The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc (25 page)

sought his knee.

“I got a new job today,” she said.

“You quit Sissy?” His heart leaped. He’d have a free shot at

her now.

Then Clara told him about the letter from the university and how

excited she’d been at Sissy’s mission, a scholarship drive for her and

in the newspaper. “I should have known they weren’t gonna take

up a collection for a colored girl.” Misery leaked out of her voice

and spilled over to Parker.

He took her in his arms and held her as she talked. He thought

about all the schools that had waved scholarships at him. All the

schools he’d run out on.

“I was worried I wasn’t gonna have enough for bus fare and

warm clothes and all. But now I’ve got to come up with a thousand

dollars and I’ve only got two months.” Parker stroked her back

until she was comforted a little. “How’m I gonna do it, Parker?”

“Shhh.” He felt her nuzzle into him and kiss his neck. But when

he offered her money, she stiffened. “Hey, I’m not paying for ser-

vices rendered.” He cupped her chin in his hand. “Heck, girl, don’t

you know, I couldn’t afford you.”

But she didn’t want to be beholden to him or any man for money.

“My mama never had any kind of a life once she started down that

road.”

He pulled her to him and murmured with his face in her hair, “I

want you to get your chance, that’s all. I want you to have a real

life.”

“Let’s see where I am next month, okay?” Her voice was hoarse.

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He held her to him. She unbuttoned his shirt and ran her fingers

through the curling brown hair. Then she slipped her hand into his

jeans. But it went in too easily. There was no straining against the

fabric. She looked up at him, startled.

“I told you I wasn’t paying for your services,” he said, taking

the hand out of his pants and kissing her carefully manicured fin-

gertips.

She looked down at his crotch and quickly looked away. “I just

wanted to be with you.” There was a wail in her voice. “I was feel-

ing low-down and blue about having to work at that smelly chemi-

cal plant and all.”

“I know,” he said and kissed her hair.

She smiled up at him like a soldier marching into battle and

unbuttoned her white blouse.

He ran his hands lightly over her chest, but tonight, for the first

time, he felt nothing. Her bra was pink nylon. It molded her flesh

into torpedo points, covered with cheap machine-made lace. He

reached around and undid the hooks, freeing her breasts to fall into

a human shape. He held them, one in each hand, as if weighing can-

taloupes, pretty beige cantaloupes. Sissy’s were smaller, more the

size of grapefruits, oranges even. He remembered how small and

lost they looked in her black-lace push-up bra. He watched Clara’s

nipples bounce, her dark brown nipples.

“What are you doing?” Clara asked.

He snapped out of his reverie and laughed. “This doesn’t turn

you on? How about this?” He ran his thumb over her nipple and

watched the shiver go through her body. He reached under her skirt

and began to stroke her thighs and then between her thighs. She lay

back and moaned. Parker wondered why he felt nothing. With his

fingertips he reached into her panties. Matching pink lace, he

guessed. Clara was always careful to match everything. But he

didn’t bother to look, didn’t even bother to pull up her skirt. She

was moving her body up and down, her eyes shut tight.

She reached for him as wave after wave of feeling made her trem-

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ble. “Don’t stop,” she moaned and grabbed the metal buttons on

his jeans. Her eyes still closed, she began unbuttoning those tight

metal buttons, but tonight they weren’t tight at all.

Clara sat up and opened her eyes. “What’s the matter?”

He shrugged and tried to smile, but how could he smile? “I don’t

know.” Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Christ!

What had these women done to him? He pulled away from her.

“You feeling all right?” She put her hand to his head.

He took her hand and held it. “These things happen to men, you

know.” But not to me! Not to me! He wanted to scream at her,

shake her, tell her it was her fault. Make her see. What?

Clara pulled her hand away and put it in her lap. She looked at

him like a frightened bird. He felt sick to his stomach, but he didn’t

want her to know.

“You’ve had other men, haven’t you?” He tried to keep his voice

kind, neutral.

She didn’t say anything.

“I’m not the first?”

She shook her head. Parker felt relieved.

“He was a boy in my school,” she said, looking into her hands.

“Oh, high school boys. They’re always horny.”

A little smile played around her lips. With her head still bowed

she said, “For the first couple of months, I thought an erection was

a man’s natural state.”

Gee, thanks for telling me that, Parker thought. That’s just what

I needed to hear. “What happened to him?”

“I was afraid if I kept on with him, I’d never get out of here.

Besides, he just wanted to show me off.”

They sat in silence for a long time. Then Clara adjusted her

panties and Parker hooked up her bra for her. They both concen-

trated on being very, very nice to one another. Very thoughtful.

Very polite. Parker could see how hurt she was. But goddammit, he

was hurting too.

“I’ll drive you home.”

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“You don’t have to,” she said, waiting for him to protest.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” He was looking at his Most Valuable

Player award.

“Don’t mind! Don’t mind!” Parker had never heard her raise her

voice before. Suddenly her face was flooded with insight. “You

thought I was Sissy, didn’t you?”

He looked up at her without saying anything.

“Tonight, when I came in.”

He didn’t say anything.

“Answer me, Parker.”

“No.” And then, “I don’t know, maybe. What difference does it

make?”

“What difference? Oh, sweet Jesus.” He saw her eyes fill with

tears. “I thought you cared about me. Me. But it was always Sissy,

wasn’t it? That’s why you picked me up, because I looked like her?”

Parker shook his head, but he was afraid she was right. He was

also afraid that after finding Sissy again, holding her, he just wasn’t

interested in anybody else. He was shocked that a girl as pretty as

Clara could come over to his house and start taking off her clothes,

and he didn’t care. It was a hell of a thing for a man who’d always

been wild and free. He wondered if he’d ever be wild and free

again.

Clara wiped her eyes and stood up. “All that time, I was just sub-

bing for Sissy, wasn’t I? Well, school’s out, Parker. The substitute

teacher’s done quit.” She walked to the front door, her head held

high. Parker remembered the night Sissy had walked the same way

to the same door. Clara must have remembered it too, because she

turned at the door and said, “To hell with you, Parker Davidson.

To hell with you both.”

She slammed out of the front door, ran across the porch, and out

into the night.

A girl doesn’t have to give in to temptation, but she might not
get another chance.

Rule Number Thirty-nine

The Southern Belle’s Handbook

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As the muggy days of July dripped into one another, Sissy felt

as if she were swimming upstream in a warm river of unrequited

lust whose source was Parker’s endless phone calls.

With Clara gone, Sissy was a hostage to her children and the sim-

plest errand became a fight. Before she could go anywhere, she had

to find, wash, and dress Marilee and Billy Joe and load them and Ed

Sullivan—or Chip, she didn’t trust him and the dog alone

together—into the car and rush through whatever she was doing

before one or all of them began to whine, make a mess, or chew

large chunks out of the car’s upholstery.

So Sissy stopped going out. She had the groceries delivered and

hung around the house with only the tenuous line of the phone

linking her with the outside world. That suited Parker. He called

her every time he climbed a telephone pole.

He called when the sun beat down on him, sticking his shirt to

his back and shrinking his jeans right on his legs. He called when

the air was thick and the sky heavy with dense, gray clouds. He

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called when the rain pelted him and lightning flashed across the sky

and the thunder cracked around his head. He loved to talk to her

when he was suspended between earth and sky. They were like

teenagers again, taking up where they’d left off in high school.

At first they caught up on each other’s lives. Parker told her fab-

ulous tales of adventures. He described the night they were caught

in a typhoon on the South China Sea and he had to lash himself to

the side of an open boat. He told her about the rigors of monastic

life. “One morning I was dragging my butt out of bed to cover a

bunch of statues with gold cloth, and I asked myself, ‘What in the

world is a nice Jewish boy from Gentry, Louisiana, doing with all

these monks?’ ”

Sissy laughed. She knew exactly what a nice Jewish boy was doing.

He was running away from responsibility. She couldn’t say she

blamed him.

Finally he ran out of fabulous tales. He confided in her how he’d

lost his business in Bangkok.

“You couldn’t help that. Your partner stole your money.”

“There were signs,” he said. And she heard the dry echo of

despair in his voice. “There are always signs. You just have to know

how to read them.”

“So you’re going to spend the rest of your life beating up on your-

self, because you weren’t . . . what do they call it? Clairvoyant?”

“A man has to take care of his debts.” There was an ugly harsh-

ness in his voice, which hurt Sissy, even though she knew he had

turned it on himself. “I was an American in a foreign country. I had

an obligation to set a good example.” Sissy knew these were his

father’s words, but they sounded as if they had been torn out of

Parker’s throat.

They made her throat hurt too, but she couldn’t let him know

that, so she laughed and said, “Somehow, I think the United States

of America will survive.” There was silence on the other end of the

line. “Oh, come on, sugar, look what you achieved. You started a

business in a country where your men couldn’t even speak English.

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You built schools and offices and places for people to live. Are the

buildings still standing?”

“I made sure the construction was first rate. They wanted me to

cut corners, but I never did.”

“So people are living and working in buildings you built.”

“I guess so. Sure.”

“Well, that’s a lot more than any other man I know has accom-

plished.” She kept on talking that way, building him up until she

heard that old note of confidence, which had been Parker’s hall-

mark when he was winning all those ball games. Rule Number

Thirty-three:
The surest way to a man’s heart is to become his

cheerleader
. She kept up the flattery and the banter until he laughed

and said, “Enough, woman. Let’s hear about you.”

Since she’d been nowhere and seen nothing, she had to fall back

on her teasing ways. She never talked of love or even sex, but her

conversation was so full of innuendo that her words hung between

them like hot nuggets burning up the phone lines. When her teasing

really worked and turned Parker to molten metal and steam, it

worked on her, too.

She would straddle the fat round slipcovered arm of the couch,

throw back her auburn hair, and play with her buttons. Sometimes

when his voice became warm and tempting, she’d grip the sides of

the sofa arm with her naked thighs and rub them up and down

across the nubby fabric. Then she’d laugh a hoarse, throaty laugh

that would make him tremble and hold on to the telephone pole for

his life.

Sissy knew that
a woman’s greatest power came not from love,

but from unrequited lust
. Rule Number Thirty-five, Southern

Belle’s Handbook.

When the children ran in from the yard she had to be careful

about what she said. She was always afraid of what Chip would

overhear and kept an eye on him when she talked. But Chip had

changed. This summer, to Sissy’s great relief, he finally made some

friends. Almost every day a small band of boys would troop

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through the house or crawl into his window and sit around his

room for hours talking, laughing, or fooling with his chemistry set.

Once, following Parker’s instructions, she checked the phone line

for taps, but found none. Chip had other things on his mind, she

decided, and then smiled to herself. He’s growing up. But even if he