When a rich man dies, the vultures descend quickly. And Lester had been wealthier than anyone had imagined. He’d been Plainview-rich back when he was courting Barbara Jean. He became Louisville-rich not long after they got married. And, it was learned, he died Chicago-rich/New York–comfortable. Lester’s greedier relatives were knocking on Barbara Jean’s door for a handout well before the first fistful of dirt hit the lid of Lester’s coffin. One previously unknown cousin came by claiming Lester had promised to fund her Hawaiian vacation. A great-niece wanted to interest Barbara Jean in “a surefire business opportunity” that just needed “a little start-up money.” Several of Lester’s leering male relations dropped by, basted in Old Spice, all prepared to provide guidance and a strong shoulder for the beautiful widow to weep upon.
This sort of situation, Clarice thought, was precisely why God made Odette. When the corners of Odette’s mouth turned downward and her eyes narrowed, nobody stuck around to see what was coming next. She stood guard over Barbara Jean, sending anyone who posed a potential threat running for their lives with just a glance. And she did it all while battling through hot flashes that set her on fire almost every night.
The Supremes were in residence at Barbara Jean’s for three weeks. Odette left each day to spend time with James, but always came back to be with Barbara Jean at night. Clarice went to check on Richmond a few times that first week, intending to cook his dinner and monitor his diabetes. But the fifth time she stopped by the house and failed to find him in or see any sign that he had come home at all since she’d been at Barbara Jean’s, she asked herself why she was doing it, and couldn’t come up with a good answer. So that day Clarice made sure the freezer was stocked with a month of meals, then she left Richmond a note saying she would return when Barbara Jean was okay. She stayed away for the next two weeks, limiting her contact with Richmond to one daily phone message that always went unanswered.
The morning after declaring temporary independence from Richmond, Clarice sat down at the piano in Barbara Jean’s sitting room after breakfast. The piano was a Victorian beauty, a Steinway square grand with a rosewood cabinet. Clarice had ordered it herself during the initial renovation of Barbara Jean’s mansion. It was a fine instrument and Clarice thought it was a shame that its role of late was merely decorative. She ran a finger over the white keys and then the black and was pleased to discover that it was in tune. She began to play.
The music drew Barbara Jean to the room, closely followed by Odette. They listened and then applauded when she finished. “That was nice,” Barbara Jean said. “Sort of happy and sad at the same time.”
“Chopin. Perfect for any occasion,” Clarice said.
Barbara Jean rested her elbows on the piano. “Remember how Adam used to imitate you?”
“I sure do,” Clarice said, twisting her mouth to feign offense.
Barbara Jean turned to Odette. “Adam used to do the best imitation of Clarice after his lessons. He would hunch over the keys and sway and moan. It was the funniest thing in the world, watching him work up all that passion while he played—what was it? ‘Chopsticks’?”
“ ‘Heart and Soul,’ ” Clarice said.
“That’s right. ‘Heart and Soul.’ The first time he did it, Clarice and I both laughed so hard we ended up on our knees crying. It was a hoot.”
Odette had heard that story on the day it happened and hundreds of times since, but Barbara Jean was laughing and it sounded too good to put a stop to it.
Barbara Jean said, “He loved music. I bet he could’ve been really good.”
“Absolutely. He was musical. He had a natural facility. Adam had it all.”
“Yes, he did,” Barbara Jean said.
Barbara Jean talked about Adam for the rest of that morning. “Remember how he loved to draw? He’d spend hours up in his room with his crayons and colored pencils.” “I’ll never forget how he taught Odette’s boys to dance like James Brown. I can still see Eric shuffling across the floor in his training pants.” “Wasn’t he the most dapper little boy you ever saw? Never knew a boy to fuss over his clothes like he did. One scuff on his shoes and he’d pout all day.”
The following morning and the next few began the same way. They had breakfast, and then Clarice played the piano. Then Barbara Jean talked about Adam, allowing memories of him to pull her back into her life. Eventually, there was so much conversation and laughter that it seemed as if the three of them were guests at an extended slumber party. Except, at this party, talking about men was carefully avoided. No Lester Maxberry. No Richmond Baker, which suited Clarice fine. And definitely no Chick Carlson, whom Clarice and Odette were both pretending they hadn’t seen at Big Earl’s house after the funeral.
In spite of the circumstances, on the mid-August morning when Barbara Jean thanked Odette and Clarice for their support and kindly, but firmly, ordered them out, Clarice was sorry to leave. She told herself at the time that her reluctance to end the slumber party was because she’d had such fun with her friends, reliving a part of their shared youth. Later, she admitted to herself that she was frightened of what she knew in her heart she would find when she got home.
When Clarice stepped inside her front door after two weeks away, she called out Richmond’s name to empty walls. None of the food she had prepared for him had been touched. And the sheets on their bed were as fresh as they’d been when she had put them on over a fortnight earlier.
When Richmond came home two days later, he gave her a peck on the cheek and inquired about Barbara Jean.
“She’s better,” Clarice answered. “Are you hungry?”
He answered yes, and then kissed his wife’s cheek again after she told him that she would prepare ham steak and roasted potatoes, one of his favorite meals.
Richmond showered while Clarice hummed “Für Elise” and cooked his dinner. He never offered an explanation about where he’d been sleeping, and Clarice never asked him for one.
Chapter 10
Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean became the Supremes in the summer of 1967, just after the end of their junior year of high school. Classes had been out for only a couple of weeks and Clarice was at Odette’s house preparing to go to the All-You-Can-Eat. Big Earl occasionally opened up the restaurant to his son’s friends on Saturday nights. The kids thought of it as adventurous and grown-up, getting out of Leaning Tree and into downtown Plainview for an evening. A night at the All-You-Can-Eat was their first taste of adult liberty. In truth, they had escaped their homes and their parents to sip Coca-Cola and eat chicken wings under the most watchful eyes in town. They couldn’t have been more strictly monitored anywhere else on the planet. Big Earl and Miss Thelma had a talent for identifying and neutralizing troublemakers, and no kind of teenage mischief got past them.
Mrs. Jackson tapped on Odette’s bedroom door as Clarice rummaged through her best friend’s chest of drawers searching for something to liven up, or cover up, those dreadful dresses Odette always wore. The blind grandmother who had made her clothes back when she was a little girl was dead, but her grandma’s style and taste lived on in Odette’s sorry closet. Mrs. Jackson said, “Before y’all go to Earl’s, I want you to run this over to Mrs. Perdue’s house for me.”
She held out a cardboard box wrapped with twine. Grease stains covered most of the box’s surface, and it emitted an aroma of burnt toast and raw garlic. Even Odette’s three cats, all strays that had sensed her true nature beneath her get-the-hell-away-from-me exterior and followed her home to be adopted, shrank away from the odor of the package. They yowled and bolted out of the open doorway.
Odette took the box from her mother and asked, “Who is Mrs. Perdue?”
Mrs. Jackson said, “You know, your little friend Barbara Jean’s mother. Her funeral was today, so I baked a chicken for the family.”
Clarice looked at the clock and felt that she had to say something. She had made plans to meet Richmond and one of his buddies at 7:00. It was only 5:30, but Clarice knew from experienc
e how long it could take to transform Odette from her usual self into someone a boy might want to wrap his arm around. There simply wasn’t time for anything else.
Clarice was indignant. She was a good girl. She got excellent grades. Hardly a season passed without her piano playing winning her a prize or affording her a mention in the newspaper that would join the articles about her birth that adorned the walls of her parents’ home. Still, she was monitored every hour of her day. All of her socializing took a backseat to the four hours of piano practice she did daily in preparation for the two lessons she had each week with Zara Olavsky, an internationally renowned piano pedagogue who taught at the university’s music school. She was required to check in hourly whenever she was away from home. And she had the earliest curfew of any teenager in town.
Her parents grew even more vigilant that year, with Richmond in college and Clarice still in high school. There were no dates at all unless she double-dated with Odette. Clarice was certain that, with Odette’s gruff personality around boys and those horrible outfits she wore that growled “keep away,” her parents viewed Odette as walking, talking virginity insurance. Not that Odette’s face was all that bad. She could be cute in the right light. And her figure was decent, top-heavy and round. Lord knows there were plenty of boys who longed to slip a hand down her blouse. But no boy wanted to cop a feel off the fearless girl. She was just more trouble than she was worth. Richmond had called in all kinds of favors to get his college friends to go out with her. Pretty soon he was going to have to start paying them.
But Richmond had a date for Odette that night and Clarice’s parents had agreed to allow her to stay out an hour later than usual. It was going to be a perfect evening. Now Odette’s mother was trying to ruin it.
Whining often worked on her own mother when she wanted out of an unpleasant chore or wanted her curfew extended, so Clarice gave it a try with Dora Jackson. She said, “But, Mrs. Jackson, we’re going to the All-You-Can-Eat and Barbara Jean lives the other direction and I’ve got on heels.”
Odette mouthed, “Shut up.” But even though she knew from the look on Mrs. Jackson’s face that she should stop talking, Clarice piped up with “And besides, Barbara Jean is not our friend. She’s nobody’s friend, except the boys she runs around with. And she stinks, Mrs. Jackson. She really does. She drowns herself in cheap perfume every day. And my cousin Veronica saw her combing her hair in the bathroom at school last year and a roach fell out.”
Mrs. Jackson narrowed her eyes at Clarice and said, slow and low, “Odette’s gonna take this chicken over to Barbara Jean to show that child some kindness on the day of her mother’s funeral. If you don’t wanna go, then don’t. If you’re worried about your feet, borrow some sneakers from Odette. If you’re worried about roaches fallin’ off of her, then step back if she gets to flingin’ her head around. Or maybe you should just go on home.”
The only thing Clarice could think of that was worse than delaying her date with Richmond to run this ridiculous errand Mrs. Jackson couldn’t be dissuaded from was the idea of going back home and, with her chaperone otherwise occupied, being forced to stay in and keep her mother company all evening. Seeing her plans with Richmond fading away, Clarice rushed to save them. Speaking quickly, she said, “No, ma’am. I’ll go with Odette. I didn’t really believe that roach story. Veronica likes to make stuff up.”
Mrs. Jackson left the room without another word, and Odette and Clarice headed to Barbara Jean’s.
Plainview is shaped like a triangle. Leaning Tree comprises its southeast section. To get to Barbara Jean’s house, the two girls had to walk south along Wall Road and then along side streets into the very tip of the triangle’s corner.
The wall that gave the road its name was built by the town when freed blacks started settling in Plainview after the Civil War. A group of town leaders led by Alfred Ballard—whose house Barbara Jean would one day own—decided to build a ten-foot-high, five-mile-long stone wall to protect the wealthy whites who lived downtown when the race war they expected finally came. Though further north, the poor whites were on the east side of the wall with the blacks, but the town leaders figured they could fend for themselves. When the new inhabitants proved less frightening than predicted, commitment to the wall project faded. The only section of Ballard’s Wall that made it to the full ten-foot goal was the portion that divided Leaning Tree from downtown. The rest of the proposed wall ended up as isolated piles of rocks, creating a dotted dividing line through town.
That part of the story of Leaning Tree was pretty well accepted as fact by everyone. Plainview’s children were taught that bit of local history in school, with the aesthetic aspects of the wall replacing much of the racial politics. But the history taught in school and what black children were taught at home took off in radically different directions at the subject of the naming of Leaning Tree.
In school, they learned that early settlers called the southeast area of town Leaning Tree because of a mysterious natural phenomenon—something about the position of the river and the hills—that caused the trees to lean toward the west.
At their dinner tables, the children of Leaning Tree were told that there was no mystery at all to the crooked trees. Their parents told them that, because downtown was on higher ground, Ballard’s Wall cast a shadow over the black area of town. The trees there needed sunlight, so they bent. Every tree that didn’t die in the shadow of that wall grew tall, top-heavy, and visibly tilted. A name was born.
Barbara Jean’s house was on the worst street in the worst neighborhood in Leaning Tree. Her street was only eight blocks from Clarice’s house, only five from Odette’s. But as they turned onto Barbara Jean’s block, Clarice surveyed her surroundings and thought that this place might as well have been on the far side of the moon for all the resemblance it held to the landscaped, middle-class order of her street or the quaint charm of Odette’s old farmhouse, with its fanciful octagonal windows and scalloped picket fence, courtesy of Odette’s carpenter father. In this neighborhood, people lived in tiny boxes with warped and splintering siding, peeling paint, and no gutters. Noisy, nappy-headed children ran naked over lawns that were mostly dirt accented with patches of weeds.
Barbara Jean’s house was the best on her block, but that wasn’t saying much. It was a little brown shack whose paint had faded to a chalky tan color. This house was only better than its neighbors because, unlike every other house on the street, the glass in all of its windows seemed to be intact.
Odette climbed up the two steps from the walkway and rang the bell. No one answered, and Clarice said, “Let’s just leave it on the stoop and get going.” But Odette started banging on the door with her fist.
A few seconds later, the door opened just wide enough for Clarice and Odette to see a big man with red eyes and blotchy, grayish-brown skin staring at them. His nose was flat and crooked, as if it had been broken a few times. He had no discernible neck, and most of his face was occupied by an unusually wide mouth. His shirt strained against his belly to stay fastened. He topped it all off with hair that had been straightened and lacquered until it resembled a plastic wig from an Elvis Presley Halloween costume.
He squinted against the sunlight and said, “Y’all want somethin’?” His words whistled through a gap between his front teeth.
Odette lifted the box and said, “My mama sent this for Barbara Jean.”
The man opened the door fully then. He stretched his mouth into a smile that caused a prickly sensation to travel across the back of Clarice’s neck and gave her the feeling he was about to take a bite out of her. She was relieved that they could finally hand off the box and get the hell out of this neighborhood. But the man stepped back into the dark beyond the doorway and said, “Come on in.” Then he yelled, “Barbara Jean, your friends is here to see you.”
Clarice wanted to stand on the front stoop and wait for Barbara Jean to come outside, but Odette was already walking through the front door and waving at her to follow. When they
stepped into the front room, they saw Barbara Jean looking surprised and embarrassed to have two girls from school she hardly knew walking into her house.
Barbara Jean wore her funeral clothes, a too-tight black skirt and a clinging, shiny black blouse. Shameless, Clarice thought. During the walk to Barbara Jean’s, Clarice had admitted to herself that this mission of mercy really was the only right thing to do. But as she silently critiqued Barbara Jean’s sexy mourning outfit, another side of Clarice’s nature leapt to the forefront and she began to eagerly anticipate describing Barbara Jean’s getup to her mother and her cousin Veronica. Their reactions would be priceless.
The living room was crowded with showy, ornate furniture that was all well past its prime. With each step, a plastic runner protecting the bright orange carpet crunched beneath their feet. The place looked as if someone with a little money, but not much taste or good sense, had once lived there and left behind all their stuff.
Odette walked over to Barbara Jean and held out the box. “We were sorry to hear about your loss. My mama sent this. It’s a roast chicken.”
Barbara Jean said, “Thank you,” and reached for the box, looking eager to hasten her visitors’ departure. But the man grabbed the box away just as Odette handed it to her. He said, “Y’all come on into the kitchen,” and walked toward the back of the house. The girls didn’t move, and from the next room the man shouted, “Come on now.” Obedient girls that they were, they followed.
The kitchen was in worse shape than the two rooms Clarice and Odette had passed through to get to it. The floor was so chipped they could see the tar paper underneath the linoleum. Dirty dishes were heaped in the rusted metal sink and piled on the cracked wooden countertop. The red patent leather seat covers of the kitchen chairs had all split open and dingy white stuffing bulged out of the open seams.
The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat Page 8