The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (22 page)

Belle stood in the door, her hands crossed over her cane.

“Have you taken a lover?”

“Grandma!”

“Oh, don’t use that tone of voice to me. What else is there for a

woman to do around here on a hot summer afternoon, except clerk

in the dime store?”

“I’ve been thinking about it. Taking a lover, I mean.”

“Whoop-de-doo, everybody thinks about it.” It was said that

after taking care of voting rights, Belle had become a champion of

free love, but about that, Sissy had heard only rumors. Belle had

never believed it prudent to kiss and tell, especially in Gentry.

Sissy went into the kitchen to get a cup of much-needed coffee

and a cigarette. Belle followed. “You’ve got to do more than think.

You’ve got to take your life into your own hands, girl.” In the yard,

the puppy let out a couple of shrill barks.

“I guess,” said Sissy, looking into the cigarette pack to see if any-

thing moved.

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Belle caught her hand and held it. “Honey, listen to me. I’ve been

seventeen years old all my life. Then one day I woke up and my

joints hurt. The next day I looked into the mirror and I saw this

hunch-backed old crone.” She looked down at their hands—Sissy’s

long and smooth; her own, gnarled and wrinkled—and dropped

them. “And now, all I can do is think about it.” She held out an

open palm for a cigarette.

Sissy struck a kitchen match, lighting them both up. “Besides, if

you don’t take your life into your own hands, someone else will

take it in theirs. Whose hands you going to trust your life to?” A

hundred unanswered questions mixed with the smoke and filled

Sissy’s head. But before she could put them into words, Marilee

rushed back into the kitchen. This time she was weeping hysteri-

cally.

“What’s wrong?” Belle asked, sitting down on the Victorian

kitchen chair. But the little girl was too upset to tell her. Both

women pored over the child looking for cuts, bruises, or bites.

Finally she hiccuped something about her dog.

“Chip!” screamed Sissy. When she received no answer she ran

out to the yard. There was no sign of him or the dog. Billy Joe

stood in the corner of the driveway, looking nervously toward the

house.

“Billy Joe, where’s your brother?”

The boy said nothing. He was being stretched between two loy-

alties.

“I know I always taught you not to tell on one another. But

you’ve got to forget about that and tell me.”

Sissy saw a stricken look in his eyes. Then he averted his head

and drew a circle in the dust with his bare toe.

She went to him and took his head in her hands. “Billy Joe,

where’s your brother?”

He ducked and looked down as if examining the circle he’d just

drawn. Then he mumbled, “He’s in our room. He’s experimenting

on Marilee’s dog.”

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* * *

was sitting calmly at his desk, making notes in his lab book. “Can’t

you read?” he said, pointing to a sign with a skull and crossbones

and the words “Danger” and “Keep Out.”

“Where’s Marilee’s dog?”

Chip didn’t even bother to answer. He calmly looked at the clock

and made an entry.

“Chip, I’m talking to you.” Sissy bent down and looked under

the beds. But she didn’t find the puppy. She whistled, “Come on,

boy, come on, come here.”

A frantic scratching and desperate whine came from the closet.

“Jesus, Chip, how could you shut up a little puppy like that?”

“I’m conducting an experiment.”

Sissy turned the knob and pulled on the closet door. It was

locked. A long time ago, she’d had the wisdom to dismantle the

lock on the boys’ door, but she’d left the closet alone, so they would

have some sense of privacy. An acrid smell wafted through the

cracks. She heard her daughter crying in the kitchen. Sissy ran her

hand on top of the doorsill. She came away with dust. “Give me the

key.”

“I can’t. I’m in the middle of an experiment.”

“Chip!” There was a warning in her voice.

“I have to test my invention. Scientists have to test their inven-

tions, you know,” Chip said.

“What invention?” She yanked on the door. The puppy re-

sponded, but this time its response was strangely subdued. Again

that acrid smell. A terrible thought crept into Sissy’s head. “Chip,

what invention are you testing?” He didn’t answer; instead he made

another entry in his book. “Chip, I’m talking to you. What is this

invention?”

“A new nerve gas.” His voice was quiet, but he couldn’t keep out

the note of pride.

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“Are you crazy? Open the door!” The dog’s scratches were get-

ting weaker, and each one felt like it was made across her heart.

“The puppy could die. Don’t you care?” She heard her voice. It was

shrill now.

Chip closed his lab book. “He’s just a dumb animal. I don’t

know why you’re making such a fuss. Scientists experiment on ani-

mals all the time.” He stood and put his lab book into its place in

the bookcase.

Sissy jerked him around. “You are not a scientist. Pretending to

be one doesn’t give you any right to torture animals. Now, give me

the key to the closet.”

Sissy heard the puppy whimper and cough and felt her own

throat constrict. She smashed into the door with her shoulder, but

it was cypress and built for the ages. “Don’t you have any feel-

ings?”

He moved to the desk. Sissy rubbed her shoulder and watched

him. Was he going for the key? He carefully put his sharpened pen-

cil into its coffee can holder.

Sissy was shaking, screaming now, “Give me the key.” But she

knew her screams made Chip more confident. He knew who was in

control. She calmed down and said, “You want me to tell your

daddy about your scientific invention?”

“You won’t tell on me, Mama. You wouldn’t dare.”

The dog was choking. She couldn’t let her son kill it. She

wouldn’t. For his sake as well as the dog’s, she had to call his bluff.

“Now listen up, boy, and listen good. You want to end your par-

ents’ marriage? Do it. Go ahead. Tell your daddy everything you

saw. In fact why stop with the truth? You’re creative; make up stuff.

You don’t even have to wait for him to come home for dinner. Get

on your bike. He’s working in the office today. Go on. Just give me

the key.”

Sissy saw Chip wasn’t ready for this. He’d counted on his black-

mail working forever. But instead of giving it up as she expected,

she saw him making calculations. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he get

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what would happen to them all? Did she have to spell it out? “I’ll

be all right, I’m the mother, so I’ll get the house and the children.

Only I can’t handle you.” She didn’t enjoy being cruel but the

puppy was gasping for air. “I expect you’ll have to live in some

dinky apartment with your father or, if he can’t handle you, in a

foster home or at the state orphanage. Is that what you want? You

think they’ll let you keep your chemistry set at the orphanage?”

That at least seemed to shake him up, but he said, “Pawpaw’ll

take me.”

“You want to live with Bourrée and Miss Lily? Is that it? I’ll call

them right now.” She started for the living room. “Of course a cou-

ple of months with them and you’ll be begging for the orphanage.

Hell, you’ll settle for a reformatory.” She glanced back at him.

He was still at his desk, nervously rolling a pencil in his hand. She

picked up the phone. The pencil was in his mouth, but he still didn’t

move. She began to dial . . .

“Wait.”

Sissy’s heart started pounding. She went back into the boys’

room. Chip had the key in the lock and was opening the door. She

took it away from him. “Go stand out on the porch,” she said.

When he was safely out of the room, she held her breath and

flung open the door.

Th e puppy lay still on the grass. “Is he dead?” Marilee asked,

her voice filled with tears.

Sissy, kneeling over the animal, shook her head, but she was wor-

ried. She didn’t have any experience with sick animals and the vet

was still out on his morning rounds of the farms. She stroked the

puppy’s head and covered him with a towel. He didn’t respond.

“Don’t let him die, Mommy,” Marilee pleaded.

Billy Joe put his arm around his little sister’s shoulders.

A cane clicked on the cement. Belle arrived with a dish of water.

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She splashed some on the puppy’s face. Nothing. She poured it on

its nose. It sneezed and very weakly tried to shake off the water.

“Good, he’s a fighter.” Bending down with some difficulty, Belle

took the dog in her arms and walked it like a baby, patting its back,

its head nuzzled against her shoulder. “Used to do this with sick

calves,” she said, striding up and down, her cane crooked over her

arm. “The movement reminds them to breathe.” And Sissy won-

dered, not for the first time, if her grandmother needed that cane, or

if after seeing an Ethel Barrymore film last year, she simply used it

for effect.

“I’ll take him, Gram,” said Billy Joe, unburdening her, stroking

the puppy as he walked him up and down the backyard. Marilee

walked with him, talking to the little animal.

Belle eased herself into a redwood chair in the shade of the old

live oak near the back bedroom. Sissy dropped to the grass at her

grandmother’s feet. She saw Chip moving around in his room,

where he had orders to clean it up and air it out. She called to him

to open all the windows and use the fan. Then she pulled up a weed

that had sprouted in the little garden in the roots of the live oak

tree. “Where’d I go wrong? Do you think he suspects?”

“Oh, for Lord’s sake,” said Belle. “Don’t take that on. You were

what, seventeen, when you had him? You were still a child your-

self.”

“I always tried to make him feel wanted, in spite of everything.”

“Sissy, look at me,” said the old woman. “In my generation they

worshiped mothers. We couldn’t do anything wrong as long as we

stayed home and took care of the kids and didn’t worry about pol-

itics. Now that you all have chosen to stay home and raise your

kids without even the help we had, you can’t do anything right.

Everything’s Mother’s fault. They just want to get us. The truth is,

that child’s a throwback. He inherited a mean streak from Bourrée.

When Lily Moffat said she was going to marry that Cajun I

warned her.”

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“Let’s not start on the Cajuns.” Sissy leaned against the arm of

her grandmother’s chair, too worn out to move and it wasn’t even

lunchtime.

“Why, Sissy, you know I’m not prejudiced. I’ve known many fine,

upstanding Cajuns in my time. And Bourrée LeBlanc is not one of

them. That man will charm the birds right out of the trees and then

shoot them.”

“What’s wrong with Chip isn’t Bourrée’s fault.”

“Don’t be too sure,” said the old lady. “The boy’s losing his

conscience. They have some scientific word for it now, psycho-

something, I can’t remember, but what it all boils down to is he

doesn’t care about what happens to anybody else as long as he gets

what he wants.”

“Maybe it’s a stage,” Sissy said.

Belle looked at her granddaughter and her look was filled with

compassion. “No. I don’t think so. I’ve seen it before. I don’t know

why it happens. Bad blood, bad genes. There are all kinds of theo-

ries, but it happens to boys mostly and it happens to them about the

time they start noticing girls.”

“He’s a teenager, not a leftover from
The Invasion of the Body

Snatchers
.”

“Sissy, I’m serious.”

“So am I. Breaking away from us is his job,” she said quoting the

latest magazine article she’d read. “What we object to is, he has a

real aptitude for it.”

Belle studied her. “It’s always hardest on the mothers.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Sissy turned away.

But Belle pressed on. “I’ve seen more than one boy like Chip tear

his family apart and go on preying on his mother year after year.

I’ve seen those same mothers give their sons everything they had

and then, when they were all but bankrupt, feel guilty they couldn’t

give them more. Don’t let it happen to you, honey.”

Sissy shook her head as if trying to wipe away her grandmother’s

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 5 1

prediction. “Chip’s not like that. You talk like he’s crazy or some-

thing. He’s not. He’s just going through a stage.”

The old woman saw the dark figure press himself against the

screen and then move back into the shadows. “Let’s hope,” was all