cup and saucer to the kitchen and left them on the counter for the maid to deal with in the morning. When she returned to the library to turn out the lights, she contemplated reopening that troublesome Bible. She was in just that kind of mood, and it wouldn’t take long. After a few vodkas, Barbara Jean’s form of Bible study was to close her eyes, open the book on her lap, and let her index finger fall onto the open page. Then she would read whatever verse was nearest the tip of her nail. She had done this for years, telling herself that one day she would land on just the right thing to turn on some light inside her head. But, mostly, she spent countless nights learning who begat whom and reading of the endless, seemingly random smitings the Bible specialized in.
She thought about the day to come and decided to go on up to bed. Rather than disturb Lester, who was a light sleeper, she would lie down in one of the guest rooms. If he asked in the morning why she hadn’t come to bed, she would tell him that she had gone straight to the guest room after staying up late to pick out her outfit for Big Earl. If she looked well rested enough, maybe he wouldn’t suspect that she had spent yet another night in the library drinking and stocking up on ammunition for her ongoing battle with God.
Barbara Jean removed her shoes before she left the library so the sound of her steps wouldn’t create a racket as she crossed the herringbone parquet floor of the grand foyer. She climbed the stairs slowly and carefully, recalling one of her mother’s warnings about the missteps that could prevent Barbara Jean from accessing the better, more respectable life that Loretta had been cheated out of. Loretta had said that if a woman fell down the stairs, people would always gossip that either she was a drunk or her man beat her. And you couldn’t have them saying either thing about you if you wanted to get chummy with the type of folks who could actually do something for you. That was the way Loretta had divided up the world, into those who could or could not do something for her. And she spent most of her life designing plots to wrest the things she wanted from the people who she believed possessed them. In the end, it did her no good.
In her stocking feet, Barbara Jean crept along the second-floor hallway of her house. She tiptoed past the bedroom she shared with Lester. Then she passed by the guest rooms. The door to Adam’s room drew her to it as surely as if it had stretched out a pair of arms and pulled her into its embrace. She opened the door and stared into the room at the familiar low shelves crammed with out-of-date toys, the small desk strewn with faded crayon drawings, the miniature chair with a pale green sweater slung over it as if its owner might dash into the room at any second to retrieve it. Everywhere she looked there were things that she had sworn to her friends she had thrown away or given away decades earlier. She knew she shouldn’t go into this room; it did her no good. But she still had a stagger in her step from the vodka. And she comforted herself with the knowledge that, in the morning, she probably wouldn’t recall experiencing the ache in her soul and the fire in her brain that always led her to this same place.
Barbara Jean stepped inside and shut the door. She curled up on the short bed, atop cowboys and Indians on horseback engaged in endless pursuit of each other across the comforter. She closed her eyes—not to sleep, she told herself—just to rest and gather her thoughts before going to one of the guest rooms for the few remaining hours of the night. Moments later, Barbara Jean was on that dirt road again, clutching her husband’s arm while her shimmering mother floated above their heads whispering, “He’s waiting.”
Chapter 8
Big Earl’s funeral was held at Clarice’s church, Calvary Baptist. He wasn’t much of a churchgoer himself, but his daughter-in-law’s family had worshipped at Calvary for almost as many generations as Clarice’s people. It seemed like the perfect choice until the place started to fill up and it became clear that the university’s football stadium was the