The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (12 page)

himself. Stories came floating into his head about going blind. Of

course he knew they weren’t true. She was just mocking him.

Sissy carefully squeezed the slippery diaphragm into an oval just

as . . .

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 7 7

Peewee smacked the door. “Time to come out!”

She jumped. The diaphragm shot up in the air and stuck to the

ceiling over the tub.

Peewee was pounding now. Sissy watched the rubber disk vibrate

with every blow. Saw the rim quiver. Keep on pounding, Peewee,

she willed. Keep it up. But he didn’t.

“Sissy, what the hell’s going on in there?”

“You wouldn’t believe it.”

She climbed up onto the rim of the old claw-footed tub, trying to

grip its curved edge as best she could with her bare feet, and batted

at the sloping ceiling with her fingertips. She thought maybe the

rubber disk shuddered a little with the breeze, but it was still inches

beyond her reach.

She grabbed a towel off the rack, flicked it in the air, and fell—

hitting her head, scraping her knee against the faucet and her elbow

on the side of the tub. The diaphragm, however, remained securely

in place.

“What happened?” Peewee wondered if he should break down

the door.

“Don’t worry, honey, I’m just fine. I won’t be but a minute.” She

turned on the tap to wash off her scraped knee.

Peewee sunk down on the bed, his head buried between his

hands. She was taking a bath!

Then as if reading his mind, her voice purred through the closed

door, “Now, sugar, don’t get discouraged. Just go on and take off

your clothes and lie down on the bed and I’ll be in there as soon as

I can.”

Sissy stood in the center of the water-slick tub flicking a towel

up at the diaphragm, which held on to the ceiling with the determi-

nation of glue. But she was even more determined. She raised her-

self to her tiptoes and gave the towel a mighty bat. Close. The next

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strike was closer. Then Bingo! The tip of the towel swept across the

sloping ceiling and knocked the diaphragm down behind the claw-

footed tub.

When Sissy finally emerged from the bathroom, ready for action,

smelling of White Shoulders cologne, Peewee was lying in bed with

his eyes closed. She saw he was a little limp. But he was also naked.

The Southern Belle’s Handbook would say that’s a good sign. “Pee-

wee,” she whispered, planning to give him a strip tease. She ran the

palm of her hand over the soft bristles of his crew cut. “Peewee.”

He opened his eyes, grabbed her, pulled her down onto the bed,

and rolled over her. “It’s about time.”

She wound her arms around his neck and licked his ear, feeling

his body come to attention. She waited for hers to respond, but

before she could get going, he had her skirt up and was jabbing,

desperate to enter her.

“Cut it out, Peewee, you’re not digging a hole.”

He stopped.

She smiled and began to stroke him. “I’m a girl, remember?

You’ve got to take your time with girls.”

Peewee sighed. Why couldn’t he ever do what he wanted? Why

were people always telling him what
they
wanted?

He pulled down her peasant blouse, gave one breast a resentful

kiss, and then tickled her “down there.” He stuck in his finger and

wiggled it around. He remembered a marital guide advising the

husband to think of it as an inkwell. He got a little “ink” on his fin-

ger, spread it around, and then popped right in with the next jab. At

last.

Sissy closed her eyes and tried to remind herself, This is my hus-

band. The man who married me and gave me his name. The man

whom I promised to love, honor, and obey. But the weasel in the

stain above her bed seemed to slide down from the ceiling. It

crawled over her, panting and sweating. She blinked her eyes open

to banish it from her imagination.

“That was real fine,” Peewee said with a contented sigh, sprawled

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 7 9

on top of her now. “Just right.” He rolled off the bed and went into

the bathroom to wash off.

Too bad speed sex isn’t an Olympic event, he’d win the gold

hands down, Sissy thought as she stared up at the ceiling. The

weasel had slipped back into its place in the water stain above their

marital bed.

Peewee returned with a satisfied smile. He tumbled into his side

of the bed, turned over, and began to snore away all those beers.

Listening to him, Sissy traced the weasel’s grin in the brown stain

and felt her resolve flow out of her like tap water.

A girl can stand just so much virtue.

Rule Number Ten

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 7

Sissy shifted her weight in the hard wooden seat. She was

back in her grade school auditorium listening to Amy Lou Hopper

present the candidates for next year’s PTA executive board. That

woman exercised her jaw more than most people exercised their

whole bodies. Sissy had heard that the girl Amy Lou’s husband ran

off with was a student from the Training School for the Deaf.

Couldn’t blame him.

Sissy shifted again and tried discreetly to pull out the little metal

end of her garter belt, which had given up on her stocking and had

embedded itself firmly in the flesh of her thigh. She’d like to meet

the man who invented nylon stockings: hot in summer, cold in win-

ter, and ripped before you got them out of the package. She was

sure it was a man. No woman would have inflicted so much suffer-

ing on herself in the name of decency. He probably thought they

looked sexy. Why do men think women are their most attractive

when they’re cramped, pinched, and constrained? she wondered.

We don’t ask guys to wrap themselves in nylon and totter around

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 8 1

on high heels to attract us. Maybe it’s that little overlay of pain we

have to endure that gets their sadistic juices going. Rule Number

Forty-nine:
What men find sexy is what women find uncomfortable
.

The applause snapped her out of her reverie. Amy Lou was intro-

ducing Carmalina Sangebina, candidate for PTA president. Besides

being an outstanding mother of six, a loving daughter, and an

enthusiastic wife, Amy Lou assured them that Carmalina was a

woman of sterling character, with the courage to do the right thing

in the face of adversity, and yet Carmalina was a team player, a con-

sensus builder, and a brilliant negotiator. Hell, Sissy thought, Car-

malina is wasting her time in Gentry. She ought to go directly to

Washington and take care of the Communist threat, before lunch.

Carmalina took the mike from Amy Lou. They looked so proper

and serious in their pastel summer dresses and their lacquered hair,

like two big Buicks parked side by side. The candidate spread her

lips into a smile that would bring pride to any Buick grille and

began talking about the threat comic books posed to the morals of

our youth.

All Sissy had wanted was to get out into the cool of the evening,

away from the house, away from the kids, away from Peewee. But

her only excuse was this stupid PTA meeting, where the stifling air

was being fouled by the high-minded exhaust from Amy Lou Hop-

per and the grinning Carmalina.

The woman next to her fanned herself with her purse, filling

Sissy’s nostrils with the sickening mixture of Evening in Paris

cologne and sweat. Sissy wished she were in Paris this evening.

Hell, she’d settle for Shreveport. Anywhere but home or this

mildewing auditorium filled with perspiring mothers, who must be

as bored as she was. She wished she had their knack of not letting

on. Southern Belle’s Handbook Rule Number Forty-eight:
A proper

Southern belle never lets others know how bored she is
. Well, it’s

something we can all aspire to, Sissy thought with a sigh. The

woman next to her caught her sigh and smiled sympathetically.

Amy Lou recaptured the mike and waxed lyrical about the next

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candidate. Sissy’s heart was beating, her breath was getting short,

and her garter belt was killing her.

The next candidate was not smiling when she rolled up to the

podium. She was much too worried about the younger generation,

“who are our hope and our future, but who are beset by a myriad

of temptations which can only lead them down that slippery slope

with its inevitable slide into . . .” and she paused for effect, “juve-

nile delinquency!” That was it for Sissy. The trouble with this group

was there wasn’t enough delinquency—juvenile or otherwise. She

looked over at her co-conspirator and found she’d disappeared.

Sissy stood up. She wanted to scream, run for the exit. Instead,

she excused herself politely as she climbed over acres of laps and

ran up the aisle.

Outside, the evening air was warm and moist and made her skin

feel soft and sinful. The night-blooming jasmine crawled all along

the fence and exhaled sweet, pungent odors, filling her body with

an inarticulate longing. An owl called to her.

She walked across the parking lot and opened the door of the

secondhand red convertible that Peewee had so adamantly opposed.

He’d explained that since they already had a pickup, a convert-

ible would be an extravagance they didn’t need. He’d also explained

how a sedan was safer and much more practical for a family of five.

Sissy should start acting her age, take on the responsibilities of

motherhood, and accept Miss Lily’s used Oldsmobile.

Sissy had set her jaw and was actually making up a bed for her-

self on the living room couch when she remembered the advice her

mother had given her while she was cleaning her wounds after a

knock-down-drag-out fight Sissy had had with one of the neighbor-

hood boys. She was eight years old, beaten and bloody, but

unbowed. “Sugar,” her mother had said, “I know you were right

and you know you were right,
but a lady shouldn’t have to fight to

get what she wants
.” Years later, Sissy had made that Rule Number

Twenty.

T h e S c a n d a l o u s S u m m e r o f S i s s y L e B l a n c 8 3

So she’d crawled back into their conjugal bed, kissed her hus-

band, and asked him not to pay her any mind. Women get funny

around that time of the month. She’d be pleased to have Miss Lily’s

Oldsmobile, as long as it was in her name. She wanted something of

her own.

The day after the papers were signed, Sissy drove her very first

car over to Parish Motors and told Sammy Rutledge she wanted to

trade it for a convertible. When Sammy asked what kind, Sissy told

him: red.

The test drive was more than satisfactory. Sissy was ready to

close the deal. Sammy offered her a chocolate doughnut. She set it

in front of her on his desk and watched him pick up the phone. Was

this how it was done? She’d never bought a car before. Who was he

calling? He dialed the Department of Roads. He wanted to check

with her husband. “Standard operating procedure,” he told her.

Sissy put her hand on his. “Sammy, we grew up together,” she

said, leaning over until he could imagine he might be able to see

right down her shirtwaist dress. Doughnut crumbs fell out of his

mouth. Then she added in a low, conspiratorial voice, “I want it to

be a surprise for Peewee, when he gets home from work.”

It was.

He nearly had a fit. It was the wrong make or model or some-

thing. He got out old copies of
Car and Driver
and
Popular

Mechanics
and showed her a whole bunch of statistics. Horse-

power, turning ratio, 0 to 60. Sissy put on her most serious face and

studied all the pages he thrust at her. And then when he was fin-

ished she said, “Sugar, I’m sure you’re right, but you know, you

can’t pay too much attention to numbers when you’re talking about

a red convertible.”

Sissy reached into her purse for the car key and found the other

key still there. Well, she wasn’t going to do anything about it, not

tonight. She was going straight home. But as she pulled out of the

parking lot, a vague feeling of anxiety began to surface. Even

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though she was driving with the top down, her hair blowing in the

wind, she had trouble catching her breath.

She drove past the high school, turned down Hope Street, and

saw Peewee through the window surrounded by the kids watching

television. She meant to stop. She would stop just as soon as she

could catch her breath. No sense in going home until she’d calmed

down. Peewee would want to know what was the matter, why was

she home so early, and she didn’t have anything to tell him. Noth-

ing was the matter!

She drove slowly around the block. The silent houses and care-