Love, Cajun Style Read online

  Ethel Lee was standing by the cosmetic counter consulting with Ms. Pitre, who’d already had her face made over half a dozen times. She’d bought everything from the Fountain of Youth Facial Serum to a tube of Luscious Lip Exfoliator. Ever since her husband had died two years back while fooling around with another woman, she’d joined the singles’ group at the church and was coming out. That meant doing her nails up and adding a swagger to her walk. She traded in her Buick Riviera for a bright red Mustang convertible. Ms. Pitre changed her attire, too. She no longer wore sweaters with bright orange pumpkins appliquéd on them at Halloween, or red sweaters with jingle bells at Christmastime. Instead she looked more like the women in the New Orleans’ Junior League who came to our town each Easter to raise money for the underprivileged. They wore silk pantsuits and big leather belts, and gold and diamond jewelry. Ms. Pitre didn’t belong to the New Orleans Junior League. She just looked like she did.

  “I want to make sure I look my best for the tryouts,” I heard Ms. Pitre say.

  Daddy brought Ms. Pitre a cup of his special blended coffee. “Alberta, when have you not looked your best? Not a day goes by you don’t make some man’s head turn,” he said.

  Daddy had a way of making all those women at the shop feel good about themselves. I didn’t see why he couldn’t work his charm on Mama at home.

  “J.C., if you aren’t the kindest man to ever walk this earth,” Ms. Pitre said.

  “That’s why his mama named him J.C., after the good Lord himself,” Ethel Lee chimed in.

  Daddy’s name is Jonathan Calvin. Growing up, everyone just called him J.C.

  Just as I was about to head out the front door to water the petunias in the cow trough, Ima Jean Balfa bellowed her way into the store. Every week Miss Balfa had her hair set by Noel at Sweetbay Hair Benders a couple of blocks over, then stopped in the shop for a cup of coffee. She was wearing baggy khakis rolled up to just below her knees, and a bright yellow tank top that hung below her hips. Her fingernails were painted the color of okra. A Kurex seashell hung from each of her earlobes. Miss Balfa liked big earrings. She liked them so much, the holes in her ears had been stretched to at least half an inch long. Usually Miss Balfa wore rubber flip-flops, the kind the Piggly Wiggly stocked each summer by the checkout counter, but that morning Miss Balfa had on white Keds sneakers with holes at the end, exposing her toes, which were also painted green.

  Ms. Pitre said, “I see Noel did a fine job on your hair. You look just the same as you did last week.”

  “I’ve looked the same for twenty years. If I had any intention of changing, I would have done so already,” Miss Balfa said right back.

  Noel moved to Sweetbay a couple of years before Ethel Lee. Noel was somewhere in his late twenties. He had long blond hair he tied back in a ponytail, and wore Calvin Klein cologne. Miss Balfa said, now with Noel in town, getting her hair done and her annual appointment with her gynecologist were the only times she could get a man’s hands on her.

  Personally, I thought Miss Balfa was crazy in the head. I’d had my first appointment with Doc Fredericks a few years before, after I’d turned fourteen. Mama had explained it was one of those coming-of-age sort of things, like getting your period, and she and I would celebrate by going to lunch once it was all over. Having Noel fix my hair was one thing, but sprawling my legs out like a Butterball turkey about to get stuffed had to be the most unpleasant of experiences I could think of. Not to mention Doc Fredericks was as old as the Parthenon.

  I began unpacking a box of scented pillowcases that had arrived the day before, while Miss Balfa and Ms. Pitre carried on. Ms. Pitre was trying out some of Ethel Lee’s new lip color. Daddy was now at the back of the store, putting together an arrangement for me to deliver to the Walbridge Wing. The Walbridge Wing is Sweetbay’s home for the elderly.

  “What do you need new makeup for? You’ve already bought out half the store,” Miss Balfa said.

  Miss Balfa and Ms. Pitre had been friends for as long as I’d known them, which was all my life. We’d all gotten used to their teasing each other. It was their way of showing affection.

  “Because I want to look my finest at the tryouts, don’t you know.”

  “What tryouts?” Miss Balfa asked.

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “If I’d heard, I wouldn’t be asking,” Miss Balfa told her.

  “The play tryouts,” Ethel Lee filled in. Ethel Lee handed Ms. Pitre a tissue to dab her lips.

  “What play tryouts?” Miss Balfa asked.

  “The high school hired a new drama teacher. He’s starting a community theater,” Ethel Lee said.

  “He’s going to be directing A Midsummer Madness, a play about four lovers,” Ms. Pitre declared.

  “It’s a spoof on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Ethel Lee said, turning to me. “Lucy, what about you? You and Evie and Mary Jordan should try out.”

  This was the first I’d heard about the play and had no intention whatsoever of participating. The last time I’d set foot on a stage was in the eighth grade when I received my middle school diploma. Mama later told me my neck had turned as red as a fire engine. Standing on a stage in front of people wasn’t something I cared to repeat.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Have you met the new teacher?” Ms. Pitre asked me.

  “He must have been hired after school was out,” I told her.

  Miss Balfa said, “Forget it, Alberta. He’s too young for you. Besides, he’s married.”

  “How do you know he’s married?” Ms. Pitre asked.

  “It’s a small town. I hear things.”

  “You didn’t hear about the tryouts,” Ms. Pitre reminded her.

  “I only hear things I’m interested in, and I’m not interested in any theater.”

  “I don’t know why not,” Ms. Pitre said. She looked at me and then at Ethel Lee. “I’ll have you know when we were in fourth grade, Ima Jean was the star of the show.”

  “What show was that?” Ethel Lee asked.

  “Little Red Riding Hood.”

  Looking at Miss Balfa, Ethel Lee got a big grin on her face. “You played Little Red Riding Hood?”

  Miss Balfa finished her coffee and made to leave.

  Ms. Pitre answered for her. “No, she played the big bad wolf.”

  By then everyone except Miss Balfa was having themselves a laugh. Sometimes watching Ms. Pitre and Miss Balfa carry on reminded me of Mary Jordan and Evie and me, and I’d wonder where the three of us would be forty years down the road. Of course I hoped none of us would end up a widow like Ms. Pitre, or a bachelorette all our life like Miss Balfa, but I also hoped we’d face the world together like these two had.

  The Shuffle

  Daddy had put together an arrangement of pink mist scabiosa and parrot tulips in a large vase. They were addressed to Mrs. Forez, a widow at the Walbridge Wing. I strapped the vase into the basket Daddy had rigged for me on the front of my bike. The Walbridge Wing was on the north side of town, three blocks up from the square. It was almost ten-thirty. Usually by that time of morning, the residents would have long finished breakfast and be back in their rooms. But as I rode up to the lobby windows, I saw a whole group gathered together in the commons area, their white heads bobbing and rocking back and forth. One of the men was waving his arms in the air. No sooner did I open the door than I heard someone playing “You Make Me Feel So Young” on the piano. Mary Jordan’s grandfather, Pappy Jacques, was sitting in a wheelchair at the back of the room and singing his heart out as if he were Frank Sinatra.

  I spotted Mrs. Forez on the far side of the room. I wove my way between wheelchairs and walkers and set the arrangement of flowers on a table beside her. I’d known Mrs. Forez my whole life. She used to throw all kinds of Tupperware parties clear up till she had her stroke two years back. She took my hand in hers when I kissed her and squeezed it with her frail fingers. She couldn’t talk so well since her stroke. Her fingers didn’t work so
well either, so I opened the card for her.

  “‘Dearest Anita, Happy Birthday. Love, Clyde,’” I read aloud. “I didn’t know it was your birthday,” I told her.

  She smiled, and her gray-blue eyes got a tad bit watery. I kissed her cheek. “Happy Birthday,” I said. I wondered who Clyde was. Maybe a brother. Maybe a friend. I wondered if anyone at the Walbridge Wing had sung to her yet.

  I walked toward the piano, thinking I’d ask the pianist to play “Happy Birthday.” Just as I stepped past a row of metal folding chairs and oxygen tanks, I saw the boy, whom the good Lord had smiled through on Mama. He wasn’t even looking at the keys while he played. Didn’t even have sheet music in front of him. He caught me watching him and smiled. That’s when I noticed his nose and decided it was entirely too big for his face. I smiled back, though all the while I was wishing his nose wasn’t so big. His face was smooth and tan and his eyes were a deep marble blue. He ran his fingers up the length of the keys real fast and started right in on “I Got Rhythm.” I didn’t know how he could play the piano without looking at the keys, much less know all those old songs.

  Hands around the room began clapping, though hardly a one of them was on beat. I found myself laughing for the sheer fun of it all. Dewey inclined his head to the audience, steering my eyes toward Mrs. Forez. A tall, thin man with a head full of white hair was asking her to dance. He bowed and held out his hand toward her. She took his fingers in hers and slowly stood from her chair. As Dewey continued to play, their feet shuffled together the tiniest bit. Their faces were all lit up, both of them smiling and twinkling their blue eyes at each other.

  “It’s her birthday,” I said to Dewey, moving my body a little closer to the piano so he could hear me.

  With that he did another one of those fancy moves with his fingers and began playing the jazziest rendition of “Happy Birthday” I’d ever heard. I stood beside the piano and started singing while others joined in. I don’t have a great voice, but neither did anyone else in that room. As we finished singing, the man dancing with Mrs. Forez clapped his hands and gave her a kiss smack-dab on the lips. All those frail voices around the room cheered and hooted. “Way to go, Clyde!” I heard someone say.

  Clyde helped Mrs. Forez back to her seat, then pulled up his chair beside her and held her hand. Both of them just kept right on smiling, and as they did, Dewey played “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.” People started singing, about as off-tune as they were offbeat.

  Dewey was amazing. I loved watching his hands move so deftly across the piano keys, and I loved listening to all those old people sing. I was standing just behind Dewey’s left shoulder. “This is wonderful,” I said.

  He looked back at me, a beautiful, wide grin on his face. I was sorry I had to get back to the shop. “I gotta go,” I said. “Thanks for playing.”

  Dewey nodded his head in acknowledgment and kept right on with his accompaniment, smiling the whole time. He looked like he was having just as much fun as everyone else in the room. I was glad Mama had suggested he share his talent with the world, and I felt my own appreciation for music make a bountiful leap. I slipped out the back door, savoring all that music trailing behind me.

  Gone with the Wind

  The next day after I finished working at the shop, I rode my bike out to Tante Pearl’s place to give her a pedicure, like I always did on Wednesdays. She’d pay me five bucks for the effort, and another five bucks for giving Moses a good shampooing and brushing. I didn’t help her out for the money. I did it because it gave me a chance to spend time with her, like a girls’ day out.

  I laid my bike in the grass beside the porch and started up the steps.

  Tante Pearl met me at the door. “We’re not doing the pedicure today,” she said. “Not giving Moses a bath, either.”

  “What is it we’re going to do, then?” I asked, following her into the house.

  We walked back to the kitchen, where she reached inside her large straw purse on the table and pulled out a quart jug. “Gator milk,” she said.

  “Un-huh. Gator milk.” I gave her one of those drop-jaw looks of disbelief. “Tante Pearl, alligators don’t have boobs.”

  Tante Pearl laughed, her bosom heaving up and down.

  “They just call it gator milk,” she said. She started unbuttoning her blouse.

  “Tante Pearl, what are you doing?”

  “I had to go to Doc Fredericks the other week, and while I was sitting in that waiting room I got to reading this magazine he had out on the table. In the back was an advertisement for gator milk. You’re supposed to rub it all over your skin.”

  “What for?”

  “So it’ll soak clear through to the fat cells. Supposed to work like vinegar on baking soda. They call it a chemical reaction. Guaranteed to change fat cells into gas.”

  “And what happens to all that gas?” I asked, looking her over.

  “Well, I’m not sure.”

  “You know that’s just some hoax.”

  By now she’d taken off her blouse and dungarees and was standing in her underwear and sneakers with the jug of gator milk on the floor beside her.

  “Lucy Marie, are you going to help me or not?”

  “What is it you want me to do?”

  “You know I can’t reach my backside.”

  I’d never known Tante Pearl to take such an interest in her physical self. “Since when did you become so concerned about your size?” I asked. As a little girl, I’d always enjoyed the cushion of my aunt’s abundance and had never entertained the idea of her preferring to be thinner.

  “Since Doc Fredericks told me I was becoming a health hazard to myself.”

  I looked my aunt over, thinking Doc’s words harsh and unkind. “What about one of those spas in New Orleans,” I said. “They give full-body massages. You could take this jug to one of them.”

  Tante Pearl picked her clothes up from the chair where she’d dropped them and strode off down the hall. She slammed her bedroom door. I followed after her and rapped as softly as I could. “Tante Pearl?” I said.

  She didn’t answer, so I rapped a little more loudly.

  “They ain’t kin!” she finally hollered at me.

  “Tante Pearl, open up. I still think it’s a hoax, but if you want me to help you, I will.”

  I waited a minute before she finally opened the door, holding the jug out in front of her and wearing a blanket wrapped over her shoulders.

  I got a smile on my face and started to laugh. Before I knew it, Tante Pearl was laughing, too.

  When I’d finished at Tante Pearl’s house, I rode out to the beach. I liked my friends, but I also liked to disappear into the quiet of my head and think about things, like what I was going to do with my life after I graduated. I knew I’d be going to college, and probably like everyone else I’d go up to LSU in Baton Rouge. But sometimes I didn’t want to be like everyone else. Sometimes I’d think about saving my money and buying a car and driving to a place I’d only read about, like Maine or California or Washington State. No one from Sweetbay ever went to college that far away, as if the South was as much country as our little town would ever need.

  Evie didn’t want to go to college. She said she was going to get a job right after school. Mary Jordan would probably go somewhere elaborate with a full-ride scholarship. The three of us had never liked to talk about what would happen to us after we graduated. Once in church, Father Ivan read from the Bible that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. I’m sure that had something to do with God, but all I could think about was Mary Jordan and Evie and me. Now that Mary Jordan was getting so serious with Doug, I worried that our cord might be losing a bit of its strength.

  That late afternoon, the sky was fretted with clouds. I sat on the beach, the wind whipping my hair across my face, the kind of moist wind that’s native to these parts. I’d brought my backpack, as I usually did. Inside was my journal, some magazines, my headphones, my CD player. But that day I didn’t feel like listenin
g to music. I didn’t feel like looking at magazines, either. Instead I listened to the wind and watched the tiny whitecaps over the water. Again I got to thinking about Tante Pearl. Something had changed. Then I remembered the two fishing poles and it hit me. Of course she’d always cared about her weight. She’d just never had anyone to notice her before. Tante Pearl had been alone so long, I’d never imagined her preferring it any other way.

  Tante Pearl deserved to have someone care about her, someone other than a seventeen-year-old who was too busy with her friends these days. I hoped I deserved to have someone care about me, too, someone other than Mary Jordan and Evie, or a boy like Tommy Pierre, who had never really cared about me at all. Tante Pearl once told me that when she was little, her family had a wishing well in their backyard. She said she would write her wishes down, wrap them around a rock, and toss the rock into the well. I stared out at the ocean, thinking I had about as big a wishing well as anyone could care to have right in front of me. I took out a pencil from my backpack and tore out one of the pages from my journal. I closed my eyes, trying to imagine someone tall and dark and wonderful. I thought about what he would be like, and as I did, I wrote down the words that came to mind: Kind. Funny. Someone who will want to know what I’m thinking. Someone who will hold my hand and dance with me on the beach underneath a starlit sky. Someone who will love me like a first kiss, and keep on loving me again and again.

  With the list in my hand, I walked toward the shoreline, the clouds lowering upon me with each breath of wind. The water washed warm currents over my feet. I strolled along the beach, kicking the water up in front of me, splashing my legs. It was then that a gust swept up from behind, snatching the paper from my hand and tossing it into the sky. I watched my wish sail to and fro, dipping and dancing through the air, till it was finally out of sight somewhere over the water. I stood there for some time, feeling the wind against my skin and listening to the Gulf roll in. And for a moment I got a strange flutter in my heart, like a whisper, that an angel had been with me that afternoon, and maybe it was an angel who had carried my wish away.