Big Easy Bonanza

Henry in the kitchen, tearing up salad greens. Skip could smell potatoes baking, and on the stove was a pot of milk. Henry didn’t speak, made no move to greet her, simply continued attacking his Romaine. She made herself at home, taking time to notice that on a nearby counter was a cookbook open to oyster soup. “You’re expecting someone.”
    Still, he didn’t speak.
    “Henry, I think you lied. I don’t think Tolliver was your lover. His note said he was in love with your mother.”
    “He was protecting me—protecting all of us. This way there’s no taint of the dread and ugly homosexuality.”
    “Frankly, I don’t think Tolliver was a homosexual at all. I think he suffered from unrequited love, if you’ll forgive an antiquated expression, and once in a while relieved an itchy libido with a prostitute.”
    Henry turned to stare at her, angry-eyed, but not speaking.
    “I think he was in love with your mother, just like the note said, but I don’t know if it was conscious or unconscious.”
    “Sigmund Freud rides again.”
    Unperturbed at the gibe, Skip reached over and helped herself to a bit of lettuce, which she chewed slowly, maddeningly, she hoped.
    “Maybe he didn’t realize he was waiting for her, it just kind of turned out that way. He watched her fall apart after her daughter ‘died,’ as the story went, but one day the daughter, who he never thought was dead, walked into his life, grown-up.”
    “Oh, brother.”
    “We’re only supposing here. You don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to. I’m just telling you a story I might have made up or I might not have. Maybe he thought that if he returned Bitty’s daughter to her, it could help her get well. So he told her he’d found Hélène. Or perhaps he told Hélène who her mother was, but I don’t think so. I think he’d want to leave it in Bitty’s hands. At any rate, the two of them got together.”
    “I don’t believe what you’re doing. You’re like something out of a circus.” He was looking at her in such amazement that Skip nearly lost her nerve.
    “It’s just a story, Henry. I was just trying to think what could have happened to poor Bitty—after all, it’s a pretty awful thing to lose a child. And what I was thinking of was that old saw about being careful what you wish for. I bet Bitty wished a million times to have her child back but when Hélène turned up, she was LaBelle—not the child Bitty wanted at all. I bet Bitty wanted to help her—to get her out of prostitution, to help her get a job, maybe to send her to college. I don’t know what she offered exactly, but it was some kind of mothering, I’m pretty sure. Only LaBelle wouldn’t want that—she’d have had no use for Bitty and the family that gave her away. I bet she hurt Bitty pretty badly, somehow or another. My guess is, she tried to shake her down. She asked for money not to tell Chauncey (who probably did know she’d been given away instead of died, but LaBelle wouldn’t know that), or not to tell your grandfather or maybe the
Times-Picayune
about her existence. Or maybe she didn’t even put it that way. Maybe she more or less demanded reparations—said Bitty owed it to her for the horrid life she’d had to lead.”
    “Go on.”
    “I think she had a blackmail tool—not a very effective one, but one with dramatic impact. All she had to do to get a copy of her birth certificate was write to the Bureau of Records. Once she knew her real name was Hélène St. Amant, she could do that. And I think she did. Have you ever heard that expression, ‘the child is the father of the man’? You’ve lived it anyway. You’ve had to be your mother’s parent in lots of ways, haven’t you? Bitty turned to the one she always turned to when she needed help—you, Henry.”
    “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Oh, she probably told Tolliver too. First, I imagine. I don’t know when all this happened. Weeks ago, probably. But you didn’t get the copy of the birth certificate until Saturday, when I caught you at LaBelle’s. It was taped to the back of a picture, wasn’t it? Not that it proved anything, it just tied her to the St. Amants.”
    “Get out of here.”
    Insouciantly, Skip reached for another lettuce leaf. He grabbed her wrist: “Get out.”
    She saw that she had won, and the knowledge made her calm and a little smug. “You thought it was the only thing that could connect her with your precious family—you must