by Sandra Hill
Listening to Tante Lulu was like trying to catch popcorn as it popped in an open pot. She was all over the place. Fleur blinked several times, waiting for her to elaborate. When she didn’t, Fleur brought up another subject. “I understand you’d like me to write your memoir, too. I’m not sure I’m the right person to do that. I don’t have any background as a writer.”
“’Course you’re the right person. You have ’zackly the right background ta suit me.”
Fleur waited for the old lady to elaborate, again.
“I used to be a Shady Lady myself, jist like you.” The old lady winked at her, as if they shared a secret.
At first, Fleur didn’t understand. But then she exclaimed, “Tante Lulu! You were a prostitute? No way!”
“Yes, I was. Well, not a prostitute precisely, but, fer a while there, I did open my legs fer every man with a hankerin’. I lost count after twenty. Did you ever keep count? No. Well, I kin understand that. My Fall From Grace came right after my Big Grief. Are you writing this down?”
Fleur put her face in her hands. What insane person had decided that her sojourn here on Bayou Black would be a retreat? It was more like the Black Hole of Bayou Madness.
For just a second, she glanced up and saw the image of St. Jude staring at her from the medallion at the end of the ceiling light’s chain pull. And she could swear she heard laughter in her head.
Shrine that! . . .
Since it was a Saturday and he didn’t have to work, Aaron decided to spend the rest of the day helping with the never-ending renovations around the plantation. Quickly tearing off the clothes he’d worn for the flight to and from Mexico and the ride into town to meet with Luc, he pulled on his go-to cargo shorts. The ones with all those pockets for nails and stuff, no need for a tool belt.
Although . . . maybe a tool belt would melt Fleur’s ice.
Then again, maybe not. If I can’t impress her with my Hot Pilot Persona, which usually works with women, I’m not gonna do it with Handyman Hunkiness.
He opted for no shirt. It was about ninety in the shade.
Maybe Fleur would be turned on by my bare chest. I’m in pretty good shape.
Then again, maybe not.
Despite the heat, he laced up a pair of heavy, steel-toed boots, having learned his lesson the hard way by accidentally nail-gunning one of a favorite pair of Lucchese cowboy boots last year. While he was in them! Shot that bugger right through to the floor. Good thing he’d missed a toe. Good thing he had a doctor on the premises, Dan had observed with a laugh at the time.
He raced down the steps of his garçonniére apartment, and practically barreled into his brother as he opened the door. “Whoa! I thought we had a workday scheduled.”
Dan was dressed like he did for work, his real work. Belted khakis, a dress shirt and tie, loafers, no jacket. He usually exchanged those for scrubs or one of those white doctor coats when he got to the medical center.
“Sorry. I was just coming to tell you that I got an emergency call. A little girl having a bad reaction to chemo. I shouldn’t be long.”
What could he say to that? “That’s okay. I’ll just relax by the pool till you get back. Wait a minute. We don’t have a pool. Darn!”
It was a running joke between them. Aaron wanted modern amenities here at Bayou Rose Plantation, like a rain forest shower (which he’d gotten) and a keg fridge (which he did not), while Dan and Samantha pushed for more practical things, like a new roof (What’s a little rain, indoors?), or furniture (Folding chairs, anyone?).
Bet Fleur would come over to my pool, if I had one. Bet she would look good in a bikini. Or a one-piece. Yeah, that would be better. But cut high and low, high on the hip, low on the chest. And when it was wet—
“On a day like today, I’d agree to the pool, but you know Samantha. Maintain historical integrity, preserve the past, yada, yada.” Dan shrugged.
Aaron gave his brother a fake punch in the arm. “Hey, bro! I was just teasing.” Actually, Samantha had done a great job in keeping the project on track, especially historically speaking, but that meant extra labor to meet her rigid specs. Which also meant ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching! Dan was the one who went bonkers over the money pit (thus, the “A friggin’ in-ground pool costs too damn much money!” refrain), but then Samantha had put in plenty of her own cash, being an heiress to the Starr Supermarket fortunes. So, Dan couldn’t complain too much. Mostly, her big-ticket purchases involved antique furniture which she explained away as “portable wealth.”
To which Dan usually responded, “Bullshit!” Like last week, when he’d added, “There’s nothing portable about that two-ton, five-thousand-dollar dresser thing.” It had taken four men—him, Dan, and two of the workmen—to get the thing off the truck and into the dining room.
“It’s a credenza, honey. A work of art.”
Dan had muttered something like, “Art, my ass!”
Samantha had made the mistake of forgetting to take the price tag off that particular piece of furniture before it was delivered. She rarely made that mistake, especially after she’d noticed Dan searching for the stickers on her purchases.
“Anyway, good antiques are an investment. Good as gold.”
Which was like waving a red flag in front of his brother. Because Samantha had a pigload of gold bars that she’d inherited, which she’d been selling off to finance some of her expenditures.
His brother had this pride thing going where he felt like Little Orphan Danny to her Mommy Warbucks. Not that Dan was a pauper, by any means. Nor was Aaron. Dan had made a good living as a doctor back in Alaska, and Aaron had reaped a bundle when the Alaska Air Shipping company was sold. They’d both done well in the stock market.
While Aaron’s mind had been wandering, Dan had kept talking. Aaron caught the tail end. “Anyway, I thought you’d be spending the day with your new babe.”
Big mistake, telling Dan about my infatuation with Fleur. Hey, I like that word. Infatuation. Makes me sound a little less pathetic. “Oh Lord! Don’t refer to her as a babe.”
“Why? That’s how you usually refer to your women.”
“Number one, she’s not my woman.”
“Yet.”
“Yet,” he conceded. “Besides, it’s just an infatuation.”
“Nice try, bro.”
The thing about twins was that they knew each other too well.
“As I told you, she’s practically a nun.”
“But kicked out of the convent.”
“But still in nun mode.”
“Good luck with that. When are we going to meet this wonder woman?”
“Wonder woman?”
“The girl who finally brought Aaron LeDeux to his knees. Speaking of knees, have you bought a ring yet?”
“Go to work,” Aaron said and walked his brother to his SUV. “I’m going to see a man about buying a bigass excavator to dig my pool.”
“Don’t you dare!”
No sooner did Dan leave than Samantha and Aunt Mel came down the wide front steps of the mansion.
Aunt Mel, dressed for the weather in shorts and a T-shirt, was above average in height, for an Inuit woman, due to a Russian grandfather, but otherwise, she had pure Aleutian features . . . a wide, flat face with almond-shaped eyes. She’d been very attractive as a young woman when his mother had first fallen in love with her, and still was, even as her black hair was threaded with silver.
Although he and Aaron called her aunt, she’d been more like a stepmother to them their entire lives. He loved the old lady, who wasn’t old compared to Tante Lulu, being only in her early sixties. Her visit to Louisiana was supposed to be temporary, to help with the babies, but everyone hoped she would decide to move here for good.
At the top of the steps, Axel sat, looking sad and longing. The old German shepherd’s hip problems precluded him from making the descent on his own anymore. He would wait there until his mistress returned.
Maddie, on the other hand, scooted around the dog and to
ok the steps three at a time, racing off with cheetah speed across the lawn toward the bayou. She’d probably scented some bayou creature on the premises. Forget hunting dogs, they had their very own hunting cat. Once she’d even brought home a small wild boar.
Emily, Samantha’s potbellied pig, had gotten even more depressed than usual when she’d spotted that boar. She’d taken the assault personally, as if the boar might have been a cousin or something.
The other cats, Felix and Garfield, were stretched out on the verandah, sunning themselves. They didn’t even raise their heads to see what was going on.
Samantha moved carefully down the steps, holding on to a hand-carved side rail, which had been installed a few months ago. For a thousand dollars! He knew, because Dan had exploded when he got the bill, only settling down when told it was for Samantha’s safety and that of his unborn children.
Samantha was looking extra hippo-ish today in a sundress the size of a circus tent. He thought about asking her how much weight she’d gained with this pregnancy, but had the good sense to zip that thought. It was too hot to be a punching bag.
“Are you sure you aren’t going to pop those babies any minute now?” he asked when she got to the bottom of the steps, wheezing.
“Why? Do I look that fat?” she snapped.
Landmine! “No! Of course not,” he lied. “You look beautiful.”
Aunt Mel made a “Way to go!” fist pump gesture behind Samantha’s back. This must be one of Samantha’s pregnancy-induced, hormonal, moody days.
Samantha gave his shirtless body and bare legs a survey then, before pretending to fan her face with a hand and say with an exaggerated drawl, “Be still mah Southern belle heart! Ah do declare, if Ah weren’t with child, Ah’d surely swoon, or invite ya inside fer a mint julep . . . or somethin’.” She batted her red—auburn—eyelashes at him.
“Eew! Incest alert!”
She grinned at him.
“Where are you two going?” he asked.
“Shopping,” Aunt Mel replied, tossing her handbag and Samantha’s into the back seat of Samantha’s BMW, where two infant car seats had already been installed. “We’re having gumbo tonight. Your mother’s recipe. Gotta get a few ingredients at the grocery store. I told Samantha I could go myself.”
“Yeah, Sammie, why don’t you go relax by the pool?” Aaron said.
“Bite me!” Samantha replied, both because he’d made the pool complaint often enough for it to be old and because he’d called her Sammie, a nickname she hated.
“I could go shopping with you guys,” he offered.
They both looked at him as if he’d suggested something obscene, like nude chauffeuring, or bare buns biking, neither of which he’d ever actually done.
“You don’t even like shopping,” Aunt Mel observed.
“I like sanding twelve layers of paint off two-hundred-year-old window frames even less.”
“Besides,” Samantha said, “you’d probably just hit on every sales clerk in sight.”
“And your point is, Mommy?”
Samantha beamed, which just highlighted the freckles on her face, which she was always attempting to hide or tone down with some kind of make-up, to no avail. She loved any references to her upcoming Mommyhood.
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek as he helped her into the passenger seat of the car. Not an easy task! If she fell on him, she’d crush him.
Another thing he chose, wisely, not to say out loud.
Instead, he said, “By the way, I thought of more names for the twins. Tony and Cleo. You know, after Anthony and Cleopatra.”
Samantha made a tsking sound, but then she got the last word in. “I invited Tante Lulu and her new roommate over for brunch, after church tomorrow. You better air out your church clothes.”
“Church clothes. What are they? And brunch? Since when do we do brunch?” he muttered to no one in particular. The BMW was already halfway down the horseshoe-shaped driveway. But what he thought was, Oh my God! This is either the answer to my prayers, or it’s going to be hell on wheels. Lavender wheels.
After that, he went to find Ed Gillotte, the resident construction foreman for their ongoing renovation project. That sounded more impressive than it really was. Ed was an ex-felon with impressive carpentry skills. He lived, with his three kids and a live-in girlfriend (who was working on her doctorate in physics . . . don’t ask!) and her kid, in the restored overseer’s house near the cane fields. (Yeah, they had sugarcane fields . . . don’t ask.)
Dan had hired Ed originally because one of his children had cancer and he had no place to stay while she was undergoing treatment at the medical center. It started with Ed fixing up one of the old slave cabins for himself. Before long, there were a half dozen of the cabins brought up to modern (though mostly historically accurate, thank you very much, Samantha) standards, housing other families of cancer patients.
Somehow, everything they did spiraled out of control that way.
Like his purchasing this rundown plantation as a means to lift Dan out of his slump (Can anyone say pediatric oncology burnout?) and give them a temporary place to live (which had turned into Tara Revisited).
Like them coming to Louisiana to make a family connection with one particular old lady (Guess who?), intending to stay one week max, and ending up still here years later, with about three dozen Cajun relatives.
Like his involvement with the Street Judes and the Magdas and sex trafficking. (Do a favor for a friend and end up center stage in a somewhat illegal rescue operation.)
Tante Lulu would say that it was all in the hands of the Powers-That-Be. Hello, up there, P.T.B. It’s me. Aaron. I’m a pilot, not some Rambo or Knight in Tarnished Armor.
He found Ed up by the slave cabins/guest cottages. (And wasn’t that an homage to political correctness?) He wore only shorts, as well . . . faded, cutoff jeans. Except he didn’t look half as good as Aaron, in Aaron’s not-so-humble opinion. In his early thirties, Ed was skinny, with a receding hairline of reddish-blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, and prison tats that were faded and not very attractive. One of his incisors was missing.
Ed was fixing the gate on Blue Willow. All of the little buildings, with their picket-fenced yards, had been given names related to their unique colors (a suggestion from Tante Lulu, which, of course, appalled Samantha’s historical accuracy standards, but who could argue with the Cajun bulldozer?). There was also Yellow Daisy, White Magnolia, Green Meadow, Peach Blossom, Rose Petal, and Purple Iris.
“What’s the occupancy today?” Aaron asked, not seeing any vehicles around.
“Full house. Everyone’s gone for the afternoon, though, either to the medical center or over to the gator farm. Del’s putting on some kind of show today.”
Del was Delilah Dugas, their neighbor. And, yes, she raised alligators which she sold to upscale restaurants for their meat, and to upscale designers for their skins, and, yes, she’d been known to wrestle the beasts on occasion. And no one thought she was weird, or anything.
Did I mention Cajuns are bat-shit crazy?
“Your family gone, too?” Aaron asked.
Ed nodded. “Except for Lily. She’s studyin’ for an exam, and the baby’s down for a nap.”
Lily Beth, a single parent to a one-year-old baby, was only a few courses away from being a full-blown physicist, while Ed was as blue collar as a man could get. She was pretty as her name, Southern to her dainty toes, and smart, really smart. A most unlikely couple. Go figure.
“You ready to tackle those windows?” Ed asked him.
“Unfortunately,” Aaron said, wiping the sweat off his brow with a forearm. “But first, I want to show you something.” They walked together toward the back of the mansion. There was a covered verandah outside the kitchens. Emily sat there munching on some pig kibble that must have been left by Samantha. The porcine pet was never far from the kitchen, unless Dan was around. Then she attached herself to him like a love-struck swain.
Beyond the
kitchen porch was a courtyard paved with ancient bricks. On one side of the house there was a rose garden. Beyond that, an orchard of peaches, apples, plums, and cherries.
On the other side, there had once been paddocks for horses and other animals. Now it was just overgrown with weeds . . . a project for sometime in the future, one of many projects for the future.
“Picture this,” he said to Ed. “A deluxe in-ground pool with cool blue water. Maybe a waterfall at one end coming from a rock garden, or fountain, or something. A diving board. Some pool floats, the kind with built-in cup holders for beer or watermelon margaritas. A slate or tile pool surround with loungers and umbrella tables and tiki torches. Jimmy Buffett music coming from the sound system. An outdoor kitchen with a keg refrigerator and a honkin’ big barbecue.”
“Are there any women in this picture?” Ed asked.
“Oh yeah. Clothing optional.”
Ed arched a sweaty brow at that. “Are you serious?”
“Oh yeah!” Aaron walked the site for a while, then asked, “Do you think the water table would make a pool here impossible?”
“Difficult, but not impossible. Especially with this site being elevated quite a bit, compared to land closer to the bayou,” Ed answered. “It would need a drainage system under the pool, of course.”
“How much you figure it would cost?”
Ed shrugged. “I’m not an expert, but I’m guessing fifty to eighty thou.”
Aaron winced but was not deterred.
“How you gonna convince your brother and Samantha?”
“I’m not sure. Wait. I have an idea. You know that rock garden waterfall thingee I mentioned . . . how about if it’s actually a St. Jude shrine? Yeah, we could build a St. Jude swimming pool. If I get Tante Lulu on my side, this will be a done deal.”
“Wouldn’t that be kinda sacrilegious?”
“Ya think?”
“Actually, we could make it really dignified.” Ed smiled, exposing his missing tooth.
The two of them exchanged high fives.
