Mary Jordan laughed. Not one of those deep, hearty laughs she was capable of, but rather one of those faraway kind of laughs that doesn’t last very long, and when you get right down to it, you’re not really sure if it was a laugh or a sigh.
The wind whipped my hair across my face, and the air felt damp.
“I’d like it to rain,” Mary Jordan said.
“Me, too.”
“It’s been so hot.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Mary Jordan said.
“I know.”
The swings whined. The wind blew some more, tossing Mary Jordan’s curls in front of her face.
“‘Head up, chin out, hair blowing in the wind,’” I said, quoting our favorite line from the movie The African Queen.
“Humphrey Bogart. He was the best,” Mary Jordan said.
“I wonder what he was like out of the movies,” I said.
“I think he loved Katharine Hepburn.”
“Who wouldn’t love Katharine Hepburn?” I said. Mary Jordan and Evie and I had watched old movies for as long as I could remember, The African Queen having been our favorite.
We swung some more.
“Do you love Doug?” I asked.
“I think so.”
“You’re not sure?”
“How does a person know?”
That’s when Evie rode up, squeezing hard on her brakes and skidding her bike in the sand. “Nice to be included!” she said. “I already rode to both your houses. No one knew where you were.”
She sat in the swing on the other side of me, her overalls rolled up to just below her knees. Her hair was pulled through an LSU cap. I knew it was Billy’s.
“What are you two looking so serious for?” she said.
“We’re having ourselves a philosophical discussion,” I told her.
“Are we talking Plato or Socrates?” Evie asked.
“More like Freud,” Mary Jordan said.
“Mary Jordan is wanting to know what love is,” I said.
Evie took off the cap and tossed her head back, shaking out her long red strands. “It’s the yin and the yang.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I just thought it sounded good.”
“Papa Walter once told me love is like the wilderness. It’s easy to get lost in it. He said, forty-one years and he still hasn’t found his way out,” I told them.
“You think we’ll ever feel that way?” Mary Jordan said.
“Hope so,” I said.
The three of us locked arms as the swings carried us slowly hither and yon. I leaned my head back, my face to the sky, my hair blowing in the wind. Giant gray clouds hung over us as if they’d tangled themselves in the cypresses. Before long, warm spatters of rain began to fall.
Mary Jordan stopped her swing and let go of my arm. “I better get home. Mom’s got her crawfish pie in the oven.”
Mary Jordan’s mom always fixed crawfish pie for afternoon dinner on Sundays. Raindrops beaded Mary Jordan’s lashes and tightened her natural curls.
“Where’s your bike?” Evie asked her.
“I walked.”
Mary Jordan took a few steps away from us, then turned back around. “I think your grandfather’s right. I think love is like a wilderness.”
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
Mary Jordan had her hands tucked in her khaki shorts. Her T-shirt, wet with rain, clung to her skin. I could tell her mind was lingering in one of its reflective moods. “A wilderness can be beautiful,” she said, “and exotic, and powerful. But it can also be scary.”
“Like love,” Evie said, her voice dead serious.
“Yeah, like love,” Mary Jordan said.
I thought about Dewey, and Mama and Daddy, and the Bankses. I knew Evie and Mary Jordan were right.
“I’ll see you all later,” Mary Jordan said.
“Later,” Evie told her.
Evie and I continued to swing, the rain washing over us as we watched our friend leave.
“You got anywhere to go?” I asked Evie.
“Nope.” She tilted her head back, letting the rain slap down on her face, and opened her mouth wide.
“It’s polluted,” I said.
“I don’t care.”
The rain fell harder, soaking us clear through.
I made a run for it, heading for the shelter of the fort. Evie pumped her legs, swinging higher and higher, her head still tilted back.
I sat in the sandbox underneath the fort and watched her. I loved my friends. I loved everything about them. I loved them so much, sometimes my heart hurt, as if any moment it would burst itself wide open.
Lightning tore through the sky, followed by one great thundering boom, as if God had just looked down on the exact earthly spot Evie and I had occupied, and decided to speak. Evie shrieked, jumping off her swing, and ran for cover. We sat in the middle of the sandbox as the rain dripped onto our heads from the cracks in the wood above us. It was a warm rain, and it smelled wonderful.
“That was a nice wedding yesterday,” Evie finally said.
“I wasn’t sure you were there.” I knew Evie had been at the reception, but I hadn’t seen her at the wedding.
“I was sitting in the balcony.”
“I guess you weren’t sitting there alone,” I said, thinking about the way she and Billy had been dancing.
Evie smiled and gave me a nudge. She was sitting cross-legged, and started drawing little diagrams in the sand with her fingers. “Hey, Lucy?”
“Hmm?”
“Remember when you were asking about love?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think love happens overnight.”
“Go on,” I said.
Evie drew more pictures in the sand. “I think it’s buried in your heart. I think maybe it’s been there all along. Maybe it’s buried inside that other person’s heart all along, too.”
“You’re talking about Billy, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, I am.”
The rain continued to fall. We continued to sit there while Evie drew pictures in the sand.
It’s funny how you can completely forget a moment in your life, and then with one instant, one comment, you remember it, as if you’ve lived it all over again.
I thought back to our first year in high school. Evie and Mary Jordan and I were sitting in the cafeteria. We’d just finished eating the school’s lunch. “I don’t feel so good,” Evie said. We decided it was probably her lunch not sitting right on her stomach. That night her mom took her to the hospital in New Orleans, where she had her appendix taken out. The doctors said we could have lost her.
Billy drove Mary Jordan and me to the hospital, none of us saying a word the whole way there. When Evie got out of the recovery room, the doctors still wouldn’t let us see her. Billy walked right into the room anyway and pulled up a chair beside Evie’s bed. He took her freckled hand in his. His shoulders slumped forward, his elbow on one of his knees, his forehead supported in his hand. He sat like that for the longest time, as if he was praying.
And so it wasn’t Evie’s appendicitis that I had forgotten, or the fear that we had almost lost our best friend. It was Billy sitting like he was, holding her hand.
“Suppose love is buried inside a person’s heart,” I said. “And suppose it has been there all along. What do you suppose wakes it up?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe sometimes it’s just not love’s time.”
“And maybe sometimes it is,” I said.
I remembered the catcher’s mitt Billy had given Evie. “To catch you when you fall,” Billy had said. I thought about seeing them dancing together at the wedding reception.
“Maybe it’s your and Billy’s time,” I told her.
Evie stopped drawing pictures in the sand. “I don’t know.”
“What does Billy say?”
“He hasn’t said anything. I don’t think either of us knows what t
o say. When I got to the church yesterday, I was looking for you and Mary Jordan to sit with. Mama had been out late the night before. I didn’t think she’d ever get herself ready. As soon as I stepped inside the church, I didn’t see you or Mary Jordan. I saw Billy, standing off all by himself. I thought that was so sweet of him to come. He asked me if I had anyone to sit with. I said, ‘Not really.’ The church was pretty full, so we went up to the balcony.”
Evie stopped and looked at me. “It was when Mary Jordan’s grandfather sang. That’s when it happened.”
“What happened?” I asked.
Evie was still looking at me, as if somehow by looking at me, she’d find all the answers. “It was like something inside of me started to wake up. Something I’d known all along.”
“Did Billy feel it, too?” I asked.
“I think so. About halfway through the song, he took my hand, holding on to just my fingertips. He held it like that for the rest of the service, even when everyone went forward to take Communion. We just kept sitting like that, as if someone had poured warm honey all over us, and we were too stuck in one place to move.”
“That’s why I didn’t see you,” I said.
Evie went on. “When the service was over, he asked me if I’d like a ride to the reception. I said that I would. I’ve always ridden around with Billy. All of us have. But it didn’t feel like all those other times.”
“How did it feel?” I asked.
“I was aware of everything,” she said. “Kind of like if someone had told you this was your last day to live and you’d want to remember every detail, how each person looked, how they made you feel, how your mama’s food tasted on your tongue, how the air smelled. I can still see Billy’s hands on the steering wheel. I can still see the way his thumbnail was nicked on the side.”
I locked my arm with Evie’s. I had felt the same way with Dewey at the beach, as if I could smell and taste every color around me.
“Do you think I’m weird?” Evie asked.
“No, I don’t think you’re weird at all.”
We sat quiet for a couple more minutes.
“I saw you two dancing,” I said.
She didn’t say anything.
“It was really beautiful,” I told her.
Evie sifted sand through her fingers. I could tell she was thinking. “After the reception was over we walked around town for a while. Then we sat on this bench and just talked. He wanted to know about school, and how I was getting along with my parents. I asked him if he’d found a job yet. Then he got to telling me about this big idea he has. He’s planning on opening up a pet store at the old Conoco.”
“A pet store?”
“That’s what he said. He’s going to turn the garage into boarding kennels. He says he’s going to make it a real nice place for animals to stay.”
“Mama always said we weren’t ever going to get a dog because there wasn’t anyone to look after it if we went on vacation.”
“That’s what everyone says. People have to drive clear over to Beaufort to drop their pets off if they want to go anywhere,” Evie told me.
“And the closest PetsMart is an hour away,” I recalled.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Well, what do you know,” I said.
“Billy said he’d give me a job. I could work with him after school.”
“When’s he planning on opening his pet store?”
“As soon as he can get the place ready. He’s meeting with the bank next week. His parents have agreed to cosign on a loan.”
Billy seemed awfully young to be opening up his own business, but I knew if anyone could do it, he could. Everyone liked Billy, and he’d always done whatever he made up his mind to do, whether it be winning a football game or deflating the tires on every teacher’s car in the parking lot without getting caught.
Evie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Did you notice how blue the sky was yesterday?”
I smiled, thinking about Dewey, thinking about the beach. “Yeah, I did.”
“It must have been ten o’clock before Billy finally drove me home. When we got to the house, he told me he’d like to talk to me again sometime. Then when I got out of the car, he leaned his head out the window and said, ‘I’d like to dance with you again sometime, too.’”
“He said that?”
“Mm-hmm, he did.”
“What did you say?”
“I just stood there thinking how I’d like to dance with him again sometime, too, but I was so busy thinking about it that I never got around to saying it. So he smiled and waved, and drove off.”
“You should have kissed him,” I said.
“He told me I was beautiful,” Evie said. “He told me I’d grown into a beautiful lady.”
The rain was passing over us, though the sky remained steamy and gray. I thought about what Billy had said to Evie. He was right. Evie had grown into a beautiful lady. She wasn’t like the other kids in Sweetbay. When Evie’s dad left home the summer after we were in fifth grade, part of her childhood left with him. People may not have seen it on the outside of her. You had to know the kinds of thoughts that went on inside her. You had to watch her pick her mom up and put her back together when her mom’s life had fallen to pieces. I remembered the days after school, not long after Evie’s dad had moved out, when we’d drop by Evie’s house and find her mom still in bed. Evie didn’t play with us on those days. By the next morning when we’d stop to pick up Evie for school, Ms. Thibodeaux would have clean clothes on and the house would be straight.
Ms. Thibodeaux didn’t fix shrimp toast on Sunday mornings or crawfish pie on Sunday afternoons. But every morning before school, Evie brought her mom coffee in bed. And every Saturday morning, Evie rode out to her dad’s to make sure he’d gotten in from his shrimp boat in one piece.
I was glad Billy had said what he did.
Garden of Eden
Evie said she was hungry. “Let’s get some ice cream.”
The Dairy Freeze was next to the Piggly Wiggly. We straddled our bikes and rode slow and easy beside each other.
“Hey, Evie, there was something I didn’t tell you,” I said. “Yesterday, after I left the reception, I stopped by Mr. Savoi’s gallery.”
“All by yourself?”
“Yeah. It was some time after I saw you and Billy dancing. I went in through the back door.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“I’m not sure. I guess I was thinking about that painting of Mama.”
“You took the painting?” Evie asked.
“No. I didn’t get the chance. When I walked in, there was a couple, completely naked, making out on the floor.”
Evie rode onto the sidewalk in front of the post office and stopped. I pulled up beside her and stopped, too.
“Completely naked?” Evie asked.
“Completely,” I said.
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t see their faces.”
We stood there a little longer.
“Do you think Mr. Savoi was one of those people?” Evie asked.
I knew what Evie was thinking. If Mr. Savoi was involved, perhaps my mama was involved, too.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t remember the guy having gray hair. Of course I only saw them for a second. The next second I was on my way out the door.”
Evie seemed to be registering what I had told her. “The back door wasn’t locked?”
“Nope.”
“So if the door wasn’t locked, maybe it’s not locked now.”
“What are you thinking?” I said.
“Same thing as you.”
“You suppose my mom’s painting’s in there?” I asked
“I suppose it might be.”
“You suppose Mr. Savoi works on a Sunday?” I said.
“I don’t suppose he does,” Evie said.
Then she smiled and turned down the alley. I followed.
We leaned our bikes against the ba
ck wall of Mr. Savoi’s gallery and approached the door.
It opened just as easily as it had the day before.
“He doesn’t keep his door locked,” Evie said.
“Mm-hmm, I know.”
Evie and I set foot in there as if any second something big and ugly was going to jump out at us.
It didn’t.
We asserted ourselves a little more. The door to the room where I had seen the couple was wide open. Evie and I stood in the entranceway, looking around. There were a couple of easels up, and on the floor next to one of the easels was a mug.
“So this is where you found them?” Evie said.
I said, “Mm-hmm.”
“Dang.”
We stood there a couple of seconds longer, then Evie said, “I don’t think Dewey’s dad keeps his paintings back here.”
“He probably has everything in the front room,” I told her.
“There are windows in that front room,” Evie recalled. “Someone might see us.”
“What do you want to do?” I said.
“If we get on our hands and knees, maybe we could go unnoticed.”
The two of us crawled to the front of the gallery. Every wall was covered with artwork. It appeared as though Mr. Savoi had everything in order for his open house, which was to take place the next night.
The gallery looked different from the first time we visited. Flowering white amaryllis and anthurium were situated on top of the Roman pedestals, and around the pedestals were peace lilies and bird of paradise.
“It looks like the Garden of Eden in here,” Evie said.
Mr. Savoi’s personal exhibit was still along the back wall. We searched the display of paintings for my mom. My eyes followed the contours of the women’s bodies, their breasts, their thighs. In a number of the pieces, the women were either faceless, or else their features were shaded.
“I don’t see your mom,” Evie said.
Mr. Savoi must have had twenty paintings along that wall. “He’s painted a lot of women,” I said.
“Lucy?”
“Hmm?”
“I think it would be an honor to be painted. I think it would make me feel beautiful.”
I wanted to tell Evie she was beautiful, but thoughts like that never seemed to find their way out of me, as if I were too afraid of how they might sound. Evie would have said those words to me. Evie always found the words to express her feelings. Like when we read The Little Prince in French class, and the prince had drawn a boa constrictor, but no one knew what it was. If he had shown it to Evie, she would have known what it was, and she would have had just the right words to tell him she understood.
Love, Cajun Style Page 14
