Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

“Just like my mama.”

  “Heyaallgoweeyourfoodnawwashaplaesthey’shot.”

  The waitress set down our food, and I proceeded to bite into the best pie I’d ever tasted in my life.

  “Oh, my God,” I said. “We’ve got to get this recipe for book club.”

  Beau laughed. “Praline pie—isn’t it great? Shelby knows all the best places in New Orleans—all the places the tourists don’t know about.”

  “He really is . . . you two really are . . . boyfriends, aren’t you?” said Faith. “It’s not a stage or anything, is it?”

  Sadness flooded Beau’s beautiful blue-green eyes even as he smiled at Shelby. “You’ve always known it’s not a stage, Mama. You just didn’t want to admit it. Almost as much as I didn’t want to admit it.”

  “But you . . . you and Roxanne seemed to really like each other.”

  “It was a lot easier to go to the prom with Roxanne instead of Denny Auerbach.”

  Faith’s eyes grew wide. “Denny Auerbach? Denny Auerbach the quarterback, who Wade said had the best arm in high school football, is gay?”

  Beau nodded, and we laughed—at how he’d widened his own eyes to mimic his mother’s, I guess, and at how much it was we didn’t know.

  “Oh, Beau,” said Faith finally. “What am I going to tell your daddy?”

  “I’ll tell him,” said Beau. “Although he’s probably known all along too.”

  “And Bonnie?”

  Beau rolled his eyes. “Of course Bonnie knows, Mama. She’s my twin sister.” He scraped the plate with his fork, collecting the last morsel of pie. “Remember those teen magazines she used to subscribe to? She never read them; she just passed them on to me so I could cut out pictures of John Travolta and the Bay City Rollers.”

  “Oh, Beau,” said Faith.

  “Howyeealldowhenwoujalikes’morepieh?”

  WE STAYED IN THE café until dawn, sipping at our rich, chicory-flavored coffee.

  “You can’t believe how relieved I am not having to lie to you anymore,” said Beau. He sprawled in his seat the way a boxer sits between rounds, totally exhausted.

  “I told him,” said Shelby, who had gone from hardly speaking to an active participant in the conversation. “I said once you tell your parents, you’ll feel you’ve been set free.”

  “Do your parents know?” asked Faith.

  Shelby nodded. “I told them when I was a junior in high school.”

  “You did? What did they say?”

  “Well, after they calmed down—and it took them a while—they said they were glad to have an end to the lies.”

  “I don’t know what it would be like not to lie,” said Faith wistfully.

  “What do you mean, Mama?” asked Beau, leaning forward. “What do you have to lie about?”

  Batting back tears, Faith looked at her son and then at me. “Oh, only about little things—like who I really am.”

  “I think we all wonder about that sometimes,” I said, wanting to get Faith off whatever self-imposed hook she’d been hanging herself on. She looked miserable and it had been too long a night of her looking miserable.

  “That’s right,” said Beau, taking her hand and holding it between his as if to warm it. “But if you’ve done something terrible—if you’re a kleptomaniac or stepping out on Dad—well, you can always tell me. Except maybe not the stepping out on Dad—that’d be too weird.”

  “I’m not stepping out on your dad,” said Faith. “You must think we’re terrible,” she said, smiling at Shelby.

  “Not at all,” said Shelby, smiling back.

  “You do know, Mama,” said Beau, “that there’s nothing you can do that would ever make me stop loving you.”

  For a long time, Faith looked at her son’s hands holding hers. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. “I feel the same about you, Beau.”

  The soft and heavy air nudged inside the café every time someone opened the door, and when a gnarled old man shuffled from table to table selling roses, I bought one, thinking that life was like a flower—showy and colorful and indescribably delicate, and even if aphids or worms or mildew destroyed it, it still couldn’t change the fact that it had been a flower. I don’t know what showed on my face, but something must have, because Faith looked at me as if she saw something she hadn’t seen before. Then she suddenly took charge, saying we were all tired, and didn’t Beau have a big calculus test he had to study for, and it was time to go back to the hotel.

  As we stood at the cash register arguing with Shelby, who insisted on paying the bill, a huge black man dressed in white carried in a tray of freshly powdered beignets, and I bought four, even though everyone insisted they could not possibly eat another bite.

  “TURN RIGHT AT that church,” Faith said.

  “That’s a church?” asked Audrey. “I thought it was a shack.”

  Faith smiled, but it was the smile of someone out on a day pass. She was dazed; it baffled her how she had wound up on a field trip with Audrey, driving into her hometown of Trilby, Mississippi.

  She had slept fitfully after they returned from the diner (the Times Picayune had already been delivered to her door) and had plans to spend the day doing nothing more energetic than rolling over in bed.

  But a little past noon, hunger had gotten the best of her, and she’d thrown on some clothes and run a comb through her hair, deciding to sit on the hotel’s patio drinking strong coffee.

  In the lobby, Audrey’s bright face had been like a strong dose of sunshine, and Faith had squinted, feeling a flare of a headache.

  “The queen’s awake!” Audrey had said cheerfully, rising from her chair. “Good morning . . . uh, afternoon, Faith!”

  “ ‘Morning,” Faith had mumbled.

  “Guess what? I rented a car, and we’re going to go exploring! I want to go see some bayous and alligators and hear some zydeco played by some old-timers on a rickety old houseboat.”

  “I . . . um . . . I’m expecting Beau.”

  “Why, Faith, you little liar. He’s going to be studying all day for that calculus exam, remember?” Audrey had taken her friend by the arm. “You’ll be back in plenty of time to have dinner with him, but for now, you’re coming with me.”

  They were almost over the Lake Pontchartrain causeway when Faith snapped out of her daze enough to say, “If you’re looking for bayous or alligators, you’re going the wrong way.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Audrey, who was the type of navigator who was always convinced she was going the right way, despite all evidence to the contrary.

  “Bayou country’s to the south. You’re heading north.”

  “North?” pouted Audrey. “Oh, well, so we’ll take a little detour . . . what’s up this way, Faith?”

  “Not much, although you could always hook up to Route Fifty-nine and see Trilby, the little town I grew up in.”

  The horror Faith felt was immediate: what on earth had she been thinking?

  “Great idea! I don’t think I really wanted to go out in a swamp anyway.”

  “At least swamps can be exciting,” said Faith, trying to keep her voice light. “There’s not much of that in Trilby. In fact, there’s nothing in Trilby. Let’s turn around and find those alligators.”

  “Too late, we’re on our way to Trilby.” Audrey paused for a moment. “Where is Trilby, anyway?”

  “It’s in Mississippi, by Hattiesburg.” said Faith, and then she burst into tears.

  “Aw, Faith,” said Audrey, “I know you’ve had a pretty emotional twenty-four hours. But for what it’s worth, I’ve never seen Beau happier.”

  Holding up her hand, Faith shook her head. When she had control of her voice, she said, “I’m not crying about Beau. Well, I guess I am . . . partly.” She wiped the heel of her hand against her nose. “But like he said, I guess deep down, I always knew he was gay. In a way it’s a relief to have him admit it and to realize that I still do love him as much as I ever did.”

  “Of course you do.”
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  “But another thing he said is true too. He said what he thought I’d worry about most was what to tell my friends. So I’m crying about that too—that I’m so shallow and my own son knows it!”

  Audrey laughed.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as Faith wailed. “I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you. Everyone worries about what their friends think . . . it’s human nature.”

  “Everyone might worry,” said Faith, a big sob shuddering through her. “But not as much as I do. And Beau doesn’t know—no one does—how much I’ve worried . . . how my whole life has been a lie because of that worry.”

  Another sob, this one an aftershock of the more potent one, rippled through Faith. “So what I’m also crying about is if we go to Trilby, I’ll be found out, and I don’t know if you’re still going to love me after that.”

  A few miles outside town, the fear inside Faith was as cold as a Minnesota January. She hadn’t been back in how many years? Twenty-five, twenty-six? Progress had visited though; they passed a Wal-Mart where farmland used to spread its green and brown quilts, and farther up, a truck stop with enough gas and diesel pumps to fuel an advancing and retreating army.

  The car windows were open and the air smelled of dirt and grass and thistle, the essential smell of Trilby that the years and progress hadn’t erased. As they turned by the old run-down church—the church where DellaRose had gone—Faith felt the poised and confident woman she struggled to be shrivel up the way MawMaw’s camellia bush (her one flowering plant) would during hot spells, felt her real self rise up like a wild weed.

  “Where to now, Faith?” asked Audrey.

  I don’t have to really show her. I could take her by the mayor’s house, or by the Stevensons’ . . .

  “Take the first right after the railroad tracks. On Pullman Road.”

  In silence, Audrey drove the car over the patched tar streets, past houses whose paint was peeled and blistered and on whose sagging porches saggy couches or chairs were propped.

  They drove a few blocks after the turn and then Faith said, “That’s it, Audrey, right there.”

  Audrey pulled over, parking next to a tree whose roots bulged up in knobs above the ground.

  “Which one, Faith?”

  Oh, that swanky one with the jasmine climbing the veranda.

  Audrey looked at the house she pointed to. It was a reminder that no one had won the war on poverty; in fact, it looked as if poverty was throwing a victory party. A tipped-over wagon, a deflated rubber ball bleached by the sun, and a plastic pop bottle littered the cracked sidewalk that led to the house, which was almost as narrow as it was small.

  Rust bled onto the concrete step from an iron handrail, and the shutter of one window was missing half its slats. Age had worn the house down as much as neglect, and its very frame, under roof shingles that were split and curled, seemed hunched.

  “So you can see,” said Faith, “that Daddy didn’t have much of a medical practice. In fact, Daddy didn’t have much of anything. The daddy that I told you was a big important doctor? Well, that daddy does not exist.”

  Faith closed her eyes, not wanting to see her friend’s face, but she opened them shortly after, not wanting to see MawMaw standing at the mailbox, shaking her head as she got another bill she couldn’t pay; not wanting to see her drunk mother picking herself up off the sidewalk, cursing, then laughing as she realized she hadn’t spilled any whiskey, her skirt caught up in its waistband so that she revealed the backs of her thighs and a crescent of shiny underwear fabric.

  Her chest heaving as if she’d chased the car rather than ridden in it, Faith stared straight ahead. In her confession, she neither felt a gush of relief or shame; she only felt numb, as if she had gotten a full-body shot of novocaine.

  “So you never knew your dad?” asked Audrey.

  What’d I just say? thought Faith, but she said, “Well, I was only two weeks old when he left. He was seventeen years old when I was born.”

  “Michael and Gil’s age.” Audrey clicked her long nails on the steering wheel. “You want to go anywhere else, Faith?”

  “Yes. I want to show you where I killed my mother.”

  The words screamed in Faith’s head, so it took her a moment to realize she had spoken them out loud.

  January 1987

  Dear Mama,

  Well, guess what: the people I love most in the world now know everything I’ve been hiding all these years.

  I can’t believe it—this is the first time in my life I have not had any secrets, and I feel like I’ve lost half my body weight. I’m forty-six years old and I feel as new as a baby, Mama!

  Audrey left New Orleans a couple days ago, and the twins went back to school yesterday. Wade and I are flying home today, and so are his parents.

  Yup, this turned into a whole family reunion, and all because of you, Mama.

  Audrey doesn’t shock very easily, but sitting in that rental car in Trilby, she looked as stunned as a victim of a lightning strike.

  “Let me drive,” I said, and without saying a word, Audrey and I switched places.

  I don’t know if an electrocardiogram could have recorded the rhythms of my heart, Mama; it was banging against my chest like it was Houdini trying to get out of a trunk he was really locked in. And yet even though I was on the verge of cardiac arrest, I felt an eerie sort of calm, the way a fugitive must when he’s finally walking toward the circle of squad cars and the guy with the bullhorn. The running was over. Who knew what horrible things lay in store, but at least the running was over.

  I turned onto Hopper Avenue (remember how the streets in this crappy neighborhood were named after train cars, as if its residents needed more reminders that they lived by the railroad?). A man walking a pit bull nodded at us and said, “Nice car.” The houses weren’t as neglected as those on my old street; in fact, it looked as if some people understood the concept of home maintenance. I drove past Kiki Krebs’ house—remember, Mama? She’s the girl whose stepfather shot her mother in the leg because he didn’t like the way she fried his eggs.

  I drove on, my heart still galloping, my jaw clenched so tight it was a wonder my teeth didn’t crumble.

  When we reached the city limits, the tarred surface of Hopper Avenue gave way to dirt and I followed it, the silence in the car punctured by the car thumping over potholes. Progress hadn’t reached this side of town; fields were still being farmed and we passed an old red barn whose roof still sported the painted sign that had been there when I was a kid: Home Pantry Grits.

  When I saw the roadhouse, my heart lurched, seeing as beating wasn’t getting it free. Instantly I was as weak as Melanie Wilkes after childbirth, but I managed to pull over to the side of the road. I don’t think I knew my head was resting against the steering wheel until I felt a hand on my back, and I jumped, making the horn beep.

  “Faith,” said Audrey. “Faith, tell me what happened.”

  Well, that had been my plan, Mama, but there was a roadblock in my throat that my words couldn’t get past.

  “Faith, do you want to get out of the car?”

  I nodded and opened the door, practically falling out. A strong breeze whipped past us, and Audrey held down her skirt with her hand against her thigh.

  “Should we walk a ways?”

  When I nodded, we began walking toward the roadhouse.

  “The Beehive,” said Audrey when we got close enough to read the plastic sign perched in the dirt parking lot. “Closed for renovations.”

  “It wasn’t the Beehive back then,” I said, my throat roadblock lifting. “It was Red’s, and open twenty-four hours a day. It was the hot spot for all the county’s alcoholics.”

  I felt like a tour guide giving chirpy commentary on the building that had figured in so many of my nightmares.

  “It was windy that night too,” I said, watching as the leaves of a big weeping willow swept a corner of the parking lot. “But it wasn’t cold like this—it was the middle of the summe
r and so hot that my hair was as wet as if I’d just washed it.

  “I had come home the summer before my senior year at the University of Texas,” I said, my voice without inflection, like someone in a trance. “I don’t know why I’d come back—I guess a part of me must have missed my mama, even though the far bigger part was thrilled to be away from her. Wade and I had just started going out, and he had no idea what I was coming home to—I’d sort of made up this fantasy childhood where my daddy was the town doctor and my mama hosted dinner parties and spent her days doing good works. I couldn’t even think what I was going to do when Wade asked to meet them.”

  Audrey had her arm around me, her eyes squinted against the dust the wind blew up. Even though she was so close I could feel the heat from her body, I had the strange feeling that I was alone, or as alone as a person can be among ghosts.

  I stared past them, seeing your big blue Chevy with the sharp fins parked among the rusty pickups and old Fords.

  “Mama had promised me that we were going to go to Hattiesburg and spend the day shopping for clothes for me to take back to school—she said her new boyfriend was flush with cash and loved to give her spending money—and I was so excited; I couldn’t remember ever taking a shopping trip with my mama.

  “Well, the day we were supposed to go, I woke up to find a note. It said she had to run a few errands but would be back in a jiffy and then we’d be on our way. At lunchtime she called, full of apologies—a friend of hers needed her to baby-sit for a little while, but it shouldn’t take long and then we’d go.

  “I sat in that ugly little house and waited all afternoon for my mama to show up. She finally called at six, full of apologies, and I could hear in her voice that she’d been drinking. Of course she’d been drinking! Why would I have thought any differently? I really lit into her then, calling her every name in the book and some that were too terrible to make it into any book. I said I never wanted to see her and her stinking lying face again, and slammed down the receiver and bolted out of the house. I was crying and so mad at myself that I still cared enough to cry.”

  There was an old picnic table bench shoved up against the wall, and we sat down on it, Audrey staring at me like a scared parishioner listening to a preacher who had gone off the deep end.