Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (15 page)

“You are making this up,” May said.

“There are a million stories in the Naked City,” Sidda said. “This is only one.”

Before Sidda could close the album, Wade leaned down to examine yet another photograph.

“Ah, the teenage Vivi Dahlin,” Wade said. “And is this your father?”

As Sidda bent down to study the photograph, she was startled to see a beautiful young man who was playing a fiddle. Lanky and graceful, he was leaning back against a large tree trunk. His eyes were large and dark, and he had the most sensual lips Sidda had ever seen on a man. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a pair of khakis, and the expression on his face was one of happy concentration. To his left was a low branch, the kind that old live oaks in the South are known to grow. On the branch sat Vivi at age sixteen. She wore a white peasant blouse, a full skirt, and sandals. Instead of looking at the fiddle player, her head was tilted to the side and slightly down. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling, lost in the music. Whoever had taken the picture had captured a very private moment, and Sidda felt as though she should have asked permission to behold the image.

“No, that’s not my father,” she said, “that’s Jack Whitman. My father has never played the fiddle.”

“Don’t you think he looks rather like—” Wade said before May interrupted.

“I don’t know who was behind the camera on this one, but you can tell she loved her subjects,” May said.

Sidda looked at May, then back at the photo. She longed to breathe herself back in time, to hover invisibly near the
young woman in the picture, to hear the fiddle music, to witness up close her mother’s fledgling joy.

In spite of Sidda’s invitation to spend the night, Wade and May left after dinner, protesting they’d already made reservations at Kalaloch Resort, on the coast. Sidda walked them to May’s vintage convertible Mustang, and the two women hugged.

“Take care of yourself in the former Czech Republic,” Sidda said.

“And Greece and Turkey, and wherever else she decides to light,” Wade said.

“Your mom can’t stay enraged forever, Sid,” May said. “God, I wish she could simply
see
the play. Keep the door open, girlfriend. As long as you’re both still breathing, there’s a chance.”

“Thanks, May,” Sidda said.

“You take care of yourself,” May said. “Fax any brainstorms about
The Women
—which we did not discuss at all!—to Jeremy. He’ll know where to reach me.”

Wade hugged Sidda. “Sorry if I was a bitch. I just want all my children to be happy. And Connor McGill is such a stud-muffin—oops! I mean genius designer.”

“Love you, Wadey,” Sidda said.

“Love you, Siddkins,” Wade said.

Sidda was surprised how sad she was to see them leave. She was relieved to still have Hueylene for companionship. For the first night since she’d arrived, it was warm enough to sleep with the windows flung open, wearing only a T-shirt. She pulled the sheet up as she propped up in bed, eager to open Connor’s envelope.

He had written her name beautifully, but what she had not noticed earlier was that he’d drawn flowers into the letters of her name. In his exquisite hand, he had drawn sweet
peas to form the “d’s” in her name. A soul from another age. When she opened the envelope, she found a seed catalog from a firm that identified itself as “The Sweet Pea Specialists, Birdbrook, Halstead, Essex.” A corner of one page was turned down, and when Sidda opened to that spot, she found the following item circled:

“L
OVEJOY.
One of the best Sweet Peas of recent years, strong and unrivaled. A very vigorous grower and sound in constitution; the crowning glory being its colour of salmon pink enhanced with a soft orange overlay, giving a clear brightness and purity. This is a colour that will neither bleach nor scorch in the hottest of sunshine. It is tiptop for both garden and exhibition, giving well-balanced flowers on long graceful stems. (Sweetly scented.)”

Folded into the catalog was a single sheet of drafting paper. On it Connor had written: “Sounds like you.”

Sidda closed her eyes and leaned back into her pillows, astounded at how aroused she was. Connor knew
just
how to get to her. She saw the incredible roof garden Connor had cultivated at his loft in Tribeca. She remembered the first time she stepped into his loft. A Sunday morning in February, 1987. A wood stove burning, a handmade quilt hanging on an exposed brick wall. A brunch of fresh oysters and cold beer. The sudden shift in her body that day as she admitted she had never, ever, felt so at home on the island of Manhattan.

She switched off the lamp and slipped the seed catalog under her pillow. Maybe a giant stalk will grow during the night, and I can climb my way out of indecision. I
must,
I
must
figure out what I’m doing.

But, as she settled into the darkness, her angels lit near her feet.
First
, they whispered, love your salmon pink and soft orange overlay; let it glow with clear, bright purity. So Sidda touched herself. She touched her blossom until, out of self-love, it swelled and quivered. Then she nodded off.

13

M
ay was correct: the person who snapped the photo of Vivi and Jack on that day in 1941 had indeed loved them. Genevieve St. Clair Whitman had captured the image without disturbing the two adolescents. She had snapped it fast and true, and when she advanced the film, she uttered a silent prayer for her son and Vivi Abbott. She did not doubt that the two of them were meant for each other. She had not questioned this since the afternoon she witnessed the two of them sitting in a swing together sometime late in 1938, holding hands, not speaking, swinging in an easy rhythm. She knew her son was born with a well of tenderness that was a curse in his father’s world. Genevieve could not imagine a stronger, more vital girl than Vivi to receive and embrace Jack’s tenderness. Not a woman to second-guess her intuition, Genevieve accepted the fact of Jack and Vivi, and she did not stand in their way.

Oh, she had to keep an eye out every now and then. With Vivi constantly at the house, as close to Teensy as any sister, Genevieve had developed a graceful chaperoning—a kind of trust coupled with a few well-timed distractions. Both of them were so busy—Jack with basketball and track, Vivi with tennis, cheerleading, and the school paper—that she usually didn’t worry. In her prayers, she thanked the Virgin for granting her son love at such an early age.

* * *

Sidda could not know this. As she returned to the photograph on the next evening, she studied the image, transfixed by her mother’s expression. Sidda could not know the autumn afternoon in the early forties on Bayou Saint Jacques, Genevieve’s country. She could not know the pungent aroma of the
cochon de lait,
or the sight of that pig roasting over the slow fire, or the huge vats of boiling water for the corn. The raw-boned jubilance of Genevieve’s and Jack’s and Teensy’s
cousins
and
cousines
and
tantes
and
oncles
and all the other Cajuns on that Saturday evening over a half century ago. The crispness in the autumn air. The easy joking. The little girls dancing with their grandfathers, the older girls, dark like Genevieve and Teensy, in their full skirts and peasant tops. The presence of the bayou, the feel of liquid Louisiana land, the language of these people who staged a
fais do-do
at the mere mention of Genevieve and her two children coming back to visit.

On these visits to the bayou with the Whitmans, Vivi felt a sense of having escaped, of entering another world. And she was terribly afraid that somehow her joy would be found out and snatched away from her.

That day on the bayou, Vivi’s head tilted back as Jack kissed her lightly on the neck as they waltzed to “Little Black Eyes.”

“I will always love you, Vivi,” he said. “There is nothing you could ever do that would make me stop loving you.”

The words shot through Vivi’s bones and blood and muscle, and her body relaxed, so that when her feet touched the ground they met the earth differently, as though they had found roots that reached deep down and anchored to something tender and undamaged.

On that late afternoon in 1941, Vivi believed for the first time:
There is more that is right with me than there is wrong with me. Jack loves me. He will always love me.
To look at Vivi Abbott
spinning and smiling, no one on the bayou would have perceived that she had stumbled into love’s seductive offer of bedrock, or how desperate she was to seize it, or how completely she believed that Jack Whitman himself was her terra firma.

With Jack’s love, everything Vivi had not been given could now be made up for. Every reflection of herself that was not mirrored in her mother’s eyes, every curious question her father had not asked, every visitation of the belt on her true-blonde skin could be redeemed. Vivi did not think of these promises on that afternoon with her skirt swirling and her hair swinging, but they curled inside her and attached themselves.

To look at Vivi, it would be difficult to spot the tectonic shift that took place in her that afternoon. But it would render her more vulnerable than a person wants to be. It would create infinitesimal fault lines, perhaps profound enough to be passed on, like brown eyes or a proclivity for mathematics.

But Siddalee could not know any of this. She could only study the photo and wonder.

Putting the scrapbook aside, she took out a piece of paper and wrote Connor a note. It read:

Connor, unequaled—

You know I’m no gardener, but the fragrance of those sweet peas wafted into my dreams. I was preparing soil in my sleep last night (something you know I know nothing about), and kept encountering masses of thick, dense roots. Did
not
(this will come as no surprise) like getting my hands dirty, but found myself bent on disentangling the roots and shaking the soil off them. This would have seemed a chore, but it was actually rather pleasant, because I could smell the sweet peas the whole time.

How is it you know just how to delight me?

May and Wade made me laugh. They also made me look at my rather embarrassing tendencies toward bull manure.

XX
Sidda

P.S. My, but you gardeners know how to romance a blossom. Take my breath away, why don’t you?

14

T
he wrinkled page looked like it had been torn out of a comb-bound book. On it was the following entry:

MISS ALMA ANSELL’S ACADEMY OF
CHARM AND BEAUTY
H
OW TO
B
E
S
MART AND
C
HARMING
C
OURSE
W
INTER
S
ESSION, 1940

LESSON 4: DO NOT CRY!

Tears will do you no good. No one will want you with dark, lifeless, dingy, lusterless, sparkleless eyes in a setting of bags and puffs. Gentlemen prefer eyes brilliant and alive and glowing, without benefit of satchels, grief, and blackness. If you must insist on crying, use a boracic-solution eye bath immediately afterward, then put cotton pads soaked in warm water and the essence of rose petals over the eyes. Next, pat very, very gently a little rich lubricating vitamin cream around the eyes. Then take a warm bath, followed by a nice nap with eye pads soaked in half-and-half witch hazel and ice water. Leave those pads on for twenty minutes, and remember that
plenty of sleep is essential and it is vitally important NEVER TO CRY.
A girl has enough handicaps in the campaign for love. Do not add to them with tears.

Sidda didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She was lying on the sofa, facing out toward the lake, with a fan blowing on her, munching on Jonagold apples and hunks of Stilton cheese, which lay on a plate that sat on her stomach. All her life she thought her mother had made up the name “Miss Alma Asshole” out of whole cloth. But the name
must
have come from this Miss Alma Ansell and her Academy of Charm and Beauty.

Winter Session, 1940, Sidda thought. Mama was fourteen years old. Just after the gang had attended the
Gone With the Wind
premiere. Interesting.

Tears will do you no good.

Although Sidda was not one to quote the Bible, there was a quote from Luke she’d always loved. “Blessed are ye that weep now: for ye shall laugh.” Sidda thought the quote was lovely and was impressed by its light touch. Luke—or whoever really wrote it—didn’t promise you’d prosper or be saved. He promised that if you wept, sooner or later you’d
laugh.

She folded Miss Alma’s lesson back into the scrapbook, and let her mind wander. As she lay on the sofa in the cabin on the lake, where she had come to decide her future, Sidda thought about tears.

Sidda remembered the first time Lizzie Mitchell came into her life. It was an Indian-summer afternoon in 1961 and Vivi had not left her room in almost two weeks. Sidda was relieved just to have her mother back home after a long unexplained absence, an absence that left them all dizzy with abandonment and confusion.

The golden afternoon light hit the fields where Chaney and Shep and a host of others worked to harvest cotton. The
afternoon air was warm and cool all at once. If things had been normal, Sidda would have been in the backyard, picking up pecans, singing to the dog, dreaming about becoming a missionary in Africa or an actress on the London stage. But she was inside, sitting on the floor outside Vivi’s door with a Nancy Drew book in her lap, one ear cocked for any sounds or requests that might issue from the room. She had been doing this for weeks; she considered it her job.

Lizzie Mitchell pulled into the driveway at Pecan Grove driving a black 1949 Ford with a cracked window on the front passenger side. When Sidda heard the front doorbell ring, she jumped up from her position outside Vivi’s door, and ran to see who it was. Vivi didn’t want to see anyone, and Sidda was standing sentry. Only the Ya-Yas were allowed into Vivi’s room, and sometimes Vivi didn’t even feel up to seeing them.

Lizzie Mitchell stood in front of Sidda wearing a blue shirtwaist dress with a gray sweater draped over her shoulders. Painfully thin, with sad blue eyes, she had a frail kind of beauty. Her face, her whole body appeared tired. In her early twenties, she had beautiful skin, but her teeth were bad, and even Sidda could see she wore the wrong shade of lipstick. She carried a suitcase, and for a moment Sidda thought the woman was a traveler who had stopped to ask for directions.

At the sight of Sidda, she gave a quick forced smile and said, “Good afternoon, is the lady of the house at home?”

Sidda just stared at the woman. Finally she said, “Yes, my mother is home. But she’s busy.”

“Would you tell her that a representative of the most advanced line of beauty products available in the world today is calling, please?”

“Just a minute, please,” Sidda said, and left the woman standing at the door.

She knocked softly on Vivi’s door.

“Mama?” she asked in a soft voice. “You asleep?”

When she got no response, she opened the bedroom door and walked in. Vivi was curled in the bed. The Snickers bar and club sandwich and Coke that Sidda had made for her when she got home from school were still untouched on the TV table.

“There’s a lady at the door asking for you, Mama,” Sidda said.

“I don’t want to see anybody,” Vivi said, without moving. “Who is she, anyway?”

“She is a representative of the most advanced line of beauty products available in the world today,” Sidda said.

“What?” Vivi asked.

“That’s what she said. And she has a suitcase.”

Vivi slowly propped herself up in the bed, bunching her old feather pillow behind her head.

“She probably just wants to sell me something. Can’t you get rid of her?”

Sidda looked at her mother. Her face was pale, had been since she’d gotten home. For the most part, she stayed in her nightgown. She hadn’t even worn any of her fabulous hats because she had hardly left the house.

“No, ma’am,” Sidda said. “I can’t get rid of her.”

“Why not?”

Sidda thought for a moment. She glanced down at the cover of her book.

“Because,” Sidda said, “she’s got on the wrong color lipstick.”

“She’s selling beauty products and she’s wearing the wrong shade of lipstick?”

“I think you need to talk to her, Mama.”

“Oh, all right,” Vivi said. “Ask her to come in for a minute.”

When Vivi walked into the kitchen, Lizzie Mitchell was sitting at the kitchen counter with Sidda. The minute
Vivi walked into the room, Lizzie jumped up from the stool.

“Good afternoon,” Lizzie said. “Are you the lady of the house?”

Vivi had pulled her green-striped silk bathrobe over her nightgown and stood barefoot. She put her hand on the counter as if to steady herself.

“May I help you?” Vivi asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lizzie said in a soft voice. Her eyes went blank for a second, and then she reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out some scraps of paper that had notes scribbled on them. Attempting to hide the fact that she was reading the notes, Lizzie began her spiel.

“I am here,” she said in a terrified voice, “to offer you the golden opportunity to discover the finest line of cosmetics ever made for a woman’s skin. The Beautiere Line is a elite line of beauty products designed for the discriminating lady whose first concern is her looks.”

“
An
elite line,” Vivi said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lizzie repeated, her hands quivering, “it is a elite line.”

“The correct grammar would be
an
elite line,” Vivi explained automatically.

“Pardon me?” Lizzie asked, her voice quivering. Lizzie’s scraps of paper fluttered out of her hand onto the floor. Embarrassed, she bent to pick them up. Sidda watched as the woman seemed almost unable to stand back up. When Lizzie did finally right herself, she was in tears.

Sidda wanted to hit her. The last thing she needed was for this woman to upset her mother. Just the week before, Vivi had sort of capsized at the A&P, and Sidda had had to call Caro to come and get them. Vivi moved like someone who was still getting over the flu, tired and uncertain, guarding her energy instead of flinging it around like she used to. Both her father and her grandmother had told Sidda that it
was up to her, the oldest, to make sure that nothing upset her mother.

To her surprise, Sidda saw her mother touch the woman’s elbow gently.

“Please,” Vivi said, “excuse my rudeness. I’m Vivi Abbott Walker, and this is my oldest daughter, Siddalee. Won’t you sit down please?”

Unable to meet Vivi’s eyes, the woman sat back down at the counter.

“Would you care for a cup of coffee? I personally do not
touch
coffee after ten in the morning. I think I’ll have a light cocktail. Shall I make you one as well? Something light?”

Lizzie continued to cry and said, “Coffee, please, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all,” Vivi said. She took ice cubes out of the freezer.

“Sidda Dahlin, do you feel like making some coffee?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Sidda said, relieved to be given a task.

Vivi filled the crystal ice bucket with ice cubes, then dropped a couple into a glass. Into the glass she poured orange juice and a half jigger of vodka.

Sidda put water on to boil and measured Community Coffee Dark Roast with chicory into the filter of the Chemex coffeepot. She tried not to look at her mother’s bare feet. The toenail polish was chipped, something that Vivi would never have allowed when she was well.

“I’m sorry,” Vivi said, “I didn’t catch your name.”

“Oh, no! I’m so sorry,” Lizzie said, covering her face with her hands. “The first thing you’re supposed to do,” she mumbled, “is introduce yourself to your customer.”

“Well, give it a try,” Vivi said as she stirred her drink. Sidda could see that her hands were still shaky. Vivi reached into the pocket of her bathrobe and swallowed a huge B-12 vitamin.

Taking her hands down from her face, the woman said
softly, “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lizzie Mitchell and I’m your Beautiere lady.”

“Pleased to meet you, Lizzie Mitchell,” Vivi said, and sat down at the counter with the woman.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Walker,” Lizzie said. “You too, Siddalee.”

“Would you like cream and sugar?” Sidda asked.

“Yes, please,” Lizzie said. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

Sidda started to get out the blue coffee mugs, but Vivi said, “Dahlin, let’s use china, shall we?”

Sidda poured coffee into a china cup and set it out on the counter with sugar, cream, and a spoon. Then she warmed milk on the stove in a little saucepan and made herself a mug of coffee-milk. She pulled a stool up to one of the upper cabinets and pulled down the bag of Oreos she’d been hiding from the other kids. She laid cookies out on a plate and joined the women at the kitchen counter.

“Tell me, Mrs. Mitchell,” Vivi said, “how did you come to be a cosmetics saleslady?”

Lizzie Mitchell, who was raising the coffee cup to her mouth, set it back in its saucer. She tried to speak, but when she did, she began to cry again.

“I’m sorry,” she said, breathing in short, ragged little breaths. “I just started up with the Beautiere business. Sam—that’s my husband—Sam died four months ago last week. In a accident at the Tullos Lumber Company. I got me two little boys and no insurance.”

Lizzie Mitchell stared at her coffee cup and blinked. She seemed shocked that she had just blurted this out to Vivi. As if to try once again to establish herself as a real saleslady, she glanced desperately down at her notes and lapsed back into her rehearsed spiel.

“The Beautiere Line is something I feel honored to be able to represent. If I did not believe in the products one hundred percent, I would not sell them. Now, if—”

“Oh, my God,” Mama interrupted. “What you have been through! How old are your boys?”

“Sam Junior is four and my Jed is two going on three.”

Sidda looked at her mother’s fingers as they held her drink glass. She was embarrassed at how unkempt her mother’s nails looked. Vivi’s hands, her nails, everything about Vivi used to be so cared for, so beautiful. Sidda could not understand what had happened to her mother.

“Mama,” Sidda asked, “you want a cookie?”

“No, Dahlin, thank you,” Vivi said.

Then, training her eyes on Lizzie, Vivi asked, “Where are your boys now? Who is taking care of them?”

“They’re at my sister-in-law’s, Bobbie’s. Her girlfriend Lurleen got me hooked up with the Beautiere Line. Lurleen has got a savings account of her own and she done so good with her sales they awarded her The Pink Chrysler.”

“She
did
so good,” Sidda said.

Vivi shook her head at Sidda.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lizzie said, “Lurleen done real good.”

“I see,” Vivi said.

“They make pink Chryslers?” Sidda asked.

“The Beautiere men gets cars and has them painted pink for the top sellers. Beautiere is your most scientific line of beauty products.”

Lizzie took a sip of her coffee.

“Scientific,” Vivi repeated, and took a sip of her drink.

“Oh, yes, ma’am,” Lizzie said. “It is important to be scientific in today’s world.”

Then, as if the coffee had picked her up, Lizzie Mitchell seemed to draw herself together. Sidda could see the woman’s notes tucked in the left sleeve of her sweater. Trying her best to appear natural, Lizzie started her sales pitch again.

“The Beautiere Line costs far less than your Avon products, and yet the quality of these beauty aids has pleased thousands of women throughout Mississippi, Arkansas, and
now—Louisiana,” Lizzie Mitchell continued, like a trembling windup doll.

Vivi lit a cigarette. Sidda climbed down from her stool and crossed to the bar to bring her an ashtray. Sitting back down, Sidda alternated between watching Lizzie Mitchell and watching her mother. This was the most interest her mother had shown in anyone in a long time.

“Ma’am,” Lizzie said, “if I can just take a minute out of your busy day to show you some of the most modern and scientific beauty boosts available, I can promise you, you won’t regret it.”

Lizzie Mitchell waited a beat, then reached down for her sales kit. The kit itself looked like a regular train case, but there was a silhouette of two women’s heads facing each other emblazoned on the front in a Pepto-Bismol pink. Moving her coffee cup aside, she set the kit on the counter, flicked its openers, and lifted the lid. Then, as if she saw something terrible inside the suitcase, something no one else could see, Lizzie dropped her head and began to sob deeply. Her bony shoulders bobbed up and down, and her crying sounded almost like that of a small dog.