The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc by Loraine Despres

silence. So Sissy sat down on the
    bed and said, “I’m sorry, sugar, I really do appreciate your protect-
    ing my chastity and all.”
    She picked up the magazine he had laid across his pillow and
    tossed it to the floor.
    “You just lost my place.”
    “I have faith you’ll find it again.” She held his eyes as she spread
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    herself out across his side of the bed. “You were a real hero today.”
    He didn’t say anything, so she added, “And now, I think you
    deserve a reward.”
    “Oh, for God’s sake, is that all you can think about?”
    Sissy shot up. She felt as if she’d been slapped. “No, that’s not all
    I can think about, but I do think about it. Don’t you? Don’t you
    think about it anymore, Peewee?”
    “Course I do. You know I do. I’m just real tired, that’s all. I had
    a hell of a day, or didn’t you notice?” He sat down on the bed, care-
    ful not to touch her as he retrieved his magazine. He looked at her
    for some sign of assent. “Men are different from girls, Sissy. All you
    have to do is lay there and smile, but a man has to perform.”
    Sissy wanted to ask him why he wasn’t up to some kind of per-
    formance, when she was sure at least half the men of Gentry would
    have been ready and willing the minute she slipped out of her robe.
    At least she hoped they would. Sometimes Peewee made her feel
    like a female reject. She reviewed the Southern Belle’s Handbook in
    her head, but she knew it wouldn’t be able to help her tonight. She
    imagined it with its binding cracked, gathering dust on a high shelf
    as she cracked and gathered dust, faithfully married to Peewee.
    She didn’t know why he was so peculiar about sex. In high
    school he’d been grateful that she was willing to do it with him at
    all. But after Marilee’s birth, when her father had given them the
    family home and gone to live over the newspaper, Peewee had lost
    interest. She wondered if he had felt a loss of his manhood by agree-
    ing to live in her old house. But the five of them couldn’t very well
    go on living in that two-bedroom duplex without any yard for the
    children to pay in. Or maybe it wasn’t that at all. Maybe by siring
    three children he’d proved himself a man and didn’t have to work
    at it anymore. Or maybe it was just marriage. If you want a man to
    “Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul,” just marry
    him . That should be Rule Number Seventy.
    Snap out of it, said her practical voice. There’s nothing in the
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    marriage vows about a husband having to service his wife when-
    ever she wants it. Except maybe that part about to have and to
    hold. She hadn’t been had or held in a long, long time. Maybe that
    would explain what happened in the kitchen this afternoon. And
    then there was also that part about love, honor, and obey. Stop it,
    she told herself firmly. She ought to respect Peewee’s feelings. He
    jumped into the gravel pit to save their daughter and if he didn’t
    feel up to making love tonight, well, so what? That shouldn’t shake
    her resolve to be a good and faithful wife.
    She switched off the radio and walked over to the closet, where
    she slipped into an ugly cotton nightgown her mother-in-law had
    bought the last time she’d lost fifty pounds and had given away
    when she gained them back. She was always giving Sissy “perfectly
    good” nightclothes suitable for protecting her virtue from any and
    all assaults.
    “Ah, come on, don’t be like that,” Peewee said.
    “Like what?” Sissy lay down next to him, her body rigid. Good
    and faithful didn’t necessarily mean happy. She pulled the sheet up
    to her neck.
    Peewee didn’t know what to do. He leaned over and kissed her,
    but when she began to respond, he pulled away, leaving her alone
    to stare at the brown water stain in the shape of a weasel that dec-
    orated the ceiling above her