The Supremes Sing the Happy Heartache Blues

by Edward Kelsey Moore

  One of the men at the bar called out for a fresh beer, and Harold excused himself. After he rose from his squeaking chair to serve his customers, El said to Lily, “I really want to talk to you, just the two of us. Maybe we could take a walk around the block while Harold’s tending bar.”

  Lily twisted around in her chair and shouted out to the two men at the bar. “Hey, Perry. Hey, Jerome. This man here is a star. He’s the best blues man in the country, maybe the whole world.” They looked up and aimed their eyes in El’s direction. They lifted their empty bottles in a toasting gesture, then turned away again, waiting for Harold to supply replacements.

  Lily reached out and put a palm to El’s cheek again. “You know what we should do? We should sing. You and me could show the young ones how it’s done.”

  She took her hand away from El’s face and brought her palms together with a smack. “It’ll be so much fun. I’ve got my old costumes upstairs, and I still fit into them. Maybe we could get Bubba and Leroy to come play with us, just like the old days. Wouldn’t that be something?”

  Harold reappeared, chuckling, “It would be somethin’, all right. Bubba and Leroy have both been dead more than thirty years.”

  For a moment, Lily looked shocked by the deaths of her old friends. Then she said, “I know they’re dead. I was thinkin’ out loud.” She toyed with a tendril of her orange-yellow hair. “If we put the word out that El’s here, all kinds of folks would come see us. Won’t they, Harold?”

  Harold said, “They sure will, hon.”

  Odette watched El as he gazed at Lily through reddening eyes. Lily continued to talk, in her stumbling way, about the show she and El could perform. She named songs and described her costumes. She spoke with the innocent excitement of a child describing her class Christmas pageant. El looked nearly as miserable as he had the day Odette and James had first gone to his hospital room. This, Odette thought, is truly a defeated man.

  Harold said, “I think Friday night would be perfect. I’ll get the kid who cleans up the place to come in early and move the cases off the stage and set things up. This is gonna be something special. I’ll put together some flyers tellin’ folks El Walker’s gonna grace us with his presence and have the kid nail ’em up outside every blues and jazz club in the city. I’ll fill every seat in the house, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” El mumbled.

  “Of course it’s a good idea. You don’t want to disappoint your little sister, do you?”

  Lily said, “You have to stay with us. We’ve got plenty of room. You can stay in the apartment in back. It’s empty, except for a bunch of my clothes.” She looked toward her husband. “He can stay. Can’t he?”

  Harold said, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “That’ll help us prepare for the show, too. We can rehearse all day tomorrow and Friday afternoon.”

  Lily asked James, “Will you come? It’d be real nice. Almost like having Ruth here.”

  James fidgeted in his chair and looked toward the exit. Odette jumped in. “We’ll be here,” she said.

  “We’ll do an eight o’clock and a ten o’clock. No, a nine and an eleven. That’ll be good.”

  Lily stood up from the table and said, “I’ll go fix the room right now.” Both Odette and James offered to help, but Lily insisted that they sit and relax. She disappeared through a door beside the stage.

  In her absence, conversation ceased. Harold kept watch over El. James listened to the sounds of the thrumming air conditioner and the traffic passing by outside. Odette studied the spider in the candleholder. Finally El said, “Thank you, kids. I can take it from here.”

  Odette saw the two old men eyeing each other like pumped-up boxers in a ring. She was just formulating words to suggest that El might want to come to the hotel with them instead of staying here, but James stood to leave. He said “Good-bye” to his father and “Pleased to meet you” to Harold before she could speak. James helped Odette from her chair and, with a hand at her elbow, tugged her toward the door. She had just enough time to call back, “See you Friday night,” before she and James were outside, squinting in the sunlight.

  * * *

  THE DOOR SHUT behind Odette and James, and El asked Harold, “What’s Lily on?”

  “Nothin’, far as I know.”

  “I know high when I see it.”

  “Anything she’s takin’ now, she got from one of her doctors.” Harold crossed his arms across his belly. “You’ve got a lot of nerve showin’ up here and actin’ like you know anything about Lily. I’m the one who’s been takin’ care of her since she fried her brain.”

  “You mean since you fried her brain.”

  “I never forced a damn thing on her. She only wanted to do that shit in the first place because you did it. She’s lucky I was there to supply it, too. Anybody else and she’d be dead.” He held up one hand, fingers extended. “Five times I found her OD’d on the floor, and the great El Walker sure as hell wasn’t there to save her.”

  El said, “You can’t talk about how you’ve been takin’ care of Lily and then let her get up in front of people and sing, not the way she is. You can’t let her embarrass herself like that.”

  “Saturday morning, Lily will take her medication and won’t remember the show ever happened. You’re the one who’ll be embarrassed. You’ll finally look like what you’ve always been, just a little piece of a man. Even Lily’s gonna be able to see it.” Harold snorted. “I only wish Ma was here to get a load of how you turned out. My mother died callin’ out for you.” Harold pinched his mouth into a tight circle and in a screeching falsetto said, “‘Where’s Marcus? Go get Marcus. I wanna hear some music.’”

  El said, “Come on, man. That was a million years ago. Except for you, Lily, and me, everybody who lived in that house is dead. Can’t we be done with all that?”

  Even as he spoke those words, El heard the hypocrisy in them. He’d gotten the switch, the fist, and the extension cord, like all the kids at the foster home. But from the day he’d learned that pulling out his guitar and singing for Mrs. Taylor meant some of his share of beatings went to Harold instead, he’d been happy to exploit the deal. Loretta hadn’t been the only one to emerge from that house ready to trade anything for self-preservation.

  The passing years hadn’t diminished El’s sense of responsibility toward Lily or his guilt for having failed her when he’d been too high and self-absorbed to protect her. Why should Harold be done with the past when El wasn’t finished with it himself?

  Harold said, “You’ve been in my way since we were kids. Even after I got Lily away from you, she talked about you every day, like you were more than another damn junkie.” He leaned toward El and added, “I had to wait a long time, but this old dog’s finally gettin’ his day.”

  “You’ll get that day without me. I won’t climb up on that stage and help you make a fool of me, and I damn sure won’t help you make a fool out of Lily.”

  Harold unfurled the bar towel he’d balled up in his fist and used it to wipe a shining, clean circle on the surface of the dirty table. “Do what you want. Lily’s gonna be on that stage Friday night. Whether you drag your sorry ass out and let everybody see what’s left of you or Lily stands there cryin’ because you didn’t show up doesn’t matter to me. I win either way.”

  Lily rushed back into the room. Her hair was combed into a neat bun, and she had applied a fresh coat of makeup. “We should do ‘Blues in the Night.’ That was one of our good ones.” Her mouth twisted, and she seemed uncertain of what she’d said. “We sang ‘Blues in the Night,’ didn’t we?”

  “That was our first song. Out in the woods,” El said. “I think about that every day.”

  He listened as she named more dead friends she hoped might come play with them. As the “L” train thundered past outside, he understood that the leopard he’d followed here had played a mean trick on him. He would not find redemption. That big check from
Forrest wouldn’t fix everything. He couldn’t rescue his sister. He was years too late.

  Lily paced behind El’s chair. “This is the best thing that has happened in ages. To tell you the truth, I’ve been feeling pretty low. But now I just wanna sing.” She clapped her hands. “We should do ‘Stagger Lee.’ Wouldn’t that be fun?”

  She leaned down and embraced him from behind. “Friday’s just the day after tomorrow. We should start rehearsing now. Okay?”

  She picked up El’s guitar case and shambled off toward the stage.

  Using the toe of his shoe, Harold nudged El’s walker toward him. “Better get to work. I can’t wait for Friday night.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Lydia’s Diner in Chicago was nearly identical to Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat in Plainview. The menu offerings, though double the price, were the same. Lydia had even ordered her checkered tablecloths and curtains from the same supplier her brother, Little Earl, used. When she and Richmond had planned the evening, Clarice had believed that dining with family and friends in a familiar atmosphere would calm her nerves. Now, as she chewed at her lower lip and tapped her fingers against an imaginary keyboard on the edge of her table, she understood that she’d been mistaken.

  Because of the size of their party, the Plainview contingent had taken over half of the restaurant. They were divided into two long tables. Clarice and Richmond, their four children, their children’s families, and Beatrice and Forrest sat at one table. At the second table, Barbara Jean and Ray, Odette and James, along with their sons, daughter, and grandkids, sat with Veronica and Clement.

  Dinner began with a toast from Richmond, followed by an uncomfortably long prayer delivered by Beatrice. Clarice thought it was funny how her mother remained exactly the same under any circumstance. Beatrice was hundreds of miles away from home and seated next to a husband who’d once been her mortal enemy. Still, as if in her own dining room, she was happy to force her loved ones to sit through her admonishment that they were all hell-bound heathens before allowing them to enjoy their iceberg lettuce–and–tomato salads.

  It wasn’t just Beatrice who was the same. Since having agreed to return to her former home with Richmond, Clarice had been saying yes to nearly everything that had gone along with her old life. After a morning of practice, her afternoon had been spent with her mother, who’d persuaded Clarice to have her hair fried, dyed, and laid to the side, the way she’d worn it before she had declared her emancipation from all things fussy and uncomfortable. One casual remark from Richmond about looking pretty for family pictures that night had prompted Clarice to bind her body in a girdle and squeeze her feet into heels that made her want to scream with every step she took. It had been frighteningly easy to sit back and let the clock reverse.

  She tried to think of something, anything, other than her journey back to her old life with Richmond and found herself ruminating on the looming concert. She thought about the sonata whose second note she had somehow managed to forget at her Plainview recital just a few weeks earlier. What would happen if she failed to remember that note in front of an audience of thousands, instead of hundreds? Would she even be able to continue? Would she collapse there, onstage, from the weight of the humiliation?

  Throughout dinner, Clarice’s dining companions approached her at the head of the table. They gave her hugs and kisses. They complimented her hair and outfit. They told her how excited they were and declared that they were certain a great triumph lay ahead for her. Clarice was gracious. But with every word of flattery and admiration, she felt her overpriced food perform fresh acrobatics in her stomach.

  By the end of the meal, she wanted to respond to every well-wisher by shouting, “Unless you’re prepared to stand up on Saturday afternoon and yell out the name of the second note of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata when I need it, you should just shut the hell up!” Rather than say that, though, she favored each friend with the bright smile her mother had taught her as a child to paste onto her face in times of distress, and she looked forward to the moment when she could pry her sore feet from her torturous shoes.

  * * *

  BACK AT THE hotel after dinner, the group split apart. Some people headed for their rooms. Others made plans to reconvene at the pool on the lower level. A few went directly to the hotel’s bar. Richmond and Clarice said good night to everyone and took the elevator to the top floor, where, courtesy of the music festival’s organizers, they had a large suite with a view of the park and the stage Clarice would occupy in two days.

  The moment she stepped into her hotel room, Clarice slipped off her heels and uncinched her waist. She sat on the edge of the bed, wiggled her toes, and enjoyed the sight of Richmond removing his sports jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. She couldn’t imagine a day when she wouldn’t want to see him pulling off his clothes. Heart pounding in her chest, she heard herself saying, “Richmond, I’m sorry, but I can’t live with you again.”

  Richmond, his shirt open and untucked, sat down next to her on the bed. Speaking to her in his most soothing tone of voice, he said, “This is just nerves. You’re tense about Saturday, so you’re saying something you don’t mean.”

  “No, I’m not. I mean, yes, I am tense. But, no, I’m not saying anything I don’t mean. Not anymore. I don’t want to come back to the house.”

  Richmond looked into her eyes and said, “I know I did wrong by you, and I know you’ve got a lot of reasons to still be mad at me. But for five years, I’ve done my best to show you I’ve changed. I don’t know what else I can do.”

  “I’m not mad, and I don’t want you to do anything.” She placed one hand on his massive forearm. “For five years, I’ve been breathing free and feeling like everything in my life fit. But tonight I sat through dinner with a stupid smile stuck to my face even though my scalp hurt and I couldn’t breathe in my dress and my shoes made me want to cry. If I don’t stop now, I’ll start telling myself that aching from head to toe feels good.”

  Richmond wrung his big hands, longing for a football to throw or a bat to swing. Something he understood and could control. He rotated his wedding band with his right thumb and forefinger while staring at the clock on the nightstand as its glowing blue numbers displayed the passage of one, two, and then three minutes. He said, “I think I get what you’re saying. But I love you, and I want to be married.”

  “We are married. We just don’t live together. Why don’t we just keep things the way they are? It’s working fine, isn’t it?”

  “It’s not enough. I need a real marriage. What we’ve been doing the last few years isn’t a marriage to me. I need you there when I go to bed and when I wake up. I don’t want to wander around an empty house. I know it sounds crazy for me to say this, but I don’t want to worry that you’re with somebody else when we’re not together. What we have now might be working for you, but it isn’t enough for me.”

  Clarice thought of how, for decades, she had tried so hard to believe that she’d wanted the kind of marriage Richmond had wanted. She remembered years of lonely nights spent struggling to convince herself that what was enough for him was enough for her. Clarice reached out and draped her right arm around Richmond’s shoulders. She kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear, “Oh, darling, I’m so sorry. I know exactly how you feel.”

  CHAPTER 33

  We rode the train from our downtown hotel to the Blues Pot. The station was just a few blocks from the club, and it was an easy walk on a warm evening. I was flanked for the short journey by my sons, Eric and Jimmy. Barbara Jean and Ray strolled arm in arm ahead of us. Denise, who was and will always be a daddy’s girl, followed after us, holding James’s hand.

  When we arrived at the club, we were surprised to see it so crowded. I recognized the two quiet drunks who had been the only patrons of the club the afternoon James and I had dropped El off. They were seated on the same two corner stools they’d been holding down on Wednesday. I wondered if they’d ever gone home. To my surprise, their names came to me. I celebrated
this small victory over my often cloudy middle-aged mind by detouring slightly from the path to the table Lily had reserved for us to say hello to them. I said, “Hey, Perry. Hey, Jerome. How ya doin’?” and got a childish thrill out of their totally bewildered expressions. Then I followed my family and friends to our seats near the stage.

  The candleholders on the tables were clean, the candles lit. The light from them gave the place a warm glow that fit the old-timey ambiance of the club. The stage, cleared of the cardboard liquor cartons and dusty sound equipment I’d seen two days earlier, looked surprisingly elegant. Spotlights illuminated sapphire-blue curtains that I guessed must have been there on Wednesday but hidden by the stacks of boxes. The blue drapes ringed the performing platform and gave the impression that there was an expansive backstage area.

  Outside, it was a comfortable evening; inside, the Blues Pot was humid and hot. In violation of city anti-smoking laws, the mostly older patrons fired up cigarettes and cigars, whose glowing tips they kept pointed toward the ceiling to avoid scorching passersby in the packed tavern. The haze in the air was thickened by wisps of smoke rising from the stage lights, which, turned on for the first time in years, cooked through layers of cobwebs and tobacco tar.

  I was glad that our children had come with us. Of course, I couldn’t have kept them away if I’d tried. They each wanted to see the grandfather they’d recently heard so much about, the man who, in their mother’s descriptions, had gone from Satan incarnate to sad old man in just a few weeks.

  Someone said, “Hey, Odette,” and I looked up to see Terry Robinson. He bent down and wrapped his arms around me, kissing me on both cheeks. I hadn’t laid eyes on Terry since I’d waved good-bye to him as he’d hopped aboard a bus leaving Plainview five years earlier. He’d become more handsome. His hair was long. It extended all the way to his shoulders in a mass of thick braids. He was thin but not scrawny, as he had once been.