The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc
A Novel
Loraine Despres
To my husband, Carleton Eastlake, who fifteen years ago succumbed to the charms of a Southern belle and proves every day that marriage is definitely not the root of all suffering
Love is the crocodile in the river of desire.
—Bhartrihari, The Vairagya Sataka, c. A.D. 625
Contents
Epigraph
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Sissy LeBlanc sank down on her porch swing and heard…
Chapter 2
Parker Davidson drove slowly down the muddy service road that…
Chapter 3
Sissy stood in the bathroom window, her hand on the…
Chapter 4
Parker and Calvin Merkin sat at a table at the…
Chapter 5
The men in Buster Rubinstein’s glass-enclosed office at the top…
Chapter 6
Bourrée LeBlanc sat at the round dining table, with his…
Chapter 7
Sissy shifted her weight in the hard wooden seat. She…
Chapter 8
Peewee had objected, of course. He didn’t think they needed…
Chapter 9
Peewee had the windows of the truck rolled down, but…
Chapter 10
The next morning, Sissy didn’t get up for breakfast. After…
Chapter 11
Sissy drove the younger children and the revived dog home…
Chapter 12
As the muggy days of July dripped into one another,…
Part II
Chapter 13
Sissy stood in her short cheerleading outfit, looking down at…
Chapter 14
Sissy looked at her watch. Ten more minutes and cheerleading…
Chapter 15
Sissy stayed away. She stayed away from the whole family…
Chapter 16
Sissy didn’t set out to trap Peewee and make him…
Part III
Chapter 17
Parker opened the front door of the Guest House and…
Chapter 18
Labor Day in Gentry was usually celebrated with the same…
Chapter 19
Sissy climbed up on the bandstand where Ida May Thompson…
Chapter 20
Tibor assessed the applause as his daughter left the stage.
Chapter 21
“Get off me!” Sissy tried to push him away, but…
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
When you get to be a certain age, you realize that the only thing you have time for is doing exactly what you want.
Rule Number Fifty-six
THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK
SISSY STEPPED INTO the main terminal of the New Orleans airport and was captured by that Louisiana aroma that encircled her memory and swept her back in time. On the flight from Washington, she thought she’d been prepared. But she’d forgotten the smell of bourbon and Coca-Cola that permeated the airport even at ten in the morning. In the recycled air, it mixed with the dank, sensual smell of oysters on the half-shell and invaded her very pores. The scent carried her back to that summer almost fifty years ago that ended when Peewee LeBlanc walked into the Paradise Lost and saw her sitting on Parker Davidson’s lap and went out to buy himself a gun.
It had been a real hot morning.
But that’s already redundant. If you know anything about summer in Louisiana you know that the heat, moist and heavy, presses down on the pavement until it sends up shimmering mirages, and lovers, looking for a little noontime solace, stick to one another in high-ceilinged bedrooms. But the bar was cool, especially after a couple of tall glasses of bourbon and Coke over cracked ice.
She remembered how she’d jumped up off Parker’s lap and smoothed down her skirt. “Peewee…”
Beads of sweat dripped into her husband’s eyes. He wiped a tar-stained hand across his forehead.
“Mama, over here!”
The sight of her daughter running through the airport snapped Sissy out of her reverie. Marilee LeBlanc was thin, tense, and perpetually in a hurry. She wore the uniform of the East Coast career woman—black. They all wore it.
Sissy wondered what they were in mourning for, their lives probably, because they sure didn’t seem to have much fun these days. Not that Sissy had had that much fun when she was young, but at least she’d had the concept.
She introduced her daughter to the gentleman who had been kind enough to help her with her carry-on bag. He was Marilee’s age and handsome, Sissy thought, in a beefy, Southern way.
Marilee took the bag, but there were no smiles over fluttering eyelashes. “We have to hurry. The senator is waiting.”
Sissy shook hands with the gallant stranger and thanked him warmly. She watched him walk toward the escalator with a bounce in his step. Men love to rescue damsels in distress, as long as it doesn’t take too much time or effort, Sissy thought. To get a man to feel good about himself—and you—ask him do something for you and thank him sweetly. That was Rule Number Forty-eight in Sissy’s Southern Belle’s Handbook, a rule she’d been using with great success for years.
“I don’t know why you’re always picking up men,” Marilee said.
“And I don’t know why you aren’t,” said the older woman, pushing her daughter’s hair off her face.
AS MARILEE DROVE over the causeway that shot straight through the swamp, Sissy looked out of the window. Lovely white water lilies floated in the gray water next to the freeway, choking the life out of the wetlands. The merciless romance of Southern decay.
She didn’t want to go home. And then she caught herself. It had been half a century since she thought of Gentry as home. Where did that come from? God, she needed a cigarette, but she didn’t dare light up in her diet-obsessed, health-regimented daughter’s car. Besides, she’d given up smoking five years ago, after dire warnings from those Doctor DoRights who’re so set on keeping you alive, they take away all reason to live.
Marilee was talking about the campaign. “We could have used you down here with the older demographics.”
“We’ve been through all that. Small-town people have long memories.”
“But I still don’t get it. Daddy was the one who committed the murder.”
“I know, sugar, but a lot of people thought I drove him to it. Of course,” she added with a sigh and a stab of guilt, “they were right.”
WHEN THEY ROLLED into Gentry, Sissy asked her daughter to swing by their old house. Marilee groaned, but turned the car up Church Street. Memories were dive-bombing at Sissy from the roofs of old houses, slipping through the slits in the windows with the long poisonous fingers of oleander leaves. She began to feel queasy.
“Stop here for a minute, will you?”
Marilee protested, but stopped the car in front of their old house, which had been renovated and restored to its nineteenth-century glory. The gardens had been professionally landscaped, the honeysuckle had been cut away from the square columns, and the whole house gleamed with fresh, white paint. The for-sale sign in the front yard said it was a “Heritage Home.” Sissy wondered how many other families had lived there, and what kind of heritage they’d found after she’d left those familiar walls in scandal.
She popped the door open and got out. “Mother, we don’t have time!” Marilee wailed.
“Sugar, when you get to be a certain age, you realize th
at the only thing you do have time for is doing exactly what you want. Rule Number Fifty-six in the Southern Belle’s Handbook.”
“Spare me,” said Marilee, who’d heard about the Southern Belle’s Handbook her entire life. “You know I have no intention of ever becoming a southern belle.”
“I know, dear,” Sissy said, wishing she could help her daughter, who was recovering from yet another miserable love affair. She turned toward the house.
Marilee pounded on her horn. “Mama! We’ll be late for the victory celebration.” But when Sissy didn’t stop, Marilee jumped out of the car and followed her. “The senator…”
Sissy cut her off. “I’m sure a United States senator will be able to get along without me for five more minutes. Don’t you want to see where you grew up?” She picked up the shining brass knocker and let it drop.
They waited a minute. “Okay, nobody’s home. Can we go now?” Marilee asked.
But Sissy, who was always so solid and filled with energy, seemed to sag and stumble.
“Are you okay?” Marilee reached out and steadied the old woman.
“Just let me rest for a moment.” Dizzying impressions, not reality, but the reality of memory swirled in her head. She staggered and reached for the reproduction of her old porch swing…
“Mama!”
PART I
1956 The Temperature’s Rising
Chapter 1
A girl has to find out if there’s life before death.
Rule Number Forty-seven
THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK
SISSY LEBLANC SANK down on her porch swing and heard its old chains groan. She threw back her head and rubbed a cut lemon over her hair to bleach it a little in the sun, all the while wondering if you could really kill yourself with aspirin and Coca-Cola. Of course, she wasn’t seriously considering suicide. Sissy never seriously considered suicide. Besides, only a teenager would try to poison herself with aspirin and Coke. She figured a bottle of a hundred would do it. Along with that six-pack of Cokes in her kitchen pantry. God, it was breathless today.
She ran her fingers through her hair. She’d just washed it and had hoped that letting it dry out here in what passed for a breeze would give her some relief. It didn’t. She was too restless to do anything much in this heat, not that housework had ever been one of Sissy’s priorities.
She’d been restless for days, feeling as if she’d burst if something didn’t happen. Of course that was crazy, because nothing ever happened here in Gentry. Except she’d heard Parker Davidson was back. Parker Davidson, her high school sweetheart.
She flipped her wet hair over her face and leaned her chest on her knees. The honeysuckle growing wild along one of the six square columns that held up the porch roof was making another assault on the house, sending tendrils through the cracks in the warped planks under the swing. She’d have to crawl under the porch and do something about it. Soon.
Parker hadn’t even called. Not that there was any reason why he should after all these years. She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him anyway. He was probably fat and full of himself now. God, this heat was making her crazy.
She sat up and saw a telephone truck had stopped across the street in front of a scarlet oleander bush on the side of the Methodist church. A lineman had already stepped out. She didn’t get a good look at his face, but he was big like Parker. That boy was sure traipsing through her mind today. If she went into town, she’d probably see his likeness in half the men who turned a corner or walked in front of her on the street.
As the lineman worked his way up the telephone pole, she saw his suntanned arms glisten with sweat. She watched his back muscles bunch up and smooth out under his wet work shirt.
Memories of old feelings crept over her. She reached for a spray of honeysuckle and wound it in her hair.
Lighting a cigarette, she found herself staring up at the lineman’s thighs. She couldn’t help but notice how his shrink-to-fit jeans had shrunk just right. She lifted her skirt a tad to let in the breeze.
The lineman pulled himself onto the top crossbar and bent forward to cut the wisteria vines that had twisted around the wires.
Sissy fanned away the smoke hovering in the still air in front of her.
Then he bent backward under the wires. He hung upside down by his knees and leaned way out.
She held her breath.
Reaching his arms above his head, he sheared away the vines. Clumps of wisteria fell through the damp air.
Suddenly, Sissy saw him begin to slip off the crossbar. The ground beneath him was littered with broken cement and covered with gnarled roots. She imagined him falling head first. Dying right there in front of her. Instead he tossed his clippers, jack-knifed up, grabbed hold of the crossbar. And waved.
Jesus! Sissy blew out a column of smoke. Of course he’d reminded her of Parker Davidson. He was Parker Davidson! And he was showing off just like he’d done in high school.
She stood up and waved back. Why’d he have to see her today of all days, when she looked like a drowned cat? As he made his way down the telephone pole, she slipped inside.
Sissy wasn’t really beautiful, but men never noticed. With her deep green eyes, her shoulder-length auburn hair that swung when she moved, and the way she moved as if she enjoyed just being inside her body, men had always paid her lots of attention. Although after fourteen years of marriage to Peewee LeBlanc, she’d begun to need reassurance. Leaning into the little round mirror she’d hung by the kitchen door, she freshened her lipstick and grimaced. She took her hair and the eyes for granted. She was worrying about the almost imperceptible lines at the corners of her mouth and the tiny fleshy places that seemed to have dropped overnight from the edge of her chin.
But then, Sissy thought, it’s not what a girl looks like that captivates a man. It’s how hard he has to work for her. A smart girl makes a man sweat. She decided to make that Rule Number Sixteen in The Southern Belle’s Handbook, which was what Sissy had ironically titled that compendium of helpful hints and rules her mother and grandmother had tried so hard to instill in her. Her mother had wanted her to grow up a gracious Southern lady. Her grandmother just didn’t want the bastards to grind her down. Sissy had added to it over the years, until the Southern Belle’s Handbook became her personal credo. She kept it in her head, assigning numbers at random, but then Sissy always had a random relationship with numbers.
Through the screen door, she saw Parker walk across the street. She filled two tall glasses with ice and grabbed a couple of Cokes from the pantry. All thought of mixing them with aspirin had vanished.
Then she strolled onto the front porch and found Parker standing on the sidewalk. His tool belt was slung on his hips like a holster. Out in the country, the afternoon freight blew its warning whistle.
“Steal any police cars lately?” he asked.
Sissy shook her head. “Crime just hasn’t been the same without you, Parker.” She remembered the night after he’d scored five touchdowns against Gentry’s biggest rival, they’d stolen the sheriff’s car and ridden all over town with the siren blaring in celebration. Until they were arrested. The sheriff had chased them halfway to Hammond in a commandeered pickup.
Her parents had been upset. Parker’s had been beside themselves. “We have a business to run in this town,” Mr. Davidson growled when he had Parker by the arm and was heading out of the police station.
Mrs. Davidson whispered to Parker, “Sugar, you just can’t embarrass us like this in front of the gentiles.”
But the Davidsons didn’t have to worry. Nobody blamed Gentry’s star football player. The teachers. The coach. The other kids. Nobody blamed him at all. They blamed Sissy. Rule Number Six, Southern Belle’s Handbook: Whatever happens, they always blame the girl.
Parker tried to make everyone believe it had been all his idea, that he’d talked her into it, but everyone knew he was just being a gentleman and taking up for her.
The truth was they’d gotten into trouble to
gether. The decision had been mutual, made in a flash. They’d raced each other to that empty patrol car.
Parker took the stairs two at a time. “God, Sissy, you’re all grown up.”
She set the Cokes on a wicker table. Her hand fluttered up to her hair. “Fourteen years will do that,” she said and wondered if he meant she looked old.
“I think you’re even prettier than you were in high school.”
Was he serious or just putting her on?
They moved toward one another until they were standing so close, she felt engulfed by his physical presence. Overwhelmed. She’d forgotten how tall he was, well over six feet. She lifted her face to kiss his cheek and then thought better of it. His shirt and hands were covered in creosote, the dark brown tar they painted on the telephone poles to preserve them. She stepped back. “Parker, what in the world were you doing on that telephone pole?”
She caught the blush even on Parker’s dark skin. She saw the color rise up his neck and over his cheeks. “Have to clean the debris away from the lines before it takes out the power.”
From the sheepish way he said it, Sissy had a sudden insight. No one had actually sent him to cut down the wisteria across from her house. She’d bet Parker had thought that up on his own when he saw her sitting on her porch. Was he just showing off for her? She examined the pole and realized that when he’d leaned way out, he could look directly into her backyard. He wanted to see if Peewee’s truck was parked there. He was spying on her. Damn! Nobody had gone to that much trouble for her in years.
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Page 1
