Back to Bayou Sabine: A Novella Page 4

  I let Kate drag me through all the boutiques in the Faubourg Marigny district and even humored her by trying on a few dresses. At the last shop, she wouldn’t let me leave until I agreed to buy a deep purple one with a halter top.

  I’d tried it just to keep Kate quiet, but still I twirled in the dressing room, just to watch the A-line skirt flare out at my knees. I pulled my hair back from my face and thought it would likely be a long time before I had an excuse to wear it, but every now and then I got to dress like a woman. Usually it was for a friend who was getting married, or some shindig with the local historical society. I supposed it couldn’t hurt to have a nice dress waiting in the closet for the next big event.

  “You should wear that kind of thing more often,” Kate said when I came out of the dressing room. “You could stop traffic.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all right.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You’re not leaving here without that dress. I don’t care if it costs as much as your car payment.”

  I looked at the tag and said, “It is almost as much as my car payment.”

  Kate folded her arms over her chest. “One of these days, Enza, you’re going to need a proper va-va-voom dress. It’d be criminal to let you walk out of here without that one.”

  ~~~~

  We had lunch on the square and sat outside, listening to a band play across the way. There was an upright bass, a violin and a keyboard—quite the backup for a singer on the square. They were playing old zydeco favorites as passersby dropped bills into an empty violin case.

  When the waiter brought our drinks, something he called a “hummingbird” that had so much fruit juice we could barely taste the bourbon, I held my glass up and toasted. “To Vergie.”

  “To Vergie,” Kate said, clinking her glass against mine. “I wish I’d been lucky enough to know her.”

  “I wish I’d known her better,” I said, taking a sip. “Kate, thank you. For everything.”

  “Any time. You know that.”

  The band started into another tune, and one of the guys pulled out an accordion. We listened for a long while, watching the tourists come and go, snapping pictures as they paused by the fountain.

  After lunch, we passed the band as we crossed the square, and the singer tipped his hat toward us.

  “Hey,” Kate said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s get our future told.”

  I followed her gaze to where a woman draped in batik-dyed fabric sat at a card table with a hand-painted sign that read Palm Readings.

  “Come on,” she said. “It’ll be fun.”

  Before I could protest, Kate trotted right up to the woman’s table and sat in the chair across from her. She motioned for me to follow, but I was fixated on the band, the way the violinist played with her eyes closed, moving her head in a quick, staccato rhythm. She stood with her back against the singer, as if performing for someone who wasn’t there. She was tall and thin, her hair cropped short.

  When the song ended, a few tourists clapped and dropped loose change into the violin case. I placed a five inside, then went over to Kate.

  Donita was the palm reader’s name. She wore a pale yellow dress and had her bright red hair piled on top of her head. She looked more like a pin-up girl than a palm reader. She glanced at me as I hovered next to Kate, then traced her finger along Kate’s palm.

  “I see three great loves in your life,” she said, tapping a bright blue fingernail against her palm.

  Kate raised an eyebrow. “What if I’ve already had three? You saying it’s all downhill for the rest of my life?”

  Donita smiled. “That’s the scientist part of you,” she said. “So literal. You haven’t had three great ones yet.”

  “I know a couple of guys who would beg to differ.”

  Donita pointed to a line. “You’ve got to wait a little longer on your best match. He shows up when this line crosses from the Saturn mound over your heart line.”

  “You have an ETA on that?” Kate asked.

  Donita smiled. “This next intersecting line is at about age forty, so somewhere before that.”

  Kate frowned.

  “Could meet him in two years or two days,” Donita said. “We have to make ourselves available to the universe for new opportunities.”

  Kate shook her head. That was a little too mystical for her taste. She usually called that kind of talk “woo-woo” and rolled her eyes.

  “Fair enough,” she said. “My friend Enza here needs a turn.”

  I started to protest, but Kate jumped up from the chair and practically shoved me into it.

  “Hi. I’m Enza.”

  I reached out to shake Donita’s hand, but she took my wrist and turned my palm up. “Nice to meet you,” she said, and studied my hand.

  As she traced her finger over the lines of my palm, she mentioned that I worked with my hands, that I had serious grief in my childhood, that I kept myself guarded because of it. I sat stone faced, not wanting to give her any leading answers, but I was certain she was telling me things she told a dozen other people every day. It’s not hard to look at someone and pin her for an introvert, or a tomboy; it’s equally easy to identify someone who uses her hands for manual labor. I was certainly no mystery to a woman who studied strangers all day, and I didn’t pretend to be surprised by her “insights.” I’d play along for Kate, though, because it was obvious she was trying to take my mind off my mother and Vergie.

  “You’re leaving soon,” Donita said, and I thought, Duh, just like every other tourist you see on the square.

  “But you’re not finished here,” she said. “You’ll be back soon.”

  “This is my last visit here,” I said, smiling. “This was a trip to tie up loose ends, and I think we’ve done it.”

  Kate winked at me. Donita tapped her fingernail against my lifeline.

  “See the way this little line runs alongside it?” she said. “It almost forms a chain pattern. Each time it crosses the lifeline is a time you’ll come back, a time of great significance.”

  I leaned down so closely to look that our heads were nearly touching. The looping pattern started close to my thumb. There was a break in the chain, and then the loops appeared again near the middle of my palm.

  “You’ve come here already many times,” she said, “but then there’s a break of ten to fifteen years, and then you start coming back. Then the lifeline splits—very unusual. That signifies a great change that has the potential to put you on a very different path than the one you were on.”

  I glanced at Kate. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

  I pulled my hand away and stood.

  “Well, thanks, Donita,” I said.

  She looked at me, her green eyes wide. “Don’t you want to hear the rest?”

  “Nah.” I pulled some cash from my purse and handed it to her. “I like to have a few surprises.”

  Chapter 7

  For the duration of the flight home, I had to hold the gardenia in my lap. I’d hoped it might ride in an empty seat between me and Kate, but the flight was full. I sat squished against the window, Kate at my elbow. The bald man next to her sneezed through most of the flight, making Kate wince each time. We agreed that until we got back to Raleigh, we would not talk about (a) my mother, (b) my father, or (c) what I’d do with my life if I quit working for my father.

  “Maybe I can find you a Sexy Gray Suit Guy back home,” Kate said at last.

  “I think maybe I need a break from the dating pool.”

  “That’s just silly,” she said. “Now I know your type.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have a type.”

  “I’ll have to line a few up before next month, though.”

  “What’s the rush?”

  She flipped through her magazine and held it up like a shield when the man next to her sneezed again.

  “I have to go out of town for a few weeks. The lab’s sending me to a training session in Denver.”

  “A few weeks?”

&nb
sp; “Eight,” she said.

  “Wow,” I said. “That sounds big time.”

  “It would make me eligible for a promotion,” she said.

  “Who will I have cocktails with while you’re gone?”

  She grinned. “That’s what I’m trying to arrange.”

  I shook my head, picking at the dead leaves on the gardenia. “Not the same. There’s no stunt double befitting you.”

  “Just wait until I find you a nice carpenter with steady hands and a deep-seated need to please.”

  The bald man sneezed.

  ~~~~

  There was a sliver of moon that night, high in the sky. It was difficult to make out the stars with all the street lights in my neighborhood, but I convinced myself I’d found the Big Dipper, tracing my finger along imaginary lines between stars, the way Vergie once did. I listened to a voicemail from my father, instructing me to go back to the almost-frat-house in the morning, and then went out to the garage to find my shovel.

  Even though it was well after ten, the horizon still had an orange cast to it from all the lights in town. I hadn’t realized how perpetually bright it was here until I’d laid out in the grassy field at the Dauphine, staring up at a darkness that felt like it could pull me up inside it at any moment. Now it seemed strange to have so much light at night, to have no real darkness.

  I dug a hole in the yard by the back porch, about eight inches across and eight inches deep. The ground was mostly clay after the first few inches, and I had to jump on the shovel to cut through. When it was finally deep enough, I filled the hole with water and waited for it to drain. Before I’d set foot back in Bayou Sabine, I’d told myself that was going to be my last visit there. My memories of that place had held so much hurt that I’d pushed them away for as long as I could remember. I’d convinced myself there was nothing left for me there and no reason to ever return. But going back had made me see how wrong I was about that. I had cut out a significant portion of my life, and it might be too late to do anything about it.

  But it might not.

  I’d been afraid to stand up to my father back then. Afraid to ask for what I wanted. Afraid to push for what I thought was right. I would not make that mistake again.

  I placed the gardenia in the hole and packed the dirt around it, soaking it again to compact the soil. The ruffled white blooms glowed in the darkness, and I smiled, thinking of how Vergie had spread so much goodness in the world around her. I hated that I wouldn’t know more about her, but I figured I could at least adopt a few of her finer habits.

  At the edge of the backyard was the pickup truck holding the pallet full of daylilies and hostas. I’d watered them before I left with Kate, and they’d managed to survive a few days in the heat without me. I smiled, thinking of how good they’d look alongside the porch at the Durham house, and tossed the shovel into the truck.

  It was darker in the historic district but not by much. I could hear a radio on in the house next door, some people laughing on a porch across the street. I straightened the “for sale” sign and set my flashlight on the porch, aimed out into the yard. I started at the corner of the flower bed the landscaper had laid out and dug holes along the porch railing eighteen inches apart. I’d put compost down before Dad had intercepted me and stopped my beautification of the saddest yard on the block. That, however, was before he told me about Vergie’s death. Before I saw his cold expression when he talked about her.

  Before I realized there was a lot he’d hidden from me.

  I dug through the compost, thinking of the last summer at Vergie’s I could remember. I’d been fifteen and boy crazy, and Vergie was trying to get me to concentrate on anything but boys. She’d hired a lady down the street to give me piano lessons, which had kept me occupied only on the hottest afternoons.

  My shirt was sticking to my back, but still I dug.

  The voices on the porch quieted.

  A woman jogged past with a Golden Retriever, its coat gleaming in the pale light.

  I heard the katydids buzzing in the cypresses, smelled the salt in the air and split the earth with the shovel.

  My fingers burned where the wood handle rubbed old calluses, but still I dug.

  I thought of Mike, how he so easily won my father over, and pushed the blade of the shovel into the loamy soil.

  I filled the holes with water, then set the lilies out, alternating yellow and orange along the front of the porch. This would prove that something could thrive here, that this was a home that would foster growth. As I packed the dirt around the last lily, I inhaled, drawing in the scent of the earth. When I held my hands out in front of me, the lines in my palms were more visible, darkened by the soil. I traced the lines with my fingers, and I gazed at the life line that Donita said would lead me back to Bayou Sabine. I thought of my father, the way he’d react when he saw this yard full of lilies, the way he’d use this as something else to hold against me. I thought of how my memories weren’t as distant as I’d once believed and understood that this was not a goodbye to Vergie. This was not an ending.

  I waved to the neighbors on the porch across the street as I walked into the yard and sat in the grass. The lilies were bright under the moon, glowing in the beam of the flashlight. I brushed the dirt from the palms of my hands and leaned back on my elbows. The grass tickled my skin, and I breathed deeply, taking in as much of the night as I could, and for a moment, wished that it might rain.

  About the Author

  Lauren Faulkenberry divides her time between writing, teaching, and crafting artist books. She’s worked as an archaeologist, English teacher and National Park Service ranger. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Georgia College & State University, where she attended on fellowship. She lives in Whittier, North Carolina, where she is at work on her next novel.

  Lauren hopes you enjoyed the book! If you did, she’d appreciate it if you left a review at Amazon. Your words may help convince other readers to embark on this voyage to the bayous of Louisiana with Enza—and Lauren would be most grateful.

  Want more? Get Beneath Our Skin for free! Simply join Lauren’s mailing list: http://bit.ly/lauren-news.

  If you enjoyed this trip to the Bayou, you’ll love the other books in the Bayou Sabine series:

  Bayou My Love, a novel set in the steamy bayous of Louisiana, it’s a story of finding love—and oneself.

  Bayou, Whispers from the Past, a novel that picks up where Bayou My Love leaves off and explores Enza’s family history—and secrets—in the bayou.

  For news about Lauren and her books, check out LaurenFaulkenberry.com. And you can always drop Lauren a line at Lauren@LaurenFaulkenberry.com.

  Read on for a sneak peek at Bayou My Love…

  Beneath Our Skin

  Winner of the Family Circle Fiction award,

  published in Family Circle March 2008

  Lola’s sister Chloe has always been the perfect one. But Chloe has a secret that shows she’s not so perfect after all. And on Chloe’s wedding day, the two sisters may hold their own quiet revolution…

  Get it for free! Join Lauren’s new release mailing list and she’ll send you a free ecopy of Beneath Our Skin: http://bit.ly/lauren-news.

  Bayou My Love

  a novel

  Lauren Faulkenberry

  Chapter 1

  I knew when I strode into my father’s office—before he’d had time to drink his two cups of coffee—that I was asking for trouble. But I was furious.

  He glared at me, the phone cradled to his ear. His upper lip twitched in the way that usually sent people running with fear. As I sat down in the chair across from his desk, I could hear the muffled voice on the other end of the line. Judging by the way he scribbled on his notepad, nearly piercing the paper, the conversation wasn’t going well. If I were a more dutiful daughter, and less hacked off at him, I might have come back later. But he’d been ignoring me all week. I needed a straight answer about my next job and was tired of waiting.

  My father
has a knack for taking roughed-up houses and making them look like they belong in the glossy pages of architectural magazines. I’d started working for him when I was in college and discovered I had a knack for it too.

  This fact puts him in a tough spot. On the one hand, he’d like his progeny to take over his company one day. On the other hand, his progeny is me: a hard-headed thirty-one-year-old woman whose general presence aggravates his ulcers. I don’t do things the way he does, and he’s a control freak. This often puts us at an impasse.

  Most of our jobs work out OK. Because I get bored easily, the short-lived challenge of a new house-flip appeals to me. My father sleeps a little easier when his daughter has steady employment and is not too close to his office. He likes to micromanage me, though, and that’s where things get hairy.

  Still on the phone, he leaned back in his prized Mission-style chair and shook his hand at me to say shoo. I crossed my arms over my chest and raised my brows. He pointed to the door more emphatically. I propped my feet on his desk.

  His eyes narrowed as they rested on my beat-up cowboy boots. They were my favorite pair, vintage brown and white with tulip and bluebird inlays. He grimaced whenever I wore them and called them unprofessional. In the beginning, he’d expected me to dress more like a real estate agent, in a nice skirt suit with heels. But skirt suits were completely against my nature. I was a tomboy through and through, perfectly happy in my jeans and plaid shirts. I usually took five minutes to pull my hair back in a ponytail and could sometimes be bothered to put on a little mascara, but that was the extent of my preening. My curvy figure and wildly curly hair had made for an unkind sprint through adolescence. My father was of no help in feminine matters, and my mother was long gone, so I’d fumbled my way through my formative years and came out the other side with zero appreciation for makeup or fashion. Heels put me just over six feet tall, and even though I had my mother’s soft face, I intimidated most men.