a kid they told me it was a heart attack, but I found out later he got knifed in a fight. My mother ran off about the same time. I barely remember her.”
“I never met my father, but there are two guys who think I’m their daughter.”
“You can’t see it because of my hair, but I’ve got a five-inch scar on top of my head from getting stitches after my brother hit me with a brick for taking food from his refrigerator.”
“When I was fourteen, my mother twisted my arm until she dislocated it because I left the house with no makeup on.”
Chick said, “Big Earl lets me stay in the storeroom here because he found out I was living in the shed at my brother’s place and sharing it with the chickens.”
She held up her hand and said, “Okay, you win.” Then they both started laughing.
That was when she did it. She took a step toward him and kissed him on his mouth. She leaned into him until he fell back against the wall. Then she kept pressing against him, wanting to be as close to him as she could be.
She didn’t know why she was kissing him, she just knew that she had to, the same way she had to tell him things she hadn’t yet told Odette or Clarice, stuff about her mother and her various fathers. With him, those truths just came tumbling out.
When she started to think about the foolishness of what she was doing and began to pull away, he wrapped his arm around her waist and squeezed her even tighter to him. They stood there in the back hallway of the All-You-Can-Eat kissing each other until they were both dizzy from not breathing. They only stopped when they heard someone calling Barbara Jean’s name.
Chick released her waist and Barbara Jean stepped away from him until her back met the opposite wall. They were there, grinning at each other across the hallway, when Clarice ran in and shouted, “Barbara Jean, come on! Lester wants to take us for a ride in his new car. He asked especially about you.”
She said, “Hi, Chick,” and then pulled Barbara Jean down the hallway, stopping only long enough to give Barbara Jean a chance to pick up the coat she had cast off in order to show her scars. As she grabbed her coat, Barbara Jean glanced back for one more look at Chick’s beautiful, smiling face. Then she was off to take her first ride in Lester’s blue Fleetwood.
The chairman of the museum’s Christmas auction committee was Phyllis Feeney. She was a nervous, pear-shaped woman who used her hands so much when she talked that she looked as if she were speaking sign language. When Phyllis came to get the Cadillac, she brought along her husband, Andy, who was stocky and jumpy like her. Phyllis was even more animated than usual that day, fidgeting and playing with her hair. She relaxed quite a bit when the title to the car was handed over and she was assured that Barbara Jean wasn’t going to back out of the deal at the last second.
Barbara Jean escorted them to the garage, where Phyllis handed the keys to Lester’s blue Cadillac over to her husband. Then Phyllis climbed back into the Ford they had arrived in and drove off. Andy slid behind the wheel of the Fleetwood and brought the giant engine to life. He rolled down the window and said, “She purrs like a kitten.”
He put the car in reverse and drove out of the garage. Just as he got to the end of the driveway, Barbara Jean called out, “Andy, hit the horn!”
“What?” he asked.
“Hit the horn. It’s the best part.”
He did it, and when he heard the three notes of the horn rise and fall he said, “Oh man, I love this car. I’m gonna have to bid on it myself.” He waved at Barbara Jean and turned down Plainview Avenue.
For a good five minutes after he was out of sight, Barbara Jean could still hear Lester’s car off in the distance singing, “Ooo, Ooo-ooo.”
Chapter 17
Odette, Barbara Jean, and Clarice sat talking in the infusion room of the hospital. Clarice, who couldn’t resist judging décor wherever she was, approved of the room. It was pretty, if you ignored the medical equipment. The lighting was less harsh than in the rest of the hospital. And the muted pastel flowers on the wallpaper complemented the comfortable cherry wood and brown