The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (46 page)

your own hands
. She ran it through the Southern Belle’s Handbook,

which was evolving in her mind. She decided it deserved to be Rule

Number One, taking precedent over anything she’d assigned to that

place. And
A smart girl can’t just sit on the porch and wait for her

life to start
, would move up to Number Two.

“I’ve sat around Gentry long enough,” she said out loud and

thought about Parker. They’d be together in half an hour. Her

whole life would change today.

The phone rang. Her heart skipped. Parker said he wouldn’t call.

Had something happened? Oh God, please don’t let him change his

mind now!

She gingerly slipped into a light cotton wrapper, ran into the liv-

ing room, and grabbed the phone. But it wasn’t Parker on the line,

it was Clara thanking her, telling her the check had cleared. She had

the money.

“I’m so glad you called. Are you at the chemical plant?

“No.”

“Thank goodness. I need to talk. Can you come over?”

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 3 1 5

“Sissy, I . . .” Clara began, but Sissy cut her off.

“I can’t talk on the phone. You can spare a couple of minutes,

can’t you?” Sissy hated to plead, but she didn’t have anyone else to

talk to.

“I can’t,” Clara wailed.

Sissy fought the ignoble feeling that Clara was being damned

ungrateful. But she told herself you can’t give a person something

and hold it over her for life. Still, she’d put herself on the line for

Clara only last night.

“Uh-oh, Sissy, I have to go. They’re loading my bus right now.”

“What are you doing at the bus station? I thought you wanted to

work for another week.”

“I did. But Mama said after what we pulled off last night, I had

to get out of town right away. Just a minute!” Clara called to the

bus driver. Then she spoke quickly into the phone. “Sissy, be care-

ful. Don’t let my daddy get you.”

“What can he do to me?”

“I don’t know, but, please, take care of yourself.”

Sissy hung up with a sense of foreboding of that unnamed fear

we all carry around with us. Well, she wouldn’t give in to it. She

knew her uncle was furious, but he wouldn’t do anything to her,

would he?

She heard Bill Haley and His Comets singing “Rock Around the

Clock.” Deafening music had been blasting from the boys’ room,

all morning.

After the prank with the stink bomb, Peewee had grounded the

boys for life. Sissy thought it wasn’t quite fair to Billy Joe, but in

Chip’s case it wasn’t nearly long enough.

She heard laughter. How many boys were in there? She checked

the clock in the bedroom. Nine forty-five. Already? God, she was

running late, but everything takes so much longer when you’re in

pain. Where was her grandmother? She ought to see if the children

were ready.

3 1 6

L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

She went into the hall outside the boys’ bedroom and smelled

something sweet. She pushed on the door, but the little darlings had

blocked it. She started to knock and then changed her mind.

Quietly, barefooted, tying the wrapper around her, she slipped

out of the house and around the veranda, where she caught a neigh-

borhood boy, a couple of years older than Chip, wearing motorcy-

cle boots, with a comb sticking out of the back pocket of his jeans,

sliding the window open. When he saw her he lit out across the

street and down the block. What was he so guilty about?

Sissy hurried up to the long window. The shade was pulled down.

Giggles. That smell . . .

Sissy carefully stepped through the window. The room was sti-

fling. Chip was bending over the gas heater, pouring some powders

into a bubbling beaker. Marilee and Billy Joe were sprawled out

facedown on the bed. One boy was lying on the floor, a second was

bending over the beaker greedily inhaling the sweet gas, and a third

was sitting next to it with a stupid look on his face and a straw up

his nose.

Sissy ran to the bed and shook her children. Billy Joe opened his

eyes and braced for trouble. Marilee giggled and lay down again.

Sissy didn’t know much about drugs, but she knew what alcohol

could do. If this was worse, she’d be damned if she’d let it get a

hold on her children. She grabbed Billy Joe’s baseball bat, and

ignoring the pain in her back, advanced on the heater. Chip

shielded it with his body.

“I didn’t buy you a chemistry set so you could drug the neighbor-

hood!”

“It’s just nitrous oxide,” he cried.

Sissy didn’t know what that was and she didn’t care. She could

see the effect it had on the children. Looking like one of the Furies,

her hair wild and snaky, she turned to the neighborhood boys and

yelled, “Now, git.”

The children fell all over each other shoving the dresser away

from the door.

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 3 1 7

Then she turned to her own children. “Go on out to the front

porch and wait for Grandma Belle, you hear.”

Marilee and Billy Joe nodded, and lit out after the other children.

“I’d advise you go with them,” Sissy said to her oldest child. The

sweetish smell permeated her nostrils, making her feel giddy.

“To hell with you,” Chip said, lunging at her, trying to grab the

bat. But she was too fast. Pushing him aside, she shattered the

beaker against the wall.

Then turning to Chip’s desk, where his chemicals were carefully

laid out, she swung the bat back. “Noooo!” Chip shrieked, knock-

ing her against the wall. Suddenly Sissy was swimming in a sea of

pain.

A smile formed on Chip’s lips. He grabbed at the bat and kicked

out, trying to trip her, but she managed to hold on. Chip yelled and

slugged his mother twice in the stomach.

Sissy folded. Pain was everywhere. That’s when Billy Joe vaulted

back into the room and smashed into his brother. “You gone crazy?

That’s our mama!”

Chip howled like a wild animal and rolled onto the floor under

his brother’s pummeling. Chip hit, kicked, scratched, anything to

get Billy Joe off. But Billy Joe, though smaller, held on.

Sissy choked down her pain and swung the bat. A jumble of col-

ored chemicals streaked the wall. Acid ate into the linoleum as the

record exchanger dropped a new record on the turntable and Dean

Martin crooned “Memories Are Made of This.”

Chip wrenched out of his brother’s grasp. He jackknifed up, ran

to his desk, and hunched over it, grieving. He turned to his mother,

his blue eyes cold as the grave. “Bitch!” he hissed.

“My God, what’s going on?” Belle Cantrell stood in the door-

way, her arm wrapped protectively around Marilee.

“World War III,” said Sissy, not taking her eyes off Chip, the bat

held high in case he came at her again.

“Now, sugar, you just calm down, you hear, and put down the

baseball bat. Just put it down,” Belle said. She wrapped her other

3 1 8

L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

arm around Billy Joe. “I understand how they can get to you. But I

realized long ago that children are sent to us to be an affliction.”

Sissy turned, looked at her grandmother, and let out a little hack-

ing laugh. Still holding the bat, she let it rest on the floor. “Afflic-

tion, hell, this kid’s a one-man plague.”

“Fuck you!”

“Chip!” But he was past listening. He shot out the window. “Chip,

you come back. You hear me!”

Chip climbed the old magnolia tree, stepping on the big white

flowers his mother loved to float in bowls. He’d get that bitch and

make her pay. He didn’t care what happened to him as long as she

got what was coming to her and got it today.

The heat and the laughing gas made his head pound. Sweat

poured off him, but he didn’t answer when his mother and his

great-grandmother called.

He saw them walking around the yard with Marilee and Billy

Joe. Saw Sissy kneel in front of his sister. Belle and the children

stayed outside when Sissy went back into the house.

He slipped down the tree and sneaked into the side door of the

garage. It was a little cooler in here. Then he heard the bitch walk-

ing across the gravel. He slammed down the hood of the convert-

ible and hid.

“Chip!” He saw her silhouette, black, in the open door. Fats,

sugar, and proteins, the boy reminded himself, that’s all she is, a

blob of fats, sugar, and proteins.

“Chip, we have to talk!” the blob said and walked into the

garage. “Look at me, son, I’m not your enemy, but I can’t let you

run wild. And I sure can’t let you hit me. Come on out . . .”

He ran past her, forcing her to jump back or he’d have smashed

her into the wall. He climbed into the magnolia tree and then

crawled along the roof to his eavesdropper’s refuge outside his

mother’s open window and heard her talking. “They say there are

no bad children, just bad parents.”

His great-grandma scoffed. “You notice, they never seem to give

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 3 1 9

us credit when the boy turns out all right. Just once I’d like to hear

them say, there are no great men, only great mothers.”

And then he heard his own mother say those terrible words: “I

think he knows I didn’t want him.”

He didn’t hear what they said after that. He didn’t need to. He

didn’t want her, either. Didn’t need her anymore. He’d be better off

without her. His father wouldn’t pry into his life, interfere with the

progress of science. He thought of his chemistry set shattered on the

floor, the chemicals running down the wall. His blue eyes narrowed

into Bourrée’s icy stare.

He was still hiding when his great-grandma backed out of the

driveway with Billy Joe and Marilee on the seat beside her. Ed

Sullivan, his head out the back window, was drooling down the

side of the car. He saw his mother, all dressed up, lean into the

driver’s side.

The clock on the dashboard said ten-fifteen. She was late already,

but Parker said he’d wait until ten-thirty.

“Would you mind taking them to see Dr. Moore before you go

out to the farm?”

“Sugar, there’s nothing wrong with these two that a couple of

hours of fresh country air won’t fix.”

Billy Joe was tickling his sister. “Make him stop, Grandma!”

Belle turned around and gave her great-grandson a look Sissy

remembered all too well. Without a word, Billy Joe sat up and put

his hands under his thighs.

They looked all right. “I’d still feel better if the doctor listened to

their chests, just in case,” Sissy said.

“Okay, I don’t want you to worry. You have enough on your

mind. I’ll swing by right now.”

“I wish I could get Chip over there.”

Belle shook her head sympathetically. She knew what it was to be

a mother, not that Cally had given her any trouble. “The boy’s just

like his father. You’ve got to face it. He’s going to do what he

wants.”

3 2 0

L o r a i n e D e s p r e s

“I don’t know what I did that made him that way.”

“You didn’t do anything. Look at these two perfect people in the

back.” Billy Joe and Marilee sat up proudly.

“You heard her, Mama, I’m perfect!” said Billy Joe.

Sissy put her head into the back window and gave them both a

kiss.

“Now go on,” said Belle. “It’s after ten. You don’t want him to

leave without seeing you.”

Sissy watched her grandmother turn down Church Street and

speed away toward Dr. Moore’s office.

Then Chip saw his mother cross to the garage. He heard the con-

vertible door slam and the starter motor complain. And complain

again. He smiled Bourrée’s tight little smile as he tossed the distrib-

utor cap from hand to hand.

Sissy ran inside, pulled out the phone book, and dialed the Par-

adise. The line was busy. She tried again, drumming her broken fin-

gernails on the pecan table. Then she ran outside.

Chip was still in the tree when his mother came out of the house.

He watched her walk quickly down the blistering sidewalk. He saw

her ankles wobble in her high-heeled sandals. He hoped the pave-

ment burned her toes. From his vantage point he watched her cross

Church Street and head up Hope.

Sissy stepped off the curb with difficulty. Muscles she didn’t

know she had ached. The Paradise was five and a half long country

blocks away. It only took a minute to drive there. She checked her

watch. Ten-twenty. She’d make it on foot, if she kept up the pace.

But every time her stiletto heel hit the pavement a jolt of pain shot

through her back. And the sun was bearing down on her.

She stepped up onto the sidewalk and into the shade of a giant

live oak in front of the Rubinsteins’ big antebellum house with its

white columns and picket fence. Mrs. Rubinstein was playing

“
Nessun Dorma
” on the piano. Sissy wanted to stand there and

catch her breath, but she didn’t have time.

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 3 2 1