Read The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc Online
Authors: Loraine Despres
Tags: #Loraine Despres - Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc 356p 9780060505882 0060505885, #ISBN 0-688-17389-6, #ISBN 0-06-050588-5 (pbk.)
blamed minute, woman. Don’t you start getting headaches on me.”
But Sissy wrenched away from him, slammed into the bedroom,
and locked the door on both of them.
Peewee stepped toward the door and rattled the knob. She’d
locked him out! Son of a bitch!
He returned to the living room, put a drunken arm on Parker’s
shoulder, and slurred, “Come on, boy, let’s get us something to eat.”
Parker watched him stumble toward the kitchen. Now that he
had seen them together, he was resolved. He had to rescue his
princess from this toad.
You have to take your life into your own hands; otherwise you
can be damned sure someone else will take it in theirs.
—Belle Cantrell, Sissy’s grandmother
Rule Number Thirty-two
The Southern Belle’s Handbook
The next morning, Sissy didn’t get up for breakfast. After
their fight the night before, she had unlocked the door for Peewee.
Gentry wisdom stated, “Any girl who locks her husband out of the
bedroom is asking for it.” But she refused to talk to him. He circled
and sniffed at her like a strange dog, and then slunk off, leaving her
in possession of the bed. He slept on the living room couch.
She pretended to be asleep when he came for his clothes in the
morning and then she stayed in bed smoking. Marilee crawled into
the bed and snuggled up next to her until they heard Peewee leave
for work.
“Clara,” Sissy called when she emerged barefooted from the bed-
room, her arm around her daughter’s shoulder.
Sissy wanted to find out if Clara had met Parker for a late date. If
not, they’d go over in rich and sarcastic detail all the horrors of the
dinner party from
The Black Lagoon
. But Clara wasn’t there. And
to make matters worse the dining room looked like a prime candi-
date for International Disaster Relief.
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 3 9
“Clara!” Sissy yelled again. It was after nine. She sent Marilee
into her bedroom to get dressed and went into the boys’ room.
They hadn’t seen Clara all morning.
Damn. Did she and Parker have such a wild night that she
couldn’t make it to work? Sissy felt betrayed by the first girlfriend
she’d had since high school. An emptiness opened in the pit of her
stomach. She thought they’d shared something.
She dialed Clara’s number, drumming her fingers on the table
next to the couch. Nobody answered. Damn her!
Sissy went back into her room and slipped into her shorts and
halter. Was Clara still at Parker’s? Maybe they were going at it
right now. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to lower herself by call-
ing him.
Furious at both of them, Sissy began stacking dishes and silver-
ware together with a great clatter. I don’t know why you’re so sur-
prised, the nagging voice in her head chided her. That’s how you
met her. You found them together.
Part of her couldn’t believe Clara would be any real competition.
She’s just a teenager, a colored teenager. And she’ll be gone soon.
All I have to do is give Parker a chance.
Clara’s available now, the nagging voice reminded her, and she
has a tiny waist just like you
used to
have. And she has beautiful
smooth young skin.
Sissy grabbed up a load of dirty dishes. Maybe Clara was so pissed
at the way we treated her last night, she’s not coming back at all, she
thought. Or maybe after her night of passion, she can’t face me.
Sissy slammed through the swinging door, dirty dishes teetering
in her arms, and found the kitchen was under a siege of cock-
roaches.
“Good riddance!” she yelled, depositing the dishes in the sink
and smashing a little brown sucker with a gym shoe Billy Joe had
left under the round kitchen table. But the disgusting creatures were
everywhere, swarming over the stove, feeding on the congealed egg
yolks and setting up camp in the spilled grits.
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It was Peewee’s revenge. Ever since hiring Clara, Peewee seemed
to delight in leaving every room as if it had been in the direct path
of a cyclone. And when Sissy complained, he’d say, “Let the girl do
it, that’s why I’m paying her.”
“Gotcha!” A flying cockroach dropped from the wall onto the
University of Chicago catalog. Sissy leaned down and blew off the
crumpled body and with it the Chicago Fantasy. A deep sense of
loss, almost mourning, overcame her. She reached into her pocket
for a cigarette, but she had trouble getting it out of the pack and
even more trouble lighting it.
You’re really pathetic, Sissy told herself, living vicariously
through that girl. But a competing voice reminded her, living vicar-
iously is better than not living at all.
It didn’t matter anyway, pretty soon Clara would be off having a
real life, having adventures with Yankees.
And then Sissy pictured what passed for her own life in Gentry,
as it stretched into the future, gnawed on by the maggots of minu-
tiae until she was hobbling on a cane like her grandmother. “What
am I going to do?” she asked out loud. “What am I going to do?”
At that moment a cockroach ran over her bare foot and Sissy
screamed.
She staged a massive assault to still her grieving. Wielding the
sneaker of death, she slashed through the roach infantry, decimat-
ing their numbers and forcing the rest into a desperate retreat. Then
she hoisted herself onto the kitchen counter to attack their air force
with chemical weapons. Balanced on one bare foot, she searched
the top shelf for the insect spray, when she heard the screen door
slam. Sissy froze. How should she handle this? She ought to give
Clara unadulterated hell for being so late and not even calling. In
her mind, Peewee’s voice came in loud and clear. “Give them an
inch and they’ll take a mile. You watch, once she knows she can
bamboozle you, she’ll come in later and later. Pretty soon you’ll be
working for her.”
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 4 1
Yes, she had to give Clara a piece of her mind, but before Sissy
could turn around on the narrow counter, she heard a sharp pound-
ing. She slid right down to the linoleum and onto a cockroach mak-
ing his last foray.
“I did not chain myself to lampposts to see my granddaughter
dusting the top of her kitchen cabinets. Don’t you have anything
more important to do?”
Sissy’s grandmother, Belle Cantrell, had arrived.
As far as Sissy knew, Belle had never actually chained herself to a
lamppost or anything else. She remembered her mother telling her
about the time, in 1916, when Belle had taken her to Baton Rouge
to attend a women’s suffrage rally. Although her grandmother
loved politics, Sissy suspected she’d really gone to that rally to stir
things up at home. Sissy’s grandfather, Claude Cantrell, a big,
melancholy dairy farmer, had expressly forbidden his wife to go.
He claimed she became impossible after associating with those
uppity suffragettes. They put all kinds of ideas into her head. He
was right about the ideas, but Sissy believed her grandmother had
always been impossible.
Sissy had grown up hearing about Belle’s impassioned letters to
public officials and how she’d tried to organize the Gentry Women’s
Suffrage Committee before the good people of the town put an end
to it. Still, they did get the vote. For all the good it did them, Belle
would sniff. They never got around to voting for each other. The
only thing women today are interested in is how to get rid of old
wax buildup.
Sissy knew her grandmother yearned for the days before they’d
won the right to vote. Days of optimism and enthusiasm, when
their slogan was “Failure is impossible.” They genuinely believed
the world was about to open up for them. Belle was able to stir
things up and do good at the same time.
So what if she’d begun to exaggerate her own role in the move-
ment into one of civil insurrection. Belle was fond of saying,
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“Dammit, when you get to be my age you should be able to
remember your life the way you want to, even if it didn’t unfurl
quite that way.”
Scraping the squashed cockroach off her bare foot and being
careful not to step on any more, Sissy crossed the kitchen and
kissed her grandmother.
“I brought the children some figs,” the septuagenarian said, set-
ting down a large paper bag and shaking a cigarette out of the open
pack she found on the counter. A cockroach jumped out. Belle
brushed it away with an imperial sweep of the pack and said san-
guinely, “You know, dear, you ought to hire some help.”
Sissy started to say something, but Belle cut her off. “I know, I
know, you’re going to tell me that Peewee can’t afford it, but don’t
you let him chain you to your kitchen. A woman’s freedom is more
important than money.” Sissy knew she’d have said more, much
more, but Marilee came running into the house. “Mama, Mama!
Come look! Hey, Gram, you gotta come too!”
“Marilee,” her mother protested.
“You gotta! You gotta!” the little girl said as she flew out to the
front porch.
The two women followed. Belle majestically pushed the scamper-
ing cockroaches out of the way with her ebony cane.
She’d been a great beauty in her youth and Sissy knew she’d used
her looks to get what she wanted. Now she used her age and its
privileges. She wore her gray hair swept up around her head. Her
body was stout and imposing, and she always dressed in somber
colors and old-fashioned dresses, as befitted a woman her age. But
there was a twinkle in her eye and an eagerness for life that
belonged to a teenager.
Out on the front porch a large brown puppy with enormous
paws was tied to one of the posts. Billy Joe was scratching its head
and Marilee lay on her stomach letting it lick her face. The children
were in love.
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 4 3
Sissy knelt down next to her daughter. “Honey, I wouldn’t get my
heart set on this puppy. We don’t know who it belongs to.”
“Yes, we do,” said Billy Joe, grinning. He held up a note tied to
its collar. The note was made out to Marilee: “A dog of your own.”
There was no signature.
“Who left it here?” Sissy asked.
“Who do you think?” said Chip, standing under a tree.
In spite of herself, Sissy was overcome with a feeling of relief.
Maybe Parker hadn’t come to see Clara after all. At least he wasn’t
still in bed with her. He’d had to get out early to find this puppy for
Marilee. Things were looking up.
“We’ve got to get him some water,” said Billy Joe, untying the
dog and opening the door. The puppy sprinted in ahead of him into
the living room.
“You going to let them keep it?” Belle asked.
“Of course she is, Gram!” Billy Joe was appalled at the very idea.
“It was given to Marilee. It’s hers, right, Mama?” When Sissy didn’t
say anything, he became upset. “Right?”
Sissy looked at the puppy, looked at its paws. It was going to be
enormous. She slapped her pockets, but her cigarettes were still in
the kitchen collecting roaches. If she let them keep the dog, Peewee
would have a fit. If she didn’t, she’d be the ogre. “We’ll see what
your father says.” But her words were drowned out by Marilee’s
delighted yelps.
“Look, Mama, look!” The puppy rolled over on the oriental rug
and became entangled in the phone cord. Billy Joe knelt down and
disentangled it. Marilee knelt down with her big brother. Chip
observed the scene from the doorway. He was keeping a scientific
distance.
The puppy rolled to its feet, ran around in a circle, sniffed, and
clearly delighted to have found the toilet at last, squatted on the rug.
“Oh my God,” said Sissy, leaping for the animal, knocking the
phone off the table just as it began to ring.
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“No, no, bad dog!” cried Billy Joe and Marilee in a cheerful cho-
rus.
Belle grabbed the still squatting puppy and rushed it out to the
yard, followed by the screaming, giggling children. Sissy picked up
the phone.
“Sissy?”
“Listen, you SOB, where do you get off giving my children a dog
without asking me?”
“Cute little thing, isn’t he?”
“I should hang up on you, right now.” But she didn’t. She could
feel his voice resonate in her chest and it made her weak. She leaned
against the couch as pictures of him in his shrink-to-fit jeans filled
her head.
When Belle came back into the house, she found Sissy with the
phone pressed to her ear, straddling the soft arm of the couch,
swinging one bare foot back and forth. A small, happy laugh bub-
bled out of her. And then she saw her grandmother. “I have to go.”