Big Easy Bonanza

if she was starting to enjoy herself. “That’s what I was doing at the time,” she said. “Trying to earn enough money to get myself through college. And suddenly this offer came, out of the blue. The family I was working for offered me $25,000 to raise a child that needed a home. Lord, if I’d known what I know now! My grandmama really wanted that baby—I thought they’d make each other happy and I’d get a college education out of it. Well, I should have got a job as a waitress—like you say, being a mother’s a lifetime commitment and I wasn’t ready for it, and I sure wasn’t ready for a daughter like LaBelle.”
    “Tell me, was it a legal adoption?”
    “Are you kidding?”
    “No, I guess it wasn’t. Do you mind telling me the name of that family? The people you worked for?” Skip spoke carefully, trying to conceal how much she needed the answer.
    “Not at all. It was Harmeyer. Arthur and Judith Harmeyer.”
    She knew the Harmeyers well, had last seen them at Chauncey’s funeral. Judith Harmeyer was Tolliver Albert’s sister.

Sunday Kinds of Love
1
    BITTY LOOKED AT the mirror, at her petite self in her black suit, her blond hair as shiny as ever, unable to believe it was really she. They had all fussed over her at church, said how good she looked. She thought it was true and she was looking at herself soberly, not having had a drink yet today. She couldn’t understand it—she was dying inside.
    Yet she looked like a young widow who was coming beautifully through tragedy. She must have one of those pickled livers that keep working against all odds. Her father had one—why not she?
    She tore at her clothes; they oppressed her. Pearl buttons flew off her cream silk blouse.
    Where was Henry? Working, of course. They would go out to dinner that night, if she lived so long. At the moment she wondered, seriously wondered for the first time, what it would be like to kill herself quickly, as opposed to the slow way she’d been working on for two decades.
    She was so lonely. She didn’t understand why Tolliver hadn’t called, either last night or this morning. She’d thought he loved her.
    Perhaps that was what had her so upset—not hearing from Tolliver. Still in her slip and bare feet, she phoned him.
    Not home. And not in church. Her father had taken her to church, had called late last night and offered to do it, and Bitty had been so surprised she had said yes and then had been too proud not to be ready when he arrived. Her father did not do things for other people; it was not his style. It was Tolliver’s.
    She changed into a peacock-colored running suit and looked in the mirror again. She could be in her early thirties. She looked wonderful. She could probably find a new man if Tolliver didn’t want her. But surely he did if the rumors weren’t true, but how could they be? She knew him better than anyone.
    She lay down on her bed for a moment, knowing that she would go down and make herself a mimosa in a moment or two, but prolonging the pleasure, the anticipation.
    Ah! I’m not dying. I do want a mimosa.
    Was it possible to live? She tried to imagine a life without Chauncey, a real life, not the waking sleep the last twenty years had been. A life in which she was married to Tolliver.
    He would probably make love to me.
    The thought came with a jolt. It must have been seven years or more since she and Chauncey had made love, and probably another year or two since the time before that.
    Tolliver would make love to her, and he would love her. Chauncey did not love her, had never loved her, had married her for what her father could do for him, and she had adored him. Or at least she had at first. For years she’d hated the bastard. She smiled to herself, remembering how much he hated that word, and went downstairs to get her drink.
    Could she have married Tolliver? She had come halfway to accept over the years the general wisdom that he was a homosexual, and so maybe he wouldn’t have married her after all. But he had made love to her once. It was rushed and painful, and he had kept saying her name. When she thought of it now, she flushed, not with pleasure but embarrassment. She had hated his saying her name, hadn’t known how to answer. She knew that something was happening to him that she wasn’t able to share.
    It was her first experience with sex, and it was no experience at all. She had closed her eyes and watched Tolliver and herself from someplace in the air above their two