Big Easy Bonanza

Cookie.”
    She gave him her address.

The Night
1
    GRATEFULLY, AFTER IT was all over, Bitty took the pills Dr. Langdon offered. She had still not had a drink. The pills were enough for now; or they would have been if she hadn’t had to wake up every time they wore off. When she woke, her chest and belly felt hollow, as if all her vital organs had been ripped out of her, as if all the booze and pills in the world couldn’t fill such an emptiness. She cried until her head ached and her eyes burned. Yet there were more tears in her. That was all that was left there. No heart, no guts, certainly no liver. Just tears.
    She knew how she’d feel in the morning—as if her body were a bell and someone had struck it, dooming her to shriek eternally. Shrieking sad, yet too sad to shriek. Immobile. Cold.
    She took another pill and soon she felt warm and hardly any other way at all, not even hollow. Numbness, for a long time, had seemed better than life. She was numb now, and would be till morning—so numb she was able to allow herself certain thoughts. For the moment she could deal with them. Right now they didn’t make her heart break, instead made her feel better, warmer, warmer even than the bed which a few moments ago had seemed her only comfort.
    She was thinking about Chauncey, about how happy they were at first. She had quite literally never met a person like Chauncey in her entire life, and she would have done anything to make him happy—
had
done a number of things she never imagined she would. He was so dark and dashing—so protective. He made her feel safe, and she desperately needed that. There were reasons she needed a man like Chauncey. Reasons nobody knew except Bitty herself.
    Oh, God, how had she gotten through today? And yet she had, because here she was lying in bed—her bed and hers alone ever since Chauncey had moved to the green guest room a few years ago. Yet thinking about that didn’t make her cry now—not just at the moment. She kept getting distracted with thoughts about herself—proud thoughts about getting through it. Doing something no one could have imagined she could do. Chauncey certainly wouldn’t have thought she could. Too bad he couldn’t be here now to see her—to be amazed.
    She would have a thought like that and then somehow a feeling or two would get through tiny cracks in the shell the drugs had built around her, and she would have a moment of utter despair.
    But then it would go away. And she would be warm again, thinking once more about the early days. If she thought she was happy with Chauncey, she had no idea what having Henry would be like.
    Tolliver had introduced her to Chauncey, hadn’t he? It was vague in her mind now, but surely that was it. She’d known Tolliver all her life, and Chauncey was one of his fraternity brothers. A Deke—they’d been Dekes. Yes, it was Tolliver. She remembered it vividly, remembered seeing Chauncey towering over her, Tolliver dropping her hand, herself shaking Chauncey’s. She felt something like an electric shock. Years later, she tried to tell her children about it, but they only laughed at her. Yet, for all the foolish romance of it, it was utterly genuine. In that moment, she had recognized her mate.
    She could barely remember anything except Chauncey after that—dancing with him, eating crabs at the lake, kissing him, laughing, finally making love with him. It was ridiculous—her mind was like some stupid movie about a courtship. Literally all she remembered now were glowing romantic moments, lit always, always by Chauncey’s brown eyes. His lovely, velvety eyes.
    He was a senior and she a freshman when they met, and he didn’t propose till that summer, after her freshman year. Good God, she’d thought her parents would croak. Not only was Chauncey a nobody from out by the lake, but Bitty was too young to marry; she must go to college and
then
get married and never use an iota of her education.
    She offered her parents a deal—she’d finish her sophomore year and get married the next summer instead of right away. At first they argued about it, but her daddy (who’d always wanted a son) had taken a shine to Chauncey that wouldn’t quit. In the end she had the most elegant wedding since Weezee Bettencourt’s a good ten years earlier. And her daddy had practically adopted Chauncey, taking him into the bank and making him his protege.
    Then Henry was born, bald as a rock, wrinkled as a raisin, the prettiest thing