The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

by Loraine Despres

  Sissy’s father warned her not to join the general harassment, although until that moment the idea had never entered her head. Then he gave her a little lecture in comparative religions. The upshot was that neither Jews nor Muslims were heathens. She dutifully brought these pearls to school, but the kids didn’t care. Jews were going to hell and it was their duty to save them.

  But resistance to conversion was about all the Rubinsteins and the Davidsons had in common. With their department store, the Rubinsteins were busy with the movers and shakers. Sissy had heard that Buster contributed heavily to her uncle’s campaign. But she didn’t know if it was out of friendship or because Buster was afraid of Tibor and his constituency of bigots.

  She knew a gang had tried to run Buster’s family out of the parish during the early years of the century. The shoot-out between the Rubinsteins and the J.O.C.s (Just Our Crowd) was part of Gentry’s legend, as was old man Rubinstein’s declaration, “Nobody runs me out of my home.”

  Nobody ever did. The old man got richer and richer. When he died, he left Buster half the business property in Gentry and controlling interest in the bank.

  At first, all Buster wanted to do was enjoy his inheritance. When she was a little girl, Sissy heard her parents talk about the wild parties and all-night drunks, with people dancing on ice cubes at the Rubinsteins’ big old house with the white columns out front and over an acre of lawns and gardens. Politicians, sportsmen, and even an urbane Catholic priest were rumored to have attended. But since Buster’s wife had taken ill, the house parties stopped. Buster’s entertaining had diminished to card games in his office with his buddies.

  The Davidsons, Parker’s parents, were quieter, not to mention poorer. They kept to themselves. She wondered if both families were trying to prove that Jews weren’t as clannish as some people said. If so, it worked.

  Her father-in-law told her that Buster, as a leading citizen of the town, had been approached to join the newly formed Ku Klux Klan. Bourrée thought that was a killer. “Those fools don’t have the sense to know who they’re organized to hate.”

  Buster had declined, of course, but there was talk that he got some of his employees to join and keep the lid on things.

  Parker started to ask Buster about his wife when Tibor reared up again, promoting the “values of the American family.” Sissy wondered which would go first, her uncle’s bigotry or his friendship with Buster. And then she wondered if friendship wasn’t too big a word.

  But she didn’t have much time to speculate, because Bourrée took her bare arm and pulled her aside. “You bribing my grandchildren, chère?”

  She had to remind herself to breathe. People called Bourrée LeBlanc a lot of names, but stupid wasn’t one of them. “Why, whatever gave you that idea?”

  “It’s not their birthday, and it’s too hot for Christmas.”

  Southern Belle’s Handbook Rule Number Three: When caught red-handed, lie through your teeth. “Why, Bourrée, you have the most astonishing imagination.” She fluffed up her hair with her long freckled fingers and then sighed, “Of course I’m not bribing them, but I’ve just got to find some way to keep them busy this summer. That’s all.”

  He seemed to buy that. Sissy began to breathe automatically again. Men are so easy.

  Then Bourrée smiled a tight, mean smile and, with her arm still in his grip, cast an eye toward Parker and asked, “What you doing this summer that’s so important?”

  Sissy would have gladly strangled him, and to make matters worse, that was the moment Chip chose to come strutting in with his chemistry set, piled high with additional beakers and chemicals from the hardware department. “We’re ready!” He saw his grandfather and went to him for a hug. “Hey, Pawpaw. You gonna take me shooting this Saturday?”

  Bourrée let go of Sissy. “Sure am, boy. We gotta try out my new shotgun.”

  Chip grinned, looked around, and recognized Parker. He hesitated for what seemed to Sissy an awfully long time, and then he smiled his grandfather’s tight, mean smile. “This should keep me quiet all summer long.”

  Parker turned on him and gave the boy a hard look. Chip stumbled back into his grandfather. Bourrée squinted from one to the other, which was when Sissy decided her best position was out. “Excuse me, gentlemen. But I’ve got to see to my children.” She started to put the dress away.

  “Take it, Sissy,” Buster said.

  “Oh no, I couldn’t…”

  “Go on, try it on at home. If you don’t like it, just bring it back. You know your credit’s always good here.” In spite of the chipped mannequins, Buster hadn’t kept Rubinstein’s the biggest store in the parish for nothing. “Tell you what, the merchandise looks so good on you, I’ll let you have it for twenty percent off.” He smiled expectantly.

  “Buster, you are a devil. You know how I hate to pass up a bargain.”

  He just laughed.

  Sissy wanted their attention off Chip and Parker, so she held the dress up and turned, gauging her effect on her admirers. “What do you all think? Can you all imagine me in this dress?” She glanced at her father-in-law and realized with disdain, and a little pride, that the son of a bitch was imagining her without it.

  “It’ll look real good on you,” said Buster. “What do you think, Tibor?”

  “Real good.”

  “Well, then, if you all insist.” She folded the dress over her arm and quoted Rule Number Twenty-four: “A girl has to look her best while she’s still young enough to look real good. Don’t you think?” And with that, she put her other arm around her son’s shoulder and turned to go. “Come on, honey,” she said.

  Chip pushed her arm off and led the way past the hardware into the children’s department.

  The children wandered off while Sissy waited at the cash register. She pulled her wallet out of her purse. Parker’s key dropped to the floor just as Bourrée came up behind her. They bent down together, but he scooped it up. “Is this an invitation, chère?” He dangled the key just out of her reach.

  Sissy’s heart was pounding. She straightened up and managed a weak smile and made her voice purr. “Why, Bourrée, are you angling for an invitation?”

  “Why would I want to do that?” His eyes were blank, but there was amusement playing around the corners of his lips.

  Sissy looked at the guns laid out in the display case. It wasn’t the first time she’d wanted to shoot him. Instead she grabbed the key out of his hand and snapped it in her purse. Then, gathering her children around her, she herded them out to the car.

  Bourrée stepped onto the sidewalk and called after her, “I’d put that key on a chain, if I was you, chère. Somebody get ahold of it and anything could happen.”

  “You’re right,” said Sissy. Then her eyes flashed over to Parker getting into the telephone truck. “You’re right, cher, anything could happen.”

  Chapter 6

  Marriage is the root of all suffering.

  Rule Number Thirty-seven

  THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK

  BOURRÉE LEBLANC SAT at the round dining table, with his back to the wall, sharpening his carving knife. The roses in the cut-glass vase on the middle of the table trembled. In back of him, hunters and dogs chased helpless foxes all over the wallpaper. He contemplated his son and his three grandchildren and wondered why, when he’d raised three sons of his own, only Peewee, the runt of the litter, was around for Sunday dinner. The others had left town long ago.

  Miss Lily, his wife, waddled in carrying an enormous bowl of mashed potatoes. She set it down and took off its flowered lid. Steam rose up and hit her in her pretty face, now swaddled in mounds of fat.

  Bourrée watched with distaste as a drop of sweat ran down his wife’s cheek, over her multiplicity of chins, to lodge between her ample breasts. He turned his head, trying not to see her dab those big, soft breasts with her napkin as Sissy came into the dining room bearing a platter of snap beans.

  She blew a lock of auburn hair off her forehead and
felt her peasant blouse cling to her. There was no air conditioning unit in the kitchen where she’d been working with her mother-in-law, and her whole body glowed damply from the heat. She wished she could throw off all her clothes and jump into the river, feel the water eddying over her, caressing her body, cooling off all her hidden crevices. Instead, she had to spend the day all trussed up like the Sunday chicken.

  She bent over the table and put the platter on Miss Lily’s lace tablecloth. Before she even looked up, she could feel her father-in-law’s eyes searching beneath her scoop-necked peasant blouse. She slowly hiked up the neck of her blouse and sensually fluffed out the ruffles. Then she licked her lips with her little pink tongue. Eat your heart out, you old coot.

  A tight little smile spread across Bourrée’s face. Here it comes, Sissy thought. But she was caught off balance when he turned to his son and said, “Sissy tell you what she picked up at Rubinstein’s on Thursday?” Peewee shook his head. Sissy glared at her father-in-law, but he just smiled back. “That broken-down football player, what’s his name?”

  “Parker Davidson?” Peewee’s voice came out thin and high.

  Just then Chip rushed in. “Pawpaw, you promised to show me your shotgun. When you gonna do it?” Bourrée ignored him, but Chip kept pressing with the same urgency that Sissy had heard when he was following her around the gravel pit demanding a chemistry set. “When, Pawpaw?”

  “When I get good and ready,” said Bourrée, not taking his eyes off Sissy.

  For a moment Sissy felt grateful to Chip for trying to change the subject. But then she realized he wasn’t protecting her. He was protecting a good thing. Did the boy expect to blackmail her forever?

  “You didn’t tell me you saw Parker Davidson,” Peewee said.

  Sissy shrugged. “Must have slipped my mind.” She set her jaw and gave Bourrée a look to tell him to lay off. But Bourrée, with a satisfied expression on his face, handed his carving implements to Chip so he could practice sharpening them. And Sissy made a tactical error. She forgot Rule Number Twenty-nine: When a lady’s actions are not beyond reproach, she never refers to them. “I mean, when you live in a town of twenty-five hundred people, you’re bound to run into everybody all the time. So don’t you all let your minds run rampant. I went with Parker before I started going out with Peewee. We were just children then.”

  “I remember what kind of child you was,” Bourrée said under his breath.

  Peewee’s head shot around. He stared at his father. Sissy waited for her husband to defend her, but then she saw he couldn’t make himself say anything, not while he was sitting in the same chair he’d sat in during all those humiliating meals of his childhood.

  “What kind of child was she, Pawpaw?” Billy Joe asked.

  Peewee managed to tell his own son to sit up straight and mind his business.

  “What did I say?” demanded Billy Joe.

  Miss Lily pursed her lips. She adjusted the venetian blinds, which were caught in her new lace curtains. Light like prison bars fell across the room. “It was real sweet of you to bring the kids to children’s services at our church this morning, Sissy. Real sweet. I mean, your being Episcopalian and all.”

  “One’s as good as another, I expect,” said Sissy, wiping up some milk Marilee had spilled. But when she stood up and saw Miss Lily’s horrified stare, she hurried to add, “I mean, when you praise the Lord it doesn’t matter whose house you do it in.”

  Miss Lily nodded. Bourrée caught Sissy’s eye, a tight smile on his face.

  Sissy ignored him, told her mother-in-law to sit down, and headed back into the kitchen. Sissy didn’t mind hypocrites so much, she was used to them. What she hated was the way they had of getting you to join them.

  She pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen and inhaled the rich smell of roast chicken. She had decided on church as a means to strengthen her resolve to remain good and faithful. She’d sat through the service in a reverie, enjoying the flowers and the music and the rich vibrations of Brother Junior’s voice, hardly noticing that she was planning Peewee’s funeral—after he died in a tragic accident, of course, due to no fault of hers. It wasn’t that she wanted him out of the way. She was just imagining herself in black, simple and dignified, wearing her grandmother’s pearls.

  She bent down and opened the oven door. A blast of heat hit her in the face. All the time she was in church, Parker Davidson was walking the streets of Gentry.

  She took the chicken out of the oven and set it on Miss Lily’s heirloom silverplate platter. Being good and faithful sure wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. She wondered what Parker was doing right now. She knew she wasn’t being rational, but she felt abandoned.

  She was thinking of Parker as she carried in the platter of chicken, but she snapped out of it when she heard Bourrée ask Peewee, “They give you that promotion you been angling for, boy?”

  Peewee’s ears went red and the blush spread up through his blond crew cut. He scrutinized his plate and shook his head.

  Sissy’s eyes blazed as she set the platter in front of her father-in-law. Bourrée knew Peewee had been passed over. She and Miss Lily had discussed it the week before. She rushed in to rescue her husband. “The only reason Daryl Morrison got that job is his family owns half the parish. Everybody knows that. He’s got the IQ of swamp gas. And the personal charm to match.” The children giggled. Peewee looked at his wife with gratitude. She sat down next to him and patted his hand. She never could stand to see him suffer.

  Then at Miss Lily’s urging, they joined hands and Marilee said grace. As the child thanked God for all His blessings, Sissy listened to the heavy, machine-made lace curtain flapping in the breeze from the air conditioner. It sounded like a man walking.

  As soon as the prayer was done, Bourrée was at it again. “They still got you working on the highway with the niggers?”

  “Bourrée!” said Miss Lily.

  “I’ll thank you not to use that word in front of my children,” Sissy said.

  But Bourrée just smiled.

  Peewee looked up at his father. Sissy was reminded of a rabbit trapped in a hunter’s flashlight. “Only when Norbert isn’t around,” he mumbled. “Road work’s his job.”

  “Looks like it’s your job, too.”

  Sissy couldn’t stand it. She knew Bourrée was bored at these family gatherings, but she’d be damned if she’d let him take it out on her husband. Rule Number Fourteen, Southern Belle’s Handbook: The best defense is a diversion. She kissed her husband on the cheek and entwined her long, thin fingers through his. “Peewee works so hard for me and the children. Don’t you, sugar?” She ruffled his crew cut. Then she glanced over at her father-in-law to see if her diversion was working. She wasn’t disappointed.

  Bourrée growled softly as her long, freckled fingers caressed Peewee’s fingernails, blackened with tar.

  “What do you want, Sissy?” Bourrée asked as he raised the carving knife.

  To make you suffer. But she said, leaning over toward the bird until her scoop-necked blouse slipped off her shoulder, “I’ll take a thigh.”

  Their eyes locked. Bourrée laughed.

  “One thigh coming up. What about you, Peewee? You want the drumstick?”

  Sissy saw Peewee wince. He was a child again, a child who had grown up in a family of five and had taken what was plunked on his plate. “Sure, Daddy, anything will be just fine.”

  “I get dibs on the other!” yelled Chip.

  “No, me!” cried Marilee.

  “I said it first, didn’t I, Pawpaw? I said it first!” insisted Chip.

  Bourrée nodded to Chip, his favorite. “That’s right, son. You said it first.”

  “But I’m the girl,” whined Marilee.

  “Give them both to the children,” Peewee said.

  “Yay!”

  “You sure, boy?”

  “Please,” said Peewee. He pulled his hand away from Sissy’s.

  Miss Lily passed around the plates
of snap beans and mashed potatoes. Bourrée carved off a piece of what looked like mostly skin and bone and put it on his son’s plate.

  “Look, Daddy,” said Marilee. “Pawpaw gave you the wishbone.”

  “He sure did.” Peewee turned to his father, a pleased expression spreading across his face. “Thanks.”

  Bourrée paused and, giving his son a bland look in return, said to his granddaughter, “I figure your daddy needs all the help he can get.”

  PEEWEE LEFT HIS parents’ home with a vague but nagging sense of humiliation churning around in his stomach. He tried to wash it away with Dixie Beer, six-pack after six-pack of Dixie Beer, while helping Chip figure out ever more ingenious ways to combine hazardous chemicals. Sissy had been at him for weeks to spend more time with the boy. By suppertime, Peewee had managed to smooth off the rough edges of the afternoon. Of course, he was also walking into the doorjambs, and Chip wouldn’t let him near his test tubes.

  Peewee opened the bedroom window. It had cooled down a little. He adjusted the fan and lay down in the direct path of the breeze, but his mind heated up as he bumped against the affronts his dignity had suffered that afternoon.

  His nickname, Peewee, had been given to him at just such a Sunday dinner. He stood a perfectly ordinary five feet eight inches now, if he stood up straight, but his growth had come late. His father had called him Peewee when he was only six years old and the smallest boy in first grade, the smallest boy in the whole school. Miss Lily had reproached her husband, but Bourrée had just laughed and warned her to stop babying the boy. Let him take care of himself. But Peewee couldn’t. And for the rest of his life, the embarrassing nickname stuck to him like tar.

  Most people didn’t even know his real name was Peter. Every year, the first day of class, he’d tell the teacher, “Call me Pete.” Nobody ever did. But then nobody ever paid him any attention at all, until Sissy.

  “Don’t let it worry you. Just remember small men do great deeds,” his mother had said more than once. He’d believed her and had always meant to do great deeds—to show them all. But, somehow, life got in the way.