Chapter 4
August 2, 1959
Late Morning
Kelly picked up the postcard and letter from the silver tray on the hall table and took them outside to savor the news. From the postcard, Savannah's houses looked like Vicksburg's -- two stories, porches, columns, trees out front. She turned it over.
"Hi! Having fun! Miss you already! Love, Christi."
Disappointed, Kelly put the postcard down and rubbed her fingers across the soft white envelope with its beautifully engraved script pronouncing the return address of "Dr. and Mrs. Claude R. Demarest III, Willow Creek Plantation, Old Willow Creek Road, Savannah, Georgia." She carefully unsealed the envelope an inch at a time to preserve its elegance. The heavy matching letterhead had a fancy crest at the top and repeated the engraved return address. Christi was obviously in high cotton.
Dear Kelly ,
I wish you could have come with us. Savannah is beautiful, with big trees like Vicksburg and a blue-water river. Mama's friend lives out in the country in a house bigger than ours (plus they have two guest houses and quarters) and we're staying in an upstairs bedroom in the main house. (You can see from the stationery, they call it Willow Creek and there's a giant willow tree outside my window that's creepy at night.) There's a ton of people and lots of parties because this is a big deal! The biggest news is about the reason for the wedding, but it's so amazing that I'm going to save it until I get back, cause you probably wouldn't even believe it unless I was there to cross my heart and swear to die. Can you guess?
I'm riding horses and swimming every day. There's lots of people here to fix the horses and everything. I wish you could be here. I'd like to stay forever, but we'll be back next Wednesday night, so see if you can come over. I miss you.
Love,
Christi
Three of the summer's longest days followed that letter. Kelly was impatiently playing jacks on the Boudreaux's front porch and was up to around-the-world sixes when the big Cadillac finally crunched onto the gravel driveway. Kelly jumped up, scattering the jacks, and ran to greet her friend. The slightly plump, pubescent little traveler was opening the back door before the car stopped.
"Christi! It's about time! Hi, Miz Boudreaux. Mama sent a casserole. She says I may stay if that's all right with you, or Christi may come spend the night with me."
"Why, thank you, Kelly. Of course, you're welcome to stay. I'll call your mother. You girls give me about an hour to get settled and reheat the casserole. Then we'll eat. Now don't go off and get lost."
On cue, the girls ran to their hide-out above the garage. From there, they could keep an eye on most of the neighborhood, and in the winter, when the trees were bare, they had a good view all the way to the river.
Christi couldn't wait to blurt out her news, "It was a shotgun wedding!"
"I don't get it," Kelly frowned. "What's a shotgun wedding?"
"I didn't know either," Christi confessed, "but I found out," her blue blue eyes opened wider, "it's when you have to get married because you're pregnant!"
"But I thought only married women could get pregnant and have babies."
"Don't feel stupid. So did I, but Michelle Demarest, she's the bride's cousin, told me all about it," Christi nodded, dark curls bobbing. "She's thirteen and she knows."
"So what happens?"
"Well, when a boy and girl are going steady, they do a lot of kissing and stuff."
"I know that."
"Well, then, eventually they go to the drive-in and they get in the back seat of the car under a blanket and then, you might not believe this but Michelle swears it's true and I believe her, then the boy puts his wiener up inside the girl and she gets pregnant."
"He puts his wiener where?"
"Up inside the girl."
"I know, but where? Exactly where?"
"In the hole you pee out of."
"You're kidding."
"No. I swear."
"Yuk."
"I know."
Silence followed. Christi pulled a splinter of wood from the floor and cleaned under her fingernails with it. Kelly stared out toward the unseen river.
Finally she asked, "What do they call it?"
"Call what?"
"It. What do they call it when a boy does that to a girl?"
"There's lots of words for it."
"Name some."
"Making love. Doing it. Screwing."
"Are they all the same thing?"
"I think so."
"Name some more."
"I can't think of any. There's a big one, though. It's the technical name for it. Actually it's two words, but I can't remember. "
"Is it 'sexual intercourse?'"
"Yeah! That's it. How did you know?"
"Lucky guess."
"Come on. How'd you know that?"
"Ran across it in the dictionary."
That was enough to satisfy Christi, although she never would understand her friend's habit of reading the dictionary just for fun.
"Then you know all about it, huh?"
"No more than you do. Just what I read in the dictionary. And another word."
"What? "
"Fuck!"
"Yeah. I heard Billy DeVito say that one. I wondered what it was. He got in trouble for it."
"It's a trouble word, that's for sure."
Kelly watched a squirrel dangling upside down from the tip of a limb, carelessly clinging with his back toes to the pencil thin branch, his tail looped over the neighboring twigs. With his front paws, the squirrel was grabbing tiny berries and thrusting them in his mouth. Another squirrel approached, and the first one scrambled upright, chattering. They chased each other around and around the tree, up and down, leaping onto other trees and then back again. Around and around. Happy. Christi cleaned her clean fingernails with the splinter.
"Mary Margaret McCafferty told me to go fuck myself."
"Mary Margaret McCafferty said that?"
"Yeah. Sunday."
"What did you do to her?"
"Nothing."
"I can't believe it. Mary Margaret McCafferty? She's so prissy. Wonder why she said that. You sure you didn't do something to her?"
"Sure. She's just weird."
"Yeah, she's weird, all right."
"Let's go help your mom set the table. I'm hungry."
* * *
"This is a delicious dinner, Kelly. You be sure to thank your mother for it."
"Yes, sir, I will," Kelly mumbled at her plate. She couldn't look at Mr. Boudreaux anymore.
"I'm afraid it would have been another night of sardines and crackers for me. I wouldn't expect Miz B to fix dinner after such a long tiring trip. No, siree, I wouldn't."
Kelly wondered why he couldn't fix a better dinner for himself than sardines and crackers. And why couldn't he have fixed a nice dinner for his wife and daughter? Kelly's father could cook, although he didn't do it more than once or twice a year, except breakfast. Why didn't Mr. B? And how did Kelly's mother know? How well did her mother know Mr. Boudreaux anyway?
Kelly blushed and glanced around furtively to see if anyone noticed. They were all eating and talking about the trip. Everyone seemed normal. Or did they? Kelly couldn't remember how it felt before, although she ate dinner at Christi's house two or three times a week, when Christi wasn't eating at the McCains' house.
Nothing had changed, but everything was different. Were they all pretending? Did they all know about the adultery, like she did? Mrs. Boudreaux was smiling. Christi told a funny story and they all laughed, even Mr. Boudreaux. How could he laugh? How could they all laugh and act like nothing had happened? Kelly heard herself laughing. She thought about her mother. Surely it couldn't be her mother and Mr. Boudreaux. She felt a lump of casserole catch in her throat. She tried to swallow. It wouldn't go down. This is crazy, Kelly's mind raced, as she struggled to swallow. I'm going to sit here and laugh until I choke to death on a tuna fish casserole that my mother fixed for Mr. Boudreaux, and no one will ever know that I know.
She pictured herself in a satin-lined coffin with people walking by saying, "Don't she just look like Sleeping Beauty?" She wondered what hymns they would sing at her Requiem Mass and resolved to make a list of her favorites so there would be no question about it when the time came. She would want to die early in the week so they'd have her funeral on a school day and the kids would love her because they'd get out of class to attend. This meant that she couldn't die in the summer, but here she was choking to death a month before school and everybody hated her for being Grand Champion of Vicksburg. The thought of her desolate funeral in an empty church made her sigh deeply and swallow hard. The casserole lump went down and Kelly felt hot tears on her cheeks.
"Honey, are you okay?" Mr. Boudreaux patted her on the back.
"Yes, sir, I am," Kelly mumbled at her plate. She couldn't look at Mr. Boudreaux anymore.
Immediately after dinner, she called home. "Mom, why'd you fix the casserole?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, why did you fix it and send it over for dinner? How did you know Mr. Boudreaux wouldn't have something here?"
"Well, honey, you seem to think that Mister B hung the moon, but the truth is, he's so self-centered that he'd never fix dinner for his family. He wants to be waited on hand and foot. Sometimes I feel sorry for Helêne. She puts up with too much.
"Do you love Daddy?"
"Kelly, what's going on? Are you okay?"
"Sure, Mom. I'm fine."
* * *
Christi said she was tired from her long trip, but seemed too excited to go to sleep, so Kelly sat up and listened to the endless details about Willow Creek Plantation, the parties, the magnificent church, the wedding itself with twelve bridesmaids and groomsmen, and the extravagant reception at Willow Creek with two bands and dancing until three in the morning.
"I don't get it. If they had to get married," Kelly questioned, "wouldn't they want to keep it a secret? It sounds like everybody in Georgia was invited to their wedding."
"I asked Michelle about that. She said that Mrs. Demarest always wanted a big wedding for her daughter because she didn't have one. And Dr. Demarest said, 'Why not? The bigger the lie, the more people believe it.'"
