He put his hand to his heart and interrupted her. “Is she gone?”
“No, no, she’s not gone. She’s awake, even speaking. But she’s saying some strange stuff.”
He smiled. “Well, being that it’s Odette we’re talking about, saying strange stuff could be a good sign.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Her doctor was sure she wouldn’t make it through the day and I don’t think he’s changed his mind.”
“I hate to hear that,” he said. “Well, let’s hope she surprises him.” He gestured toward two high-backed, copper-colored leather chairs that sat facing his desk. “Would you like to sit down?”
She answered, “Yes, thank you,” but her feet carried her past the chairs and on toward one of the tall windows instead. Chick followed her and stood by her side, so close that their arms almost touched.
From the window, Barbara Jean could see the hospital where Odette lay. She thought about Odette, and she tried to draw strength from imagining how her brave friend would approach this. Odette would get right to it, Barbara Jean thought. So she did the same.
She said, “I’m an alcoholic, just like my mother was. It’s a struggle, but I haven’t had a drink in a while.” That was something she hadn’t meant to say, something she had never said outside of an AA meeting. But, after it had been said, it felt like as good a way to start as any.
He furrowed his brow, as if he were searching for the proper response to what she had just blurted out. He settled on “Congratulations. I know how hard that is.”
“Thank you. I came to see you because they tell us at AA that we have to make a list of the people we’ve harmed and try to make amends.”
His head jerked back a little and he looked confused. “You want to make amends? To me?”
Barbara Jean nodded. “I know how bad I hurt you and—”
He interrupted her again. “You don’t need to feel bad about any of that, Barbara Jean. You were just a kid. We both were.” He paused. “And we were in love.”
“That’s what makes it worse, Ray. That’s the thing I used to think about when I sat up at night drinking. I knew you loved me, or at least that you had loved me once upon a time, and I used that. I think maybe I could have gotten past the guilt if I’d done the honest thing and shot Desmond myself. But, instead, I took your love for me and I twisted it to make you pull the trigger. Now, both of us have had to live with it. I can’t even imagine what that must have done to you.”
Chick remained silent. His only response was to slowly shake his head back and forth.
Barbara Jean wondered why she wasn’t crying or shouting, or something. Lord knows she felt as if she were bursting at the seams. But at the same time, she was strangely calm. Well, not calm, she thought. More like purposeful. She could feel something, or someone, willing her on. She imagined voices whispering in her ear saying that every word she spoke was moving her incrementally closer to a place she wanted to be.
She went on. “According to the twelve steps, making amends shouldn’t injure the person you’ve harmed. So I hope and pray that saying this and dredging it all up again doesn’t hurt you more. It’s just that I want you to know that I’m sorry for what I made you do. And if there’s a way I can make it up to you, I’d like to.”
Chick’s shoulders slumped and his face looked weary. In a tone of voice that sounded as if he were apologizing, he said, “I didn’t kill Desmond.”
His words took a moment to register and, when they did, Barbara Jean still couldn’t accept them. She found herself focusing on his eyes again. She felt sure that, even after all of the years that had passed, she could still read the truth there if she stared hard enough.
It was there, all right. Her throat went dry and she brought her hand to her mouth to smother an escaping gasp. She whispered, “Oh Lord, you’re telling the truth.”
She took a few steps and fell into the chair he had offered her earlier. Part of Barbara Jean accepted that what Chick had said was true. But another, maybe stronger, piece of her had memorized every second of the morning the police had taken her and Lester to Desmond Carlson’s place. That memory, as vivid to her that afternoon as it had been decades earlier, made her mistrust anything that threatened to alter the script of the movie she had played over and over in her head for years.
She said, “But I saw feathers from those birds in the cages at your house. They were all over the ground at Desmond’s place that day. Gray, white, and red feathers. There was nothing that looked like that just flying around town. You had to have been there.”
Chick came away from the window then and slid the other leather chair closer to hers so that, when he sat, their knees were just inches apart. The room had grown warmer since she had arrived, the air-conditioning unable to compete with the July sun, but her hands had gone icy. They trembled as if she had laid them onto the surface of the frozen river in her dreams. Chick surprised Barbara Jean by reaching out and pressing her cold fingers between his warm palms.
Speaking quietly and slowly, Chick said, “I was there. But I didn’t kill him. I went over to see Desmond late that night after you left my house. I didn’t really know what I was going to do. In my mind I pictured strangling him with my bare hands. But when I got to Desmond’s place, he was already dead on the porch with his rifle lying beside him. I don’t know for sure what happened, but his girlfriend Liz’s father walked up to me at Desmond’s funeral and bragged right to my face that he’d shot Desmond for beating Liz one time too many. He was falling-down drunk when he said it, so maybe it was true, maybe not. My brother spread a lot of misery in his life, and a long list of people wanted him dead. I suppose it’s even possible that Desmond did it himself, like the police decided. But I doubt it.
“All I can tell you for sure is that what you believed … Well, that’s what I hoped you’d believe. I thought maybe that way you wouldn’t hate me, maybe you would believe I’d done at least that one thing for our son.”
Barbara Jean sat frozen in the leather chair, going over what he had just said. She sat motionless for so long that Chick asked her if she was all right and offered to go get some water for her. She said, “I’m fine, Ray.” But in her mind, she was trying to sort out her new role as an exonerated prisoner. What do you do when your cell door suddenly swings open? How do you embrace freedom when you’ve never known it? How do you forgive yourself for serving as your own jailer for three decades?
The easiest thing—and the smartest thing, she suspected—would have been to leave then. But being cut loose from the familiar ground of her guilt somehow made going further less scary.
She took a deep breath and said, “Odette told me I had to come talk to you and see how this thing between you and me is supposed to end. She said it was time to tell the whole truth, lay everything out in the sun once and for all. And she said Big Earl and Miss Thelma agreed with her.”
Chick looked confused. “What?”
She continued without explaining. “Tomorrow I’ll call my sponsor, Carlo, and I’ll tell him about today. He’ll probably say, ‘Barbara Jean, you should have stopped at making amends. You can’t trust what you’re feeling right now. Years of drinking have pickled your brain and left you stuck where you were when you were a kid.’ Or he might say that I’m like a lot of drunks, nostalgic for a sweet past I just imagine I lived.
“But Odette and Big Earl never led me wrong. And since I know the truth, I’m going to say it. That way I can go back over to the hospital and tell my friend that I did what she told me to do. And if that’s the last thing I get to tell her, I think I’ll be able to look back and not have any regrets. And believe me, I’ve learned about regret the hard way.”
At that moment, Barbara Jean felt that it wasn’t just Odette pushing her to talk. All of that ghost business must’ve gotten under her skin because the voices she had heard whispering in her ear from the time she walked into Chick’s office were louder now. The voices encouraged her. “Tell it, girl.” “Preach!” “Speak the t
ruth and shame the devil.” And Barbara Jean would have sworn on that Bible in her library that had been her companion and nemesis for so many years that one of those voices was Big Earl’s.
She kept her eyes on Chick’s handsome face and said, “Ray, I loved you that day I kissed you that first time in the hallway at the All-You-Can-Eat and I’ve never stopped. I loved you when I was sober and when I was drunk. I loved you when I was young and still love you now that I’m old. I thought it would change, or I’d grow out of it one day. But all these years later, after all kinds of people and things have come and gone in my life, that one fact, foolish or not, hasn’t changed even the tiniest bit.”
She stopped and, except for the occasional chirp or caw from the birds, the room was quiet. There was really nothing more to say. She let out the breath that she hadn’t been aware she was holding.
While she talked, Chick had aimed his gaze downward and stared at the floor. Now he released her hands and slid his chair away from hers. As he got up and moved away from her, Barbara Jean told herself that it was fine, she was fine. She had done what she needed to do, what Odette had insisted she do. If it ended with this, with Chick stepping away from her, that was okay. At least this time they would part with the whole truth being the last thing spoken. What mattered was that she would know how the story ended, like Odette had said.
Barbara Jean lifted her eyes from the empty chair Chick had vacated. He had moved a few feet away and now stood just to the side of his desk. The afternoon sun blazing into the windows backlit him, turning him into a silhouette. She couldn’t see his face. But she heard his voice, strong and exquisitely out of tune, when he opened his mouth and started singing.
“My baby love to rock, my baby love to roll. What she do to me just soothe my soul. Ye-ye-yes, my baby love me …” He sang louder and louder, gyrating his hips and pivoting around until he was wiggling his narrow rear in her direction.
She heard herself let out a howl that had been waiting too, too long to come out. She applauded, clapping her hands together until they ached, as Ray Carlson, King of the Pretty White Boys, swayed in the sun and danced the blues.
Chapter 37
By the time Richmond brought me to the house in Leaning Tree, I was holding on to just a tattered corner of the world of the living. I had used up all of the energy I had left in me explaining to Richmond what I needed him to do, and I spent most of the drive from the hospital resting my head against the car window, watching the scenery go by.
Throughout that short ride, I kept picturing James and how he was going to react when he found out I’d run off the moment I got the chance. He’d be good and mad at first. He would ask Richmond why he helped me do this foolish thing and Richmond would shrug those big shoulders of his and say, “She told me to.” James would cuss, maybe even take a swing or two at his friend. But he’d think it over and forgive Richmond, eventually.
I hadn’t exactly lied to James. I’d promised him he wouldn’t come back to the hospital and find me dead. And that was the truth. He would be angry with me for a while, but then he’d admit to himself that I would have found a way to do what I wanted no matter what. And then he’d acknowledge that he couldn’t have brought himself to help me do it. Yes, James would understand what I’d done. He couldn’t stay married to me for thirty-five years without learning to roll with the punches. He might even laugh about it someday, maybe turn it into a funny story to entertain the grandkids with when they’re older: “Hey, did I ever tell y’all about that last crazy thing your Grandma Odette did?”
Richmond helped me out of the car and into the wheelchair we’d borrowed from the hospital. When he wheeled me back behind the house we crossed paths with my father. Daddy looked up from the 1960s-style riding lawn mower he was tinkering with. He saw me and smiled. Then he wiped his hands on a red shop rag that was covered with black oil stains and he waved at me.
Richmond and I bumped along the cobblestone path that led past the gazebo. Clarice, bless her heart, had been good about taking care of Mama’s garden. It looked better that year than it had in ages. The climbing roses that Mama had trained onto trellises and an arch were in full bloom. The pink and white flowers and rich green foliage provided shade for Aunt Marjorie, who sat under the arch smoking a cigar and sipping gold-colored liquor from a mason jar. She called out, “Hey, Dette.” It cheered me to hear that wonderful, unique voice of hers again, that sound that made you imagine she gargled with pine tar and rock salt. But I didn’t have time to say more than a quick hello to her. Richmond, a good soldier who knew a thing or two about breaking rules, was intent on accomplishing the mission I’d assigned to him. He quick-stepped behind my chair as fast as his bad ankle would allow.
When we got to the far end of the garden, where it was too overgrown for him to continue to push the wheelchair, Richmond stopped. He came to my side, slid one arm under my back and the other beneath my knees, and lifted me. Then he carried me up the hill toward my sycamore tree.
At the base of the tree, Richmond put me down with my back pressed against the warm bark of its trunk. He saw that I didn’t have the strength to keep my head from falling forward, so he adjusted my position against the tree. Then he lifted my chin so I could look up into the branches and see the green leaves against a blue sky unbroken by a single cloud.
I thanked him, but he couldn’t hear me.
I let go then of that little bit of the world I’d been holding on to. When hazy liquid flooded in from the corners of my vision, I didn’t try to swim against it. I let the tide carry me up toward the branches of the tree where my mother had given birth to me after following a witch’s advice so many years earlier.
“Hello, tree, my first cradle, my second mother, the source of my strength, the cause of my struggles. I’m back home.”
I saw Mama then. She was wearing her best dress, the light blue one with embroidered yellow flowers and green vines. Her legs were crossed at the ankle, and she kicked her feet out in front of her like she was on a swing set. She shared her tree branch with Eleanor Roosevelt.
I breathed deep and inhaled the smell of the soil, the aroma of the honeysuckle that drifted up the hill from the garden, the faint odor of Aunt Marjorie’s foul-smelling cheap cigar. I felt good. Felt like whatever happened next would be just fine. I floated and waited.
I looked around for that welcoming light I’d heard about, but I didn’t see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds—not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama’s garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I’d been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me.
I looked up then to tell Mama how overjoyed I was to see that crossing over was just like she had said it would be. That was when I saw Mrs. Roosevelt reach out, pick something from the tree, and then pass it to Mama. I watched as Mama rolled whatever she’d been handed around in her palms before letting it go. It fell from her hands, through the branches and leaves of the tree. Finally, it came down to me where I sat on the ground—or floated in the air, I wasn’t quite sure which I was doing. I felt the thing land on my lap.
The object Mama had dropped rested just above my knees. It was small and dark green with blackish-brown spots. I felt the heat it had absorbed from the summer sun coming off of it so strong that I wondered if it might burn clean through the thin robe I was wearing.
Then I felt and heard it tick. Like a time bomb.
I looked back up at the tree again. This time I studied it more carefully. I focused on the shape of the leaves. I squinted and saw that there were clusters of little round fruit coveri
ng the tree. I watched as Eleanor Roosevelt tugged another one from the tree and let it fall. This one landed on my head and then bounced off to my right.
“Damn you, Richmond Baker. This is just you all over. I give you one thing to do and you screw it up. And, to top it off, you do it when I’m too gone from the world to yell at you about it. Any fourth grader can tell a sycamore from a time bomb tree. Now here I am with walnuts falling on my head while I’m trying to die the way I want to.”
I picked up the walnut from my lap and tossed it at him.
To my surprise, Richmond ducked. Then he backed away several feet.
He started apologizing. “I’m sorry, Odette. A tree’s a tree to me. They all look the same.”
Another surprise. What I’d believed I had shouted out in a place far beyond Richmond’s hearing, I had apparently bellowed directly at him. And he’d heard at least enough of it to know that I was truly pissed. Richmond kept his distance, afraid I might find the strength to toss something else at him.
Throwing something else at Richmond wasn’t on my mind, though. I was too busy trying to figure out why I was alive when all the indications were that I was done for. I put my hand to my forehead. I felt hot. But it was the heat from the sun now, not the fire that had been roiling in my blood since the day of Sharon’s wedding.
I called up to Mama, “Is this a miracle?”
She raised and lowered her shoulders. Her voice drifted down: “Maybe. Or maybe this is just what’s supposed to be.”
Richmond assumed I was talking to God, so, preacher’s son that he was, he bowed his head. I started to feel bad for yelling at him. He’d done me a big favor, one I couldn’t have asked anyone else to do. And it wasn’t his fault he screwed it up. That was just his nature.
The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat Page 31
