The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (40 page)

She stopped and, except for the occasional chirp or caw from the birds, the room was quiet. There was really nothing more to say. She let out the breath that she hadn’t been aware she was holding.

While she talked, Chick had aimed his gaze downward and stared at the floor. Now he released her hands and slid his chair away from
hers. As he got up and moved away from her, Barbara Jean told herself that it was fine,
she
was fine. She had done what she needed to do, what Odette had insisted she do. If it ended with this, with Chick stepping away from her, that was okay. At least this time they would part with the whole truth being the last thing spoken. What mattered was that she would know how the story ended, like Odette had said.

Barbara Jean lifted her eyes from the empty chair Chick had vacated. He had moved a few feet away and now stood just to the side of his desk. The afternoon sun blazing into the windows backlit him, turning him into a silhouette. She couldn’t see his face. But she heard his voice, strong and exquisitely out of tune, when he opened his mouth and started singing.

“My baby love to rock, my baby love to roll. What she do to me just soothe my soul. Ye-ye-yes, my baby love me …” He sang louder and louder, gyrating his hips and pivoting around until he was wiggling his narrow rear in her direction.

She heard herself let out a howl that had been waiting too, too long to come out. She applauded, clapping her hands together until they ached, as Ray Carlson, King of the Pretty White Boys, swayed in the sun and danced the blues.

By the time Richmond brought me to the house in Leaning Tree, I was holding on to just a tattered corner of the world of the living. I had used up all of the energy I had left in me explaining to Richmond what I needed him to do, and I spent most of the drive from the hospital resting my head against the car window, watching the scenery go by.

Throughout that short ride, I kept picturing James and how he was going to react when he found out I’d run off the moment I got the chance. He’d be good and mad at first. He would ask Richmond why he helped me do this foolish thing and Richmond would shrug those big shoulders of his and say, “She told me to.” James would cuss, maybe even take a swing or two at his friend. But he’d think it over and forgive Richmond, eventually.

I hadn’t exactly lied to James. I’d promised him he wouldn’t come back to the hospital and find me dead. And that was the truth. He would be angry with me for a while, but then he’d admit to himself that I would have found a way to do what I wanted no matter what. And then he’d acknowledge that he couldn’t have brought himself to help me do it. Yes, James would understand what I’d done. He couldn’t stay married to me for thirty-five years without learning to roll with the punches. He might even laugh about it someday, maybe turn it into a funny story to entertain the grandkids with when they’re older: “Hey, did I ever tell y’all about that last crazy thing your Grandma Odette did?”

Richmond helped me out of the car and into the wheelchair we’d borrowed from the hospital. When he wheeled me back behind the house we crossed paths with my father. Daddy looked up from the
1960s-style riding lawn mower he was tinkering with. He saw me and smiled. Then he wiped his hands on a red shop rag that was covered with black oil stains and he waved at me.

Richmond and I bumped along the cobblestone path that led past the gazebo. Clarice, bless her heart, had been good about taking care of Mama’s garden. It looked better that year than it had in ages. The climbing roses that Mama had trained onto trellises and an arch were in full bloom. The pink and white flowers and rich green foliage provided shade for Aunt Marjorie, who sat under the arch smoking a cigar and sipping gold-colored liquor from a mason jar. She called out, “Hey, Dette.” It cheered me to hear that wonderful, unique voice of hers again, that sound that made you imagine she gargled with pine tar and rock salt. But I didn’t have time to say more than a quick hello to her. Richmond, a good soldier who knew a thing or two about breaking rules, was intent on accomplishing the mission I’d assigned to him. He quick-stepped behind my chair as fast as his bad ankle would allow.

When we got to the far end of the garden, where it was too overgrown for him to continue to push the wheelchair, Richmond stopped. He came to my side, slid one arm under my back and the other beneath my knees, and lifted me. Then he carried me up the hill toward my sycamore tree.

At the base of the tree, Richmond put me down with my back pressed against the warm bark of its trunk. He saw that I didn’t have the strength to keep my head from falling forward, so he adjusted my position against the tree. Then he lifted my chin so I could look up into the branches and see the green leaves against a blue sky unbroken by a single cloud.

I thanked him, but he couldn’t hear me.

I let go then of that little bit of the world I’d been holding on to. When hazy liquid flooded in from the corners of my vision, I didn’t try to swim against it. I let the tide carry me up toward the branches of the tree where my mother had given birth to me after following a witch’s advice so many years earlier.

“Hello, tree, my first cradle, my second mother, the source of my strength, the cause of my struggles. I’m back home.”

I saw Mama then. She was wearing her best dress, the light blue one with embroidered yellow flowers and green vines. Her legs were crossed at the ankle, and she kicked her feet out in front of her like she was on a swing set. She shared her tree branch with Eleanor Roosevelt.

I breathed deep and inhaled the smell of the soil, the aroma of the honeysuckle that drifted up the hill from the garden, the faint odor of Aunt Marjorie’s foul-smelling cheap cigar. I felt good. Felt like whatever happened next would be just fine. I floated and waited.

I looked around for that welcoming light I’d heard about, but I didn’t see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds—not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama’s garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I’d been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me.

I looked up then to tell Mama how overjoyed I was to see that crossing over was just like she had said it would be. That was when I saw Mrs. Roosevelt reach out, pick something from the tree, and then pass it to Mama. I watched as Mama rolled whatever she’d been handed around in her palms before letting it go. It fell from her hands, through the branches and leaves of the tree. Finally, it came down to me where I sat on the ground—or floated in the air, I wasn’t quite sure which I was doing. I felt the thing land on my lap.

The object Mama had dropped rested just above my knees. It was small and dark green with blackish-brown spots. I felt the heat it had absorbed from the summer sun coming off of it so strong that I wondered if it might burn clean through the thin robe I was wearing.

Then I felt and heard it tick. Like a time bomb.

I looked back up at the tree again. This time I studied it more carefully. I focused on the shape of the leaves. I squinted and saw that there were clusters of little round fruit covering the tree. I watched
as Eleanor Roosevelt tugged another one from the tree and let it fall. This one landed on my head and then bounced off to my right.

“Damn you, Richmond Baker. This is just you all over. I give you one thing to do and you screw it up. And, to top it off, you do it when I’m too gone from the world to yell at you about it. Any fourth grader can tell a sycamore from a time bomb tree. Now here I am with walnuts falling on my head while I’m trying to die the way I want to.”

I picked up the walnut from my lap and tossed it at him.

To my surprise, Richmond ducked. Then he backed away several feet.

He started apologizing. “I’m sorry, Odette. A tree’s a tree to me. They all look the same.”

Another surprise. What I’d believed I had shouted out in a place far beyond Richmond’s hearing, I had apparently bellowed directly at him. And he’d heard at least enough of it to know that I was truly pissed. Richmond kept his distance, afraid I might find the strength to toss something else at him.

Throwing something else at Richmond wasn’t on my mind, though. I was too busy trying to figure out why I was alive when all the indications were that I was done for. I put my hand to my forehead. I felt hot. But it was the heat from the sun now, not the fire that had been roiling in my blood since the day of Sharon’s wedding.

I called up to Mama, “Is this a miracle?”

She raised and lowered her shoulders. Her voice drifted down: “Maybe. Or maybe this is just what’s supposed to be.”

Richmond assumed I was talking to God, so, preacher’s son that he was, he bowed his head. I started to feel bad for yelling at him. He’d done me a big favor, one I couldn’t have asked anyone else to do. And it wasn’t his fault he screwed it up. That was just his nature.

“I’m sorry, Richmond. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, or thrown that walnut either. You’ve been a good friend, and I appreciate it.”

Sensing that the danger had passed, he came closer. Then he sat down next to me in the shade of the walnut tree. The summer afternoon heat was getting to him and he wiped his forehead with a handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. “Umm, so do you want me to
carry you somewhere else? If you point out the sycamore, I can take you to it.”

I pondered what I should do and couldn’t come up with a decent answer. “I’ve gotta tell you, Richmond, I’m not quite sure what to do. I’d only planned the day as far as this. I had it on what I’d taken as good authority that I’d be dead by now.”

I turned my face up toward the top of the tree and cut Mrs. Roosevelt a dirty look. I was happy to still be a part of the world of the living, but I’d gone to a fair amount of trouble to get myself to my sycamore tree—no, walnut tree, thanks to dumb-ass Richmond—so I could pass in peace. Now it looked like it was all for nothing.

I looked around and saw my sycamore tree about fifty yards away, as twisted and beautiful as ever.

Richmond saw where I was staring. “You want to go over there?”

“I don’t think so. It appears I won’t be dying just yet. Let’s go back to the hospital. If we’re lucky, we might make it before James gets back. If he finds out about this, I might die on schedule after all.”

Richmond chuckled.

“I wouldn’t laugh if I was you. After James is done with me, he’ll want a piece of you, too.”

“Well then, we’d better get a move on.” Richmond got up on one knee and then bent and scooped me up from the ground.

“Really, Richmond, I don’t think you have to carry me. I can probably walk, if you help me.”

He began to climb down the hill with me in his arms. “No, no, you’re as light as a feather,” he lied, grunting with every step.

“You know, Richmond, I see why all the women love you so much. You talk a bunch of shit, but you make it sound good.” I wrapped my arms around my accomplice’s thick, muscular neck and enjoyed the bouncy ride.

Over Richmond’s shoulder, I smiled up at my mother in the walnut tree. She gazed back at me, looking as pleasantly surprised as I was to see me leaving this place alive. Then I focused my attention on that bothersome Eleanor Roosevelt, who had caused me so much concern and vexation throughout the year. I wanted her to know, before Richmond
carried me out of sight, that she might have had me worried, but she never had me scared.

I balled my hand into a fist and shook it at Mrs. Roosevelt. And, just before Richmond and I reached the tall reed grass at the back end of Mama’s garden, I shouted as loud as my hoarse throat would let me, “I was born in a sycamore tree!”

My first Sunday back at the All-You-Can-Eat came three weeks after I didn’t die beneath my tree. The restaurant was packed. Every chair in the place, except the ones waiting for James and me, was occupied. And from the unusual amount of trouble even skinny James had squeezing between the patrons, it seemed to me that Little Earl had added some tables to the dining room to handle the increased numbers.

As we made our way through the crowd, folks greeted me like I’d just returned from the battlefield. Erma Mae rushed up to me and kissed me on each cheek. Ramsey Abrams hugged me—a little too tight and a little too long, as usual. Florence Abrams shook my hand and contorted her face into that wince she believed was a smile. Every step we took, somebody stopped me to say how glad they were that I was on the mend. People had done the same thing when I’d returned to church that morning, and I have to admit I was flattered by the attention.

When we finally got to our window table, I took my seat between Clarice and Barbara Jean. James sat down at the men’s end of the table, and we both launched into conversations with our friends.

It was like things had never changed, and it was completely different at the same time. Clarice, bold and braless in a gauzy, shapeless white dress that she wouldn’t have been caught dead in six months earlier, was still the most dedicated gossip I knew. But, courtesy of the Unitarians, she wasn’t so filled up with fury now that every story or observation had to have a bite to it. And Barbara Jean was as beautiful as ever in a pearl-gray dress from her new toned-down and sobered-up collection, but she had a way about her that said maybe
her soul was truly at peace for the first time in all the years that I’d known her.

I could hear the usual sports talk coming from the other end of the table. But they’d shuffled up things a bit there, too. Richmond had moved over one chair and now sat in the space that Lester had occupied for years. James sat where Richmond used to sit. And Chick Carlson sat in James’s old spot.