The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (12 page)

When Clarice, Odette, and Barbara Jean walked into the All-You-Can-Eat, Little Earl ushered them to the coveted window table for the first time. A group of his pals was sitting there, but he chased them off, saying, “Make way. This table is reserved for the Supremes.” After that, every boy in the place, even those who Clarice knew had told some of the most outlandish lies about Barbara Jean and what she’d supposedly done with them, came to the window table to stutter and stammer through their best adolescent pickup lines.

Richmond showed up with James Henry in tow a few minutes after the girls had been seated. Clarice made a mental note to give Richmond hell later for bringing him. James was the worst of all the regular guys Richmond had scrounged up for Odette. He was nice enough, and he’d had a fondness for Odette ever since she’d beaten two teenage boys bloody when she was ten after they’d called him “Frankenstein” because of that ugly knife scar on his face. But he was, Clarice thought, the most boring boy on the face of the earth. He barely made conversation at all. And when he did, it was pathetic.

The only topic James talked with Odette about at any length was her mother’s garden. He worked for Lester Maxberry’s lawn care business and he came to their dates armed with helpful hints for Odette to pass along to Mrs. Jackson. James was the only boy Clarice knew who could sit in the back of a car parked on the side of a dark road with a girl and talk to her about nothing but composted manure.

Worst of all, James was always exhausted. He had to be at work early in the mornings, and he took classes at the university in the afternoons. So just when the evening got going, James would start nodding off. Odette would see his head droop and she would announce, “My date’s asleep. Time to go home.” It was intolerable.

Odette had a slightly different view of James Henry. He might have been the worst double-date choice for Clarice’s purposes, but
Odette was content with him. She thought it was kind of sweet how he dropped off to sleep during their dates. How many other boys would let themselves be that vulnerable in front of a girl—mouth open and snoring? And he had excellent manners. James had become a frequent visitor, never failing to come by and personally convey his thanks to Dora Jackson for the food she regularly brought to his home after his mother became housebound with emphysema. This in spite of the fact that Odette had witnessed James wisely burying her mother’s half-raw, half-burned pork chops beside his house one day. She assumed, hoped, that all of the meals her mother gave the Henrys ended up underground as well. Still, each inedible bundle was greeted with undeserved gratitude from James.

Odette knew just enough about men to have her guard up at all times. So she hadn’t eliminated the possibility that, underneath it all, James might be as horny and stupid as his friend Richmond. But she was willing to tolerate his head falling onto her shoulder occasionally while she figured him out.

Richmond and James wound through the crowd of boys gathered around the window table. James behaved the same way he always did. He sat next to Odette, complimented her homemade dress, inquired about her mother’s garden, and then yawned. Richmond was another story. To Clarice’s surprise and enjoyment, Richmond, by then a college football hero, felt threatened by all of the testosterone-dizzy boys surrounding his girl, even though they were really there for Barbara Jean. Ordinarily, he was content to sit in the center of the throng, entertaining the boys who came by the table to laugh at his jokes and to hear tales of his record-breaking freshman year on the team. Clarice felt that she had his full attention only in those brief moments when they found themselves alone. That night, though, Richmond spent the entire evening with his arm draped around her shoulders, whispering in her ear and being extra attentive to her in order to clearly stake out his claim.

Barbara Jean was like magic, Clarice thought. The more boys came by to get a close look at her, the more territorial Richmond became. That night was a wonderful evening of flirting, dancing, and nonstop
free malts and Coca-Colas from admirers. When James drifted off to sleep and it came time to leave, Big Earl had to intercede to forestall a fistfight over who would see the Supremes home.

As they left the All-You-Can-Eat and headed for Richmond’s car, Clarice whispered to Odette, “Barbara Jean is our new best friend, okay?”

Odette said, “Okay.” And by the end of the summer, that’s the way it was.

Six weeks after Big Earl’s funeral, my summer break ended and I returned to my job. I was food services manager at James Whitcomb Riley Elementary School, which was a fancy way of saying “head lunch lady.” Normally, I enjoyed getting back to work and starting the new school year. But that fall was a tough one.

James was still adjusting to life without Big Earl being there for him. I often caught him reaching for the phone, only to set it back down again as a brief shadow of pain traveled across his face. Whenever that happened, I knew who he’d been thinking of calling. I’d done the same thing for months after losing Mama so suddenly. James’s mother had died relatively young, but she had wasted away for years and James had learned to live without her long before she passed. Losing a parent, and that’s what Big Earl had been to James, in the blink of an eye was a new kind of loss for James and it was going to take him some time to work it through.

Barbara Jean was bad off, too. She tried to put up a good front. She wasn’t hysterical or even teary-eyed, and she looked as perfectly put together as ever. But it was easy to see that Lester and Big Earl passing right up on top of each other like they’d done had laid her low. She was living deep in her own thoughts and pulling herself further away from Clarice and me every day.

Clarice had her hands full with Richmond. He was back to his cheating ways with a vengeance. It was like the old days. Richmond catted around, not caring who knew. People barely acquainted with him and Clarice openly gossiped about it. Clarice pretended not to notice, but she burned so hot with anger at him some days that I hoped, for both of their sakes, that Richmond was sleeping with one eye open.

And me. After slacking off for a while, my hot flashes were back big time. More nights than not, the early hours of the day found me cooling myself in the kitchen and shooting the breeze with Mama, instead of sleeping. I loved Mama’s company, but the lack of sleep was taking a toll on me. I felt run-down and I looked, as my mother bluntly put it, “like shit on a cracker.”

By the middle of October, I’d had my fill of feeling bad, so I went to my doctor and rattled off a long list of symptoms. I told him about my hot flashes and my fatigue. I complained that I was getting forgetful and, James claimed, irritable. I wasn’t willing to tell him the main reason I had decided to see him. I had no desire whatsoever to explain to my doctor that I’d made my appointment because former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt had been showing an awful lot of interest in me lately. I remembered, all too well, how she’d orbited around Lester right before he electrocuted himself, and it had me feeling antsy.

At first Mrs. Roosevelt had only visited me along with Mama, but then she started turning up by herself. Some mornings I would walk into my cramped office off of the cafeteria at Riley Elementary and there she’d be, asleep in one of the rusty metal folding chairs or stretched out on the floor. Occasionally she’d pop up out of nowhere and lean over my shoulder as I did the food orders over the phone. I made up my mind to see the doctor after Mrs. Roosevelt greeted me every morning for a solid week, grinning wide and offering me a swig from her flask. (Mama had been right about Mrs. Roosevelt and the drinking. That woman was at her flask morning, noon, and night.)

Mrs. Roosevelt and Mama sat in the corner of the examining room during my checkup and during the tests that came afterwards. They came with me again a week after that first appointment and listened in as my doctor, Dr. Alex Soo, told me that I had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Alex was my friend. He was a chubby Korean man, about a year younger than my son Jimmy. When he took over my old doctor’s practice several years back, I had been his very first patient.

Alex came to town just after my Denise left the house, and as soon as I laid eyes on Alex’s round, smooth face I decided to mother the hell out of him, whether he wanted it or not. When I found out that
he lived alone and had no relatives nearby, I badgered him into spending the holidays with me and my family. It was an annual tradition now. Sometimes, if Alex wasn’t careful, he’d slip and call me “Ma.”

Now this kind young man sat twisting his fingers behind a mahogany desk that seemed too large for him. He worked hard at not looking me in the eye while he rattled off the details of what was happening within my body and what needed to be done to stop it. The next step, he said, was to get a second opinion. He’d already made an appointment for me with an oncologist at University Hospital who was “one of the most highly regarded in his field.” He used terms like “five-year survival rate” and “well-tolerated chemotherapy cycles.” I felt sorry for him. He was trying so hard to remain calm that his voice came out robotic and full of bottled-up emotion at the same time, like a bad actor playing a soap opera doctor.

After he got done with his speech, he let out a long sigh of relief. The corners of his mouth curled up slightly, like he was proud of himself for making it over a big hurdle. When he was able to look at me again, he started in offering his most optimistic prognosis. He said, “Your general level of health is very good. And we know a lot about this kind of cancer.” He went on to say that I might be lucky. I might be one of those rare people who sailed on through chemotherapy with hardly any side effects.

His words were meant to comfort me, and I appreciated it. But part of my mind had already left the office. In my head, I was telling my anguished kids not to worry about me. They were adults now and scattered all over the country, but still in need of parenting. Denise was a young mother, still filled with fear and worry over each stage of her children’s development that defied the books she had believed would bring order to motherhood. Jimmy and his wife were both hell-bent on getting ahead and would work themselves to death if I didn’t nag them into taking an occasional vacation. And Eric, he was as quiet as his father, and no one but me, who had listened over the phone as he cried his heart out over lost love more than once, knew that he felt everything twice as deep as his brother or sister.

From the moment I told the Supremes I was sick, Clarice would
try to take over my life. First she’d want to take charge of my medical treatment. Then she’d get on my very last nerve by trying to drag me to her church for anointings and such. And Barbara Jean would just get all quiet and accept that I was as good as dead. Seeing her grieving for me ahead of time would bring back memories of all she’s lost in her life, and it would depress the hell out of me.

My brother, in spite of being raised by our mother, had grown up and become a man who believed that women were helpless victims of our emotions and hormones. When he found out I was sick, he would talk to me like I was a child and pester me just like he used to when we were children.

And James. I thought of the look I used to see on James’s face in that horrible, gray-yellow emergency room light whenever one of the kids suffered some childhood injury. The smallest pain for them meant despair for him. Whenever I came down with a cold or flu, he was at my side with a thermometer, medicine, and an expression of agony on his face for the duration. It was like he’d pooled up all the love and caring his father had denied him and his mother and was determined to shower it onto me and our children ten times over.

I made up my mind right then that I’d keep this whole thing to myself for as long as I could. There was still an outside chance that it was all a false alarm, wasn’t there? And, if this chemo was indeed “well-tolerated,” I might be able to tell everyone about it at my leisure. If I was lucky, in five or six months I could turn to James and my friends one Sunday at the All-You-Can-Eat and say, “Hey, did I ever tell you all about the time I had cancer?”

When I didn’t say anything for a while. Alex spoke faster. believing he had to provide me with some sort of consolation. But I wasn’t the one who needed to be consoled. Behind him on the windowsill of his office, Mama sat with both of her hands pressed to her face. She was crying like I had never seen before.

Mama muttered, “No, no, this can’t be right. It’s too soon.”

Mrs. Roosevelt, who had been lying on the sofa against the wall of Alex’s office, rose and walked over to Mama. She patted Mama on the back and whispered in her ear, but whatever she said didn’t do
the trick. Mama continued to cry. She was crying so loud now that I could barely hear the doctor.

Finally, forgetting my vow not to talk to the dead in the presence of the living, I said, “It’s all right. Really, it’s all right. There’s nothing to cry about.”

Alex stopped talking and stared at me for a moment, assuming I was talking to him. He apparently took my words as permission for him to let go because within seconds he was out of his chair and crouching in front of me. He buried his face in my lap, and I soon felt his tears soak through my skirt. He said, “I’m so sorry, Ma.” Then he apologized for not being more professional as he blew his nose into a tissue I pulled from the box on the corner of his desk and handed to him.

I rubbed his back, pleased to be comforting him instead of him comforting me. I bent forward and whispered, “Shh, shh, don’t cry,” into Alex’s ear. But I said it staring ahead at my mother as she sobbed into Eleanor Roosevelt’s fox stole. “I’m not afraid. Can’t be, remember? I was born in a sycamore tree.”

Clarice turned around in her chair to get a good look at the newly redecorated All-You-Can-Eat. It was just before Halloween and the restaurant was dressed up for the holiday. The windows were draped with cotton cobwebs. A garland of crepe-paper skulls surrounded the cash register. Each table was decorated with a centerpiece of tiny orange pumpkins, gold-and-green striped gourds, and a small wicker basket filled with candy corn. It wasn’t the prettiest display Clarice had ever seen, but it did at least cover up that awful restaurant logo on the tablecloth.