The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (6 page)

Jewishness. All that fear of “waving the flag.” In the end, what dif-

ference did it make? They called him a Jew boy behind his back and

bought their shoes down the street at Rubinstein’s.

A red-and-green neon sign outlined the department store on the

corner of Grand and Progress, where he turned. Golden letters

flashed on: RUBINSTEIN’S SERVING GENTRY SINCE 1875. The raindrops

on his windshield lit up in a splatter of color, the colors of the tem-

ples of Thailand.

He’d landed there in 1948 and felt an affinity for the steamy,

underdeveloped country with its temples of gold and red and green.

He acquired a real taste for the spicy Thai food and the lissome

women who cooked it.

He found a job with Jim Thompson, an American G.I. who was

revolutionizing Thai silk, changing it from a cottage industry into a

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 3 5

major export. But Parker didn’t much like textiles or working for

the fastidious, fussy Thompson.

He was more comfortable with a former Seabee captain, who

was starting up a construction business and promised to teach him

anything he didn’t already know about building.

They took an influential Thai businessman in as a partner and

began to build downtown Bangkok. Parker was on a roll again, as

his company moved into the spotlight. His partners took care of the

contracts, the bribes, the business. Parker stayed at the job site. He

liked being out there in the heat with the other men, building some-

thing he could see, something he could lay his hands on.

One of Thompson’s pretty weavers moved in with him and

Parker settled down, as much as he could settle down. As soon as

the actual construction slowed, he’d be off by himself trekking

through the mountains on elephants or wandering around the jun-

gles of Burma on foot. Once he disappeared into a Buddhist

monastery and didn’t come out for two months. At first he thought

he’d found what he was looking for. There the monks in their saf-

fron robes tended rows of golden Buddhas and taught him that this

life was just one small step in the eternal journey. They showed him

how to take away the pain of living. But after a couple of months,

he realized they were so focused on the pain, they’d given up on the

joy. He couldn’t stay. The river of desire was too strong in him.

Then in 1954, when a big contract they were counting on didn’t

come through, his American partner skipped town with all their

money. Parker managed to pay off his men. He knew they’d have

starved if he hadn’t. But it wiped him out. And he wasn’t able to

repay their big suppliers. He remembered his father telling him, “A

man has to stand behind his word.” Parker felt he’d had his shot

and he’d dropped the ball. He was humiliated.

His Thai partner suspected Parker was in league with the thief.

All Americans looked the same to him. With an Asian prison loom-

ing over his future, Parker, who was carving out a place for himself

as an international businessman, was forced to slip out of the coun-

3 6

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

try at night, in an old fishing boat that belonged to one of his

laborers.

The girl cried. She wanted him to marry her and take her back

with him. He considered it. She was strong and sweet and when

she’d throw her long black hair around and look at him from the

corner of her eye, he found her hard to resist. But he knew it would

be wrong. He didn’t love her.

By then he’d had more women than he could count, in every

color and hue. And some of them meant a lot to him. But he always

held back. Something indescribable was missing.

He slunk back to the United States with the bitter taste of defeat

on his tongue. He felt like a stranger in San Francisco, where

nobody cared that he claimed to have been part owner of a con-

struction company in some godforsaken underdeveloped country.

He returned home to his mother, now living in Miami, and his

sense of humiliation was complete. The only work he could find

was on nonunion construction crews. His mother lied about his

occupation.

He met a girl in Miami, this time Southern and Jewish. She was

smart and sarcastic, and had wonderful curly red hair. Her father

owned a big Cadillac dealership and was willing to take Parker into

the business.

“Perfect,” his mother said.

The date was set. Parker went with his fiancée to pick out their

silver. As he watched her agonize over the pattern, arrange knives

and spoons on different place mats, he envisioned their life together

and he couldn’t make himself go through with it. He couldn’t spend

the rest of his life living off his father-in-law’s dole. Besides, that

indescribable something wasn’t there.

His mother said he’d find any excuse not to get tied down.

“You’re thirty-two and you don’t have anything to show for it. No

family. No education. No business. Nothing. It’s time you built

yourself a life, boy, or life’s going to pass you by.” He knew she was

right.

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 3 7

In the middle of his life, Parker’s vision of himself was shrinking.

He decided to go back to Gentry, where, once upon a time,

crowds cheered and called him the great Parker Davidson. Besides

he wanted to see how Sissy was doing.

He’d half hoped she was settled and fat, so he could reject her as

she had once rejected him. He intended to close the door on that

painful adolescent fantasy. So the last thing he’d expected was the

heat their encounter had generated. But there it was. Maybe that’s

what he’d really been hoping for all along.

He swung the telephone truck into the rutted gravel parking lot.

Calvin Merkin, his supervisor, was standing in the doorway looking

pissed.

Parker jumped out and went inside to face him. As the lightning

flashed and the thunder boomed, Calvin did his duty and chewed

him out for a good five minutes, until he noticed the lipstick on

Parker’s shirt. “I should fire your ass, boy,” he said. “Who you been

catting around with? Some housewife with a bad phone?” But his

eyes didn’t show anger. Instead they gleamed with eager admira-

tion. “You SOB.”

Parker said nothing.

“Come on,” Calvin said. “I’ll let you buy me a drink.”

They went out into the parking lot together. Calvin watched

Parker grab a jar of homemade pickled watermelon rinds from the

telephone truck and toss it into his MG.

“Damn!” said Calvin. “Damn! She gave you a souvenir!”

“I’ll see you at the Paradise,” Parker said, and peeled away from

the curb.

He’d fallen in love with Sissy in the days of his youth, when he

was struggling to remain pure at heart. He’d never even tried to

make love to her. Now he ranked that as one of the stupider deci-

sions.

As he pulled up to the bar, he thought about the bigoted toad

she’d married. But he didn’t know what to do about it.

Love is like cigarettes. It gives you a little pleasure while you’re
at it, but it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth and a

pain in your chest.

Rule Number Forty-two,

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 3

Sissy stood in the bathroom window, her hand on the creased,

yellowing shade. She heard the voices of Frankie Lymon and the

Teenagers floating down the empty street singing “Why Do Fools

Fall in Love.” Good question, she thought as she saw the second-

hand hearse filled with high school kids round the corner under the

streetlight.

She remembered what it was like when she was in high school

looking for trouble on a hot summer night and her biggest problem

was she might not find any.

The storm had blown over, leaving the town breathless and

muggy. She pulled the shade down and hung her green chenille robe

on the hook in back of the door. The wet clothes everyone had

thrown into a heap and left for Mother were lying in a puddle on

the black-and-white tile.

Balancing an ashtray on the edge of the old, claw-footed tub, she

sank wearily into the water. It was barely tepid now that she’d got-

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 3 9

ten the rest of her family bathed. She closed her eyes, too tired even

to pick up the soap.

After a while she sat up and took a drag on her cigarette. As the

nicotine curled through her system, the horrors of the afternoon

came back to taunt her. Peewee had been so brave. Foolish but

brave. He could have died in that damned gravel pit like Sissy’s

brother Norman had all those years ago. Guilt crawled up and

down her stomach. Okay, that did it, enough.
She was going to

remain a good and faithful wife just as she’d always been
. She

decided to make that Rule . . . she searched for an appropriate

number . . . Fifty seemed about right.

She ran the pink bar of soap along her arms and around back of

her neck where her auburn hair was more or less pinned up. No

more yielding to temptation, she swore to herself. What does it get

you, anyway? A different man. Big deal.

A memory flashed through her body of another man, a long time

ago, a short powerful man in a hunting jacket. She reached for her

cigarette. Southern Belle’s Handbook Rule Number Seventeen:
A

lady doesn’t waste her precious time on bad memories
. She inhaled

shakily. Ashes fell into her bath. Shit. She tried to grind out the

butt, only to knock the ashtray onto the floor.

Love is like cigarettes, Sissy thought as she leaned over the edge

of the tub and shoveled up the dead butts and old cellophane wrap-

pers. It gives you a little pleasure while you’re at it, but it leaves you

with a bad taste in your mouth and a pain in your chest.

She picked up her still burning butt and tried to take one last

drag, but it fell apart in her ash-wet hand.

She stretched her chin to her chest, working the kinks out of her

neck, and wondered what she was going to do when she saw Parker

again. Nothing, she assured herself, wallowing in soapy water and

rectitude. She was finished with love. From now on, she was deter-

mined to be a good and faithful wife. And love had nothing to do

with that.

4 0

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

She stepped out of the tub, rubbing herself dry with the last

clean towel, a thin, flowered thing she’d gotten in a box of deter-

gent, and then she slipped into her green chenille robe. She

unpinned her hair. It fell around her face as she bent down to pick

up the wet clothes.

As her sundress unfolded, she saw to her horror the creosote

hand imprinted into the folds of her circle skirt. My God, had it

been there all the time? She was pretty sure Peewee hadn’t

noticed. He would have said something. She brushed her hand

over her skirt. She couldn’t resist letting her fingers play over the

sticky handprint one last time. Her body remembered what

Parker’s big hand had felt like when he put his dark mark on her

behind, and then, in spite of her newfound probity, her nipples

hardened.
One man’s as good as another
, Rule Number Twenty-

one, she reminded herself with as much conviction as she could

muster. But her nipples didn’t pay any attention. She wadded the

dress into a ball.

As she passed the bedroom door, she heard Chip explaining to

his father how Marilee had crawled out of the water when no one

was looking. “Guess my little girl’s a better swimmer than any of us

thought.” Peewee sounded pleased. Sissy glanced into the room and

saw the little girl snuggled up next to her father in the big four-

poster bed. What more do I want? she asked herself. She wondered

if she should make up something appropriate for the Southern

Belle’s Handbook, but she was too tired.

She threw all the wet clothes except her dress into the washing

machine and turned it on. Then she opened the broom closet and

almost threw the crumpled dress into the rag bag. But remembering

the look on Chip’s face, she took it outside and threw it straight

into the garbage, which was scheduled for pickup the next day.

Something was happening to Chip. He was changing in front of her,

not that he’d ever been easy. Maybe he needed more attention,

more encouragement. She decided to buy him the chemistry set he

wanted. He was right. It would be educational.

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 4 1

* * *

bedroom. As she expected, this announcement set off much moan-

ing and gnashing of teeth. Marilee whined. Billy Joe threw himself

on the mercy of his father and tried to plea-bargain.

“Bedtime,” Sissy repeated, ruffling her middle child’s hair.

“You heard your mother,” said the patriarch. Sissy smiled at her