The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues

by Edward Kelsey Moore

  Richmond whispered something in her ear that made her smile. He gave Clarice a quick hug and a kiss on the forehead before waving good-bye to the rest of us and heading back to his Chrysler alone. Clarice stared after him, watching him walk away with his smooth, athletic glide, and I thought, No, that story isn’t done yet.

  Before we got into our car, Terry whispered to me, “Odette, I couldn’t do it.”

  I patted Terry’s cheek. Contrary to my nature, I found myself getting choked up. I told my young friend, “You did just fine.”

  CHAPTER 39

  The morning after Wayne Robinson was laid to rest, I drove Terry to the bus station so he could get back to Chicago in time for his show. We were early, so we found a quiet spot inside the depot where we could sit and chat for a while. We hadn’t been alone together in years, but it immediately felt like old times in the gazebo in my garden. We talked about his new life and his job at the theater. I told him I’d try to make it back to Chicago to see him perform. He said that he’d come visit Plainview again when he got the chance. I believed he might actually do it since Barbara Jean, who’d made him a gift of the Dior dress he’d worn, had told him she had other dresses she’d like to pass his way. Just the idea of walking into her closet once more had made him go weak in the knees again.

  Just after the speaker crackled and announced the boarding of Terry’s bus, he surprised me by asking, “Odette, do you see ghosts?”

  I generally avoided telling my friends about my gift—or delusion, depending on your beliefs concerning such things. I’d never told Barbara Jean that since her first husband, Lester, had died, I’d often seen him and their son, Adam, playing together in the garden behind her big house. I’d made no mention to Clarice of the many times I’d seen her dead father following her around, beaming with pride. I would find it torturous if someone were to tell me that people my heart ached for were nearby but couldn’t be heard, seen, or touched. But there was such hope on Terry’s face as he waited for my answer that I felt I had to make an exception to my rule. Also, my mama didn’t raise any liars. So I said, “Yes. I do.”

  He said, “I wondered back when I used to hang out with you in your backyard. Sometimes when I’d come by unexpected, you’d be talking to somebody—your mother, I think. Then, when Mr. Henry asked you yesterday morning if you’d seen his father after the fire, I wondered about it again.”

  I said, “You’ve got your talents. I’ve got mine.”

  Terry leaned in close to me and whispered, “Sometimes I swear my mother is with me. I’ll be watching an old movie on TV, like the two of us used to do together, and I know she’s there, right beside me. Or I’ll be walking down the street, or doing chores around my apartment, and, poof, there’s Mom. Do you think she’s really there?”

  I said, “I can’t say for sure if your mother’s been coming to see you in Chicago, but I know she was with you almost all the time in Plainview after she passed. Right before you left and you were so unhappy, I doubt that she ever once let you out of her sight. It stands to reason she’s still checking in.” I patted his cheek. “Terry, Audrey, or both, if you were mine, I’d never stop coming to see you.”

  He said, “Thank you.”

  “I knew you were special the day we met in my backyard. What you did yesterday only showed me I was right. Since we left the cemetery, I’ve been thinking that if you can find a way to forgive your father after all he did, then I’ve got no excuse to keep holding on to the load of grievances I’ve made a habit of carrying. You made me want to do better. And that’s saying a whole lot, because I’ve gotten real used to being me.”

  Terry furrowed his brow and leaned back in his chair. “Odette, I should probably tell you what really happened at the cemetery.” He gnawed at his lower lip. “When I told you yesterday that I couldn’t do what I was planning to do, I didn’t mean that I’d changed my mind. I meant that I really couldn’t do it. Like, physically. When I squatted down, I found out that the dress Barbara Jean gave me was so tight I couldn’t get my knees apart. Next thing I knew, everybody was telling me how proud they were of me for proving I was the better man, and I couldn’t admit the truth. I had every intention of pissing on that bastard, but that gorgeous dress wouldn’t let me.”

  I laughed, picturing Barbara Jean, ever the lady, putting together an outfit for Terry with precisely that limitation in mind. I patted Terry’s shoulder and said, “As long as you feel good about it, I still believe it worked out for the best.” I was thinking, I can’t wait to tell this part of the story to Mama. She’s gonna love it.

  A second announcement summoned passengers to Terry’s bus. We exchanged hugs and kisses and promised each other that it wouldn’t be long before we talked again. I waved good-bye to him as he boarded a Chicago-bound bus, on purpose this time.

  * * *

  WHEN I GOT back home, Denise, Jimmy, and Eric were sitting at the kitchen table with their father. They’d arrived in Plainview the previous night, along with their spouses. Denise’s husband, Jimmy’s wife, and Eric’s partner had all been corralled into playing some sort of video game in the family room with Denise’s children, Dora and William.

  Denise said, “She’s back, Daddy. Now you can open it.” She pointed to the manila envelope El had left with Barbara Jean for James. She turned my way. “Daddy said we had to wait until you got home before we could look inside.”

  I resisted the urge to laugh. I had been pestering James to unseal that envelope from the moment we’d left Wayne Robinson’s burial, but I’d been unable to persuade him to do it. He’d claimed that he was going to wait until the kids had left, so his attention wouldn’t be diverted from enjoying their company. Our children were having none of that. And they had always been better at getting James to see things their way than I was. If they wanted that envelope opened, it was going to be opened.

  James ran a butter knife beneath the flap of the envelope and reached inside. The first thing he slid out was a sheet of white paper. Standing behind him, I saw the words “My son,” written in the same big, round letters that marked the envelope. Several handwritten lines were scrawled beneath that.

  I pulled reading glasses from my pocketbook and passed them to James. At Denise’s urging, he began to read aloud:

  Dear James,

  I’ve been trying to find words to talk to you about the past and all those things I did wrong to you and your mother. But it’s like that time the Pink Slipper caught fire and everybody ran for the one door together. Every word tries to escape at the same time, and nothing gets out. So I’m writing this for you.

  James paused, clearly having trouble with El’s chicken scratch.

  I remember every day with you. I know you won’t believe me, but you were my world.

  James used his index finger to slide the glasses a little farther down his nose.

  I tried, but I wasn’t good enough. That’s the story of my life.

  James stopped and said, “It’s hard to read. Half the lines are scribbled over, and stuff is written sideways.”

  He went on:

  There will never be a day when I don’t look for you to come running up to me.

  James stopped again, tilting the page in hopes of finding a better reading angle. “He must have been drunk when he wrote it.”

  Denise reached out and took the letter from her father. She said, “Daddy, it’s a song.” She handed it back to James. “See, these other words are rhyming lyrics that he crossed out.”

  James picked it up and read it again, to himself this time. Even with the reading glasses, he squinted to decipher the words. I was sure that my husband, who loves mysteries, was also trying to read the lines El had obscured beneath slashes of ink. When he finished reading, James quickly passed a finger beneath his glistening eyes and then played it off like he was just removing the glasses. His voice quavering slightly, he said, “It’s not a bad little song.”

  He reached into the envelope again and removed a bundle of pictures bou
nd together with a thick rubber band. He pulled the first photograph away from the stack and stared at it for a moment. It was a picture of a tall, skinny man who looked a bit like James. He wore a striped vest and a bowler hat, and by his side was a strange animal.

  James turned the photo over and read the words that were written on the back in the same handwriting as the song lyrics:

  Your grandfather Joe. His leopard, Raja.

  If you ever see Raja, follow him.

  James flipped the photograph right side up again, and Denise squealed at her brothers, “Oh, my God. This is incredible. Do you remember all those stories Daddy used to make up for us when we were little? About Joey and his leopard, Roger? I can’t believe this.”

  Laughing, Eric picked up the picture. “I can’t believe this is any kind of leopard.”

  Denise said, “Daddy, do you remember those stories?”

  Our children’s spouses came into the kitchen in a rush of conversation and giggling. Dora tugged at the right arm of her uncle Eric’s partner, Greg, competing for his attention with her brother, William, who yanked on the poor man’s left hand. Jimmy’s wife said, “These children need feeding, and they say that Grandma Odette promised them waffles.”

  Denise said to James, “Do you remember those stories you used to tell us?”

  Dora released Greg and ran to her grandfather. “What stories?”

  “Those Joey and Roger stories I used to tell you and your brother,” Denise said. “Your grandfather made them up for your uncles and me when we were little. Well, we thought he was making them up. It turns out Joey was your great-great-grandfather.”

  “He had a leopard?” William asked.

  “Well, he had some kind of animal with spots on it,” Denise said.

  James continued to study the picture.

  Denise placed a hand on her father’s arm. In a tone of voice I hadn’t heard from her in twenty-five years, she said, “Daddy, I want to hear a story.”

  Eric and Jimmy laughed at the idea of being told a children’s story at their ages. But they both moved their chairs closer to their father.

  Denise said, “Please tell us one for old times’ sake.”

  I stood behind James, massaging his tight shoulders as our daughter badgered him.

  Dora leaned against her grandfather’s side and said, “Come on, Granddaddy.”

  William let go of Greg and hurried to join Dora. “I want to hear one, too,” he said.

  I felt the tension fall away from James’s shoulders. In a hoarse voice, he began, “Once upon a time, there was a boy named Joe who had a pet leopard called Roger…”

  My mind traveled back in time, and I pictured Daddy cheerfully humming a sorrow-filled blues song to himself as he sawed open the ceiling in my family room to give me and my children a skylight so we could see the stars. I rested my chin on my James’s shoulder, and listened to the love in his voice.

  It took some strength to keep from stepping away from the perfect moment in front of me to record it in the book I’d started keeping, the way Mama used to. But I managed to stay put, knowing I would get to it later.

  The next time the blues comes looking for me, I’ll do what you did, Mama. I’ll shake my book of little miracles at it and tell it to move along, because I know how to jump for joy.

  CHAPTER 40

  At the Club Sucre on the Rue Galande in Paris, a tall, skeletally thin young woman in a tight-fitting black tuxedo stood onstage. The red-tinted spotlight caused her platinum hair to glow pink and made the two-hundred-year-old stone walls of the club seem warm and alive.

  The club was small, but nearly every seat in the place was filled, and it took the crowd some time to quiet as the woman addressed them. First in French, then in English, she said, “Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to present to you our incredible performers this evening. She is a blues singer of the Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey tradition. He is a legendary blues guitarist and singer. Please welcome this marvelous brother-and-sister blues duo—El Walker and Lily Taylor.”

  People always snickered when the pale elderly woman and the white-bearded black man made their entrance after being introduced as brother and sister, and tonight was no exception. It had become a part of their routine. El, in his charcoal sharkskin suit, entered first, leaning heavily on his cane. Lily followed him, wearing a white sequined dress and a leopard-spotted scarf that matched the guitar she was carrying.

  After taking their bows, El and Lily sat on the two stools at center stage. Lily handed Ruthie to him, and he connected his guitar to an amplifier cord. They thanked the audience and launched into the opening song of their set.

  They began with “Blues in the Night.” Three months earlier, at the start of what was supposed to have been a three-week Paris engagement, they had fallen into the habit of opening with that because singing it calmed Lily’s nerves. When she became flustered, she often forgot the words to the songs they performed. So they kept the lyrics on a music stand onstage beside her to help her through her more confused days. She never forgot “Blues in the Night,” though. It was a safe opener. Their regulars had come to expect that song nearly as much as they expected “The Happy Heartache Blues.” They felt cheated when El and Lily didn’t perform it.

  The applause for their opening number died down, and Lily and El had a brief consultation about which song to sing next. “‘Every Day I Have the Blues,’” El whispered. He waited for her to dig the lyrics sheet out from the stack of pages on the music stand.

  Before they could start the song, El heard the door of the club open. When he looked up, he saw the silhouettes of a tall, thin man and a much shorter, rounder woman against the light from the streetlamps outside. As the newcomers stepped in, El lifted a hand and held it flat at his brow to block out the glare from the stage lights.

  Lily followed his eyes as he squinted again at the couple in back. “Yes?” she asked.

  “Could be,” he replied with a trembling voice.

  Lily stopped sifting through the song lyrics on the stand. She reached out and placed her hand on El’s shoulder as they began to sing.

  Love, love, oh love, if you stay away I don’t know what I’ll do

  How can I go on breathing without you to see me through?

  I close my eyes, my love, and smile, thinking of you calling my name

  But when that dream is over, you’re gone and I’ll never be the same

  Love, love, oh love, you can treat me any way you please

  Hurt me, leave me, cut me, love, I’ll keep crawling back on my knees

  It’s you, love, only you, my love

  It’s been you right from the start

  So come back to me and break it

  Break my happy heart

  Baby, baby, my baby, remember how it used to be?

  No pain, no lies, just laughing and loving, sweet baby, you and me,

  Can’t we go back, baby, and find the joy we had at the start

  Before you saw I didn’t deserve you, baby, and broke my happy heart?

  Yesterday’s sorrow is old news, my darling, doesn’t matter anymore

  I’ll beat my chest and beg my best for you to walk back through my door

  Oh love, oh baby, oh darling, say you’re willing to give us a fresh start

  I’ll always, always love you, after you break my happy heart

  It’s you, love, only you, my love

  It’s been you right from the very start

  So come back to me and break it, love

  Break my happy, happy heart

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Special thanks go to Barney Karpfinger for all of his help in bringing this book to life. Barney, you are a great agent and a treasured friend.

  I am deeply indebted to my editor, Barbara Jones, whose talent and insight are more precious to me that I can possibly say.

  I am endlessly grateful for the patience and judgment of my first reader, Claire Parins.

  Peter Moore, thank you fo
r making every day brighter.

  ALSO BY EDWARD KELSEY MOORE

  The Supremes at

  Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  EDWARD KELSEY MOORE is the author of the bestselling novel The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. His short fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, African American Review, and Inkwell, among others. His short story “Grandma and the Elusive Fifth Crucifix” was selected as an audience favorite on Chicago Public Radio’s Stories on Stage series. A professional cellist, he lives in Chicago. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34