in Veronica’s monologue. She glanced at her watch and said, “I wonder what’s keeping Barbara Jean.”
Veronica said, “I figured she must be sick. She didn’t come to church today.”
Clarice raised an eyebrow and looked in my direction. “Maybe she was just too tired to go today.”
Veronica shrugged and said, “I see Madame Minnie is finishing up. I’d better get going. I’ll call you tonight, Clarice.” Veronica left us and trotted across the room to where Yvonne Wilson was thanking Minnie and corralling her daughters.
Clarice said, “How Veronica can waste her money on such idiocy is a mystery to me.”
From across the room Minnie yelled, “I heard that, Clarice!”
That old woman’s good hearing never ceased to amaze me.
Fifteen minutes later, Barbara Jean still hadn’t appeared. Clarice and I debated whether we should go over to her house and see how she was doing—I was for, Clarice was against. I had just about talked Clarice into getting a quick bite from the buffet and then walking over to Barbara Jean’s when we looked out the window and saw her car pulling up on the other side of the street.
The Mercedes crawled slowly into a parking space, thumping the curb repeatedly as she backed up, drove forward, backed up, drove forward in a vain attempt to straighten out the car in a space that could have fit four vehicles of its size. She stopped with the front passenger side tire up on the curb. Barbara Jean sat there for a long while, looking straight ahead. We watched her, wondering what was going on. Then we saw her slump forward until her forehead came to a rest on the steering wheel.
Clarice and I both got up and went out, running across the street to the car. Clarice got there first and opened the driver’s-side door. I went around to the other side and climbed in.
Barbara Jean was weeping and rolling her forehead back and forth on the top edge of the steering wheel. She asked, “How could this happen? How did I end up like this?” But she didn’t seem to be addressing anyone in particular. When she looked up at me her lovely, exotic eyes were bloodshot and her breath had the sweet, grassy odor of whiskey, something I’d never known her to drink.
It was a raw, early spring day and there were just a few people out on the street, but they were beginning to look in our direction. We were also attracting attention from the All-You-Can-Eat across the way. Clarice shut the driver’s-side door of the car and came around to my side. She leaned down and whispered in my ear, “Odette, she’s wet herself.”
I looked over and saw that, sure enough, the pale green of Barbara Jean’s skirt was stained dark with urine from her waist nearly to her knees. I took the keys from the ignition and told Clarice to stay with Barbara Jean. Then I went back to the restaurant to tell James what was happening. I handed off her keys to him and asked him to deal with her car. I went back outside and pulled our car up between Barbara Jean’s Mercedes and the All-You-Can-Eat’s windows so Clarice and I could transfer her to my car out of eyeshot of the restaurant’s curious patrons. Once we got Barbara Jean into the backseat of my Honda, Clarice and I drove her back to her house, cleaned her up, and then put her to bed.
We waited four hours for Barbara Jean to wake up. Clarice and I spent the time chatting about Richmond, the garden at the house in Leaning Tree, the music she was playing now that her piano technique was back, my chemo—everything but what had happened earlier across the street from the All-You-Can-Eat.
When Barbara Jean came down from her room, Clarice headed into the kitchen and began to search through the refrigerator for something to fix for dinner. As Clarice boiled up noodles, she settled into some familiar, comfortable denial. She said, “Barbara Jean, you’re going to be just fine. You just have to make sure you get enough rest and enough to eat. It’s a nutrition issue, mostly.”
I wanted to join in and make the same excuses we had always made rather than deal with what was staring us in the face. But things had changed now. I was a sick woman who saw ghosts. I didn’t have the strength or inclination to lie anymore.