Big Easy Bonanza

subject I could understand, I’d be glad to talk to you.”
    “You sat right there in that chair, Haygood.”
    “I did not sit right there in that chair.”
    And so it would go.
    They would fight about a quart of milk, but Merrie Mac would never ask to move—to get out of that drafty, dark old house on Louisiana Avenue, that house that she complained of all day long to Bitty and then at night to Haygood as well. She’d say she got so depressed in there she felt like slitting her wrists; and she’d say it was so drafty she guessed that’s why she was sick again. But she’d never say, “Haygood, let’s move.”
    She was afraid of him, and so was Bitty. Before she was nine, Bitty figured out that bickering and complaining was her mother’s way of getting back at him because she didn’t dare ask for what she wanted. Bitty didn’t question why Merrie Mac never asked. She knew. Her father would give something only if it suited him. He didn’t give a damn what anyone else wanted unless it meshed with his own plans.
    Bitty got the bicycle she wanted for Christmas, but little Gilford Del Monte also got a bicycle that year and Haygood didn’t want to be outdone, so he got her a better one than his friend Hugh got for his son. It wasn’t the color she wanted, and it was too big for her. She was afraid to ride it, and the first time she did she fell off.
    When she asked for a puppy, Haygood said, “You wouldn’t take care of it, Bitty; you know that. Look at that bicycle just rusting out in the garage.”
    He hadn’t wanted her anyway. He wanted a boy. She had to learn to hunt and fish instead of taking ballet lessons, even though she hated worms and, frankly, anything outdoors at all. For a while she even had to take riding lessons, but she was so terrified of the horses that eventually the teachers wouldn’t allow the screaming, clinging little creature in her specially made miniature jodhpurs anywhere near their stable. (“Another reason you couldn’t take care of an animal. You’re scared to death of ’em.”)
    Merrie Mac was sick nearly all the time. She didn’t have any one thing, but she had the flu a lot, and stomach complaints, and inner-ear trouble, and sometimes headaches. She had two favorite topics of conversation—her husband’s failings and her health. In the afternoons, after school, she would tell Bitty what was wrong with her this time and what the doctor had done about it and how it hadn’t worked and what he had done next and how that hadn’t worked either, and what he was finally trying now.
    When Bitty met Chauncey he had seemed a miracle—vigorous, full of life, not sick like her mother, not a drunk like her father. She wanted him to save her from their darkness. And she wanted to have children with him—strong, healthy children that she couldn’t have with just anybody, given her background. Perfect children she’d never neglect, and neither would Chauncey.
    Hurt, Tolliver had said, “Somehow I always thought you and I—I guess I just assumed…”
    “Oh, Tolliver!”
    Thin, pale Tolliver? So quiet, almost effete. But she could see why he’d thought that. He had plenty of reason to think that. Their families were close. They’d grown up together, almost—gone out with groups of kids, paired off and dated. She loved him and felt more comfortable, safer with Tolliver than she ever had with anyone. He was like a first cousin who was almost a brother. And, when she thought about it, she’d never dated anyone else before Chauncey—never had the least inclination or interest. She supposed, in some corner of her mind, that she had “always assumed” as well, or would have if she’d thought about it.
    But she hadn’t. The idea of marriage hadn’t come up yet. If Tolliver had proposed, she’d probably have married him, but only after taking time to think about it and wondering why it hadn’t occurred to her before.
    Chauncey was like one of those horses she’d been so frightened of—a force you couldn’t argue with. She’d always known—with the horses—that riding would be the most exhilarating thing she’d ever done if she weren’t so afraid. She knew it would be that way with Chauncey—and she wasn’t afraid for a second.
    The priest was doing something odd now. He was starting to talk as if there were just a few people gathered in the cavernous church instead of hundreds, from the mayor to some of the street musicians Chauncey had befriended. He was