How Lulu Lost Her Mind

by Rachel Gibson

  “Hey, tee Lou.” I’ve never been so glad to hear Simon’s smooth Southern drawl. “I got some samples for you.”

  “I didn’t recognize your number.”

  “I’m at my office on the landline. I’ll make a pass with those samples tomorrow.”

  I don’t even know what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter right now. “Mom’s in the hospital. I don’t know when I’ll be home tomorrow.”

  “Damn.” He pauses for a few heartbeats before he says, “I’m sure sorry to hear that. Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yes,” I answer, because I hope it’s true. I lean a hip into the counter and give Simon the short version of the past twenty-four hours.

  “Where y’at?”

  I slide the ice to the back of my neck. “Home.”

  His soft chuckle fills my ear. “That means, ‘How are you doing?’ ”

  “You could have said that?”

  “I did.”

  It must be one more of those Southern things, like come see and make groceries. “The central air isn’t working. I don’t think there are any fans in this house, and I’m melting.”

  “We can’t have that. Hang tight. I got something you need.”

  I can think of a lot of things I need. At the moment, a new air conditioner is number one on the list.

  Simon brings the next-best thing: a big fan and a six-pack of cold beer. “At times like this NOLA Blonde goes down easy and hits the spot.”

  I laugh, but he’s right. Within a few short minutes, we’re sitting on the front porch, the steady squeak of rocking chairs on old wood lulling away my tension. “I never imagined that I’d one day be rocking in these old chairs. I must be getting old, too.”

  “You probably have a few good years left.” Simon raises a beer to his lips as the setting sun washes the night sky in deep purple and orange.

  Not so much as a wisp of a breeze tonight, and a scattering of fireflies twinkle and flash like tiny stars right in front of me and the depths beyond. “One or two before I get my AARP card, I suppose.” The scene is enchanting, and the rhythmic creaks of worn planks fill the comfortable silence. I take a long drink and it does indeed go down easy. “Jim picked up Lindsey earlier and they went to a movie,” I say as I lower the bottle.

  “Hmm,” is his only response.

  “Did Jim tell you she’s pregnant?”

  “Didn’t have to tell me.” He raises his bottle again, and I watch as it seems to go down easy for him, too. “It was obvious the first or second time I saw the girl.”

  Yep. I’m the only one who didn’t figure it out. “Lindsey says they’re friends. I think it’s kind of… odd.”

  Again, “Hmm.”

  “She’s going to have a baby in about three months.” I lift a palm inquisitively. “Why would he go out with someone who’s pregnant with another man’s baby?”

  “I don’t ask.”

  “It’s weird.”

  He shrugs one shoulder. “Maybe for you.”

  I point my bottle at him. “Are you saying you’d date a woman who’s about to pop out another man’s kid?”

  “No. I wouldn’t, but Jim’s a different kind of guy. He’s lived a different life. He’s had some rough patches, and I imagine he sees her as someone having a rough time too.”

  “That’s what concerns me. Lindsey’s naive for her age.” I look over at his profile, bathed in increasing shadow. “Now she’s pregnant and has no family to protect her. Mom and I are all she’s got.”

  “Mais, you don’t have to worry about Jim Poulet, no. He’s the last person on the planet anyone needs protection from, believe me. There isn’t a bad or mean bone in his body.” He finishes off his beer and sets the empty in the cooler next to him. “He had a brain fever when he was a baby, and I think it burned up any meanness in him.” He pulls out two bottles. “Want another?”

  I chug the last sip and hand him my empty. “How do you know him?” I ask, trying very hard not to burp like a teenage boy.

  “I saw him picking up cans on the side of the road about two years ago. He had a big ol’ garbage bag full, and I thought if a man works that hard for cans, he’s likely to work hard for real money.” Simon screws off the top of the two bottles and hands me one. “I stopped and asked if he wanted to come and sweep up my shop, and he’s been with me ever since.” He drops both caps in the cooler. “He lived in Terrebonne Parish, and I didn’t know he walked to and from work for the first six months.”

  “Well, he has a car now.”

  Simon laughs. “He loves that Malibu. It looks like hell, but it runs good.”

  “My first car was a ’96 Ford Focus I bought off my mom’s last husband. It was almost as big a piece of shit as Lester Doyle.” I take a drink, then press the cold, wet bottle to my hot cheek. “The car lasted longer than the marriage, though.”

  “How long was the marriage?”

  “That one?” I lean my head back against the top of the wooden chair and look out at the silhouette of tree branches against the vivid dusk sky. “Ahh… two years, maybe. I don’t quite remember, but I know it lasted longer than her marriage to Melvin. She was married to Vince the longest.” Light from the transom window illuminates Simon’s shoulder and the side of his face. I can’t make out his expression, but I don’t need to. “Five,” I answer the question hanging in the air.

  “What number was your father?”

  “Two.” Of all my mother’s men, he’s the one I like to talk about least. “I hardly remember him.”

  “Where is he?”

  I shrug in the darkness. “I have no idea. The last I heard, somewhere in Kansas.” I tried to find him when I was a kid. Whenever I was sad and lonely, I’d sit on my bed and reach for the phone. “That was about thirty years ago.” I remember the sound of my mother and her latest boyfriend’s laughter leaching through the thin walls as I reached out to several of my father’s relatives in a desperate attempt to reconnect with the most important man in my life. “I used to have fantasy conversations with him in my head. The things I’d say and the things he’d say if I ever found him.” But those conversations never came to fruition, and for many years, I blamed my mom. Given Mother’s penchant for acquiring men, sometimes while she still had another, it was easy to blame her. “We used to move around so much, I thought he just couldn’t find me.” I take a long drink, then set the bottle on the porch by my chair. “It never occurred to me that he wasn’t even looking.” I stand and stretch my arms over my head. For a few seconds, I feel light-headed, and I don’t know if I stood up too fast or had too much beer. “Men like him are what I call WADs. Worthless Apathetic Deadbeats. At least that’s what I call them in public.” I drop my arms and move to the edge of the porch. “In my head, they’re worthless asshole deadbeat sons of bitches.”

  “Bon rein. A man takes care of his responsibilities.” Simon gets up and stands behind me, so close I can feel his warm chest against the back of my arm. “I’ve always been surrounded by a big family. Some should get divorced but stick together for the misery. Some are faithful and others mess around, but every one of them takes care of their kids. Including the ones born outside of marriage.” He puts his hands on my shoulders. “They’re a pain in the ass and think they have a right to my personal business, but who else is going to give me a kidney if I need it?”

  I laugh and look back over my shoulder at him. “If I need a body part, I’m out of luck. There are only two of us and Mom isn’t a good donor candidate.”

  “If you need a body part, cher, you let me know.”

  I don’t think he’s talking about a kidney. I turn to look up into his face. “Are you coming on to me, Simon?”

  He chuckles. “If you have to ask, I must be getting old.”

  He’s about my age, so he’s not that old. He has a good business and all his hair. He brought me a fan and beer and made my shitty day better. God knows he’s a triple threat when it comes to women—handsome, smooth-talking, charming. �
��Why hasn’t some local girl snapped you up?” I ask.

  “You’re the expert.” His hands slide across my shoulders, and his thumbs brush my jaw.

  “Is there something wrong with you?” I mean it as a joke, but it comes out a little breathy, and I want to turn my face into his hand and kiss his warm palm.

  He lowers his face and whispers against my mouth, “You tell me.”

  I hear a little moan, and I think it’s me, but I’m not sure. Simon’s kiss takes the breath from my lungs, and his mouth works me over, pushing every single thought from my head.

  I am not Lulu. I am not an expert.

  I am simply a woman being kissed by a man and, thank God, he knows how to do it right.

  18

  June 18

  Hard decisions.

  Birds of a feather.

  Twisted Twister.

  MOM IS wheeled out of the big pneumatic doors like the day she got kicked out of Golden Springs, but this time she’s pale. Her white, almost translucent skin sets her Renegade Red lips apart, and her eyes look a bit sunken.

  She’s been gone for five days, and I had the air-conditioning unit replaced this morning before I picked her up. Besides her complexion, there are other changes I notice once we’re home. She walks slower and tires quicker. She says she’s hungry, but she eats next to nothing. We have to avoid using the word remember when she’s around. According to my Alzheimer’s books (and backed up by Lindsey), some sufferers become irritable when reminded of their memory loss. This behavior can happen at any stage, but we’re especially sensitive to the possibility now.

  The good news is her UTI is getting better. The bad news is her swearing is getting worse. It’s like she has seventy-four years’ worth of cuss words stored up inside and she’s determined to say every last one of them before she dies.

  When Simon dropped by to see how she was doing the other day, she’d looked up from a scrapbook and said, “Holy shit, you’re a foxy man.”

  I hadn’t seen him since the night he kissed me senseless on the front porch and jumped in his truck and drove off. I don’t know how long I’d stood there staring at the empty driveway before snapping out of it and returning inside. Too embarrassingly long is all I know. Simon is smooth, and I need to watch out for his slick moves. Enough is going on in my life. Especially now that Mom has added swearing to her act.

  Lindsey managed to get Mom an appointment with her neurologist only a few days after her discharge. Before we left, I put her hair in a bun and helped her with her lipstick. I try to be optimistic at the clinic, but her mental and cognitive evaluations show a three-point drop since the last time she was tested, shortly after we arrived in Louisiana. Three points closer to end stage. I can’t say I’m surprised.

  “You’re as healthy as can be and pretty as a picture,” the doctor tells Mom in a smooth Southern drawl.

  She smiles and bats her eyelashes like her old self. “You’re a rascal.”

  Rascal? That’s a new one.

  “A goddamn rascal.”

  They both laugh while a little piece of my heart dies. This can’t happen. Not now. Not when I’ve only had four relatively good months with her. I want more good months and more good years.

  Along with her new swearing habit, she won’t brush her teeth unless Lindsey or I stand in the bathroom and watch her. Suddenly the toothpaste she’s used for years burns her gums. We try everything from organic to Sensodyne to Baby Orajel, but she complains about them all and blames Wynonna for the heinous act of stealing all the good toothpaste. “That nasty bitch Wynonna took it. She’s a filthy whore and loves to burn my mouth.”

  “Yeah, nasty bitch,” I say, to reinforce that Wynonna is to blame and not me.

  “Don’t curse, Lou Ann. You were raised better,” says the potty-mouthed hypocrite. On the bright side, she doesn’t hate me anymore, and we’ve returned to our equilibrium. At bedtime, I brush her hair while she berates contestants on Family Feud and calls Wink “that handsome son of a bitch.” She turns the volume up so loud, I swear they can hear it in the next parish. One night, she loses the remote and I have to stand next to the television and change the channels manually.

  Most of my mornings are spent painting with Mom and Bob again. After lunch, Mom takes a nap and I head to the attic, where I have become enmeshed in the history of Sutton Hall—the nearly two centuries’ worth of recorded births and deaths and receipts for bags of flour, crocks of butter, and casks of Charlie’s Fine Whisky. Jasper’s gambling ledger was packed away with his gold tie bar and cuff links, and it appears that Simon was right. It was either feast or famine with old Jasper.

  The day I brought Mom home from the hospital, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I had to choose between Lulu and my mom. Mom’s hospital scare made it clear that I can’t split myself between the two. They each suffer from the lack of my attention, and I feel guilty neglecting one for the other. But when it came down to it, the choice was clear. Mom is more important, and spending as much time as possible with her is my only priority.

  I still have my boss-lady moments, even down here in Louisiana, but Lulu deserves better than I’ve given her lately. She needs a new voice. Someone young and talented who has her finger on the pulse of the dating world. Someone fresh, but most important, someone who is as excited as I was when I first started the company. The day I chose Mom, I asked Fern to start vetting potential replacements, and since then she’s sent me videos by the dozen. No matches yet, so the guest blogging will have to continue for now.

  Five days after the neurologist appointment, I force myself to pull a wardrobe steamer trunk from the attic. The canvas is torn and the locks are broken. The only thing holding it closed is a cracked leather buckle. It isn’t easy, but I drag it downstairs. It thumps each step of the way, and a yellowed lace sleeve escapes through a crack. I fear the whole thing will bust apart before I get to the parlor.

  Raphael hangs upside down from the grand chandelier in the entry. It’s been cleaned and rewired, so there is no danger of electrocution. Sometimes I have to remind myself that that’s a good thing. “Shake your tail feathers,” he squawks.

  That’s tame compared to some things that come out of him. Since the day Simon made him talk, the bird hasn’t shut up. I’d like to blame Jasper for Raphael’s potty beak, but he’s added a few more words to his lexicon, courtesy of Patricia Jackson.

  “Tony’s an asshole.”

  Okay, maybe me too.

  I’m breathing hard by the time I finally slide the trunk into the front parlor. Lindsey looks up from rubbing her belly. “Are you okay?” she asks while practicing her who-who breathing. She’s been doing that a lot lately, saying she has to practice so she won’t forget to breathe while she’s pushing out Frankie.

  “I’m fine,” I grunt while tugging at the trunk.

  “What’s going on?” Mom asks as she enters behind me, wringing her hands. She’s remembered her lipstick, a rich cabernet that complements her chartreuse dress. Just below her knees, she’s pulled on her beige support socks and white orthopedic shoes. “Did Tony bring that?”

  “Tony’s an asshole,” Raphael chimes in.

  Mom gasps like always and lectures Raphael on the evils of curse words. I don’t even bother to point out her hypocrisy because she’d just shrug.

  “I thought you might want to look inside this old trunk,” I tell her once she finishes her reprimand.

  “What’s in it?” Mom stops beside me and stills her hands.

  I have a notion of what’s inside, but I’m not sure. The buckle finally gives way, and I push the two halves apart. Clothes tumble out and fill the air with the smell of musty old fabric, mothballs, and dust.

  Mom puts one hand on the trunk as she reaches for an enormous deep blue hat with a broken ostrich feather and smashed rosettes. She puts it on her head, and I tie the wide ribbon into a bow by the side of her face like she’s Scarlett O’Hara. “I love a good hat,” she says, and prances around laug
hing. I take a picture of her in her very large “good hat” and deep red lipstick. “What’s that?” She points to the yellowed sleeve, and it turns out to belong to a wadded-up dress with streaks of orange discoloration on the lace and satin. She wants to try it on, but I can tell without even holding it up that it’s too small. Instead, Lindsey and I get her into a green-and-yellow-striped skirt and matching jacket with balloon sleeves.

  “Put that on, Lou.” Mom points a red parasol at the lacy dress, seemingly unable to let it go.

  I really don’t want to. The dress is yellowed and scratchy and smells like mothballs and old trunk, with just a hint of burnt starch. MISS LILLIAN SUTTON ON HER WEDDING DAY is embroidered on a silk tag. “This belonged to Grandmother. It’s her wedding dress.”

  Mom looks up from a box of gloves. “It’s not white.”

  It used to be. I shake out the mess of a dress, and light from the window picks up tiny glass beads and seed pearls hand-sewn into the lace. This is the dress that Grandmother wore at her first wedding, to my grandfather Louis.

  Mom orders me to put it on again, and I reluctantly strip to my underwear and pull the stiff fabric over my head. A row of silk buttons runs halfway down my spine, but the fabric loops are also stiff, and we leave the back open. The chest is tight, and the long lace sleeves are snug on my arms and scratchy against my skin. I run a hand over tiny beads and pearls sewn into the sweetheart neckline and wonder how Grandmother felt in this dress. Happy, excited, scared? Was she madly in love with Louis Jackson? Did she want to run into his arms as he waited for her at the altar?

  Mom used to have a black-and-white photograph of Louis in his uniform, but I don’t remember exactly what his face looked like. Other than his war hero status, Mom has never really talked about her dad. He left when she was four and died when she was seven, so she never knew him. Grandmother never talked about him either, and I don’t know if that was out of respect for Papa Bob or because she’d moved on and forgotten him. Everyone has forgotten. I don’t even know where he’s buried. It’s sad, like he never lived at all.