The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (34 page)

Clarice turned to Sharon. “I really didn’t come by to upset you or cause trouble.” Sharon responded with a groan of skepticism. “The thing is, I
am
the expert on this. I know what it means to spend your life with a cheating man. And the only reason I’m here telling you this is that I care about you and I don’t want to see you go through what I’ve been through.”

Veronica put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side. “Because you care so much about Sharon, I won’t un-invite you to our wedding. But your services as assistant wedding planner will no longer be needed. I’ll have your wedding book back now, thank you very much.” She dramatically extended her arms and held out both hands, palms up, as if she thought Clarice had the twenty-pound book in one of her pockets and might conceivably slip it out and hand it to her.

When Clarice pointed out that she didn’t have the book on her, Veronica said, “Well, you can bring it by later. Leave it on the front stoop, if you please. I don’t think you and I need to have any further interaction.” Then she opened the sliding glass door and strode inside with Sharon at her heels.

As she disappeared into the house, Sharon called out over her shoulder, “People will be talking about my wedding for years to come.”

None of them knew then just how right Sharon was about that.

When Clarice got back to Leaning Tree, she did some work in the garden to sweat the lingering frustration from her tussle with Veronica out of her system. Then she bathed and started to cook her dinner. She cracked eggs and pulled leftover potatoes and fried onions from the refrigerator for a frittata. Since she’d been on her own, her meals tended toward that kind of thing—simple dishes that Richmond had refused to eat because of their foreign-sounding names or had rejected as “girl food” because they lacked red meat.

Clarice was whisking eggs when Richmond knocked on the front door. She saw him on the porch and thought,
Lord, this is the last thing I need today
. She opened the door and prepared herself for a fight.

“Hello, Richmond. What do you want?”

He smiled and said, “Is that any way for a wife to greet a husband who comes bearing a gift?”

He held up an envelope in his right hand and waved it back and forth in front of his face.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Like I said, it’s a gift. A birthday gift.”

“It’s not my birthday. You must have me confused with some other woman.”

He pouted. “Come on, Clarice, give a man a break. I know when your birthday is. This is an
early
present.”

“Sorry. It’s been kind of a rough day. Thanks for the present.” She held out her hand to take the envelope.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

Clarice sighed, still not in the mood to be bothered. But years of childhood etiquette training kicked in and she couldn’t be rude any longer. She said, “Come on in,” and he followed her into the living room.

They sat together on the couch. Like most of the furniture in the house, it dated back to the 1960s. The springs beneath the cushions
had long since given up the ghost, and Richmond’s weight caused him to sink so far into the couch that his knees came close to his chest. He handed Clarice the envelope and she tore it open.

She began to read the letter he had given her, but she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. “What
is
this?” she asked.

“It’s what it looks like.”

What she held in her hands was a letter from Wendell Albertson, the music producer who had invited her to record all of the Beethoven sonatas for his label more than thirty years earlier. She said, “Is this some kind of a joke? Wendell Albertson would have to be a hundred years old, if he’s alive at all. And I know his record company is long gone.”

“The record company is gone, all right. But Albertson’s alive and well. He’s not that much older than we are. You were only, what—twenty, when you first met him? Everybody over thirty was old to us then. Anyway, as you can see, he’s still working and still remembers you.”

In the letter, Mr. Albertson expressed his surprise and pleasure that Clarice had contacted him after all these years. He also thanked her for the “wonderful recordings” that had accompanied her letter to him.

“What letter? What recordings?” she asked Richmond.

He said, “Well, the letter is what you might call a ‘loving forgery,’ but the recordings are yours. I took the tapes from your recitals over to the audio lab at the university and they made them into disks for me. And I sent the disks to Albertson.” He leaned back and sank even further into the couch with a self-satisfied smile on his face.

Clarice shook her head. “Oh Richmond, I know you meant well, but you really shouldn’t have done this. Those tapes are ancient. I don’t play like that anymore.”

“No, you play better than you did,” he said. “I’ve been listening. Every time I come by here I sit outside on the porch before I knock, or sometimes after I say goodbye, and I listen to you. You play better than ever, sweetheart, you really do.”

The last part of the letter from Wendell Albertson discussed possible
dates for Clarice to come play for him in New York. Assuming that went well, they would talk recording dates and discuss his idea of marketing her as a resurrected prodigy.

She put the sheet of paper down on the coffee table in front of her and said, “I honestly don’t know whether to kiss you or spank you.”

Now was the time for Richmond to test the waters by saying “You could do both,” or something along those lines. Because he didn’t, she leaned over and kissed him on the mouth. Then she gave him another kiss because, even though what he’d done was crazy, it was also the kindest thing he had ever done for her. She picked up the letter and read it again just to make sure she hadn’t imagined it.

“So, do you like your birthday present?” he asked.

“You know, I think I do like it. It’ll probably blow up in my face. But I like it. Thank you, Richmond.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad to see I can still make you happy.”

Clarice kissed him once more, on the cheek this time. Then she thanked him again.

Richmond said, “Well, I’d better get out while I’m ahead.” He scooted forward on the couch, beginning the process of extricating himself from the cushions. He stood, grunting as he put weight on his bad ankle.

Clarice walked a few steps toward the door with him, but then stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You don’t have to go. Stay for dinner. I’m making a frittata.”

“That sounds nice. You know how I love fri-tta-ta.” He pronounced it “free tah-tah,” drawing it out so that it sounded both silly and dirty. She gave his arm a playful punch and he accompanied her into the kitchen.

After dinner, they sat on stools at the kitchen counter and talked. Clarice described her afternoon at Veronica’s house to him. He filled her in on the latest about the football team and how their prospects looked for the upcoming season. She told him that Odette was getting worse and that it scared her. He bragged that he was on schedule with his diabetes medication nearly every day now and was becoming a champion clothes ironer. She told him about going to the Unitarian
church and how she thought maybe it was just right for her. Clarice even related to him the tale of finding his girlfriend Cherokee in the gazebo with Clifton Abrams.

Richmond laughed until tears came to his eyes at her description of Clifton hopping around naked, trying to get back into his underpants. But he took exception to her calling Cherokee his girlfriend, insisting that he had given up all of his women in an effort to become a better man. This included, he claimed, the girls at the Pink Slipper Gentlemen’s Club. He said that his only recent visit to the club had been for purely theological purposes.

In response to her laughter, Richmond raised his right hand as if he were taking the Boy Scout Oath. “No, really. Tammi, the girl who showed up at the last revival meeting, has been doing biblically themed pole dances on Monday nights at the club. Last week she danced the tale of Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden and gave every cent she made to the New Roof Fund at church. What kind of Christian would I be if I didn’t show up and support a young convert preaching the Word?” He swore that he had left the club, alone, the second the dancer and her python exited the stage. He said, “You told me to evolve, remember?”

“I remember. But please don’t change everything. You’ve still got your good points,” Clarice said. She wondered if she was flirting with him now from force of habit or because she actually sensed something was different about him.

She thought back to her conversation with Veronica then. She said, “Richmond, tell me something. Do you feel like I neglected you or made you a low priority in my life because of Odette and Barbara Jean?”

The expression on his face said that he thought she had thrown him a trick question or was laying a trap. “Why do you ask that?”

“Something Veronica said to me today made me wonder.”

He thought about it for a while and then said, “You know, if you’d asked me that question a few weeks ago, I’d have said yes. But that would have been to get you to feel guilty and maybe come back home. But, honestly, I was always glad you had the Supremes. I think it made
me feel okay about running with Ramsey and all my other … well,
activities
, let’s say. When it came to you and me, I never felt anything but loved, and that’s the truth.”

“Thanks, Richmond. I appreciate you saying that. That was really sweet of you.”

“What can I say? I’m a sweet guy. That’s why you married me, isn’t it?”

Remembering the early years of their courtship and the fever that had swept over her whenever she looked at Richmond or even thought about him, Clarice said, “Not exactly.”

“No, I suppose it was having your mother on my side that sealed the deal for me.”

“Partly. But, to be honest about it, the thing that really made up my mind for me was something Big Earl said.”

“Big Earl?”

“Mm-hmm. I had already talked to Mother, Reverend Peterson, even that old fraud Minnie, and I was still wavering. So I went by the All-You-Can-Eat one night to talk to Big Earl. Odette and Barbara Jean both swore the man was a genius, and I had always liked him. So I figured,
why not
?”

“Big Earl stuck up for me, did he?”

“He said that when you grew up you’d be a fine man.”

Richmond swallowed hard and his mouth spread into a slightly sad smile. “Damn, I miss that old man.”

Clarice had done a little paraphrasing for the sake of the evening’s mood. What Big Earl had actually said was, “Clarice, honey, I truly believe that in about twenty-five years, Richmond Baker is likely to show himself to be as fine a man as this town ever turned out. Till then, you might be in for a rough ride.” With that fever in her blood, Clarice had decided to hear what Big Earl said as a glowing endorsement. It was years before she realized that she had ignored a warning in favor of an optimistic prediction. And that prediction had been quite optimistic. Big Earl had seen Richmond’s turnaround coming in twenty-five years. As usual, Richmond was dragging himself in late.

Neither of them said anything for a while. Then Richmond glanced at his watch. “I guess now I’ve really got to go.”

Clarice reached out and patted his cheek with her hand, allowing it to rest there for a few seconds to enjoy the familiar sensation of his beard stubble against her open palm. She thought for a moment and then said, “Don’t go. Stay over.”

His eyebrows rose and he asked, “You mean it?”

“Yeah, why not? We’re married, aren’t we?”

As he hopped off of his stool, he smiled that fun, nasty smile she had always loved. Then he hooked an arm around her and pulled her to him. They kissed through the kitchen, the hallway, the living room, and up the stairs.

Clarice had thought that it would be like old times, she and Richmond together enjoying that type of married folks’ lovemaking that was a mixture of passion and efficiency gained from familiarity. But it was better than it had been before. Living alone for the first time in her life had changed her perspective. She didn’t have to see Richmond as a disappointing husband anymore. In her house he was her lover, there at her request, for her pleasure. In that department, Richmond never disappointed. And without the burden of having to play the wronged wife, Clarice could be his lover, too—a free woman who wore peasant skirts and comfortable shoes and gave as good as she got in bed.

She woke up in the morning to find Richmond already awake. He was lying on his side, his right elbow on the mattress, his head propped up by his hand. “G’morning,” he said.

She stretched and yawned. “Good morning to you, too.”

He pecked her lightly on the lips and whispered, “Glad you’re awake. I didn’t want to take off before you got up. I have to be at a meeting in a couple hours.”

Clarice nodded. “Sorry you have to go.”

“Me, too.” He slid out of the bed and went across the room retrieving his clothing, which they had flung from wall to wall in the heat of the moment the night before. Once he had gathered all of his clothes, he sat on the edge of the bed and started to dress. It was a reverse striptease Clarice had seen thousands of times. It was always done in the same order. Right sock. Left sock. Underwear. Pants. Belt. Shoes. Then, finally, the undershirt and shirt were slipped over his massive
and still firm upper torso and arms. Richmond had a strong sense of what his best features were and he didn’t like to cover up the good stuff too quickly.

He was just about to pull on his pants when he said, “Listen, while you were sleeping I was thinking there’s no need for you to have to pack up all your things. We can hire somebody to box up your clothes and whatever else you brought over. And later in the week we can have the piano movers come. How’s that sound?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your move back home. We can hire someone to pack your things.”

“I’m not moving back home, Richmond.”

He’d had his back to her; now he stood and turned around. Richmond, clad in his boxer shorts and socks, stared at Clarice with an astonished look on his face. “What do you mean you’re not coming home? I thought—well, after last night and what happened …” He gestured back and forth from his bare chest to her naked body in the bed to illustrate his point.