The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat

by Edward Kelsey Moore

  His words were meant to comfort me, and I appreciated it. But part of my mind had already left the office. In my head, I was telling my anguished kids not to worry about me. They were adults now and scattered all over the country, but still in need of parenting. Denise was a young mother, still filled with fear and worry over each stage of her children’s development that defied the books she had believed would bring order to motherhood. Jimmy and his wife were both hell-bent on getting ahead and would work themselves to death if I didn’t nag them into taking an occasional vacation. And Eric, he was as quiet as his father, and no one but me, who had listened over the phone as he cried his heart out over lost love more than once, knew that he felt everything twice as deep as his brother or sister.

  From the moment I told the Supremes I was sick, Clarice would try to take over my life. First she’d want to take charge of my medical treatment. Then she’d get on my very last nerve by trying to drag me to her church for anointings and such. And Barbara Jean would just get all quiet and accept that I was as good as dead. Seeing her grieving for me ahead of time would bring back memories of all she’s lost in her life, and it would depress the hell out of me.

  My brother, in spite of being raised by our mother, had grown up and become a man who believed that women were helpless victims of our emotions and hormones. When he found out I was sick, he would talk to me like I was a child and pester me just like he used to when we were children.

  And James. I thought of the look I used to see on James’s face in that horrible, gray-yellow emergency room light whenever one of the kids suffered some childhood injury. The smallest pain for them meant despair for him. Whenever I came down with a cold or flu, he was at my side with a thermometer, medicine, and an expression of agony on his face for the duration. It was like he’d pooled up all the love and caring his father had denied him and his mother and was determined to shower it onto me and our children ten times over.

  I made up my mind right then that I’d keep this whole thing to myself for as long as I could. There was still an outside chance that it was all a false alarm, wasn’t there? And, if this chemo was indeed “well-tolerated,” I might be able to tell everyone about it at my leisure. If I was lucky, in five or six months I could turn to James and my friends one Sunday at the All-You-Can-Eat and say, “Hey, did I ever tell you all about the time I had cancer?”

  When I didn’t say anything for a while. Alex spoke faster. believing he had to provide me with some sort of consolation. But I wasn’t the one who needed to be consoled. Behind him on the windowsill of his office, Mama sat with both of her hands pressed to her face. She was crying like I had never seen before.

  Mama muttered, “No, no, this can’t be right. It’s too soon.”

  Mrs. Roosevelt, who had been lying on the sofa against the wall of Alex’s office, rose and walked over to Mama. She patted Mama on the back and whispered in her ear, but whatever she said didn’t do the trick. Mama continued to cry. She was crying so loud now that I could barely hear the doctor.

  Finally, forgetting my vow not to talk to the dead in the presence of the living, I said, “It’s all right. Really, it’s all right. There’s nothing to cry about.”

  Alex stopped talking and stared at me for a moment, assuming I was talking to him. He apparently took my words as permission for him to let go because within seconds he was out of his chair and crouching in front of me. He buried his face in my lap, and I soon felt his tears soak through my skirt. He said, “I’m so sorry, Ma.” Then he apologized for not being more professional as he blew his nose into a tissue I pulled from the box on the corner of his desk and handed to him.

  I rubbed his back, pleased to be comforting him instead of him comforting me. I bent forward and whispered, “Shh, shh, don’t cry,” into Alex’s ear. But I said it staring ahead at my mother as she sobbed into Eleanor Roosevelt’s fox stole. “I’m not afraid. Can’t be, remember? I was born in a sycamore tree.”

  Chapter 12

  Clarice turned around in her chair to get a good look at the newly redecorated All-You-Can-Eat. It was just before Halloween and the restaurant was dressed up for the holiday. The windows were draped with cotton cobwebs. A garland of crepe-paper skulls surrounded the cash register. Each table was decorated with a centerpiece of tiny orange pumpkins, gold-and-green striped gourds, and a small wicker basket filled with candy corn. It wasn’t the prettiest display Clarice had ever seen, but it did at least cover up that awful restaurant logo on the tablecloth.

  No matter how she felt about the new logo, it was clear that this affront to her sensibilities wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The kids from the university had discovered Little Earl’s T-shirts with the big red lips, pink tongue, and suggestive fruits on them. Now a constant stream of young people came into the All-You-Can-Eat to giggle and buy the risqué restaurant merchandise. Little Earl was making a small fortune.

  The Supremes, Richmond, and James were all in their usual places by the front window. For Barbara Jean’s sake, they had tried shuffling things around after Lester died—moving the men to the opposite end one week, shifting James to the center and Richmond to Lester’s seat the next. But it was no use. The more they tried to avoid seeing it, the stronger they felt Lester’s absence. Barbara Jean finally called a halt to the musical chairs, saying that she preferred to keep things the way they had always been.

  Everyone was tired that week. Richmond yawned every few minutes—which was no surprise to Clarice since he’d been out all night again. Barbara Jean hadn’t been fully awake since Lester died. She pretended that she was okay, but her mind wandered constantly and Clarice always had the feeling when she talked to her that Barbara Jean was only half there. James had been sleepy since childhood. And Odette actually fell asleep at the table that afternoon.

  Clarice was exhausted from having spent most of the night playing the piano. She had begun to rely on music to get her through those nights when Richmond did his disappearing act. Instead of sitting up stewing over where her husband was, she had taken to playing the piano until she was too worn out to think. The previous night Clarice had begun playing Beethoven sonatas at midnight, and the next thing she knew she was underscoring Richmond’s arrival home at six in the morning with an angry fugue. Now her fingers ached and she could hardly lift her arms.

  She poked Odette on her shoulder with her fork and said, “Wake up. You’re starting to snore.”

  Odette said, “I wasn’t sleeping. And I certainly wasn’t snoring. I never snore.” James heard her say that and let out a snort. “I heard every word you said. You were talking about how you surprised yourself yesterday with how much Beethoven you could still play from memory. See, I was listening.”

  “I finished telling that story ten minutes ago, Odette. Since then I’ve just been watching you sleep. Are you feeling okay?”

  Odette sidestepped Clarice’s question. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Work is really taking it out of me. The children get unrulier every year. And the parents, well, they’re just impossible. It seems like all the kids are on some sort of restricted diet that their parents have to come in and explain to me. And you’d better believe they make sure I know they’ll sue me and the school district, too, if their little darlings ever get near a peanut or a grain of refined sugar. It’s like they were bred in a lab somewhere, all of them allergic to this and intolerant of that. And try keeping those kids from trading candy loaded with chocolate and nuts this close to Halloween. It’s enough to drive you crazy.”

  Barbara Jean said, “The kids haven’t changed, Odette, you have. You’re getting old.”

  “Thank you both. It’s such a joy to come have Sunday supper and find out I’m a decrepit old woman who snores. Why I continue to hang out with you witches I will never understand.”

  Clarice laughed and said, “You hang out with us because we’re the only ones not too scared of you to tell you that you snore and that you’re old. But don’t feel bad about it. We’re all in the same boat.
”

  At the other end of the table Richmond said, “Now that is a nice car.”

  Everyone turned and saw the car Richmond was admiring. It was a steel-gray Lexus, polished to perfection, with windows tinted so dark you couldn’t see who was behind the wheel.

  No one spoke, each person at the table feeling the absence of Lester right then. He would surely have taken over the conversation at that moment. Lester had loved cars. He would have said that the Lexus was okay to look at, but way too small. From the 1970s onward he complained that luxury cars were disappointing now that they’d “taken the size out of ’em.” Every year, he took a tape measure with him to the Cadillac dealer and bought the longest one on the lot regardless of color or style.

  The Lexus moved forward at no more than three miles per hour. Just a few steps in front of the car, a heavyset young woman in a blue sweatshirt and blue sweatpants that were darkened to black from perspiration jogged in slow motion, struggling to lift her feet from the pavement.

  Barbara Jean asked, “Isn’t that your cousin’s girl?”

  Clarice said, “Yes, that’s Sharon.” The driver’s-side window of the Lexus slid down and Veronica stuck her head out of the window. She yelled something at her daughter that the spectators in the restaurant couldn’t hear.

  “What on earth is Sharon doing?” Odette asked.

  “I think she’s exercising,” Barbara Jean said.

  Clarice said, “A big girl like that shouldn’t run. It’s suicidal.”

  The car stopped and they watched as Veronica double-parked and got out. She walked up to her daughter, who stood doubled over gasping for air in the street, and wagged a finger at her. Sharon poked out her lower lip and then began to run in place in front of her mother’s car. Veronica gave her panting daughter a thumbs-up and headed toward the All-You-Can-Eat.

  Odette groaned. “Oh, Lord, not her. Your cousin is the last thing I want to deal with today.”

  Odette had longed to strangle Veronica since 1965. But she had resisted the impulse, for Clarice’s sake. Clarice didn’t feel much fondness for Veronica, but they were blood. She was stuck with her, in spite of the fact that her cousin had been a thorn in her rear as far back as Clarice could remember. And now she was worse than ever, the perfect example, Clarice thought, of what happens when a pile of cash gets thrown on top of a raging blaze of ignorance.

  Veronica’s family had been the last of the Leaning Tree old-timers to sell out to the developers and it paid off big for them. Given half a chance, Veronica would expound for hours about what a visionary her father had been for holding out the way he did. The truth was, Veronica’s father hated his wife so much that he preferred to keep the family poor rather than sell the property and see her live comfortably. Like Clarice’s mother and many of the devout women of her generation, Clarice’s aunt Glory had believed divorcing her husband and taking her rightful half of everything he owned would buy her a trip to hell, so her husband knew he had her stuck. He planned to torture her with his presence for decades. What he didn’t plan on was dropping dead of a heart attack in the middle of one of their nightly arguments. Glory skipped her husband’s funeral service to meet with a real estate lawyer. She moved next door to her sister Beatrice in an Arkansas retirement village a week later.

  Now Glory, Veronica, and Veronica’s family were all living off the big chunk of money that they had received for the property, which Clarice hoped Veronica thanked the Lord for every night since she was married to a man who was borderline retarded and couldn’t feed a bowl of goldfish, much less an entire family, on the piddling amount of money he made. Of course, like most of the poor folks from Leaning Tree who had lucked into the first real money of their lives when they sold their land, Veronica’s clan of morons were burning through the money as quickly as they could. Clarice had no doubt Veronica would show up on her doorstep pleading for a handout sometime in the near future.

  Veronica had a distinctive walk that was characterized by rigidly straight legs and jerky movements. She took fast, short steps—not quite running, not quite walking. Just the sight of her cousin trotting toward the window table that afternoon made Clarice ache to slap Veronica with her open palm. But instead of slapping her, Clarice said, “Veronica, darling, what a lovely surprise.” Then the two of them made kissing noises at each other.

  Clarice prepared herself to hear Veronica brag about her new car, but Veronica had other fish to fry. Without saying a word of hello to anybody—that was so like her—she started talking.

  “I figured I’d catch you here. I’ve got wonderful news. Guess what it is.” Clarice was about to say that she couldn’t possibly guess what her cousin’s news was when Veronica yelled out, “Sharon’s getting married!”

  Clarice said, “Congratulations. I didn’t even know she was seeing anybody.”

  “It was a whirlwind romance. She met him four weeks back and the two of them hit it off right away. And here’s the amazing thing, it was all foretold. I went to see Miss Minnie for a reading last month, and she told me that Sharon would meet a man and fall in love that very week. And wouldn’t you know it, she met the man of her dreams at church the next Sunday.” She wrinkled up her nose at Clarice and said, “That’ll teach you to doubt Miss Minnie’s powers. She hit the nail right on the head with this one. He was just who she described to me, tall, handsome, well-dressed. I took one look at him and told Sharon, ‘Go introduce yourself. That man is your future husband.’ A few dates later, she was asked to become Mrs. Abrams.”

  Veronica had been a true believer in Minnie’s abilities since she’d gone to see her for the first of many readings a few years earlier. Clarice was convinced her cousin went to see Minnie that first time for the specific purpose of getting under Clarice’s skin, since Veronica knew full well how Clarice felt about the fortune-teller. At that reading, Minnie predicted that Veronica’s husband, Clement, would have an accident of some sort. As it happened, Clement ended up in the hospital that same day after injuring himself at work. That was all the proof Veronica needed. Now she took everything Minnie said as the complete gospel truth. Clarice had reminded her, as nicely as she could, that predicting an accident for Clement wasn’t such an impressive feat. He worked construction and, being a blithering idiot, he sliced, punctured, or burned himself on a weekly basis. It was the inevitable result of putting that fool in the same room with band saws, nail guns, and blowtorches. You didn’t have to have second sight to see it coming. But Veronica was convinced that fate, having already showered her with much-deserved cash, had now provided her with her own oracle to go along with her imagined social prominence, and she wasn’t hearing anything to the contrary.

  Richmond said, “Sharon’s marrying Ramsey Abrams’s boy?” When Veronica nodded yes, Richmond looked right and left to see if anyone was within earshot and then whispered, “I don’t want to talk bad about the boy, but does Sharon know about the stuff with him and the ladies’ shoes?”

  “Not that Abrams boy,” she snapped. “Sharon’s marrying the other brother.” Clifton, the Abrams boy now engaged to Sharon, had spent his teenage years getting stoned and committing petty theft. As an adult, he had spent more time in jail than out. It seemed likely to Clarice that, if the Abrams boy had proposed to Sharon, it was because he was trying to get his hands on her mother’s money before it ran out.

  When no one said anything, Veronica seemed to guess what was on all of their minds. She added, “Clifton’s changed. Been saved by the Lord and the love of a good woman.”

  Veronica looked over at Minnie’s fortune-telling table. “I was hoping to catch Miss Minnie between appointments to get a quick reading. I want to find out what her spirit guide says before I pick the wedding date. I told Sharon I’d take care of all the plans so she can concentrate on losing weight. I want her to look just like her sisters did at their weddings.”

  Clarice said, “That’s so sweet of you,” but she thought something else. She thought of how Sharon’s older sisters wer
e two of the ugliest women she had ever seen, having inherited their mother’s heavy brow and too-close eyes and their father’s huge ears and sunken chin. Thin as the older girls were, Veronica would be doing her youngest no favor by making her look like her sisters.

  The door opened again and Minnie McIntyre, draped in a black cape with dozens of silver eyes pasted all over it, swaggered into the All-You-Can-Eat. Since her husband’s funeral she had taken advantage of Little Earl’s soft heart and guilted him into allowing her to do Sunday readings. Of course, he was also less concerned about offending his more conservative customers than he had been before, now that his All-You-Can-Eat merchandise was such a big hit with the college crowd.

  Veronica said, “I’m glad you’re here, Miss Minnie. I was hoping you had a few minutes free today.”

  Minnie didn’t answer Veronica. She turned to the occupants of the table and said, “I suppose y’all have heard about my latest prediction coming true. Charlemagne has opened the gates to the world of shadows to me now that he knows I’ll be coming to join him soon.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked toward heaven the way she always did now when she talked about her approaching death.

  Clarice couldn’t stop herself from rolling her eyes. Minnie saw her, and she looked for a moment as if she might punch Clarice. But just then, a woman waved at her and called her name from the client chair at Minnie’s table. Minnie said, “Veronica darlin’, I’ve got this one readin’ to do and I can help you right after.”