The Axeman's Jazz

Gerard ploy slightly modified. She introduced Skip as her colleague.
    The thing not only worked, Mrs. Breaux apparently couldn’t have been more delighted if the Queen of England had come calling. For a while she bustled about, settling them into a formal living room with glasses of iced tea. Then she sat down herself, snuggling well-padded posterior into wing chair and making no bones about the fact that her day was made.
    “You have a very nice house, Mrs. Breaux,” said Cindy Lou.
    “Isn’t it lovely? It was Jackie’s, of course—Diamara’s, I mean. I got it in the divorce settlement. She likes the action down in the Quarter and I like the quiet out here.” A shadow came over her face. “Or I thought I would. I never lived anywhere quite so fancy. Sometimes it gets a little too quiet.”
    She paused to repair her smile. “I’m so glad Jackie’s going to use some of those courses she’s always taking; she’s such an intelligent girl. I’ve always said how much potential she had. But then you won’t believe me—I’m her mama.”
    “That’s why we came. Who could possibly know her better?”
    “Well, you’re right about that. What can I tell you?”
    “Oh, I just thought we’d talk informally. The whole idea is just to get to know what kind of person she is. Why don’t you tell us about your family? Starting with you, for instance.”
    Cindy Lou made it seem so easy—just a friendly conversation over tea.
    “Oh, gosh, there’s nothing interesting about me.”
    “Well, you know, I’d never pick you for Di’s mother. She has such exotic looks, and the Cajun name—”
    “Oh, Lord, yes. I was Louise Wood from Cullman, Alabama. Met Jimmy Breaux and thought I never saw anything so tall, dark, and handsome in all my days. And charming! The man could talk you out of everything you owned, and did, most of the time. He was in sales. There was a downside, though. Isn’t that what they say today?”
    Skip and Cindy Lou nodded, spellbound, knowing she was going to talk until she was talked out and that they were soon going to know enough about Diamara Breaux to write her biography.
    “What was the downside?”
    “Well, I moved here with him and everything went real well for a year or so. Then, I don’t know, Jimmy just seemed to lose interest in everything; couldn’t seem to get out of bed, even. Then all of a sudden he got better and next thing you know he disappeared.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “Well, that wasn’t the worst of it. He started writing bad checks. Dear God, what a nightmare!”
    Skip said, “Tsk tsk,” but nothing else, not wanting to stem the flow.
    “It kept happening, that was the really sad part. That time I was pregnant and I was still in love with him. Later on, I don’t know if I was in love or not, but I had two kids—Jackie was the oldest. It was only years and years later somebody put a name to it. The long and short of it was, I married a manic-depressive.” She stopped, nodded, and let it sink in. “A manic-depressive. Can you imagine?
    “He’d get manic and he’d go off and, frankly, he’d turn into a con man. Then he’d get depressed and he’d come home and just lie there.”
    Cindy Lou said, “Sounds kind of hard on the kids.”
    “The amazing thing is, they took it better than any kids you could ever imagine. Now, Mary Leigh, she had some problems, but Jackie never did. You’d have thought she came from the best home in the world. Funny how kids can adjust, isn’t it?”
    “What was she like as a child?”
    “Oh, always dreaming, always making up stories. And into everything—curiosity almost killed her—you know, like the cat? She’d do anything just to see what it felt like. More scrapes and bumps than any kid in the neighborhood—any girl, anyhow. But the main thing about her was she was always so optimistic. Mary Leigh’d make bad grades and do bad things—break things, sometimes on purpose, it seemed like. Jackie just always saw the good side—always thought things were going to turn out all right. Never had a sad day in her life, that child. Even when the girls were at the Ellzeys’.”
    She stopped to sip from her glass, a lecturer in mid-performance. “Jimmy’d go and he’d come back and then he’d go again, and when he came back he’d be real sick, and I could tell he really needed me. So somehow I never got around to thinking about getting divorced and maybe finding someone new. But that meant I had to keep things together