training pants.” “Wasn’t he the most dapper little boy you ever saw? Never knew a boy to fuss over his clothes like he did. One scuff on his shoes and he’d pout all day.”
The following morning and the next few began the same way. They had breakfast, and then Clarice played the piano. Then Barbara Jean talked about Adam, allowing memories of him to pull her back into her life. Eventually, there was so much conversation and laughter that it seemed as if the three of them were guests at an extended slumber party. Except, at this party, talking about men was carefully avoided. No Lester Maxberry. No Richmond Baker, which suited Clarice fine. And definitely no Chick Carlson, whom Clarice and Odette were both pretending they hadn’t seen at Big Earl’s house after the funeral.
In spite of the circumstances, on the mid-August morning when Barbara Jean thanked Odette and Clarice for their support and kindly, but firmly, ordered them out, Clarice was sorry to leave. She told herself at the time that her reluctance to end the slumber party was because she’d had such fun with her friends, reliving a part of their shared youth. Later, she admitted to herself that she was frightened of what she knew in her heart she would find when she got home.
When Clarice stepped inside her front door after two weeks away, she called out Richmond’s name to empty walls. None of the food she had prepared for him had been touched. And the sheets on their bed were as fresh as they’d been when she had put them on over a fortnight earlier.
When Richmond came home two days later, he gave her a peck on the cheek and inquired about Barbara Jean.
“She’s better,” Clarice answered. “Are you hungry?”
He answered yes, and then kissed his wife’s cheek again after she told him that she would prepare ham steak and roasted potatoes, one of his favorite meals.
Richmond showered while Clarice hummed “Für Elise” and cooked his dinner. He never offered an explanation about where he’d been sleeping, and Clarice never asked him for one.
Chapter 10
Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean became the Supremes in the summer of 1967, just after the end of their junior year of high school. Classes had been out for only a couple of weeks and Clarice was at Odette’s house preparing to go to the All-You-Can-Eat. Big Earl occasionally opened up the restaurant to his son’s friends on Saturday nights. The kids thought of it as adventurous and grown-up, getting out of Leaning Tree and into downtown Plainview for an evening. A night at the All-You-Can-Eat was their first taste of adult liberty. In truth, they had escaped their homes and their parents to sip Coca-Cola and eat chicken wings under the most watchful eyes in town. They couldn’t have been more strictly monitored anywhere else on the planet. Big Earl and Miss Thelma had a talent for identifying and neutralizing troublemakers, and no kind of teenage mischief got past them.
Mrs. Jackson tapped on Odette’s bedroom door as Clarice rummaged through her best friend’s chest of drawers searching for something to liven up, or cover up, those dreadful dresses Odette always wore. The blind grandmother who had made her clothes back when she was a little girl was dead, but her grandma’s style and taste lived on in Odette’s sorry closet. Mrs. Jackson said, “Before y’all go to Earl’s, I want you to run this over to Mrs. Perdue’s house for me.”
She held out a cardboard box wrapped with twine. Grease stains covered most of the box’s surface, and it emitted an aroma of burnt toast and raw garlic. Even Odette’s three cats, all strays that had sensed her true nature beneath her get-the-hell-away-from-me exterior and followed her home to be adopted, shrank away from the odor of the package. They yowled and bolted out of the open doorway.
Odette took the box from her mother and asked, “Who is Mrs. Perdue?”
Mrs. Jackson said, “You know, your little friend Barbara Jean’s mother. Her funeral was today, so I baked a chicken for the family.”
Clarice looked at the clock and felt that she had to say something. She had made plans to meet Richmond and one of his buddies at 7:00. It was only 5:30, but Clarice knew from experience how long it could take to transform Odette from her usual self into someone a boy might want to wrap his arm around. There simply wasn’t time for anything else.