Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (28 page)

“To keep the devil away, let the
bébé
teethe on a necklace of alligator teeth. Show dem spooks who is boss! For teething, take crawfish, rub de chillun’s teeth, will make them cut easy.

“Always remember,” Genevieve would say to the expectant Ya-Yas: “Sometime the
bébé
she has to get sick to get well.”

On bad days, the boudoir lamps weren’t even turned on. Genevieve’s room was kept dark. She wanted no light. The bad days finally stretched to weeks, then to months. Finally, only Teensy was welcomed into her mother’s bedroom.

One afternoon when Sidda was a little over a month old, Vivi stopped in to show Sidda to Genevieve. It was Vivi’s first trip out after losing the twin, and she was trying to pull herself out of depression. She intended to ask Genevieve to be Sidda’s godmother.

Caro had driven Vivi and the baby to the Whitman home. When they arrived, Shirley met them at the front door.

“Miz Vivi, Miz Caro, yall kindly wait in the living room?”

When Teensy came down the stairs, she looked exhausted. Her swollen body looked like a volleyball had been placed in the waistband of an adolescent girl’s skirt.

“
Maman
’s sleeping today,” she said. “I’m sorry. She’s not doing so good.”

“Is she sleeping,” Caro asked, “or did they give her another shot?”

“Another shot,” Teensy whispered. She lifted the baby blanket to peek at Sidda sleeping in Vivi’s arms.

“Lashes to die for.”

“Like Shep’s,” Vivi said.

“Little one,” Teensy whispered to the baby. “I don’t think my
maman
can be your
marraine.
” Then she folded the blanket back over Sidda’s tiny head. She did it quickly, as if she couldn’t bear to see the baby’s face for another instant.

“Vivi,” she said, “ask Caro to be the godmother.”

“Why?” Vivi asked. “It doesn’t matter if Genevieve can’t be at the baptism. I want Genevieve to be—”

“Don’t argue with me, Vivi,” Teensy said. “Please.”

“Couldn’t I just show Sidda to Genevieve?” Vivi asked.

Teensy looked as though she were barely holding on. “I’m sorry, Vivi,” she said.

Sidda never got to meet Genevieve St. Clair Whitman.

A month after Sidda’s baptism, Vivi was lying on a green-and-blue-plaid spread on top of the daybed. Sidda lay next to her, sucking on her bottle. It was a moment when she had managed to put the lost twin in God’s hands for a few hours, and cuddle up inside her life, and she was thankful. Shep was in the kitchen, mixing a drink and slicing some cheese to go with crackers. He was the one who took the phone call from Chick.

Vivi could hear the sound of him talking, but couldn’t make out what he was saying. She was in a sweet, dreamy time with her new baby. My husband is going to bring me appetizers, then broil me a steak, she thought. I look pretty damn good for a woman who has just had a baby.

“Baby,” Shep said, walking back into the room with her bourbon.

“ ‘Baby’ yourself,” she said, patting the bed. “Come sit.”

Vivi wanted her little family curled around her. She was a new mother with a handsome husband and a beautiful and healthy redheaded daughter. She might have lost a child, she might have been doing battles with the demons, but that evening she was in a glow and she knew it. Vivi could feel the bright center spotlight shining on her.

“Look at this darling girl,” she whispered to Shep. “Just look at her.”

Vivi took a sip of her drink, then set it on the table next to the day bed. She began to whisper to Sidda. “You have pretty eyes big as plates and a perfect nose and sweet little lips. You have ten yummy toes and ten yummy fingers and pretty little legs. I just want to eat you up.”

Shep looked at his infant daughter for a moment, then at his wife. He hated to ruin the sweetest moment they’d had since the twin died.

“The good French lady has left us, Vivi,” he said softly.

Vivi wasn’t paying attention to him. She was in Sidda’s sweet, powdery little world. She was holding the bottle to Sidda’s lovely lips. She watched her daughter’s eyes starting to get heavy as she finished the bottle.

Bending down, Shep started to pick up Sidda. He had slipped one of his hands under her tiny back.

“Don’t pick her up, yet, Baby Doll,” Vivi said. “Let her drift all the way off, then I’ll burp her and put her to bed.”

Usually Shep let Vivi tell him what to do with his daughter. He didn’t touch Sidda without Vivi’s instruction or permission. This time, however, he left his hand under Sidda’s back for a moment, hesitating. Then he scooped her up, taking the bottle out of Vivi’s hands.

“What are you doing, Shep? You want to finish feeding her?”

Shep stood holding Sidda in one hand at his hip.

Vivi sat up, still in a good mood, ready to indulge her husband.

“Vivi, Genevieve has passed over,” he said, watching his wife closely.

The taste of iron seeped into Vivi’s mouth. She stood up. Strange, she thought. I did not taste iron when the twin died. I have not tasted it since Jack died.

“What happened?” she asked, not wanting to know.

Shep looked down at the baby girl in his arms. He did not want to tell his wife what he had to say. “Babe, I’m awful sorry. But I think the alligators got her.”

Vivi looked down into her daughter’s sleepy eyes. For a moment, Vivi could not see her daughter. She could only see her own shocked expression reflected back to her from the baby’s large hazel eyes.

“Can I do something, Vivi?” Shep asked. “Is there something I can do for you, Babe?”

Vivi shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do for me. Finish feeding your daughter. Then burp her and check her diaper. I’ll be in the bedroom on the phone. Please don’t disturb me.”

Then Vivi turned and walked out of the room, and Sidda began to cry. Shep Walker lifted the infant up in the air so that Sidda’s baby body was slightly above his face. He did not know why she was crying. He did not know how to make her stop.

“Hey, Little Butterbean,” he said. “Everything’s okay. You got your papa’s eyes, you know it? You got your mama’s set of lungs and your papa’s eyes.”

“Can I talk?” Vivi asked Teensy, who was now stretched out on a lounge chair, her shoes kicked off.

“What do you mean
can you talk
?!” Teensy said. “The only way any of us are going to stay out of The Betty is to talk.”

“I have realized that I do not forgive Holy Mother Church,” Vivi said. “I thought I had, but I haven’t. They
should have let us bury Genevieve in the Divine Compassion graveyard.”

“HMC still doesn’t like final exits via barbiturate-vodka cocktails,” Teensy said, sounding vulnerable in spite of her tough words.

“I kept going to Mass,” Vivi said, “even though you quit. Even though Caro gave up on Confession. I kept up everything, just like Necie. Even after I had to switch confessors after Sidda told the world I was the Hitler of motherhood. All my life I’ve been a sucker for that pure, light feeling you get for two and half minutes after you’ve come clean in Confession. The feeling that if you got run over by a truck you’d be just fine.”

“I gave up on that when they told me my striptease was a mortal sin,” Teensy said.

“You’re smarter than me, Teensy-boo.”

Teensy laughed. “In the land of the blind, the nearsighted man is king.”

After taking a sip of her drink, Teensy continued. “I am not smarter, Vivi. But I know
Maman
loved me. She did not kill herself because she did not love me. She killed herself because she believed she had let my father kill my brother. She left that in her note. My father is the one she punished the most.”

Teensy sighed, then took a sip out of her drink.

“Do you miss him?” Vivi asked.

“I miss Jack every day of the world,” Teensy said softly. “But not in the way you do. He was my brother. I have spent my life with the man I love.”

“I can still close my eyes and see Jack,” Vivi said. “See him running down the court with the basketball, jumping off that rope swing at Spring Creek. Teensy, I can still see him—I don’t know if you even remember the time at the Gulf when—”

Vivi paused to look away. “God, am I crazy, still carrying
on like this? Am I one of those nuts who never get over high school, for Christ’s sake?”

“My brother was your true love,
Bébé
,” Teensy said.

“Yes,” Vivi said, and took a sip of her bourbon. “And I would still give everything I have to smell his scent one more time before I die.”

“That’s something I don’t forgive,” Teensy said.

“What?” Vivi asked.

“God taking Jack. I’m glad we beat the Japs and I’m proud we stopped Hitler, but I still don’t think my brother should have died in that war. It’s how come you and I understood the kids when they were against Vietnam. Patriotism is a crock. True love is not a crock, but patriotism is,
cher.
”

“The Catholic Church and the United States military really ought not to mess with the Ya-Yas,” Vivi said.

Opening the set of French doors that led from the living room to the patio, Chick said, “Do I hear yall plotting against Church and State? Please, Teensy, I don’t want the FBI bothering us again.”

Teensy and Vivi laughed.

“You crazy fool,” Vivi said. “How’s your marinade?”

“Just call me Julia Child,” Chick replied, affecting the famous chef’s voice. “Yall need refreshing?”

“
Oui, oui, s’il vous plaît
,” Teensy said. “And,
Bébé,
we’re almost ready to eat. What can we do to help?”

“I’ve got it,” Chick said. “Yall stay put. I’m enjoying myself.”

“Love you,” Teensy said, standing up and kissing him lightly before she sat back down.

When Chick turned to go back inside, Vivi caught Teensy’s eye. “How many years?” she asked.

“Almost golden,” Teensy replied.

“Golden from the beginning,” Vivi said.

“He’s been there through it all, I don’t have to tell you about that,” Teensy said. “I could not have lived my life after
Jack and
Maman
if Chick hadn’t been by my side. Chick and the three of yall.”

Vivi looked at her friend. “You are both blessed.”

“Blessed and lucky, and neither of us sweat the
petit caca
,” Teensy said. “It also hasn’t hurt that we haven’t had to worry about money a single day in our lives.
Mais oui
, my marriage has survived even when it looked like my children wouldn’t.”

“That’s part of what worries me about Sidda—what she witnessed in my marriage.”

“Come on, Vivi,” Teensy said. “You and Shep have stuck it out.”

“We were never like you and Chick,” Vivi said. “But that’s no revelation.”

They were interrupted by Chick, who stepped back out on the patio with fresh drinks.

“You know,” Vivi said, “you are an adorable waiter. How much do they pay you in this joint?”

He winked at her before stepping back inside.

Vivi took a sip of her drink, letting the warmth of the bourbon settle into her body. “God, is it a full moon or something?”

“Who knows?” Teensy asked, lighting them each another cigarette. “There are some months when I could swear it’s a full moon for thirty Goddamn days. And we’re supposed to be postmenopausal and serene. That’s a joke.”

She handed Vivi a cigarette. In unison, they said, “Filthy habit.”

Then they each took a puff.

“I had the dream once when I was still sleeping in the same bedroom with Shep,” Vivi said.

She paused for a moment to see if it was all right with Teensy to continue. When Teensy nodded, Vivi proceeded.

“The one where Jack is smiling that long, slow grin of his. You know the one I mean. He’s giving me that smile from the basketball court. He’s turning and giving me that grin. I see his strong jawline and that hank of thick, black hair. And
I feel exactly the same way I did back then, the same warmth in my groin, the same heart pounding.

“I lower my head to toss my hair out of my eyes the way I used to do back when I still parted it on the side. And when I raise it again, Jack’s jaw has been blown off. Same thing every time.”

Vivi took a sip of her drink and stared out at the pool. She took a deep breath before continuing. “Shep put his arms around me one night when I had the dream. He got up and mixed me a drink, brought it to me in bed. I was touched by Shep’s concern, but I never told him why I was crying.”

Vivi frowned, then inhaled deeply from her cigarette, letting the smoke out slowly. “Kids know everything. My daughter knows that I held back the core of myself from her father, from my husband of forty-some-odd years. She knows that my marriage wilted on the vine and just hung there. She witnessed me hold back the precious part of me that I buried when I was a teenager. Even when Sidda was not in the room, she saw.”

“Vivi, you’re being too hard on yourself,” Teensy said.

“No, I’m not,” Vivi said, firm. “I have held on to your brother. That dream has torn me up hundreds of times in the past five decades. The only time it left me was when my babies were little.
And I missed that dream, Teensy. I wanted it back. I begged that dream to return.
And it did. With a roaring vengeance in 1963, when I dropped my basket. And part of me was
thankful.
Because as much as that dream destroys me, it gives me
back
that part of my life.”

Teensy did not speak. She put down her drink and just listened.

Vivi stubbed out her cigarette. “What my thoroughly analyzed daughter doesn’t understand is that you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars in therapy to consider things like this. I think. I try to work it out. You don’t have to pay someone a hundred bucks an hour.”

“I like to think my rates are quite reasonable,” Teensy said.

Laughing, Vivi stood up and kissed her friend. “I love you so much, Teens.”

“Talk to Sidda,” Teensy said.

“Oh, no,” Vivi said. “No, no, no. Not my style. This is
my
luggage. These are
my
trunks.”

She walked to the French doors, as if looking for Chick. “I carry these stories. They have my name tags on them.”

Shaking the ice in her glass, she said, “Now where
is
that darling little waiter? We could use some service in this establishment.”