Chapter Ten

Cameron and the boys were long gone by the time Raven walked out onto the back porch of the restaurant. The night was brilliant, the sky full of so much light Raven thought it was making her a promise. Wynn was helping Billy Ray clean up and they sounded like they were getting along. Their laughter floated from the kitchen out of the back porch’s screen door. She could hear Imogene every now and then humming loudly before breaking out into song as she cleaned the dining room floor. She had a good voice, which surprised Raven. A church voice that Raven was finding a joy to hear. Imogene had gotten tipsy, but she knew how to handle her liquor. She stopped drinking more than an hour prior, and started pounding Advil with large amounts of Perrier.

Raven gazed at the stars for a long time, and leaned against a porch post, just thinking how lucky she was at this moment. At the end of the gravel pathway was the shotgun house Billy Ray had lifted from its foundations when he opened the restaurant, and transported from the abandoned neighborhood near Peabody. This one wasn’t a duplex like he lived in before. It was a single with the three rooms set one behind the other. He had painted it red, and hung white Christmas lights around the doors and windows. And there was another bottle tree to drive away evil spirits, the dead limbs covered in red, blue, yellow and hot-pink glass.

“What’s got you so pensive, my Rave girl?”

Raven startled. She turned to see Edmée sitting on the high porch rail with her legs dangling over the edge.

“I thought you left with Stella,” Raven said.

“I put her in a Lyft,” she said. “I did my duty for the night.” She was drinking a glass of Chardonnay so full that she had to lap at its surface to keep from spilling it.

“Well, it looks like someone else is going to need a Lyft tonight,” Raven said with a smile.

“No worries.” Edmée waved a hand expansively. “Billy Ray will take me.”

“Why does it have to be Billy Ray?” Raven said. “Wynn or I can take you. Or Imogene.”

“Billy Ray smells better,” Edmée responded. “He has a nicer ass.”

“Did you forget that you’re married, Edmée?”

“I forget nothing,” Edmée said, bobbing her head.

Raven decided not to lecture. She didn’t want to break the mood the cool night and bright stars were giving her by getting into heavy conversation with Edmée. Billy Ray could take care of himself.

Edmée’s loud sigh intruded into Raven’s thoughts. “I do miss our long talks, Raven, like we had in high school. They call Noe and Clyde two peas in the pod. We were together so much they used to call us Thing 1 and Thing 2.”

“That wasn’t a compliment, if you remember correctly.”

“Why do you say that? I do, I do remember correctly,” Edmée said, nodding emphatically. “I can’t help but remember correctly. It’s like having an extra limb, useless, dragging me down no matter what I do….” She lapped at her wine some more. “Sometimes it makes me want to burst out into big tears.”

Raven laughed. “Okay, Edmée, I think you’ve had enough. You’ve gone from happily drunk to maudlin. I didn’t think you drank this much.”

“I usually don’t. But tonight I need it. Go ahead, ask me a date, any date. I’ll be able to tell you what was happening on the news, where I was, what I was wearing. The day of the week, anything your little heart desires to know.”

“Edmée,” Raven said mildly.

“I’m a parlor trick. At parties, my husband points his beautifully slender hand and says, ‘Watch what my wife can do. Go ahead, roll over, Edmée.’ Do I find it annoying? Wouldn’t you? Here I am able to rise above the hell that was my childhood, build a successful non-profit business, keep a yard and grow my own vegetables, a garden so bomb that it was featured twice on the news, and all that man cares about is the fact that I can tell you if it was raining or sunny on a particular date, if it was a Tuesday or Wednesday.”

Raven walked over and sat beside Edmée in the ensuing silence. She looked at her friend. “You want a hanky, Edmée?”

Edmée slung an arm around Raven’s shoulder. “That’s why I like you, Raven. You’re truly a bitch. I know this is the world’s smallest violin stuff, but I did so like talking to you when we were teenagers.”

“I’m not getting out of this conversation, am I?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Edmée said. “Now you may wonder why I stay with the great Dr. Long. I wish I can say ‘late, great’ but that man will probably outlive me by a thousand years.”

Edmée now gulped the chilled Chardonnay. She savored it for so long that Raven could taste the tartness of the wine on her own tongue.

“Why do you look at me like that? Do you think I am a bad person? This is true.”

“Okay, Edmée. It’s time for you to go home. You’re drunk.”

“I am that. But I’m also happy sitting here under the stars with you. Let’s not talk about my Fabian or about how the wine is killing my brain cells. You asked me a question that’s bothered me all night. How I live with the affliction of memory.”

“I did, but we don’t have to talk about it now.”

“Yes, we do,” Edmée countered. “So, how shall I put this? You…” she said, jabbing Raven’s chest with a manicured fingernail, “…came from hell. But I am still in hell. I live it every day. Every memory of what my cousin did to me, those men who raped me over and over again, every memory lives here. In my head. The sound, the smells, the fear. I feel it as if it’s happening right this minute. At least your memories have soft edges. But no, no, no, not for Edmée.”

“I’m sorry, Edmée.”

“I know you are. But do you know how I cope? By dancing.” Edmée suddenly stood and twirled. The wineglass she had been holding fell, the wine spilling into the soft earth below. “By buying expensive clothes, painting my face and curling my hair. By doing good for people who are less fortunate, that does help. Nothing makes you forget your problems like helping somebody else with theirs.”

“Like you’re helping Billy Ray?”

“Oh what, are you mad now? You think I’m going to steal your boyfriend again like I did in high school?”

“I didn’t have any boyfriends in high school,” Raven said, though she was aware Edmée knew darn well that Raven was going out with Wynn.

“You mean that you didn’t have boyfriends for long, because I took them. Every single one. You know, I didn’t even want them. But beating you was such a distraction.”

“Is that what you thought you were doing, beating me? Sorry, I thought we were only in competition on the track field.”

“And I beat you there, too.” Edmée pointed at Raven. “Every time.”

“Not every time. I almost had you once. You cheated.”

“Be serious. It was only a garden snake. A little baby snake who still had his little round baby eyes, and you screamed for your mother like a three-year-old.”

“It took me out of the race.”

“Oh, don’t give me that, you could have just hopped over it like I did, or told on me. But you didn’t.”

“Edmée,” Raven said, “you are not right in the head.”

“Yes,” Edmée agreed cheerfully, “I am not right at all.”

She sat back down, and once again slung her arm around Raven’s neck, this time pressing her head close. “But you never got mad, did you? Because you knew inside what I was going through. You wanted to make sure that I stayed happy so my memories, my demons, wouldn’t slice me to pieces. That’s why I do love you, my Raven.”

“Sounds like you and Dr. Long aren’t getting along too well,” Raven said, wanting to get Edmée’s mind off high school.

Edmée sighed. “We don’t. He just doesn’t know about it, yet.”

“Must be upsetting for the both of you with that boy’s body being found at the construction site for Memorial’s new wing.”

Edmée shuddered. “Just unbelievable what some people will do.”

“Did you happen to know him?”

“You mean Henri Toulouse?” Edmée said. “No. I think Fabian knows the father, though. A judge. Fabian hates that they found the dead boy there. He said he’s not going to talk about it in the press. It’ll ruin the opening.”

“How are you going to have a successful opening of the new wing if you don’t acknowledge that a body was found there? People might think you’re callous.”

Edmée touched her throat. “Me? Why, it has nothing to do with me. That wing is Fabian’s pet project. I have my hands full with my own work. I told him when he started that I can’t be involved in this at all.”

“And he’s okay with that?”

“My husband is a very understanding man.”

“Must be,” Raven said.

“Jealous?”

“Completely.”

They sat for a while in companionable silence. Raven felt nice having Edmée close to her again. It brought back so many memories of them supporting each other through high school.

Suddenly, Edmée said, “Raven, the stuff we talked about in high school…what my cousin did to me, making me bed those men for money. I was so young. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“It wasn’t your fault, Edmée,” Raven said. “Your cousin was evil. Someone should slow cook her in her own fat.”

“It would have been easier to cope if there wasn’t a baby,” Edmée said, staring into the night.

“But you had an abortion. There was no baby.”

Edmée touched her belly. “There was a child that lived here for a while. They took that away from me. All I ask is one thing from you.”

“Anything, Edmée, you know that.”

“I never told, Billy Ray, I mean. Only you, my husband and my cousin know about the sex stuff. No one else.”

“It’s not sex stuff, Edmée. It’s rape stuff. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“You’re so kind, my friend,” she said. “But please, I just ask that you not tell Billy Ray.”

“Relax,” Raven said, “I have no reason to tell him. Besides, Billy Ray and I don’t talk about everything.”