Gods in Alabama (21 page)

Burr whistled, long and low. “That is one fierce woman,” he said. “I see where you get it.”

“Get what?” I said. “And what am I supposed to do now?”

Burr took my hand. “Now you come eat breakfast, and then you have a shower.”

We went back in and sat down at the table. No one made biscuits like my aunt Flo, and when I made myself eggs, I cooked them in Pam. This breakfast was like eating the sweet parts of my childhood, and it made me choky and regretful.

“By the way,” I said to Burr, “just because I’m sitting here like a dork, weeping over my eggs, don’t think I haven’t noticed what a good man you are. You could make the situation a thousand times worse if you felt like getting shirty.”

Burr shrugged. “This isn’t anything new. I’ve been black all my life, and there are racists in Chicago. All I ask is that you remember you owe me when we get married and my sister Geneva calls you a she-pirate who has hijacked a black woman’s rightful mate.”

I nodded. “Deal.”

After we finished eating, Burr told me he was going to try to run off his three-thousand-calorie breakfast while Aunt Florence was busy in the garden. He headed out the front door, and I caught a quick shower and got dressed. I was brushing out my hair in the bedroom when the phone rang. After six rings, when it was obvious Mama wasn’t going to answer it, I grabbed the Princess phone on top of the desk. It was Clarice.

“I was hoping it would be you. What’s going on, Arlene? You need to talk to me,” she said.

“I just had a screaming fight with your mama, and I need some Excedrin and an early death. Maybe you could come out here later?” I opened up the desk’s top drawer. Clarice’s old pencils and scrap paper were gone, replaced by a local phone book. I pulled it out and flipped through to look up the Fruiton Holiday Inn.

“I can’t this afternoon. It’s Field Day at the boys’ school, and we need to talk somewhere away from my mama,” she said.

We agreed to meet up in Fruiton the next day at the mall. I had to shop for Uncle Bruster, anyway. In the worry over Burr and Rose Mae Lolley, I had forgotten to get him a present for his retirement.

As soon as Clarice hung up, I tapped the button to get a dial tone and called the Holiday Inn. No one named Rose Mae Lolley or Rose Mae Wheeler had checked in yet. But it was only Wednesday. Rose had said in the note that she might not make it down to Fruiton before Thursday night. I would have to keep checking and make sure I caught her before she got to Clarice and Bud. I was relieved she hadn’t shown up yet. I still did not have my miracle lie ready, the one that would make her leave Fruiton and stop searching for Jim Beverly.

I needed Burr’s good brain. If Burr was helping me, the two of us together could figure it out and come up with a plan. If only we were actually married. Once we got married, it would be safe and I could tell him everything.

Burr’s laptop case was sitting at the foot of the bed. Aunt Florence must have thought it was one of our suitcases and brought it in. I got out the laptop and set it up on Clarice’s desk. I knew his log-on, so I signed in and went online. I went to Alta Vista and in twelve minutes had found a site that told me everything I needed to know. Alabama did not require a blood test or a waiting period before issuing a marriage license to people over eighteen years old.

Fruiton was too close. Someone who knew my family might see us. But Mobile was only about an hour away. I went back and found the Web site for the Mobile County clerk’s office. I followed a few links and got to a page that told me that any notary could perform a marriage ceremony in Alabama. For thirty-four dollars, we could get a license and be married that same day in the same building. We could get ten dollars off the license if we signed an affidavit certifying that we had read and understood something called
The Alabama Marriage/Family Law Handbook.
The hand-book was available as a PDF file, which meant they hadn’t tran-scribed it, they had scanned the actual document into the computer and uploaded it.

I opened the file. The pamphlet had a green cover with a picture of a happy bride and groom, both lily-white and as whole-some as Ward and June Cleaver. I heard Burr returning from his jog and called, “I’m back here.”

He came in the room, sweating and breathing hard. “The hills almost killed me,” he said. “I’m used to running on the flat.

Meanwhile, your mother is in the front yard. Doing something.

What, exactly, is a mystery to me.”

I scrolled past the cover to the first page of the pamphlet and started reading. “Is she in the street?” I asked.

“No.”

“Is she fully dressed?”

“Yes.”

“She’s probably fine, then.” I half stood so I could see out the window into the front yard. Mama was out there, wearing an aquamarine and yellow muumuu and red galoshes. Over the muumuu she had donned a voluminous clear plastic rain poncho and a matching plastic hat. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. She was dragging a large Hefty bag behind her, and in her other hand she had Uncle Bruster’s trash pole, which she was using to viciously stab a pinecone. She had to stab three or four times before the pinecone stuck, and then she put it in the bag and walked a few steps, searching. She found another pinecone and began stabbing at it.

“She gets like that,” I said. “I wonder if Aunt Florence remembered to lock her pills back up this morning. Sometimes Mama gets in her pills.”

Burr was behind me, reading over my shoulder. “Should you go check?”

“Florence has the only key, and anyway, if she got in them, it’s too late. She’ll have eaten some and squirreled more away for later. We’ll keep an eye on her.” I sat back down.

“What’s this?” Burr said, still reading.

“Alabama marital something-something pamphlet.”

Basically the pamphlet said that Alabama was concerned about the rising divorce rate, and if we got married here, the state did not want us to get divorced. In order to avoid divorce, advised the pamphlet, we should communicate with each other. This took about two pages.

Then the pamphlet started to explain in excruciating detail exactly what we would need to do when the communication thing didn’t pan out and we decided to get a divorce. I scrolled down the screen, skimming.

“Twenty bucks says lawyers wrote this,” said Burr.

“Sucker bet, no takers,” I scoffed. I flipped down to the bottom of the document and read, “Published by the Alabama Bar Association at a cost of .085 cents per pamphlet.”

“Lena, why are you reading this?” Burr asked.

“Because Alabama says we have to.” I closed the PDF file and turned around in the chair to face him. He straightened up and looked down at me. “Burr, listen, I was thinking. What if we ran over to Mobile and got married right now?” Burr’s eyebrows went up and I talked faster, making my case. “You said you wanted to marry me, and you said soon. This is soon. And what if I am pregnant? And then it would be done and we could stop worrying about it.”

Burr’s eyes narrowed, and he looked at me silently. At last he said, “No.”

I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “That’s it?” I said.

“Just no?”

“What else is there to say? Yes, I want to marry you. No, I’m not going to Mobile and get it over with as if it were a root canal.

I want to get married in my dad’s church, by our pastor, with my family there—”

“Geneva won’t come, I bet you,” I interjected, but he kept talking.

“My mother will. I would think you’d want her there. I’m sorry you’re having a post-lie panic attack, if that’s what this is, but this is not the solution. We’ll be home in a few days. If you’re pregnant, you won’t be showing next week. We can do it quietly, the way you want. I’m good with quiet. But I’m not good with hasty and ashamed.”

I stared at him helplessly, then turned back to the computer. I closed it down and packed it carefully back into its case.

“I really need this, Burr,” I said in a low voice.

“Why?” he said.

I didn’t have an answer.

He took a deep breath behind me. “I don’t know what your agenda is, Lena. I know you have one. You always do. I don’t mind that when you let me be on your team. But don’t work me.

Don’t tell me half the story and expect me to fall in line. At some point you have to decide to trust me.”

“Maybe that’s what I’m trying to do. But how can I, if you won’t marry me?”

“I will marry you. But I don’t want a civil ceremony. I don’t want to break my mother’s heart. And I don’t want to spend my wedding night in that bed, listening to your mother cough. I think that’s reasonable. Now I’m going to get in the shower, because this is a bad time and place to have a fight. And believe me, we’re heading that way.”

He walked out of the room. I heard the bathroom door shut emphatically, and then the water began to run. He stayed in the shower a long time. I got up and went to coax Mama in out of the yard.

Burr and I spent the rest of the day being polite and careful with each other. Burr read one of the legal thrillers he’d brought with him. When I went in the kitchen to make lunch, I gave the medicine-cabinet door a tug. It was locked, but then I noticed Aunt Florence had left her keys behind on the kitchen counter. I sighed. No doubt Mama had been in the meds. I took Flo’s keys and went back to her room and tucked her key ring in her pocket-book.

I made tuna salad for lunch and then played cards with Mama.

Mama was flushed, and whatever she had swallowed had made her chirpy and twitchy. Whenever I could get a break from her chatter, I went back to Clarice’s room to call the Holiday Inn, but Rose still had not checked in.

At about three, Aunt Florence came in from the garden. Burr was still reading. Florence took one look at Mama’s red cheeks and said, “Gladys, why don’t you go get your scrapbooking things.” Mama joggled off to her room, and Florence said, “I got in it with you and forgot and left my keys out, didn’t I?”

I nodded and told her where I had put them.

When Mama came back, Florence spent the rest of the afternoon helping her do scrapbooking, trying to keep her calm and seated. Uncle Bruster got home at four-thirty, and Florence went to start dinner. Mama was still flying when we all gathered at the dining room table. The clink of cutlery on the plates and Mama jiggling and twisting around in her chair almost made me run screaming into the street.

Burr and I went to bed when Bruster turned in. I called the hotel once more, but Rose was still a no-show. I spent another long night dozing and listening to Burr breathe while my mother and Aunt Florence walked the house. Florence marched Mama up and down the hall until she could get her to go to bed.

The next morning all was quiet. Mama had crashed and was dead asleep in her room, so Florence was systematically searching the house, looking for Mama’s pill stash. My money was on Mama. I offered to help with the search, but Florence shook her head. She remained so cool and distant that her earlier relentless stalking began to look appealing. Right after lunch, Burr and I escaped the house, heading for the mall in Fruiton. I tried the hotel a few times before leaving, but still no Rose.

Clarice was already waiting for us by the mall’s front entrance, just her and the baby. Bud was at work, and the boys were at school. Her mouth was pulled down slightly at the corners, but even so, she looked pretty enough to be a TV mommy. Francie perched solemnly on her hip, staring me down with smaller ver-sions of Clarice’s pale blue eyes. Clarice walked up to meet us and gave me a one-armed hug. Francie used the opportunity to re-move a chunk of my hair.

“What are we looking for?” Clarice said, disentangling my long hair from the baby’s fat starfish hand.

“We have to find a present for Uncle Bruster,” I said. “How’s that for procrastination? I figured you could help us find something he would really like.”

Clarice switched the baby to her other hip, and we headed down the mall together. There was one of those knickknack and trophy shops two stores down from the entrance, and we went in.

Burr wandered the aisles, picking up business-card holders and pens and desk sets and setting them back down.

Clarice pulled me in the opposite direction. Once we were a couple of aisles over, she said, “What do you mean you’re not married? What happened with Rose Mae Lolley? Why did she want to find you? Why are you really home after all this time, not that I’m not happy to see you, but Arlene, what’s going on?”

“That’s a lot of questions,” I said. “The marriage thing, don’t worry about it. We are getting married. I think. I hope. Next week, at home. But I couldn’t have Aunt Florence thinking he was temporary and picking at us.”

“That almost makes sense,” said Clarice. “It makes Arlene sense, anyway. Still, if Mama ever finds out, I don’t want to be in the state.”

“As for Rose Mae, who knows,” I said. “She’s a nutburger. She tracked me down at my job—”

“She showed up in Chicago?” Clarice interrupted me.

“Yes, at school and at my apartment.”

“What did she want?” Clarice said. Her pretty brow was furrowed, and Francie gave a peeping squawk. Clarice was holding her too tightly. Clarice loosened her grip and dropped a kiss on the baby’s head.

“I refused to talk to her, Clarice. I pretty much closed the door in her face. I had no idea she’d turn around and come down here hunting you.” I was doing it again, telling the truth but not the whole truth. I couldn’t bring myself to tell a flat lie to Clarice.

“Don’t worry about it, okay? She’s just your garden-variety loon.

She said she was coming to Fruiton mostly on some tour-of-memories thing, so bothering you isn’t even her first priority. And if she does turn up, you can send her my way. Don’t tell her anything, don’t talk to her, just get ahold of me, and I’ll handle her.”

“I can do that,” said Clarice. She wrapped her other arm around Francie, holding her close and rubbing her cheek along the baby’s head. “If she’s crazy, I don’t want her near us.”

“Good. It isn’t much to do with you anyway. I’ll handle her,”

I said, and Clarice looked at me, solemn and trusting.

We went to find Burr. He was at the back of the store, holding a brass cigar cutter in the shape of a bare-breasted mermaid. She was leering and holding up a clamshell that held the blades.