Read Online Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rebecca Wells
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drafting table, looking over drawings. How he stroked her and how he smiled and how she groaned, Oh, these drawings are so lovely. She missed him, she wanted him. She resented the fact that each time she thought of him she grew simultaneously moist in her groin and tight in her chest.
She turned to look inside the cabin. Vivi’s album sat on the table. She took a step closer and leaned her face against the screen of the door, like a child might do. She raised her glass to the scrapbook in a private little toast. The album drew her back inside.
Leaning over the scrapbook, she opened to a page nearthe front. What she found was a cardboard placard with the number 39 written on it. Next to it was a piece of paper on which a childish hand had written the following, so that it looked like the beginning of a newspaper article:
VIVI’S VERY IMPORTANT NEWS
ISSUE NO. 1
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1934
GIRLS POOT AND GET DISQUALIFIED
BY VIVIANE ABBOTT. AGE 8
Sidda smiled and turned the paper over, but it was blank. No story followed, there was only that heading. She scoured the nearby pages for more, but she could find no further information from “Vivi’s Very Important News.” She knew exactly who those girls were. 1934. The depths of the Great Depression. Huey Long was Governor of Louisiana—or dictator, depending on your viewpoint and your parish. She knew that Eugene O’Neill’s play Days Without End had premiered that year, and that Pirandello received the Nobel Prize for Literature. But she did not have the faintest idea what her mother had been disqualified from, or who had done the disqualifying.
Shaking her head, she absentmindedly reached down to stroke Hueylene. If only that scrapbook could talk, she thought. Our Lady of Cherubim Chit-Chat, if only that scrapbook could talk.
7
V ivi Abbott Walker knew she wasn’t supposed to be drinking, and she knew she wasn’t supposed to be smoking. That is why, after she’d cleared the dinner things and said good- night to Shep, she felt a little thrill as she stepped out on the back patio with a snifter of Courvoisier and a cigarette. She sat down at the wrought-iron patio table where she’d set up the Ouija board. She lit candles on the silver candelabra, which had been one of the many wedding gifts fron Teensy’s mother, Genevieve. Then she went into a little trance.
She didn’t pose any questions. She just sat there with the candlelight and the Ouija board and the sounds of the cicadas and the appealing idea that she was some kind of medium.
One hand rested lightly on the pointer, and Vivi smiled as it slid across the board and spelled out the numbers “1,” “9,” “3,” and “4.”
Ah yes, Vivi thought, my first encounter with Hollywood.
Vivi, 1934
You have got to have exactly fifty-six curls if you want a chance to win the Shirley Temple Look-Alike Contest. Meand my best buddies, Caro and Teensy and Necie, spent all morning at the beauty parlor getting our hair just perfect.
Miss Beverly’s Beauty Parlor was so busy you would have thought it was New York City. Teensy’s mama, Genevieve, took us there to have our hair changed from rags to curls. Genevieve is the one who helped us all get our hair and costumes ready for the Shirley Temple Look-Alike Contest. Yesterday morning she rolled our hair in rags and we were supposed to keep them in all day and all night.
But Caro ripped her rags out in her sleep. When we got to the beauty parlor, her hair was lying there straight as little boards. She said, “Those rags made my scalp itch and they pulled my eyes back like a Chinaman’s, so I ripped them out and threw them in the garbage.”
I know what she means. I’ve still got twitches around my temples that I sure hope go away before I grow up.
“I’m gonna wear Lowell’s aviator cap,” Caro said, and she whipped out her brother’s cap, plopped it on her head, and tucked her hair underneath.
“What a splendid idea,” Genevieve said. “Très
She turned to look inside the cabin. Vivi’s album sat on the table. She took a step closer and leaned her face against the screen of the door, like a child might do. She raised her glass to the scrapbook in a private little toast. The album drew her back inside.
Leaning over the scrapbook, she opened to a page nearthe front. What she found was a cardboard placard with the number 39 written on it. Next to it was a piece of paper on which a childish hand had written the following, so that it looked like the beginning of a newspaper article:
VIVI’S VERY IMPORTANT NEWS
ISSUE NO. 1
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1934
GIRLS POOT AND GET DISQUALIFIED
BY VIVIANE ABBOTT. AGE 8
Sidda smiled and turned the paper over, but it was blank. No story followed, there was only that heading. She scoured the nearby pages for more, but she could find no further information from “Vivi’s Very Important News.” She knew exactly who those girls were. 1934. The depths of the Great Depression. Huey Long was Governor of Louisiana—or dictator, depending on your viewpoint and your parish. She knew that Eugene O’Neill’s play Days Without End had premiered that year, and that Pirandello received the Nobel Prize for Literature. But she did not have the faintest idea what her mother had been disqualified from, or who had done the disqualifying.
Shaking her head, she absentmindedly reached down to stroke Hueylene. If only that scrapbook could talk, she thought. Our Lady of Cherubim Chit-Chat, if only that scrapbook could talk.
7
V ivi Abbott Walker knew she wasn’t supposed to be drinking, and she knew she wasn’t supposed to be smoking. That is why, after she’d cleared the dinner things and said good- night to Shep, she felt a little thrill as she stepped out on the back patio with a snifter of Courvoisier and a cigarette. She sat down at the wrought-iron patio table where she’d set up the Ouija board. She lit candles on the silver candelabra, which had been one of the many wedding gifts fron Teensy’s mother, Genevieve. Then she went into a little trance.
She didn’t pose any questions. She just sat there with the candlelight and the Ouija board and the sounds of the cicadas and the appealing idea that she was some kind of medium.
One hand rested lightly on the pointer, and Vivi smiled as it slid across the board and spelled out the numbers “1,” “9,” “3,” and “4.”
Ah yes, Vivi thought, my first encounter with Hollywood.
Vivi, 1934
You have got to have exactly fifty-six curls if you want a chance to win the Shirley Temple Look-Alike Contest. Meand my best buddies, Caro and Teensy and Necie, spent all morning at the beauty parlor getting our hair just perfect.
Miss Beverly’s Beauty Parlor was so busy you would have thought it was New York City. Teensy’s mama, Genevieve, took us there to have our hair changed from rags to curls. Genevieve is the one who helped us all get our hair and costumes ready for the Shirley Temple Look-Alike Contest. Yesterday morning she rolled our hair in rags and we were supposed to keep them in all day and all night.
But Caro ripped her rags out in her sleep. When we got to the beauty parlor, her hair was lying there straight as little boards. She said, “Those rags made my scalp itch and they pulled my eyes back like a Chinaman’s, so I ripped them out and threw them in the garbage.”
I know what she means. I’ve still got twitches around my temples that I sure hope go away before I grow up.
“I’m gonna wear Lowell’s aviator cap,” Caro said, and she whipped out her brother’s cap, plopped it on her head, and tucked her hair underneath.
“What a splendid idea,” Genevieve said. “Très
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