The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues

by Edward Kelsey Moore

  Odette and James paused on the sidewalk and waved at someone as they approached the diner’s entrance. Barbara Jean and Ray Carlson soon came into view. Barbara Jean had been the prettiest girl in Plainview when they were growing up. At sixty, she was the wealthiest woman in town and still possessed the type of beauty men wrote songs about and acted like fools over. Today, dressed up and made up for church, she was a vision of elegance and perfection. Ray was just as eye-catching. Behind his back, Clarice, Barbara Jean, and Odette sometimes called him “the King of the Pretty White Boys,” a nickname Clarice had given him as a teenager. Though he was no longer a boy, Ray was headed toward old age just as pretty as he’d ever been. Almost a year after their long-delayed wedding, these two former teenage lovers inspired admiration, lust, and envy simply by walking down the street.

  Clarice rose to greet her friends and walk through the buffet line with them. Minutes later, they were seated at the window table that had been permanently reserved for them since 1967, in recognition of Richmond’s status as a football hero, Clarice’s renown as a local music celebrity, and Barbara Jean’s breathtaking beauty. Barbara Jean and Odette sat at Clarice’s right and left. Ray and James took their places at the opposite end of the table on either side of Richmond.

  Odette lifted the plate that held her slice of cherry pie and waved it beneath her nose. “This smells incredible,” she said. “Clarice, you are an angel. You know, there’s not a single piece left. Ladies, I’m warning you now that you’ll want to avert your eyes when I get to work on this. It won’t be attractive.”

  Clarice laughed and said, “I’d expect nothing less.”

  As Odette quickly and loudly devoured her pie, Barbara Jean asked Clarice about preparations for the recital Clarice would be performing in two weeks to benefit the pediatric unit at University Hospital. In recognition of Barbara Jean’s philanthropy, the children’s wing bore the name of Barbara Jean’s late son, Adam. In addition to raising money for the hospital, the performance would serve as a run-through for a program Clarice would play in Chicago in July. The Chicago concert, outside in a downtown park, would put Clarice before the largest audience of her career.

  “I’m still trying to decide about one piece,” Clarice said. “I’ve got to make up my mind soon. The Chicago organizers want to know what I’m playing so they can advertise, and the hospital recital programs have to go to the print shop this week.”

  Having finished her pie, Odette began working on the other items of food she’d taken from the buffet line. Between bites, she asked Clarice, “Are you nervous?”

  Clarice glanced at Richmond. He was tossing an imaginary football in the air, entertaining Ray and James as he held court on his favorite subject. Not long after Clarice had left Calvary Baptist for the local Unitarian congregation, she and Richmond had fallen into a routine of him picking her up every Sunday morning and driving her to her new church on his way to Calvary, where he was still a deacon. But today she’d awoken feeling antsy. So as soon as Richmond had pulled into her driveway, she’d waved him inside and then dragged him to her bedroom to enjoy a fast tussle that had made them both late for their respective services.

  “I’ve been a little edgy,” Clarice said. She carefully trimmed a narrow strip of fat from a slice of roast beef, chewed, and swallowed. “But I’m finding ways to handle the strain.”

  The sound of rustling cloth and the tinkling of a bell announced the entrance of Minnie McIntyre. She had on a loose white robe with a gold belt. As she always did when she was on the job, she wore a white turban with a small silver bell jutting out from its top. The bell rang, Minnie said, whenever she received a message from her spirit guide, a dead magician named Charlemagne the Magnificent. In her right hand, she held a rhinestone-encrusted cane. She’d needed the cane to steady her since an accident that had resulted in a broken ankle. Minnie blamed Clarice for causing her injury. She claimed to have no memory of having taken the tumble that broke her ankle after losing her balance as she reached out to grab Clarice’s throat in a fit of anger. What she did remember was that Clarice was at fault and that, in spite of her own willingness to pardon Clarice’s transgressions, she was duty-bound to deny Clarice her forgiveness until Charlemagne told her it was time to move on. So far, she said, the spirits were not in a forgiving mood.

  On her way to her station, Minnie stopped at the window table. Bowing her head so that the bell atop her turban rang, Minnie said to Clarice, “Charlemagne has been talking about your big Chicago concert, but I don’t want to upset you by telling you what he said.” She patted Clarice’s shoulder. “You have my sympathy.”

  Erma Mae stepped through the kitchen door just in time to hear the tail end of what her mother-in-law was saying to Clarice. Moving far more quickly than she ever could have before healthy eating trimmed her figure back to her high school weight, Erma Mae rushed to reach the window table before things got out of hand. She knew that Clarice was likely to ignore any provocation, but she’d seen what Odette was capable of doing and saying when she went into protector mode.

  Erma Mae placed a hand on her mother-in-law’s arm and said, “Miss Minnie, Veronica Swanson is waiting for you.” Escorting the fortune-teller toward her table in the corner, Erma Mae turned toward Clarice and mouthed, “Sorry.”

  Clarice was struck by the urge to run home and practice. After keeping company with Veronica and Minnie, it would feel good to work out some frustration on the piano. Besides, even though the hospital concert wasn’t important in comparison to most of the recitals she’d played recently, she wanted it to be a success. The concert was for a good cause, and it would be her last performance before Chicago.

  Clarice’s pulse quickened as she silently counted down the days until the journey north to Chicago. The anxiety she’d temporarily banished that morning with Richmond returned as she thought of just how close she was to the date of the big show. Her neck stiffened and her temples began to throb.

  She considered running to the other end of the table and dragging Richmond home for their second stress-relieving go-round of the day. Why not? He wasn’t likely to say no. Also, she had just read an article by a doctor who maintained that sex was good for lowering blood pressure. It wasn’t just that she’d be alleviating stress; she could be preventing a stroke. It would be like filling a prescription, really. She could be saving her life and Richmond’s, too.

  “Clarice, are you all right?” Odette asked. “You look a little flushed.”

  “I’m fine,” Clarice said. Her eyes were on Richmond as, all dimples and good humor, he expelled his loud bass bark of a laugh in response to something Ray had said. “I’ve got a bit of a headache, but I plan to take something for it just as soon as I get home.”

  Clarice ate one more bite of roast beef and set her knife and fork on her plate. “I’m sorry to take off so soon,” she said. “But I’ve got practicing to do, and it would probably be best if I took that medicine before my headache gets any worse.” She pushed her plate of cherry pie toward Odette and, rising from her chair, called out, “Richmond!”

  CHAPTER 5

  A hospital is a crowded place when you’re a woman who sees ghosts. The minute James and I stepped through the doors of University Hospital, I met up with a slew of dead folks. The recently dead, the long dead, and the nearly dead strolled the hallways in varying states of joy and sorrow. People who were thrilled beyond measure to be released from the bonds of the physical world glided along next to others who were pissed off beyond consolation to be parted from their bodies. Most of them ignored me. Some, aware that I could see them when others couldn’t, nodded my way as James and I passed by. A few even waved and called out, “Hey, Odette!”

  I’ve never figured out how the dead know that I can see them. It could be that my mother tells them about me. When Mama was living, she had the same gift. Unlike me, she saw no reason to keep quiet about it. In fact, she took considerable pleasure in passing on messages from the other side. As soon as Mam
a’s special ability made its appearance, the departed began showing up on her doorstep, asking her to play interpreter between them and their survivors. Feeling that it was her duty to help people and possessing an affinity for putting her nose in other folks’ business, Mama eagerly cooperated.

  Unfortunately, her assistance was rarely appreciated. It turns out that dead folks are just like live ones. The biggest fools are the ones with the most to say. The deceased with good sense are usually too busy leading their afterlives to bother chitchatting with living friends and relations, but the dead buffoons can’t shut the hell up. Mama’s ghost acquaintances wanted to confess their long-ago extramarital affairs, gossip about nonsense that everyone they knew had stopped caring about, and criticize their surviving spouses’ home-decorating choices. They rarely conveyed any useful information. To my knowledge, they never once shared winning lottery numbers, passed on a decent recipe, or even helped someone find their lost car keys. So, because Mama wasn’t telling the living anything they wanted to hear, she gained a reputation as a crackpot and a nuisance, instead of as a psychic.

  Of course, there was evidence supporting the notion that Mama wasn’t quite right in the head before she started seeing ghosts—her well-known passion for marijuana smoking, for instance. Mama put the most glassy-eyed college boys to shame. And I gave her a hard time about her habit, until my months of chemotherapy. Though my Indiana State Police captain husband prefers not to notice, I still regularly tote my weed and rolling papers off to our backyard to sing my changed tune.

  On the advice of a witch, Mama had once hauled her heavily pregnant body up into the branches of a sycamore tree. The witch had told her that climbing the tree and singing a hymn there would get her overdue baby to come. Sixty years later, people still walk up to me and ask, “Is it true that you were born in a sycamore?”

  Yes, I was born in a sycamore tree. And because of the circumstances of my birth and an old superstition that a child born off the ground will wind up fearless for his or her entire life, I continue to face the rumor that I’m not afraid of anything. Truth is, plenty of things scare me. When I was growing up, though, all the adults in my life believed that my birth in the tree had made me endlessly brave. And when the people you love and trust tell you as a child that nothing frightens you, part of you believes them even after life has proved them wrong. So while I’m not fearless, I’m no scaredy-cat.

  The elevator doors opened with a quiet squeak, and James and I stepped out onto the brightly lit fourth floor of University Hospital. Barbara Jean was at the nurses’ station there, talking with two women. The nurses’ pale blue surgical scrubs contrasted sharply with Barbara Jean’s magenta tea dress. She wore a pair of matching high-heeled shoes that made my feet ache just to look at them. If I’d ever been reckless enough to try on those shoes, I’d have made it about three steps before either the four-inch heels or my ankles would’ve collapsed.

  Nearly everyone on the hospital staff knew Barbara Jean. Her first husband, Lester Maxberry, was quite a bit older than she was, and during his last twenty years, every organ in poor Lester’s body operated on a part-time basis. As soon as the doctors would get one part up and running, something else would go on strike. When he died, in 2005, the only shocking thing was that an illness didn’t get him; an accident did. His death was caused by plain old bad luck.

  Lester died with a bigger pile of money in the bank than anyone in Plainview, including Barbara Jean, had imagined. When she sold his business, the stack of cash grew higher. These days, Barbara Jean occupies her time with giving that money away. The staff members who’d arrived too recently to know Barbara Jean from the many trips she made to the hospital with Lester know her as a benefactress and a volunteer.

  The consultation James and I were headed to was taking place in the Lester Maxberry Women’s Health Center at University Hospital. If you turned left after walking through the visitors’ entrance to the building, you’d be facing the children’s wing and the Adam Maxberry Auditorium, named after Barbara Jean’s son, who died as a little boy. Our friend Clarice would be performing a piano recital in that auditorium in a week and a half. Barbara Jean also ran a charity that brought free flower arrangements to hospital patients. If you had no family or if your people were needy, the Maxberry Foundation made sure your room was filled with as many blooms as you wanted.

  At the nurses’ desk, Barbara Jean gave each of us a quick hug. “What a happy coincidence,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting to see you.”

  She said she just happened to be on the same floor as my doctor’s office, delivering a vase of flowers to a patient in a connecting ward. But I wasn’t buying it.

  Barbara Jean is kind. She has lived through great suffering and managed to come out on the other side without bitterness. But she’s no actress. She was there to see me.

  I was about to receive the results of tests I’d had a few days earlier to mark five years since I’d been treated for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. I wasn’t keeping the tests secret. Barbara Jean and Clarice had been with me through every step of my illness, and they knew the dates as well as I did. But I also didn’t want to make a big deal of it. My husband and my friends weren’t what you’d call easygoing when it came to matters of health, not my health at least. I thought that downplaying the five-year anniversary might save us all some stress.

  I should have known better.

  Barbara Jean said, “I was just about to head over to the surgical wing and drop off these flowers.” She picked up a milky-green glass vase from the counter of the nurses’ station. The vase contained an arrangement of roses that matched Barbara Jean’s ensemble so perfectly you’d have sworn she’d had the cloth of her dress woven to match the flowers, or maybe had the roses bred to coordinate with her dress. Considering her devotion to fashion and her unlimited resources, either seemed a real possibility.

  “They’re for Mr. Walker, the man who sang at Miss Beatrice’s wedding. Poor thing has diabetes real bad, and they had to take part of his foot this morning. Apparently, he’s got no family. And the nurses say he’s depressed.”

  The blues man had seemed in bad shape when he’d limped off into the shadows after his performance at the wedding. I wondered for a moment if maybe Barbara Jean really was at the hospital to deliver flowers. But just as I began to think I might have been flattering myself that she was there to check on me, I heard another familiar voice repeating the same line I’d just heard. Behind me, Clarice said, “What a happy coincidence. I didn’t expect to see you.”

  Clarice hugged me and gave me a peck on the cheek. She did the same with James and Barbara Jean. After the hugs, she said, “I was checking out the piano for my recital.”

  The auditorium was on the first floor, and we were on the fourth.

  James studied the carpet rather than look at Clarice as she performed an acting job even worse than Barbara Jean’s. As soon as I glanced his way, I knew that he’d called them to let them know when and where to find me. I couldn’t help but feel a little happy about it. Like having good friends who will risk annoying you to show their support, having a husband who will ignore your wishes to make sure he fulfills your needs is too damn good to be upset about.

  “Let’s cut the crap, ladies,” I said. “I’m glad to see you. Quit your lying and come along with us.”

  Barbara Jean pressed her hand to her chest and put on a fake offended expression. She said, “I’ll have you know I wasn’t lying. Not entirely. The man who sang at the wedding is here, and the flowers really are for him.” To Clarice, she said, “Isn’t it a shame that our friend has such a suspicious nature?” She placed the vase back on the counter. Then she hooked one arm around my elbow and the other around Clarice’s and said, “Shall we go, Supremes?”

  With James trailing behind, we marched for my doctor’s office, arm in arm, just the way we had strolled the halls of our high school more than forty years earlier.

  My doctor was running late, so we sat talking in the
waiting room outside her door. James hardly said a word. With one hand he grasped my fingers, squeezing them until they went numb. With his other hand, he rubbed his jawline. James has a dark, raised scar that runs from his right earlobe to the tip of his chin, a souvenir from the lowlife father he barely knew. When James was fretful, he massaged his scar as if it had become inflamed.

  Meanwhile, Clarice and Barbara Jean couldn’t stop chattering. Barbara Jean gave us the details about the bird conservation project that had taken her husband, Ray, to the West Coast for the week.

  When we met Ray, he was a dirt-poor and drop-dead gorgeous teenager who raised and sold chickens for a living. He was so often covered with chicken feathers that, in addition to “King of the Pretty White Boys,” we called him “Chick.” That nickname faded from use, but Ray’s obsession with birds never went away. He now worked at the university, studying hawks. Years after he’d stopped sharing his living quarters with chickens, it was still rare to find him without a stray feather on his shoulder.

  Clarice rattled off a list of events she had in mind for our families to enjoy when her children and mine gathered in Plainview after her Chicago recital. Our two daughters were best friends who spoke every few days, but the July reunion would mark one of those increasingly rare occasions when her four kids and my three, along with their spouses and children, would all be in Plainview together. I gave my wholehearted approval to her plans for a week of nonstop eating and endless spoiling of grandbabies.

  Talk of grandchildren led to some good-natured competition between Clarice and me over my two grandkids and hers. That opened the conversation to the pictures of Veronica’s grandson, Apollo, that she had been showing around town. At the mention of that child, we all went quiet. That way, we let it be known that we had witnessed the unique horrors of that poor baby but, because we’d been raised right, weren’t going to discuss them out loud.