She picked up the magazine he had laid across his pillow and tossed it to the floor.
“You just lost my place.”
“I have faith you’ll find it again.” She held his eyes as she spread herself out across his side of the bed. “You were a real hero today.” He didn’t say anything, so she added, “And now, I think you deserve a reward.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, is that all you can think about?”
Sissy shot up. She felt as if she’d been slapped. “No, that’s not all I can think about, but I do think about it. Don’t you? Don’t you think about it anymore, Peewee?”
“Course I do. You know I do. I’m just real tired, that’s all. I had a hell of a day, or didn’t you notice?” He sat down on the bed, careful not to touch her as he retrieved his magazine. He looked at her for some sign of assent. “Men are different from girls, Sissy. All you have to do is lay there and smile, but a man has to perform.”
Sissy wanted to ask him why he wasn’t up to some kind of performance, when she was sure at least half the men of Gentry would have been ready and willing the minute she slipped out of her robe. At least she hoped they would. Sometimes Peewee made her feel like a female reject. She reviewed the Southern Belle’s Handbook in her head, but she knew it wouldn’t be able to help her tonight. She imagined it with its binding cracked, gathering dust on a high shelf as she cracked and gathered dust, faithfully married to Peewee.
She didn’t know why he was so peculiar about sex. In high school he’d been grateful that she was willing to do it with him at all. But after Marilee’s birth, when her father had given them the family home and gone to live over the newspaper, Peewee had lost interest. She wondered if he had felt a loss of his manhood by agreeing to live in her old house. But the five of them couldn’t very well go on living in that two-bedroom duplex without any yard for the children to pay in. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe by siring three children he’d proved himself a man and didn’t have to work at it anymore. Or maybe it was just marriage. If you want a man to “Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul,” just marry him. That should be Rule Number Seventy.
Snap out of it, said her practical voice. There’s nothing in the marriage vows about a husband having to service his wife whenever she wants it. Except maybe that part about to have and to hold. She hadn’t been had or held in a long, long time. Maybe that would explain what happened in the kitchen this afternoon. And then there was also that part about love, honor, and obey. Stop it, she told herself firmly. She ought to respect Peewee’s feelings. He jumped into the gravel pit to save their daughter and if he didn’t feel up to making love tonight, well, so what? That shouldn’t shake her resolve to be a good and faithful wife.
She switched off the radio and walked over to the closet, where she slipped into an ugly cotton nightgown her mother-in-law had bought the last time she’d lost fifty pounds and had given away when she gained them back. She was always giving Sissy “perfectly good” nightclothes suitable for protecting her virtue from any and all assaults.
“Ah, come on, don’t be like that,” Peewee said.
“Like what?” Sissy lay down next to him, her body rigid. Good and faithful didn’t necessarily mean happy. She pulled the sheet up to her neck.
Peewee didn’t know what to do. He leaned over and kissed her, but when she began to respond, he pulled away, leaving her alone to stare at the brown water stain in the shape of a weasel that decorated the ceiling above her head.
The soft, honey-scented smell of night-blooming jasmine crawled over the windowsill and curled around her bed. And her hand strayed under her nightgown.
She breathed in the seductive sweetness of the jasmine. She felt her ribs and thought about how funny it was that Eve came from Adam’s rib, but that women had had to give birth ever since. She tried to imagine little babies being cut out of men’s bones. After giving birth three times she figured she’d be pleased to let the men have the experience.
Her hand wandered on down the smooth, flat skin over her belly. Was she too skinny? Would Peewee be more interested if she had some meat on her bones? Is that what he wanted? She wondered if Parker liked big-busted women. But she knew the answer. She’d known it in high school. All men do. She wished she had bosoms like Marilyn Monroe and wondered what their marriage would be like if Peewee were more attentive. “If you were more of a woman, he’d be more of a man,” prattled the Voice of Guilt. Come on, how could I be more of a woman? the voice she preferred asked.
She caressed the rough triangle of hair and let her hand stray further down. Peewee would have a conniption fit if he caught her. But Parker had awakened something inside her she thought had died. Awakened it and left it to lick her body without satisfaction.
She secretly began to stroke herself. But it didn’t work. Peewee’s leaden presence next to her made too great an impression on the bed. Even when she pinched her breasts, which usually got her going, she couldn’t get her concentration up. Not with him lying there, reading Popular Mechanics and flossing his teeth.
She remembered when she was a child eavesdropping on her grandmother and her friend Selma Martin. “Every time he finishes plowing a row, he wants to come inside and fool around,” Selma had complained.
“You’d better keep that to yourself,” her grandmother had said, “or every woman in Gentry’ll be after him.”
But Mrs. Martin had continued to complain. “Saturday night, he wouldn’t get off me for seven hours.”
Sissy hadn’t understood exactly what they were talking about at the time, but now she thought the preservation society should forget about the Martins’ antebellum house and declare old man Martin a national treasure.
She wondered if all over Gentry there were couples doing it for seven hours, only the wives weren’t letting on. And then she wondered what in the world a man did for seven hours. She guessed she’d never find out, since she’d taken the vow to remain good and faithful to Peewee. Hell, she’d be happy to find out what they did for seven minutes.
She looked at him, his lips moving as he studied. What? She leaned on her elbow to see what was so fascinating: a picture of a car engine. A car engine! When he had a perfectly good naked woman lying beside him. Well, if not naked now, willing to get naked in a flash.
Why was it that the men she wasn’t married to always wanted to get into her pants, and the one man she was married to didn’t? At least, not often.
THE HONEYED SCENT of night-blooming jasmine crawled through the window of the room the brothers shared. Chip inhaled and vague distorted images filled his brain. His mother’s legs. The stranger. The way he had his hands on her. All over her.
Chip would soon be fourteen, but he was small like his father had been at that age and slow to mature physically. Puberty was just beginning to bedevil his body and give rise to new and troubling, but creative, ideas.
He slicked back his hair like the young hoods who rode motorcycles and kept their cigarettes rolled in the sleeve of their T-shirts. He adopted their grammar too. “It don’t make no difference” was a favorite. But the hoods weren’t fooled; neither were the wheels. Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. He was forced to hang out with his younger brother and sister.
But when a subject like science took hold, he so far outdistanced his classmates, he could have been in another solar system.
He’d made a tent of his sheet and was studying the latest Scientific American. The beam of his flashlight shone through the white cotton and suffused the room with its soft glow. Sissy had caught him reading in bed over a year ago. She’d made a deal. He could continue, as long as he didn’t keep his brother awake. She said she knew how hard it was to lie sleepless in the dark. But as far as Chip was concerned, she didn’t know nothing. She’d never understand the mind of a scientist.
While Billy Joe slept, Chip was lost in a universe of spinning electrons, protons, neutrons, and chemical reactions. He pulled down the plaid sheet and looked around th
e familiar room, trying to see it as it really was. He stared at his brother, reducing him to ninety-eight cents’ worth of chemicals. Less than a dollar. He wondered how he’d change if other chemicals were added. Which chemicals?
Then he saw the big live oak tree in the middle of the yard go dark. The light from his parents’ room had been switched off. It was time for his midnight rambles.
Chip carefully placed a paper clip to mark his place and folded the magazine neatly next to his bed. Then he turned off his flashlight.
Feeling the boards with his bare toes and counting each one, he silently made his way through the hall and the dining room and into the kitchen. He ignored the icebox stuffed with Cokes and the cookies and went straight for the broom closet, where he turned his flashlight on and rooted around in the rag bag. When he didn’t find what he was looking for, he crept into the bathroom and searched the dirty clothes hamper. Sweat and mildew filled his nostrils. Nothing. Then he remembered his mother’s footsteps slapping against the cement.
Sneaking back through the hall he forgot to count and stepped on the third board from the bathroom door.
“Who’s there?” Sissy called.
Chip froze.
“Chip, is that you?”
He heard her footstep and dove back into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” And he reminded himself he was talking to fats, proteins, and sugars.
“Go on to bed when you’re finished and put down the toilet seat, you hear?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Chip waited patiently, sitting on the toilet, until the house was still, and then he flushed, just to be sure. Counting carefully this time, the boy stole out to the front yard and pulled the yellow sundress with the creosote handprint out of the trash.
Chapter 4
Men talk about wanting to be a lone wolf, but that just means they want to run in packs. A man on his own is lonelier than a dog.
Rule Number Sixty-five,
THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK
PARKER AND CALVIN Merkin sat at a table at the Paradise Lost where Calvin drank beer after beer and complained about his wife. The light over the pine-paneled bar shone through Calvin’s wispy brown hair, which he grew long on the sides and carefully brushed over the top of his head. He said he wanted Parker’s advice, as a man of the world. But after a few minutes, Parker realized all Calvin really wanted was sympathy.
Parker nodded and made noncommittal sounds of solidarity as he looked around. His picture in his high school football uniform was displayed behind the bar along with the article calling him a war hero. But most of the guys he’d hung out with in high school had left town. They’d gone to college on the G.I. Bill and never returned or they’d found new opportunities in the city.
But a few remained to take over the family farm or run a small business. A couple of his old teammates spotted him and came over. One was tall and gaunt, with an unhealthy pallor and a heavy five o’clock shadow prickling over his cheeks. He had small black eyes with pouches hanging from them. Parker remembered they called him Plurb something. The other man Parker recognized as Sammy Rutledge, whose family owned Parish Motors. Sammy had been heavy when he played tackle. Now he looked as if he’d been stuffed into his skin like a German sausage. They’d been sophomores when Parker had had his famous senior year. Sammy slapped him on the shoulder. “What you doing back, boy?”
“It’s about time, don’t you think?” Parker said, motioning for them to sit down.
“Hell, yes,” said Sammy, pulling out a chair. It creaked with his weight. Plurb hooked an empty from the next table. Sammy waved to Rosalie behind the bar and said, “Tell the truth. There’s no place like Gentry, is there?”
“Damn straight,” said Parker.
Sammy nodded to Plurb with approval. Plurb said nothing.
“Parker’s working with me,” Calvin said with obvious pride. He downed his fourth beer. Even though he was the supervisor, Calvin had the grace not to say Parker Davidson’s working for me, but it was there anyway, hanging in the air.
Parker shifted in his chair. “It keeps me outdoors.”
His former teammates nodded and said nothing, but they looked betrayed. Peewee was right. Parker was supposed to come back bringing them fame and glory they could bask in. Parker recognized the look. He knew he should have saved up enough money in Miami so he could just sit around Gentry and look important. But he’d go nuts doing that, so he said, “I never was one to settle down.”
He saw Plurb’s eyes shine with a dream of freedom—a man’s freedom.
“Same ol’ Parker,” Sammy said.
“Gotta be wild and free,” said Parker.
When Rosalie arrived to take their order, they fought over who’d buy the drinks. Parker slapped a five on the table, but Sammy pushed it away and handed Rosalie a ten. “This boy’s been consorting with Yankees and worse. His money’s no good down here.”
Rosalie smiled and took Sammy’s bill. “You all want some potato chips?” she asked, slipping her pencil behind her ear into her curly black hair. The gold was peeling from her drop earrings. She looked tired.
“Sure do, honey,” said Calvin, patting her once voluptuous hips, now beginning to sag. “We just love your potatoes.” Rosalie swatted at him like at a pesky fly. Sammy and Plurb laughed. Parker said nothing.
“Hey,” Sammy yelled after her. “Bring three, four bags of pork cracklin’, too.” He brushed his pale crew cut with his palm in eager anticipation.
When Rosalie came back with the order, Calvin waited until she leaned over the table with a tray of drinks and rubbed his palm over her spreading rear. This time Rosalie jumped. Parker had to move fast to catch the tray before the beers turned over and landed on their laps.
“Hey, woman, you gotta be more careful,” Calvin said.
Sammy and Plurb thought that was hilarious.
“Cut it out, Calvin,” Parker said, handing the tray back to Rosalie.
“What’s eating you, boy?” Calvin asked, his voice filled with the injured innocence of the intoxicated.
“Can’t you see she doesn’t appreciate it?”
“Sure she does. You love me, don’t you, honey?” Calvin said, trying to pinch her.
“Course I do,” Rosalie said, jumping back and moving around Parker for protection. She set out the last of the drinks, warily eyeing Sammy Rutledge, who was on Parker’s right.
Sammy appraised the waitress with a crooked smile. Then he saw Parker’s expression and decided to go with the winners. “Leave her alone, Calvin. You’re drunk.”
“Damn right,” said Calvin. “And proud of it.”
Everyone laughed at that.
When Rosalie was gone, the men relaxed. Sammy started to reminisce about Parker’s famous ninety-five-yard touchdown against Hammond. While Calvin amiably downed his fifth beer, the three ex-teammates went over the game, play by play. Parker could almost hear the cheering as they relived that great afternoon. He felt better than he had in ages. He told them about the opposition tackle who’d tried to step on his face. “That’s right. He did fall,” said Sammy. “I remember thinking he wasn’t real coordinated.”
“Right,” said Parker. “Lost all his coordination when I yanked on his shoe.” Everybody laughed and Parker was glad he’d come home where he could find friends to share his memories.
“Why didn’t you get the rest of us to beat the shit out of him on the next play?” Plurb asked. It was the first time he’d spoken.
“That would be playing his game,” said Parker. “I didn’t want to do that.”
Plurb squinted at Parker. “I remember, you always was clean cut.” He picked up his beer and sniffed it.
“Nothing wrong with that,” said Calvin. His voice was loud.
Sammy agreed there was nothing wrong with that at all. Plurb said nothing.
“You never did get hurt, did you?” asked Sammy, tearing into the potato chips.<
br />
“Once, sophomore year.” Parker described the game against Amite. “Doctor benched me for a month.” He started to tell them about it, but they weren’t listening. It was before their time.
“Remember the barf party we had after we beat Hammond!” said Sammy, washing his potato chips down with beer and opening a bag of pork cracklin’. “Man oh man, did I get sick.” They ordered another round and moved on to the great barf parties of their youth. When the drinks came, Calvin kept his hands to himself.
After that, talk turned to the war. But pretty soon Calvin and Sammy were doing the talking, because all Parker would say about his Silver Star was “I guess I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He never said any more.
“Tell these boys about some of them places you was living in. He was shacked up with one of them Thailand cuties,” Calvin said, pulling on his eyes so they’d slant.
“No shit!” Pork cracklin’ fell out of Sammy’s open mouth.
But when Parker started talking about something besides cuties, Sammy cut him off. “Hell, Parker, me and Plurb was stationed over in the Pacific. We couldn’t wait to get home. Them places are filled to busting with little brown people, don’t even speak English.” He passed the pork cracklin’ around the table. “And the things they eat. Shit, that stuff ain’t fit for a dog.”
Plurb spoke for the third time that evening. “They eat the dogs, too.”
A silence descended on the table after that. Parker searched for some way to fill it. He’d been the captain of the team and still felt it incumbent upon him to keep up their spirits. A muscle in his neck started to ache. Before he could think of anything, the others reached for their wallets and pulled out pictures of their families. Sammy showed off his plump wife and two plump sons. Plurb, with quiet pride, passed around a snapshot of his sweet-faced wife and six little girls in matching dresses and Mary Jane shoes. Calvin pulled out a snapshot of Thelma, who turned out to be blond and perky. Parker admired all the pictures, but didn’t pull out any of his own.
The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Page 5
