The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (27 page)

said that you manage the widows and rape the land. Or is it the

other way round? I never can keep it straight.” She knew in this

heat he could smell her perfume. He didn’t move back.

“You meeting somebody, Sissy?”

Her heart pounded and she felt it beat between her legs. “What

gave you that idea?”

Bourrée looked her over. “Don’t tell me it’s just you and me alone

in the big city.”

“Could be,” she said, not knowing what to do about the pound-

ing of her heart. It sounded so loud she was afraid he could hear it.

“What do you have in mind?”

“No reason why kinfolk like us can’t have a drink somewhere,”

he said, blowing cigar smoke in her face. “I mean, New Orleans can

get real lonely if you’re all alone.”

“Just a drink?” Sissy asked and held her breath. The moment

she’d waited for all these years was coming.

“You look old enough.” He smiled a mean little smile. Then he

moved in on her, and said softly, one conspirator to another,

“Course, I wouldn’t want to take a lady to a bar. But I do keep an

apartment over on Royal Street.” Two women in street clothes and

heavy makeup came out of the strip joint. Sissy felt the cold,

clammy air hit her skin.

He raised his cigar hand up to his mouth, brushing her breast in

a proprietary manner. Then clamping his cigar between his teeth he

brought his hand down and gave her nipple a quick pinch. “For old

times’ sake.”

She jumped back, her body reeling from the invasion.

He twirled the cigar between his lips. “What do you say, chère?

I’ll be there at two o’clock.”

“Sounds good,” Sissy said and repeated it so she could feel the

sensuousness of the words forming in her mouth. “Sounds real

good.”

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“The address is 428 Royal.” He licked his cigar. “And, Sissy, you

know I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

“I know that, Bourrée,” she said as the Hallelujah chorus went

off in her head.

“Champagne cocktail,” Sissy said to the maître d’, who’d

led her to a table against the back wall. Yellowed pictures of dead

Mardi Gras queens lined the dark panels and smiled down on her.

Sissy smiled back, and when the waiter arrived with her drink,

she raised her glass to them. She’d spent the last fourteen years of

her life waiting for this moment. Waiting for him to ask her.

She knocked a cigarette out of her pack, and when the waiter

bowed over her to light it, she ordered another champagne.

She looked at her gold watch with the black suede band. One-

fifteen. She tried to concentrate on Parker and what he was doing at

this moment. Parker Davidson, the man who’d driven all the way to

New Orleans to find a hotel for them to be alone in. Her first love.

The waiter brought her drink. She inhaled the sharp, fruity smell

and rolled the champagne around in her mouth, feeling the sparkles

prick her tongue in a hundred places. She drank slowly, thinking

about Parker, but she couldn’t keep the memories of Bourrée from

crashing the gates of her mind. She looked up at the dead Mardi

Gras queens and mused on all those lovers’ trysts they must have

witnessed and wondered if any of them had happy endings.

P A R T I I

1941

The

Fall

Watch out for men who are on speaking terms with the

Almighty.

Rule Number Thirty-four

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 1 3

Sissy stood in her short cheerleading outfit, looking down at

the yellow and brown sycamore leaves strewn over her brother

Norman’s grave. It was the autumn of 1941. The afternoon sun

shone through the thinning branches above her and made dappled

patterns on the ground.

She tried to envision her brother’s face in the scatter of sunlight

and shadow. The way he’d looked this summer, when he’d come

home from LSU in his torn Levi’s, his red hair long and flying

around because he hadn’t had time to get it cut during finals.

He’d done real well on those finals. Three As and a B. But he

never knew it. They got the news two days after he’d drowned in

the gravel pit.

Sissy felt the pang of guilt she always felt when she thought of

that afternoon. Maybe if she’d gone to the gravel pit with him,

maybe if she hadn’t been so busy working on a surprise party for

Parker (a party that, in the end, she never gave), maybe she could

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

have stopped Norman from diving into water he hadn’t tested since

the summer before.

Instead he’d gone alone, eager to wash away the summer heat.

He’d hit his head on a submerged log.

She kicked the dead leaves from his grave. They crumbled and

crunched under her white tennis shoe. Then she bent down and

swept the rest away with her hands. She touched the name on the

tombstone. Norman, Norman Thompson. Her big brother.

She remembered the day he’d taught her to swing out over the

creek on a rope tied to a tree and splash into the water without hit-

ting the roots. And the afternoon of her first real date with a boy,

when Norm patiently watched her try on every outfit in her closet.

Afterward, he’d sat her down on the front porch and told her how

to intercept a pass without making the boy angry. How to make

him respect you instead.

They’d always shared their problems with each other, except she

couldn’t any more, and she needed him. She needed to talk to him

about Parker.

She and Parker had started going out the previous fall. Norm had

known Parker the way an upperclassman knows an underclassman

who’s making a name for himself on the football field. But when she

announced they were going steady, Norm had taken the bus home

from LSU. He wanted to be sure Parker was straight and would

treat his little sister right. The two boys had hit it off right away.

Parker had said he’d always wanted a brother like Norman. And

Norm had kissed Sissy on the forehead, giving Parker his stamp of

approval as he boarded the bus back to school.

Sissy tried to conjure up the three of them, walking arm in arm to

the bus station, but when she closed her eyes, she saw Norman’s

face, blue and lifeless, staring up at her from the edge of the gravel

pit where she and Parker had found him. She opened her eyes and

shook her head.

The autumn smell of burning leaves floated into the cemetery,

over the vine-covered wall, with its peeling white paint and its

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 8 5

crumbling masonry. Her comfortable life had fallen apart this sum-

mer. First Norman. And now her mother was set to join him.

All spring her mother had complained about a pain in her stom-

ach. The first doctor had diagnosed it as chronic indigestion and

put her on a diet. Then when the pains increased during the sum-

mer, a second doctor, this one in New Orleans, had said it was dis-

tress over the loss of her son. But it turned out to be a cancer the

size of a Ping-Pong ball. There had been operations and optimism,

but Sissy could see her mother disappearing every day and taking

her daddy with her.

The optimism was still there. But it was like the grin pasted on

the face of a monster.

Home had become a place she hated to go.

Sometimes her father was okay. Just like he used to be. Explain-

ing the economic causes of the war in Europe. Throwing a tizzy fit

when Sissy didn’t pick up her room. But mostly he was preoccupied

and she couldn’t blame him exactly, but she couldn’t count on him

either. The only person in the world she’d been able to count on

was Parker. Until now.

Half an hour ago, they’d swept into Hopper’s Drugs like a tri-

umphal procession, led by the star captain of the football team and

the head cheerleader.

It’s funny, she thought, how she felt entitled to the attention:

everyone wanting to sit next to them, across from them, cramming

into the dark wooden booth, hanging over it and bringing up chairs.

Even Peewee LeBlanc had looked up from the magazine rack

when Sissy walked by, but as soon as she stopped and turned

around to say hello, he grabbed a magazine and buried his head in

it. She said, “Hey, Peewee,” anyway and watched his ears get red.

She knew from the way his eyes followed her in the halls that he

had a crush on her. But she also knew he’d never have the courage

to tell her so.

Sissy had always been in the town crowd, the “in” crowd, thanks

to her mother’s admonitions and her grandmother’s exhortations. At

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first she’d simply internalized their advice like everyone else. But

three years ago, in ninth grade, she’d read
Gone With the Wind
. In

that book Scarlett O’Hara’s mother along with Mammy taught her

the secrets of being attractive to men and it worked so well that Scar-

lett became the belle of five counties. Sissy had pored over the novel,

reading it and rereading it, but Margaret Mitchell never revealed

exactly what these secrets were. Sissy was very disappointed.

She decided to pay attention to what her mother and grandmother

said and discover for herself what worked and what didn’t. Boys

squirm when you look at them over your shoulder and half close

your eyes. The best way to make a boy like you is to ask him to do

something and then thank him sweetly. Finally she began numbering

the rules and the Southern Belle’s Handbook was born, although the

title had been conceived at a garden party when she was twelve.

One of Norman’s friends had taken her shoe. He and Sissy were

running through the guests, shrieking with laughter, when her

mother pulled her aside and told her to act like a lady and stop

chasing the boys. “But he’s got my shoe,” Sissy had wailed.

“Well, you just sit right down and wait for him to bring it back.”

“Why?” That didn’t sound like much fun.

“So you’ll be admired.”

Sissy with all the sophistication of her twelve years said, “What’s

that, the Southern Belle’s Handbook?” Then she jerked out of her

mother’s grasp and took off after her oppressor.

By the time she was thirteen, she’d decided being admired was a

very good thing indeed. Over the years she changed and renum-

bered the rules, but many of her early discoveries proved to be pure

gold, such as
Boys find themselves fascinating
. And her mother’s

advice:
A lady shouldn’t have to fight to get what she wants
. Still,

even with her dedication to the arts and graces of being admired,

she’d never felt quite so special until she and Parker started seeing

each other.
A successful man gives a lady a position in society
, her

mother was fond of saying. Sissy figured that should be way back in

the handbook. She made that Rule Number Seventy-nine.

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 8 7

Of course, she and Parker weren’t supposed to be seeing each

other anymore. Not since the night after the game when they’d

stolen the sheriff’s car and driven it all over town with the siren

blaring and Sissy waving a banner that said, “Go Gentry!”

Her daddy was furious that he’d had to pick up his daughter at

the parish jail, and to make it worse, the sheriff had given
him
a lec-

ture. But he’d only grounded her for a week until that witch, Betsy

Davidson, Parker’s mother, had called and said Sissy was a bad

influence and was corrupting her son.

That really ticked off her daddy. He told Mrs. Davidson to keep

her damned son away from his daughter or he’d go to court and get

a restraining order.

Mrs. Davidson had said that wouldn’t be necessary. Parker was

going to win an appointment to the Naval Academy and couldn’t

afford to associate with juvenile delinquents.

That’s how it had stood for over two whole weeks. No more

bicycle rides into the country. No more hot kisses at the drive-in.

No more long talks, telling each other their secret dreams and plans

in the front seat of his father’s car. Now, the only time they could

see one another was in school or in a crowd like this afternoon.

Even Mrs. Davidson couldn’t stop her son from going out for a

soda with the football team. And she could hardly expect the foot-

ball team to go anywhere without the cheerleading squad.

But this morning, Doreen McAlister had taken Sissy aside and

told her she’d seen Parker in New Orleans Saturday night with his

arm around some girl. Parker had admitted it when Sissy caught

him between classes, but had said that the girl was a cousin.

“A kissing cousin?” Sissy asked. She knew Parker couldn’t stand

to be without female companionship for long.

He just laughed it off and told her he was saving himself for her.

But this afternoon, at Hopper’s Drugs, when he pulled out his

wallet to pay for her soda, a condom fell out. He slipped it back