Delta Belles

by Penelope J. Stokes

  Lacy cringed at the thought. That was the way most people perceived twins, after all. Because they shared the same DNA, the same physical appearance and stature and coloring, folks assumed that they shared a mind too, and a personality. Teachers and friends, sometimes even family members, were forever mixing them up, and although occasionally in junior high and high school they had used that confusion to advantage, Lacy had always loathed the idea of being mistaken for her sister.

  She wasn’t quite sure why. Lauren was more outgoing, better at sports, and generally more popular. Lacy, the studious, serious one, was included in her sisters circle of friends, but always as an afterthought, a tagalong. All her life Lacy had longed for one thing, her single wish every time she blew out candles on their shared birthday cake: She wanted to be different. Even before she was old enough to articulate it, she wanted it so badly that she took drastic measures to distinguish herself from her twin. Like cutting all her hair down to the scalp during Christmas break of second grade.

  Now they were grown, and Lacy realized—at least theoretically—that she no longer had to compete with Lauren in order to be a self-actualized individual.

  Unfortunately self-actualization had its downside too. The bond had been stretched beyond its limits, the connection severed. At forty-six, Lacy Cantrell was her own person.

  But her emancipation had cost more than she bargained for.

  SIX

  THE OTHER SISTER

  DURHAM, NORTH Carolina

  SEPTEMBER 1994

  Water poured down the eaves and ran in gushing streams out the gutters into the backyard. From the screened porch that overlooked the lawn, Lauren could barely hear the chiming of the mantel clock underneath the steady thrumming of the rain.

  Midnight.

  The air was chilly and damp, and she shivered, pulling her robe more closely around her shoulders. She ought to be in bed, but she couldn’t sleep. For an hour she had tossed restlessly before deciding to get up again. Now she sipped at a steaming mug of tea and read Tabby Austin’s letter for the third time.

  Neither the letter nor the invitation to the reunion had affected Lauren as much as Delta’s voice mail message. She had sounded depressed, empty, her voice flat and emotionless. Delta hadn’t pressured Lauren to agree to Tabby’s wild notion of getting the Belles back together again—in fact, Lauren had gotten the impression that Delta didn’t really want to do it either. Nevertheless, the very idea of reuniting their old singing group brought up a wave of nostalgia and longing in her, a yearning that would not let her go.

  And despite her attempts to push the realization away, she knew that her wakeful restlessness wasn’t only about the group, but about her sister.

  Lacy. Her mirror image, her second self. Her womb-mate.

  She could hardly believe how far they had drifted since college, when they stood onstage and sang together, laughed together, lived together. How much they had lost over the years.

  One of those old folk songs surfaced in Lauren’s mind— Peter, Paul, and Mary’s version of a childhood ditty: Rain, rain, go away, come again some other day. …

  But the storm did not diminish. Mist seeped through the screens and gathered on her cheeks, and on the rhythm of the pounding rain, the music took her back.

  BACKSTAGE AT COLTRANE AUDITORIUM was pure bedlam. Half the students, it seemed, had cooked up some kind of act for the Talent Extravaganza, and the other half were out in the audience, stomping their feet and yelling for the show to begin.

  Lynn Stanton, leader of a group called the Pillowcase People, had her crew all dressed and ready to go on. The group wore pillowcases pulled down to their knees, painted with enormous faces so that the girls all looked as if they were giant heads with little stick legs and no arms at all. Presumably they had eye slits somewhere near the top, but evidently they couldn’t see a thing, because they kept thrashing into people and tripping over equipment.

  Lauren caught a glimpse of Tabitha Austin dashing around with a clipboard, making sure all the acts knew what to do. Tabby glanced over and waved and then, looking frazzled and dazed, went to break up an altercation between a ballet dancer and one of the pillowcases who had just stomped on her toe.

  “Come on,” Rae Dawn said, gripping Lauren under the elbow. “Let’s go back here and collect ourselves.”

  Lauren followed Rae to a dim back corner near the emergency exit, where Lacy was doing a last-minute tuning. She and Delta were wearing the outrageous straight blonde wigs Lauren had bought, but by majority vote they had dispensed with the ferret vests and were all clad in black pants and black turtlenecks.

  “All right,” Rae said as she tucked her dark hair up under the wig, “are we ready?”

  For a moment no one spoke. Then, as if on cue, everyone turned and looked at Lacy, who seemed very pale and was breathing more heavily than usual.

  “What?” she demanded. “Yeah, I’m okay. What are we singing again?”

  An expression of horror rippled through the group. Lauren was about to say something when Lacy poked her in the ribs and started to laugh. “Just kidding.”

  “Don’t do that!” Lauren said. “We’re all nervous enough as it is.” She folded her arms and regarded her sister. “Did you go to the bathroom?”

  “Let’s focus, all right?” Rae Dawn interrupted. “We start with ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ Do you want to go ahead and do ‘If I Had a Hammer,’ or wait to see if they want an encore?”

  “I think we should wait,” Delta said. “I’ll check with Tabby and let her know we’ve got a second song if she wants us to do it, and if there’s time.”

  “Okay then. Delta will give us the sign if we’re going to do the second one.”

  “Of course we’ll end up doing it,” Delta said. “They’re going to love us.”

  “Ha!” Lacy jibed. “And you started out thinking this would be a big joke.”

  “It will be a joke if we don’t get onstage,” Rae said. She pointed to the wings, where Tabby was frantically motioning to them and holding up two fingers. “We’ve got two minutes. Let’s go.”

  FOR JUST AN INSTANT, when they first stepped out onto the stage, Lauren thought that she, not Lacy, might be the one to pee in her pants tonight. The auditorium was packed all the way up to the balcony. Halfway across the platform, she froze in her tracks. Her feet had turned to stone, and her knees were about to give way. She looked out into the audience, and faces swam before her eyes, an enormous sea of them, undulating like a wave.

  When the audience caught sight of the long blonde wigs, they began to laugh and point and applaud. Lights glared, and from somewhere above her emanated an earsplitting squeal, feedback from one of the microphones.

  Then out of the darkness a calming hand touched her shoulder, and Rae Dawn’s low voice spoke into her ear. “Relax. It’ll be fun. If you get nervous, just look around at me.”

  Miraculously, Lauren was able to move again. She followed Rae to center stage and took her place at the mike farthest from the piano. Lacy moved in opposite her, while Delta claimed the remaining microphone, closest to Rae Dawn. Rae nodded, and Lacy jumped in on the second bar of the introduction.

  It was amazing. The microphones, the speakers, the acoustics in the auditorium swelled their voices. After three weeks of practice in the rehearsal rooms, Lauren knew they had the notes and the blend right. But she had never in her life imagined this… this sound. This enormous, confident, harmonious sound.

  Everyone else seemed surprised too. Delta and Lacy wore dazed, stunned expressions, and at one point during Rae Dawns segue, Lauren turned around and mouthed, Is this us? And they all laughed, right out loud, because it was so much fun.

  Then, almost before she realized what had happened, Lauren heard it: a surging noise, the sound of wooden auditorium seats clattering. The crowd was on its feet, applauding, cheering, whistling. Rae Dawn stood up at the piano, and the rest of them stepped from behind the mikes, waving and nodding. Tabby, shrouded in the ne
ar dark of stage right, stepped forward, gave them a thumbs-up, and made a rolling motion with her hand.

  “She wants the encore!” Delta hissed over the noise of the crowd. Rae sat down again, adjusted her mike, flexed her fingers, and launched into “If I Had a Hammer.”

  This time no one in the auditorium bothered sitting down. They clapped and swayed and nodded their heads in time to the music. Lacy pounded away at the guitar, and Lauren could barely sing because her grin kept getting in the way. The music sailed and swirled around and through her—Rae Dawns gorgeous deep alto, Deltas clear lead.

  As the song lifted and soared, Lauren’s heart lifted with it. By the time they came to the last verse, she was flying.

  The words echoed in the hall: Justice. Freedom. Love. The crowd roared its approval.

  Lauren grabbed her sisters hand, took a bow, and grinned. “Damn,” she said as the applause washed over them, “that was fun!” And perhaps for the first time in her life, Lauren Cantrell felt herself totally set free.

  If only I could know that freedom again, Lauren thought as the rain continued to pour from the dark sky.

  But she was forty-six years old. It was too late to change. Too many years had gone by, too much pain. Too much water had passed under the bridge.

  Or perhaps the bridge had been washed out altogether.

  PART 2

  THE GOLDEN YEARS

  Like amber leaves upon a branch, the hopeful gilded dreams of youth

  shimmer in the sunlight,

  tempting, out of reach,

  yet never out of mind.

  Ah, we were true believers then,

  convinced our dreams

  were weightless

  and would

  never

  fall.

  SEVEN

  AT THE GOOSE

  Sophomore year

  AUTUMN 1966

  For generations the college grill had been known as the Gray Goose, a reference to certain ceramic figurines that had decorated the tables back in the early 1900s, long before the current café had been so much as a glimmer in an architects eye. Here and there a few goose remnants remained, such as the goose-shaped clock on the wall and an enclosed patio with the outline of a goose stamped in the paving stones.

  At a wrought-iron table on the outdoor terrace, Delta Fox pushed aside her textbooks—English lit, Crafting the Short Story, Intro to Social Work. Last year had been core courses mostly. Now, as a sophomore, she was finally getting into subjects that really interested her. Especially literature and creative writing.

  At last the heat of September had spent itself and given way to cooler weather and glorious autumn colors. This was Delta s favorite season, the time of year that always stirred a restless energy in her. A leather-bound journal—a gift from Cassie last Christmas—lay on top of her books, and she picked it up and flipped through it. Only a month and a half into creative writing, and already the journal was crammed with notes—descriptions of characters, snatches of dialogue, titles, fragments of ideas. Even an opening scene for the short story that was due in two weeks. Delta had no delusions of becoming a writer, but she was thoroughly enjoying the process. Creative writing was her favorite class.

  She closed the journal and settled herself in the afternoon sunshine to read through her mail. The process took a while, since people kept coming to the back windows of the grill, knocking and waving to get her attention. She waved back but did not invite any of them to join her.

  Delta took a sip of iced tea. The first letter, thinner and rather crumpled looking, was from her longtime boyfriend, Ben Rutledge, in Atlanta. An architectural engineering student at Georgia Tech, Ben wasn’t much of a writer, and his letter would undoubtedly be short and to the point, a hastily scribbled note, a memo: When are you coming home? Or, Everything’s fine here. I miss you. Will call Friday at 7:30.

  The second letter, postmarked Stone Mountain, Georgia—a thick, heavy, legal-size envelope with extra postage—was addressed in her mothers handwriting, old-fashioned and flowy. From the heft of it, it probably included pictures drawn by her six-year-old sister Cassie, who worshiped Delta.

  Deltas father called her Daddy’s Little Afterthought.

  She laid her mothers letter aside and opened Bens. As Delta had expected, it was one page, printed neatly in the angular, precise hand of a future architect.

  Hey, cute thing—

  Had dinner with your folks on Sunday. Your dad took me out to the park to see the progress on the Big Rock. He appears to think it’s a matter of South-ern pride to follow every move of the torch, and can’t seem to remember I’m a Yankee at heart.

  Classes are going well. My Architectural Design prof, Dr. Butts, says he thinks I have a lot of promise. More potential than if my name was “Butts,” that’s for sure.

  Will call on Friday eve, usual time. Try to come home for a weekend soon, OK?

  Love,

  Ben

  Delta reread the letter and smiled. Ben was right: Delta’s father still had trouble realizing that Ben wasn’t really a southern boy. He had moved with his parents from Vermont to Atlanta during junior high, and by then his liberal northern turn of mind was already firmly entrenched. It was one reason among many that Delta adored him. He was different, and unafraid. He didn’t own a single firearm, didn’t drive a pickup truck, didn’t fall in line and salute the Confederate flag like most of the boys she had grown up with. He kept his own unshakable opinions. And yet he indulged Daddy in his fascination with the Stone Mountain carving.

  Since 1928 the six-hundred-foot granite dome that gave the town its name had sat untouched, its unfinished carving a mute testimony to the faded glory of the old South. A year ago work had finally resumed on the project, an enormous bas-relief of that Holy Trinity of the Confederacy—Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Delta’s father was ecstatic. To anyone who would stand still long enough to listen, he rhapsodized about the magnificence of the sculpture, prophesying that one day the Stone Mountain park would be a world-class attraction, drawing people from all over the world. He went out to the park at least once a week, rain or shine, to check on the progress, as if he were personally responsible for the completion of the sculpture. And whenever Ben was around, Daddy would drag him out there to oversee the work as well.

  Neither Ben nor Delta could understand the obsession. Stone Mountain was a nice little town with a picturesque main street and a laid-back atmosphere that contrasted sharply with the tension and haste of Atlanta proper. But, as Ben often pointed out, the mountain itself wasn’t a mountain at all—just a huge slab of granite sticking up out of nowhere, with none of the charm or peacefulness of the Green Mountains of Vermont or the Blue Ridge Mountains three hours north of Atlanta. Besides that, the sculpture, though massive, wasn’t exactly Mount Rushmore. Thus, while everyone around them oohed and aahed over the carving and its historical significance, Delta and Ben privately shook their heads in amazement and dismay.

  This was the 1960s, for God’s sake. The War Between the States had been over for a century, and in case nobody in Georgia had noticed, the South had lost. Atlanta, once burned to rubble, had in the past hundred years risen from its ashes to become a thriving, diverse, cosmopolitan city. Last summer President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. The future was Coke and Delta Airlines and Martin Luther King, not Gone With the Wind and the KKK and Lester Maddox.

  Delta did not, of course, voice these opinions aloud. Her parents, though good people and not overtly racist, seemed apprehensive and confused by the changes that were rapidly coming to the deep South. They had difficulty moving beyond their nostalgia for the simpler, more placid days gone by, and the knowledge that their eldest daughter supported such a revolution would have troubled them even more.

  Delta sighed, set aside Ben’s letter, and opened the one from her mother.

  Dear DeeDee…

  Delta cringed. She despised this nickname her mother had imposed on her before she had t
he vocabulary to protest. It brought up memories of scratchy pink crinolines and uncomfortable black patent shoes, and the hideous perm she had endured when she was six and about to enter first grade. Daddy was the one who had first called her Delta.

  She pushed her irritation aside and read on:

  Dear DeeDee,

  Hope all is going well with you there at college. We are all right. Cassie is (as we knew she would be) far beyond any of her little friends in first grade. While they’re learning to sing the alphabet and can barely manage “See Jane run,”she sits in a corner and reads everything she can get her hands on. I swear she goes through about a dozen books a week.

  I worry for her. She doesn’t seem to be adjusting well to being with the other children. The teacher says she’s bossy sometimes, and other times with-drawn. I wonder if we ought to let skip ahead, except that she’s so small. People see her and think she’s four years old, and then she opens her mouth and sounds like she’s thirty. Last week she complained about having to participate in a reading circle. “The stories are just so juvenile,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind school so much if it wasn’t so infernally boring.”

  Where does she get this stuff?

  Anyway, I’ve included some pictures she drew for you and a story she wrote. She still thinks she ought to be at college with you, and occasionally I suspect she might be right.

  Daddy says to tell you that the carving is coming along nicely. They’re

  using something called thermo-torches to slice away the stone. Your father made friends with Roy Faulkner, who’s the new chief carver, and Roy took him up on the mountain to show him how the torches work.

  Ben came for dinner on Sunday. He’s so nice and intelligent and considerate, even if he does have some strange ideas for a southern boy. And he’s really sweet on you. I think you could do worse than marrying an architect.