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

Chapter 24





Barbara Jean knew that Clarice leaving Richmond and returning to Leaning Tree didn’t have anything to do with her; it had been a

long time coming. Still, it felt like another piece in the conspiracy the whole world was engaged in, a sinister plot to drag her

back into the past and lock her up there. Here they were, the Supremes, gathering again in Leaning Tree, in the same house where

they had talked, laughed, and sung along to records on Odette’s pink and violet portable record player forty years earlier.

Driving to and from Odette’s old house—Clarice’s house, now—Barbara Jean saw the Leaning Tree of her girlhood all around her,

instead of the one that existed in the present day. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted landmarks that hadn’t stood in

decades—Abraham Jordan’s law office, the five-and-dime where her mother bought her cosmetics, the carpentry shop Odette’s

father had once owned. They were there, more real than the large homes and cute, overpriced boutiques that had replaced them,

until she blinked her eyes and made them vanish.

The people of the past continued to visit her as well. And when they came—Lester, Adam, Loretta, Chick, Big Earl, Miss Thelma,

the other Supremes and herself as young girls—Barbara Jean gave in completely to the past and let the force of it pull her

drunken mind along as if it were caught in the tide under the surface of the frozen river she now dreamed about every night.


Lester asked Barbara Jean to marry him on April Fool’s Day in 1968. At first she thought he was kidding.

Lester had taken the Supremes, Richmond, and James out to dinner. Being a Monday, it had been an early night. James worked

mornings. The girls had school.

Barbara Jean was the last to be dropped off at home that night. Lester parked outside Big Earl and Miss Thelma’s house, and she

waited for him to jump out of the car and come around to open her door the way he always did. But Lester sat gazing forward as the

Cadillac idled. So she said, “Well, good night, Lester,” and she reached for the handle to open the door.

Lester put a hand on her shoulder and said, “Hold on a minute, Barbara Jean. There’s something I want to talk to you about.” He

left his hand on her shoulder, the most physical contact they’d ever had, and began to speak.

“Barbara Jean,” he said, “I’ve been trying hard not to make a fool of myself about this, but I’m sure by now you know that I

have feelings for you.”

She expected him to grin and shout “April Fool!” But he continued with a straight face, and she realized, with as much fear as

interest, that he was serious.

“You probably think of me as an old man—”

“No, I don’t, Lester,” she interrupted.

“It’s okay. You’re young. When I was your age I thought forty-two was ancient. But, here’s the thing. Forty-two isn’t really

all that old. And you’ve always seemed like someone more mature than your years. So, I’ve been thinking that maybe you and me

could spend more time together.”

When she didn’t respond, he added, “Just so you understand, I’m not talking about just messing around or something. I’m

talking about you and me really being together. What I want is a wife, Barbara Jean.”

She didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded and thought, Boy, were you right about this one, Clarice.

“You’ll be done with school in a couple months and you’ve probably been thinking about what’s ahead for you.”

Lester was wrong about that. While Barbara Jean had been raised to always have an eye out for the next opportunity—“You got to

be a forward-thinkin’ woman if you wanna get anywhere in this world,” her mother always said—she had done nothing but try not

to think about the future since the day she first kissed Chick Carlson in the hallway of the All-You-Can-Eat. And it was becoming

increasingly difficult to do. Practically every night, Chick whispered his dreams to her as she lay in his bed with her head

resting on his chest. Chick had been reading about cities where they could be together. He made it sound so easy, so possible.

They would slip off together to one of the mixed-marriage Promised Lands, maybe Chicago or Detroit, and everything would be

perfect. Barbara Jean wanted to fantasize along with him, but where Chick imagined minor inconveniences that they could link arms

and breeze right past, Barbara Jean saw impassable obstacles of race, ignorance, and rage. So she let Chick talk about an idyllic

tomorrow, but she blocked out his words and only listened to the sound of his heartbeat.

Lester continued, “I just want you to know that I’d like to be a part of your thinking. I’ve got a fair amount of money. And if

things go the way I believe they will, I’ll have a lot more soon. I could certainly take care of you and give you anything you

might want. Not that I’m trying to buy you, or anything like that. I just thought you should know that I can take care of you

right. I could even buy you Ballard House and fix it up for you, if you want. I remember how much you said you liked it.”

“I did?” Barbara Jean asked, not recalling having said any such thing.

“Yeah, that first time you rode in my car, when we passed by the house you said, ‘Look at that place. I’d love to live in

something like that.’ ”

Barbara Jean had thought that very thing every time she passed the house, but she didn’t realize she had ever said it out loud.

But Lester had heard her and remembered all these months later. It touched her heart.

“You don’t have to decide anything right now. I know this probably isn’t what you were expecting to hear from me today,” he

said. “I’m going to be away in Indianapolis for the next week and a half to do some business. You can think about it and give me

an answer when I get back.”

The only words Barbara Jean could think to say were “Thank you, Lester.” So she left it at that.

Lester took his hand away from her shoulder. Then he leaned in and planted a kiss on her cheek. He slid away from her and hopped

out of the car. Then he walked around to the passenger side and opened it. Again, she said, “Thank you, Lester.”

She hurried up the walkway to Big Earl and Miss Thelma’s house without glancing back and she let herself in. As she climbed the

stairs to her room, Barbara Jean thought of her mother. When Loretta was dying, she had spent hours looking back at her life and

listing the ways the world had wronged and cheated her. The main thing she had been denied was “a man who could look me in the

eye and swear that he’d be my man forever and that he would always do right by me and my baby.” Now, after what Lester had just

said to Barbara Jean in his car, she heard the voice of her mother panting in her ear, “This is it, girl, what we been waitin’

for.”

When she got to her room that night and peered out of the window, she saw that the light was on in the storeroom of the All-You-

Can-Eat. But she pulled down her window shade and didn’t go to see Chick.

For two days, Barbara Jean kept what Lester had said to her all to herself, hoping that an answer would come if she thought about

it long enough. She stayed behind her locked bedroom door and avoided everyone. If asked, she claimed to be sick, which was half

true because holding her secret inside made her stomach churn throughout each of those days. And her shade remained drawn, because

she knew that if she stared too long at the storeroom light across the street, she would run to Chick and the decision would be

made for her.

Finally she had to let it out, so she called a meeting of the Supremes. In the gazebo behind Odette’s house, the very one that

she and Chick had sneaked off to so many times, she told Odette and Clarice about Lester’s proposal.

Clarice was overjoyed. She said, “See? See? I told you Lester was interested in you. You told him yes, didn’t you?”

“I told him I’d think about it.”

“What’s there to think about?” Clarice asked. “There’s not a colored woman in town who wouldn’t jump at the chance to have

Lester. Veronica’s been trying to get him to notice her since she was thirteen. You’d better lay claim to him while you can, or

somebody else’ll beat you to it.”

Odette didn’t say a word while Clarice went on and on about Lester’s proposal as if it were the greatest thing that had ever

happened to anyone in the world. Barbara Jean thought that Clarice sounded as excited about this as she did when she talked about

herself and Richmond. Clarice stood up from the wooden bench that lined the lattice walls of the gazebo and walked in a tight

circle, already planning Barbara Jean’s wedding.

Clarice named ten girls from their high school, in descending order of height, who would make the best bridesmaids. She rattled

off a full menu of foreign-sounding foods Barbara Jean had never heard of, freely spending Lester’s money.

Barbara Jean asked her to stop, saying that she had to think about it. Clarice countered, “Lester is a nice guy, and he has all

kinds of money. He’s a little on the short side, but he’s handsome. I don’t see what’s holding you back. Do you, Odette?”

That was when Odette said it, just as casual as can be. “Well, Barbara Jean’s in love with Chick.”

Clarice said, “Chick? What are you talking about?”

“They’ve been together for months. Don’t you have eyes, Clarice?”

Barbara Jean stared at Odette, unnerved by what her friend had just said. Being in love with James seemed to have imbued Odette

with a hypersensitivity to other people’s feelings that hadn’t been there before. This new, greater power of observation,

combined with Odette’s tendency to say what was on her mind, made her kind of spooky in addition to being a pain in the neck.

Clarice turned to Barbara Jean and asked, “Is that true?”

Barbara Jean was going to lie, but she looked at Odette’s face. Odette cast her open, accepting gaze on Barbara Jean and the

truth came on out. Barbara Jean described the first time she kissed Chick. She told them about the nights they had shared in the

storeroom. She repeated to them what Chick had said to her about the two of them running away together to Chicago or Detroit, how

couples like them weren’t a big deal there and they could get married.

Odette said, “You should go talk to Big Earl, see what he has to say about it.”

“I can’t do that. What am I going to say? ‘Guess what, Big Earl, I’ve been sneaking out of the house you invited me into and

going over to f*ck the white busboy in your storeroom.’ I can’t have him thinking of me that way. I can’t have him thinking I’

m like …”

Barbara Jean stopped there, but Clarice and Odette both knew how that sentence ended.

Clarice always thought of herself as the most practical of the three of them. She said, “Chick’s sweet. And he’s good-looking.

But he’s got no money and no prospects that I can see. Plus, there’s his brother to think about.”

They had all seen Desmond Carlson driving slowly past the All-You-Can-Eat in his red truck at least once a week over the past

several months. He never came inside the restaurant to cause trouble; Big Earl wouldn’t have tolerated anything like that, and

Desmond knew it. But if he caught sight of his brother through the window as he cruised by, he made obscene gestures and called

his brother out to fight before eventually giving up and speeding away.

Clarice said, “That crazy redneck brother of Chick’s will track you both down and kill you even if you make it to Chicago or

Detroit.”

Barbara Jean didn’t respond to that because the truth of it was clear. And it wasn’t only Desmond Carlson. There were plenty of

folks in Plainview, black and white, who’d happily have seen Chick and Barbara Jean dead rather than see them together. That was

just how things were.

When the silence stretched out a while longer, Clarice assumed that the debate was over and that Barbara Jean had seen that she

was right. She went back to planning a huge spectacle of a wedding for Barbara Jean. Clarice kept it up during the ride from

Odette’s house and didn’t stop until Barbara Jean jumped out of her car in front of Big Earl’s.

In her heart, Barbara Jean knew Clarice was right; there was only one choice that made good sense. But the gorgeous picture

Clarice painted of a hand-embroidered wedding dress with a ten-foot lace train battled an even more exquisite image in Barbara

Jean’s head, the vision of what she truly wanted.

In the years that came later, Barbara Jean would imagine what might have happened if she had been more like Odette when she was

young. Maybe if she’d had more courage, she could have told common sense to kiss her ass and run straight at that sweet vision of

a life with Chick in Detroit or Chicago or anywhere. Maybe if she had been braver, her boy would have lived.