Love, Cajun Style Page 7

“We could at least see who shows up,” Evie suggested.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “That means yes.”

  “It does not.”

  She laughed. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Before long, I smelled Mama’s seafood consommé and bourbon pecan pie. I headed downstairs, hunger gnawing at my stomach.

  “Want any help?” I asked.

  She gave me a head of green leaf lettuce and a cup of chopped fruit to toss together.

  I made the salad and went to set it on the table in the dining room. Mama brought in a bottle of white wine she’d just opened and put a Fats Waller jazz CD in the stereo.

  The front door opened. “Fee, Fie, Foe, Fum,” Papa’s voiced boomed through the whole house.

  Papa walked into the kitchen, his hands held over his big stomach. “Mmm, mmm. Lily Dawn, you do know how to satisfy a man’s appetite.”

  Papa and Sissy followed Mama and me into the kitchen and sat in the two oven chairs while Mama made Papa a gin fizz. Papa liked his before-dinner drinks. Said they whet his appetite up good. Sissy said his appetite was plenty whet enough as it was.

  Papa slapped his thigh for me to come sit on his lap.

  “Papa, when are you going to realize I’m too big for your lap?”

  “Nonsense.”

  He grabbed my arm and pulled me over to him, making me fall into his arms, at which time he let out a deep groan.

  “Lily Dawn, what are you feeding this child?” Papa teased.

  “Told you,” I said, trying to get up, but he just wrapped his arms around me that much tighter.

  “You’re like the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “You ever seen the Statue of Liberty, Lucy?”

  “Not in person,” I said.

  “The Statue of Liberty is the most beautiful lady in the world. She’s a beacon of light to men near and far.”

  Mama brought Papa his drink. I stood to help her with the rest of dinner.

  It was another thirty minutes before Daddy finally got home.

  “’Bout time you showed up. If we don’t eat this casserole soon, it’s not going to be a bit of good,” Mama told him.

  “Just let me wash up, and I’ll tell you why it is I’m straggling behind.”

  Daddy was laughing to himself as he walked to the half bath off the kitchen, letting us know he had something good up his sleeve.

  Sissy and Papa and I helped Mama bring the food to the table. We sat down and put our napkins in our laps, except for Papa. He tucked a corner of the white linen into his shirt collar as if he thought he was going to spill food all over his front side. Papa always tucked his napkin into his shirt. Mama told him he was unrefined. He said the day he wanted to be a refinery, he’d let her know, the same old joke they’d exchanged for years.

  Daddy walked in and poured all the grown-ups a glass of wine. I poured myself some water from the pitcher beside me. Then all of us held hands as Mama bowed her head and began to say grace.

  “Bless us, dear Lord, we pray, and this food laid out before us. Thank you for all our rich blessings. Bless the dear souls around this table. Bless this food to our dear bodies. Bless us to thy service. Help us to be more mindful of others in need. Bless us with thy grace and kindness. Thank you for all you’ve given us….”

  I watched Papa roll his eyes. He couldn’t stand it any longer. “For God’s sake, Lily Dawn, the Lord heard you already.”

  “Amen,” Mama finally said.

  “Amen,” we all responded.

  Papa started scooping the oyster and shrimp casserole onto his plate. The rest of us looked at Daddy.

  “Well?” Mama said.

  “Well, what?” Daddy said, reaching for the salad bowl.

  “Well, why is it you were straggling behind?” Mama wanted to know.

  Daddy served himself some salad. He picked up his glass of wine and took a long, slow swallow.

  “J.C., you’re as slow as Christmas. Get on with it, will ya,” Sissy said.

  He set his glass down. “Just as I was fixing to close shop, guess who came in?”

  “Who?” Mama said.

  He took a bite of his salad before speaking, chewing it as if he were performing some kind of digestive exercise. At last he said, “Pearl.”

  Mama and Sissy looked straight at each other. “Pearl?” they said together.

  I don’t know that Tante Pearl had ever walked into Daddy’s shop before. She grew her own flowers and didn’t wear a speck of makeup.

  “Came in to buy herself some lingerie,” Daddy went on to say.

  “Lingerie?” Mama and Sissy said.

  Then Mama dropped her fork onto her plate, making an extra-loud clinking sound. “What kind of lingerie did she buy?”

  Daddy raised his eyes to the ceiling like he was trying to remember. “Hmm. I think it was black.” He shook his head. “No, it was red.”

  “Red?” Mama declared.

  “Mm-hmm. Bought herself some perfume, too.”

  “Perfume?” Sissy said.

  I’d already eaten a good way through my dinner during all their banter. “I don’t know why everyone’s getting so worked up. Tante Pearl’s got as much right to buy perfume and lingerie as anyone else.”

  “Honey, the only time a woman buys perfume and lingerie is when she’s got a man on her agenda,” Mama said.

  “Maybe she does,” I said. “And then maybe she doesn’t. I think you should be happy for her.”

  “Honey, we are,” Mama said, dropping her chin a lot lower than was becoming on her. “But …”

  “But what?” I said.

  “Being as we are Pearl’s closest of kin, I think we have a natural right to know what’s going on in her life,” Mama said.

  “Lucy’s probably right,” Daddy said. “We shouldn’t be drawing so much attention to Pearl’s affairs.”

  Papa had already helped himself to seconds. Holding his wineglass up in front of him, he said, “You know, cars are kind of funny. Sometimes all they need is a little engine lubrication. Take that Impala of mine. She was making quite a ruckus with all that high-pitched rapping of hers. I added some Quaker State—Slick 50 to her motor. She’s got less engine friction and is getting better gas mileage and horsepower, too.”

  “Why, Papa, that’s just beautiful,” Sissy said, looking like she’d just fallen in love with him for the kazillionth time.

  Papa held a forkful of food out in front of him. “What?”

  “Mm-hmm, Papa, it sure is.” Mama nodded her head thoughtfully and served herself some salad.

  Papa looked at Daddy. “What’d I say?”

  Daddy smiled. “Well, Walter, I do believe you’ve just given us a fine analogy on love.”

  Daytona 500

  Mama spent most of Tuesday afternoon baking all kinds of delights for the drama club meeting. She believed preparing food was her charitable calling in this world. She’d made pecan yam muffins, turtle shell cookies, buttermilk pie. She’d even mixed up some hurricane punch, virgin-style, filling old gallon milk jugs with it. I knew her charitable service on that particular day was also her way of getting me to show up at the meeting.

  “Somebody has to take all this food over to the school,” she said. “I’ve got my weekly prayer vigil at the church.”

  Mama had told me I could take her car, saying one of the ladies from the altar guild was going to be picking her up.

  Though I agreed to deliver the food and give Mary Jordan and Evie a ride, I still had no intention of participating in the play.

  “This will be fun,” Mary Jordan said on the way over.

  “You better not take off,” Evie told me. “I’m not walking home.”

  It seemed to me my friends and my mama were in cahoots with each other. I didn’t say anything.

  When we pulled up to the school, there were already ten cars in the parking lot. We loaded our arms with Mama’s benevolence and headed up the steps toward the commons area. Standing just outside the buildin
g, smoking a cigarette, was Mr. La Roche, the senior history teacher, who was the spitting image of Ichabod Crane. He’d been married once, or so we’d heard. His wife asphyxiated herself in the garage about twenty years back. He never remarried. Some of the kids at the high school liked to talk up stories about what really happened, saying it wasn’t suicide at all, but that Mr. La Roche had locked his wife in the car, then went on in the house to go to sleep. I’d asked Mama about it once. She declared that that was pure nonsense, saying they didn’t even manufacture cars with automatic door locks back then. She said Mr. La Roche would have had to hit his wife upside the head or else tied her up to have kept her in the car against her will, which stirred up Evie’s and Mary Jordan’s and my imaginations even more.

  When Mr. La Roche saw us, he put his cigarette out on the bottom of his shoe and tucked the butt in the pocket of his navy blue blazer. I didn’t know why he was wearing a jacket with the night being as hot as it was. I supposed men always wore their sport coats the way old women always wore pantyhose, even in the middle of summer.

  Mr. La Roche held the door open for us. “Would you like me to take some of that burden off your hands?” he asked.

  We said, “No, thank you.”

  About twenty people were scattered around the auditorium. Standing in front of them was Mr. Banks. He saw us and smiled.

  “My mom likes to cook,” I said as we approached him.

  We set the food on the stage.

  “You’re going to stay, aren’t you?” he asked us.

  Mary Jordan and Evie each took hold of one of my arms. “We’re staying,” they said. I knew there was no way they were going to let me out of there.

  We sat about a third of the way back.

  “He’s hot,” Evie said.

  “And you didn’t want to come tonight?” Mary Jordan said.

  Before I had a chance to offer an opinion on the matter, Dewey walked up.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I said back, drawing the word out with surprise. I was sitting between Evie and Mary Jordan. Dewey was standing just at the end of our row.

  “We didn’t get a chance to really meet the other day. I’m Dewey,” he said.

  “I’m Lucy.” I shook his hand over Evie. Then I introduced him to my friends.

  We moved down a seat so he could join us.

  “Why haven’t I ever seen you before?” Evie asked.

  “I just moved to town with my dad a couple of weeks ago,” Dewey said.

  “From Detroit, Michigan,” I said.

  Dewey bent forward with his arms on his knees and a big question written all over his face. “How did you know?”

  “My mom’s Lily Beauregard. I heard you play at the house the other day.”

  “You were there?”

  Evie interrupted. “Should Lucy and I trade seats? I’m feeling a little out of the loop.”

  I filled my friends in.

  Then Dewey said, “Clyde proposed.”

  I looked confused.

  “Clyde. Over at the Walbridge Wing. He proposed to Anita. I was up there this afternoon.”

  “You’re kidding.” I started to laugh.

  “He gave her a ring and everything.”

  “What did she say?” I asked.

  “She said, ‘Yes.’”

  “Who said, ‘Yes’?” Evie wanted to know.

  “Mrs. Forez, over at the Wing,” I told her. “Dewey played the piano up there the other day. She and this old man were dancing.”

  “I know Mrs. Forez,” Mary Jordan said. “That is so sweet.”

  Mr. Banks began talking. “I’m going to need you all to move in closer so I don’t have to yell.”

  Everyone got up and moved, taking seats within the first three rows. Ms. Pitre and a couple of the women she went bowling with sat in the center of the first row, looking about as eager as a couple of gators in a duck pond. I was now sitting next to Dewey, with Evie on my other side.

  “I’m Ted Banks.”

  Evie whistled.

  I slunk down in my seat. “I don’t know you,” I said.

  Dewey laughed.

  “How many of you have acted before?” Mr. Banks asked.

  Ms. Pitre raised her hand. Mr. La Roche did, too. Mary Jordan reached for my hand and held it in the air.

  Mr. Banks caught my eye. “Lucy,” he said. “Come on up here.”

  “I wasn’t even supposed to be here,” I mumbled to Mary Jordan.

  I squeezed my long legs between the seats in front of us and Dewey’s knees, and made my way toward Mr. Banks.

  He laid his arm across my back, cupping his fingers over my bare shoulder. If anyone else had done that, I wouldn’t have even taken notice. But here he was, probably the best-looking man I’d ever seen, and all of a sudden I felt like a shot of pure adrenaline had just coursed through me. My neck gets splotchy when I get nervous, and I was certain it was getting splotchy then.

  “What part did you play?” he asked.

  I cleared my throat. “I was the Grinch.”

  Evie whistled again. Mary Jordan laughed.

  “Okay, good.” Mr. Banks didn’t laugh, and his hand didn’t leave my shoulder. “We’re going to do a little exercise,” he went on. “Henry, I saw your hand go up.”

  Mr. La Roche was sitting behind Mary Jordan, next to Noel La Plume, from Sweetbay Hair Benders. Mr. Banks motioned Mr. La Roche down.

  “Now, I want you two to face each other,” Mr. Banks said. He laid both his hands over my shoulders and gently turned me toward Mr. La Roche. “Lucy, you’re going to mirror everything Mr. La Roche does. Henry, move slowly so that Lucy can stay right with you. Like this,” Mr. Banks said, holding up Mr. La Roche’s right hand. “Now, Lucy, you hold up your right hand, and try to move at just the same moment Henry does.”

  I did as he said. As Mr. La Roche slowly moved his hand to the right, I did the same. As he turned his body to the side, so did I. He raised his eyebrows. I raised mine. A couple of people laughed. Then Mr. La Roche really loosened up. He slid to the right. He slid to the left. I kept right with him. He kicked his heel out in front of him. He kicked his heel behind him. He moved his jaw to the side. He turned his head. He leaned his face toward mine. I leaned my face toward his. I swear our noses were no more than a couple of centimeters apart. I felt that nervous giggle inside me start to erupt. He scrunched his nose. I scrunched up mine. With that, everyone was laughing, and that nervous giggle of mine did a full-blown explosion, snowballing into both a raspberry and a snort, which embarrassed me to no end. I wheeled around, turning my back to the audience.

  Mr. Banks laid his arm over my shoulders. With his face next to mine, he said, “Nice job. You were great.”

  His mouth was so close to my cheek, I was certain I felt his warm breath on my skin, which sent the blood in my body racing like a stock car at the Daytona 500.

  Before I turned back around, everybody started clapping, even Mr. La Roche. I still thought he looked like Ichabod Crane, but for that split second, began to fancy that maybe he hadn’t asphyxiated his wife after all.

  Kite Strings

  After Mr. La Roche’s and my demonstration onstage, Mr. Banks talked about the play and announced that tryouts would be two nights away. He passed out scripts so that we could become familiar with the parts.

  “I’ll be asking the ladies to read Hermia’s lines from Act I, Scene I, and the men to read Lysander’s part from the same scene,” he told us.

  Everything had happened so fast that before I knew it, I’d been swept up in the whole affair. When Evie and Mary Jordan and Dewey all agreed to try out, I agreed, too.

  The next day I rode my bike to Tante Pearl’s. She’d asked me to help her tear off the trim around her windows so that she could replace it with new wood. It was late afternoon. I was on top of a ladder, prying off one of the strips with a crowbar, when a blue Karman Gia convertible pulled into the driveway. In the passenger seat was Evie. Tucked in the back was Mary J
ordan. And driving was Dewey. Evie leaned in front of Dewey and pressed on the horn several times.

  I had no idea how the three of them had gotten together. “What are you doing?” I yelled, still standing on the ladder with the crowbar.

  “We saw this really cool car driving around town, so I stood in the middle of the road and made the driver pick us up,” Evie said.

  “What do you think?” Mary Jordan said.

  “It’s my dad’s,” Dewey added.

  “Out of my good citizenly duty, I told him he had to take us to the beach. It’s called welcoming the new resident. Want to come?” Evie asked.

  The window trim could wait. I knew Tante Pearl wouldn’t care. She and I would probably be at this project for weeks. Maybe we’d finish it sometime next year. That’s how Tante Pearl was. She had unfinished projects all over the house—walls half painted, cabinet faces removed, a garage with no door.

  Tante Pearl was around back working in her garden. “Let me tell my aunt.” I climbed down the ladder, then, looking at the car, said, “Are we all going to fit?”

  “We’ll fit,” Evie said.

  Evie climbed in the back with Mary Jordan, saying my legs were longer than hers.

  “The radio’s broken,” Dewey told us.

  “That means we’ll have to sing,” Evie said. It didn’t take her long to start singing “I’m a Redneck Woman.” Mary Jordan started right in with her. I joined in, too. Dewey did one of those pretend embarrassment things, rubbing his hand down his face as if trying to hide, though grinning the whole time.

  “What? You don’t like country?” I teased.

  He blushed. “No. I guess I never cared for it.” He was still smiling.

  “Try it. You might like it,” Evie said, then kept right on singing.

  “Or get the radio fixed,” Mary Jordan said.

  When we got to the beach, the mosquitoes were having a heyday. Mary Jordan hadn’t brought any repellent this time, so we decided to build a fire to deter them, despite the saturating heat. We scouted the area for wood. Dewey went back to the car for matches he said his dad kept in the glove compartment.

  It wasn’t long before we had a fire roaring. We sat back from it a ways to buffer ourselves from the heat.