“She was?”
“Mm-hmm. And Ms. Pitre and Ethel Lee.”
I was glad Savannah had signed up for the art class, and yet I felt sad for her, too. I couldn’t imagine having a husband like Mr. Banks, and I hated myself for ever having betrayed her.
“Mrs. Hazelbaker down at the bank was there, too,” Mama went on to tell me. “She said Billy came by to see her this morning. He got his business loan. Looks like he’ll start working on the old Conoco place soon.”
“He’s opening up a kennel,” I told her.
“That’s what I hear.”
“Maybe we could get a dog,” I said.
“We’ll see.”
Mama’s eyes were still closed.
“You sure nothing’s wrong?” I asked her.
Her head nodded the slightest bit.
Sitting there like we were, I got to thinking about Dewey losing his mama. I thought about her getting sick, and as I did, my stomach seemed to twist itself up into a painful knot. No one I’d loved had ever died.
“Mama?”
“Hmm?”
“Have you ever had anyone close to you die?”
Mama’s body seemed to soften all over. “Yes.”
I set my book on the table between us. “Who?”
“His name was Russell.”
I pulled my knees up into the chair. Mama had never told me this story before. “Who was he?”
“We met at Camp Winnataska, where I worked as a counselor. All the girls in my cabin thought he looked like Magnum P.I., so that’s what we called him.” Mama lowered her head and looked at me. “You ever hear of Magnum P.I.?”
“Evie and I used to watch the reruns.”
“Well, that’s what we called him. Magnum. He had a mustache just like Magnum, too. We would sneak out of our cabins once everyone was asleep and hike up the hill at the back of the camp. We’d build a fire and sit up talking for hours. Then we’d kiss and we’d talk some more. There was a river just below the hill, and a bridge. Sometimes we’d hide ourselves under the bridge, wrapped up in each other’s arms.”
I had no idea. “I can’t believe you never told me this before.”
Mama took a deep breath, long and slow. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to talk about it.”
“Even after all these years?”
Again, she nodded. “Even after all these years.”
“Did you love him?” I asked.
“Oh yes.”
I held on to Mama’s every word. I tried to picture her working at the camp, tried to picture the boy she’d described. “Was he your first love?”
“Mm-hmm.”
I hugged my knees to my chest, still wanting to know more. “What did it feel like?” I asked.
Mama’s eyes weren’t closed anymore, but she wasn’t looking at me, either. “It felt like one breath.”
I wasn’t sure I understood.
“When you love someone that much,” Mama continued, “and that person is away from you, sometimes it literally feels like you can’t breathe, as if your body is aching for air.”
Mama pressed her palm over her chest, slowly inhaling, as if she were re-experiencing all the love and pain she had known so many years before. “And then that person walks into the room, and all that ache inside of you, all that longing, dissolves, and you feel yourself breathe again. But it’s as if he takes the same breath with you. You’re both one.”
I had never heard my mother speak in such a way. Her whole body was relaxed. Her eyes continued to stare off.
“What happened to Russell?” I asked her.
“He was driving his car one night… He must have fallen asleep.”
“That is so sad,” I said.
She finally looked at me. “Yes, it is.”
“Dewey lost someone he loved,” I said.
“I know.”
Silence settled upon us like a fog. Thousands of emotions seemed to tangle themselves up inside me so that I would never be able to find the words to sort them out or make sense of them all.
I didn’t have to.
“Mr. Savoi lost someone he loved, too,” Mama said.
I hadn’t thought about Mr. Savoi having lost someone. I’d only thought about his messing up my parents’ lives. I didn’t want the conversation to stop. I had to know more.
“That one breath you were talking about. Do you feel that way with Daddy?”
Mama paused so long I thought I would die. I stared away, tears fighting their way to the surface.
Mama reached for my hand. I couldn’t remember the last time Mama had held my hand. “Lucy, what’s wrong?” she said.
Those tears burned themselves right out of my eyes. “It’s you and Daddy,” I said.
Mama got out of her chair and knelt beside me. She wrapped her arms around my shoulders. “Oh, Lucy.”
“People shouldn’t hurt each other,” I said. “Daddy slammed his door because he didn’t want you taking one breath with anyone else. He wants you taking it with him, only he doesn’t know how to tell you.”
Mama rubbed my back. “I’m not taking it with anyone else,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“What about Mr. Savoi?”
Mama still held me. “No. Not Mr. Savoi.”
I took the collar of Mama’s shirt and rubbed my eyes. My breathing slowed. “Why is it you and Mr. Savoi have been spending so much time together, then?”
Mama held me out in front of her. She wiped the remaining tears from my face with her fingers and smiled. “Come here. Let me show you something.”
She took my hand and led me upstairs. Just off her and Daddy’s bedroom were the pull-down steps to the attic. She unfolded them and began climbing up. I followed her.
At the top of the steps, Mama pulled the little chain on the lightbulb. She ducked below the slanting rafters and walked toward the other side of the attic. “Close your eyes,” she said.
I did as she told me and waited, heard boxes scoot along the floor, then paper crinkle.
“Okay,” she said. “You can look.”
Propped against Mama’s legs was a painting, at least three feet tall, of a beautiful woman with smooth olive skin and black hair sweeping over her left eye. Her small breasts were round and full. She stood completely exposed, her body aglow, with a deep midnight blue all around her. One knee was crossed slightly over the other, as if attempting modesty. However, even to the eyes of a seventeen-year-old, everything about the woman’s body was alluring, as if daring the man who had slipped inside her heart to make love to her body and soul as well. I knew the painting was of my mother, and yet it wasn’t my mother I saw. Instead, Mr. Savoi had captured a beautiful woman, thirsty for love.
As I looked at the woman in the painting in front of me, I recognized the burning ache Mama had described earlier of a woman waiting for her lover to walk into the room. Mama wanted to feel what it was like to share one breath. I just hoped with all my heart my daddy would be the one with whom she’d learn to breathe again.
Women in Love
“The painting is for your father,” Mama told me as we went downstairs. “It’s his anniversary gift.”
Mama and Daddy’s anniversary was more than a month away.
Back in the kitchen Mama poured herself another glass of wine. I sat in one of the oven chairs, pulling my feet up underneath me, my knees hanging over the arms. Mama stood next to the kitchen counter. She looked at her watch as if she was wondering where Daddy was.
“I think he’s working late, on account of your and Mr. Savoi’s art class,” I told her.
She took a sip of her wine and swallowed it slowly.
“You said you aren’t taking that one breath with Mr. Savoi, but do you think he’s been falling in love with you?” I asked.
“When did you start asking so many questions?” Again she drank her wine.
“Do you?”
“I think Mr. Savoi is lonely. I think he fell i
n love with the painting, not me.” She set her glass down. “Lucy, I’m not in love with Mr. Savoi. He knows that. I just…”
She turned her back to me and walked over to the Crock-Pot to check on the gumbo. “This isn’t going to be a bit of good if your dad doesn’t come home soon.”
“You just what?” I asked her.
She continued to stir the gumbo, scraping the thick sediment from the bottom. “He made me feel beautiful.”
I remembered Evie’s words so clearly. I think it would be an honor to be painted. I think it would make me feel beautiful.
Then I got an idea. “Maybe you shouldn’t wait until your anniversary.”
Mama turned around with her hand in a fist on her hip. “Just what are you concocting in that head of yours?”
“Maybe you ought to take that gumbo and that loaf of bread and that painting down to Daddy’s shop tonight. Maybe you ought to take a couple of candles and a bottle of wine, too. Maybe you ought to show him you’d rather be with him than at some art class painting naked people.”
Mama swooped her eyes off to the side and smiled, her lips pressed together. After a second or two she started downright laughing.
“What?” I said.
“Lucy, I don’t know that I can go back to Mr. Savoi’s art class.”
“Why?”
“You know who he’s got sitting right up in front of us?”
I said, “Who?”
“He doesn’t have us painting a woman. He has us painting Noel La Plume. For the life of me I couldn’t get myself to look past his umbilical separation.”
“Noel!” I said.
“Mm-hmm.” Mama giggled some more. “Now how in the world am I supposed to get my hair done next week?”
All I could think about were the boys at Rummy River whom I’d had to face in geometry.
“You avoid eye contact,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Mm-hmm. You look at a magazine or something.”
“Well, maybe I will,” Mama said.
I helped Mama bring the painting down from the attic and out to the car. Then we carried the food and wine and candles out to her car, too.
After she left, I made myself a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and took my plate up to bed. Sitting on top of the covers, I laid out my lines to the play and tried as I might to memorize them. Before long, the phone rang. It was Evie.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m eating a sandwich and studying my lines so hard my eyes are about to go crooked. How’s Billy?” I asked her.
“He’s coming by later. We’re going out for ice cream.”
“I saw the painting,” I told her.
“What painting?”
“Mr. Savoi’s painting of Mama.”
“Where?”
“She showed it to me. It was in the attic. She was saving it to give Daddy for their anniversary. She’s down at the shop right now. She’s going to go ahead and give it to him.”
“So she wasn’t doing it for Mr. Savoi?” Evie said.
“No. Hey, Evie?”
“Yeah?”
“It was really beautiful. And when I saw it, it made me think of my mom differently.”
“What do you mean?”
“It made me think of her as one of us. Not just a mom.”
Then Evie said, “A woman who wants to be loved.”
And I knew Evie was right. “Yes,” I said.
Blue Shoes
I awoke the next morning to the gentle patter of rain. The pages from the play were scattered around me. A few had drifted onto the floor. I hadn’t heard Mama and Daddy come home, but I knew one of them had checked in on me, as the lamp beside my bed was no longer on. The house was quiet. I looked at my clock. It was a little before seven. I wondered what Daddy had thought of the painting. I wondered if Mama and Daddy had made up. I hoped they had.
I gathered up the pages and set them on my nightstand. I knew the school would be meeting sometime that day about Mr. Banks. I wasn’t sure what time. Dewey told me I didn’t have to talk to the principal, but I knew he wanted me to. A week ago, there was no way I would have even considered it. And yet, as I sat up in bed and listened to the rain, I knew exactly what I had to do. Maybe it was seeing the painting the night before. Maybe it was the story of Mama’s first love. Maybe it was my feelings for Dewey. I’m not sure. All I knew was, something felt different. Mama might have said I was growing up. Maybe I was. Part of me was glad for it, and part of me wanted to turn back into that little girl who could still fit on Papa’s lap, or who could sit cross-legged in a chair without her knees hanging over the sides like the wings of a 747.
After I showered and dressed, I went down to the kitchen. Mama and Daddy were still in bed. I made their coffee and left them a note on the counter: “Practicing my lines with Evie and Mary Jordan. See you later.” Then I took off on my bike for the school.
The parking lot was empty. I circled around and rode back by the square, pulling up in front of a pay phone by the movie store, and looked up the number for Mrs. Leigh, the principal.
Holding on to the phone, every inch of my body trembled. I can’t do this, I thought. I dialed the number anyway.
Mrs. Leigh answered.
“This is Lucy Beauregard,” I told her.
“Hi, Lucy.”
For a second, I thought someone would have to take a shovel to dislodge the rest of the conversation buried inside of me.
“Lucy?”
I watched a couple of cars drive by. “I need to talk to you about something,” I said.
Mrs. Leigh waited. I didn’t say anything.
“I’m getting ready to leave for the school,” she told me. “Why don’t you meet me there.”
“Will anyone else be around?” I asked.
“Not until ten.”
I said, “Okay.”
That was it. I had an appointment with Mrs. Leigh. I was scared to death. Suddenly I wished I had told Evie or Dewey what I was doing. I wished they could go with me.
I rode up to the school, parked my bike, and climbed the stairs. The doors were locked. I sat outside the building on the concrete, leaning my back against the warm brick.
After about twenty minutes, Mrs. Leigh’s Jeep pulled into the parking lot. I waited as she ascended the steps toward the school.
“Hi,” I said.
She had just pulled her keys out of her purse to unlock the door. She hadn’t seen me. Her free hand flew up to her chest. “Good heavens, Lucy. You sure know how to startle a person.”
“Sorry,” I said, standing up.
She went ahead and unlocked the door, then put her arm around my shoulders and led me inside. I followed her to her office. On the other side of her desk was a sofa and a chair. She sat in the chair; I sat on the sofa.
I liked Mrs. Leigh. All the kids did. She was a small woman, somewhere in her thirties, with short brown hair. And she played the electric guitar. I’d never known a woman who played the electric guitar. She and her husband lived about fifteen miles outside of town on a farm. They didn’t grow anything or raise any animals. They just liked living off by themselves.
“So what’s this about?” Mrs. Leigh got right to the point.
As I sat there, I had no idea how I was going to get the words I came to say out of the depths of my body, much less my mouth.
“It must be something serious,” Mrs. Leigh said.
“I think so.” I tucked my hands underneath my legs and stared forward. “It’s about Mr. Banks.”
She gave me about a whole minute, then asked, “What about Mr. Banks?”
I didn’t say anything.
She was leaning forward, her knees pressed together, her arms on her legs. She was dressed up, wearing a short skirt and a silk pullover, no doubt for the meeting. “Okay, let’s start over,” she said. “I know you’re playing the part of Hermia in the play.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“So you’ve gotten to kno
w him.”
“I babysit for him, too,” I told her.
“And he’s gotten to know you,” she said tentatively.
“I guess so.”
“Should I ask how well he’s gotten to know you?” Her voice still had a bit of a tentative edge.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” I said.
“I see.”
I wasn’t sure what it was she saw, which got me to worrying. I’d kissed Mr. Banks. I hadn’t experienced Holy Communion with him, Mama’s definition for physical consummation.
“Mrs. Leigh, he kissed me. That was all,” I blurted out.
“Was this at the school?” she asked.
I looked at the floor and nodded my head, feeling about as sheepish as a dog that’s just been shaved.
“Have you told anyone, gone to any other adults?”
I wasn’t sure which question to answer first. “I told Evie,” I said. “That was it.” I decided not to tell her about Dewey. With him being new, she probably wouldn’t have known who he was anyway.
“Has Mr. Banks made any other advances toward you?”
“No, not really.” I thought about his hand on my leg, but guessed that didn’t need any special mention.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Mrs. Leigh told me.
I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Will anyone know I talked to you?”
“No, absolutely not.”
I was glad she threw in the “absolutely.”
I stood to go.
“What’s going to happen?” I asked.
“Let’s just say I don’t think he’s the kind of teacher I want to have around my students.”
Before I left, I said, “What will happen to him?”
Mrs. Leigh pressed her lips together and made a small smacking sound with her mouth. “My dad used to tell us, whatever jam we got ourselves into, he wasn’t going to be spreading it on his toast come the next morning. In other words, Mr. Banks is going to have to figure things out for himself, but he isn’t going to be solving his problems at our school.”
After I left, I can’t say I was real happy with myself. I felt like I had betrayed Mr. Banks. Yet, that person who’d been doing a lot of growing up knew Mr. Banks had betrayed me. Nonetheless, I didn’t care for the way I felt.
Love, Cajun Style Page 18