Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

  Crickets, she thought. They’ve serenaded me since the day I was born. Breathe in, breathe out. Right now I am sitting in the light of the moon. Right now my dog is beside me and we are taking a moon bath.

  Softly, unexpectedly, she began to sing. Something she had not done by herself in a long time. First off, she launched into “Blue Moon,” singing the alto part that her Aunt Jezie had taught her many years ago. When she finished that, she moved on to “Shine On, Harvest Moon,” accompanying her singing with light foot tapping when she came to the line, “I ain’t had no lovin’ since January, February, June, or July.”

  Lightly thumping her tail against the wooden steps, Hueylene watched her mistress. Sidda might as well have been singing dog lullabies. In fact, Sidda was singing a sort of lullaby, songs to calm the baby girl who’d lived inside herself for forty years. Sidda rubbed the crown of the dog’s head, where tufts of white fur sprouted like feathers against the otherwise buff-colored coat. As Sidda stroked, she began to roll her own head around in gentle circles, feeling the tightness in her neck and shoulders. How much does a human head weigh? Twenty, twenty-five pounds? She considered the tender stem that connected her head to her heart, and for a moment she experienced a trickle of gratitude. She wondered if it was possible for gratitude to replace anxiety.

  From Sidda’s pondering grew a hum. It drifted along until it blossomed into the song “Moon River.” She sang the words, remembering how for a period in the early sixties, after Breakfast at Tffany’s came out, that song had been her parents’ favorite. She remembered how it was to step into Chastain’s Restaurant with Vivi and Shep, and blush with delight as the piano player would stop whatever he was playing, and switch to “Moon River” in honor of her parents. How royal it made her whole family seem. Say it was a Saturday evening in what—1964—say it was end of summer, say they all wore a summer glow on their faces. Say Vivi wore a beige linen sheath; Shep wore a sports coat over a pair of khakis; Sidda and Lulu wore new sundresses; Little Shep and Baylor wore crisp polo shirts. Say the meal was lobster; all went well. Say they used finger bowls, Shep gave his old saw: “Lovely meal. I’m elephantly sufficed.”

  “Two drifters,” Sidda sang as she sat on the dock, “off to see the world. There’s such a lot of world to see.” She continued singing all the verses of the song, which Vivi had taught her.

  “My huckleberry friend,” she whispered in Hueylene’s ear when the last verse was finished. This made the cocker spaniel lay her blonde furry head on Sidda’s lap and give a great sigh. Sidda’s chest was opened, her head felt tingly and good. The singing had given the inside of her body a little massage.

  I learned to love singing from Mama, she thought. These days nobody sings the way Mama and the four of us used to do.

  What Sidda did not know was how much more singing there was when Vivi was growing up. That’s the kind of thing the history books don’t tell. How people sang outdoors all the time. How it was impossible to walk down the street in Thornton, Louisiana, in the thirties and forties and not hear somebody singing. Singing or whistling. Housewives singing while they hung out the clothes; old codgers whistling while they sat in front of the courthouse on River Street; gardeners humming while they weeded and hoed; children lilting and yodeling while they tore through the neighborhoods on their Schwinns and Radio Flyers. Even serious businessmen whistled on their way in and out of the bank. These were people with pianos, not TVs, in their living rooms. Their singing didn’t always mean they were happy; sometimes the tunes were dirges or the old hymns. Often the music flowed from black people whose songs touched a sadness inside Vivi that she herself had no words for. In those days, it seemed, everybody sang.

  When Sidda was growing up, Vivi led her four kids in song as she drove them to school on mornings they missed the bus. She taught each of them to whistle before they could spell, and she made sure they knew all her old camp songs and chosen favorites from the forties. Sidda and her siblings knew all the verses to “Pennsylvania 6-5000,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine,” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” before they knew how to tie their shoes by themselves.

  On good days, Vivi would sit at the baby grand that Buggy had given her, and pretend their living room was a piano bar. Sometimes even Shep joined in on tunes like “You Are My Sunshine” or “Yellow Rose of Texas.”

  At those times, Vivi would turn to him and say, “Great Scott! You have a marvelous voice. You should sing more often! Don’t hide your light under a bushel!”

  That would embarrass Shep, who would mumble, “You’re the performer in this family, Viviane,” and wander off to the kitchen to freshen his drink.

  Sidda loved the moments when her father joined in the free-for-all rambunctiousness her mother encouraged. These occasions were rare, as were any moments with him. Shep loved his children; he loved his wife. But he knew a lot more about farming and duck hunting than he did about being part of a family. Mostly he stuck to what he was good at. Sidda can count the number of times she was ever alone with her father, and most of those were after she was grown. He was a man with his own brand of rural poetry, but its expression was gruff with bourbon and unarticulated melancholy.

  Shep Walker did not fly as high as Vivi, but every so often, unpredictably, he was capable of unbounded whimsy. Like the Christmas Eve he came home with cowgirl and cowboy outfits, complete with hats and boots, for each member of the family, including a ridiculous little bitty cowboy hat for their cocker spaniel. He was so delighted with himself that he managed to charm Vivi into allowing all of them (except the dog) to wear the getups to Christmas Mass. After Mass, as friends gathered round the Walkers, who looked like a wild offshoot Western singing group gone wrong, Vivi laughed and said, “Saint Shep the Baptist thought Our Lady of Divine Compassion Parish needed a kick in the butt.”

  As a young man, Shep Walker had been a good-looking lady-killing sleeper of a gentleman farmer who married Vivi Abbott because he coveted her irrepressible vitality. He never stopped to consider why he needed such vigor. Nor did he suspect that Vivi’s animation had a dark side. It never crossed young Shep Walker’s mind that Vivi might, as the years passed, wear him out. The physical attraction they shared when they were courting was almost overpowering, and it had a way of resurfacing over the years, unbidden and sometimes unwanted, after long droughts of blame and abstinence.

  For her part, Vivi married Shep Walker because she adored the sound of his voice; because she loved how he looked so confident after she kissed him; and because—at first—he made her feel like a star. And because she no longer believed, at age twenty-four, that it mattered all that much whom she married.

  Vivi once told Sidda, “I meant to marry Paul Newman, but Joanne Woodward got him first. After that, I didn’t give a damn.”

  It was this devil dance between Shep’s quiet melancholy and Vivi’s frenzied charm—all of it oiled with an endless stream of Jack Daniel’s—that sculpted Sidda’s impression of marriage.

  Later, back inside the cabin, Sidda made a glass of Earl Grey iced tea, and pulled a floor lamp and chair out onto the deck so she wouldn’t lose sight of the moon. The minute she sat down with her mother’s scrapbook, Hueylene flopped a cloth toy against Sidda’s leg, announcing that it was time for a game of tug-of-war. Looking at the dog, Sidda had to laugh. The dog’s huge eyes, slightly elongated nose, and curly flaps of ears were so familiar and lovable. Sidda got down on her knees and pulled on the toy and growled. The dog was delighted, and they played till Sidda gave up and let Hueylene win.

  Picking the scrapbook back up, Sidda took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment before she opened it again. Unfold to me. Let me unfold.

  When she opened her eyes, she beheld an invitation. Engraved in script on a card of white bristol board, the invitation read:

  Mr. Taylor Charles Abbott

  requests the pleasure of your

  company at a dance in honor of his daughter

  Miss Viviane Abbott

/>   Friday the eighteenth of December

  One thousand nine hundred and forty-two

  at eight o’clock

  Theodore Hotel Ballroom

  Thornton, Louisiana

  December, 1942. It must have been some sort of sweet-sixteen ball. Had they really carried on with such grand events even during the war? Sidda turned the card over. Where in the hell was her grandmother’s name? The omission took her breath away. Was it an oversight? If this blackballing of her grandmother was intentional, then what did it mean?

  Once again, she longed to be able to pick up the telephone and simply ask her mother. But Vivi had made her feelings clear: do not call.

  Sidda looked at her watch. Nine o’clock. Eleven o’clock Louisiana time. Caro would still be awake. She’d just be gearing up, downing the thick black Community coffee she adored. The one true Ya-Ya night owl would still be receiving phone calls, unless her life had radically changed. Up until The New York Times interview, Caro still called Sidda every couple of months and always after midnight. But they had not spoken since the offending article. Not since Vivi had handed down the fatwa.

  Grabbing a flashlight and Hueylene’s leash, Sidda and her cocker spaniel struck out for the phone booth at the Quinault Merc. The road was deserted, all the happy campers bedded down for the night. When Sidda passed the Quinault Lodge, she saw the warm lights in the lobby still burning, and felt a little comfort knowing that she could wander in there anytime she wanted, if she grew tired of being alone. She liked the late-night buzz she felt; she liked the frisson she experienced as she set forth to sleuth out information about Vivi Abbott, age sixteen.

  “Eatin’ cheese biscuits and playing with the damn-fool CD-ROM, that’s what I’m doing,” Caro said, drawing in a ragged emphysemic breath. “How about you, Pal?”

  “Caro,” Sidda said, “I’m out here on the edge of the United States, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life.”

  “That is a filthy habit for such a lovely girl,” Caro said in a near-perfect Groucho Marx voice.

  Sidda laughed, picturing the way Caro’s shoulders shrugged when she tossed off a comment like that. “I can’t help it, I’m an addict.”

  Sidda sat on the narrow shelf of a bench inside one of the few 1950s vintage public phone booths left in North America. She unhooked Hueylene’s leash, and gave her a command to sit.

  “Don’t corrupt that word ‘addict,’ Goddamnit,” Caro said. “I’m fed up with everybody claiming they’re addicted. You’re just a ponderer, Sidda, that’s all. Have been since you were four. It’s your nature. What else is new?”

  “You don’t sound very surprised to hear from me.”

  “Should I be?”

  “After—well, all the mess with—”

  “With that fat-ass New York reporter? Come on, what do you take me for?”

  “My mother’s best friend.”

  “That’s true,” Caro said, then paused. “I’m also your godmother.”

  “You’re not upset with me?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Then why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you write?”

  “Well, to quote that pointy-head idiot, George Bush, it wouldn’t have been prudent.”

  “Caro, when have you ever been prudent?”

  “When it comes to my friends, I have been known on occasion to be prudent.”

  There was a silence while Sidda thought of how to respond.

  “I sent Blaine and Richard up to see your play,” Caro said. “You know that, don’t you? I sent my ex-husband and his boyfriend up there to see your tour de force and report back to me.”

  Sidda never stopped marveling at Caro. Growing up, Caro’s husband, Blaine, had always turned heads in the French Quarter. But when he finally left Caro for the man he’d been secretly seeing in New Orleans, it had rocked the whole Ya-Ya universe. That was eight or nine years ago. After threatening Blaine with an unloaded gun and tearing up an entire portfolio of architectural drawings for a house he was designing, Caro had finally forgiven him.

  As she had explained things the last time Sidda had been home two years earlier, “It’s a shock, but it’s not a surprise. And the fact is, I really like Richard. The man can cook, for God’s sake. Nobody has cooked for me since Mama died.”

  Blaine moved to New Orleans to live with Richard, but they were always driving up to Thornton to stay with Caro, especially since she’d been diagnosed with emphysema.

  “I know Blaine and Richard saw the show,” Sidda said. “I mean, Connor and I took them out while they were in New York. But what do you mean you sent them?”

  “I mean,” Caro said, “I bought the Goddamn tickets for the play and I instructed the lovebirds that if they didn’t come back with a detailed description of Women on the Cusp, and graphic particulars on how you looked, sounded, and behaved, that I would turn them over to the Divine Compassion vice squad.”

  “And?”

  “The boyfriends told me not to worry. Said you were gracious, good-looking, if a little thin; sad about your mama, but proud of your success. And that they—and I quote: ‘adored’ Connor McGill. If I recall correctly, Richard said, ‘He’s Liam Neeson crossed with a young Hank Fonda, who’s spent a few sessions on the couch.’ ”

  “Jesus!” Sidda said. “How do you put up with those two?! Scuse me a second, please, Caro—Hueylene, get back over here!” Sidda called out to the spaniel, who was starting a slow lumbering across the road in the direction of the lake.

  “Sorry, the dog was wandering off,” she apologized.

  “Is that code language for something?” Caro asked.

  “No!” Sidda laughed, realizing she had just uttered the kind of phrase the Ya-Yas would use to convey a piece of information they didn’t want anyone else to understand. “It’s Hueylene, the theater dog.”

  “Are you still carrying that dog around with you everywhere you go?”

  “Yes,” Sidda said. “She has this thing like epilepsy, you know. I don’t like to kennel her. Connor calls it ‘puppylepsy.’ She’s on downers.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve turned into a nut,” Caro said.

  “You should talk, Caro!” Sidda said. “You’re the woman who once raised a litter of four beagles, if I recall.”

  “Now, what about this hunk Connor? What about—”

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” Sidda said, changing the subject. She did not want to discuss her postponement of the wedding with Caro. “How do you put up with Blaine and Richard?”

  “I not only put up with them, I relish them. Blaine’s ten times more fun. Every time Blaine and Richard come to visit, they cook, redecorate, and throw me a party. How could I not enjoy the hell out of them?”

  Caro then began to cough. It was a horrible, ragged cough that hurt Sidda’s chest to hear. She pictured the Caro she grew up knowing: tall, tanned, athletic, emerging from swimming laps in Teensy’s pool, reaching for a cigarette before she’d even dried off. Baylor had told her that Caro’s battle with emphysema was up and down.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call, Pal,” Caro said softly. “It was just too Goddamn touchy down here with Vivi. She made us swear not to talk to you. Your mama’s terrified of betrayal. By the way, don’t let the coughing bother you. It sounds worse than it is—always flares up at night.”

  Sidda was quiet for a moment. “Do you feel I betrayed her?”

  “No, I don’t. I think The New York Times, and every other woman-hating publication in this country, would like to siphon the milk out of every single mother’s tits, and then blame them for being dry. But no, I do not think you meant to hurt your mother.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me, Sidda.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  Caro coughed again before she responded. Sidda winced.

  When Caro spoke, she sounded wary. “Depends on what it is.”

  “I found this invitation in Mama’s scrapbook. To a
dance thrown on her sixteenth birthday. My grandmother’s name is missing from the invitation. It reads like Buggy wasn’t even alive.”

  “You ask Vivi about it?”

  “She doesn’t want to talk about the scrapbook. In fact, Mama doesn’t want to talk to me at all. She says she sent the ‘Divine Secrets’ and that’s enough.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Isn’t what?” Sidda said.

  “Isn’t the scrapbook enough?” Caro said.

  “No, it’s not enough!” Sidda said. “It irritates me, it frustrates me to look through that scrapbook and only get inklings, only tiny slivers of information. No explanations for anything, no dramatic structure! When I know there must be stories, narratives that could solve—maybe not solve—but account for . . . Mama owes me some pointers, for God’s sake.”

  Sidda cleared her throat, embarrassed at her outburst. Caro didn’t speak for a moment.

  “You think your mama has something to do with your cold feet about Connor McGill?”

  “I don’t know,” Sidda said. “I’m a little shocked at my vehemence about all this, to tell you the truth.”

  “I’m not. You and your mama have broken each other’s hearts. But while you’re slinging arrows, let me remind you that you did—do—have a father, Sidda. Understandable that you should overlook him, vanishing act that he is. Not that that distinguishes him from any other Ya-Ya husband.”

  “Yeah, but Mama was always the star. Daddy was a bit player.”

  “How many years of therapy did you say you’ve had?”

  “Put it this way: with the money I’ve spent trying to deal with the ways Mama fucked me up, I could have retired at the age of thirty.”

  “Let me tell you something, Pal: your mother doesn’t owe you anything. You’re a grown-up. She fed you and clothed you and held you, even if she did have a drink in her hand while she was doing it. And however she fucked you up—and I’m sure she did—every mother fucks every kid up—she did it with style, you hear me?”