EVERY OTHER THURSDAY

By Jim Oliver

Doreen Trahan a recent widow in her mid-thirties from New Jersey - naive, socially challenged and of very moderate means - is invited to visit Rive Perdue, Louisiana by her wealthy sister-in-law Lois Trahan.

Through a bi-weekly women's club called "Every Other Thursday" dedicated to "educational presentations" Lois introduces D

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amazon Book Marketing Pros
• Release date: Dec 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9798869062321

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EVERY OTHER THURSDAY

By Jim Oliver

Copyright ©Jim Oliver, 2023

All Rights Reserved

This book is subject to the condition that no part of this book is to be reproduced, transmitted in any form or means; electronic or mechanical, stored in a retrieval system, photocopied, recorded, scanned, or otherwise. Any of these actions require the proper written permission of the author.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter  16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

CHAPTER 1

Through the tinted windshield of her Lincoln Town Car, the flat, green fields along the highway on her approach to Lafayette, Louisiana appeared fresh and cool to Lois Trahan.  Even the water, deep and clear in roadside ditches, looked inviting to passersby tempted to stop their cars on this torrid August day, kick off their shoes, and wade there up to their knees in a childish moment of refreshment.  But not Lois.   She knew that if she were to stop her car and open the heavy driver’s door she would be whacked upside her face by a wall of heat and humidity.  The same wall awaited her at the Lafayette Airport where her sister-in-law Doreen stood at this moment, bag and baggage, waiting to be met.

As she neared Lafayette, Lois tried to remember the specifics of Doreen’s face, to retrieve her image as she might a photograph, but no matter the context in which she placed Doreen during the only three days they had ever spent together, Doreen’ face would not come into focus.  Her tallness, yes; her stooped shoulders, yes, heavy with the shock of having to bury her husband.  But little else.  Lois could not recall the features of the pale woman who had wandered about the little house in Cherry Hill from small room to small room.  Only Doreen’s height and hair remained in Lois’s memory.  She had had to remind Doreen to wash her hair the morning they buried Billy.  Come, she had said gently, steering Doreen toward the bathroom.  We’ll get your hair clean.  Doreen allowed this, changing from dirty blonde to sorghum honey.

Lois wondered now what impulse beyond the vague one of family had caused her to invite her weeping and recently widowed sister-in-law to come stay with her.   Oh, the words had fairly burbled from Lois’s lips in Rive Perdue to Doreen’s ears in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.   She had blithely told her Doreen that she was to pack her bags and get away from that awful, lonely place and come to her in Louisiana where she could at least be around normal people. 

Well.  Doreen was coming.  She wasn’t just coming, she was probably already here and the two of them would have to make the best of this. 

Lois reminded herself that life was a basically unstable condition, like the Delta mud on which she lived.  You go along just fine, for a long time if you’re lucky, then something awful crawls up through the muck and grabs you by your feet and tries to pull you down into itself. 

In a surge of acceleration the Town Car moved toward the sign which announced Arrivals/Departures.

Doreen, you poor thing! she called to her sister-in-law across the roof of the Lincoln.   You must be cooked through!

Doreen stood in wilted hair and darkened armpits amid a wildly unmatched collection of bags and wrapped objects at curbside, far more than Lois had expected to see. 

Oh, said Doreen wearily.   This isn’t so bad. 

Lois stabbed a button on her armrest.  The trunk lid popped and yawned.  She left the car, breathed in a small amount of sultry air and set about getting Doreen and her things inside as quickly as possible.  Doreen stared at Lois’s smart skirt and spiked heels, then she glanced at her own limp dress and scuffed, damp sneakers. 

What? said Lois.

Nothing, replied Doreen.

Doreen reached for the closest of two large suitcases then thought better of her attention to luggage before her attention to Lois and let go of the bag.  She moved to embrace the wife of her dead husband’s dead brother.  Hello, she said.  You were so sweet to invite me.

Mary and Joseph!  Lois, waved the perspiring woman away from her and toward her piles of bags.  We can hug in the car, child.

Doreen heaved and handed while Lois loaded, grunting as she lifted the final piece, a box tied round many times with frayed Manila rope.   "What is this?  Lead?"

No.  A present.  It’s a present for you.

I hope you had a porter.

No.  I carried it.

"From in there? asked Lois.  Doreen, get in the car.  You’re about to melt."

Inside the Lincoln, Lois adjusted the air conditioner to its coldest setting.  She waved toward the glove box.  Kleenex, she said.

Kleenex, repeated Doreen.

In there.  Kleenex.  Get you some.

Doreen pulled a couple of wads from the box and blotted her sweaty eyelids. 

Okay.  We are out of here, Lois declared, pulling away from the terminal’s curb.  Then she stopped the car and put it into Park.  She leaned over toward Doreen.  A hug.  I’m sorry.  I’m glad you came, Doreen.

Me, too.

I’m goin’ to make sure you have a fine time.  Deciding to cut to the chase, Lois added, Now.  How long can you stay?

Doreen raked back her stringy hair.  That depends how long you want me.

Well.  You just stay as long as you like.  Lois put the car into gear and nosed out of the airport toward Route 90, South.    She felt some tension now that Doreen was with her.  The two had not ever talked much, even at Billy’s funeral.

Doreen’s face was inches from a dashboard vent.  How do you take this?

Take what?

"The heat, Doreen said quietly.  ... Not the heat.  The wetness in this air.  It’s like a steam room or something."

We just don’t pay it much attention, said Lois.  

Billy hated the heat, said Doreen.  He didn’t really like the south at all, in fact.  Even when it isn’t hot... He wouldn’t come back here.  He just refused.  That’s partly why this trip is so important for me, she said with what sounded to Lois like false enthusiasm.   So different from New Jersey.

The flatness, suggested Lois.

Well, Doreen said, finally sitting back from her vent.  I was thinking more the people.  A few of them talked to me at the airport while I was waiting.  There’s something about the pace here, the way people talk.  In New Jersey we try to get a lot of information into the shortest possible period of time.  Down here there’re lots of pauses?  Almost like little invitations to say something.  If you felt like it.

You just haven’t talked with the right people, observed Lois dryly over the steering wheel.

She did not want to stare, but the woman beside her was a study in discomposure.  If Doreen wore makeup, it had either dissolved or evaporated.  Even her shoes looked soggy.  Listen, Lois said cheerfully.  I hope I did the right thing.  I don’t want to be tellin’ you how you spend your time here - I want this to be like a vacation for you - but I invited a few of my girlfriends over to meet you tomorrow afternoon.

That’ll be fun, said Doreen with a wan smile.

Lois looked again at her passenger who was now holding out her blouse and blowing air down through the neck opening.  She had a good, wholesome face and was quite pretty - travel peakedness aside.  Nothing a long shower and the judicious application of blush couldn’t cure.

I invited Tippy, Chloe, Jeanette, and Putsey, Lois went on in order to fill their space.  They’re my best friends.  After Walker Neal died, they all just sort of adopted me.  It’s odd when I think about it now.  We had a lot of friends, Walker Neal and me.   People comin’ in and out of the house at all times of the day and night.  But when he dropped dead, most of them just sort of dropped away.  Oh, they’d call every now and then, but they stopped comin’ by.  I like that old custom - just droppin’ by.  I missed it a lot after Walker Neal was gone.

.... Lois?  Could I say something?

Well, sure.

"I wanted us to come. To Walker’s funeral?  Billy and me.  But he wouldn’t do it.  He just refused.  All he’d say was that he’d never come back here again.   Ever.  I said, ‘Even for your brother’s funeral?’  And he said, No, he wouldn’t.  The next morning I said to him, ‘Well, I’m going.  One of us has to.’  And you know what he said to me?  He said to me, ‘You can’t go without me, how would that look?  And I’m not going, so that’s that.’ ... I’ve felt awful for years about that.  And then when you came up for Billy’s funeral, I felt worse.  You came right away and you stayed for days.  You cleaned my house for me, and you made all those calls I couldn’t make.  And you went to that horrible casket place with me.... not much of that was about Billy, either. 

"You know what I feeling at the time of his funeral, Lois?  Not grief.  Oh, I liked him enough.  I just felt absolutely helpless.  I couldn’t make a single decision.  Billy had always made our decisions.  All of them.

When Billy and I got married, he promised me the moon.  And more.  And that’s what I fell in love with then.  That idea.   But all I ever got was a bunch of road trips.  

Doreen opened the glove box and retrieved the Kleenex. I felt like I abandoned you when Walker Neal died, and yet you helped me so much when I needed that.  Doreen blew her nose. 

I never thought once you abandoned me, Doreen.  You called me a lot then, for weeks, I think.

I felt like I left you in the lurch when Walker died, said Doreen.  She dabbed her nose and seemed to collect herself. 

How much fluid could a body exude, Lois wondered. 

I never understood it.  Why Billy wouldn’t come back to the place where he was born and lived so long?  It just didn’t make any sense.

Men are strange animals, replied Lois.  .... Weird, isn’t it?  Both of them goin’ the same way.

And almost the same age.

And almost in the same place.  Just different golf courses.  Well, said Lois, brightening to a subject other than dead husbands, Are you hungry?  We can easy stop someplace.  Cade’s just off the road.

I’m not.  Are you?

I can last ‘til we get home.  Drizzy’ll have somethin’ ready.

Who’s Drizzy?

She works for me... Or I work for her.  I’m not sure.

Doreen shook her limp skirt uselessly and let it drop.  The fabric sagged between her knees.

The remainder of their half hour drive to Lois’s town included great lengths of silence on Doreen’s part which Lois attempted to fill with travelogue.  She liked her sister-in-law well enough; felt warmly toward her.  It was just that the only role she’d ever played in Doreen’s life was that of hand-holder.  As she drove and talked their way toward the Louisiana bottom lands, Lois again wondered if her invitation, at the time well-meant, had been such a good idea.  The woman beside her seemed not to have a lick of humor.  Lois far preferred the company of light and lively people.  However, she was determined to make a good thing out of this.

When we cross this little bridge here, we enter Rive Perdue, she said.   You can use Walker Neal’s car while you’re here.  I never sold it, he loved it so, and even though it’s six years old, it’s only got ten thousand miles on it.   But let me tell you a little secret about this area right here:  Everybody sort of guns it when they cross this bridge leavin’ Rive Perdue.  There are no traffic lights after the bridge, just a straight shot almost all the way to Cade.  You see that bunch of trees and bushes over there?

Yes?

"Inside there, I gay-ran-tee you, is parked either Kiley McQuown or Rodney Duchein at almost any time durin’ the day except meal time and if either one of them ever pulls you over for speedin’ and you’re already over that bridge?  You just march yourself out of the car and put your hands on your hips and say Mister McQuown?  Mister Duchein, whichever one it is, Rodney’ll be the fat one, ‘You are a little out of your jurisdiction, aren’t you?’  And you don’t have to say one more word.  You just turn a little bit and look toward that bridge back there. 

"Whichever one it is’ll say something macho at you then like, (Lois lowered her voice dramatically) ‘Ma’am, this’s all my jurisdiction.’  After that, if you want to, you can say, ‘Well you have a nice day.’ Then you just turn on your heels and get right back into Walker Neal’s car and be on your way.  They catch a passel of tourists here that way.  Of course, tourists don’t know the rules."

This all just looks like a strip mall, said Doreen when they had driven farther into town.

Remind you of home? asked Lois, wincing immediately at this implied insensitivity.  Well?  Cherry Hill had looked like a strip mall to Lois.

So many motels, said Doreen.  Billy and I stayed in every kind of motel.  You have Motel 6 here.  We stayed in a Motel 6 in Muncie, Indiana once.

What were you doin’ in Muncie, Indiana?

Nothing, really.  We were on our way to French Lick Springs.

Sounds repulsive.  Why were you going to French Lick Springs? Lois asked in honest wonder.

It was just one of the places Billy wanted to go to... He loved motels.  I think that’s the only reason he liked car trips.  He loved rooms that were new to him, Doreen said.

The part of town we’re comin’ to’s a lot prettier, Lois said.

Why do they call this ‘Rive Perdue?’ Doreen asked, this her first apparent interest in their destination.

Now, that is an unusual story.  Do you know what a distributary is?

No.

You know what a tributary is, said Lois, stopping at the first of Rive Perdue’s traffic lights.

Sure.

"Well, a distributary doesn’t run into a river, it runs out of it.  And at one time, long before I was born, there was a river that almost completely surrounded our town.  It was a distributary of the Mississippi and it accounted for the way the town grew.  We had barges and everything come here long ago.  They didn’t call it Rive Perdue in those days.  They called it ‘Slowey’ for a family that settled here.  Anyway, one spring there was a terrible, terrible flood - they say there wasn’t a single building or house in Slowey that wasn’t neck deep in water.  But suddenly some bend in the Slowey River washed out and the wholeriver completely disappeared.  They say the flood was gone in twenty minutes.  After that day, they started callin’ the town ‘Rive Perdue.’  ‘Lost river.’"

With each passing block, Lois’s speech sank deeper into its warm and languid bayou roots.   We’ve gotlots of nice stores in Rive Perdue, she continued in tour mode.  "Like Maynard’s there.  They got almost everything.  Clothes, home furnishin’s.  That’s Slowey’s Hardware and Supply.  It’s owned by Delbert Slowey; he’s the last of the Sloweys.  I don’t know what they’ll call the store when he goes.  Delbert had nothin’ but daughters.  Maybe they’ll call it ‘Prossner’s’.  All his girls married Prossners.

Lois glanced at Doreen.  Doreen was picking at her neck.  Lois hated it when people picked at their bodies.

And that’s Labrideaux’s on the other side.  The best restaurant God ever authorized.  I’ll take you there one of these nights.  They make their boudin and boulettes from their own pigs.  The owner, Lester Labrideaux, has been courtin’ me recently and invited me to observe his pigs.  I declined.

Lois detoured onto another street.  While we’re down here I want to show you Billy’s momma and daddy’s place.

The homes here were larger than they had passed previously, and very-widely spaced.  The trees on these properties were old, large canopied, and draped in grey, hairy stuff.  Doreen wondered what these trees were and if they lost their leaves in the fall.

Who lives there? Doreen asked.  It’s huge.

Not huge, by Rive Perdue standards.  That’s Delbert Slowey’s house.  Belle Vue.  He’s got eight rooms - four up, four down - but ceilings you could fly a kite in.  His parents used to have the servants move the grand piano up to the second floor every time there’d be a flood.  Since the river dried, the piano has remained in the parlor.

Soon, Doreen’s view was blocked by a solid wall of green hedging, much higher than the car was.  This hedge was trimmed flat, as if by the hands of hundreds who had worked with little scissors.  The green wall extended hundreds of yards along the street.   Eventually they came to two stone pillars which marked a paved driveway.  Lois pulled in and turned off the engine. 

That’s where Billy and Walker Neal grew up, Lois said.  It’s called Stockton.

In the distance stood what to Doreen at first appeared to be a giant, dazzlingly white cake, a confection which gradually resolved for her into columns, porticoes, and windows each taller than two humans stood.  She could not even guess the number of rooms this house might contain.  Maybe thirty, she thought.

That’s a college, she said.

It’s a bed and breakfast now.  We can go through it, but not today.

I can’t believe it, said Doreen.  She had stood once with Billy at a fence on Pennsylvania Avenue and looked in at the White House.  This place looked bigger.  It almost hurt your eyes to look at it in the sunlight.

Well? That’s Stockton.

He never told me.

Never told you what?

Billy said his parents were just middle class people.

I can’t say he lied about that.  They were when they died, said Lois.

"But that?  Billy  grew up there?"

He and Walker Neal.  With their momma and their daddy.  Billy lived in that house until he moved north.

He showed me pictures of his parents’ house.  I’ve still got them.  It’s a tiny ranch house with a lot of little pine trees around it.

Billy didn’t lie about that either.  What you have are pictures of the house they lived in until they died, after they lost Stockton.  They moved way up to Simmesport, near the Mississippi border where Mrs. Trahan’s folks were from.  We can go see that house, too, if you want to drive up someday.

But how did they lose this... this palace?

Lois considered for a moment, her hands on the Lincoln’s steering wheel.  "Well?...You might as well know, even though I wasn’t goin’ to tell you.  Probably, though, I’d have told you sooner or later because you’re here and everybody I know knows the story.  Sooner or later somebody’s goin’ to bring it up and you won’t know what they’re talkin’ about.   And they won’t be blamin’ you, either, when they do bring it up.  This all happened a long time before you and Billy even met.  There is a reason why Billy wouldn’t come back here to Rive Perdue.

I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you this.  But you need to know, Doreen.

Doreen scratched at her neck and stared ahead. 

Billy stole his parents’ money.  It’s just as simple as that, said Lois.

Stole it?

He stole it.  And part of that money would have been Walker Neal’s, too.

But how did he steal their money?

It was nothing very complicated.  When their daddy had his first stroke, Walker Neal was already in college up at Duke.  Somebody had to run the family business.  Since Billy hadn’t even started college yet and Walker Neal was a senior, they all decided that Billy would stay behind and take care of things for a year.   They gave Billy power of attorney to pay workers and suppliers and such and to run that house, which wasn’t cheap.  Walker Neal said Billy did know the business, better even than he did.  A week before Walker Neal graduated from Duke, Billy disappeared into thin air.  What he could easily take in that house over there disappeared with him.  The banks and creditors got the rest, includin’ ‘Stockton’ eventually.

Doreen had stopped picking at her neck.  I can’t believe it.  What, she wondered, had Billy been thinking while they stood on Pennsylvania Avenue looking at the White House?

Neither could Walker Neal and his momma believe it.

Did they go after Billy?  The police or someone?

Oh, no.  That would never have been done.  Never.  It was all too mortifyin’.  To lose your family business?  Lois nodded toward the Doric columns and Jeffersonian windows.  To lose that?  Bad enough to lose everything, but then to hunt down your son or your brother?  That would be the final humiliation in a town like Rive Perdue.  No.  The Trahans always licked their wounds in private and then they moved on.

But where did it go? asked Doreen.

Where did what go?

The money.  Billy and I were married fifteen years.  We lived from paycheck to paycheck all the time we were married.  He left me almost nothing.  We got our house finally almost paid for.  I’m to get twenty-five thousand in life insurance?  What did he do with the money he took?

Who knows?

.... Are you sure Billy did that?

Ask anybody.

Doreen sat on the leather seat of the Town Car staring at the sprawling home.  In all the years she knew him, her husband had never so much as hinted at these grand beginnings.  Stockton’s columned, two story porch alone took up as much space as their entire house in Cherry Hill.  She had married a criminal?  Lived together for fifteen years with a man who had stolen from his parents and his brother?  Doreen could not match the lackluster husband she married with the arrogant thief Lois described.

All those Motel 6's, Doreen said quietly.  "All those Red Roof whatever they are’s.  Are you telling me we could have been spending our vacations there?"

You and me both, Doreen.  Lois laughed ruefully.  The bank owned it the year Walker Neal and I got married.

Walker must have hated Billy.

Lois thought about that for a minute and then cocked her head.  You know? I really don’t think he did.  For Walker Neal, Billy was sort of like a disease you’ve had and you got over.  Like the polio, he told me once.  You heal from it, and if you have a limp the rest of your life, you adjust to that.  But do you hate the disease?  It’s somethin’ that happened to you.

Lois smiled and turned on the ignition.  Enough.  We’ll go to my house and get you settled in.... I feel kind of sorry I told you about all this.

Lois put her car into gear.  But Doreen, this has nothin’ to do with you.  If you had known all this, if you had been livin’ high off the hog all these years up north on that money, you wouldn’t have been invited here.  I’ve seen where you live.  Billy screwed you, too.

He was good at that.

At least he was good for somethin’, said Lois as she pulled back onto St. Charles Street.

I didn’t mean that.... He wasn’t very good at that, either, muttered Doreen.

Neither am I, smirked Lois.  That’s Slowey Hospital, Lois pointed out near the southern edge of Rive Perdue, now back into travelogue.  It’s bigger than any hospital in Layfayette, even Alexandria.  It serves four parishes, she said.  "And the directors are still gobblin’ up every bit of land around it and every private clinic they can get their hands on all the way down to Houma.  It’s a real fine hospital, but you know what, Doreen?  There is something very, very odd goin’ on in there and I aim to find out what.   I own some Slowey stock myself.  Nearly everyone around here does, but I got some serious worries just now about ownin’ my stock.  What Billy did back then is real small potatoes compared to what I suspect is goin’ on in there.

Well, never mind that.   Now, see this bridge here?  See under it?  There’s almost no water there at all.  Just a big, old ditch.  That’s part of where the Slowey River used to be.  And here’s my road, said Lois, turning at the Slowey Bridge.  Bayou Bec Road.  There was nothing much out this way when Walker Neal and I built, but now a lot of young doctors live here. 

Doreen saw glimpses of water now and then far back from the road.  The homes looked palatial to her, each surrounded by broad, manicured lawns framed by copses of woods and stately live oaks.  Utility trucks were parked in many driveways.  T-shirted men moved about with shoulder-harnessed air blowers.  Others guided gas-powered edgers.

Doesn’t anybody mow their own grass here? she asked. 

Not in Bayou Bec, smiled Lois.  Course, this isn’t even the ‘right’ side of the bayou.  Folks over there on the other side don’t even hire lawn work.  They have permanent gardeners.

"This is the wrong side of the tracks?" said Doreen.

Most of the fine, old houses are over there.  Across the bayou.  By comparison, I live in the lower rent district.

This news came as small relief to Doreen, to whom even Lois’s Lincoln represented outrageous excess.  This is not what I’d call ‘low rent.’

We’re almost there, was all Lois said.  Her car entered a narrow, dirt road and slowed to accommodate an occasional rut.  They passed through one small clearing in the woods, then a larger one planted in scalloped flower beds and camellias and onto a paved driveway which formed itself into an oval.  At the end of this stood a very wide, one story shake-roofed house.  Lois stopped before the door of a two car garage.

Home, she said.

This is incredible, said Doreen.

We were aimin’ at Southern Colonial when we built it.  My friends all call this ‘French Primitive.’  Lois activated the automatic garage door and nosed the Lincoln inside. 

A Corvette? asked Doreen, gaping at the car they parked beside.  Was that Walker’s?

One result of the male menopause.  I hope you drive a stick shift.

No.

I’ll have Drizzy teach you.  The garage door closed behind them. 

We can leave your things in the car, unless there’s somethin’ you want right away.  Madison’ll bring them.

Who’s Madison?

Madison’s Drizzy’s husband.  Drizzy’s mother helped raise Walker Neal and Billy.  Years later when Walker Neal and I could afford to, we hired Drizzy and when she got married, we hired Madison, too.  We’ll take this door.  That one goes to the kitchen.

Lois led Doreen into a slate-floored foyer.  Drizzy? she called.  It’s us.

I figured, called a voice from somewhere deep in the house. 

Do yourself a favor, Lois whispered.  Don’t do anything that resembles work while you’re here or they’ll get in a snit.  Ask them first.  If you just pick up and start doin’ somethin’, they get insulted, you bein’ a guest.

The woman who appeared at the end of the foyer was white-uniformed, and richly black.  The woman smiled warmly as she approached.  She did not extend a hand, so Doreen did not either.  How do you do? said the maid.  Happy to have you here.  My name’s Drizzy.

Hi.  Thank you.  Mine’s Doreen.

Drizzy’s smile did not waver but her eyes told her that ‘Doreen’ would not do.  Drizzy addressed Lois: You want to show Miz Trahan around, or you want we should get her hosed down first?

I’ll show her her room, and then we’ll get her hosed down.

Do I look that bad?

You look like a long trip, assessed Drizzy.  Lunch’ll be whenever, she told Lois.  Miz Greer called.  She’s sendin’ over some shrimps as a welcome present to Miz Trahan.   Miz Guilbeaux called.  You’re to call her the minute you get in.  ‘Don’t even let her put her purse down,’ she tole me.

What’s she want?

It’s about Every Other Thursday, is all I know.  She sounded like she’d been cryin’ again.

Lois dropped her purse onto the foyer table. 

Oh, added Drizzy.  She did say she was plannin’ on shootin’ herself sometime today.

Lois sighed.  Doreen, Drizzy’ll show you your room.  This won’t take long.  EOT.  EOT, she muttered on the way to a telephone.   Chloe really needs to get a life.

Drizzy lead Doreen through the living room and down a hall to a large and sunny bedroom at the rear of the house.  Doreen felt uncomfortable.  Everything in this house was polished and there was no dust anywhere.  Her room was huge; as big as her living room and kitchen combined in Cherry Hill.  Two floor-to-ceiling windows on one wall revealed a manicured lawn which sloped to the edge of some kind of water.

We can close those drapes, if you want, suggested Drizzy.

No.  I like the light.

"Your bathroom’s through that door.  Just so you know, Miz Trahan likes to take her mornin’ coffee in her bedroom.  You can do that, too, if you want to.  Or in the dinin’ room.  If you want to take your coffee here, you just press that button there by the bed and that tells me you’re awake and ready.  You get up when you want to.  Miz Trahan usually gets up at seven, but if you want to sleep, you go right ahead and sleep.  No rules for guests here. 

We never had two Miz Trahans in this house before.  This might get confusin’.   Drizzy, swatted a non-existent bed wrinkle.  I’ll have to pray on that.

You can call me ‘Doreen.’

Like I say, I’ll have to pray on it.  Madison’ll be bringin’ your things in a minute.  I can show you the rest of the house, meantime.

Drizzy lead her from large room to large room.  The flooring throughout was dark and wide-planked.  Every window in the house was banked by thick, fine draperies.  The furnishings, which Doreen guessed were antiques, glowed of polish.  As Drizzy and she toured the house, Lois could be heard from the living room, attempting to console. 

"Well, Chloe?  Why can’t they just find your video disk and replace it with the one they gave you?.... Well, Chloe?  Can’t they make you a new disk?  There must be a record somewhere?.... Chloe, stop chokin’, I can’t understand you.... Me?!  Chloe, I can’t substitute for you.  I haven’t even started my research..... Chloe, I can’t give the same presentation I gave last year!  Well, why don’t you call Ursula? She’s the Topic Chairlady.  Chloe.  No.  I will not stand up there and embarrass myself when I’m not even ready.... Oh, who would drum you out of EOT?  That’s ridiculous."

That’s the terrace out there, Drizzy indicated wide French doors off the dining room.  If you want to use it.  Drizzy gave Doreen a brief appraisal.  Later.  When it’s cooler.  That water’s the Bayou Bec.  There’s ‘gators in there.  Sometimes they come up on the lawn to take the sun.

Are there snakes? asked Doreen.

Oh, there’s lots a snakes, but you won’t see ‘em, probably.

Doreen lingered at the French doors.  What’s that over there?  Across the water.

That’s Maypop.  The Newsomes live there.

That’s a house?

Yes, ma’am.  Biggest house in all Rive Perdue.  And one of the oldest.  Next to that is ‘Fairhope Mansion,’ up the bayou a ways.  Fairhope’s the next biggest house in Rive Perdue.  Miz Putsey lives there.  She’s the one sendin’ you shrimps.

>>>>

Refreshed from a shower and in a clean sun dress, Doreen hauled a rope-bound box into the dining room where Drizzy had set the table for lunch. 

Doreen, you’ll get a hernia movin’ that, observed Lois from her chair at the table.

I lugged this all the way down from New Jersey.  A few more feet won’t matter. Besides, it’s your present and I want you to have it.  Doreen eased the box to the floor beside Lois.

I just can’t imagine.

Well, it’s something you probably never saw before.  After that story you told me about Billy, I feel even more like it belongs right here with you.

What is it?

Lois, you won’t know ‘til you open it.

Doreen took her chair but leaned in Lois’s direction in great anticipation as Lois sawed at the Manila twine tied around the box.  Finally, she got to the sealing tape, slit it, and lifted the box lids.

"Oh, Doreen, you shouldn’t have!  Styrofoam beans!  I just love Styrofoam beans!"

I thought you would.  They had the green at K-Mart, too, but I got the white.

What in the world.... ? said Lois, reaching down into the beans.  My Lord!  She extracted a china cup and held it to the light.  Doreen.... do you know what this is?

It’s Limoge, Doreen replied proudly, with a hard g.

Where did you find this?

Billy gave it to me, as my wedding present from him.  He said it was his mother’s china.

Well, he didn’t lie about that, said Lois softly.

Do you like it?

I have always loved it.  Mrs. Trahan gave me four place settin’s of this before she died.

Now you’ve got enough for twelve then.  And there’s two extra cups and saucers.

Doreen, I can’t possibly accept this.

Doreen sighed.  Lois.  For fifteen years I washed this stuff every year and stored it away in a cupboard again.  I never used it once.  I almost did.  One of Billy’s many bosses was supposed to come to dinner a few years ago, but he fired Billy the week before.  I want you to have this.

I don’t know what to say, said Lois, shaking her head.  This china belongs to you.

Doreen placed a hand over one of Lois’s.  Listen, this china never really belonged to me.  We both know Billy probably stole it from his mother.

Lois smiled at the porcelain cup on the table before her.  "You know, Doreen?  Of all the things you might have brought me?   Melba Trahan never uttered a single word to me about what Billy did.  Not about losin’ Stockton.  Or the family business.  Or all that money that just disappeared with him. She never mentioned any of that in my hearing.  But when Walker Neal and I would drive up to Simmesport to see her, at some point while we were there she’d always run her  fingers  across the glass front of that little, cheap china cabinet she ended up with and her eyes’d get watery, and she’d say, ‘Ah nevah have undahstood why he left me four settin’s.’"

By rights, this belongs to you now, said Doreen.

"It should have belonged to both of us," Lois said, grinning.

It’ll make me feel good for you to have it.  Especially now.

... I’ll tell you what.  I’ll accept it for now.  If you’ll let me give you something.

What?

I don’t know yet.

>>>>

The EOT is a club, explained Lois at the table after Drizzy had served their luncheon chicken salad.  "It means ‘Every Other Thursday’ because that’s when we meet.  It was started in the Thirties by a woman named Mrs. Spiller here in Rive Perdue.  She was concerned that she and her friends did nothin’ but give tea parties and sit around talkin’ about their husbands and their children.  Mrs. Spiller thought women ought to be learnin’ things, so she started a book discussion group.  Then, gradually, the members started doin’ educational presentations.  And more and more women were invited to join and finally the EOT became so popular they had to make a lot of rules. 

Doreen, see that silver bowl there.  Spoon you some of that sauce on your plate and dip your chicken in it.  Drizzy makes that and it’s delicious.  And wait.  Lois pushed another silver bowl in Doreen’s direction.  Sprinkle you some capers on, too.  You like capers?

Doreen had never been served capers.  Dutifully, but suspicious of them, she added capers to her plate. 

Now the membership in EOT is limited to forty women, Lois went on between bites of her chicken.  "No men.  Men are not even allowed to be in your house when it’s your turn to give a presentation.  And no one will admit it, but members have to have a certain income - or they have to come from one of the old families, preferably the former.  Money creates its own pedigree, you know.  And nobody is asked to join until an older member dies or somebody  moves away.  But if