My Father Bet My Year at the Boucherie, So I Signed It Myself and Named the Terms novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Supper With Blake

Blake fills Dolly's plate, tests the story of the marriage and has the couple kiss for the old men after Mass.

Blake Broussard set his pot on my stove, took my spoon out of my hand and tasted my chicken and sausage.

"Mmm," he said.

"Alcide's girl.

"Marie's girl.

"That's your grandmother's roux, cher, I'd know it blind."

I took the spoon back.

"I'd like my kitchen to myself, Monsieur Blake."

"Blake," he said.

"We're family."

He laughed at his own joke, and Seb, in the doorway, did not.

We ate at six, all four of us, at the cypress table.

Blake took the chair at the head, though it was Seb's house.

He filled my plate himself, from his own pot and then from mine, and he did not let me say no.

He talked about the Courir de Mardi Gras, about a horse he'd sold, about my grandmother's boucherie thirty-five years ago when he was a boy.

He was funny.

That was the worst part.

I laughed twice before I noticed I was doing it.

Margot sat across from me and ate four bites of rice and nothing else.

She watched her uncle's hands.

"So," Blake said, with the gumbo spoon pointing at us.

"How long have you two been seeing each other?"

Seb put his fork down.

"Since the fall," I said.

"At the school."

"I'd have thought I'd hear," Blake said.

"Seb doesn't tell you everything," I said.

"No," Blake said, smiling.

"He doesn't."

"He does the pickup for Margot on Fridays when Andrei has court," I said.

"I came to her classroom door in a hurry, and I dropped her lunch box and spilled applesauce on his boots."

I had made up the lunch box on the spot, but I kept going.

"He laughed at me.

"First time anyone had laughed at me in that building in a year."

I did not look at Seb.

Under the table, I felt his knee settle against mine.

It was not an accident.

I did not move away.

"Applesauce," Seb said, in his low rough voice.

"On the left boot."

Blake laughed.

"Well, that's something."

He looked at his brother for a long moment, and his eyes were suddenly wet.

"Four years I've been waiting to see you laugh at anything, little brother."

"I didn't laugh," Seb said.

"He did," I said.

"Inside."

Blake reached across the table and squeezed his brother's hand, and Seb sat very still and let him.

I watched the squeeze and thought, he is holding him down.

I could not have said why I thought it.

At eight the doorbell chimed, which meant someone had walked all the way up the porch and pressed a button that had not rung in years.

A neat man in a gray quarter-zip stood on the step with a leather folio under his arm.

He wore wire-rimmed glasses.

"Andrei," Seb said, and for the first time all night his shoulders came down.

"Ça va, mon frère?"

"Ça va," Andrei said.

"I'm only here for the paperwork."

He turned to me with a polite smile and held out his hand.

"Andrei Ivanov.

"I typed your paper.

"I'm sorry about the circumstances, Mademoiselle Fontenot.

"The family's never done this before."

"It's Dolly," I said, and shook his hand.

It was cool and dry.

"Nobody's ever done it before," I said.

"I'd have remembered."

"I came to ask about the morning," he said to Seb.

"Margot has a dentist's appointment Tuesday, and I've moved her school pickup.

"I'll drive her to school every day, as I've always done.

"You don't need to change anything."

"I'll drive her," I said.

Andrei's smile stayed exactly as it was.

"You teach in the same building, Dolly.

"It would be far simpler."

"It would be," I said.

"But she's mine to mind for a year.

"I'll drive her tomorrow, and you can have the dentist."

Nobody said anything.

Margot had gone completely still.

She was sitting with her hands in her lap, looking at Andrei's folio, and she had pushed her chair back from the table by about two inches.

Seb looked from me to Andrei, and then at his daughter.

"Dolly's right," he said.

"Tomorrow she drives."

"Of course," Andrei said.

His voice was perfectly pleasant.

"I only wanted to save you the trouble."

He left.

Blake stayed another hour, drinking my coffee and telling stories about the plants.

When he finally stood, he looked at the two of us at the table, and at Seb's knee against mine, and smiled.

"Mass at ten tomorrow," he said.

"Sit together.

"The old men will be on the church lawn after."

We sat in the fourth pew the next morning with Margot between us in her red coat.

Seb's arm rested on the pew back behind my shoulders, not touching me.

I could feel its warmth on my neck for a whole homily.

After Mass the church lawn filled with old men in their good jackets.

The priest shook hands at the door, and Blake came across the grass with his arms open.

"There they are," he said, loud enough for the whole lawn.

"Alcide's girl and my brother.

"The old men want to see it, Seb.

"Give her a kiss."

Seb went rigid.

"Blake."

"For the family," Blake said.

"A little kiss.

"The ones who doubt will stop doubting."

I looked at Seb.

His eyes were on me, gray and very steady, with something under them that I could not read.

He was asking, without a word, whether I would be made to.

I thought about the three lines I had written in pencil on the paper.

I put my hand flat on his chest.

"In public I am his wife," I said clearly, to the lawn.

"So I'll kiss my husband when I want to."

I went up on my toes and kissed him.

It was only a kiss, a few seconds, with my mouth on his in front of forty people and a priest.

His mouth was warm and still, and then, as I stayed there, it was not still.

One of his hands came up and rested at the back of my head, very lightly, as though he could not believe it.

He made a small sound against my lips.

I felt it all the way down.

When I stepped back, the old men were clapping.

Blake was beaming.

Seb was breathing as if he had run across the lawn.

Margot stood between us in her red coat and looked up at her father.

I looked at his mouth, and I thought, I would like to do that again with nobody watching.

On Monday morning I drove Margot to St. Martin's myself.

She sat in the front seat and counted the oaks along the Teche with one finger against the window.

At the school gate she took my hand without looking at me.

She held it all the way across the brick yard to her classroom door.

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