The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues

by Edward Kelsey Moore

  * * *

  EL WAS SITTING at the kitchen table when I walked in to start the coffee on Monday morning. He was dressed up. He wore a pair of black trousers and a white dress shirt that was creased from being stored in a suitcase but was otherwise neatly pressed. I guessed, and El confirmed, that Barbara Jean was coming over to take him out for breakfast. El, like most men, cleaned himself up as much as possible in anticipation of spending time with Barbara Jean.

  Dozens of El’s photographs were spread across the tabletop. Even though I told him that it wasn’t necessary, he began to gather them up to clear a place at the table for me. He said, “I was lookin’ for more pictures to give to Barbara Jean.”

  He sifted through the photos, squinting as he inspected each one. He waved a photograph at me and said, “I’ve got a picture of James’s grandfather that I can show you.”

  I told him I thought James would be thrilled. As it turned out, the morning soon took an odd twist. James and I wouldn’t see the photo of his grandfather Joe until several days later.

  James entered the kitchen, stretching out his long legs with each step and yawning as he walked. Every few paces, he paused to puff out his chest and push the knuckles of his fists into his lower back. This was his routine. Seven mornings a week, James slowly made his way through our house, moving as if he had to wake up each part of his six-foot-four-inch frame separately.

  El lifted a picture and announced, “There it is.” It was a snapshot of Loretta Perdue, looking remarkably like Barbara Jean, perched on the edge of a stage as a round-faced blond singer behind her leaned into a microphone.

  James looked at the picture and suddenly ended his morning stretch. He and El exchanged a glance and quickly turned away from each other. It was evident that, like the previous night when I’d mentioned Big Earl McIntyre, another rock had just been rolled over. Again, something unpleasant had been uncovered.

  El shoved the picture into his shirt pocket. James poured a cup of coffee and then excused himself, saying that he had to do something to the car to prepare for the trip. I weighed whether or not to ask what had just happened. But El announced that he was going to lie down for a little while before Barbara Jean arrived to fetch him. He was up and shuffling out of the room with his walker a few seconds later. It was the fastest I’d seen him move all week.

  Just after James and his father vacated the kitchen, my phone rang. I didn’t recognize the voice at first. The woman calling didn’t introduce herself; she just started talking the moment I answered. A few sentences in, though, I realized it was Darlene Lloyd. She was calling to tell me that Wayne Robinson was dead.

  Darlene said that although it was a minor breach of hospital protocol to pass this news along to me, she felt it was her Christian duty to try to get word to Terry. Like any good gossip, she was happy to employ the Lord if she needed an excuse for getting into somebody else’s business. I thanked her for calling and said good-bye.

  Her call had been unnecessary. By the time I’d lifted the ringing phone from the countertop, I’d known that Wayne Robinson was gone. Out my kitchen window, I saw him in the garden talking to my mother and Eleanor Roosevelt. He was waving his hands as he spoke, pleading his case, no doubt—claiming that he’d been a good husband, a well-intentioned father. Mrs. Roosevelt might have been inclined to give him a sympathetic ear. She was sweet that way. He was barking up the wrong tree with Mama. And he had better beat a hasty retreat before Aunt Marjorie showed up. If Mama had shared with her manly sister that Wayne Robinson had thrown out his teenage son for being too girly, Aunt Marjorie would be likely to exact vengeance. If anyone could whoop a dead man’s ass, it was Aunt Marjorie.

  But none of that was my concern. I called Terry.

  CHAPTER 29

  The Simon Theater was decorated for Independence Day. Red, white, and blue metallic streamers hung from the wall sconces. Each table in the main room was adorned with a patriotic centerpiece that contained miniature American flags and small cut-out caricatures of the founding fathers. Audrey was also decked out. She saluted America in a vintage World War II WAC uniform. She had planned an evening of songs that coordinated with her outfit—“I’ll Be Seeing You,” “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

  Once the stage lights hit her, though, she veered away from her script.

  As the applause died down, she said, “I’m going back to southern Indiana Sunday morning.”

  A few boos and shouts of “No!” came from the regulars. Audrey smiled and said, “You’re sweet. But don’t you worry; I’m not going there to stay. I’ll just be gone for a couple of days.” The booing transformed into whistles and more applause.

  “Some of you might have been here when I talked about the little chore I promised to take care of down there. Well, the time has come. As usual, the great challenge is picking just the right outfit for the occasion. I’ve been calling old friends and soliciting advice, but I’m still trying to make up my mind.”

  Audrey sang the Ella Fitzgerald standard “Undecided.”

  Earlier that day, Terry had called his former home in Plainview for the first time in five years, hoping that whoever answered would be able to supply him with a phone number for his sister.

  It had been James Henry’s idea for Terry to call Cherokee. Terry had been having doubts about whether to follow through on the promise that had been so easy to make in Bailey’s Laundry and Dry Cleaning. His fury had been raw then, propelled by years of pain. Later, when the tiny nest egg he’d brought with him from Plainview had been exhausted, he had swallowed that anger and resentment until it filled his empty belly. Even after Odette and James had hooked him up with free meals and a job at their friend Lydia’s South Side diner, he’d thought of his father every day and tasted his revenge with every bite of food he ate.

  But now that Wayne Robinson was dead and retribution hung within reach, Terry was amazed to find himself wondering what to do. Long-buried memories had crept forward to complicate his feelings. Camping trips with Mom, Daddy, Cherokee, and Seville. Daddy teaching him to ride his bike. Playing in the cars at Daddy’s repair shop. Recollections of better days in the distant past competed for his attention with the ugliness that came later, threatening to reduce his ogre to a troll.

  He’d called Odette for advice. She hadn’t been at home, so he’d spoken with James. As Terry had expected from speaking with James many times throughout his tough high school years, James had counseled that Terry should be the bigger man—or woman, depending on whether Terry or Audrey showed up in Plainview. “You’ve got to forgive. Forgive your father, and forgive your sister, too. That’s what your mother would want you to do.”

  James had made it sound easy. He’d told Terry about the return of his own father and how therapeutic forgiving El Walker had been for him. Not having spoken to Odette about El and James’s relationship, Terry didn’t understand that there was a far more complex scenario playing out in the Henry home than James was letting on. It was with James’s urging toward forgiveness on his mind that Terry called Plainview.

  To his surprise, when he dialed the number that had been his throughout his boyhood, Cherokee answered. “Hi, it’s Terry,” he said when he heard her voice. He listened to the sound of his sister breathing as a television commercial blared in the background. He asked, “How are you?”

  When she still didn’t answer, he continued: “I heard about Daddy. I’m going to come to Plainview for the funeral and—”

  “I can’t believe you have the nerve to call here,” Cherokee said. “Haven’t you caused enough trouble? All I’ve heard about since Daddy got sick has been that nasty thing you said you were going to do.” Her voice quavered, and Terry heard her sniffling. She said, “I hope you know you won’t get away with that filth. Seville’s coming, and he’s bringing friends with him to keep the peace. You’d better not try to come anywhere near Daddy’s funeral.”

  Cherokee wailed about the humiliation Terry had brought to th
e family and the years of suffering she and Wayne Robinson had endured because of him. As she continued to toss accusations at him, Terry felt his hunger pangs of the past return. The anger he’d feasted on to soothe those pangs came back, too. When Cherokee paused in her recitation, he said, “So our brother, who I’m guessing is fresh from his latest prison stay, is going to stand guard at the cemetery to stop me from bringing shame on the family?”

  Cherokee stopped crying. Terry heard another, cheerier television commercial through the phone. He inquired then about his sister’s husband. A year after Terry had left Plainview, Cherokee had married the handsome dry-cleaning heir for whom her younger brother had once danced in his homemade Dior. “How’s Andre doing, Mrs. Bailey?”

  The phone had gone dead then.

  To her Simon Theater audience, Audrey said, “There’s nothing quite like family. Just when you start to forget the past, they remind you where you came from.”

  She played a jazzed-up version of a bugle call on the piano that would serve as a lead-in to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy.” The bugle call turned into a series of arpeggios up and down the keyboard. Out of that rush of sound emerged the opening of a Brahms intermezzo.

  “Before I go to Indiana, I’m going to go to a concert in Millennium Park. Have you seen those ads for the recital by Clarice Baker?” A few handclaps sounded from the audience. “Mrs. Baker was my piano teacher when I was a kid.”

  Chopin. Louder and faster. Several patrons whistled and shouted, “Bravo!”

  “That’s right. Your little Audrey studied the piano with a genuine virtuoso. I was going to be a great piano soloist, like Rubinstein. Well, maybe like Van Cliburn.” Then she lifted her hands to show the crowd the chunky, glittering rings on each of her fingers and raced through a chromatic run from the lowest key of the piano to the highest. “Okay, more like Liberace.

  “After Mrs. Baker’s concert, I’m going to catch a ride to Plainview with my friend Odette. The question is, do I head for a thrift shop and find a dark men’s suit to wear? Or do I paint my fingernails fire-engine red and break out the imitation Chanel? I’ll tell you what, I never imagined when I was a youngster that so much of my life would boil down to that one quandary.”

  Audrey sang the first few bars of that 1940s favorite “Sentimental Journey.” Then she modulated to a new key. She winked a heavily mascaraed eye at the crowd and belted out, “Walk Like a Man.”

  CHAPTER 30

  The night before their departure for Chicago, Barbara Jean and Ray went to bed early, each claiming that the day had left them exhausted. An hour after they had kissed good night and clicked off the lamps on the nightstands beside the bed, Barbara Jean lay awake. She looked at the shadows on the ceiling cast by moonlight peeking through the gangly trees outside the house. She listened to the hissing of the wind through the leaves of those trees, hoping it might lull her to sleep. She turned her head and saw that Ray, too, was watching and listening instead of sleeping.

  She asked him the question that had been on her mind all day. “Are you happy?”

  The question shocked him, but his answer came without hesitation: “Of course I’m happy. I have everything I’ve ever wanted.” Ray scooted closer to her. He slid one arm beneath her neck and brought the other across her body so that his arms encircled her. He took a fortifying breath and said, “You’re scaring me.”

  Barbara Jean shifted in the bed until she was facing Ray, their lips just inches apart. She said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” She kissed him. “What I meant to ask was, do you think of yourself as a happy person?

  “El and I talk about happiness and sadness a lot when we’re together. I suppose that goes along with the territory when you’re hanging out with a blues man. El says Loretta was sad from the day he met her. She was only happy when she was dancing. There’s no real joy in El until he pulls Ruthie out of her case. Sometimes I think maybe I’m like the two of them. I’m happy when I’m with you. I was happy when I was with Adam. I’m happy when I’m acting a fool with Odette and Clarice. That’s the only way I know happiness; somebody or something comes along and makes me light up. It never comes from inside. It’s not like I’m unhappy. Happiness just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Know what I mean?”

  Barbara Jean felt the tense muscles of Ray’s arms relax around her. He said, “I don’t think about it a lot, but it’s like that for me, more or less. When I’m with you and sometimes when I’m in the middle of a really good day at work, I feel great. Otherwise, it’s like I’m faking it. Well, not faking it exactly. More like I’m standing outside of it. James feels the same way. We’ve talked about it a few times while we’re fishing.”

  Because both Ray and James were exceptionally quiet men, Barbara Jean had always imagined that they fished in silence. She’d often pictured them as two mute statues, floating along the river together until they agreed, through telepathic communication, that it was time to row back to shore.

  “James believes it’s the fatherless thing. He thinks maybe growing up without dads screwed us up some.”

  “He might be on to something,” Barbara Jean said. “I didn’t know anybody who had a father until I started hanging around with Odette and Clarice. I remember thinking it was like they lived on a different planet. Once, back when we were teenagers, the three of us were over at Odette’s house. All casual, like it was nothing, Clarice said that she’d never had a moment in her life when she didn’t feel like everything was going to be all right. No matter how bad things were, she knew there’d be happier times ahead.

  “At first I thought she was talking about something she’d heard in church; Miss Beatrice dragged Clarice off to Calvary Baptist almost every day back then. But Clarice said she knew things would be okay because her daddy said they would be. I actually laughed when I heard that. When I looked at Odette, she wasn’t laughing with me, though. You know what Odette said?”

  “What?”

  “She said, ‘Of course.’ Can you imagine that? ‘Of course.’ That’s the way they grew up, believing they were going to be happy and that things would work out all right because their daddies told them so.”

  They lay, forehead to forehead, listening to the wind sing. Then Ray said, “I think I know what our solution is. We’ve got to spend more and more time together until we get so damn happy that it starts to come naturally.”

  Barbara Jean said, “I like that plan. Who wouldn’t be happy to spend time with the King of the Pretty White Boys?”

  “Oh, stop it,” he said.

  She wrapped one arm around his waist and placed her palm against the small of his back. She brought her mouth to rest at the hollow at the base of his neck just above his collarbone, that place she’d been convinced had been made just for her when she was a teenager and first in love with him. “Between the two of us, we’re gonna kick happiness’s ass.”

  * * *

  EL SAT WITH his back supported by two pillows propped against the brass headboard of his bed. He held a black felt-tip marker that he’d found among several other writing utensils in a misshapen mug that had a childishly scrawled “Grandma” baked into its glaze. He wrote, “My friend Bubba and my brother Bert” on the back of the photograph on his lap and placed that photo on top of a stack to his right. He reached for another.

  Some of the pictures would go to Barbara Jean. He’d discovered several more with Loretta in the background. Not all of them were the kind of images she would want to see. A few, though, captured Loretta at her best, when her beauty was so spectacular that just looking at her was like stepping out of this world and into paradise.

  The rest of the pictures would go to James. The same with Ruthie. James had said he didn’t want her, but he might change his mind once El was gone.

  El had worked out the end. It had come to him when Odette, as the leopard woman, had stopped him from swallowing the pills. Several days and a few lies later, the time had come.

  He had lied when he’d told Odette
and James that his brother and sister were expecting him. The last time he had spoken to Lily had been ten or eleven years back. She’d shown up at a club he was playing in Gary, Indiana, and, as she’d done dozens of times over the years, had announced that she was done with drugs and with Harold. She wanted to get clean and sing again before it was too late. Close to seventy, she’d been stuck in an addict’s cycle of dreaming and never acting. She had disappeared by the end of the evening, and El hadn’t seen her since.

  That was just as well. Lily would likely be dead by now if she had come with him. He had been flat broke and in the midst of his final relapse that night in Gary. The best he could have offered her was a room in his run-down house in New Orleans, where they would both have fallen deeper into addiction. Now, though, he was clean and had enough money to get Lily to New Orleans. He had lined up some friends to help her get settled there, mostly old guys who remembered the tiny white girl with the Bessie Smith voice. They would take care of her.

  His reunion with Lily wouldn’t be all he had once hoped for. Too much time had passed for the fantasy of the two of them singing and traveling together again to come true. But he had dreamed of fulfilling a promise to protect his little sister that he’d made on a log in the woods as a boy. Giving Lily this last chance, financed by Forrest, would have to be enough.

  El had also lied when he’d told Odette and James that he would be coming back to Plainview with them. Once Lily was on her way with Forrest’s money in her pocket, El would get a cheap room in Chicago and make use of that bottle of good whiskey from Forrest and the painkillers he’d saved from the hospital. True to her word, Odette hadn’t tossed the pills away. He’d seen her tuck them into a cabinet the night he’d arrived at her house, and he had filled his pocket with them the previous night.

  For forty years, he had begun every song in every club he’d played by looking out into the audience. He’d been certain that James would walk in one night. Sometimes he imagined James running up to him with open arms and a forgiving heart. Other times he imagined James striding in, a rightfully angry man determined to balance the scales. Either way, he saw himself impressing his son with one of his best numbers and showing James who he was, even if he couldn’t manage the words to tell him.