The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival (7 page)

She stares at them a few moments longer before moving again. “I’m sure they’re just here to eat, Steve. Let’s go.”

We walk over to the serving tables, where I plop my cake boxes down. Denise lifts the cover on one and takes a peek.

“You made these?” she asks, seemingly impressed.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I say. “Want to mark them up to ten bucks a pop and sell them for me?”

Miss Celestine and Miss Emilia are slopping their side dishes into meat-laden containers and sliding them down to Miss Pamela, who drops in a square of corn bread before closing the box, taping it, and writing a
C
(for chicken), a
P
(for pork), or an
R
(for ribs) on the lid and stacking them neatly in rows so the volunteers taking orders can hand them out. When Miss Celestine and Miss Emilia hear Denise ask me about the cakes, they drop their serving spoons for a moment and rush over to make a fuss.

“Oh, Father,” says Miss Emilia, “I’ll buy one of your cakes.”

“I’ll buy two,” says Miss Celestine.

“Maybe I should get three,” Miss Emilia says without even thinking about it.

Miss Pamela, waiting for the assembly line to start up again, smirks at them behind their backs. I feel like a special-ed kid who’s managed to make a cardboard Christmas tree without cutting off a finger or eating all of the paste.

“No, no, no,” I say. “Yall have done more than enough work, already. I’m not going to start taking your money on top of that.”

“Okay, Father,” they both say, sounding like two schoolgirls who’ve just been reprimanded. They shuffle off back to their work and Vicky takes a place at one of the sales tables and starts handing out lunches in exchange for cash and checks.

I notice she’s eyeing the Pentecostals, who are about ten people back from the front of the line. I try not to stare, but it’s hard to resist. The little girl—Pentecostal Cindy—is doing her own bit of staring, gawking at all the strangers walking by, no doubt fascinated by the short hair and makeup on the women. B.P. has a hand resting on his daughter’s shoulder and seems to be making small talk with Bobby Trahan, a man I see in church the one Sunday a month I offer donuts and coffee. B.P. catches me looking at him and offers me a smile and a chin tilt, which I try to answer. Vicky sees the exchange, looks at me, and shakes her head.

And then he’s there at the front of the line.

“I’m gonna need me, let’s see…” He pauses theatrically. “What you say, Cindy-bell? Ten rib lunches. Ten chicken lunches. And ten of them pork-steak lunches. Think that’ll do it?”

Everyone in the line stops talking. Miss Celestine, Miss Emilia, and Miss Pam stop serving and turn around to get a good look at the man who’s just ordered enough to feed a football team.

The child, who I’m beginning to think is mute, looks over at Denise and points. “Better get three of them cakes, too, Daddy,” she says so loudly that everyone from the front of the line to the back laughs.

B.P. laughs, too. “How ’bout we make do with just one cake, huh, sugar?”

“Okay, but it better be chocolate,” she says, and everyone laughs again. They’re swayed so easily.

“Father Steve,” he says. “How yall doing today?”

“Couldn’t be better,” I answer, wishing he’d leave, but offering him my hand.

“Good to hear. Good to hear. Looks like you got a hardworking crew helping you out. Who are these fine ladies?”

Vicky smiles as if she’s heard it all before, but two of the three older ladies go red up to their scalps.

“That’s Denise, over on the cakes,” I say.

“Vicky’s the one who’s about to take all your money.” She offers her hand and a quick “Pleased to meet you.”

“And these three are Miss Celestine, Miss Emilia, and Miss Pamela.”

“Ladies,” he says, tipping his hat and offering a wink. Even Miss Pamela, who I would have thought was above this cheap play for affections, puts her hand up to her throat to hide the small patch of red blushing across her neck.

And just when I think it can’t get any worse, I see B.P. looking over my shoulder to the hat bobbing up and down behind the open lid of the barbecue.

“Man,” says B.P. loud enough to be heard in Opelousas, “I’d recognize that hat anywhere.”

He’s got a point. Boudreaux’s hat is ridiculous. It features a smirking raccoon offering a full view of its rear end.
Registered Coon-Ass
is written above the animal’s back. Miss Emilia had fussed at him all morning to take it off. Boudreaux lowers the lid of the barbecue and looks over.

“B.P.? Mais, what you doin out here, huh?” Boudreaux’s accent is about as thick as they come. “Keee-yahhhhhh. They let-tin’ anybody live around here now, it looks like.”

He steps down from the trailer and comes around to shake B.P.’s hand. “How you doin’, podnah?” he asks. Then he points his chin at Miss Emilia. “B.P., that’s my wife, right there. Emilia, this B.P. Remember?” Did I not just introduce them to each other? Still, he continues. “Emilia, I tole you we grow up together…and I still see this old so-and-so at the Walmart on Saturday afternoons.” Traitor! Miss Emilia offers her hand.

“Pleased to meet you,” B.P. says. “What a woman like you is doing with an old rascal like this is beyond me.”

“Oh, now, you stop,” she says.

“Yeah, B.P.’s the preacher bought all that land from Jugg-head and dem and’s building that big ol’ church up the road.”

He knew this? He’s been cooking on my lawn all morning, his wife’s been making eyes at me for all this time, and neither have said anything?

“Isn’t that nice?” Miss Emilia says.

“Sister Emilia, it is nice. But it’s gonna be a while yet before that church is built,” B.P. says. “But when it’s done, we gonna have to have yall over for a prayer or two.”

At that, I see the eyes of the entire throng gathered in the lot glancing at me to see my reaction. I just stand there and smile, wanting to smack him for using that Sister Emilia business on one of my parishioners.

B.P. hands Vicky a wad of bills. “Guess I’ll be going,” he says. “Brother Trahan, you think you could help me and Cindy bring these lunches over to my truck?”

He tips his hat to me. “Be seeing you, Father,” he says.

What does the thirty-year-old man do when he needs a break from adulthood? The straight, the gay, the black, the white? The lawyer, the priest, the rich, the poor? The Catholic, the Protestant, the Jew, the Hindu? He goes running home to his mama. That’s exactly what I’m doing tonight, and Vicky’s riding shotgun.

Mama’s only twenty minutes away in Opelousas, but it’s been a while since I dropped by. Hell, I visit Miss Rita more than I visit Mama. “I think I saw you more when you were away at seminary,” she’s always saying. “Such is life,” I’m always telling her.

This evening’s shaping up to be a beauty. The sun’s riding low and there’s an honest-to-God nip in the air. Winter’s decided to make an appearance after all.

For some reason, I’m experiencing that feeling I used to get in seminary when the holidays approached and I knew I was going home, that feeling that I’m going to pop right out of my skin.

It’s a feeling, of course, that wasn’t shared by many of the other seminarians I went to school with. Prior to vacations, they dragged the halls, heads hung low, nerves on edge.

“C’mon,” I’d say. “You’re getting away from this hermit hole. A vacation. You’re going home, seeing the folks.”

But the pop-eyed response was always the same: “That’s exactly what’s wrong.”

The seminary was a Freudian wet dream of parental issues.

There was the overbearing mother who chose to ignore the fact that her son had become a priest, a woman who still expected grandchildren and, worse, still dropped hints and comments, still talked about that nice girl who lived down the street. And there was the overbearing mother who’d harangued her son straight into the priesthood and now paraded him about like a champion show dog, a woman who invited all her friends over to see the nice, fine Catholic boy she’d raised.

On the other side was the slightly embarrassed father who didn’t know quite what to make of the whole thing. A quiet man who said as little as possible and asked no questions for fear that he might confirm his deepest suspicions. Or, worst of all, the hostile old man. Oh, he knew all right, and he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind. He knew why his yearbook-staff son, that glee-club boy, that National Honor Society lad, that non-football-playing, squeamish-about-hunting, didn’t-want-to-go-fishing sissy joined the seminary. He knew what to blame. Too much mothering. Too much TV. Too much public schooling. Too much Catholic schooling. Too much altar-boying.

But Mama’s house? It’s a good time. I wouldn’t want to live there, but it is a great place to visit.

I have no lingering mother issues. Once she realized I was probably going to make it to adulthood without getting myself killed, she’d let go. Sure, she worried about me. Probably still does. But she’s mastered a skill shared by maybe one percent of parents. She doesn’t worry me with her worries.

And Tommy, my stepdad? Well, he’s my stepdad. There’s always going to be that slight tension that results from two men vying for the love of one woman. But Tommy was smart enough to realize early on that if push ever comes to shove, a sane woman is going to pick her child over her man. He’d made his peace with that and done his job. And Tommy had his own theory about that job, which he’d shared with me one night when we’d both gotten a little boozy and confessional. “Love and support the woman, and don’t fuck up the kid.”

So it’s good times all around. Spending an evening at Mama’s house is like being at the sort of party that, when I was a kid, I imagined I’d have when I was an adult and had my own family. Grown-ups standing around, picking at appetizers, drinking, telling dirty jokes.

During seminary, I’d typically bring some stray home with me. And even with the inevitable off-color comments from Tommy, who had a healthy and vocal distrust of voluntarily celibate men, the reaction was always the same: “Your family’s so amazing.”

Tonight, Vicky’s my stray. She’s been spending a lot of time hammering out fund-raising logistics while I’ve been doing a whole lot of watching. I’d offered to take her to dinner, some place fancy in Lafayette, but she declined.

“Why spend all that money on food that I can cook better?” she’d said. A regular romantic, that woman. “Besides, didn’t you spend enough buying all those unsold cakes so Celestine and Emilia wouldn’t slip into depression?”

“I think the point of going to a restaurant is so you don’t have to do all that work,” I said.

“Well, I kind of like the work. I think the work is part of the point.”

Pigheaded woman.

“I’m just trying to reward you for all your hard work.”

“I don’t know,” she’d said. “Take me to a party or something. Put me with some people other than Emilia, Celestine, Pam, and your little sweetheart.”

A priest, of course, isn’t exactly big on the party circuit, so here we are, pulling up to Mama’s house.

Like normal, civilized people, we walk up the carport and enter through the kitchen door without knocking. There’s no one in the kitchen. Cheese cubes, chips, and dips sit on the snack bar, along with a half gallon of Seagram’s 7, a gallon of Carlo Rossi white, and a bottle of E.&J.—probably burgaunet sauvignoir or some bastard child of the red grapes. My kind of people.

I give Vicky a tour of the house before heading to the backyard, where Mama’s sitting on the swing, drinking a Bud Light and watching the purple martins fly in and out of the birdhouse. Tommy comes out of his outdoor kitchen and I make introductions.

“It’s about time Steve met a woman,” Tommy says, offering his hand.

I knew that was coming, but I blush anyway. Tommy still has that power over me, the power to make me feel thirteen again.

“Well, even a priest needs a woman to make an honest man of him,” Vicky answers, sliding onto the swing next to Mama. I feel the tips of my ears turning red.

“You better go get some beer,” Mama tells me.

“Vick, you want to come along?” I ask.

“No, you go,” Mama says, patting Vicky’s knee. “She can stay here.”

“I’ll be okay,” Vicky says. Lucile, Tommy’s Lab, runs over to the swing and hops up, taking a seat between the two women.

As I walk out of the backyard, Mama shouts after me, “And make sure you don’t get mine in those twelve-ounce cans. They get hot too fast.” Every time, the same thing.

Five minutes later, I’m back with two cases of Miller Lite in standard-issue cans and a case of ten-ounce Bud Light cans, per Mama’s instructions. Beer brand and can size are things taken seriously in this backyard. Mama won’t drink Miller Lite or Coors Light. And she won’t drink anything out of a twelve-ounce can.

“Jesus, Steve,” Vicky says. “What do you plan on doing with all of that?”

“That’s two Hail Mary’s for taking the Lord’s name in vain,” I say.

She scrunches up her face and sticks out her tongue in response.

“Cute,” I say. It sort of is.

We settle into a backyard rhythm. Martins fly in and out of the birdhouse in flurries while Mama and Vicky chirp away, feeling each other out. I’d call it small talk, but I learn more about Vicky in five minutes than I have since I’ve known her. Yeah, Vicky’s a nurse and the daughter of a priest. But I wasn’t aware just how unembarrassed she was about the latter. She weaves that fact into the conversation as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I thought she was unguarded around me because I was the replacement priest, but I guess I’m not all that special. It’s Daddy this and Daddy that.

Vicky turns out to be one of those people who loves her job. I never thought to ask. A job’s a job. You just sort of pick one best suited to your disposition and go with it. But Vicky’s telling Mama she doesn’t even need the job because her daddy, the priest, apparently made a number of wise investments. Left her fairly well off. I shudder to think where he got the seed money.

“So before surgery,” she’s telling Mama, “this little shit was giving us a hard time. Whining, crying, pitching fits. Sure, he might have been scared, but still. Anyway, we knock him out, do the surgery, and then he starts to come to. And people usually cry and talk and stuff when they’re coming out from under.”

“Really?” Mama asks.

“Oh yeah. You’re kind of half in and half out. You can hear and take instructions, but you’re not going to remember any of it. Not consciously, anyway. So this kid starts coming out and he starts thrashing around, screaming, fighting, swinging in the air. Guess he’s rotten to the core. So I restrain his little ass and me and the other nurse start telling him, ‘Hey, Bobby, you know Santa Claus ain’t real. He’s fake. Your mama’s lying to you.’ Things like that.”

“You did not!” Mama squeals. “That’s awful.” But of course she’s laughing so hard, the swing’s shaking.

I’m sure there’s a special place in hell for people like Vicky. It’s probably the most fun and entertaining section of hell, but still.

Before long, the guests have all arrived and we have quite a party on our hands. After eating, Tommy lights a fire in the backyard pit, around which we gather with stiff drinks. It isn’t long before the inevitable happens.

“Hey, Vicky,” Tommy says. “Steve ever tell you about—”

I cut him off. “No, Tommy. I haven’t.” I know it’s already too late to put this horse back in the barn, but I try anyway. “And everybody else here has heard it eight hundred times, so we can just skip it.”

“Now, wait a minute,” Vicky says. “That’s not fair.” And of course, everyone else is dying to hear it just one more time. “What story?” she asks.

“Ruh-ruh-ruh-Rachel,” everyone else says in unison.

Ruh-ruh-ruh-Rachel—or, as she was more commonly known, Rachel—was my high school sweetheart. A two-month-long crush had forced me to ask her to homecoming sophomore year and she’d said yes. That she’d agreed to date me should have been warning enough that her judgment was sorely lacking, but so these things go. She was so beautiful that night that I looked right past the ridiculous poofy sleeves on her shiny teal dress, straight into a future of marriage, 2.4 kids, and a Labrador retriever. So did she. It was that easy. In no time, we were being overly friendly with each other’s parents and picking out names for our kids and arguing over the color of the Lab puppies—she wanted yellow, I wanted chocolate.

Like the good Catholic girl that she was, she forced me to endure a year’s worth of blue balls and accidental discharges before giving in. The night we lost our virginity, we were teary-eyed and spoke of purity and love—as if we hadn’t spent every weekend night exploiting each other’s anatomy in ways that made the good ole in-and-out seem quaint. As is often the case when it comes to religious rules, it’s the technicality that matters. Thousands of Brazilian girls walk up to the altar wearing white every year, precisely because night after night of anal sex doesn’t count as a loss of virginity. Which might also explain that country’s fascination with the female posterior.

So, yes, in a way I was fortunate. My trouble wasn’t getting into love; it was extracting myself from its tumbled-down remains.

And on the night of my Confirmation, two months before my seventeenth birthday, Rachel pulled the walls right down on my head.

We were at a party at Seth Goldstein’s house. What better way to celebrate our adult entry into the Church than getting tanked at the Jewish kid’s house?

Everyone was good and drunk. Even Seth seemed unconcerned about the pot smoke, the stains on the carpet, the girl frothing at the mouth as she puked root beer schnapps into the pool. But Rachel was silent—to me at least. One second she’s giggling with her girlfriends, the next she’s rolling her eyes at me. It was pissing me off. Still, I was so clueless that when she grabbed my hand and pulled me into a back bedroom, I figured she’d pulled the stick out of her ass and that I was going to get lucky. She closed the door behind her and even let me make out with her long enough to develop a raging boner. Then she pushed me away.

“What’s wrong, baby?” I said in what I thought was a concerned yet sexy manner.

“I think we should see other people,” she said with no preamble save the snapping of her gum.

“What the fuck?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“I think we should see other people,” she repeated.

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re too young to be serious like this. We have our whole lives ahead of us. I think we’re both a little immature.” She didn’t stumble over her words. Even as stupid as I was, I could tell she’d been preparing this little speech. As the news settled in, as my drunken brain unraveled the words, translating them into elementary English—
You’re getting dumped
—I felt my lower lip tremble.

“You’re dumping me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what does seeing other people mean?” I demanded, hoping I could gin up enough anger to hold back my tears.

“I—I just think we need space.”

“Space?” Space meant breaking up. Space meant no sex.

“Yeah. Space.”

“So, we’ll see each other, but just less.”

“Maybe.”

“Okay. So we can go out next week, then?”

She hesitated. She hadn’t figured on me being so pigheaded. “I think we should take time apart.”

“Time apart? Like how much time apart?”

“God,” she said, stomping her foot. “Just forget it.”

“So we’re still together?” I was desperately clinging to any last shred of hope.

“Damn it, Steve. No. It’s over, okay?”

I wiped my eyes with my sleeve and blinked at her.

“But why?” I sniffed. “I thought we were in love.”

“Steve,” she sighed, then threw out a line every teen girl has heard a million times in a million movies—something they consider deep, an easy and dignified letdown. “I love you, I’m just not
in
love with you.”

“What the fuck does that even mean?” It should be pointed out that during this conversation I’d been holding in my right hand a forty-eight-ounce cup once filled with whiskey and 7Up. It was approaching empty.

“I don’t think you need to talk like that,” she said.

I was a little shocked at my own outburst. “It’s just that I am in love, Rachel. I am in love with you. I’d do anything for you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Dignified, to be sure. “You were my first. I was your first.”