Big Easy Bonanza

question now. Despite the pill, thinking too much about that made her shaky.
    Yes, Tolliver had loved her, but she had loved Chauncey. For so many, many years. With surprise, she realized she was actually ashamed of that now. Of loving her own husband and the father of her children. But she had, and who had Chauncey loved? No one, she thought bitterly. Himself. No one else.
    He had given her baby away. Even now, she couldn’t think of it without surprise. Given her baby away, her own flesh and blood, condemned her child to a life of poverty and misery, just to further his own political career. If she thought it monstrous to contemplate, that was nothing compared to seeing the reality of it. When she found out what Hélène had become, she wanted desperately to help her, would have done anything to undo what Chauncey had done—but Hélène didn’t want help. She lived in another world, beyond help, beyond anything her mother could do for her. Bitty closed her eyes and squeezed to erase the memory of her grown-up daughter rejecting her.
    “Mother, are you all right?”
    “My eyes hurt, that’s all.” She opened them.
    “Crying,” said Marcelle. “It’s overrated. Burns the eyes and turns them red.” She rummaged in her purse for a plastic vial of eye drops.
    When Bitty handed it back to her, she said, “Marcelle, I want to tell you something. About that summer in Covington.”
    Was that fear in her eyes? Bitty tried to reassure her. “You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Don’t you?”
    Marcelle stared at her lap. “Of course, Mother.”
    “I was so depressed that summer. I don’t think I’ve ever been that depressed. Except now.” She left unspoken the loss of her baby. “Marcelle, I guess I should say that I was drinking a lot that summer. I guess—I don’t know, I was very short-tempered. And…”
    “And what, Mother?”
    “And miserable. Things took on significance. Something that might be small another time was a big deal at the time. I’m sort of ashamed to say this, but all that really happened was that your father snapped at Henry.”
    She replayed it in her mind, knowing she would whitewash it a little for Marcelle but sparing herself nothing.
    It was early evening. She and Ma-Mère were cleaning shrimp at the kitchen table while Marcelle played quietly in the living room, where Pa-Père was reading the paper.
    Henry and Chauncey were standing together across the big, open kitchen, Henry trying to untangle a fishing line. Chauncey was watching, supervising, hovering like a vulture, it seemed to Bitty. Suddenly he reached out for the tangled line, grabbing impatiently, violently, but Henry pulled it away. Bitty gasped.
    “Let me do it,” Chauncey ordered.
    “Daddy!” Henry’s voice was tragic. “I’ve almost got it.”
    “You’ve been working on it for twenty minutes. If you’re going to do something, do it right.”
    He snatched it from the boy’s small hands, leaving Henry with a shamed, stricken look that made Bitty want to kill.
    Her composure disintegrated. Suddenly she hated Chauncey for everything he had done to her and to Henry and to Tolliver, and most of all to Hélène. The hatred crystallized in that moment, over Henry’s molested fishing line.
    “You don’t deserve children!” she shouted as loud as she could, the only time she could remember yelling like that in her whole life. She had yelled in horror when she killed the rabbit, and probably she had screamed once or twice when something startled her but she had never simply gotten furious with someone and bellowed like a fishwife.
    “Bitty!” Ma-Mère’s voice was shocked.
    Across the room, Chauncey turned toward her, surprised, probably not realizing she had it in her. She watched his face become a mask of concern. “Dollin’, are you all right?” His voice was saccharine.
    Bitty stood up, picked up the chair she was sitting in, and went for him. Tiny, quick Marcelle, frightened by the yelling, ran from the living room into her path and froze, too late sensing danger. She stood looking up at her mother with those plate-sized eyes. Bitty tried to step aside, but it was too late. She mowed her down with the chair.
    By now, though, trying to avoid hitting her child, she had lost her own balance and she fell sideways to the right, missing Marcelle, at least not falling on her, and twisting her own ankle. As Marcelle had stood there, staring up at her, Bitty had yelled, “I hate you!” Not at Marcelle, but