The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (22 page)

Clarice’s daughter, Carolyn, who is good friends with my Denise, stretched her Christmas visit out a few extra days and came to the party with her husband and her son, who was carried in already sound asleep in his father’s arms. Carolyn had gone way out of her way to find a man who wasn’t the least bit like her father. She married a Latino intellectual who teaches physics at a college in Massachusetts. He’s small, much shorter than Carolyn, and he’s had the doughy body of an idle middle-aged man since he was twenty-two.

When Richmond realized that Carolyn was getting serious about the intellectual, he did everything he could to divert Carolyn’s interest in the direction of someone he thought would be more suitable for her. He scoured the campus until he found two replicas of himself in his virile prime. Then he dragged both men to a big Memorial Day picnic at his house, where he paraded them in front of Carolyn like a couple of prize bulls. In a turn of events that I’m sure Richmond will still be trying to sort out on the day he dies, Carolyn stayed with her egghead while the two Richmond clones began a romance with each other on that Memorial Day that is still going strong more than a decade later.

Mama appeared, along with Mrs. Roosevelt, late in the evening. They both looked like they’d been to several other parties already that day. Mama’s eyes were bloodshot and Mrs. Roosevelt, who was wearing a cone-shaped silver and gold paper hat that was attached to her head with an elastic band, seemed to have forgotten her usual good manners. She waved in my general direction as she staggered in. Then she plopped down onto a footstool and began to snore.

When Mama spotted Rudy, she squealed, “Look at my boy. Ain’t he the handsomest thing?” Rudy’s a dear, but he’s mostly ears, nose, and belly. Pretty, my brother is not. I said nothing.

After Mama finished making a fuss over Rudy, she commenced to making a nuisance of herself by following me around the house as I performed my hostess duties. “Oh, there’s the Abrams boy,” she said when she saw Ramsey. He was standing much too close to the girlfriend of one of the young cops and getting dirty looks from the girl’s date and from his wife, who scowled at him from a few feet away.

Mama said, “You know, it’s sad when you think about it. He’s probably just overcompensatin’ for a very small penis. All of the Abrams men have little dicks. That’s why they’re so short-tempered. His poor father and uncle were the same way, had practically nothin’ down there at all.”

I silently prayed that my mother would spare me the details of just how she’d come across that bit of information about the Abrams men.

I noticed Clarice sitting on the couch next to her mother and aunt. She was frowning like she had a toothache and her attention was focused on some point way off in the distance. The fingers of both her hands were tapping away on her lap like she was playing an invisible piano. If her mother didn’t get out of town soon, Clarice was going to snap.

When I came over to offer to freshen up their drinks, I saw that Clarice’s mother and her aunt Glory had started speaking to each other again. They were having a good time now, arguing about who would be more surprised to be left behind after the Rapture, the Catholics or the Mormons.

Mama sneered at them. “I know you and Clarice are friends, but you can’t tell me you don’t wanna slap the livin’ shit outta that mother
of hers. Talk about somebody with her head stuffed way up her own ass. And that sister of hers is just as bad. As far back as I can remember, Beatrice and Glory been usin’ Jesus as an excuse to be bitches.” She wagged her finger at them and, like they could hear her, said, “That’s right, I said it!”

Veronica waved me over to where she was holding court, showing Sharon’s wedding planning book to a group of women who were too polite to walk away. She pointed to a page in the book that held a magazine clipping with a picture of a bride floating on a rug in midair down the center aisle of a church. Veronica said, “I’m thinking Sharon should make a magic carpet entrance. It’s all done with lights and mirrors. Isn’t it something?”

I agreed that it was something, all right, and tried to ignore the fact that my mother was next to me shrieking with laughter at the idea of big Sharon floating to the altar.

Over Mama’s continued cackling, I heard Veronica discussing the trouble she was having finding a suitable affordable home for the newlyweds. Sharon had another year at the university, and her fiancé, Clifton, Veronica claimed, would be going back to school soon. So after the wedding, which Veronica and her psychic had determined should happen on the first Saturday in July, she would settle them into something nice, but reasonably priced, here in town.

James, ever helpful, walked by just then and said, “You know, Veronica, we don’t have a tenant in the house in Leaning Tree.”

If I hadn’t been holding a tray of pigs in blankets, I’d have knocked James upside his head. I had nothing against Sharon. It wasn’t her fault that she’d inherited her father’s intelligence and her mother’s personality. It was the thought of Veronica traipsing in and out of Mama and Daddy’s house that made my pressure rise.

I gave James my
back away quickly
look. But he’d been immune to my hostile glances for ages, so he wasn’t put off his stride for a second. He just went right on being helpful.

He said, “We just put a new roof on it and painted it. And the last tenant took good care of the garden. It’s not like it was when Miss Dora was living, but it’s not bad.”

It turned out I didn’t have to worry about the prospect of having
more Veronica in my life. Veronica wrinkled her nose and said, “Thanks, James, but I didn’t spend all those years working to get out of Leaning Tree just to send my baby daughter back there.”

Mama let out a snort. “Talk about a nerve. I guess she’s too good for my house now. She oughta try to sell that bullshit to some folks who don’t remember where she came from. And what kind of ‘working’ did she do to get outta Leanin’ Tree? All she did was outlive her lowlife daddy. Odette, tell her your mama’s back and that she’s fixin’ to haunt the fuck outta her. Go on, tell ’er.”

I hadn’t seen Minnie McIntyre come in, but I heard the tinkling of a bell and turned to see her standing just behind me. Minnie had taken to wearing her fortune-telling turban with its tiny silver bell all the time. She said that, because she was so near death, Charlemagne the Magnificent had more messages for her than ever. So she wouldn’t miss one of those messages, she made sure to always have her bell at the ready. My first thought was
Oh great, now Mama will never shut up
.

When Mama was alive, just the sight of Minnie McIntyre was enough to start her cussing and spitting. I prepared myself to hear her let loose with a foul-mouthed tirade. But Mama was watching Denise as she attempted to corral my grandkids. She wasn’t thinking about Minnie. Mama heard Denise call her daughter by her name, Dora, and I thought she was going to fall out on the floor.

Mama was in my business so much that I had forgotten she wasn’t a daily part of my children’s lives, too. She hadn’t seen them in years and didn’t know her great-grandchildren at all. Now she’d discovered that she had a cute little namesake running around and it had knocked the wind out of her sails. She went silent and tottered off behind the kids. After all the shocks she’d handed me, it was kind of nice to see Mama taken by surprise for a change.

Barbara Jean stood talking with Erma Mae on the other side of the living room from me. She nodded her head and pretended to listen to whatever Erma Mae was saying to her. But I could see that she was staring at my grandkids, especially my grandson William, just as hard as Mama was. Barbara Jean did that from time to time, saw boys
around eight or nine years old and couldn’t draw her eyes away from them. I knew she was thinking of Adam. How could she not? Sure, Adam and William looked nothing alike. My grandson inherited my roundness and cocoa skin, and Adam was a buttercream-colored string bean. But they shared that same wild energy and heartbreaking sweetness that little boys have in those brief years before your presence bores and annoys them and they can’t abide an embrace. Barbara Jean’s boy would never grow out of that phase.

Barbara Jean watched my grandson as he zipped through the room, tormenting my cats with an overabundance of affection and charming guests with his big smile. When my son-in-law sensed that William was becoming too rambunctious for the crowd and carried his giggling and squirming son out of the room under his arm, Barbara Jean looked like she might cry. I’d have bet good money that she was seeing Lester and Adam just like I was, remembering how Lester couldn’t resist hoisting Adam in the air whenever that boy was within reach. If Lester’d had his way, Adam’s feet would never have touched the ground. Barbara Jean walked away from Erma Mae then, heading in the direction of the vodka.

That year’s party was the biggest ever. It was like everybody we’d ever met came by to say hello. Or, more likely, they came to say goodbye. Nothing like a little touch of cancer to get folks to feel all sentimental about you, whether they cared for you or not. But by midnight most of the guests had left. Mama retired to the family room to coo over her great-grandkids, who had collapsed on the couch alongside Clarice’s grandson by then. I was dead on my feet and longed to stretch out and rest, but I went into the kitchen to do some cleaning up. I opened the kitchen door to find my Denise and Clarice’s Carolyn washing dishes, laughing and talking the same way they had done when they were girls. I stood there for a few seconds watching them—both of them smart, strong, and happy. Well, I thought, looks like Clarice and I did at least one thing right.

A hand touched my shoulder and I turned to see Richmond. He whispered into my ear, “Listen, Odette, Clarice and I are leaving, and we’re taking Barbara Jean. She’s had a little too much to drink.”

I followed him out of the kitchen, through the living room, and into the front hallway, where Clarice was helping Barbara Jean into her coat. The quiet mood Barbara Jean had been in all day had given way to gloominess. Her watery eyes and the haunted expression on her face seemed even bleaker because of the pink dress that mocked her now with its youthful cheeriness.

I gave her a quick hug and said, “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Barbara Jean tried to say good night, but her words came out in a jumble. Clarice and Richmond each grabbed one of her arms and guided her out. They were followed by the oh-so-proper Mrs. Jordan, who glared at Barbara Jean and clucked, “Unseemly. Entirely unseemly.”

I stepped out onto the front porch and watched as Clarice and her mother got into the front seat of Richmond’s Chrysler while he helped Barbara Jean into the back. After he got Barbara Jean settled in, he shut the door and trotted over to her car and hopped inside. They drove off, Richmond leading the way in Barbara Jean’s Mercedes.

I stayed on the porch for a few minutes, enjoying the cold air after so many hours inside the warm, crowded house. Mama joined me, and Mrs. Roosevelt came out just after Mama. The former first lady had sobered up and her famous warm, toothy smile was firmly in place as she snuggled up against me.

Mama said, “I hate to see Barbara Jean like that. I think maybe there’s trouble comin’, don’t you?”

I didn’t answer for a moment. I was distracted because, for the first time in all of her visits, Mrs. Roosevelt seemed to have actual physical presence. I felt the weight of her body leaning against mine. And, in the chilly air of the evening, the warmth that emanated from her was almost uncomfortably hot. She and I now truly shared the same world.
This can’t be good
, I thought.

When I finally answered Mama, I said, “Yeah, I believe trouble’s coming.”

If you ever wanted evidence that I wasn’t as fearless as the rumors made me out to be, all you had to do was look at the way I handled Barbara Jean’s drinking. Without even discussing it, I joined in a coward’s pact with Clarice and didn’t say a word about it for years. Both of us were afraid that if we confronted it head-on we’d find our friendship toppling over like a tower of children’s blocks.

Not dealing with Barbara Jean’s drinking turned it into an invisible fourth member of our trio, a pesky, out-of-tune singer who Clarice and I just adjusted to over time. We learned not to call Barbara Jean on the phone after nine at night because she wasn’t likely to remember the conversation. If she was going through a bad spell, we would say that she was “tired” and we rescheduled anything that we might have had planned so we could do it when she was feeling more energetic. It went on like that for years, and the whole time I convinced myself that we weren’t doing her any harm by not confronting her about it. She would go through periods when she was tired more days than not, but those episodes were always followed by longer periods when she was fine.

I told myself that it was Lester’s place to step in and say something if it was going to be said. He was her husband. But Lester was gone now, and for the first time in ages, Barbara Jean had been drunk in public. I tried to tell myself that what had happened at my party had been typical New Year’s Day excess. Who hadn’t tied one on celebrating a new year at some point in their lives?

But this was different. And Clarice and I both knew it, even if we hadn’t said anything. Barbara Jean had that darkness about her in a way that I hadn’t seen since she lost Adam. And it didn’t seem like she was going to shake it anytime soon.

I entered 2005 recognizing that one day soon, while I still had the chance to do it, I was going to have to risk toppling that tower of blocks.

Barbara Jean’s drinking got bad for the first time in 1977, during that horrible year after little Adam died. For a long stretch of months she was drunk more than she was sober. I would stop by her house and find her hardly able to stand. She maintained a good front when she was out among strangers, though; people talked about how well she was holding up. If I hadn’t known her like I did, I’d have agreed. But I heard the occasional slurred word coming into her speech earlier and earlier in the day. I saw how she wobbled on those high heels she loved to wear.