The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (13 page)

T
he class of 1971 was getting ready to graduate! So much had already happened since Christmas. For one thing, Tuck and I had made up on Valentine’s Day. I had refused to talk to him, though it was hard to avoid him since he lived next door. But when he showed up on Saint Valentine’s Day with a big bouquet of roses and a little gold bracelet, dropping to his knees and saying, “Calla, I beg your forgiveness,” my heart melted. I had missed him so much!

But before graduation, of course, there was the senior prom. This one will go down as the first time in La Luna history that one girl went to the prom with two boys. And you can guess who that was: Sukey. As she explained it, “Well, I dated them both, so why not go with them both? I didn’t want to turn one down for the other.”

So it was Sukey and Peter Robertson and John LaCroix. She wore a black dress that was cut on a slant and had a single white ruffle down the back. And it was short. Even I couldn’t believe it. Sukey wore a
short
gown to the prom.

I said, “Sukey, did you see this dress in a magazine or something?”

She sniffed and turned up her nose. “Are you kidding? They wouldn’t think of having
this
in
Seventeen
magazine.”

Sukey had designed the dress herself, and Aunt Helen had made it. Again and again, Aunt Helen asked Sukey, “Why don’t we just make it a
long
dress, with the ruffle running down to the ground?”

And Sukey kept saying, “Because I want a short dress.”

Aunt Helen had bought the extra yardage anyway. “By the time I’m through fitting this,” she said, “I’ll break her down. It’s going to be a long dress.”

Sukey won that fight, of course.

Renée, who was the opposite of Sukey in so many ways, wore white. Her dress was organza, with an empire waist, with long sleeves that you could see through and little pink flowers here and there. It was such a sweet dress, for a sweet girl.

And my dress—oh! I will love it till the day I die. My inspiration was the beautiful flowing dresses that M’Dear used to dance in, and I showed Aunt Helen a picture of my favorite one. “Remember this dress?” I asked.

“Ohhhh! Oh, yes, I do,” she said.

So she copied it in lavender chiffon. The delicate top came down in little scallops to just below my collar-bone. Then there was lavender chiffon to my waist and, below that, a lavender skirt with purple chiffon flounces.

I did my hair myself. I just brushed it out, then leaned over, put a rubber band around it, and wound it into a bun. Then I pulled out some strands and curled them so they would billow around my face.

Tuck was talking to Papa when I came down the stairs. He looked up at me where I stood on the landing.

“Wow! Calla,” he said, “you’re beautiful. It seems like each year you’re becoming more and more beautiful. What will we do, Mister Will? She’ll have the other guys knocking me over to get a dance with her.”

“Gotta be brave, son,” Papa said. “But you knew that a while ago, didn’t you?”

I smiled to hear them talk like that. It helped ease the pain of M’Dear not being there.

Tuck leaned in to kiss me. “I love your scent,” he said.

We all met before the dance to head over together, and wouldn’t you know it, Sukey pulled out a bottle of bourbon. She was always the one to provide the booze for almost every event we’d go to. We all mixed it with Coke except Sukey, who drank hers straight in little sips. I couldn’t believe that she could stand the taste. By the time we got to the prom, we were all pretty giddy, especially Sukey, who was already screaming and having a ball.

The Get Down Boys, our band for the night, knew all the songs we loved, like the Youngbloods’ “Get Together” and Janis Joplin’s “Piece of My Heart.” It was a woman’s song, but the band was all men. It wasn’t the same with a guy singing it.

We all headed out to the dance floor, and I loved seeing my best friends moving around Tuck and me as we danced. I had done both of their hairdos, so I checked to see how they held up. Renée’s hairdo worried me, and a trip to the ladies’ room for some extra Aqua Net seemed to be in order.

My sweet Renée with her dainty fine features. I gave her a feminine style to enhance her Dresden loveliness: long Victorian ringlets, slightly undefined and loose, not anything too tight, with wispy tendrils on her face. I pinned the tendrils back with a perfect little dainty flower pin to go with her scalloped lace organza dress with the pink roses on it. Oh, she looked so sweet and beautiful.

And then there was my Sukey, moving like a madwoman. I was really glad that they were playing Janis Joplin because it allowed her to dance as crazy as she wanted. The straps of her flouncy dress had already fallen off the side so that her shoulders and her back were showing even more.

With her hair, I gave myself a challenge—how to build on her Sassoon and make a more dressy look. I tried to capture a 1930s look with a provocative design. I wanted to revive the classic pageboy by making it very wavy and full, so that it swirled onto her cheek really elegantly. Graceful giant waves that I wove into one fluid line to go with her big eyes and her full lips and perky nose. Oh, she looked beautiful. With that tiny short little dress with ruffles going down the back.

“Suke!” I called out. “Maybe you won’t want to dance so wild if you think about your hairdo.”

Then she looked at me and said, “Hairdo, smairdo.” I could hear her voice starting to slur a little bit.

“I love what you did with your hair, Calla,” Tuck said. “The top almost looks like a princess, the way you pulled it back.”

I was so glad he noticed because I had worked very hard to sweep it back so that it looked like a crown at the top.
Princess
was the very word I thought of. Then I let the rest of my hair fall down so that I had two layers.

Next, the band played “When a Man Loves a Woman,” and it didn’t matter to me that the lead singer didn’t sing it as well as Percy Sledge. I was dancing with Tuck, and every once in a while, he would lean over and kiss me on the back of my neck. I would look up into his eyes, and he’d smile down at me. He had his arms around me, and I could feel his strength as he held the back of my waist.

“I love you, Calla Lily,” he said. “I’ll always love you. No matter what happens, I’ll always love you.”

Reaching up, I wrapped my arms around his neck as we swayed together, so tender and close. “I love you too, Tuck,” I whispered. “I will love you forever, no matter what happens, no matter what you do. I will always love you.”

We stayed up all that night, fooling around and making out. We had plenty of beer to fuel us, courtesy of Sukey and her two dates. Sukey definitely had more to drink than the rest of us, but that was nothing new. But then Sukey tried to take off her dress while she was dancing on top of one of the cars. I said, “Sukey, just keep the dress on. Keep the dress on. You can dance on any car you want. Just don’t take off the dress.”

“Come on!” she said. “You’re no fun!”

“And you’re a little
too
fun,” I told her.

“All right, all right, all right,” she said and climbed down from the car and put her short prom dress back on.

Just before five in the morning, we all met at Renée’s to fix our hair and gargle, because we were invited to the Tuckers’ house for an after-prom breakfast with our families.

And what a breakfast it was! Fresh orange juice with champagne, eggs with hollandaise sauce, bacon, tons of homemade ham biscuits, and Miz Lizbeth’s perfect cinnamon toast, which was always crisp and cut into triangles. She had also made her famous cinnamon buns from scratch. And French toast too—she had really outdone herself! Plus, there was coffee, chicory dark roast with cream and two sugars—who could ask for more?

So we all sat down at the long table, ready to eat, except for Sukey. Papa looked over at her and said, “Sukey! You’re looking a little green around the gills, girl. Do you think you’ll survive this breakfast?”

Sukey’s mother looked a little embarrassed. She said, “Um, would it be all right, Miz Lizbeth, if my daughter and I had a cup of black coffee and sat out on the porch for a little while?”

“That would be just fine,” Miz Lizbeth said, like she was sort of relieved.

When everyone was almost finished eating, Uncle Tucker stood up and, gently tapping his fork against an antique champagne flute, said, “Hear! Hear! It’s time for the clique of 1971 to reveal your plans for the future!”

My heart did a flip. Sure, I’d been discussing my plans, but I wasn’t sure if I was ready to make them final by announcing them widely. Plus, I wasn’t sure that the others would understand that Tuck and I had planned to keep our love alive and remain a couple even though we had different plans. We knew in our hearts and minds that eventually we’d be together again.

I looked over at Renée, who looked especially lovely this morning. Her skin was milky, and her white-blond hair was tumbling down now, loosened from the updo I’d fixed for her before the prom, what seemed like a week ago. She must have felt me looking at her, because she looked my way and gave me one of her sweet-eyed smiles. Eddie had his arm around her like she was the most precious thing in the world to him.

“Well,” Uncle Tucker said, “who wants to go first?”

Eddie stood up and looked at everyone with exhausted eyes that might have seen a little too much bourbon. With his glass in his hand, he said, “I’m here to—,” and then Renée tugged at the sleeve of his rumpled tuxedo jacket. He turned to her, and then pretended to knock himself in the head with the palm of his hand. “Oh, excuse me,” he said, “I wasn’t supposed to do this yet. Sorry.”

Just when I thought that this moment couldn’t be saved, Renée stood up, looked down the table, and said, “Mama and Daddy, would you mind if Eddie continued what he was about to say?”

Well, what could they do?

Mrs. Jeansonne just sat there shaking her head and smiling. I had the feeling that, after so many years, she had made peace with who Eddie was—a happy playful fellow who didn’t stand as much on custom as she did.

“Certainly,” she said.

“I’m all for it,” Renée’s father said.

So Eddie announced that they were going to be married, and we all clapped and wished them well. Papa acted like he was shocked at the news, which made me laugh. Nobody was at all surprised by their plans, and I could feel their happiness circle around the table in the Tuckers’ porch.

“You next,” I said, pointing to Tuck. I was so proud of him.

“I’m going away to college,” Tuck said. “I got accepted at one of the universities I applied for.”

Everyone started clapping again. I could hear folks say, “Great.” “Way to go, Snake Boy,” Eddie said. “You done good,” Sonny Boy added.

“Where to?” was the question that folks didn’t realize they weren’t ready for.

“I’ll be going to Stanford University,” Tuck said.

“Where?” everybody asked. “Where is that?”

“I thought you were shooting for University of Virginia,” Will said. Will had been offered a scholarship there, but had turned it down to study with the old Cajun musicians in Louisiana. He said universities would always be there, but that the musical geniuses of our homeland wouldn’t.

“I
was
shooting for Virginia,” Tuck said, “but—”

“Okay, okay,” Sonny Boy said, “pardon me, I’m just a dumb old country boy, but where is Stanford?”

“It’s in California,” Tuck said.

“California?” Eddie said.

“Near San Francisco.”

“I hear that’s a beautiful city,” Sukey said. “On a big bay. Oh, to go to school so near a big bay! A big
California
bay.”

“California,” Eddie said, “man, that is where people go and never return.”

That’s exactly what I feared.

“Yeah, right,” Sonny Boy said in a scary-sounding voice, “and they are never heard from again.” Everyone laughed.

“Come on, y’all,” Sukey said, looking at me. “It’s not like it’s Europe.”

No, but it might as well be
.

I was so caught up in that thought that I barely heard Uncle Tucker say, “And Calla Lily, the flower among us, how will you step out into the world?”

Tuck squeezed my hand before I stood up and said, “I’m going to beauty school.”

At first there was this awful silence. Like Tuck had announced he’d won the Nobel Prize and I’d just said I was in the last rounds of the Louisiana State Spelling Bee. I sat down, and I breathed like M’Dear taught me.
I can get through anything if I just keep breathing
. I looked over at my father, who gave me a wink.

It was Miss Lizbeth who broke the awkward pause. “Tell us more, won’t you, Calla?” she asked, smiling at me with love.

“I have researched beauty training academies across the South and have decided that I do not need to travel any farther than New Orleans for my training. Just as soon as I have enough saved, I’m going to head to New Orleans, home of L’Académie de Beauté de Crescent, the best in the state.”

Sukey said, “All right, Calla!” Then everyone clapped and Papa raised his glass and said, “To the class of 1971!” And we all raised our glasses in a toast.

I looked at Tuck. He put his arms around me and gave me a big smile. I looked at Renée and Eddie and thought,
They’re so happy!
I couldn’t help but feel a little envious.

After everyone had left, and the sun was rising, Tuck and I walked down to the river, to our pier. We kissed for a while, then just lay back on the dock, our legs dangling over the edge. We watched the thin dancing wisps of clouds change from peach to pale yellow and eventually to white in the soft early-morning sky. Tuck’s arm was under my neck, making a perfect little pillow, and he had his tux jacket rolled up under his head.

“When I come home at Christmas,” he said, “we can come right back to this spot. It might be a little bit cooler, so you might need a sweater. Or I could give you my coat, Calla. If you were cold, I’d give you my coat. If you ever need anything, I’ll give it to you.” He paused, then said, “This Christmas, and every one after that. If you want, Calla Lily.”