The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (9 page)

After seeing Big Earl laid to rest next to Miss Thelma, we kissed our children goodbye and watched them hurry back to their busy lives. Then James and I drove home to pick up the food I’d made for the funeral dinner and headed over to Big Earl and Minnie’s house.

No, just Minnie’s house now. Big Earl had lived across the street from the All-You-Can-Eat since I could remember, and this sad, new reality was going to be tough to get used to.

We found the widow situated on the porch swing surrounded by sympathetic well-wishers. Minnie made it clear that no one would be granted admission without first being given a recounting of the visit from her spirit guide and the prediction that her death was coming sometime over the next 360 days. So we stood in the heat while she acted out the tale again. Then, as soon as decency allowed, James and I offered our condolences for her husband’s passing and for her own upcoming demise and ran inside.

The place had changed a good deal since the days when I had spent a lot of time there. But that was to be expected. My memories were mostly from attending countless childhood parties in these rooms with Little Earl and our school friends. And the last time I’d stepped beyond the front door had probably been twenty years earlier, on the occasion of Miss Thelma’s funeral.

The interior was now a combination of the old and the new. Everywhere I looked, decorations and furnishings from the era of the first Mrs. McIntyre battled it out with things obviously brought in by the second wife. The old oak table I’d eaten at many times still took up most of the dining room’s floor space, but an enormous, glittering gold-plated chandelier hung above it now. The chandelier had hundreds of clear glass lightbulbs with jittery orange lights bouncing around inside of them to suggest candle flames. It was definitely a Minnie addition.

Family pictures and framed needlepoint scenes crafted by Miss Thelma shared the walls with photographs and posters of young Minnie dressed in a sparkling one-piece bathing suit. In the photos, Minnie stood onstage flourishing a handful of playing cards or staring at the camera in open-mouthed pretend surprise as Charlemagne the Magnificent levitated her above his head.

I had never understood why Big Earl married Minnie. They couldn’t have been more different in terms of their dispositions, and I never witnessed a moment of anything that looked like true affection between them. But looking at the old pictures of her that adorned the walls, the mantel, and just about every other visible surface, it made a little more sense to me. In those pictures, she was glamorous and desirable, an exotic and magical creature with an air of mystery. We had all thought of Big Earl as a father figure and a friend. But hadn’t he been a man, like any other? Maybe when he saw Minnie, he didn’t see the spiteful old woman who now sat on the front porch greeting guests with “Thank you for coming. Did you know I’ll be dead in a year?” Maybe Big Earl looked at her and saw a gorgeous, smiling showgirl freeing a squirming rabbit from a hat. Maybe seeing Minnie that way had helped him get through those lonely years until he was back with Miss Thelma. I hoped that was the way it had been for him.

I caught sight of the fountain Mama had told me about during her visit to my kitchen earlier in the week. It took up a quarter of the floor space in the living room and was even more of an eyesore than Mama had made it out to be. It was six feet high, and the two naked maidens Mama had described—one crouching, the other standing
over her dousing her with water from a pitcher—were life-size and realistically detailed. Rose-colored lights shone on the fountain from sconces on the wall above and behind it, giving the smooth marble surface of the statues the glow of pink skin. One of the lights submerged in the pool of water beneath the statues’ feet was malfunctioning. The light flickered on and off and made it appear as if the statues were quivering.

A voice said, “Hard to look away, ain’t it?” I turned and saw Thelma McIntyre standing next to me. Ever the lady, Miss Thelma was dressed for her husband’s funeral in a tasteful black mourning dress. Her face was covered by a veil.

I nodded in agreement, but didn’t say anything out loud to Miss Thelma. I had decided as soon as Mama left my house that first night that I was going to keep any ghost sightings to myself. I didn’t want to put James through what we had all gone through with Mama, her driving us to distraction by keeping up an almost constant dialogue with one invisible friend or another. Also, I was perfectly happy to do without everybody thinking I was out of my mind and giving me that
poor thing, she can’t help it
smile that the local folks had given my mother after word got around that she thought she was talking with the dead.

Another voice called out, “Over here, Odette” from the direction of the dining room. I turned, half expecting to see another dead friend. Instead, I saw Lydia, Big Earl’s daughter, waving me over to a ten-foot-long table of food that sagged under the weight of countless covered dishes. With Miss Thelma tagging along, I brought my addition to the feast to Lydia in the dining room.

While I helped Lydia shift things around to make room on the table for my platter, James declared himself starving and began to pile food onto a plate. Mama, Big Earl, and a well-dressed white woman who I didn’t recognize right away made their way through the crowded room toward Miss Thelma and me. People stood shoulder to shoulder in the room, but Mama and her friends glided across the space easily, squeezing between the guests in a way that made them appear to blink in and out of sight like Christmas tree lights.

When she got to the food table, Mama started to count. “One,
two, three, four, five, six. That’s six hams. Two smoked, two baked, a boiled, and a deep-fried. Very impressive.” Mama was of the generation that believed you showed your respect for the deceased with a tribute of pork. She turned to Big Earl, who seemed to be genuinely moved by the pork shrine in his dining room, and said, “Six hams. Earl, you were truly loved.”

Just then, Lydia pulled the foil off the dish I had brought. She bent over and took a long, deep sniff. She said, “Mmm, honey walnut glazed and spiral cut. Bless your heart.”

Mama yelled, “Seven!” and Big Earl appeared to blush a little bit.

I realized that Barbara Jean and Lester were at the other end of the table when I heard Barbara Jean slap her husband’s hand and say, “Stop right there. Strawberries make your throat close up.” He received another slap when he reached for a different fruit platter and had to be warned about the countereffects of citrus on his ulcer medication.

Mama asked, “Has Lester been sick?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. Asking if Lester was sick was like asking if it was likely the sun would come up in the morning. His vital organs had gone into a state of semi-retirement ages ago. I was surprised that Mama had forgotten.

Seeing my reaction, Mama said, “I know he’s been sick. I meant has he been extra bad off?” She pointed toward Lester as he and Barbara Jean sat down next to James in the living room. The strange white woman, who had just moments earlier been standing beside Mama and Big Earl, had followed Lester to his chair. She stood next to him, studying him closely as he began to eat his wife-approved plate of food. Mama said, “It’s just that she’s not usually interested in people unless they’re about to pass over. She hovered around your daddy for an entire month before he died.”

I recognized the woman then and let out a little squeak in spite of myself. Standing there in the living room in her fox stole was the regal former first lady, Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Mrs. Roosevelt. She moved in with my mother right after Daddy passed, so I heard about her antics nearly
every day during the last nineteen years of Mama’s life. And I had no reason to believe they’d parted company. Still, there are some people you just don’t expect to come across in an old friend’s living room.

Mama said, “Eleanor ain’t good for much these days—can’t be, the way she drinks and carries on—but she’s got a real knack for knowin’ who’s about to go.”

I whispered, “Well, tell her she’s likely to have a long wait. Lester’s been kicking at death’s door for more than ten years, but it never opens up for him.”

Clarice and Richmond came in burdened with yet another ham, and Clarice was immediately set upon by people eager to tell her how they had loved her piano playing at the service. After she escaped her admirers, Clarice came to the table and passed her ham to Lydia. Mama moved away then, presumably to tell Big Earl, who had wandered off somewhere with Miss Thelma, that the ham count was up to eight. Clarice saw the fountain in the living room and groaned. “Would you look at that? What that woman has done to this house is a crime.” She stopped herself; her good upbringing wouldn’t allow her to go on an anti-Minnie tirade in the woman’s own home an hour after Minnie’s husband had been put into the ground.

We filled our plates and joined Barbara Jean, Lester, and James in the living room. When we got there, Lester was complaining that the blinking light in the fountain’s pool was beginning to give him a headache. “Probably a loose bulb. Wouldn’t take but three seconds to fix.” I expected Barbara Jean to warn Lester away from any notions he might have had about fixing the underwater light in the fountain. It would be just like Lester to splash around in that water and come up with some sort of microbe that landed him in the hospital for a week.

But Barbara Jean was staring at something else. Her eyes were locked on the picture window and on the crowd gathered around Minnie out on the porch. Something she saw there caused a look to come over her face that was a mixture of amazement and terror. I was certain for a moment that I wasn’t the only person in the room newly able to see ghosts. Slowly, like she was a puppet being hauled upright
by tightening strings, Barbara Jean began to rise from her chair. In her trance, she didn’t seem to remember that she had a plate of food on her lap and I had to lunge and grab the plate before it slid onto the floor.

Clarice saw me snatch the plate from the air and asked, “What’s going on?”

Then we looked to where Barbara Jean’s gaze was focused, and we both understood. There, among the circle of cinnamon and mahogany faces surrounding Minnie on the front porch, was one white face. It was a face I recognized, one that I never thought I’d see again. Almost thirty years had passed since Clarice and I had last laid eyes on him, but we both knew it was Chick Carlson. His black hair was streaked with gray and he was thicker around the waist now. But he had just grown out of boyishness when he’d left Plainview, so that wasn’t a surprise. Even from where I sat, I could see the pale blue of his eyes and see that he was, in middle age, a mature version of the beautiful kid Clarice had proclaimed “King of the Pretty White Boys” on the day we got our first look at him in 1967. Barbara Jean and Chick had loved each other deeply and foolishly, the way only young people can do. And it nearly killed them both.

As Chick leaned over to take Minnie’s hand and offer condolences, Barbara Jean, wobbling a little on her red high heels, stepped away from us and toward the front window.

Then things got crazy.

A loud noise in the room drew everyone’s attention. It was a kind of a low-pitched “whoop,” like the short, insistent bark of a large dog. After that, there was a loud pop and the lights went out. It was still midafternoon and plenty of light came in from the windows, but the sudden dimness made people gasp anyway. Then we heard a series of thudding noises, another barking sound, and a splash.

Lester stood next to me now. His best black funeral suit was sopping wet and his sleeves were rolled up. He said, “I was just trying to fix that damn light in the fountain.” He looked down at himself, dripping water onto the carpet. “I guess I fell in.”

He held up his right hand for me to see. The tips of his fingers
appeared to be singed. “Hurt my hand, too. That light must’ve had a short in it.” Mama came up and stood between me and Lester. His brow wrinkled in confusion and he said, directly to Mama, “Dora, is that you?”

Mama said, “Hey Lester, nice to see you again.”

I said, “Oh, shit.”

Miss Thelma, Big Earl, and Mrs. Roosevelt walked up to us then. Miss Thelma handed a lit joint to Mama, who offered it to Lester. “Take a hit, baby. It’ll all make sense in a minute.”

Lester, whose suit had completely dried in the previous few seconds, continued to look uncertain about what had happened. But he said, “Yes, I think that sounds good,” and took the joint from Mama.

Someone called, “Barbara Jean,” and she turned around where she stood, just a few feet from the front window. The crowd parted between Barbara Jean and the corner of the room that contained the fountain. Now she and I both saw what most of the people in the room had already seen. Lester was on the floor, half in and half out of the now-darkened fountain, the two marble statues lying on top of him.

Barbara Jean ran to Lester’s side as Richmond threw the large statues off of him like they were made of cotton balls instead of stone. James shouted for someone to call 9-1-1 and moved in to start CPR. I knew it was too late. Lester—the true Lester, not the wet shell being pounded on by my well-meaning husband—was already shaking hands with Eleanor Roosevelt and telling her how much he had always admired her good works.

Mama turned to me and said, “I gotta tell ya, I’m surprised.”

No one was looking my way, so I answered her out loud. “Well, you said Mrs. Roosevelt was good at picking out who was about to die.”

“Oh, not that. I figured all along she was right about that. I just always assumed it would be Richmond who’d die underneath two naked white girls.” Mama walked away then, not interested in the commotion taking place at the foot of the fountain.

I went over and joined my friends. Clarice had her arms around
Barbara Jean, both of them seated on the floor. I got down on my knees beside them and grabbed ahold of Barbara Jean’s hand. She stared at Lester’s body as it rocked under James’s futile effort to revive him. She shook her head slowly from side to side and said, in the soft tone of a mother gently scolding a much-loved, naughty child, “I can’t take my eyes off you, can I? Not for two seconds.”