Paradise for a Sinner

by Lynn Shurr

  “Ha! All that sand you dragged in last night is a dead giveaway.”

  “Don’t say anything to my brother-in-law, okay?”

  “Now why would I? You can make your own decisions.”

  Nell abandoned the topic of conversation as soon as her mother-in-law arrived with a roasting pan full of rice dressing and a large bread pudding topped with six inches of meringue to be shoved into the refrigerator and warmed later. Mawmaw Nadine, a robust woman with a head of thick iron gray hair, pointed at her cheek. “Which of my grandkids is gonna give me some sugar?” She bent down to receive kisses from the triplets, Xochi, and the twins.

  Stacy held back. “You, too, cher heart. You my honorary grandbaby.” Because it was hard not to comply with anything the forceful mawmaw wanted, she offered up a rather dry kiss. Teddy remained where he sat studiously working his grater, but Nadine came to him. “You my son’s foster child. Come on now, a big smacker right here.” She offered a cheek, and Teddy did his best to make his kiss the biggest of all.

  Then with her usual energy, Mawmaw Nadine grabbed a grater and pitched in, all the while talking about cooking and her family, two favorite topics. “Now, Lizzie will bring the French bread like usual and a red velvet cake from Pommier’s Bakery. I think Izzy is doing white beans with ham and the Watergate salad. Eenie said she might make a potato salad and a pecan pie. Allie usually does baked beans and a coconut cake. We gonna have lots of coconut, looks like.”

  “For a special Samoan dish Adam is making,” Winnie told her.

  “Oooh, he’s cookin’ for you, cher. That’s a good sign. Too bad you divorced and won’t be able to marry in the church.”

  “Actually, neither Adam nor I are Catholic.”

  Nadine shrugged her shoulders. “Well, we ain’t all lucky enough to be Cajun. Guess it works for you.” Sturdy arms pumping, she made huge inroads into the heaps of coconut.

  By the time Adam poked his curly head into the kitchen, they’d completed the first part of the preparation. “Now we ring out the cream.”

  Lacking anything better, they used cheesecloth to do this task. He tossed aside the dry shreds, added salt, pepper, and sliced onion to the cream, then laid out his spinach, making it into leafy cups on top of a swath of banana leaves. He poured the mixture into the cups and sealed up the packets of banana leaves.

  Mawmaw Nadine at his elbow, remarked, “So, not a dessert then?”

  “Nope. Savory. We could have made it with canned coconut milk, but this is much better.”

  Nadine, the queen of making food from scratch, nodded approval, but Winnie rolled her green eyes. “Now he tells me—after I spent half my day making the world’s most laborious starch.”

  “You’ll love it. I have to go tend my rocks. I need to prove I can feed you well. A Samoan man who cannot cook in an umu is no catch at all.” Adam returned to his pit oven.

  “A great big hunky catch who can cook a whole pig,” Nell remarked with a sigh.

  Mawmaw Nadine shook a finger at her daughter-in-law. “You got my son already. He can cook a pig, too, but not in a hole in the ground, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Only joking. Joe and Nell forever.”

  Winnie stared at the packets of palusami. “What if I don’t want to catch him? What if I only want to have some fun for a while?”

  Nadine turned the shaking finger on her. “You don’t throw away a catch that big, cher. You don’t want to keep him, you shouldn’t mess wit’ him.”

  Car doors began to slam, frightening the mockingbirds already staking out breeding territory in the bushes. Bringing side dishes, desserts, and numerous children from college age down to grade school size, the extended Billodeaux clan arrived. Right behind them, the New Orleans contingent made up of former and current Sinners and their families came bearing pots of jambalaya, red beans and rice, and a tower of King Cake boxes from the best bakery in the city. Once every guest had a cold drink in hand, the crowd gathered around the umu to watch Adam poke hot stones inside the pig carcasses and lay the meat out just so on the glowing lava rocks. He piled on more steaming rocks, threw in the potatoes and plantains and lastly placed the packets of palusami, all to be smothered in a thick layer of banana leaves that left a long, lumpy green hump in the earth.

  “How long before we eat?” Nell asked.

  “Two pigs—an hour or so.”

  “That quickly!”

  Immediately, a chain of women transferred dishes that needed to be heated to the top of Joe’s vast grill inside the barbecue pavilion. They covered the length of two picnic tables with cold foods and set up the desserts in the formal dining room inside the house to be available when darkness fell and the game began. When this frenzy of culinary arrangement ended, Nell and her favorite guests gathered in a ring of folding chairs under the oaks to take a breather before the meal. Winnie declined a rest despite her long efforts in making palusami. She and Adam took Teddy to the riding ring for a promised turn on the horses. Stacy bobbed by Teddy’s side on the white mare giving him instruction he did not need and confusing the western-trained horse with her posting and commands.

  “Winnie says Teddy should do more riding to strengthen his core and thighs,” Dr. Mintay Bullock observed.

  “She’s a good nurse. Thanks for bringing her over to fill the gap until Nurse Wickersham is free,” Nell answered.

  “You know I had ulterior motives for that.”

  “What?” asked Precious Armitage, wife of the nose guard. Big, black and bodacious, she wore the red, white and blue jersey of the team she favored tonight. It spanned across her enormous breasts.

  “No, don’t tell me. I see it all now. Adam just snaked his arm around yo’ sister’s waist. They got it going on. Too bad. I hoped Adam might stay single until one of my girls finished college. Whatever happened to the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice, as my Calvin likes to put it when we in bed? Hate to say it, but your sis is the most bourgy girl I ever seen. Look at that hair, and it ain’t even extensions. Why she’s hardly black at all. Now if I was light-skinned I’d want to be the tawny kind like Sharlette.”

  Sharlette Dobbs, wife of Ace, preened a little. “Why thank you, sister,” she said to her best friend. Elegant and always well-dressed, she stretched out long legs clad in skintight leggings and topped with a belted leopard print tunic that extended to her knees. She crossed her gold-sandaled feet and called out to her two teenage daughters who stood at the base of the rock climbing wall. “You keep an eye on Prince now.” Her son, around the same age as the twins and Tommy, scrambled up the outcrops with Mintay’s athletic daughter not far behind.

  Sharlette got an eye roll and a sassy remark in return. “We’re tired of taking care of the royalty. When is dinner?”

  “Soon. You watch him until then.”

  The two other mothers in the circle sat quietly because both had worn-out sleeping toddlers in their laps. The leggy, blonde sports photographer, Stevie Riley, wife of the retired Connor Riley, supported her tow-headed daughter, Josee, on a shoulder. Her son, Jack, equally white-haired and blue-eyed, bounced in the jumper along with a redheaded little terror named Maureen Mariah McCoy, the daughter of Cassie and Howdy, the Sinners’ kicker. The triplets tumbled around with them.

  “I never knew motherhood would be so—so engrossing. I might have had kids sooner if I’d known.” Stevie patted her daughter’s back.

  “I never knew it could be so daunting,” Cassie McCoy said, careful not to disturb little Wayne, the image of his father, curled in her lap. “Wayne has been easy compared to Maureen. I guess my mother got her wish—that I’d have a child exactly as troublesome as myself someday.”

  Nell squeezed Cassie’s hand. “You turned out fine in the end.”

  “Because of Howdy. He’s steady. I needed slow and steady and didn’t even realize it.”

  “You think this thang with your sister and Adam is going anywhere, or is she just keeping him warm until my daughter graduates college?” Preci
ous said, not giving up on the topic.

  Mintay shook her head. “I only wanted her to let loose a little after that shipwreck of a divorce.”

  “I think Adam is taking this a little more seriously after what the Rev said to him about courting Winnie. He isn’t a player when it comes to women, you know. His fiancée jilted him for his best friend. I’m afraid he’s on the rebound, and Winnie seems unsure where all this is going.” Nell expressed her concern.

  “What kind of crazy woman would dump a man like Adam?” Precious asked. “Just look at him, he can rock one of those aloha shirts. Not many men can pull that off!”

  “Evidently he was dumped by a Samoan virgin princess.”

  “Oh, not good,” Mintay said. “Our entire lives, Winnie felt she had to compete with someone better and failed. She is far prettier than I am, and I guess that made people take her more lightly. Nothing wrong with being a nurse and not a doctor, I keep telling her—but she should go to med school now. I did get the better prize when it came to husbands.”

  A murmur of agreements went around the circle. “Now if only I could prevent the sisters of the church from stopping by with their fried chicken and mac and cheese. I’d like him to live past fifty.” Their eyes swiveled toward the Rev standing near the pig pit and wearing one of his old team jerseys stretched tight across the belly.

  “Doesn’t look like Winnie is giving up Adam anytime soon. She’s about glued to his side and has her fingers in all that nice curly hair down his back,” Sharlette observed. “I wouldn’t mind taking a turn with that.”

  Brinsley approached to ask if any of the ladies would like another drink of any kind. Sharlette and Precious placed their orders. “Now that is a man who does not rock an aloha shirt. I don’t think I ever seen whiter arms sticking out of one of them,” Precious commented. “A shirt like that should be topped with a lei and a big, brown smiling face, not the kisser of doom.”

  “Adam talked him into the shirt. Brinsley is very uncomfortable in beachwear,” Nell said, defending the butler.

  “I never thought you’d be the one to get a butler. Why, you don’t even cater parties like these,” Stevie remarked.

  “We will never have a catered party as long as Mawmaw Nadine lives. She firmly believes home-cooked is better. As for the butler, he is only temporary until Stacy gets used to living here. Brinsley is her only link to my sister and her former life.”

  Brinsley walked up and presented Sharlette and Precious with two uncapped light beers sweating from the cooler on a silver tray. They nodded their thanks, and he moved off to accost others about their desires. Precious watched him go, so straight and so out of place. “Still a person could get used to having a butler pretty quick.”

  Over by the riding ring, Adam looked at the sun rather than his watch and beckoned Teddy and Stacy to bring their horses to the gate. He helped the boy down and into his wheelchair. Stacy dismounted with ease and flipped the reins to Dean as if he were merely a stable boy attending to the stock. Even from a distance, Nell knew her son’s jaw clenched. Winnie pushed Teddy across the uneven ground between the ring and the pavilion. Along the way, they spread the word that the pigs should be ready. Mothers hailed children, grungy from climbing, jumping, and riding, to go wash their hands.

  Releasing a cloud of steam, Adam raked the wilted banana leaves from the top of the umu. Joe used his barbecue tools to remove the packets of palusami, the baked potatoes and plantains to a tin tub. Howdy McCoy and Connor Riley carted it off to the table set aside for the pigs and already covered in oilcloth and banana leaves. It paid to have half a football team to transfer two heavy, roasted pigs onto a plank and into the pavilion. Nell quietly requested that the black-eyed heads of the animals be removed from sight. Precious offered to take them home to a relative who made hogshead cheese and always bemoaned the difficulty of finding a good fresh head, though she wasn’t sure a roasted head would do.

  After that, everyone got down to the business of eating, filling plates to heaping and gamely trying the palusami which they declared tasty, okay, or never again depending on the person. Winnie fell into the “okay for all that work” category, disappointing Adam just a little. The two of them sat cross-legged on a blanket with a selection of foods laid out on fresh banana leaves as he wanted to give her a Samoan experience.

  Adam gestured to the crowd perched wherever they could find a space. “This is very Samoan, a big feast for the whole village.”

  “The Sinners are a village?” Winnie questioned.

  “Yes, my village when I am away from home. Too bad I could not find any taro. We like to eat with our hands, and pieces of taro make a good scoop. Potatoes crumble.” Still, he popped a piece of yam into his mouth and offered a bit to Winnie.

  Winnie ate it off his fingertips, slick and greasy from the roast pork. If they hadn’t been surrounded by an audience, she would have sucked them clean, he was that tasty. She offered him a slice of mango the same way.

  “You must come with me to visit Samoa.”

  She nearly choked on a succulent piece of roast pork. “It’s a little soon to be meeting your family, Adam.”

  “For a vacation, just a vacation.”

  Somehow, she didn’t think so. “Are you sure this isn’t about the princess who got away?”

  “Pala is her name, and I have another princess now. Winnie, I never held her close to my heart as I have you. Last year, I remarked to my mother that Pala had turned into a beauty and filled her role as taupou very well. My mother told my father. He spoke to her father and uncle, the matai, the village chief. Pala must have agreed to a courtship because before I knew it, I was taking gifts to her family and eating with them regularly. When Pala and I walked out together, half the village followed. She remained reserved as would be expected of the taupou.”

  “This was an arranged marriage?”

  “A very traditional one. My family has been accumulating fine mats and other gifts for most of a year in expectation of the wedding. Such a bride would bring prestige to my family. Pala is all a Samoan woman should be and so I ought to be happy with her, right?”

  “I suppose.” Winnie studied the abundance of food she had little appetite for anymore and crushed a blackened bit of pigskin into the banana leaves with her thumb.

  “Only now, I don’t think I want a Samoan wife anymore.”

  Her eyes moved from the feast to Adam. “Is that so?”

  “Winnie, come to the islands with me as soon as you can.”

  “I’d have to wait until Nurse Wickersham arrives to care for Teddy. I’m not sure. Samoa is very far away, and I should be looking for a new job. I don’t want to be a burden to Mintay and Rev any longer than I must.”

  Nell clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Finish eating. The pre-game show is on and dessert is in the house. Every one of you take home some of this pork and anything else you want. I know y’all brought coolers.”

  “That, too, is very Samoan. Every person takes home part of the feast. I have no interest in seeing the pre-game show and want only one kind of dessert. I think we have time for a trip to the palm grove before anyone will miss us.”

  “I can’t. Teddy.”

  Teddy sat nearby, a sturdy plastic plate almost empty in his lap. Stacy had taken a seat beside the wheelchair and handed him his drink whenever he wanted it. She fed Titi a morsel of pork. Macho gnawed a crunchy pig tail and a couple of the ears with great contentment. The girl gave the couple a genial smile, far from her usual sullen expression when she failed to be the center of attention. She’d been listening in on the adult conversation of course.

  “If you want to go for a walk, I’ll take Teddy inside for dessert and get him a good spot in the theater to watch the game.”

  Winnie considered the offer. Stacy, though bossy, did pay attention to Teddy and helped when she could. Their little nightly tête-à-tête continued before both went to bed. Within the large Billodeaux family, they had formed their own group o
f two.

  “Teddy, do you need to relieve yourself or anything else?” she asked.

  Embarrassed in front of Stacy, he wrinkled his nose. “No! I’m okay. Go for your walk. I don’t need a babysitter all the time.”

  “If you are sure…”

  “Jeez, go walk with Adam. I can get inside by myself.” He pushed his chair in the direction of the house.

  Adam threw the meat scraps to Macho and gathered the banana leaves with the rest of the remnants to fling into a trashcan. “Sounds like he means it to me.” He neatly folded the blanket and tucked it under his arm.

  “Teddy,” Winnie called after the disgusted child. “We won’t be gone more than an hour. If you need me, have someone call from the gate to the grove.”

  “Yeah, sure.” The boy made steady progress toward his dessert with Stacy tagging after him and giving the wheelchair a shove whenever it hung up in heavy leaves or a small hole.

  Winnie conceded to Adam, “To the palm grove then.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Stacy took possession of wheeling the chair. She leaned over and whispered in Teddy’s ear. “They are going to do grownup stuff, sex things, aren’t they?”

  “Probably. Let go of my chair. I can do this myself.”

  Instead, Stacy flashed a sweet smile when Sharlette Dobbs complimented her on being so kind. “I wish my daughters were half as helpful.”

  Stacy tipped the chair slightly to gain the concrete path. “Let go,” Teddy growled. Titi yipped at their heels.

  “Wait here. I’m going to put Titi inside. I don’t want her barking and giving us away.”

  “Giving what away?”

  “I want to watch the sex stuff. That Dean thinks he knows everything. I bet he never actually watched anyone having sex.”

  “You don’t want to, either. It ain’t nice.”

  “How would you know?”

  Teddy snorted. “I lived in a trailer, not a wing of the palace, Stace. The walls are pretty thin. Ours had a crack between the two bedrooms. Once, I watched Newt and my mother go at it. Mama called that ‘doing the nasty’, and it was. Lots of moaning and grunting and bumping against the wall. She said she had to let Newt or he’d put us both out on the road with no way to get back to Tennessee.”