Southern Hearts (9 page)

“I can’t...” I said softly, closing my eyes as she caressed my breasts, rubbing my nipple with her thumb.

“She’s right there,” I whispered. Then I groaned, panting, “What if...?”

The more I protested, the tighter and faster she thrust into me. “You’re nuts.” The word came out on a moan. “Aw, yes.”

When she pushed one finger into me, I moaned again. “I...I, oh God, I’m gonna come,” I said, stammering the words between harsh breaths. She touched her tongue to mine, licking my lips with it as I surged with passion.

“Regency?” my mother called out from very close by.

“Yes, Mrs. Bossier,” Regee said. She spun me around so that my back was to her. “Was there something else you forgot to tell me?” she asked as my mother came into view.

“There, how is that?” she asked, resting a hand on my shoulder.

I couldn’t face either of them.

“I was using a yoga technique on Kari to help relieve the tension in her back.”

I stood motionless, letting them carry the conversation as I collected myself.

“I just wanted to tell you not to use the electric trimmer. Last year it left a noticeable scar and browned the leaves.”

“Yes, I remember. My father already warned me.”

“Kari, darling, I think you need to get in out of the sun. You’re looking quite flushed.”

“I think that’s a good idea, Kari, you are looking a bit exhausted,” Regee said glibly. “You look as if you need to rest.”

“Yes, I think so too, chèr. Come into the house and relax for a spell.” My mother put her hand out as if to pull me toward her.

“Any time you need me to use that technique on you again, Kari,” Regee called out, “Just let me know.”

I kicked my shoes off and slung my bare feet up onto the plush cotton of the sofa, then rested my book over my lap as if I were reading it and leaned back, letting granules of rock sugar from the rim of the lemonade glass Marney had specially prepared—at my mother’s insistence—glide down my throat. I rolled the cool glass over my reddened cheeks, then over my lips. I shook my head at what I had just gotten away with. I felt as if I were a toddler standing in front of an empty box of donuts, protesting my innocence even as I chewed down the last bite, the crumbs sprinkling my shirt and the mounds of powdered confectioners’ sugar still outlining my lips.

I put my hand over the wood post that controlled the tilt of the blinds, gently moving it upward until the louvers parted, then hunched down and gazed out. Regee was bending down, raking the dead buds from under the weeping magnolias. Her skin was radiant. Even from this distance, I could see the beads of sweat that danced from her midsection and then down the backs of her legs. God, she looked sexy covered with dampness, I thought. I put my fingers over my lips, stroking them, smelling her scent. There was something about her that made me leap inside every time I saw her. There was something about her that captivated my thought.

chapter seven

I waited until the clock mounted beside the replica of Hopper’s
The Mansard Roof
struck ten a.m., then started my complaining. I had watched the morning pass, rising at six a.m. at my mother’s request to drive her across town to her friend Mable Trousseaux’s house. Mable had been ailing, and in a gracious act of goodwill, my mother wanted to take a pot of Marney’s cream of corn soup over to help her recovery. I had eaten breakfast to candlelight, showered, read the week’s
People
magazine and several other supermarket rags that were about the house, and now I sat down in the trundle chair, twiddling my thumbs and tapping them loudly over its carved arm.

Going somewhere with my mother bordered on torturous. She was casual about time, and her every movement was slow and methodical. I had spent a good deal of my life waiting for her to finish primping her hair, lay out her clothes for the day, and choose the right hat for the occasion, then repeat the process at least twice before we ever stepped out into our day.

I heard the door to my mother’s dressing room shut. Taking my cue, I collected my things and went toward the car. I sprayed washer fluid over the windshield, then watched the wiper blades skip across the dust, smearing the clumps of bird doo-doo into a creamy powder that coated the window.

“First, we’re going to Jeanerette to drop off the soup at Mable’s, then I have to make a quick stop at Thomas Thorton’s office, and then to your hair appointment.” My mother placed the kettle of soup on the floorboard of the backseat.

Thomas Thorton was our family attorney. He was suave and full of both disingenuous cheer and himself, a devout Protestant and a longtime friend of my father’s. They had fished together, spent summer vacations on his yacht in Spain, and confided to one another their prowess in many affairs.

I put my mother’s Explorer into gear and headed toward Franklin.

“What are you thinking of doing with your hair, chèr?”

“I haven’t really thought about it.” I hadn’t wanted to have my hair done to begin with. My mother had made the appointment with her stylist without consulting me. I thought about dying it fuchsia or tangerine, or maybe a combination of both, and matting it into dreadlocks to get even with her for meddling.

“I think it would look cute if you had it layered along the back.” She picked a few strands up with her fingers. “Then maybe an undercut on the sides, so you don’t look quite so...”

“So what? Sloppy?”

“I was thinking unkempt, but however you choose to see it.”

I fluttered my eyelids in disagreement.

“Maybe a new outfit. Something a bit more pastel and brighter than you are accustomed to might add a more youthful glow to your face.”

“I don’t know. I’m not really into pastels, Mother, you know that.”

“Yes, darling, but how much black and dark gray can one wear? Maybe a change, even for a day, would make you feel a bit better about yourself,” she went on.

“I don’t know where you would get the idea that I don’t feel good about myself.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Mother, you never say anything, you imply, and it’s the same thing.”

“Whatever you’d like to do, chèr, I’m merely trying to give you some grooming and fashion options.”

“Mother, have you ever noticed that the one thing we seem to be able to talk about is my wardrobe? I have been home for eight weeks. We haven’t talked once about anything other than the party and my clothing.” What I had wanted to say deserted my throat at the last minute. I wanted to talk about her health. I wanted to know the specifics and have her give them to me with honesty. But it was a touchy subject, and I didn’t know what my mother’s reaction would be I had the courage to raise it.

“Turn right at the stop sign.”

I didn’t say anything in response.

“Make a right on Dixon Lane and follow it to the end.”

Mable Trousseaux’s home was set back from the road along a slice of path at the heart of Lake Fausse Pointe. It resembled the classic Painted Lady, though the roof was oddly rotund and Seussian around the center, then fell steep into gables near the huge Palladian windows, and the sides were more spindle work then shingle.

As we neared the house, my mother waved. Mable was sitting in her porch swing, her small stunted frame barely discernible below the tall towers that made up the house’s corners.

“I’ll be a few minutes, chèr, you can wait here if you like.” She took the pot by the handle, one hand underneath for support.

Mable smiled as my mother set the soup down, neared her, and then snuggled the wool afghan in her lap more securely around her before carrying the pot into the house. She reappeared minutes later with a steaming bowl, which she placed ion a TV tray beside the swing. Then she helped Mable into a seated position, propping pillows behind her. Mable smiled again with appreciation and waved as my mother returned to the car.

As she settled into the passenger seat, my mother said, “Now to Thomas’s office. It’s off Providence in New Iberia.”

I put the car in reverse and backed partway down the drive.

“Stop the car!” my mother called out suddenly.

“What? Why?” I asked, startled.

My mother got out and walked to the edge of the road to a shallow culvert that dipped down into a trickling brook just beyond. I stretched, then got out too. My mother knelt down without pulling the hem of her dress from the dirt and put her hand on the bronze pelt of a baby fawn that lay half covered in dried leaves in the ditch, its head resting beside the road. I was amazed my mother had even seen it, because its coat was the same color as the leaves that covered it and its body was out of sight in the trench.

“She looks bad.”

My mother leaned over to lift a portion of the brush. There was a hole the size of my fist in the fawn’s abdomen. Blood still seeped from it, and there was gravel embedded in the wound. My mother put her fingers over the wound as if to cover it, then bent her head in a mournful droop, petted the fawn’s fur lightly, and stood up. “She’s gone.” She didn’t take her eyes from it as she spoke.

“She must have died during the night. Whoever hit it probably didn’t even know it, she’s so tiny.”

“Taken before she had even been exposed to life,” my mother said ruefully.

I thought of getting the camping shovel from the car and burying the fawn. “Should we...?”

My mother didn’t dust the mud and sand from her dress, she didn’t pick up her hat from the ground where it had fallen, she didn’t look at me, and she didn’t speak. She straightened her back, walked to the car, opened the door, and got in. I looked at my mother, then at the fawn, and then followed my mother back to the car.

“I feel bad just leaving her here.”

“That is what is meant to happen. She becomes nourishment for whatever animal is fortunate to wander upon her. It is the way it is supposed to be.”

Her pronouncement sounded harsh. I had never heard my mother speak so matter-of-factly about nature’s cycles.

“Do you want to go back to the house and change?” I put the car into drive, edging forward.

“No, we will leave things as they are.” Her words were hard and her tone adamant.

“You will be coming up, I trust?”

Normally my mother’s business matters were her own; she had never shared her intentions or personal affairs with my sister or me. They had always been private, and though I was taken aback by her request, I agreed.