Love, Cajun Style

by Diane Les Becquets

  I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even nine o’clock. I didn’t have to be at work until ten. I decided I’d round up my friends, thinking maybe if we had breakfast at Bessie Faye’s, I’d start feeling better.

  I stopped by Mary Jordan’s first. Her mother told me to go on up, that Mary Jordan was still in bed.

  I ran into her room and pounced on her bed. “Wake up!” I shouted in her ear.

  She rolled over, pulling the sheet with her.

  “Come on,” I said. I got up and walked over to her closet to find something for her to put on.

  I crouched on the floor and pushed Mary Jordan’s dresses aside to grab a pair of shoes. Suddenly the air going into my lungs felt as heavy as cement. Next to a pair of Nikes were my navy blue heels.

  Mary Jordan was still pretending to sleep.

  I wasn’t hungry anymore. I didn’t want breakfast. I picked up my shoes. I stood. I walked out of the room. I didn’t say anything.

  Yellow Petals

  Never in my wildest dreams had I thought Mary Jordan and Doug were the couple I’d seen in the gallery. We had vowed to wait until we were married. We were young when we made that promise. I knew that. But I thought it had meant something, especially because the three of us had made the promise together. We’d always talked about everything. Mary Jordan had made this decision without us.

  I climbed on my bike, wanting more than ever to have a car of my own, to drive for miles and miles with the windows rolled down and the wind in my hair, and turn down roads I’d never explored before and just drive wherever they took me. But I didn’t have a car, so I rode my bike, all the while wanting to disappear from the town and the houses and the people passing by.

  I rode to St. Marc’s, leaned my bike against the side of the church, and entered through the large arched doors. I wanted to be alone, but I didn’t want to be alone. I just didn’t want to be with people. I wanted to be with God. Strange, I thought. I couldn’t remember ever having desired to be alone with God. I hadn’t even thought of God in that way, as someone, something, that I could be close to. He’d always just been an ear off in the distance. That morning, after talking with Mrs. Leigh, after finding my blue shoes, I didn’t want just an ear. I wanted a voice. I wanted life explained to me, and for the first time, I didn’t feel like any human could tell me what I needed to hear.

  And so I entered the church, as I had done after being cast as Hermia. Only this time Dewey wasn’t playing music. The silence was so thick, it echoed in my ears. I didn’t kneel. Instead, I sat in one of the pews midway, as if saying, “Here I am.” That was all. Just, “Here I am,” as if I had been all emptied out and I didn’t know what to feel anymore.

  I don’t know how long I sat there, but long enough to get sleepy, so sleepy I wanted to curl up in the pew and close my eyes, maybe stay there all day. And then it hit me. I’d been doing so much deliberating in my head, I hadn’t been listening. Mary Jordan had been talking to us, only we had chosen not to hear what she had to say. She’d always been the quiet one out of the three of us, and sometimes the quiet one never gets heard.

  I left the church and rode back to Mary Jordan’s house.

  “She’s not here, Lucy. She just left to go for a walk,” Mrs. Jacques said after she greeted me at the door.

  For a minute I thought about riding around the streets till I found her, or going over to Evie’s house, but then I remembered the three of us as kids playing at St. Vincent’s Park, and something inside me told me she’d be there. All along the edge of the playground, hibiscus was in bloom in deep shades of pink. Mary Jordan wasn’t on the swing set. She was in the sandbox underneath the fort, where I’d found her the morning after Clyde and Anita’s wedding.

  “Hey,” I said, walking up to her.

  Her head was lowered over her chest, her knees pulled up to herself.

  I crawled underneath the fort and knelt in the sand beside her. “Hey,” I said again.

  She still wasn’t looking at me, so I reached for her chin, trying to lift it up, but she just rolled her head back and forth against her knees, as if telling me not to.

  I sat next to her. “Do you want to talk?” I asked.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Since when did you forget how to talk?” I teased her.

  On the other side of the playground was a small garden with three rosebushes. Mary Jordan and Evie and I used to say those rosebushes were planted just for us. They’d been there for as long as we could remember. Mama says roses can outlive people by decades, saying her own rosebushes are over a hundred years old. One of the shrubs was full of tangerine-colored blossoms, one bloomed red roses, and the other yellow. The red rosebush was the tallest. Evie had dedicated it to me. She dedicated the tangerine one to herself on account of her orange hair. Mary Jordan had always liked the yellow one best.

  I climbed out from beneath the fort and strode over to the small garden. Pressing my fingers on one of the yellow rose stems, I broke off a flower, then brought it back to the sandbox and handed it to Mary Jordan. Her head was still lowered, so she didn’t see it.

  I slid it underneath her arms, which were snug around her legs, and held it up to her nose. She leaned her weight into me. I wrapped my arm around her, and held the rose out in front of me.

  “Are you mad at me because I found my shoes?” I asked.

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said.

  It was then that Mary Jordan lifted her head. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes, which were swollen and red. “He told me he loved me,” she said, her voice raspy and weak.

  I couldn’t help but remember what Mama had said. Sometimes boys tell you they love you, because their bodies get confused. I wondered if Mary Jordan’s body had gotten confused, too.

  Mary Jordan buried her face into my shoulder. “He doesn’t love me,” she said.

  I wrapped both my arms around her, feeling her tears leak through my shirt.

  “He says he doesn’t want to be serious; get that. We made love, and yet he doesn’t want to be serious. What’s wrong with me?” She continued to cry.

  “Nothing’s wrong with you,” I told her. I held her tighter, rocking slightly back and forth. “Nothing’s wrong with you,” I said again.

  Out of the three of us, Mary Jordan had been the last one to get her period. She’d been the last one to wear a bra. She was the first one to have sex. I wondered when things had changed.

  I was still holding on to the rose. I leaned forward and pushed its stem into the sand so that it stood straight like a tree. One by one I tore off the petals, rubbing each one between my fingers, feeling their silky texture, their gentle residue coating my skin in a fine, fragrant wax. I held the petals in the palm of my hand. Then I took Mary Jordan’s hand and pressed them into hers, folding her fingers over them.

  “It’s crazy,” she said. “I thought Doug and I could be one of those great loves. I felt important. I had the whole thing planned out in my head. But now I feel so empty, like it never meant anything to him at all.”

  “When did he tell you he didn’t want to be serious?” I asked her.

  “We were supposed to get together last night. But then a bunch of the guys wanted him to go out. He’d been acting different. I called him later. That’s when he told me.”

  He’d told her on the phone. What kind of person would do that? But then I thought maybe he’d just been afraid. Maybe he hadn’t been ready, either.

  Mary Jordan was crying. I wiped the tears from her chin. “When did you decide to go through with it?” I asked.

  “It was after we made up at the play. We talked about it. At first I wasn’t sure. But then one night things just seemed to happen. It’s supposed to feel good, right?” she said.

  I just listened.

  “The first time it hurt. I thought it was going to be so incredible. I’d felt so much when we were kissing. But when it was over, I didn’t feel anything. It all happened so fast. I thought the next time it would be
better.”

  “Was it?” I asked.

  “I wanted it to feel beautiful,” she said. “It never felt beautiful. I wanted to talk to him about it, tell him how I felt, but I didn’t know what to say.”

  Mary Jordan reached for my hand. She squeezed my fingers, held them against her face. “You know what’s weird? For so long he told me he loved me. All those months. Then we had sex, and afterwards he’d lie there not saying anything, as if he were somewhere else. I’d tell him I loved him. He’d tell me he loved me, too, but it wasn’t the same. He didn’t look at me. He’d lie on his back and say it, but it was different.”

  Mary Jordan continued to cry, but they were slow tears now. “Maybe I wasn’t any good,” she finally said. “I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what I keep thinking.”

  “Don’t say that.” I let go of her hand and took hold of both her shoulders, making her look at me. “You are so beautiful,” I told her. “Don’t you know that? When it’s right, that’s how you’ll feel. Beautiful. And the whole thing will be wonderful.”

  “How will I know when it’s right?” she asked me. “I thought this was right.”

  I knew I could tell her what the Church had always told us. I could tell her the same things we’d heard from our parents. But instead, I said, “I don’t know,” because that was the truth.

  “Do you think I’m bad?” Mary Jordan asked.

  I shook my head. “You’re not bad.”

  She opened her hand and looked at the petals, then clutched them tightly in her palm. “Will you get Evie? I’ll wait here,” she said.

  I climbed out from under the fort and began to walk away.

  “Lucy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “I love you,” I told her.

  “I love you, too.”

  Fais-Dodo

  Over the next three weeks, the only time Mary Jordan saw hide or tail of Doug was at rehearsals, and the only discourse that existed between them was their dialogue in the play. For the most part, she kept to herself. Sometimes I’d find her at the library, or I’d come upon her sitting at the park. Evie said to just give her time.

  Dewey and I continued getting to know each other, slow and easy, as did Billy and Evie. I was certain I’d never seen Evie as happy. Daddy stopped playing golf so much, and every once in a while I’d catch a glimpse of him and Mama holding hands out on the porch.

  Ever since the night she gave Daddy the painting, she hadn’t taken any more art classes with Mr. Savoi. She hadn’t taught him how to cook, either. I guessed the portions of her pie were no longer lopsided. I’d hoped to goodness she wouldn’t hang that painting of hers in the living room. She didn’t. Daddy hung it in their bedroom next to his dresser.

  One morning while Daddy and I were having our coffee, I asked him what he thought of the painting Mama had given him.

  “I guess you can say that painting told me a lot,” he said.

  “What did it tell you?” I asked him.

  “It told me what your mama needed.”

  I thought about the first time I met Savannah at Daddy’s shop. She had needs, too, but Mr. Banks never paid any heed to them.

  I saw him only one other time after Mr. Savoi’s open house. I was riding my bike home from rehearsals and had just approached the Piggly Wiggly. Mr. Banks was walking out to the parking lot. He paused when he saw me. Maybe he knew I had talked to Mrs. Leigh. Maybe he blamed me for the school’s canceling his contract. I would never know. I didn’t look away, though. I slowed my bike and stared back at him for a couple of seconds before riding on.

  About a week later, I heard some of the women at the shop saying he had left town. One day I asked Daddy if it was true. He said he guessed it was.

  Savannah’s parents had come to help with Mattie, so Savannah didn’t ask me to babysit again. From what I gathered from Ethel Lee and the other ladies in the shop, Savannah was putting down roots. She was showing up at Mr. Savoi’s art class on a regular basis and had been seen taking pictures for the Sweetbay Times.

  Largely to the credit of Mr. La Roche, the play came together without Mr. Banks. By Founders’ Day, I suppose we were as ready as we ever would be.

  Founders’ Day is Sweetbay’s biggest celebration. The town is one enormous playground from sunup to sundown. But that morning, it wasn’t the sun staring at me through my bedroom window that woke me up. It wasn’t the smell of Mama’s rum raisin French toast, either. It was the Acadia national anthem playing over Mama’s stereo speakers. Before I had a chance to sit up and rub the sleep out of my eyes, Daddy flung my bedroom door open, his voice belting out, “Acadia, my homeland, to your name I draw myself.”

  My daddy didn’t sing much. He either had to be drinking or in a very good mood. I knew Daddy hadn’t been drinking. It was too early, which meant his mood was exceedingly jubilant that particular day.

  I followed Daddy down the stairs and joined him at the table while the music continued to play. Mama set a plate of rum raisin French toast and bacon in front of me. Then she brought me one of her parfaits. Mama always made her patriotic parfaits on Founders’ Day, bearing all the colors of the Acadian flag: raspberries, whipped cream, blueberries, and slices of mango, topped with amaretto sauce. She brought Daddy and me each a cup of coffee and joined us at the table. Her hair was tied back with a navy blue bandanna. Her face glowed. I wasn’t so sure the condition of her complexion was on account of the blush she was wearing. In fact, I wasn’t even sure she’d put on any makeup that morning. Sissy says cooking is good for a woman’s complexion. She once said conjugation is good for a woman’s complexion, too. As I sat there eating my breakfast, I couldn’t help but wonder if Mama and Daddy had been doing their share of conjugating.

  “Are you going to be seeing Dewey today?” Mama asked.

  I didn’t know Mama had a clue as to what was going on with Dewey and me. “Why do you ask?” I said.

  “It’s called a mother’s intuition.”

  “We might be going to see each other,” I said.

  “That’s good,” Daddy said.

  “Mm-hmm,” Mama said.

  Founders’ Day begins with eating and ends with eating. I guess you could say the eating never really stops. The Lions Club throws an all-you-can-eat pig roast starting at ten o’clock in the elementary school parking lot. By the time Mama and Daddy and I got there, a line of people had already wrapped itself around the building. In front of the tables were two large speakers playing music from The Hoolie Brothers. The Hoolie Brothers were from Beaufort. One played the fiddle, the other the guitar. Good ’ole stomping music. The town was waking up, people tapping their feet to the Cajun rhythm, a couple of people clapping their hands.

  By the time I got my plate of food, Mama and Daddy had a swarm of adults around them talking and laughing. Hearty laughter was considered Cajun etiquette in Sweetbay, and all over that parking lot, people were being socially correct.

  I spotted the Jacques family about four tables over, so I joined them, sitting next to Mary Jordan. Except for church, I rarely saw Mr. and Mrs. Jacques out in public. They were both retired and stayed inside most of the day because they didn’t like the heat.

  “Lucy, did you ever hear how Forrest Gump got into heaven?” Mr. Jacques asked just as soon as I sat down.

  “No, sir, I can’t say I did.”

  “Well, now, I’m going to tell you, then. Forrest Gump got himself up to those pearly gates, and there, standing before him, was St. Peter. ‘Forrest,’ St. Peter said, ‘in order for you to go through these gates, you have to answer three questions.’ ‘Okay,’ Forrest said. ‘The first question,’ St. Peter said, ‘is: What two days of the week begin with a T? The second question is: How many seconds are there in a year? The third question is: What’s God’s first name?’ Now Forrest thought long and hard about those questions, and after a while he told St. Peter he was ready. ‘The two days of the week that begin with a T are Today and Tomorrow,’ he said. St
. Peter looked a little surprised. ‘Well, now, Forrest, that wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but I guess I can’t argue with it. What about how many seconds in a year?’ Forrest said, ‘That would be twelve.’ St. Peter wanted to know how he figured that. Forrest said, ‘There’s January second, February second, March second, and so on.’ St. Peter decided he couldn’t argue with that answer, either. ‘What about God’s first name?’ St. Peter asked. ‘That would be Andy,’ Forrest said. ‘Andy walks with me. Andy talks with me. Andy tells me I am His own.’”

  Mr. Jacques laughed so hard at his own joke, I thought for sure he might give himself a heart attack. Mrs. Jacques laughed hard right along with him.

  “That’s good, Dad,” Billy said, and he and Mary Jordan and I laughed, too.

  Mr. Jacques always wore khaki pants and a solid-colored Izod shirt. Mrs. Jacques always wore a dress or a skirt. For as long as I’d known her, I’d never seen her in a pair of pants. They weren’t the type to ever tell a dirty joke, either. There weren’t many clean jokes told around Sweetbay, so I think Billy and Mary Jordan and I were rather impressed.

  “Has anyone seen Evie?” I asked.

  “She said she’ll meet us later,” Billy told me. “Says she’s got a surprise up her sleeve.”

  “What kind of surprise?” I wanted to know.

  “She wouldn’t say.”

  Mr. Jacques had finished eating. He stood and stretched. “It’s getting mighty warm out here,” he said. “You ready, Mama?”

  “I’m ready,” Mrs. Jacques said.

  Billy and Mary Jordan and I threw our plates away and headed over to the courthouse lawn. At least fifty yards of Main Street had been roped off for the games, which would begin at noon. Scattered around us were all kinds of vendor booths selling everything from boudin to funnel cakes to pralines to homemade beer to T-shirts and bumper stickers that read CAJUNS DO IT BETTER to pickled alligator toes.

  We hung out at the different booths, spending our money and eating more food. About fifteen minutes before the games, we saw Evie pushing a large blue wheelbarrow down Main Street toward the starting line. Walking beside her was her mama, wearing a hot pink tube top and a pair of white cutoff shorts.