Crescent City Connection

first place.”
    “Well, I can tell you about that. I can tell you a lot about that. You’ve probably read about me in People magazine and the New York Times and all those kinds of things and what you see is the Rosemarie of today. When I think back to Rosemarie at fourteen, I could just cry.” The words were pouring out of her so fast she was tripping over them. Skip suspected her life with Jacomine was something she didn’t often think about and couldn’t talk about—with anyone.
    “Rosemarie in those days was a plain little thing—to look at me today, you’d never believe it. Plain and scared. I lived completely in my head, was what I did. I read a lot. I’ll bet that surprises you, doesn’t it? You probably think I’m just some brassy blonde who marries rich men, but let me tell you something, honey. You don’t get out of Savannah unless you’ve got some idea what the outside world is like. You die of claustrophobia or become a drunk. I knew the world through books, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to go places and meet people!
    “But I was this plain little pudgy girl from the most ordinary family you can name—my daddy was an accountant, and my mama was a cashier in a drugstore. They were Southern Baptists, and they made me go to church twice a day on Sunday and once on Wednesday night. Now, how was a girl like that gonna go anywhere or do anything? I wanted to see England; I wanted to see France; I wanted to see someone’s underpants. How old are you, Detective?”
    “I’m, uh—”
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude. You’re under thirty, aren’t you? Or maybe around there—you’ve already made detective. However old you are, you have no idea what the world was like then. My mama told me that people didn’t have sex outside of marriage unless they were very, very low-rent. But you see, I read novels, so I knew they did—outside Savannah, of course. I bet you think Peyton Place never existed before the TV series.
    “My mama never touched me that I can remember. Now, isn’t that pathetic? I don’t even remember her hugging me. Are you getting a picture here, Detective?”
    Rosemarie had become so excited Skip had to hold the phone an inch from her ear. “Are you saying the combination made you—uh …”
    She was about to say “vulnerable,” or something like it, but Rosemarie finished for her: “Hot to trot. I was easy prey for somebody like Earl Jackson, who preyed on … easy prey. I remember the first time he touched me, walking me home from school. Put his arm around my waist, and I thought I’d burn up. Is he still as ugly as he ever was?”
    “He’s not my type.”
    “Little weasely-looking fellow. I didn’t care. I just wanted to be touched. By anybody. And then, too, he knew quite a few ways to tap into interesting sensations I didn’t know the human body was capable of. Poor a specimen as he was, I always wondered what he saw in me—well, I think I know now.
    “First of all, I was a real easy target. Second, I had such low self-esteem he could pretty much push me around any old way he wanted. Third—and maybe this is important—he had this Pygmalion thing.”
    “I beg your pardon?” Skip hadn’t expected to hear her say that—Rosemarie was an odd combination of sophisticated and down-home Southern.
    “He wanted to make me into the woman he wanted. Like a Stepford wife or something. I lost weight and got pretty sexy for him, which was his downfall in the end because then I figured out he wasn’t the only fish I could catch. But that wasn’t why I left him. Uh-uh.
    “What happened was I got pregnant and we ran away. I had no more idea what a baby was or how to be a mama than I knew how to fly. I wanted to see the world, and I saw Dothan, Alabama.
    “I wasn’t a good mama. I was a lousy mama. I had zero patience with my child, and I yelled at him and swatted him sometimes, when he got to be three or four. But I knew one thing—I knew you weren’t supposed to suck a baby’s penis.”
    “I … what?”
Did I hear her right?
    “I guess I caught you off guard there. Well, Earl got pushier and pushier and more and more abusive, bashing me around, telling me what to do, treating me like a slave, to tell you the truth. And he wanted me to do weird sexual things—I’m not going to go into that right now. But you asked me why I left him. I left him because, when Daniel was a baby he’d cry and keep us up at night, and Earl wanted me to suck his