Lousiana Hotshot

divulge your mama’s secrets, but I know what I know.”
    There it was— the same old thing again. “What
is
this thing with secrets?”
    “Now, hush, Sandra. You just hush now.” He spoke just above a whisper; Talba could imagine him speaking that way to his demented wife. “By the time your daddy died, your mama had moved on. She had other things on her mind. Yes, ma’am. Yes, she did.”
    “You sound as if you remember when he died.”
    For the first time, he seemed confused. “Well, now, I can’t say I do exactly. The service must have been somewhere else— maybe his woman’s church, or his parents’. But one thing I can say for sure. Miz Clara wasn’t studying on that man anymore. She had moved on from that.”
    Suddenly the light started to dawn, so clearly she didn’t see how she could have been so stupid. “Are you saying my mama had a boyfriend?”
    “Child, you know I can’t talk about something like that. You know I can’t. If Miz Clara won’t talk about her own life, far be it from me.” He stood up. “Let me just check on Ella.”
    When he came back, Talba had readied herself to leave, a process that took only a little longer than leaving Lura Blanchard had. After many thank-yous and be-goods and take-care-of-yourselfs and promises not to be a stranger, they finally severed the connection.
    Talba was a little disoriented, but otherwise okay. Feeling turtlelike, that was all. And utterly unprepared to see Darryl’s car in front of her house when she arrived. Darryl was coming down the walk, just leaving.
    “How’s Your Grace this fine afternoon?” He was trying to be his old easy self, but there was something stiff about him.
    “Embarrassed,” Talba said. “Humiliated beyond all imagining. Abject. Do you think you could possibly ever forgive me?”
    He relaxed a bit. “Consider it done. But we do have to talk— I’m not kidding. I got worried when I couldn’t get you on the phone.”
    “I was too embarrassed to call.”
    “Can we talk?”
    She shrugged, wondering what fresh hell this was. “If we go somewhere else. I’m not in the mood for Miz Clara right now.”
    “Nor am I. Let’s take a walk, why don’t we? City Park, maybe. Or maybe not. Too many flying horses. Maybe out by the lake.”
    Talba thought that ideal— the man was better than a doctor. She got in the car with him and started up again. “I don’t know what got into me— I swear to God I don’t.”
    “If I had to guess, I’d say it was frustration. You’re right. They’re all lying to you. They even kind of know they’re wrong, but they can’t
not
do it.”
    She whirled toward him. “You know something I don’t.”
    He laughed. “Uh-uh. Not till we get there. Think about something else till we get there.”
    He thought that was funny. He didn’t have a clue how blank she could make her mind, how easy it was for her to settle back in her shell— the more stress, the easier. And this was stress. Smugly, she idled her mind, and not until they were walking did he speak.
    “You’re not going to blink first?”
    “You challenged me. But enough’s enough. Out with it.”
    He picked up a stone and skipped it across the silvery surface. “Unfortunately, there is no it. Nobody told me what it is— -just
that
it is. Goddam, Baroness. Something’s funny in your family.”
    “Come on— everything! Now.”
    “Well, first Corey. Frankly, my dear, you were a tiny bit out of line.”
    “Don’t remind me.”
    “But did he get upset? No, he got protective.”
    “Yeah, I noticed it too.”
    “And there was Miz Clara, waiting up for us with hot milk… he’d called her, of course. But you’d have thought she’d be panicked. I mean, what it looked like, speaking from the outside, was that the very distinguished Baroness de Pontalba had just flipped her famous lid.”
    “Oh, God, it’s going to get around town.”
    He dismissed that one. “You’re a poet. You can get away with it. But Miz Clara almost seemed to be expecting it. And she did talk to me.”
    “You’ve been holding out on me.”
    “Uh-uh. I didn’t learn a thing, except that
they’re
holding out on you. She said I had to be especially nice to you, that you’d been a real nervous child, and the family was always ‘scared something would happen.’”
    “Scared what would happen?”
    “You got me. I asked her specifically. All she’d do is put her lips together and shake her head. So I got tired of it, finally. I