The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

by Loraine Despres

  But deep down, Sissy’s true voice admitted it wasn’t just the coming together of their bodies she cherished. It was the way he cared for her. The way he treated her, making her feel that she, Sissy, the high school dropout, might not be disposable after all. She might not be just a piece of trash that men wanted to paw over.

  That’s when she realized she hadn’t thought about the Southern Belle’s Handbook in a long time. She didn’t need it with Parker. That she could be with a man and trust him to be good to her without having to manage or manipulate him was a whole new world for her.

  One afternoon in late August, as she lay naked on those perspiration-soaked sheets, under Parker’s big, hairy legs, she caught him looking at her, searching her face for the answer to what seemed like the most important question in the world. When she asked him about it, he just shook his head.

  The next day, however, he began to make phone calls. As the summer rushed toward Labor Day, Parker discussed his future with old friends and Marine buddies all over the country. And when a man he’d fought side by side with in the Pacific told him he was building a subdivision outside of Boston, Parker told him, “Let me know if I can do anything for you.” And then he said, after a long hesitation, “No, I’ve got nothing to keep me down here. Nothing at all.”

  Chapter 18

  Letting go is the best revenge. It frees your heart for much more satisfying pursuits.

  Rule Number One Hundred

  THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK

  LABOR DAY IN Gentry was usually celebrated with the same indifference as in the rest of the country, offering the men an excuse to get drunk with their buddies and offering their exhausted wives real hope that the long summer was ending and school would actually begin. But this year, since Gentry was the parish seat and their own D.A. was running for U.S. Congress, the Committee to Elect Tibor Thompson had turned the annual picnic into a virtual orgy of politicking, praying, and carnival rides.

  Belle Cantrell sat in a folding chair in the shade high up on the riverbank, where the septuagenarian could oversee all the festivities. In the 1930s during one of her many spurts of self-improvement, she’d taken a WPA course in art history. The scene spread out before her reminded her of something. All these half-naked people, jumping around, pleasuring themselves, awakened a wavering recollection of a famous painting, but for the life of her, she couldn’t remember which one.

  On one side of the fairgrounds a traveling carnival was raking it in. Peewee sat Marilee on a giant bird and mounted a fish as children and parents scrambled onto gay ponies and camels before the calliope screamed and the merry-go-round began to turn.

  Next to the carousel, teenagers clutched each other in libidinous delirium as they whirled around and around in fruit-colored spheres.

  Belle searched her brain as she watched young men and women float up into the sky and back down in the colorful hanging baskets of the Ferris wheel. The painter was… God, she hated old age. She never used to forget anything.

  An Irish marching band, wearing green suits and leprechaun hats, danced along the riverbank blowing their horns. Labor Day was almost as good an excuse as St. Pat’s to get drunk and noisy. One of the marchers spotted Belle and stopped to share his flask with her.

  Going the other way, dressed in maroon robes verging on red and singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” was Brother Junior Bodine’s choir led by Sister Betty Ruth in virginal white. They were drumming up business for his tent show and revival meeting downriver. Sister Betty Ruth’s singing faltered when she saw Belle take a swig from the flask. She licked her parched lips and for an instant wished she were an old lady sharing a drink with a friend instead of the Holy Willie she’d become. The instant passed. She renewed her hymn with added fervor, hoping God didn’t read her heart continuously, but just tuned in from time to time.

  In the river itself, half-naked people were swimming, splashing, and fondling one another. Miss Lucy, looking like an enormous peach in her salmon-colored bathing suit with its modest pleated skirt, waved merrily from the inner tube of a truck tire as she floated downstream. A towheaded boy tried to ride a swimming dog, who was growling and snapping to get him off his back. The painter had naked people carousing in giant fruit, floating in bubbles. His name was… on the tip of her tongue.

  Then she saw Bourrée LeBlanc with a crew of Cajuns carrying bundles of dried sticks and reeds and banners proclaiming A FREE AMERICA DEPENDS ON TIBOR THOMPSON. America’s in deep shit, thought the old lady as Bourrée stopped to pay his respects. “Bourrée, what in the world are you and those Cajuns up to?”

  “Just helping out a friend, chère.”

  “You building bonfires in September?”

  “Tibor’s getting TV coverage all the way from Baton Rouge. Gotta give them something to cover.”

  “That a fact?” she asked. He nodded. “You two never did have the sense the good Lord gave oysters.”

  “If I was you, Belle, I’d climb on his bandwagon before it’s too late.” In back of him a bevy of Thompsonettes, in white shorts and skimpy T-shirts adorned with giant Ts, were tacking up signs, KEEP THE AMERICAN FAMILY PURE, VOTE FOR TIBOR.

  “I’m not all that partial to his music,” said the aging suffragist.

  Bourrée laughed, and for a moment he remembered how fine she’d been all those years ago when he’d first hit Gentry, young and horny, and she was “the fascinating older woman.”

  Belle remembered, too. Eleven years hadn’t seemed like much then. But time, that infernal sorcerer, had changed her from the beautiful lady into the old hag with a cane. Suddenly she remembered the painter and the painting: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. We’re in the hell part, she thought as Sissy came up to them.

  Sissy hadn’t seen Bourrée since she stood him up in the French Quarter. She saw his lips turn into a sneer. Gotcha, she thought, but was surprised that she didn’t feel much of anything. The thrill of revenge was gone.

  “You all seen Uncle Tibor?”

  “He’ll be along tonight in time for his speech,” Bourrée said. He appraised her freckled legs stretching out under her shorts and adjusted himself in his khakis.

  Belle’s eyes darted from one to the other. That dirty old man!

  “Not till tonight?” Sissy was clearly disappointed.

  “Why? You want to volunteer for something, chère?”

  “I just might,” Sissy said.

  “Don’t you dare,” Belle said to both of them.

  CHIP DROPPED SILENTLY from a tree onto the roof of the girl’s bathhouse. He saw Sally Reinhold and Mary Beth O’Brien walk right in through the swinging doors, whispering to each other. He licked his lips. This is gonna be so neat! They were the prettiest girls in his class, especially Sally, with her mass of black curls. But where the hell was his brother? If he didn’t get his ass in gear, it was gonna be too late.

  Chip lifted his army-surplus field pack out of the tree and methodically laid out his equipment on the roof: rubber gloves so he wouldn’t leave any fingerprints, a piece of garden hose, his chemistry funnel, a pickle jar half filled with ferrous sulfide, and two clothespins. He heard the girls giggling below him. He slipped on his rubber gloves. But where was Billy Joe? He had to get there before the girls left the bathhouse. He just had to!

  Chip leaned over the back of the roof and pried open the louvers of the ventilation window. He couldn’t see the girls. Good. They couldn’t see him, either. Quietly, carefully, with a scientist’s concentration, he stuck one end of the hose through the louvers into a dark corner of the window. And missed seeing his mother and Marilee enter the bathhouse.

  He spotted Billy Joe running across the fairgrounds, a paper bag banging against his bare leg. He willed him to be careful! If the lid wasn’t screwed on tight, the jar would fall right through the bag.

  Inside the bathhouse, Sissy and Marilee stepped into a changing booth. Sissy leaned over to unbutton Marilee’s jumper when she heard a loud thump on the roof. She lo
oked up at the ceiling.

  “Shhh!” Chip ordered Billy Joe, who had dropped from the tree limb. The boys froze and waited.

  Inside, Sissy listened for a moment. Hearing nothing more, she slipped out of her blouse and shorts.

  In the next booth, Sally and Mary Beth were trying on each other’s bathing suits.

  “Did you get it?” Chip whispered.

  Billy Joe nodded and pulled a mayonnaise jar out of the paper bag. It contained a blue liquid. “It was in the toolshed in back of the pool, just like you said.”

  Chip grabbed it, unscrewed the lid, and sniffed. “This is gonna be so neat!”

  “Nobody saw me.” But Billy Joe looked worried.

  Chip recognized the look. “They’ll never miss this little bit. It’s not like stealing.”

  Billy Joe nodded. “What’s it like?”

  “You’re such a drag,” said Chip. He poured the swimming pool acid into the pickle jar and shook it up.

  Billy Joe hesitated. He didn’t want to be a drag, but he just had to ask. “We can’t hurt them, can we? I mean this stuff isn’t dangerous, is it?”

  “Billy Joe!” the big brother said in a threatening voice so the younger boy shut up. Chip couldn’t be bothered with reading all that warning crap. “They’ll be fine, as long as they get out fast enough.”

  INSIDE THE BATHHOUSE, Sissy was trying to shimmy into her tight green bathing suit, yanking up one side and then the other, as Marilee stepped into hers backward.

  Chip poured the contents of the pickle jar into the funnel attached to the hose. And waited. He didn’t have to wait long. The wooden bathhouse seemed to tremble and then naked and half-naked ladies poured out.

  Billy Joe, hidden by a tree limb, peeked over the edge of the roof. “This is so neat! This is really neat!” Then he turned back to his brother and said in an anxious voice, “They’re coughing and wheezing!”

  “Stop worrying,” Chip said, handing him a clothespin and attaching another to his own nose as the putrid smell of rotten eggs drifted toward them.

  Then he saw his twelve-year-old brother rock back and forth with excitement. “Look!” Billy Joe said, and his voice was almost reverent. Chip leaned over and saw Sally’s beautiful buns sticking straight up in the air! She had run out with Mary Beth’s bathing suit around her knees and was furiously pulling it up. Mary Beth ran out next wearing only the bottom of Sally’s new bikini. Billy Joe grabbed his brother’s arm. “Oh, my gosh. Mary Beth’s boobs. Look at ’um! They aren’t like torpedoes at all. They’re squishy!” He lay on the roof and rolled on his back. “They bounce!”

  Chip watched all that naked protoplasm jumping and jiggling and marveled that mere protein and fat would give him an erection. He touched his hand to it, purely in the interest of science, of course.

  A scientist’s job is to observe and measure. He made a mental note to find out the minimum number of naked girls he’d need to produce the same effect. Hidden in the tree, he touched it again, to assess its measurement. Big.

  Then he saw his mother run out of the bathhouse, holding Marilee in her arms.

  Sissy had her bathing suit on, but Marilee was completely naked, choking and crying hysterically. Belle arrived with a beach towel. She covered her weeping great-granddaughter and took her down to the river to wash her off as Sissy searched the bathhouse roof.

  She couldn’t see the faces peering out among the leaves, but she knew. “Chip!” she growled. “You get down here this minute!”

  Two boy figures rolled off the other side of the roof and ran toward the carnival.

  Oh, God, he’s got Billy Joe. I should have known. “Your next stop is reform school, you all hear?” she called after them. But the boys weren’t stopping.

  BOURRÉE STOOD NEAR the side of the bathhouse, where he had the privileged view of the naked girls running out the front and the two boys rolling off the back. That boy of mine is a pistol, he thought with pride. Then he caught sight of Sissy and sauntered up to her.

  Competition always excited him and Gentry’s greatest, failed football star was the kind of competition he liked. He decided to invite Sissy for a drive in the woods, but when he approached, said, “Ouwee, woman, you smell just like a skunk in heat.”

  “Only you would know its mating scent,” she said.

  But Bourrée also knew Sissy would never allow herself to smell like a skunk, mating or otherwise. He watched her make a quick run to the top of the high bank and dive into the deep, dark waters of the river.

  He picked up one of the inner tubes piled up on the bank and threw it to her. “Here you go, chère. See if you can swim downwind of the rest of us.”

  She made a quick obscene gesture.

  He chuckled as he watched her float downstream, cradling the inner tube in her arms. Her cheek rested on the black rubber. Her red hair was spread out around her. He saw the river water lapping at her round butt in its green bathing suit, and he couldn’t remember why he’d denied himself her favors all these years, especially since she’d always been so handy.

  Sissy felt Bourrée’s eyes on her and then forgot all about him as she floated down the warm, rolling waters of the swollen river. Aunt Ida May’s Chihuahuas, Thunder and Lightning, raced along the bank, pulling tiny carts announcing the time of Tibor’s speech. The yipping dogs excited a great deal of attention. But Sissy knew if anyone was stupid enough to pet them, they’d bite.

  Near her, a man had lashed up two inner tubes, one for himself and one for a case filled with beer, which he drank as quickly as he could, one after another. Empty beer cans followed him downstream like ducklings in the current. They bore silent tribute to his major accomplishment in this world, the ability to hold prodigious amounts of alcohol and live.

  Sissy climbed into her inner tube and floated on her back. Overhead, graceful strands of Spanish moss waved to her. She closed her eyes and held her face to the sun. As she drifted along, she gave herself up to the dark water. It played gently with her hair and licked the soles of her feet.

  She didn’t see Bourrée’s black Cadillac parked next to the bridge spanning the river. Nor did she see Bourrée standing on that bridge, waiting for her. She felt the shiver of a cold shadow only as she drifted under it.

  “SISSY!” SHE FELT a hand hook her inner tube and jerk her toward the shore.

  She opened her eyes. Bourrée was silhouetted upside down against the bright sky. For a brief moment, she saw him as she’d seen him all those years ago. He was in an inlet, hidden by bushes and moss-covered cypress trees from the rest of the river.

  “What do you want?” she asked warily.

  He turned her around, brushing her knee. He had kicked off his sandals and waded into the water. He was still wearing his green-and-red Hawaiian shirt printed with parrots. The river water darkened the material and stuck the parrots to his belly, but he still didn’t take it off.

  “You’re smelling better.”

  “Not like a skunk in heat anymore?”

  She lay before him as if on a platter, knees and chest in the air. He whispered, “Not like a skunk. We’ll find out about the rest, won’t we?” He ran his hand over her cold thigh.

  “Cut it out, Bourrée.” She pushed him away.

  But he pulled her inner tube closer. “I’m giving you another chance, chère.”

  Sissy laughed. “You’re what?”

  “I’m giving you your last chance.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  Bourrée’s face became purple. He growled. “What’s the matter, that clipped-dick football player of yours keeping you plugged up?” He clutched her thigh with one hand and drove his other hand up inside the crotch of her bathing suit.

  “Stop it, damn you!” she yelled, and kicked him in his big stomach.

  Bourrée grunted. His eyes went cold. He jerked her out of her inner tube. He was still a lot stronger than she was. “I’m getting tired of this, Sissy. You get your hot little butt into that car.”

  Sis
sy was incredulous. “Just like that?” She started to laugh again.

  Bourrée seethed with rage. “Just like that.” He squeezed and cut off the circulation in one of her arms.

  “Let go of me, Bourrée, or I’ll scream so loud those widows and orphans you’ve been stealing from all these years are going to hear me.”

  He grabbed her hair and pulled her against him. She could feel he was hard as he pressed his cold, wet belly against her. “You know you want it. You’ve been angling for it for years.”

  Sissy screamed and screamed again.

  Picnickers deserted their fried chicken and potato salad and ran through the woods. Swimmers pressed against the current and floaters abandoned their inner tubes and converged on their inlet.

  But all they saw was Sissy and Bourrée standing waist-deep in the river glaring at each other.

  “False alarm, folks,” Bourrée said in a jovial voice that barely masked his rage. “This little girl here thought she saw a water moccasin.”

  “I was wrong,” said Sissy, not taking her eyes off him. “It was just your garden variety snake.”

  AS SISSY FLOATED downriver, away from the man who’d taken her innocence, the Hallelujah chorus went off in her head. She felt like a spellbound princess who’d finally broken free. Turning the tables on all those fairy tales, she’d shattered the enchantment by refusing to kiss the frog. Said, Don’t be ridiculous. That was all it took: the courage to say no. Suddenly she had a giddy thought. Maybe those fairy tales were simply propaganda put out by aging frogs because princesses, real princesses, wouldn’t have anything to do with them.

  Sissy realized she’d wasted half her life on resentment and dreams of revenge—and, she had to admit, a mixed-up, crazy kind of longing for something she never really had. Real freedom comes from no longer caring.