Big Easy Bonanza

For now, Bitty could only be grateful. But she wanted to say something to Marcelle—she would, as soon as the drug took effect and she felt she could talk. Her face was unbearably tight. It would probably crack if she tried to speak now. She must look awful, sitting there like that, back straight, tears running down her face. She hated being so pathetic in front of her daughter.
    She was seeing Tolliver and Henry holding hands, Henry about two and a half feet tall, headed out to find an ice-cream cone, or maybe just taking a walk around the block. They played catch sometimes, and inside the house, they played Go Fish and crazy eights and checkers and later on, chess. The two people she loved most in the world—good pals, hitting it off. Thank God for Tolliver in those years, or Henry would have had no daddy at all. Tolliver had seen that and had stepped in to do what he could. For her. For Bitty. And because he was a wonderful person. And because he loved Henry. She thought he had probably felt cheated out of having a son himself. But the thing had backfired or something; she wasn’t really sure what you’d call it. She could see now that Henry must have been in love with Tolliver almost all his life.
    The pill was working now. She took a deep breath, savoring the sensation of hardly feeling suicidal at all. Marcelle looked so miserable sitting across from her, like a mother outside a hospital room waiting for her child to come out of its coma. She was such a good girl. And she hadn’t had it easy either. Chauncey had been erratic with her. At least Henry always knew where he stood with him. Sometimes, when he was tense, he yelled at Marcelle for no reason, just as he did at Henry.
    And then there was the indisputable fact that he was—she hated to say it—he was seductive with her. Well, anyway, to her it seemed indisputable, but Chauncey called her sick when she brought it up. Bitty’s own father had sometimes treated her like his girlfriend. She knew how bewildering it was and she had tried to tell Chauncey, but he called her crazy, as if he was an expert on the raising of children, when he hadn’t read a line on the subject. Not a word, and she had read every book in the library. Chauncey just took it for granted that he knew everything there was to know, and his way of expressing that was simply to dispute her.
    “Chauncey, that can be confusing for a little girl.”
    “Oh, Bitty,” in a tone of utter condescension and deepest sarcasm.
    “I know. It happened to me.”
    “She’s not confused, Bitty.” Angrily. “Are you crazy?”
    “Chauncey, you don’t know.”
    At this point he would laugh, a little condescending chuckle as if at himself, for getting into this web of irrationality in the first place. “It isn’t confusing.”
    Just like that. As if it was received knowledge, like the Ten Commandments; and absolutely as sure of himself as Moses could ever have been. Setting himself up as some twentieth-century prophet of childhood. Maybe he thought that “Saint” in his name really meant something.
    Still, it had to be something more than Chauncey’s occasional flirtatiousness that had made Marcelle, in the end, so unhappy, so unsure of herself. What had happened to the little girl who could do anything? Bitty didn’t know. She didn’t understand Marcelle. To her, Marcelle seemed the picture of competence—a single mother with a lovely child. But Marcelle tried to talk to her sometimes. Bitty hated it, was made hugely uncomfortable by it—but she told her how she felt inside, how unable she was to decide things, even to know what there was to decide. Bitty didn’t want to hear about it. This wasn’t the Marcelle she knew.
    But it must be true. If Marcelle said she was unhappy, she must be. Bitty wanted to do something for her, and she realized that right now she could. The drug was working and she could talk. She could tell her what had really happened in Covington, that she wouldn’t have hurt poor Marcelle for anything.
    She wondered if Marcelle would enjoy running an antique store or if she would sell Tolliver’s. And she really couldn’t help wondering why Tolliver had left his shop to her. To ask her about it seemed churlish, but somehow Bitty hadn’t known they were that close. She and Henry were the ones who were close to him—Henry in love with him and Tolliver in love with her. Just like always. She knew that it was true because the note said so. There was no doubt, no