to be seriously pissed off at God while the weight of her guilt ground her into powder.
Barbara Jean was finally able to leave Adam’s room after she and God came to an understanding. She would continue to smile and nod through services every week at First Baptist just as she always had, and she wouldn’t call Him out for being as demanding and capricious as the worst two-year-old child, ready at any moment to reach out with his greedy hands and snatch whatever shone brightest. In exchange for this consideration, Barbara Jean asked only that God leave her alone. For decades, the pact worked out fine. Then, with Big Earl’s sudden passing, God reminded Barbara Jean of who He was. Bringer of death, master comedian, lightning bearer. He made it clear to her that He had no intentions of honoring the terms of their truce.
Barbara Jean put the Bible on the eighteenth-century candle table next to her chair and walked to the mirror above the fireplace to inspect herself. She didn’t look too bad—a little puffy, but nothing some time with an ice pack wouldn’t take care of. Also, the sun wasn’t up yet, so she still had time to get a little rest to ensure she would look good for Big Earl. And she was determined to say goodbye to her friend looking her very best.
She had laid out her outfit for Big Earl’s service earlier that evening, before heading into the library. Out of respect, she would wear a black dress. But she chose magenta shoes, a matching belt, and a white hat with clusters of red and black leather roses around its wide brim to go with it. The little black dress was cut well above the knee and had a tiny slit on the right seam. Clarice would hate it and would have to bite her tongue to keep from saying so. But Barbara Jean wasn’t wearing it for Clarice. She was wearing it for Big Earl.
When she was a teenager and was ashamed of having to wear her mother’s flashy, trashy hand-me-downs, Big Earl made a point of telling Barbara Jean that she looked pretty every time he saw her. Not in a dirty old man way or anything. He would just smile at her and say, “You look divine today,” in a way that made her feel as if she were wearing haute couture. Or he would see her come into the restaurant in one of her mother’s shiny, too-short skirts and he’d turn to Miss Thelma and say, “Don’t Barbara Jean look exactly like a flower.” Anywhere else in town, she might have been dirt, but inside the walls of the All-You-Can-Eat, she was a flower.
Long after Barbara Jean had choices and knew better, she would occasionally pick one of the brightest and the tightest from her closet and sashay into the All-You-Can-Eat on a Sunday afternoon just to give Big Earl a reason to grin and slap his knee and say, “That’s my girl.” On those days, she left the All-You-Can-Eat feeling twenty years younger than when she’d walked in. So, for Big Earl she was going to squeeze into a black dress she wouldn’t be able to take more than a shallow breath in and she was going to look damn good in it, or die trying.
Barbara Jean knew she should get to bed, but she didn’t feel sleepy, just a little woozy still from the vodka. She didn’t remember getting the bottle from the liquor cabinet, but there it was on the table next to the Bible. That was her pattern. When her mind was too full of thoughts—usually about the old days, her mother or her son—she would reach for either the Bible or the bottle and end up with both in her lap before the night was over. She would sit in one of her burgundy chairs and drink vodka from one of the antique demitasse cups Clarice had found for the house. She sipped and read until the memories went away.
Barbara Jean always drank vodka, partly because whiskey had been her mother’s drink and she swore she’d never touch it. Also, vodka was safe because people couldn’t smell it on you. If you stuck to vodka and you knew how to control yourself, nobody talked trash about you, no matter how many times you filled your demitasse cup.
She put the cap back on the vodka bottle and returned it to the liquor cabinet. Then she took her