Barbara Jean had become El’s friend. She felt sorry for him, and she visited him almost every day. I knew that hearing his stories and looking at his pictures helped her imagine who her mother might have been if she’d survived all her trials and lived long enough to make amends for the misery she’d caused. Loretta had beaten Barbara Jean, humiliated her, and left her vulnerable to dangerous men. It was part of the wonder of Barbara Jean that, all these years after her mother’s death, she still wanted to find evidence that Loretta was deserving of the forgiveness Barbara Jean had already granted her.
El Walker wasn’t showing me any pictures or lightening my load with blues songs and stories of the past. I couldn’t see him as anything but a lowlife who’d cut James and then come back fifty-seven years later to injure him again. So Barbara Jean said little about her new friend, and I tried not to speak ill of him.
In the week since the shit had hit the fan, I’d tried to get James to talk to El. More than once, I’d said, “Don’t you want some answers? Don’t you want to know where he’s been and why he never came back?” I told him, “You should march over to that hospital and demand an apology. That’s the least you’re owed.”
Last night, calm, sweet James, who rarely raised his voice in anger, had actually shouted at me. He’d yelled, “Dammit, Odette, leave it alone!” Because he is James and had shocked himself as much as me with his outburst, or maybe because he’d recognized he was proving my point that he wasn’t done with his father like he claimed to be, he had apologized right away and then acted as if none of it—the yelling or meeting his father—had ever happened.
The only person who wanted to talk about El was Mama, and I didn’t want to hear what she had to say, because she didn’t agree with me. My mother, who had advocated the hard line since she and Aunt Marjorie had taught me the techniques I’d used to kick Ramsey Abrams’s ass back in grade school, was suddenly a fan of moderation. When I’d confessed my fantasies of marching over to the hospital and pistol-whipping James’s father, she’d sided with James, telling me to back off. “You’re a hard woman,” Mama had said. “Hardness ain’t likely to bring you peace.”
Barbara Jean said, “Did you know that Wayne Robinson was sick?” She leaned forward and whispered so that only Clarice and I could hear her. “Darlene Lloyd told me it’ll be a miracle if he lives through the week.”
“Yes, I heard about that,” I said. I didn’t bother to mention that I’d heard about it directly from the comatose patient himself.
True to her sweet nature, Barbara Jean tried to come up with something nice to say about Wayne Robinson. She had heard me say plenty about him back when Terry, afraid at school and unwelcome at home, was spending a lot of time with James and me. She’d encountered Mr. Robinson often enough when his wife was receiving treatment at the hospital to get a sense of his character. Barbara Jean moved food around on her plate as she struggled to conjure up a kind word about the man. She opened her mouth a few times as if something had come to her, then gave up. She sat back in her chair and sipped her tea.
Finally, she asked, “Have you talked to Terry?” Like nearly everyone else in Plainview, Barbara Jean had heard the story of Terry’s vow to take revenge at his father’s burial. She also knew that I had promised Terry I would notify him when the end came for his father.
“I spoke to him,” I said. “He hasn’t changed his mind.”
“Did you try to talk him out of it?” Barbara Jean asked.
“It’s not my place,” I said.
She cast me a disapproving look. She was too much of a lady to ever applaud Terry’s plan to drop his drawers at his father’s graveside, and I knew she thought I should encourage my young pal to take the high road. She didn’t argue with me, though. We were already seeing enough of life differently.
Since she’d sat down at the table, Clarice had been smiling and nodding her head as if she was listening, but I was willing to bet she hadn’t heard most of what had been said that day. She proved me right then. When Barbara Jean and I took a break from making conversation and turned our attention back to our food, Clarice figured we were waiting on her to say something. With no idea what we’d been talking about, she jumped directly to the topic we’d been avoiding. She looked at me and asked, “What do your kids say about their grandfather showing up in town?”
She took me by surprise, but her question was easy to answer. My children and I had talked on the phone about James and El Walker every night that week. They had reacted pretty much like I’d expected. Our eldest, James Jr., thought that we should pretend we’d never met the old man and forget the whole thing had ever happened. Our “let bygones be bygones” middle child, Eric, thought it was wonderful that his father wanted to forgive. Our daughter, Denise, asked me if El had ever apologized for all he’d done to James and Miss Ruth. When I told her that he hadn’t, she asked me how many times I’d hit the old man. Not if I’d hit him, but how many times.
I told Clarice, “James is acting like our peacekeeping son, but if you catch him when he thinks you’re not looking, you can tell he feels like our hell-raising daughter.”
Then Clarice rescued us from the topic of El Walker. She put her hand to her forehead and exhaled loudly. She whispered, “I’m having trouble with Richmond.”
Barbara Jean and I exchanged glances. We knew all about the struggles Clarice had had with Richmond’s cheating throughout their marriage. We’d thought, though, that they’d come to an agreement now and those particular difficulties were in the past.
Clarice picked up on what we were thinking. “Not the old kind of trouble. He’s keeping it in his pants, as far as I know. That’s part of the problem. He’s acting strange. He wants to cuddle, even when there’s no sex in it for him. He notices what I’m wearing. He’s caring and considerate. It’s horrible. His sensitivity isn’t what kept me with him all those years, and it’s certainly not what I need from him right now.
“Forty years ago, I’d have loved the husband he’s decided to turn into. But today, I just want him to shut up, strip off his clothes, and make himself useful.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair, pouting.
Barbara Jean twirled her fork in her spaghetti. With a sheepish expression on her face, she said, “I might know a little bit about what’s happening.” Then she uttered what is maybe the least useful sentence in the English language: “I was just trying to help.”
Sounding remarkably like my aunt Marjorie, Clarice growled, “What did you do?”
“It really wasn’t much. Richmond came by the house a few weeks ago wanting some advice. He said that things were going well between you and him, but he wanted to move your relationship further along. He asked what Ray and I thought he should do to convince you that he was different now.”
Clarice glared at Barbara Jean. “What did you tell him to do?”
“We just told him you’d probably like him to be more attentive and show you that he appreciates you as more than a bed partner. We also suggested that he might want to ask you how you were feeling and what you were thinking. You know, small things like that.”
As Clarice groaned, Barbara Jean said again, “I was just trying to help.”
“Barbara Jean,” Clarice said, sounding more like herself, “you know I love you and Ray. But if either of you give Richmond one more word of advice, I can’t be held accountable for my actions. Since the day we got married, my husband has consistently done one thing extraordinarily well. You and Ray are screwing up that one thing.”
Clarice cast her withering stare my way. “Did Richmond talk to you and James, too?”
“I’m happy to report that we haven’t given him one single word of advice,” I said. I didn’t mention that Richmond had called a week or so earlier and suggested getting together for dinner—just him, James, and me. One good thing about the revelations of the previous week was that we’d been too off-kilter to have much of a social life, so we’d avoided an advice session that might
have put us in Clarice’s doghouse along with Barbara Jean and Ray. At long last, El Walker was good for something.
The bell above the door of the diner rang and, led by Miss Beatrice and Clarice’s new stepfather, Richmond walked in. Their appearance allowed us to escape from the uncomfortable topic of the latest twist in Clarice and Richmond’s love story.
The two men went to the buffet line. Miss Beatrice headed straight toward our table. I had hoped it might take a while for her to work her way over to us. The Sabbath tended to get Clarice’s mother so hopped up on Jesus that she was hard to stomach. When she took her time winding her way through the after-church crowd, she got a chance to burn off some holy energy by politely judging and criticizing people as she greeted them along her way. But that Sunday, we were out of luck.
Miss Beatrice stepped up to the window table and, without saying hello, began needling Clarice. She started by telling us what an inspirational service everyone in the family, except Clarice, had enjoyed at Calvary Baptist Church. “It was so moving. You could feel the Spirit.” Miss Beatrice brought her fingertips together in a prayerful pose and said, “You remember what that was like, don’t you?”
Clarice said, “I remember everything about that church, Mother.”
Not hearing, or choosing to ignore, the sarcastic tone in her daughter’s voice, Miss Beatrice said, “And still you refuse to go back. I’ll never understand it.” She looked down at Clarice’s half-eaten plate and said, “Have you been here long?”
“Not too long. Maybe twenty minutes.”
To Barbara Jean and me, Miss Beatrice said, “Those Unitarians sure do zip those services right along, don’t they? I suppose you save a lot of time if you aren’t concerned with saving souls, like us.”
It made my head spin to have Miss Beatrice turning to Barbara Jean and me for support on religious matters. Clarice’s mother had never thought much of my church, Holy Family Baptist, or of Barbara Jean’s, First Baptist. She’d told me many times that my church’s sinner-coddling ways guaranteed that none of our members would make it into the Kingdom of Heaven. The large number of wealthy members of Barbara Jean’s church meant they were cursed, too. “‘Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle,’” she liked to quote when she spoke of First Baptist. But Miss Beatrice wanted us on her side in her ongoing holy war with Clarice. That Sunday, she was willing to pretend that, being Baptists, Barbara Jean and I had some hope for redemption, even though we’d chosen the wrong churches. She had no such hope for her Unitarian daughter.
Clarice had once told me that when her mother was driving her crazy, she thought of the fact that Barbara Jean and I no longer had mothers at all. The idea of losing Miss Beatrice helped her endure her mother’s lectures. At the time, I had thought it was a touching thing to say. But as Miss Beatrice stood there hammering away at the topic of her daughter’s religious choices, the cold-eyed, crocodile smile on Clarice’s face caused me to wonder if I’d misinterpreted her meaning. If she was imagining Miss Beatrice dead at that moment, she was taking at least some small amount of pleasure in the fantasy.
Miss Beatrice turned to Barbara Jean and me. She said, “Wouldn’t you think the Unitarian services would go slower, since they probably have to stop the sermon every few minutes in order to keep those heathens from indulging in sins of the flesh right there on the spot?” She arched an eyebrow, proud of herself for the insult.
Clarice said, “Don’t be silly, Mother. Everybody knows the orgy is before the service. We wouldn’t want those friendly, nondenominational homilies to distract us from our fornicating.”
“That’s not funny,” Miss Beatrice snapped. But Forrest Payne appeared then and, having heard the tail end of their conversation, let out a high-pitched, howling laugh. To my surprise, Miss Beatrice stopped twisting her mouth in disapproval and began to laugh along with her new husband. Loosening up that woman on a Sunday was no small achievement. As they headed to their table, I thought for the first time that maybe Forrest Payne was the perfect man for Miss Beatrice after all.
Clarice’s family reunion expanded when Veronica strode in with her husband, Clement, trailing along behind her. Veronica had taken her habit of overdressing for every occasion to new heights since her promotion from annoying church member to bothersome associate pastor. That day she was encased in layers of puce-colored taffeta from her neck to her ankles. She was perspiring heavily from wearing such a heavy outfit on a warm June day. The length of the gown made it difficult for her to maintain her usual jerking, goose-step style of walking.
I hadn’t seen Veronica since the news of El Walker’s connection to James became public knowledge, and I wasn’t looking forward to hearing her offer her opinions about matters that were none of her business. Veronica and I had butted heads since we were schoolgirls. Though I saw the foolishness of it, I still let her get under my skin. The moment I laid eyes on her, I felt myself becoming angry, and I began to ready myself for a fight.
Rather than preparing to pounce at the first provocation, though, I decided to try Clarice’s approach. I imagined how sad I’d feel if Veronica suddenly dropped dead. But I quickly gave that up. Given the years of hostility I had harbored toward Veronica, it wasn’t safe for me to indulge in that fantasy with so much cutlery lying around. I stuffed a forkful of salmon into my mouth and attempted to think kind thoughts, like genteel Barbara Jean.
Panting in her unwieldy dress, Veronica marched up to our table and said, “I can guess from your smiles that you’ve all been celebrating the good news.”
That wasn’t exactly the way I, or anyone else at our table, had been looking at the return of James’s father. I was surprised to hear Veronica describing it as cause for celebration. But as Veronica continued, it became clear that she had other news on her mind. She said, “Clarice, I’ve been thinking maybe the two of us could put something together for the occasion. A little music is always nice and folks will think it’s cute, us being cousins and all. I could also use your help picking my outfit. You used to have such good taste.”
When Veronica saw the mystified expressions on the faces at the table, she said, “You have heard about Reverend Biggs’s accident, haven’t you?”
Barbara Jean said, “What are you talking about? I just saw Reverend Biggs at church an hour ago.”
Clement said, “The accident must have happened right after that. He fell down the stairs after the service. He tripped on the top step and fell all the way down to the bottom.”
“Good Lord,” Barbara Jean said. “There must be twenty steps in front of First Baptist.”
“He didn’t fall down those stairs. He fell on the steps in the back. There are only four or five stairs there,” Veronica said.
Barbara Jean asked, “How is he?”
“He’s doing okay, considering. But he’ll be out of commission for about a month, they say. He’s got a broken leg, and he hurt his back.” Pointing a thumb at her puffed-out chest, Veronica said, “I’m the one who found him. And he’s lucky I did. Most of the members had gone home by then. He could have ended up lying there for who knows how long.
“I have no idea why he was going out the back door of the church. He knows I always wait for him in front with my suggestions for the next week’s sermon.”
I pictured Reverend Biggs’s accident like an episode of a nature program on TV. I saw Veronica stalking the poor man through his church like a lion after a gazelle until she brought him down, wounded, in the rear parking lot.
Barbara Jean said, “Wait a minute. You said something about us celebrating good news. What’s good about this news?”
Veronica said, “I’m going to preach. With Reverend Biggs out, we associate pastors got together and decided that we would split the sermon duties between us until he gets better. My turn comes in three weeks.”
Veronica leaned toward us as if she were sharing a secret. But in typical Veronica fashion, she spoke loudly enough for anyone within ten yards to hear. “Madame Minnie
was right on target about this whole thing. Charlemagne told her ages ago that I would have my own church.”
Clarice said, “It’s a little soon to claim First Baptist as your church, don’t you think? Reverend Biggs isn’t dead. He’ll be back as soon as he’s healed.”
Veronica said, “I didn’t mean it that way, of course. I’m praying nonstop that he’ll have a speedy recovery.”
That last part would have been more believable if she’d been able to stop grinning for just a few seconds. Family loyalty wouldn’t allow Clarice to say it out loud, but I’d have bet anything she was thinking that her cousin had shoved Reverend Biggs down those stairs.
Veronica glanced across the room toward the fortune-telling table in the corner, where Minnie, in one of her showy trances, sat rocking from side to side with her palms on her crystal ball. Above the noise of the diner, we heard the occasional tinkling of the silver bell that stuck out of the top of Minnie’s turban.
Veronica said, “I’m going to consult with Madame Minnie about the topic for my sermon. I’ve been thinking either the Good Samaritan or Daniel in the lions’ den. But there’s no reason to leave it to chance.”
Clement fetched a chair for his wife, and she sat down between Clarice and me. “I wish Madame Minnie would hurry up. I’ve got a lot to do today. It’s not easy running a church.
“In the meantime,” Veronica said, “let me show you the video of Apollo that Sharon sent this morning.”
Clement retrieved Veronica’s phone from her purse so she could treat us to the video of their grandson.
Apollo sat in his father’s lap. The camera angle exaggerated the strange shape of the baby’s nose, which looked even more like a snout than it had in his earlier pictures. He seemed to have become hairier, and his plump cheeks squeezed his small eyes into tiny black dots. The baby opened his mouth so that it formed a frighteningly large, gaping pink cavern. Then Apollo let forth a shriek: “Gaah!”
The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues Page 15