The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

by Loraine Despres

  There was an urgency in her voice and fear, but Peewee didn’t hear. The blood was pumping in his ears. He hadn’t heard a word she’d said since she’d called Parker sugar.

  He saw that long freckled hand and thought about all she’d taken from him, all she’d done to him. He wiped his left hand on his pants, but he couldn’t wipe his right and it was sweating so badly he could hardly hold the pistol. He looked at his wife cool and pretty and aimed at her face.

  A blast of hot air hit him.

  Bourrée stepped through the door behind the lovers. He couldn’t resist checking out what was going on. He smelled his son’s sweat from across the room. Saw his hand tremble. Pitiful.

  Peewee glanced up as his father moved past the targets. Their eyes met. The air conditioner pounded.

  Bourrée’s nostrils flared with contempt. The master puppeteer willed his son to get on with it.

  And Peewee obeyed.

  The shot ripped a hole though the rest of their lives.

  Epilogue

  You can’t change the past, but a smart girl won’t let that

  stop her.

  Rule Number One Hundred and One

  THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK

  MARILEE TRIED TO help her mother down the stairs. “You don’t have to treat me like a cripple,” Sissy said, pulling away from her briskly.

  “You were faking, weren’t you?” Marilee asked. “You just wanted a chance to sit on your old porch for a while, didn’t you?”

  “I told you. When you get to be my age, doing what you want is the only thing you have time for. Now, hurry up. We don’t want to be late for the senator.”

  MARILEE TURNED THE corner onto Hope Street. The Rubin-steins’ big antebellum house had been torn down. A stucco apartment block with aluminum-clad windows took up most of the lot. Tibor’s pretentious brick monstrosity with all its Doric columns was still standing, but the big magnolia tree where Clara had once hidden was gone. The old high school was gone too, with its pilasters and curlicues and engraving of “Mens sana in corpore sano.” In its place was a two-story glass and cement building that would be at home in any suburb of Los Angeles. Sissy sort of missed the old school, which had housed so many of her memories, but was sure that the students she saw with their backpacks and baggy clothes pouring out of the classrooms, released early for the victory celebration, undoubtedly preferred air conditioning.

  Brother Junior Bodine’s white clapboard Church of Everlasting Redemption had been replaced by a glass and stucco structure with a soaring roof and a huge cross that caught the sun as it reached to the heavens. “Looks like a lot of people have been real successful finding Everlasting Redemption,” Sissy said.

  Marilee didn’t say anything. She was still pissed at her mother and concentrated on getting them to the fairgrounds.

  Sissy looked to her right at the cemetery. She could see the crape myrtle tree over the graves of her mother, father, brother, and grandmother. “Honey…” she started.

  “We don’t have time to visit dead people, Mama. The live ones need us right now.”

  Sissy laughed. “Sometimes you sound just like me.”

  Marilee couldn’t suppress a smile. “Sometimes you drive me crazy.”

  “I know, sugar, that’s a mother’s job.”

  Marilee laughed and, shaking her head, picked up her cell phone.

  THE SENATOR WAS late.

  Sissy, standing by the side of the stage, looked around at the fairgrounds and thought about how it had changed over the years. The river had cut into it and a lot of the trees were gone to make way for “improvements.”

  Where Belle Cantrell had set up a folding chair in the shade was now a sun-bleached Little League field. A cement slab had been poured in front of the stage, with metal chairs set into it. They made clacking noises as people scrambled to find a seat, because there were not nearly enough to accommodate all those who had come to celebrate one of their own in the United States Senate.

  No one was swimming in the river on this crisp autumn day. And there were no Irish marching bands in leprechaun hats nor maroon-robed choirs singing “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but there was a piano onstage and the high school band was setting up next to it, scraping chairs and making anticipatory toots. Sissy looked at those shiny-faced boys and girls in their purple and gold uniforms and suddenly it came over her that at least half of them were black, as were the voters sitting in the metal chairs and standing behind them.

  Then she saw him, coming from the parking lot. He waved as he hurried toward her. Sissy felt that little leap in her heart that she always felt when they’d been apart for a few days. She watched him move stiffly around the crowd. The easy grace he’d once had was gone and the dark brown hair was now gray, but he had the same strong features, high cheekbones, and prominent nose. In a couple of minutes he was with her.

  “I was afraid I wouldn’t make it in time,” Parker said, bending over her to give her a kiss.

  WHEN PEEWEE GLANCED up and saw his father enter the Paradise, he saw Bourrée’s nostrils flare, saw that familiar look of contempt, and at that moment, he must have realized that killing Sissy and Parker wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly enough. Sissy hadn’t made his whole life a misery. And Parker was an afterthought.

  It was his father who’d raised him in the sink of humiliation and laughed about it. Peewee’s hand shook as he pressed his finger against the trigger. The squeeze was such a little thing. Just the fleeting pressure of the forefinger of his right hand was all it took.

  Bourrée was thrown back into the wall. His head cracked the knotty pine paneling. The holes in the wood dripped blood as he slid to the floor. A roar rolled out of his mouth and his breath became shallow.

  Peewee traced his fall with the barrel of his revolver. “It’s all your fault!” he screamed and this time his hand didn’t shake.

  Parker pushed Sissy to the floor and rushed Peewee. If he’d had a knife or a broken bottle or a blunt instrument, Parker could have taken it from him. Easy. But Peewee had a.38 Chief’s Special, and he got off a second shot that hit Parker, but didn’t stop him. His third shot hit the ceiling as the ex–football player tackled him, knocking the revolver out of his sweat-slick hand. It scuttled across the floor into a table as Parker slammed Peewee into the bar and knocked him to the floor. Sissy heard the crack of a bone breaking and heard Peewee scream.

  She grabbed the gun and, as Bourrée had taught her all those years ago, quickly emptied out the chambers. There’d be no more shooting today, she vowed, pocketing the shells.

  She heard Rosalie calling for an ambulance. Then she saw Bourrée groaning on the floor. She thought about going to him. Instead she reached for Parker, who was crossing the room to see if she’d been shot.

  “I’m okay,” she said, but her voice was shaky. Parker helped her to her feet, keeping his eye on Peewee.

  That’s when she saw the blood seeping through Parker’s shirt. “My God, you’ve been shot!”

  Parker looked down. “I guess so.” He tried to smile to reassure her, but she saw he was sweating. Her heart hammered in her ears as she opened his shirt. But the bullet had only grazed his side. She felt her whole body flood with relief. She picked up the ice pack to stop the bleeding. But Parker never took his eyes off Peewee, who was pulling himself up with his right hand.

  Peewee stumbled over to the man who’d belittled him his whole life and so casually betrayed him. He held his throbbing left arm in his right as he stood triumphantly over him.

  “Who taught you to shoot, boy?” Bourrée whispered.

  Suddenly Peewee’s expression changed. Was that a note of admiration in his father’s voice? Peewee couldn’t be sure. He’d never heard it before. He dropped to his knees. Bourrée’s hands fluttered and jerked.

  WHEN THE SHERIFF arrived, Peewee was sitting on the worn plank floor, holding Bourrée in his arms, desperately trying to stop the bleeding with his good right hand.

  Outside an ambulance wail
ed. Peewee wailed too, but it was too late.

  He had killed his own father.

  Hugh wrote his daughter a firsthand account of the funeral. Widows from all over the South came and wept copious tears. In fact, the only dry-eyed woman in that crowd of wailing mourners was Miss Lily. She had a kind of relieved look on her face as they lowered Bourrée’s coffin into the ground.

  The trial was a sensation. Juries understand about a man shooting his wife. It was only natural. But killing his own father—and the D.A.’s campaign manager to boot—that was something else.

  For the first time in his life, Peewee saw his picture in the paper and in the New Orleans and Baton Rouge papers too. He was secretly glad no one believed he was insane, even temporarily. He was sentenced to seven years in the state penitentiary for manslaughter, with time off for good behavior. He got out in four. His behavior had always been very, very good.

  Amy Lou Hopper took it as her mission to save his immortal soul. She visited him every Sunday, bringing him baskets of baked goods. And when she raised her voice in prayer, thrusting her fervent prow right up against the visitor’s screen where Peewee’s hand was pressed, he had his first vision of heaven.

  AT FIRST SISSY enjoyed “living in sin” up in Boston. But Parker didn’t like it and the kids hated it. So Sissy gave in, filed for divorce, and married Parker.

  He was true to his word. He made big money in the construction business and built them a house first outside of Boston and then in Alexandria, Virginia, where Sissy and Clara got together again. The younger woman was going to law school, marching for civil rights, and discovering that black is beautiful. She introduced her cousin to a whole new world. By now Clara was in love with a black activist. Sissy let them—no, encouraged them—to organize civil rights protests out of their new house in Alexandria.

  But before they moved to Virginia, back in Boston, Sissy told Chip that Bourrée was his biological father and the boy decided to make her and Parker pay for the tragedy. He almost succeeded. Until with Hugh’s and Belle’s help, they shipped him off to a Southern military academy where distraught parents sent their delinquent sons to keep them out of jail. Chip loved it. He won all the medals on the shooting range and wrote an honors paper on the strategic benefits of poison gas. The school commander predicted a brilliant future.

  Chip joined the army right after graduation, when they promised to assign him to a chemical warfare unit, and he rose through the ranks. Sissy suspected he’d personally made the decision to deploy Agent Orange, but she never had any solid information on that subject. The army sent him to college and he stayed in until his retirement in 1980, when he went to work for a chemical company no one had ever heard of, doing top-secret research somewhere in the Middle East. He never married, never wanted to have anything to do with his family, but Sissy never gave up trying.

  Billy Joe got a football scholarship to Northwestern in 1961 and discovered acting. He studied Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Ibsen in college and then went to New York. He had his mother’s charm, which served him well on the stage and in his many love affairs, as he knocked around in regional theater. When he was thirty he fell in love with a woman very much like Sissy, who was smart enough to let him think he was chasing her. They married the next year, soon had two children, and moved to Southern California. He played numerous roles in forgettable films and then after years of classical stage training he found fame, at last, on a TV sitcom. He and his family vacationed with his mother and Parker whenever his schedule permitted, and his burgeoning celebrity lent a real air of excitement when he was able to campaign in southern Louisiana towns.

  The stage was filling up with dignitaries. A woman with a lot of teased blond hair sat down at the piano and belted out “America the Beautiful” in a clear bluesy voice. It took Sissy a few minutes to recognize Betty Ruth under all that hair. After her drunken foray in the woods with Harlan, Betty Ruth wrote Sissy that she’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous and had taken her own first step—by divorcing Brother Junior Bodine. She’d played the piano and sung in dives all over the South and in her later years had become a revered figure in the New Orleans jazz scene.

  Then the mayor announced the senator had arrived. The band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” and the crowd stood and cheered for their new United States senator, Gentry’s own Clara Conners.

  Parker took Sissy’s hand, which was covered in age spots now, but then so was his. He kissed her hand gently as Clara, with her hair turning gray and her figure thickening, walked onto the stage. Sissy thought how far they had come together.

  Once Clara had enlisted her into the civil rights movement, Sissy found she had a real talent for fund-raising. The Southern Belle’s Handbook was a big help when it came to talking rich businessmen into giving money to worthy causes. And later when Clara began running for office, there was no cause Sissy felt more passionate about than the rising political career of her cousin. A political career Clara strengthened by her own judicious use of certain rules in the Southern Belle’s Handbook. She also used it to great advantage when she decided to marry the black activist she had loved for so long. He was a handful, but she managed to keep him faithful and supportive until his sudden death from a heart attack shortly before her run for the Senate.

  Clara thanked the political establishment, her supporters, and then said, “There’s one person I owe everything to, without whom I’d never be standing on this stage today. Sissy Davidson, get up here, girl.”

  Sissy hadn’t expected this. She turned to Parker.

  “Go on, honey, you deserve it.”

  “Come on, Sissy,” the senator said. And the crowd cheered, “Sissy! Sissy!”

  Sissy mounted the stage as Clara talked about all that Sissy had done for her. How she never would have had an education without her, never would have had the funds to stand there before them. Sissy’s cheeks were burning, but she felt that same wild rush of energy she’d felt so many years before, when she stood on this same stage and spoke to a very different crowd on Clara’s behalf.

  Without letting her leave the stage, Clara told the crowd what she intended to do up there in Washington, for Gentry, for the state, and for the country. Sissy had heard it all before, when she’d helped Clara write it. She looked out over the audience and saw Marilee and the other campaign workers, those black-suited sisters in mourning, hovering together at the edge of the stage. Sissy knew most of them well. They were attractive, some of them even beautiful, all of them intelligent and well educated, and most of them miserable. Most of them lived alone.

  For the first time in years, Sissy thought she just might take the advice Clara had given her in her kitchen back in 1956 and write the Southern Belle’s Handbook. God knows, these poor benighted Yankee girls needed it. She’d seen the way they cut men down, not even trying to make them feel good about themselves. Sissy had long ago discarded Rule Thirty-seven, Marriage is the root of all suffering. Her new Rule Thirty-seven said, Marriage can be the root of great happiness, when you marry the right man.

  She knew these bright, resourceful young women starved themselves diligently and worked out their bodies relentlessly, but they had little real grace or understanding of courtesy. She’d comforted them as they wept hot tears when the humiliated men in their lives left them, or worse, stayed and treated them badly. She had to write the Southern Belle’s Handbook for them, to help them attract a good man and keep him in line, because Sissy knew even the best of men needed a little managing. And if the other women took up the handbook, maybe Marilee would too. Then maybe, just maybe, her daughter would be able to find happiness, and not just empty bustle, in her life.

  The high school band struck up her old school march, and Clara slipped her arm around her cousin’s waist. The two old ladies waved as the crowd cheered.

  But how could she write the handbook? She’d never written anything except thank-you letters. Of course she’d helped with the speeches and put together fund-raising proposals, but that wasn’
t really writing.

  As the band played and the crowd sang “Onward, onward to victory!” Clara took Sissy’s hand in hers and held it up in a victory salute. The crowd went wild. Parker and Marilee applauded loudly, beaming with pride.

  Suddenly Sissy knew she’d never succeed unless she tried. She had to take that first step. She’d write down what she remembered. The rest would come. Hell, she was only seventy-six. She had time.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  THERE ARE SO many people who helped me give birth to this novel. I am indebted first and foremost to my agent, Robert Tabian, who kept the faith and never let me down, and to my editor, Claire Wachtel, a woman of great taste and perspicacity. I also want to thank Jennifer Pooley at William Morrow/HarperCollins for her guidance and hand-holding, and Sharyn Rosenblum for her brilliant support. Sissy was born in Deena Metzger’s workshop, and without her prodding, Sissy and her eccentric family might never have kept me awake at night and invaded my dreams. I am indebted to Mollie Gregory, Johnna Levine, and especially Sarah Timberman for their careful reading of the manuscript and their enthusiasm for it in its earliest stages and to Patricia Eskovitz and Dr. Ernest Scheuer, who proofed it at the end. Carolyn Kolb in New Orleans supplemented my childhood memories with her own recollections of small-town life in Louisiana. My father-in-law, Dr. Chesmore Eastlake, researched illegal abortions in the 1940s for me. The accuracies are theirs; any mistakes are all my own. I wish to acknowledge Dianne Dixon, who with unbridled enthusiasm urged me on. (Easy for you, Dianne.) And I am eternally grateful to my fellow writers, who have inspired me and who go daily into solitary rooms, sit in front of relentlessly whirring computers, and attempt to commit literature. I appreciate my son, David Despres Mulholland, for his unswerving belief that I could do anything. Finally, for my peculiar worldview I am beholden to the memories of two great southern belles—my grandmother Dora Stern and my aunt Francis Stern Schwarz—and to the memory of my mother, Doris Stern Despres, who never let the bastards get the better of her. This book could not have been written without any of them.