in the fountain.” He looked down at himself, dripping water onto the carpet. “I guess I fell in.”
He held up his right hand for me to see. The tips of his fingers appeared to be singed. “Hurt my hand, too. That light must’ve had a short in it.” Mama came up and stood between me and Lester. His brow wrinkled in confusion and he said, directly to Mama, “Dora, is that you?”
Mama said, “Hey Lester, nice to see you again.”
I said, “Oh, shit.”
Miss Thelma, Big Earl, and Mrs. Roosevelt walked up to us then. Miss Thelma handed a lit joint to Mama, who offered it to Lester. “Take a hit, baby. It’ll all make sense in a minute.”
Lester, whose suit had completely dried in the previous few seconds, continued to look uncertain about what had happened. But he said, “Yes, I think that sounds good,” and took the joint from Mama.
Someone called, “Barbara Jean,” and she turned around where she stood, just a few feet from the front window. The crowd parted between Barbara Jean and the corner of the room that contained the fountain. Now she and I both saw what most of the people in the room had already seen. Lester was on the floor, half in and half out of the now-darkened fountain, the two marble statues lying on top of him.
Barbara Jean ran to Lester’s side as Richmond threw the large statues off of him like they were made of cotton balls instead of stone. James shouted for someone to call 9-1-1 and moved in to start CPR. I knew it was too late. Lester—the true Lester, not the wet shell being pounded on by my well-meaning husband—was already shaking hands with Eleanor Roosevelt and telling her how much he had always admired her good works.
Mama turned to me and said, “I gotta tell ya, I’m surprised.”
No one was looking my way, so I answered her out loud. “Well, you said Mrs. Roosevelt was good at picking out who was about to die.”
“Oh, not that. I figured all along she was right about that. I just always assumed it would be Richmond who’d die underneath two naked white girls.” Mama walked away then, not interested in the commotion taking place at the foot of the fountain.
I went over and joined my friends. Clarice had her arms around Barbara Jean, both of them seated on the floor. I got down on my knees beside them and grabbed ahold of Barbara Jean’s hand. She stared at Lester’s body as it rocked under James’s futile effort to revive him. She shook her head slowly from side to side and said, in the soft tone of a mother gently scolding a much-loved, naughty child, “I can’t take my eyes off you, can I? Not for two seconds.”
Chapter 9
Clarice and Odette moved in with Barbara Jean after Lester died. For the last bit of July and on into August, they made sure she got dressed and ate something every day. They slept on either side of her in bed for the first few nights. Not that Barbara Jean slept much. Every night, they heard her creep out of her room and down the stairs to sit alone in her library. She would return to the bed just before sunrise and pretend later that she’d slept through the night.
Barbara Jean hardly spoke at all. And, when she did, not a word of it was about Lester. Most of her time was spent pacing the house, stopping in her tracks every so often to shake her head like a sleeper trying to wake up from a nightmare. She was in no shape to be left alone or to make any decisions. And there was so much that had to be done.
Clarice and Odette were surprised to learn that, although Lester had spent many years fighting off various near-fatal illnesses, the only preparation he had made for his passing was a short will leaving everything to Barbara Jean. So while Odette saw to Barbara Jean, Clarice could be depended on to organize the service and interment. She planned everything from Lester’s burial suit to the menu for the funeral dinner. She accomplished it all with a gracious smile, even swallowing her temper when dealing with the pastor and higher-ups of First Baptist Church—a piss-elegant crowd if ever there was one, all of them eager to demonstrate to his widow just how deeply they adored the wealthy deceased. It was quite an undertaking, but burying