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

Chapter 3





Clarice and Richmond Baker claimed seats at opposite ends of the window table at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat and waited for their four

friends to arrive. The restaurant was an easy walk from Calvary Baptist and they were always first to show up for after-church

supper. Odette and James Henry’s little country church, Holy Family Baptist, was farthest from the All-You-Can-Eat, but James was

a fast driver and, being a cop, unafraid of getting speeding tickets. So they usually arrived next. Barbara Jean and Lester

Maxberry were members of grand First Baptist, the rich people’s church. It looked down on Plainview from its perch on Main Street

and was closest to the restaurant, but Lester was twenty-five years older than the rest of the group and he often moved slowly.

Clarice caught her reflection in the window glass and imagined that she and Richmond must resemble a luminous peacock and his drab

mate. She was hidden, neck to kneecaps, beneath a modest, well-tailored beige linen dress. Richmond, leaning back in his chair and

waving hello to friends seated at other tables around the room, demanded attention in the pale gray summer suit Clarice had set

out for him the night before along with his favorite shirt, a cotton button-down that was the vivid ultramarine of aquarium rocks.

He had always worn bold colors. Richmond had such a Ken-doll handsomeness about him that the women in his life, first his mother

and then Clarice, couldn’t resist the urge to dress him in bright hues and show him off. On the occasion of Richmond’s first

date with Clarice, his mother had adorned her teenage son in a peach jacket with white rope trim ornamenting the lapels. A getup

like that would have gotten any other boy in town ridiculed and called a sissy—it was still the 1960s, after all. But Richmond

Baker sauntered up Clarice’s front walk and managed to make that outfit look as masculine as a rack of antlers. Clarice often

pictured that loose, powerful way he walked back then before the surgeries stiffened him. It was as if he were constructed

entirely of lean muscle strung together with taut rubber bands.

By coincidence, Clarice had chosen a peach skirt for that first date. Her skirt matched Richmond’s prissy jacket so perfectly

that everyone who saw them out on the town later assumed they had planned it that way. Clarice and her mother had peeked through

the curtains and watched him step onto the front porch. Her mother, who was as excited as Clarice was, had dug her fingers into

Clarice’s arm until her daughter pulled away from her. All the while, her mother had gushed that their matching ensembles were a

sign Clarice and Richmond were made for each other.

Clarice, though, had already seen all the signs she needed. Young Richmond had a handsome, almost pretty face with a small, well-

shaped mouth and long eyelashes. He had a football scholarship waiting for him at the university across town. He was a preacher’s

son, his father having been the pastor of their church before moving on to a larger congregation just across the state line in

Louisville. And he had those beautiful hands.

She had been in awe of his hands long before they brought him glory for palming a football in high school, college, and a

professional career that had lasted only one season.

By the time he was eleven years old, Richmond was using his already large paws to show off for the girls by pulling walnuts from

the low-hanging branches of the trees that lined the streets between the schoolyard and their neighborhood. He would make a

grunting, grimacing production of crushing the nuts between his palms until he tired of his solo act and joined in with the other

boys who ran in his pack, tossing the walnuts at the girls as they ran home squealing and laughing.

The children had named the walnut trees “time bomb trees” because when the nuts were past their prime they turned black and made

a quiet ticking sound on hot days. Years later, she often thought it was fitting that her earliest recollection of the boy who

would become her husband was a memory of him lobbing time bombs in her direction.

Lit by the afternoon sun from the window at the All-You-Can-Eat, Richmond Baker still looked like a square-jawed young football

hero. But Clarice was doing her best not to look his way at all. Every time she glanced at her husband, she thought back to the

hours she had sat up worrying until he finally staggered in at 3:57 that morning. The sight of him brought to mind those horrible,

slow-passing minutes of waiting and then the time spent lying in bed beside him after he finally got home, pretending to sleep and

wondering whether she possessed sufficient upper-body strength to smother him with his pillow.

At breakfast, he had dragged himself into the kitchen, scratched his private parts, and told her a tale that she knew was a lie.

It was the old reliable story of having to work late and finding that every phone within a ten-mile radius was broken. For the new

millennium, he had updated his excuse to include cellular phones mysteriously losing their signals. He deserved some credit for

keeping up with the times, she thought. After he told his lie, he had sat down at the kitchen table, blown a kiss in his wife’s

direction, and tucked himself into the breakfast she had prepared for him, attacking it as if he hadn’t eaten a meal in weeks.

Screwing around, Clarice thought, must stimulate the appetite.

Before church that morning, Clarice had mulled over her situation and decided that her problem was that she had gotten out of the

habit of ignoring Richmond’s little lapses; he had been on such good behavior for the past couple of years. She figured that if

she just avoided looking at Richmond through breakfast, morning service, and maybe during the walk to Earl’s, she could relocate

that old wall in her brain she used to hide behind at times like this. Then she’d soon be back to merrily pretending things were

just fine, as she had done for decades. She had gazed at the kitchen floor through breakfast. She had stared at the stained-glass

windows during church. She counted the clouds in the sky and the cracks in the sidewalk on the way to the All-You-Can-Eat. But the

remedy didn’t work. The throbbing at her temples that bloomed each time she watched Richmond’s pretty, lying mouth spread into a

grin told her that she needed more time before she could step back into the old routine, the way her husband apparently had.

Clarice heard a deep male voice whisper, “Hey there, gorgeous.” She looked to her right and saw that Ramsey Abrams had slithered

up beside her. He placed one hand on the table and the other on the back of her chair, and then he leaned in until his face was

just inches away from hers.

Ramsey had been Richmond’s number one running buddy for years, the two of them continuing to sow their wild oats together long

after they were married and the fathers of several children between them. With his nose nearly touching hers, Clarice could see

that the whites of Ramsey’s eyes were laced with bright red veins. She detected the odor of stale rum on his breath.

She began to create a picture in her head of how the previous evening had started. Richmond would have been in his office at the

university where he and Ramsey both worked as recruiters for the football team. Ramsey shuffled in and said something along the

lines of “Come on, Richmond. Just join me for a quick drink. I’ll have you home by ten. You can stay out till ten, can’t you?

Your woman ain’t got that tight a hold on your balls, does she?”

She had no real evidence that he had been the instigator of Richmond’s night out, and she knew Richmond was perfectly capable of

getting into mischief all on his own. Still, Clarice itched to slap Ramsey’s stupid face and tell him to get back across the room

to the table where his son Clifton—the son who had been in and out of jail since he was thirteen, not the other son who sniffed

airplane glue and touched himself inappropriately in women’s shoe stores—and Ramsey’s bucktoothed wife, Florence, sat glaring

at each other.

She said, “Ramsey, you keep sweet-talking me like that and I’m going to have to try and steal you away from Florence.”

He laughed. “Baby, I sure won’t stop you from trying. Just don’t tell Richmond.”

Clarice said, “Ramsey, you are so naughty,” and she slapped his hand in that way that men like him interpreted as Please do go

on, you sexy bad boy. Then he leaned in closer and kissed her on the cheek. She let loose a kind of girlish squeal, the sound of

which made her want to kick herself. No, not only herself, but her mother, too, for drumming this business of responding to male

attention with adolescent giddiness so firmly into her head that it was automatic now.

She delivered another slap to Ramsey’s hand. This time, she accidentally allowed her true feelings about him to creep into her

gesture. He let out a very sincere “Ouch!” and snatched his hand away before walking toward Richmond’s end of the table. As she

watched Ramsey rubbing his knuckles, her headache eased just a bit.

Ramsey pulled a chair up close to Richmond and the two of them started whispering in each other’s ears, stopping occasionally to

bellow with laughter. Clarice imagined the content of the conversation passing between them and her thoughts turned violent again.

She picked up her fork from the place setting, twirled it like a cheerleader’s baton with her left thumb and forefinger, and

thought about the sense of fulfillment she would gain if she walked to the other end of the table and plunged that fork into

Richmond’s forehead. She pictured the look of amazement that would spread over his face as she grabbed hold of his jaw to get

better leverage, and then twisted the fork 180 degrees counterclockwise. That fantasy felt so dangerously good that she forced

herself to put the fork back down on the table. She told herself, again, to look away.

Her gaze was drawn to the center of the table then, and she noticed the new tablecloth for the first time. The restaurant,

apparently, had a new logo. At the center of the tablecloth, and all the others in the room, a painted wreath of fruits and

vegetables spelled out “All-You-Can-Eat.” Inside the circle of produce was a pair of shiny red lips with a bright pink tongue

protruding from them.

Clarice could see Little Earl’s tacky fingerprints all over this. He had inherited his father’s kind disposition, but not much

of his good taste. And she suspected that, even though the place was no longer legally his, Big Earl wasn’t going to be happy

with this innovation. Those nasty-looking lips and fruits and vegetables—particularly the suggestive cherry and cucumbers that

spelled “All”—were going to have the more conservative patrons in an uproar. Clarice was thankful that her pastor wasn’t a

regular customer; she could easily imagine him calling for a boycott.

She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the new tablecloths the instant she walked in. They definitely hadn’t been there a day

earlier when she had eaten lunch at this same table with Odette and Barbara Jean. She was so familiar with the All-You-Can-Eat,

and it had changed so little over the years, that she could usually tell if one chair was out of place. This was how much Richmond

had put her off her game.

Clarice and her friends had been meeting at the window table at Earl’s for almost forty years—since right about the time they

were nicknamed the Supremes. Little Earl had wild crushes on all three of them back then, and he had tried his best to seduce them

with free Cokes and chicken wings. Clarice was sure that, if he had been a little more persistent, it would have eventually worked

on Odette. That girl was always hungry. Even when she was a child, Odette ate like a grown man.

Clarice’s first memory of Odette was of watching her stuff fistfuls of candy into her mouth and then wipe her sticky hands on her

dress in kindergarten. Odette always wore hideous homemade dresses with crooked seams and mismatched patterns. Clarice still

remembered their first conversation. Since Odette’s maiden name was Jackson and Clarice’s was Jordan, alphabetical order

demanded that they sit next to each other throughout most of their education. Odette had reached over from her desk and passed

Clarice a piece of taffy in class one day. Clarice said to her, “That’s the ugliest dress in the whole world.”

Odette replied, “My grandmama made it for me. She’s real good at sewin’, but she’s blind.” She popped another piece of candy

into her mouth and added, “This ain’t the ugliest dress in the world. I’m gonna wear that one tomorrow.”

And she did. And it was. And they’d been friends ever since.

Little Earl’s wife, Erma Mae, walked, ass first, through the swinging doors that led from the kitchen, carrying a tray of food.

Erma Mae had the largest head Clarice had ever seen on a woman. When she was in high school, that huge, round head, coupled with

her tall, bony body and flat chest, earned her the nickname Lollipop. Marriage to Little Earl, and access to all that good free

food, had thickened her out from her hips on down, so the nickname hadn’t stuck. Putting on all that extra weight was probably

not the healthiest thing for her, but it did help to balance out that giant head, which Clarice supposed must bring Erma Mae some

solace.

Erma Mae placed the tray on the buffet table and then plopped down on one of the two wooden stools next to the gleaming stainless

-steel steam tables from which she and her husband oversaw their domain every day. She made eye contact with Clarice after she

settled onto her stool, and she waved at her.

When Clarice waved back, Erma Mae stood and performed a little pirouette to display her new apron, which, like the tablecloths,

had that awful lips logo on it. Clarice mouthed, “I love it,” and thought, Hope you’re watching, Richmond. This is how you tell

a convincing lie.

Erma Mae yelled, “Belinda!” and her daughter rushed in from the kitchen. Erma Mae pointed toward Clarice and Richmond, and

Belinda picked up a pitcher of iced tea and headed to their table. Clarice was fond of Belinda. She was a darling girl, and smart,

too. She had won enough scholarship money to pay for a full ride at the university. Unfortunately, she was also the mirror image

of her big-headed mother at that age. If you squinted as she walked toward you, you’d swear a brown party balloon was floating

your way.

After Belinda poured Richmond’s tea, she accidentally nudged his glass with the pitcher, causing the glass to fall to the floor.

She let out a yelp and said she was sorry. Then she started going on about how clumsy she was. Belinda pulled a kitchen rag from

her apron pocket and moved to wipe up the spill, but Richmond stopped her. “And risk ruining that fancy new apron? I wouldn’t be

able to live with myself,” he said as he took the rag from her. He dropped to his knees to clean up the mess. Belinda continued

apologizing as he worked, and she poured him another tea using a glass taken from one of the other place settings at the table.

Watching Richmond kneel in his best summer suit at the feet of that awkward, plain girl just to make her feel good caused Clarice

’s bad memories of the previous night and morning to recede a little. That was Richmond. About the time she built up a good head

of steam thinking of the many ways he had disappointed her, he’d go and remind her of what she loved about him. She watched him

swirl that rag over the rutted oak floor and couldn’t help but think of how those same wonderful hands had comforted their

children and changed as many, if not more, of their diapers as hers had. Those hands had also spoon-fed her father—three times a

day, every day—for the last weeks of her father’s life, when he was too frail to lift a spoon and too proud to allow Clarice or

her mother to feed him. That Richmond, the kind and selfless one, was the only Richmond she had seen for two years. But the other

Richmond, the one who lied and cheated, had reappeared, and no number of kind words or gallant gestures could erase him from her

mind.

Belinda left, carrying the tea-soaked cloth and still looking flustered, but grinning. Richmond returned to his chair and gulped

from his glass. Clarice tasted her tea and discovered that it was so sweet she couldn’t stand more than a sip. Richmond, who was

diabetic, had no business drinking any of it. But when she looked his way, she saw that Richmond was not only guzzling the sweet

tea, he was using it to wash down a piece of pecan pie that someone, probably that damn Ramsey Abrams, had slipped to him.

This was part of the dance they did each Sunday. Richmond sneaked fatty, sugary treats that were off his diet and Clarice played

the role of the frustrated mother, running to the other end of the table to pinch his ear and demand that he hand it over to her.

The game always ended with Richmond batting those long lashes of his at her until she permitted him a spoonful of whatever he was

sneaking. Then she would return to her chair, theatrically rolling her eyes about what an ill-disciplined boy her Richmond was.

But Clarice was in no mood to play along with him this time. She watched him chew the pie and wash it down with sweet tea, and she

kept her mouth firmly shut. She told herself that this time she wasn’t going to lift a finger to stop him. He could put himself

in the hospital again, if he wanted to. If he didn’t care, why should she?

Old habits evolve into reflexes, though, and Clarice found that she couldn’t stop herself. She raised her tea glass high in the

air with her right hand and then tapped it with the nail of her left ring finger to get his attention. She said, “Richmond, too

sweet.”

He pushed his lower lip out and unleashed the sad eyes, but he slid his glass of tea and the small plate containing the pie away

from his place setting. Then, performing his part of their little ritual to perfection, he grabbed his fork and took one more

quick bite of the pie. Then he winked at her.

Clarice had learned her husband was a diabetic two years earlier when she received a phone call from the hospital saying that he

had been found in his university office in a coma and might not make it. He was in intensive care for weeks, and for months

afterward he was nearly helpless—no feeling in his feet, no strength in his beautiful hands. When she finally got him home, she

prayed, bullied, sweet-talked, and seduced, anything to get Richmond well again.

She succeeded magnificently. He was up and about far sooner than his doctors had anticipated. And when he recovered, he expressed

his gratitude for the care she had given him to anyone who would listen. He would actually stop strangers on the street and say,

“This woman saved my life; made me a new man.”

And Richmond was a new man. For the first time in their marriage he was actually the husband Clarice had always pretended he was.

All the love she had for him, the affection that had felt so inconvenient for so long, suddenly didn’t seem misplaced. It was a

second chance at life, a wonderful rebirth for both of them.

It lasted two years. Two fine years.

A petite woman in a knee-length tan dress and black patent leather pumps walked past Clarice and strode up to Richmond. She leaned

over to say something into his ear, giving Clarice and half the dining room a view of her tiny backside.

The vise around Clarice’s forehead tightened again. There she is, Clarice thought, the reason Richmond didn’t make it home until

nearly sunrise.

With her eyeglasses stowed away in her purse, Clarice couldn’t identify the woman whispering to her husband. She reached to

retrieve her glasses, but stopped herself. The only people who saw her bespectacled with any regularity were her piano students.

That concession to middle age had come only after she had detected a slight decline in the general level of her students’ playing

that was caused, she came to realize, by her inability to see subtle technical lapses—an intermittently flattened finger, a wrist

that dipped at just the wrong moment, a transient raised shoulder. Few people even knew that Clarice owned glasses, and she

certainly wasn’t about to give Richmond’s latest partner in fornication the pleasure of seeing her looking matronly. Not today.

Clarice leaned back, hoping that a little more distance would bring the woman into better focus. She teetered on the rear legs of

her chair until she felt that she was on the verge of toppling over backwards. Only the thought of Richmond’s current bit on the

side laughing at her as she lay with her back on the floor and her best Sunday pumps pointing at the ceiling forced Clarice to sit

up straight again.

Attempting not to squint so blatantly that Richmond and the stranger might notice, Clarice strained to see the other end of the

table. Whoever the woman was, Richmond responded to her with a wide smile that displayed even, capped teeth that were the eye-

straining white of new aluminum siding and took years off his face.

Right then, Clarice felt something crack inside of her. The look of admiration on Richmond’s face as he flirted, right in front

of her, with this skinny tramp in her polyester dress was just too damn much to take. Clarice had gone decades without making

scenes, no matter how great the provocation. But now, at their window table at the All-You-Can-Eat, in front of some of their

oldest friends, she was primed to leap into uncharted territory.

Before she had time to think about what she was doing, Clarice stood from her chair and shouted, “Richmond!” loud enough that

the restaurant grew quieter as the people at the surrounding tables stopped their conversations to look her way. But her chance to

let thirty-five years of pent-up outrage come flooding out evaporated when the woman whispering to Richmond turned in her

direction and Clarice saw that it was Carmel Handy. She was good-looking, nicely shaped, well-groomed, and at least ninety years

old. The schoolboy smile Clarice had seen on her husband’s face had been just that. They’d both had Miss Carmel as their ninth

grade English teacher.

That her prime suspect turned out to be Miss Carmel was, Clarice had to admit, one hell of an ironic twist. Carmel Handy was, at

that time, Clarice’s personal hero because of the local legend about her marriage.

The tale people told was that William Handy once took off on a weeklong whoring excursion. When he got home, Miss Carmel

confronted him and told him the only excuse he could possibly have for disappearing like that was that he must have forgotten

where he lived. So she recited their address, 10 Pine Street, aloud. And, to make it memorable, she punctuated the telling with

three blows to Mr. Handy’s head with a cast-iron skillet. She didn’t kill him, but she changed him from Big Bad Bill to Sweet

William overnight.

That had happened before Clarice was born, if it happened at all. Rumor had a way of becoming permanently entangled with fact in

small towns like Plainview. But, to this day, angry wives in southern Indiana evoke the legend of “the Skillet Lady” whenever

they want to get their husbands’ full attention.

Richmond and Miss Carmel both stared at Clarice, waiting for her to explain her outburst. She stared back at them, trying to come

up with words. But no words would form. All she could think about was how satisfying it must have been for Miss Carmel to remind

her no-count husband where he lived by clobbering him on the head once for each of the three syllables of their address. Since

Richmond and Clarice lived at 1722 Prendergast Boulevard, she assumed that her satisfaction would be four times sweeter.

As she had so many times in the past, Odette came riding to Clarice’s rescue. Through the window, Clarice saw James and Odette’s

car squeezing into a small space directly across the street, in front of the two-story white clapboard house Big Earl had moved

his young family into not long after he opened the All-You-Can-Eat.

Clarice lowered herself into her chair and said, “Hi, Miss Carmel, how are you, dear?” Then, to Richmond, “Honey, Odette and

James are here.”

Miss Carmel said hello to Clarice and then went back to chatting with Richmond, who was still teacher’s pet after forty-three

years. The customers seated nearby stopped staring and resumed their conversations when they saw that nothing exciting was going

to happen.

For reasons Clarice could never understand, Odette and James insisted upon traveling around town in a microscopic ten-year-old

Honda when James had full access to a much roomier and more presentable state police department vehicle. It looked even worse now

because Odette had packed on at least ten more pounds that year; and that was on top of the extra fifty she’d been carrying since

the Nixon years. The sight of them extricating themselves from that tiny car—Odette, as round as a berry and dressed in one of

those shapeless muumuus she favored, and James, skeletal and over six feet tall—was such a spectacle that Clarice couldn’t help

but imagine she was taking in a circus act.

As she watched Odette and James walk toward the All-You-Can-Eat, Clarice asked herself how on earth she had ended up being the one

Supreme who turned into her mother. Odette might look like Dora Jackson, but she was as different as she could be from her mother,

who had always scared Clarice a bit with her talk of ghosts and her countrified brusqueness. And with all of her wealth, civic-

mindedness, and charitable deeds, Barbara Jean was about as far as she could get from living the sad, desperate life her mother

had lived.

Clarice had been the one to follow her mother’s example. She had become a pillar of her church, striving for biblical perfection

at all costs. When her children came, first Ricky, then Abe, and, finally, the twins, Carolyn and Carl, Clarice had made sure that

they were the cleanest, best-dressed, and most polite children in town. She had acted the part of a lady, even when every last

particle of her being yearned to spit, curse, and kill. And she had grown up and married her father.