The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (7 page)

husband gratefully.

Forty-five minutes later, when all three children’s heads had at

least touched their pillows, Sissy returned to the bedroom. Peewee

lay on top of the white sheets in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, read-

ing
Popular Mechanics
. She switched on the radio to a down-and-

dirty jazz station and felt her body respond to its beat. She swung

her hips and did a slow grind. Peewee didn’t even look up.

Locking the door behind her, she untied the sash of her green che-

nille robe. She let it fall to the floor at her feet and walked naked to

the bed.

“Sissy, for God’s sake!” Peewee jumped up. “What do you think

you’re doing, parading around for the whole neighborhood to see?”

“Don’t worry, sugar, the curtains are drawn.”

“But the shades aren’t.” He raced from window to window.

“You expect some late-night Methodist to stand in the yard, just

waiting to get a peek at me?” Sissy was tickled at the thought and

wondered, not for the first time, why men set such a store by a

woman’s modesty, while to women it was only a passing inconve-

nience.

Peewee filled the air with angry silence. So Sissy sat down on the

bed and said, “I’m sorry, sugar, I really do appreciate your protect-

ing my chastity and all.”

She picked up the magazine he had laid across his pillow and

tossed it to the floor.

“You just lost my place.”

“I have faith you’ll find it again.” She held his eyes as she spread

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herself out across his side of the bed. “You were a real hero today.”

He didn’t say anything, so she added, “And now, I think you

deserve a reward.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, is that all you can think about?”

Sissy shot up. She felt as if she’d been slapped. “No, that’s not all

I can think about, but I do think about it. Don’t you? Don’t you

think about it anymore, Peewee?”

“Course I do. You know I do. I’m just real tired, that’s all. I had

a hell of a day, or didn’t you notice?” He sat down on the bed, care-

ful not to touch her as he retrieved his magazine. He looked at her

for some sign of assent. “Men are different from girls, Sissy. All you

have to do is lay there and smile, but a man has to perform.”

Sissy wanted to ask him why he wasn’t up to some kind of per-

formance, when she was sure at least half the men of Gentry would

have been ready and willing the minute she slipped out of her robe.

At least she hoped they would. Sometimes Peewee made her feel

like a female reject. She reviewed the Southern Belle’s Handbook in

her head, but she knew it wouldn’t be able to help her tonight. She

imagined it with its binding cracked, gathering dust on a high shelf

as she cracked and gathered dust, faithfully married to Peewee.

She didn’t know why he was so peculiar about sex. In high

school he’d been grateful that she was willing to do it with him at

all. But after Marilee’s birth, when her father had given them the

family home and gone to live over the newspaper, Peewee had lost

interest. She wondered if he had felt a loss of his manhood by agree-

ing to live in her old house. But the five of them couldn’t very well

go on living in that two-bedroom duplex without any yard for the

children to pay in. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe by siring

three children he’d proved himself a man and didn’t have to work

at it anymore. Or maybe it was just marriage.
If you want a man to

“Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul,” just marry

him
. That should be Rule Number Seventy.

Snap out of it, said her practical voice. There’s nothing in the

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 4 3

marriage vows about a husband having to service his wife when-

ever she wants it. Except maybe that part about to have and to

hold. She hadn’t been had or held in a long, long time. Maybe that

would explain what happened in the kitchen this afternoon. And

then there was also that part about love, honor, and obey. Stop it,

she told herself firmly. She ought to respect Peewee’s feelings. He

jumped into the gravel pit to save their daughter and if he didn’t

feel up to making love tonight, well, so what? That shouldn’t shake

her resolve to be a good and faithful wife.

She switched off the radio and walked over to the closet, where

she slipped into an ugly cotton nightgown her mother-in-law had

bought the last time she’d lost fifty pounds and had given away

when she gained them back. She was always giving Sissy “perfectly

good” nightclothes suitable for protecting her virtue from any and

all assaults.

“Ah, come on, don’t be like that,” Peewee said.

“Like what?” Sissy lay down next to him, her body rigid. Good

and faithful didn’t necessarily mean happy. She pulled the sheet up

to her neck.

Peewee didn’t know what to do. He leaned over and kissed her,

but when she began to respond, he pulled away, leaving her alone

to stare at the brown water stain in the shape of a weasel that dec-

orated the ceiling above her head.

The soft, honey-scented smell of night-blooming jasmine crawled

over the windowsill and curled around her bed. And her hand

strayed under her nightgown.

She breathed in the seductive sweetness of the jasmine. She felt

her ribs and thought about how funny it was that Eve came from

Adam’s rib, but that women had had to give birth ever since. She

tried to imagine little babies being cut out of men’s bones. After giv-

ing birth three times she figured she’d be pleased to let the men have

the experience.

Her hand wandered on down the smooth, flat skin over her belly.

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Was she too skinny? Would Peewee be more interested if she had

some meat on her bones? Is that what he wanted? She wondered if

Parker liked big-busted women. But she knew the answer. She’d

known it in high school. All men do. She wished she had bosoms

like Marilyn Monroe and wondered what their marriage would be

like if Peewee were more attentive. “If you were more of a woman,

he’d be more of a man,” prattled the Voice of Guilt. Come on, how

could I be more of a woman? the voice she preferred asked.

She caressed the rough triangle of hair and let her hand stray fur-

ther down. Peewee would have a conniption fit if he caught her. But

Parker had awakened something inside her she thought had died.

Awakened it and left it to lick her body without satisfaction.

She secretly began to stroke herself. But it didn’t work. Peewee’s

leaden presence next to her made too great an impression on the

bed. Even when she pinched her breasts, which usually got her

going, she couldn’t get her concentration up. Not with him lying

there, reading
Popular Mechanics
and flossing his teeth.

She remembered when she was a child eavesdropping on her

grandmother and her friend Selma Martin. “Every time he finishes

plowing a row, he wants to come inside and fool around,” Selma

had complained.

“You’d better keep that to yourself,” her grandmother had said,

“or every woman in Gentry’ll be after him.”

But Mrs. Martin had continued to complain. “Saturday night, he

wouldn’t get off me for seven hours.”

Sissy hadn’t understood exactly what they were talking about at

the time, but now she thought the preservation society should for-

get about the Martins’ antebellum house and declare old man Mar-

tin a national treasure.

She wondered if all over Gentry there were couples doing it for

seven hours, only the wives weren’t letting on. And then she won-

dered what in the world a man did for seven hours. She guessed

she’d never find out, since she’d taken the vow to remain good and

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 4 5

faithful to Peewee. Hell, she’d be happy to find out what they did

for seven minutes.

She looked at him, his lips moving as he studied. What? She

leaned on her elbow to see what was so fascinating: a picture of a

car engine. A car engine! When he had a perfectly good naked

woman lying beside him. Well, if not naked now, willing to get

naked in a flash.

Why was it that the men she wasn’t married to always wanted to

get into her pants, and the one man she was married to didn’t? At

least, not often.

The honeyed scent of night-blooming jasmine crawled

through the window of the room the brothers shared. Chip inhaled

and vague distorted images filled his brain. His mother’s legs. The

stranger. The way he had his hands on her. All over her.

Chip would soon be fourteen, but he was small like his father

had been at that age and slow to mature physically. Puberty was

just beginning to bedevil his body and give rise to new and trou-

bling, but creative, ideas.

He slicked back his hair like the young hoods who rode motorcy-

cles and kept their cigarettes rolled in the sleeve of their T-shirts. He

adopted their grammar too. “It don’t make no difference” was a

favorite. But the hoods weren’t fooled; neither were the wheels.

Nobody wanted to have anything to do with him. He was forced to

hang out with his younger brother and sister.

But when a subject like science took hold, he so far outdistanced

his classmates, he could have been in another solar system.

He’d made a tent of his sheet and was studying the latest
Scien-

tific American
. The beam of his flashlight shone through the white

cotton and suffused the room with its soft glow. Sissy had caught

him reading in bed over a year ago. She’d made a deal. He could

continue, as long as he didn’t keep his brother awake. She said she

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knew how hard it was to lie sleepless in the dark. But as far as Chip

was concerned, she didn’t know nothing. She’d never understand

the mind of a scientist.

While Billy Joe slept, Chip was lost in a universe of spinning elec-

trons, protons, neutrons, and chemical reactions. He pulled down

the plaid sheet and looked around the familiar room, trying to see it

as it really was. He stared at his brother, reducing him to ninety-

eight cents’ worth of chemicals. Less than a dollar. He wondered

how he’d change if other chemicals were added. Which chemicals?

Then he saw the big live oak tree in the middle of the yard go

dark. The light from his parents’ room had been switched off. It

was time for his midnight rambles.

Chip carefully placed a paper clip to mark his place and folded

the magazine neatly next to his bed. Then he turned off his flash-

light.

Feeling the boards with his bare toes and counting each one, he

silently made his way through the hall and the dining room and

into the kitchen. He ignored the icebox stuffed with Cokes and the

cookies and went straight for the broom closet, where he turned his

flashlight on and rooted around in the rag bag. When he didn’t find

what he was looking for, he crept into the bathroom and searched

the dirty clothes hamper. Sweat and mildew filled his nostrils.

Nothing. Then he remembered his mother’s footsteps slapping

against the cement.

Sneaking back through the hall he forgot to count and stepped

on the third board from the bathroom door.

“Who’s there?” Sissy called.

Chip froze.

“Chip, is that you?”

He heard her footstep and dove back into the bathroom, closing

the door behind him.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.” And he reminded himself he was talking to fats, pro-

teins, and sugars.

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 4 7

“Go on to bed when you’re finished and put down the toilet seat,

you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Chip waited patiently, sitting on the toilet, until the house was

still, and then he flushed, just to be sure. Counting carefully this

time, the boy stole out to the front yard and pulled the yellow sun-

dress with the creosote handprint out of the trash.

Men talk about wanting to be a lone wolf, but that just

means they want to run in packs. A man on his own is lonelier

than a dog.

Rule Number Sixty-five,

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

C h a p t e r 4

Parker and Ca lvin Merkin sat at a table at the Paradise Lost

where Calvin drank beer after beer and complained about his wife.

The light over the pine-paneled bar shone through Calvin’s wispy

brown hair, which he grew long on the sides and carefully brushed

over the top of his head. He said he wanted Parker’s advice, as a

man of the world. But after a few minutes, Parker realized all

Calvin really wanted was sympathy.

Parker nodded and made noncommittal sounds of solidarity as

he looked around. His picture in his high school football uniform

was displayed behind the bar along with the article calling him a

war hero. But most of the guys he’d hung out with in high school