The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (17 page)

intelligence and drive. But what touched him was her voice, Sissy’s

voice.

The next evening, after trying in vain to reach Sissy, he stopped

by the funeral home again. They drove to the gravel pit and parked

in the moonlight. He told her he’d lived in Asia.

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 1 1 1

“I’d like to see that,” she said.

Her eyes opened wide when he described riding elephants

through the mountains during a monsoon, and wider still when he

told her about vacationing in Hong Kong and getting caught in the

Kowloon riots. He felt glamorous and powerful again.

He didn’t tell her about his business in Bangkok and his humili-

ating failure. He hadn’t told anyone in Gentry about that. Instead

he asked about her plans for college. As she spun out her dreams

and fears, Parker remembered what it felt like to be young with the

whole world spread out in front of you, before the defeats of real

life bludgeoned you into submission.

He slid his hand into hers, but he didn’t make a move on her. It

didn’t seem right. She was just eighteen, for God’s sake. He was

thirty-two and only in town temporarily. He didn’t want her to get

hurt. But he needed the company of women. He felt more relaxed

with them, less on guard. And he was constantly fascinated by the

way they smelled, the way they played with their hair, crossed their

legs.

He picked her up the next night and the next, until Clara got

tired of his gentleman routine and made her move on him. Parker

didn’t say no. How could he, when that lovely young body was

climbing into his lap, straddling him?

But after that, he stayed home nights or went to the Paradise.

Until she called.

Now, even if he wanted to, he couldn’t get at her, either. Not at

work. Not at home, where her brother wouldn’t let her to go out

with a white man. He’d really screwed himself.

He stopped his truck out in the country. The telephone pole was

planted away from the trees, standing alone at the side of the road,

under the blazing sun. The iron grips would be too hot to touch

with his bare hands. He pulled on his creosote-soaked gloves. They

made his hands sweat and slip as he swung to the top of the truck.

Then he grabbed the iron grips and climbed hand over slippery

hand into the stifling air. By the time he reached the top, his shirt

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was covered with sweat. He unstrapped his headset and hooked

onto a line. And dialed.

The two women sat side by side in the cool dark room, their eyes

on the television. The leather-jacketed stud had found the heroine

alone in her apartment, dressed for bed. He threw open the door.

“I’ve been waiting all my life for this night.” And then the tele-

phone rang.

Clara picked it up, her eyes fixed on the screen, “LeBlanc resi-

dence.”

Parker hung up. What was he doing? He was a grown man. He

dialed again.

Clara turned to Sissy and without even bothering to put her hand

over the mouthpiece said, “It’s Parker. He wants to talk to you.”

Her voice sounded hurt.

Sissy reached for the phone, but one look at her cousin made her

back off. She silently repeated Rule Number Thirteen:
A smart girl

makes a man sweat
.

“There’s nobody home . . .” Clara said into the mouthpiece. “I

said there’s nobody home, Parker, that means white or colored.”

She hung up.

As the pictures of the bare-chested stud taking the heroine into

his arms flickered in front of them, each woman sank back into her

own private world—and thought about Parker.

Parker climbed down off the blistering telephone pole and

kicked it.

It’s okay for a woman to know her place. She just shouldn’t

stay there.

Rule Number Fifty-nine

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 9

Peewee had the windows of the truck rolled down, but he still

felt stifled. He’d been working in the sun, with half a crew, when he

wasn’t supposed to be on the roads at all. And to make matters

worse, they’d had trouble with some of the equipment, so he’d had

to stay and work overtime. He’d been on the roads most of the

month of June. If Norbert would kindly get over his damn summer

flu, Peewee could go back to the office where he belonged. The

smell of the tar was thick in his nostrils. A steel band of a headache

was stretched around his forehead.

On the radio, Tennessee Ernie Ford was singing “Sixteen Tons.”

About getting older with nothing to show for it. The steel band

tightened a good inch.

Peewee was headed for home when the song came to an end and

a moronically cheerful chorus burst into the “Hadacol Boogie.” He

swung the truck around and headed down Grand Avenue for Hop-

per’s Drugs. A tonic was just what he needed.

Amy Lou Hopper was standing in front of the prescription

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counter with Rowena Weaver, talking about what had become her

favorite topic. “She had a bad reputation back in high school, you

remember?”

“I remember she was real pretty,” said Rowena.

“I feel sorry for her daddy, trying to run a newspaper with a

daughter like that,” Amy Lou said. “Her poor mother, you remem-

ber Miss Cady, don’t you? Well, she’d turn over in her grave. I

swear, somebody ought to tell Peewee.”

Lester Hopper, Amy Lou’s father, looked up from behind the

counter and shook his head. He was heavyset like his daughter,

with a florid complexion and dark brown hair that had refused to

turn gray.

Rowena said, “I don’t think Peewee would take real kindly to the

news.”

Just then sleigh bells chimed over the front door. “Well, what do

you know,” said Amy Lou, whisking off her blue pointy glasses.

Peewee LeBlanc had come for his tonic.

“Amy Lou, you keep your big mouth shut,” warned her father.

Amy Lou tossed her head, pocketed her glasses and swept down

the aisle.

In her white cotton blouse, she looked like a ship in full sail. Pee-

wee watched her. He always did admire a woman with an ample

prow, and for his money, Amy Lou had the best prow in the parish.

He had to inhale sharply as it heaved to in front of him, all

squeezed together under the prim white blouse, with a single drop

of sweat shining like a diamond in the cleavage.

“Hey, Peewee.” Amy Lou slipped behind the counter and smiled,

looking really glad to see him, “What can I do for you?”

Peewee could think of a lot of things, but he asked for a bottle of

Hadacol.

“Feeling a little peaked?”

Peewee nodded. “Must be the heat.”

“I’ll bet you want the king size, right?” she asked as she pulled a

rolling stool over to her.

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“Sounds right to me,” said Peewee, feeling king-sized, watching

her flanks as she mounted the step stool. Her tight navy blue skirt

cupped her broad behind with each step. Peewee’s hands began to

sweat. He marveled at how she could balance all that weight on

those little bitty high-heeled shoes. When she reached up to the top

shelf for the bottle, he could see the outline of her big brassiere

squeeze her back into mounds of flesh and he had to rub his hands

on his pants to dry them off.

She climbed down. “This should do it,” she said, holding out the

big bottle.

“Yeah, it should.” Peewee reached for the sixteen-ounce bottle

and brushed the tips of her breasts by mistake. He looked at her,

startled.

But instead of being offended she asked, “Anything else?”

Oh yes, but Peewee said only, “You got some of that Lava soap?”

“Sure do.” She reached down for it and Peewee watched almost

in pain as her chest brushed the top of the counter. When she came

up, both of their faces were flushed. She pushed aside a stray hair

that had come loose from her lacquered, blond upsweep and pre-

sented him with a bar of soap and a little tube.

“What’s this?”

“A free sample.” Their eyes met. “It’s for a man who works with

his hands.”

Peewee pulled his hands down and hid them behind the counter.

“It’s supposed to get under your fingernails and get them real

clean. It’s a problem for all my customers who work hard,” and she

said “work hard” as if that were something to be proud of. Peewee

felt a wave of gratitude and the band around his forehead loosened.

They stood there looking at one another. Peewee watched a little

rivulet of perspiration find its way in between these two mounds

that made up her wonderful prow.

“How’s Sissy?” Rowena Weaver asked, coming up behind him.

Peewee swung around, feeling like he’d been caught at some-

thing. “She’s fine, doing real fine.”

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“Be sure to say hello for me,” Rowena said.

“I surely will.” Peewee tried to remember the woman’s name.

“Speaking of Sissy . . .” Amy Lou began.

“In the old days, they used to shoot the messenger,” said her

father.

“What?” asked Peewee, but Lester had moved on to fix a display

in the back of the store. Peewee turned to Amy Lou and saw her

eyes were shining.

There was an eager insistence in her words. “You know the other

afternoon, oh, it must have been six weeks ago, you remember?

When we was coming out of choir practice and you asked if I’d seen

Sissy, well, I seen her all right.”

Peewee didn’t remember asking Amy Lou anything and he didn’t

want to hear this. He’d been hearing innuendos all over town, but

he didn’t put any stock in them. He couldn’t. Because if they were

true, it would mean that Sissy didn’t love him and maybe never had.

And that would mean nobody had ever loved him in his whole life.

“As you know, I am not one to carry tales, but I couldn’t help see-

ing the two of them. We open the church window for the breeze. I

mean they was sitting there drinking in front of God and everyone.”

“Drinking?” asked Peewee.

Amy Lou nodded sympathetically. “I hate to be the one to tell

you this, but she was sitting out there on your front porch half-

naked in some skimpy little dress, drinking in the middle of the

afternoon with Parker Davidson. Did you know he was back?”

Peewee nodded. “She told me it was Cokes.” Sissy had explained

about Parker’s tool belt and he believed her. He knew she was a

flirt, but he also knew she’d never actually been with another man,

not that they weren’t after her. They were after her, they were after

her all the time, and like she said, she chose him. Well, that was

something to be proud of. Hell, all you had to do was look at the

kids to know she’d never messed around. They were LeBlancs

though and through. Of course they hadn’t had a kid for six years,

but what was he thinking? She was too eager for the connubial bliss

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he provided. No, he’d worry when she started getting headaches.

But if she was drinking while he was at work, well, that was some-

thing else. One thing Peewee couldn’t stand was a female drunk.

“She said they were just drinking Cokes,” he repeated.

Amy Lou tucked up her stray hair with her long, polished talons

and leaned toward him, her breasts floating centimeters above the

counter and inches away from his burning fingers. “Well, it must

have been. Far be it for me to call your wife a liar, Peewee. All I saw

was a couple of glasses filled with a dark liquid and . . . two people,

Sissy and Parker.” She lowered her voice and said confidentially,

“They were having a real good time, drinking whatever was in

those glasses. It could very well have been Cokes,” she said with no

conviction whatsoever in her voice.

The front door chimed. “I’d keep it down,” said Rowena mean-

ingfully to Amy Lou, because Parker Davidson had just walked in

the door. The two women watched silently as the ex-football star

strode through the drugstore. The floor shook beneath his feet. This

was the first time Peewee had actually seen Parker since he’d come

back to town and he looked a lot bigger than Peewee had remem-

bered. The band around his forehead tightened.

“You look like you could use some of that tonic right now, Pee-

wee,” Rowena said.

Peewee nodded. Amy Lou reached under the counter for a little

beaker that could be mistaken for a shot glass. He broke open the

bottle of Hadacol and Amy Lou poured him a two-ounce dose of

the patented secret formula: sugar syrup, a smattering of vitamins,

iron, and one-hundred-proof alcohol.

Peewee was thirsty after a day on the roads, and he could feel the

warmth of the liquid as it flowed into his chest. He was breathing

easier now. He took another dose and felt the band pop right off his

forehead. To hell with Parker. He was no threat. Like Sissy said, she

dumped him in high school.