The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc

by Loraine Despres

  She had missed the homecoming prom. It would have been too humiliating to stand in the back of the gym and watch them crown Parker king and Doreen his queen. But when the American Legion threw a Christmas party for the young people, she decided to go. She knew it would be her last dance.

  Peewee was thrilled to escort her in her beautiful green taffeta evening dress, which Sissy had let out in home ec. Earlier that week, she’d confided in him that she’d missed her period, but they’d have to wait another couple of weeks before she could take the rabbit test. She told him it must have happened the first time they were together and that proved how incredibly potent he was. Rule Number Eighteen: Flattery works.

  Of course he was scared, but he was proud, too. He wouldn’t mind word getting around that he was the boy who knocked up Sissy Thompson. His plans for the future were vague, but he’d always expected he’d marry sometime. Nothing wrong with now. In his heart he knew he’d never get another shot at a girl like Sissy.

  Peewee had never been much of a dancer. He simply didn’t hear the beat. But tonight he wanted to dance every dance with her, to show the other guys.

  For Sissy, who loved to dance, dancing with Peewee was torture. Toward the end of the evening, Parker cut in, and when he took Sissy in his arms and held her against him in perfect time to the music, she remembered what slow dancing could be like.

  “How you doing?” he asked. She felt pain radiating out through his clothes, caressing her. He still cared for her! It gave her an unexpected thrill. For the first time she realized she didn’t have to marry Peewee, she had other choices. All they’d have to do was sneak off now. They could do it in the parking lot. She counted the weeks. It was still within the realm of possibility, almost. The thought of finally going all the way with Parker was exciting. She moved in closer and felt he was excited, too. But he was too honorable to leave Doreen stranded.

  Okay, she’d get him to make a late date with her. Tonight. Two A.M. She’d climb out the window and meet him at the corner. And maybe when he kissed her and touched her skin, it wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe the image of the weasel wouldn’t slip in between them, but she suspected Peewee had embedded it in her brain for all time. She wondered if Parker thought nice girls aren’t supposed to like it. Maybe all the boys did. Maybe they were right and she wasn’t a nice girl. She looked up at him. He smiled and pressed her gently to him, his lips on her hair.

  It wouldn’t be fair. With his grades and his football record, he was sure to get the appointment to the Naval Academy he had worked so hard for. He had a big future ahead of him. Her daddy said so. Everyone said so. Would he still have a future with a wife and child dragging him down?

  “Can I come over tomorrow? We need to talk.” His voice rumbled through her and Sissy felt a throb down there. She stroked the hair on the back of his neck. Tomorrow would be as good as tonight. They could park somewhere in the woods. Even go to Manchac and rent a boat, do it in the swamps. He kissed the top of her head and Sissy was caught up in the romance of gliding through those misty waters in a pirogue with Parker.

  But if the boys talked, and she knew how boys talked, neither one would want to marry her! And even if Parker did want to, the Naval Academy wouldn’t take him if he was married. She wondered if any college would. In the movies, football players went on dates with sorority girls. Did they let married men play football? Did they give scholarships to fathers? The child she was carrying wouldn’t even look like him.

  The music stopped. “What do you say?”

  Sissy hesitated, but just for a moment. “I can’t. I’m going steady with Peewee.”

  “I DID NOT save up all those years so my sixteen-year-old granddaughter could drop out of high school to marry the spawn of Bourrée LeBlanc!” yelled Belle Cantrell as she stormed through the door. It was a week before Christmas. Bowers of mistletoe and holly decked the living room. A large pine tree stood in the corner. The creche Belle’s husband had carved for Cady stood watch over the family from the mantelpiece.

  “I’m almost seventeen,” said Sissy, but she was glad her grandmother was making such a fuss.

  “I suppose that makes it all right for you to give up your education to wash that boy’s socks! Dammit, Sissy, I’ve put every dime I could scrape up into your college fund.”

  “She’s pregnant, Belle,” said Hugh.

  “Of course she’s pregnant, why else would a woman with any sense get married?”

  “Mama,” objected Cady, propped up on the couch, looking gray. The cancer they’d all feared had come back. The doctors were talking about another operation, but nobody was optimistic this time. Sissy, sitting on the floor at Cady’s feet, covered her mother’s lap with a shawl.

  “I know you did it for love,” Belle said to her own daughter. “But I said a woman with sense. Now, Sissy’s got sense, but she’s still a girl. What are you going to do if that boy decides to up and leave you? You won’t even have a high school education.” Belle lowered herself into a wing chair. In her late fifties, she was still a handsome woman, with auburn hair swept up on her head and fastened with an art deco comb. She wore a broad-shouldered rust-colored jacket with a pinched waist over a straight skirt. She had a red camellia pinned to her shoulder in an effort to look festive, but it was obvious Belle didn’t feel festive.

  “What about you?” Sissy asked. “You eloped with Grandpa when you were just sixteen.”

  Belle paused. Sissy remembered stories about how wild her grandmother had been to marry her big, taciturn dairy farmer. “I’ve had to live with that decision for forty years. Don’t do it, baby, life’s too long.”

  “What do you all want me to do?” Sissy asked.

  “You’re not some country girl who has to get married just because she got caught,” Hugh said, trying to warm himself in front of the fire.

  “How pregnant are you?” Belle wanted to know.

  “About two months, I guess. My last period was ten weeks ago.”

  “Good! We’ll get you an abortion and afterward, we’ll get you fitted for a diaphragm,” said Belle firmly, her tone brooking no objections. “Then you can screw like a rabbit, if that’s what you want.”

  “Mother!” Cady protested. “Now you just stop it.”

  But Belle was flying. “She’s not a breeding machine, who has to drop a baby just because she’s able to conceive one.” She turned to Sissy. “I found someone who’ll do it.” Sissy’s green eyes lit up, her heart was pounding with relief. Was it still possible? But Belle didn’t look happy. “There’s a woman out by Big Creek who’s supposed to be reliable.”

  “No!” Sissy screamed.

  “Now, hush, Sissy, her name is Sarah Miller. She’s been doing it for years, apparently.”

  “Tibor told me about her. The police let her operate as a kind of safety valve. Does mostly colored…” Hugh’s voice trailed off. He shook his head as if to get rid of his thoughts.

  “What about those hospitals you told me about, Grandma? With doctors?”

  Hugh, Belle, and Cady looked from one to another, embarrassed. “I told you I’d heard about them, honey. I didn’t say I actually knew of any around here.”

  “I checked,” said her father. “There’s a doctor in New Orleans who used to do them, but he’s under indictment.”

  Sissy screamed, “Shit!” No one told her not to swear. She reached for her mother. “Please, Mama, don’t make me.” And for the first time since she’d found out, Sissy let herself go and cried. All the fear and grief and anger she’d held back came out in terrible, soul-wrenching sobs. “Don’t let them kill me.”

  Cady stoked her daughter’s hair and squared her frail shoulders. “Nobody’s going to make you do anything,” she said, glaring at her husband and mother. “Nobody, you hear? I’m not risking my daughter’s life on some backwoods abortionist.”

  Belle suddenly looked much older than her years. “I’ll talk to your cousin Loreen over in Little Rock. Maybe you can stay there until the baby’s b
orn.”

  Sissy sat up. “That mealymouthed hypocrite! She’d spend the whole time lecturing me about being a fallen woman. I’d rather die!”

  “Look at it this way,” Hugh said. “When it’s over, you can get on with your life. You can finish high school and go to college. You’ll just be a year behind.”

  “Just a year?” Sissy said sarcastically. “What do you know about it? I’m sick every morning. I’m swelling up like some kind of horrible watermelon. Even my legs are all pumped up. You can’t make me go through nine months of …of… manufacturing this baby and then tell me to give it away! By then, don’t you understand, it’ll be my baby!”

  “It won’t seem so bad after it’s over,” said Belle without conviction.

  “Oh, come on, Grandma, even suffragettes don’t give their babies away.”

  Hugh was fed up. “Stop being so dramatic, Sissy. Girls do it all the time.”

  “No grown woman would.”

  “A grown woman can take care of a baby,” he shot back.

  “So can I! Peewee’ll get a job. I’ll be an inspiration to him.” In the face of what she felt was her father’s insensitivity, Sissy was digging in. Even Peewee seemed better than throwing a helpless baby out into the world and never knowing what happened to it.

  There was more. A lot more. Hugh talked about the importance of an education, about having a family when she was ready for one.

  Sissy didn’t see what difference it made when she had a family. It would all come out the same anyway. Especially since she wasn’t looking for love. She’d be stuck in a house somewhere with a bunch of kids. At least Peewee adored her.

  And then she thought about Bourrée. Carrying his baby to term would make him nuts. They’d live at Sissy’s until Peewee graduated. But they’d still have dinner at the LeBlancs’ every week. And every week Bourrée would see her getting bigger and bigger and there’d be nothing he could do about it. Revenge was so much more satisfying than love.

  Finally, she stormed out of the house, announcing she was going to get married and they had two choices: give her a wedding or watch her elope.

  “What does she know about taking care of babies?” Hugh raged.

  “What did any of us know?” asked Cady.

  “Belle, you talk to her. She listens to you.”

  But Belle was watching her own daughter. Her face had become a mask of pain. “Cady?”

  Cady reached for her mother. Belle moved to the couch, took her daughter in her arms, and rocked her.

  When the spasm passed Hugh said, “Dammit, I won’t let her ruin her life. If she doesn’t want to go to Loreen’s, I’ll find one of those homes for unwed mothers. I heard about one in Baton Rouge, I’ll check it out myself. I’ll make her go.”

  Cady closed her eyes. “I hate to think that my only grandchild is going to be given away to strangers. God knows what they’ll do to it.” A second spasm racked her body. When it passed, she said, “It would be nice to have a baby in the house, wouldn’t it, Mama.”

  “It would,” Belle agreed.

  “Are you all crazy! She’s ruining her life and that boy’s and all you can talk about are babies!”

  “She’s set on having it,” Cady said, reaching for her husband, who was pacing the room now. “Remember how sweet you were to me when I was pregnant? I don’t want Sissy to go through it alone in some home in Baton Rouge.”

  “You think you can hang on until the baby gets here?” Belle asked. Cady’s face clouded over. “You’d want to hold it in your arms.”

  “I’m gonna try, Mama. I’m gonna try.” And that’s when Hugh knew he was beaten.

  Sissy and Peewee were married in a simple but tasteful ceremony the second weekend in January. The bride wore white. Newton Carruthers was Peewee’s best man.

  The same afternoon Gentry won the state football championship. A representative from Annapolis was on the fifty-yard line. College scouts came from as far away as Notre Dame. Parker broke the state record for passing and running. And he broke the national record for most points made by a single player. As the sportswriters were to say the next day, when Davidson gets his hands on the ball the other team might as well leave the field. But after the game, when the sportswriters and the scouts converged on the locker room, Parker wasn’t there.

  The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor the month before. And at six o’clock, while the minister was asking Peewee to take this woman, Parker joined the Marines.

  PART III

  1956 The River of Desire

  Chapter 17

  Fourteen years of foreplay are enough for any girl.

  Rule Number Forty-five

  THE SOUTHERN BELLE'S HANDBOOK

  PARKER OPENED THE front door of the Guest House and walked across the steamy French Quarter street. He’d been there since ten o’clock that morning, driving the staff crazy. He’d changed rooms three times. When he was finally satisfied, he sent the bellboy out to buy some flowers. “Anything but roses.” Roses would have been too obvious. He wanted it to look as if he’d gone to no special trouble. He wanted everything perfect.

  He spotted Sissy as soon as he opened the door to the restaurant. The maître d’ came oiling up to him, but Parker waved him off. He wanted to see her fresh.

  She was sitting next to a cream-colored wall with dark wainscoting. Yellowing Mardi Gras photos hung overhead. She was wearing a white straw hat and a green dress that hugged her every curve. Her cigarette made smoke signals in the air.

  He sat down across from her and felt the pressure of her knees. He could smell her, even though the kitchen was sending out the aromas of fresh bread, sautéed garlic, and chicory coffee. She leaned toward him. She was wearing perfume, but under that was the deep scent of something much more exciting.

  He picked up a menu. “Did you order?”

  “No.”

  “Have you figured out what you want?”

  Sissy checked her watch.

  “It’s quarter of two. We’re both early.”

  She put her hand on his, closing his menu. “Parker, do you know what it means to be a grown-up?”

  “You don’t have to clean your plate before you can have dessert?”

  She ground out her cigarette with her long, freckled fingers. Then she stood and said, “Come on. Fourteen years of foreplay is enough for any girl.”

  AS SHE LEFT the restaurant, she wondered if Bourrée was already in his apartment on Royal Street waiting for her. Eat your heart out, you old coot, she thought as she took Parker’s arm. And then she didn’t think of Bourrée any more for the rest of the afternoon.

  As soon as Parker opened the door, Sissy felt her heart racing. She stepped into the room and was greeted by a huge bouquet of white flowers on a polished rosewood table in front of the cypress armoire with its full-length mirror. The honeyed scent of jasmine hung in the air.

  She saw his reflection close the door and walk over to the white canopied bed. It was a beautiful old bed. High and wide. She wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake.

  She turned and looked at him straight on. He smiled. It would be terrible form to get him all this way and change your mind, she told herself. She had to go through with it. But unlike that afternoon in the kitchen, all her fantasies had abandoned her. In that delicate moment before the first touch, she wondered if she knew this man at all.

  Why had she been so brash in the restaurant? They could be eating oysters and sipping champagne, right now. Telling jokes, talking. Anything!

  She went over to the air conditioner and fiddled with the dials. She turned up the fan so high the white organdy curtains floated up in the air. She opened the armoire door and took out a couple of fat pillows, when she felt Parker slip his arms around her. As he pressed her to him, she realized he was ready. Right now. Ready. Oh God, she wasn’t. She tossed the pillows on the bed.

  His calloused fingers were gentle as he unzipped her green linen dress, letting it fall to the floor. She wondered if she could force
herself to go through with it. Of course she could. He ran his hands over the satin lace that sheathed her body and stepped back. “Walk around.”

  “What?”

  “Walk around. I like to see a woman wearing a slip.”

  “Parker…”

  “It looks like home.”

  She walked across the room, relieved to get away, and watched him warily. He unbuttoned his shirt. As the fabric came apart, she saw his chest was rippled with muscles and covered with scars and those same soft brown curls she’d remembered. But she kept her distance.

  He slid his pants over his thighs. Then he slipped out of his shorts. She saw his penis standing up, hard and red against his body. She didn’t know it could do that. Straight up.

  She was surprised how completely at ease he was in his nakedness, how confidently he moved in his body. She wondered what he wanted her to do. Men were so peculiar about sex. They had rules. Bourrée wouldn’t undress. Peewee wouldn’t let her move too much or make any noise.

  Suddenly, he scooped her up in his arms. She let out a little squeal and found she naturally wrapped her legs around his naked waist. And pressed herself to him. She was beginning to wake up.

  He laid her on the bed and caressed her body, still covered in satin and lace. And then as he began to kiss her, she thought maybe she wouldn’t have to force herself after all. He kissed her all over until every inch of her shivered, and Sissy decided she definitely wouldn’t have to force herself. But the kisses went on and on, until she began to feel uneasy.

  Peewee and even Bourrée had always zeroed right in on a couple of obvious targets, eager to get the job done. But Parker was taking such a long time, she wondered if something was wrong. He ran his work-hardened fingers slowly over her back until it tingled. Then he peeled off her slip and kissed her flat stomach, her ribs. He reached around her to take off her bra and licked the creases under her breasts. Working his way over her breasts, both nipples between his rough fingers, he kissed her neck so softly she thought she could feel its pulse beating in and out. Then he ran his hands down her arms, kissing her breasts and tickling her skin until the inside of her elbows became erogenous zones. Sissy shivered deep inside herself. If this was wrong, she never wanted to do it right again.