The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (21 page)

blamed minute, woman. Don’t you start getting headaches on me.”

But Sissy wrenched away from him, slammed into the bedroom,

and locked the door on both of them.

Peewee stepped toward the door and rattled the knob. She’d

locked him out! Son of a bitch!

He returned to the living room, put a drunken arm on Parker’s

shoulder, and slurred, “Come on, boy, let’s get us something to eat.”

Parker watched him stumble toward the kitchen. Now that he

had seen them together, he was resolved. He had to rescue his

princess from this toad.

You have to take your life into your own hands; otherwise you

can be damned sure someone else will take it in theirs.

—Belle Cantrell, Sissy’s grandmother

Rule Number Thirty-two

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 1 0

The next morning, Sissy didn’t get up for breakfast. After

their fight the night before, she had unlocked the door for Peewee.

Gentry wisdom stated, “Any girl who locks her husband out of the

bedroom is asking for it.” But she refused to talk to him. He circled

and sniffed at her like a strange dog, and then slunk off, leaving her

in possession of the bed. He slept on the living room couch.

She pretended to be asleep when he came for his clothes in the

morning and then she stayed in bed smoking. Marilee crawled into

the bed and snuggled up next to her until they heard Peewee leave

for work.

“Clara,” Sissy called when she emerged barefooted from the bed-

room, her arm around her daughter’s shoulder.

Sissy wanted to find out if Clara had met Parker for a late date. If

not, they’d go over in rich and sarcastic detail all the horrors of the

dinner party from
The Black Lagoon
. But Clara wasn’t there. And

to make matters worse the dining room looked like a prime candi-

date for International Disaster Relief.

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 1 3 9

“Clara!” Sissy yelled again. It was after nine. She sent Marilee

into her bedroom to get dressed and went into the boys’ room.

They hadn’t seen Clara all morning.

Damn. Did she and Parker have such a wild night that she

couldn’t make it to work? Sissy felt betrayed by the first girlfriend

she’d had since high school. An emptiness opened in the pit of her

stomach. She thought they’d shared something.

She dialed Clara’s number, drumming her fingers on the table

next to the couch. Nobody answered. Damn her!

Sissy went back into her room and slipped into her shorts and

halter. Was Clara still at Parker’s? Maybe they were going at it

right now. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to lower herself by call-

ing him.

Furious at both of them, Sissy began stacking dishes and silver-

ware together with a great clatter. I don’t know why you’re so sur-

prised, the nagging voice in her head chided her. That’s how you

met her. You found them together.

Part of her couldn’t believe Clara would be any real competition.

She’s just a teenager, a colored teenager. And she’ll be gone soon.

All I have to do is give Parker a chance.

Clara’s available now, the nagging voice reminded her, and she

has a tiny waist just like you
used to
have. And she has beautiful

smooth young skin.

Sissy grabbed up a load of dirty dishes. Maybe Clara was so pissed

at the way we treated her last night, she’s not coming back at all, she

thought. Or maybe after her night of passion, she can’t face me.

Sissy slammed through the swinging door, dirty dishes teetering

in her arms, and found the kitchen was under a siege of cock-

roaches.

“Good riddance!” she yelled, depositing the dishes in the sink

and smashing a little brown sucker with a gym shoe Billy Joe had

left under the round kitchen table. But the disgusting creatures were

everywhere, swarming over the stove, feeding on the congealed egg

yolks and setting up camp in the spilled grits.

1 4 0

L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

It was Peewee’s revenge. Ever since hiring Clara, Peewee seemed

to delight in leaving every room as if it had been in the direct path

of a cyclone. And when Sissy complained, he’d say, “Let the girl do

it, that’s why I’m paying her.”

“Gotcha!” A flying cockroach dropped from the wall onto the

University of Chicago catalog. Sissy leaned down and blew off the

crumpled body and with it the Chicago Fantasy. A deep sense of

loss, almost mourning, overcame her. She reached into her pocket

for a cigarette, but she had trouble getting it out of the pack and

even more trouble lighting it.

You’re really pathetic, Sissy told herself, living vicariously

through that girl. But a competing voice reminded her, living vicar-

iously is better than not living at all.

It didn’t matter anyway, pretty soon Clara would be off having a

real life, having adventures with Yankees.

And then Sissy pictured what passed for her own life in Gentry,

as it stretched into the future, gnawed on by the maggots of minu-

tiae until she was hobbling on a cane like her grandmother. “What

am I going to do?” she asked out loud. “What am I going to do?”

At that moment a cockroach ran over her bare foot and Sissy

screamed.

She staged a massive assault to still her grieving. Wielding the

sneaker of death, she slashed through the roach infantry, decimat-

ing their numbers and forcing the rest into a desperate retreat. Then

she hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter to attack their air force

with chemical weapons. Balanced on one bare foot, she searched

the top shelf for the insect spray, when she heard the screen door

slam. Sissy froze. How should she handle this? She ought to give

Clara unadulterated hell for being so late and not even calling. In

her mind, Peewee’s voice came in loud and clear. “Give them an

inch and they’ll take a mile. You watch, once she knows she can

bamboozle you, she’ll come in later and later. Pretty soon you’ll be

working for her.”

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 1 4 1

Yes, she had to give Clara a piece of her mind, but before Sissy

could turn around on the narrow counter, she heard a sharp pound-

ing. She slid right down to the linoleum and onto a cockroach mak-

ing his last foray.

“I did not chain myself to lampposts to see my granddaughter

dusting the top of her kitchen cabinets. Don’t you have anything

more important to do?”

Sissy’s grandmother, Belle Cantrell, had arrived.

As far as Sissy knew, Belle had never actually chained herself to a

lamppost or anything else. She remembered her mother telling her

about the time, in 1916, when Belle had taken her to Baton Rouge

to attend a women’s suffrage rally. Although her grandmother

loved politics, Sissy suspected she’d really gone to that rally to stir

things up at home. Sissy’s grandfather, Claude Cantrell, a big,

melancholy dairy farmer, had expressly forbidden his wife to go.

He claimed she became impossible after associating with those

uppity suffragettes. They put all kinds of ideas into her head. He

was right about the ideas, but Sissy believed her grandmother had

always been impossible.

Sissy had grown up hearing about Belle’s impassioned letters to

public officials and how she’d tried to organize the Gentry Women’s

Suffrage Committee before the good people of the town put an end

to it. Still, they did get the vote. For all the good it did them, Belle

would sniff. They never got around to voting for each other. The

only thing women today are interested in is how to get rid of old

wax buildup.

Sissy knew her grandmother yearned for the days before they’d

won the right to vote. Days of optimism and enthusiasm, when

their slogan was “Failure is impossible.” They genuinely believed

the world was about to open up for them. Belle was able to stir

things up and do good at the same time.

So what if she’d begun to exaggerate her own role in the move-

ment into one of civil insurrection. Belle was fond of saying,

1 4 2

L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

“Dammit, when you get to be my age you should be able to

remember your life the way you want to, even if it didn’t unfurl

quite that way.”

Scraping the squashed cockroach off her bare foot and being

careful not to step on any more, Sissy crossed the kitchen and

kissed her grandmother.

“I brought the children some figs,” the septuagenarian said, set-

ting down a large paper bag and shaking a cigarette out of the open

pack she found on the counter. A cockroach jumped out. Belle

brushed it away with an imperial sweep of the pack and said san-

guinely, “You know, dear, you ought to hire some help.”

Sissy started to say something, but Belle cut her off. “I know, I

know, you’re going to tell me that Peewee can’t afford it, but don’t

you let him chain you to your kitchen. A woman’s freedom is more

important than money.” Sissy knew she’d have said more, much

more, but Marilee came running into the house. “Mama, Mama!

Come look! Hey, Gram, you gotta come too!”

“Marilee,” her mother protested.

“You gotta! You gotta!” the little girl said as she flew out to the

front porch.

The two women followed. Belle majestically pushed the scamper-

ing cockroaches out of the way with her ebony cane.

She’d been a great beauty in her youth and Sissy knew she’d used

her looks to get what she wanted. Now she used her age and its

privileges. She wore her gray hair swept up around her head. Her

body was stout and imposing, and she always dressed in somber

colors and old-fashioned dresses, as befitted a woman her age. But

there was a twinkle in her eye and an eagerness for life that

belonged to a teenager.

Out on the front porch a large brown puppy with enormous

paws was tied to one of the posts. Billy Joe was scratching its head

and Marilee lay on her stomach letting it lick her face. The children

were in love.

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 1 4 3

Sissy knelt down next to her daughter. “Honey, I wouldn’t get my

heart set on this puppy. We don’t know who it belongs to.”

“Yes, we do,” said Billy Joe, grinning. He held up a note tied to

its collar. The note was made out to Marilee: “A dog of your own.”

There was no signature.

“Who left it here?” Sissy asked.

“Who do you think?” said Chip, standing under a tree.

In spite of herself, Sissy was overcome with a feeling of relief.

Maybe Parker hadn’t come to see Clara after all. At least he wasn’t

still in bed with her. He’d had to get out early to find this puppy for

Marilee. Things were looking up.

“We’ve got to get him some water,” said Billy Joe, untying the

dog and opening the door. The puppy sprinted in ahead of him into

the living room.

“You going to let them keep it?” Belle asked.

“Of course she is, Gram!” Billy Joe was appalled at the very idea.

“It was given to Marilee. It’s hers, right, Mama?” When Sissy didn’t

say anything, he became upset. “Right?”

Sissy looked at the puppy, looked at its paws. It was going to be

enormous. She slapped her pockets, but her cigarettes were still in

the kitchen collecting roaches. If she let them keep the dog, Peewee

would have a fit. If she didn’t, she’d be the ogre. “We’ll see what

your father says.” But her words were drowned out by Marilee’s

delighted yelps.

“Look, Mama, look!” The puppy rolled over on the oriental rug

and became entangled in the phone cord. Billy Joe knelt down and

disentangled it. Marilee knelt down with her big brother. Chip

observed the scene from the doorway. He was keeping a scientific

distance.

The puppy rolled to its feet, ran around in a circle, sniffed, and

clearly delighted to have found the toilet at last, squatted on the rug.

“Oh my God,” said Sissy, leaping for the animal, knocking the

phone off the table just as it began to ring.

1 4 4

L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

“No, no, bad dog!” cried Billy Joe and Marilee in a cheerful cho-

rus.

Belle grabbed the still squatting puppy and rushed it out to the

yard, followed by the screaming, giggling children. Sissy picked up

the phone.

“Sissy?”

“Listen, you SOB, where do you get off giving my children a dog

without asking me?”

“Cute little thing, isn’t he?”

“I should hang up on you, right now.” But she didn’t. She could

feel his voice resonate in her chest and it made her weak. She leaned

against the couch as pictures of him in his shrink-to-fit jeans filled

her head.

When Belle came back into the house, she found Sissy with the

phone pressed to her ear, straddling the soft arm of the couch,

swinging one bare foot back and forth. A small, happy laugh bub-

bled out of her. And then she saw her grandmother. “I have to go.”