, “Are you sure you haven’t been going to one meeting a week, but getting there so drunk you’re seeing triple?”
Barbara Jean felt a tear trickle out from behind her sunglasses and travel down her cheek. She grabbed a napkin from the table and wiped it away as quickly as she could.
Carlo softened his tone, which was contrary to his nature and, she knew, hard for him. He said, “Look, Barbara Jean, I like you a lot. You’re good company and you’re a nice lady. But I’m not helping you. And, frankly, it’s not good for me to be around someone who continues to drink the way you do. Especially someone I like as much as I’ve come to like you.”
Barbara Jean struggled to find something to say. She mumbled a few words about how wrong he was and how it hurt her that he didn’t believe her. But her heart wasn’t really in the lie anymore. She leaned back in her chair and said, “Some folks have a good reason for drinking, you know. A damn good reason. I want to tell you a story. And after I’m done, you look me in the eye and tell me that I shouldn’t take a drink every now and then.”
She took a sip of the coffee she had spiked with a healthy splash of Irish whiskey from her silver flask before he’d arrived at the coffee shop. Then she told Carlo a tale she had never told Odette or Clarice.
The night of Adam’s funeral, Odette and Clarice stayed on after everyone else had left Barbara Jean’s house. After they’d helped her maid to clean up after the guests who had filled the house with far more food and sympathy than Barbara Jean could handle, she rushed them out the door. Lester, who was just a few weeks away from the first of many hospitali
zations that were to come, collapsed onto the bed the second he was out of his black suit. As soon as he began to snore, Barbara Jean slipped out of the house.
She went to see Big Earl. It was cool and misty outside that night, but there he was, smoking a cigar and rocking on the porch swing, when she came up the walk to the house. It was as if he’d been waiting for her. When she stood beside him, he looked up at her and said, “Baby, you should go on home.”
“I need to know where he is,” she said, not bothering to say his name. Though Chick never set foot in the All-You-Can-Eat or made any attempt to see her, Barbara Jean knew that he had been back in Plainview for at least two years. She had spotted him coming and going from the McIntyres’ house, and she had overheard Little Earl saying that Chick was a frequent visitor now that Miss Thelma was sick.
Big Earl said, “You and Ray ain’t talked in nine years. Won’t nothin’ be helped by talkin’ now.”
“I need to see him. And I know you can tell me where to find him.”
“Be careful, Barbara Jean. You ain’t in the shape to make a good decision right now. You need to give it some time before you do anything that might cause you more heartache.”
“More heartache?” She laughed at the thought of that, and Big Earl winced at the sound of her laughter, which to his ear sounded like a shriek of hysteria. She said, “I’ve got to talk to Chick and I’m going to do it tonight. Will you tell me where he lives? Or do I have to drive out Wall Road past the place where my little boy died and ask Desmond Carlson where I can find his brother?”
Big Earl stared down at his feet and slowly shook his head. Then he looked up at Barbara Jean and told her the address. As she left, he said, “Be careful, baby. Be careful.”
Chick lived on a block near the university that was mostly student housing, little square boxes painted dinner-mint colors. Was he in school? She didn’t really know anything about his life since he’d returned to Plainview. Was he married? Was she about to awaken a family? She sat in her car across the street from his house, staring at the place until a light came on in back. She decided that was her signal, just like the light in the storeroom of the All-You-Can-Eat she had once watched for from her bedroom. She crossed the street and knocked on the door. The noise of her fist striking wood was the loudest sound on the street at that late hour.
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