“Feathering the bride,” Tante Lulu corrected, and went on pouring coffee. Then she pulled a baker’s bag off the counter—did the woman always come prepared with food?—and laid out on a platter a dozen les oreilles de cochran, or “pig’s ears”—a Cajun deep-fried pastry sprinkled with sugar. Tee-John downed one of the confections before Sylvie had a chance to register what his aunt had said. “Hope you weren’t too fond of that ugly red leather chair down there, hon. I tried to cover everything with those fancy flowered sheets of yours I found in the linen closet, but those birds have a mind of their own. The chair seems to be covered with a little bit of chicken poop.” She thought a moment. “Okay, a lot.”
“But why in the basement?” she persisted, refusing to focus on the leather chair—her dead father’s favorite for reading—or the Christian Dior sheets her cousin Valerie had given her last Christmas.
” ‘Cause your dumb neighbors complained about the noise of chickens squawkin’. Can you imagine? It’s not like I was playin’ heavy lead music or nothin’.”
“Uh, I think you mean heavy metal,” René said, rolling his eyes at Sylvie.
“Lead, iron, steel, metal, whatever,” Tante Lulu said, waving a free hand in the air. “Don’t these people know that the sounds of nature are pleasing? Betcha they’d be complainin’ if I dumped a truckload of cow manure on those sorry roses of yours out back, too. Yep, these city folks have lost their connection with the good earth.”
“Don’t… you… dare,” Sylvie sputtered, “… bring cow manure here.”
Remy and René were laughing uproariously at her dilemma, while Charmaine and Claudia appeared to be sympathetic. Tee-John just continued to eat.
Sylvie raked the fingers of both hands through her tangled hair. She must look a mess. In fact, she noticed Charmaine eyeing her speculatively, even as she was blowing on her nails to dry the lacquer. No doubt Charmaine would be suggesting a makeover sometime soon. Before Charmaine got a chance, Sylvie wanted to set Tante Lulu straight. “What you don’t understand is that I am not a prospective bride.”
“Really?” Tante Lulu sank down into a chair with a thud of disappointment. “I was sure that boy would see the light this time.”
“Did you have a vision, Tante Lulu?” René asked.
His aunt nodded sadly. “I coulda sworn I saw Luc walking down the aisle with a bride that looked like Sylvie here.”
“Well, they was kissin’ and touchin’ a lot,” Tee-John informed the group. He was idly licking the powdered sugar off his fingers as he spoke.
“They were?” everyone else exclaimed with decided glee in their voices. Except Sylvie, of course, whose face felt as red as Tante Lulu’s hair.
“Yep,” Tee-John said.
Tante Lulu’s smile was so wide, it was a wonder her face didn’t break.
“And then there was the naughty stuff,” Tee-John elaborated. “Whoo-ee!”
Sylvie let her face drop to the table, right on top of her own “pig’s ear.” She didn’t care. Life didn’t get any worse than this.
Then her life got worse.
Her mother and Valcour LeDeux arrived.
“Have you lost your mind, Sylvie Marie?” her mother asked, as if she were a child, and not a grown woman. “And what is that ungodly white powder on your face?”
Her mother had walked into the kitchen, uninvited and unannounced, and was regarding each of them in turn with her nose lifted in the air. The Queen Mother stepping down into the servants’ quarters couldn’t have shown more arrogance. Most of all, her disdain was for Sylvie.
“Hello to you, too, Mother,” Sylvie remarked with a snippishness she usually contained around her family. As she scrubbed at her face with a damp dish towel that Tante Lulu handed her, she proceeded to berate her mother. “And I’m just fine, thanks. Yes, I managed to escape, unharmed, from the bullets shot through my front window. The voodoo snakes at the cabin were nonpoisonous, thank you very much. Would you like a cup of coffee? Or a cup of my blood?”
“A lady does not speak with such sarcasm, Sylvie Marie. Restrain yourself.”
“Jeesh!” she heard Claudia mutter under her breath. “Talk about a royal poker up the behind!”