Chapter Three

Nothing came easy to Teddy, not even taking a shower. He arrived at the accessible college apartment he once shared with a roommate entirely wheelchair bound, but now had the place to himself. The university let him stay on since he called the football games for them, and he continued to pay the housing fee. Though he’d never be a Sinner, he knew the game inside out because of his sports-saturated upbringing. That gig led to providing color and analysis for the Sinners’ home games—or maybe his dad’s influence had, but he excelled at what he did, and it paid well during the football season.

Using his sticks to get to the side of his van, he wrangled his wheelchair from the interior, not bothering to use the lift. He’d selected a side loader, hating to be discharged from the rear like cargo if someone else drove. Teddy slammed the sliding door and sank gratefully into the chair. Crutches stowed into a sling, he pushed himself up the handicap ramp from his parking space and all the way up the longer incline leading to his first-floor front door.

Inside, he rolled past his living room and dining area, by a small kitchen with cabinets and counters lowered to wheelchair height, and one of the bedrooms to the spacious bathroom off the hall.

With the wide shower stall flush to the floor and loaded with safety bars, Teddy entered to adjust the water temperature, reversed, and shucked his workout clothes. His legs emerged from the braces as if he were a molting crab. He sat in the sliding shower chair and shuttled himself into the stall. Using the handheld sprayer to wet his body, he took the bottle of liquid soap from a caddy and scrubbed away the sweat of his exertions. Next, a good shampooing of his fine hair that looked limp if not washed daily.

He used his sticks and upper body strength to get back to the wheelchair. Toweling off his bottom and privates before sitting, he reapplied his braces. Time to change his ostomy pouch, the bag that collected his waste, though he probably should have done that first. Accidents did happen and were hell to clean up. He added deodorant drops to the pouch and slapped his nude body with a light cologne in case the danged thing seeped and smelled. With no need for modesty, Teddy wheeled to the bedroom and took underwear, wide-legged jeans that covered the apparatus on his lower legs, and a T-shirt from a low, built-in dresser and got himself clothed. All that finished, he returned to the bathroom to hang the damp towel and put his gym clothes in the hamper. No excuses for being a slob, Mama Nell always told him.

The cell phone he’d left on the counter informed him she’d called again. “Teddy, we’re at the clinic. Get here as soon as you can. Love you.”

The clinic—had his youngest brother, the ever leaping and climbing T-Rex, broken something? Maybe his littlest sister ran a high fever? But Nell wouldn’t call him for assistance. Despite Joe being gone, she had a nurse in-house at the ranch and plenty of other help. A terrible thought poked to the surface of his mind. Had Xochi miscarried, and the clan been summoned to give her support? He’d be the one most easily reached. His recently married sister had blossomed with excitement over the baby. What if it had been taken from her? That spurred him to his van. Teddy dealt handily with the rigmarole necessary to get back behind the wheel and sped south thirty miles to meet his mom.

As usual, by this time of day on a Monday, he found the clinic parking lot jammed and all the handicap spaces taken. Teddy blew off his wheelchair and hitched himself along on his crutches. Sweat from the heat gathered on his forehead before he reached the door and hit the button to open it automatically.

“You can go on back, honey. Your mom is between patients,” said the receptionist.

He swore Marvelle had been sitting behind the desk since before he’d been left at the clinic. She simply grew grayer and wider in the beam over the years, but always greeted everyone with a broad smile.

He hiked past a clutch of noisy children playing with toys from the box in the corner, a pregnant teenager who looked about to pop, and an old black woman nodding off in her wheelchair as an aide read a magazine by her side. Thought he heard his name called, but kept going. No time for friendly clinic chitchat if the very beloved Xochi needed his comfort.

“I’m here!” he announced, opening the door with the plaque, Nellwyn Billodeaux, MS, LPC, attached. “Is Xo okay?”

His mom looked up from a chart. “As far as I know. We’re supposed to have lunch together, but I’m not so sure now. Something has come up. Sit.” She gestured to one of the comfortable overstuffed chairs that encouraged people to relax and spill their concerns into her ears. “Does the name Ella Sue Smalls mean anything to you?”

Caught off balance in more ways than one, Teddy fell into a chair. “It—ah—might.”

Disappointment washed over his mom’s face. They’d never intended for Mama Nell to know about their computer searches for information about lost family members, he and Xochi and Stacy. Not that they thought the Billodeauxs tried to hide anything, maybe just soften the past when they were younger. But as teens the three housed at the end of the hall in the mansion near the elevator Teddy used had done their best and found little. Xochi came up with her birth record from a Texas hospital learning only her mother’s appallingly young age and a Mexican surname so common it led nowhere. Stacy attempted to track down her father’s Polish relatives, supposedly royalty, but finally had to accept that the noble Polaskys were a fictional construct as Nell had gently tried to tell her.

He’d been more successful. Maydell Wilkes Smalls had given birth to a six-pound, five-ounce baby girl in Bristol, Tennessee, the sister she’d told him she expected with so much joy. Everything would be fine now with Newton Smalls, her boyfriend, who wanted a child of his own—a normal child who wasn’t so much trouble, though she didn’t say that. Evidently, Newt did finally marry her and headed farther north looking for good work as he constantly said he would do if not for being stuck with this handicapped kid who needed special care the local community provided. More than once when drinking as Maydell worked her waitress job, he swore he’d chop Teddy’s head off and leave it in the drive for her to find if he had to clean up another mess made by the boy. Teddy shivered in the depths of the overstuffed chair just remembering.

“Well?” said Mama Nell. “How do you know her? Because she is out in the waiting room very pregnant and looking for you.”

“It’s not what you think.” He’d done all right in college tooling around in his flashy red wheelchair showing off his chest and shoulder muscles in tight tees. Some girls could get into that and found the penis ring he used to sustain erections cool and exotic. Eventually, the novelty wore off. Still, no matter what his disability, he followed Daddy Joe’s rule number one: always use a condom.

Cheeks burning because he couldn’t seem to overcome his childish blushes, the curse of the pale, Teddy said, “I think someone named Ella Sue Smalls might be my sister. That was Newt’s last name.”

“Oh, Teddy, forgive me for suspecting the worst.” Nell made use of the box of tissues she kept on her desk for clients and dabbed at her doe brown eyes. “I didn’t make the connection, and you look so much like her. Your mother never revealed the name of your father, or of the baby she carried when she left.”

“Newt wasn’t my dad. She wouldn’t talk about the man who got her pregnant with me when she was so young. Best let lay, she’d say. We had Granny, and Granny took care of us until she died. Then, along came Newt who carried us off to Louisiana where he said he had a job. His jobs didn’t last long because he drank.”

“When I counseled her, I simply could not convince Maydell she was in an abusive relationship. My failure.” Nell wiped her nose of the drip the tears brought on.

“My good luck she left me behind when Newt took off again. Since I’m not the daddy, what does my half-sister want?”

“I imagine money as she made a point of telling me how broke she is and a roof over her head while she waits for the baby to come. Maybe more.”

“Let’s bring her in here and find out.” He said the words oh-so-casually. As part of the Billodeaux family, he didn’t lack for interesting and involved siblings, ten of them plus their ward, Stacy, but a tinge of excitement passed through him at the thought of a real blood relative, one who could tell him what happened to his birth mother. Newt hadn’t lingered long in Bristol before he moved the family again, and they disappeared from the records.

Nell contacted the front desk. “Marvelle, would you send Ella Sue Smalls to my office?”

Not long before Ella Sue filled the doorway with her belly. “Please sit down. Teddy tells me you might be his long-lost sister.”

“That’s right. I am.” She sank into the other chair.

Teddy stared at the gravid teen he’d passed in the lobby. She possessed the same light complexion, blue eyes, and pale blonde hair his mama had, and him, too. Nothing of the brutal Newt in her. Though he hadn’t said a word yet, his sister got her back up immediately, a white cat spitting.

“I know what you’re thinkin’. She’s too young, but I’m eighteen and got my GED diploma after being mostly homeschooled since we moved so much. I’m plenty old enough to be on my own and have a kid.”

“I was thinking you look just like Mama. How is she?” His voice shook a little.

“Dead.” Ella Sue didn’t pretty up the news any. “Passed last year of breast cancer. No mammograms for her. Daddy said he couldn’t afford it and wouldn’t take no charity when the clinic offered them free. Stage Four. She went fast, but not before all her hair fell out and was nothing left of her but a bundle of bones. Only decent thing Daddy did for her was take her back to the hollow where she grew up, and plant her beside her own mother in the graveyard. Had her cremated so we only had an urn to put in the ground. Cheaper that way, he said. Her Uncle Merv paid for the marker.”

Teddy closed his eyes tight for a moment. He’d nearly reached for a tissue himself. After his initial bewilderment, fear, and anger over being abandoned receded, he’d taken what Mama Nell said to heart. His mother left him in a safe place—even if she did knock down the door by claiming her son belonged to Joe Billodeaux, a total falsehood.

“I’d like to go there sometime and visit their graves.”

“Not much to see. There’s a little white Baptist church that been there forever by the cemetery. Bunch of rundown cabins and some trailers. Merv owns the gas station and convenience store, about the only business in town besides the Dairy Queen. He let us stay in Granny’s old place since Daddy was between jobs again.”

“Nice of him,” Teddy managed to say.

“You think? That place was a dump. We worked days fixin’ it up. Now it’s good enough for Merv to rent.”

Teddy didn’t remember the cabin that way. Not that the small house was anything special, but it had been warm and dry, full of handmade quilts and good home cooking. The church members built a ramp to the porch for his wheelchair and held bake sales and raffles to pay for his needs. He, his mom, and his granny rocked in a swing on that porch in the evenings. In fact, he had a photo of the three of them someone had taken. He’d found it wedged into his favorite of the Harry Potter series, The Goblet of Fire. No doubt his mother had placed it there to be discovered when he reread the set as he did over and over. He could have asked Mama Nell for a frame because she’d understand, but instead he left it exactly where Maydell laid it for him to find. He could almost feel the touch of her fingers as she pressed the picture between the pages when he handled it, the same way she’d tested his forehead for fever from his many illnesses.

Ella Sue continued on oblivious to his pain. “Merv give me a job in the store and had Daddy fixin’ flat tires and doing oil changes and such at the gas station.”

“Generous guy.”

His sister curled her pink lips. “Ha! Minimum wage pay, and he’d play grab ass every time I passed. He’s quick for a geezer. Merv the Perv I called him. I quit and moved on over to the Dairy Queen. The woman who owned that place said my looks would bring in the young men. She was right. They lined up for soft serve.”

And maybe something else, Teddy declined to say.

Nell took over the conversation. “Is your father still living in the cabin?”

“Doubt it, but don’t know. He kicked me out when I started to show. Asked if the baby was Merv’s kid like Teddy. I think he believed he could get blackmail money out of him if that was so. Sorry, Daddy. I wouldn’t let that creep touch me for all the world.”

Nell studied Teddy’s face. “You’ve gone whiter than white. Are you ill, son?”

Since he was prone to infections, she’d posed a reasonable question, but Teddy felt sure she’d caught the reference about Merv being his father. Now he knew what everyone suspected—Teddy Wilkes Billodeaux was a child of incest, an ugly truth.

Ella Sue caught on quick. “Didn’t know, huh? Well, Mama told Daddy, and when we went back there, he said he thought Uncle Mervin was too old to get it up now, but to be shy of him if he got handsy.”

Teddy still had no words. Nell filled the gap. “Would you care to tell us who the father of your child is?”

“My baby daddy was a local boy who loved chocolate-dipped soft serve. I stayed with him for a while, but he wasn’t into the whole fatherhood thing. I got to thinking I have a brother out there who’s done pretty well for himself. Mama always said so. How you’d landed in clover. We followed you in the magazines, and she’d say, ‘Look at my Teddy Bear at that fancy wedding. Don’t he look good?’ She talked about you all the time when Daddy went to work. Anyhow, maybe you’d give me a place to stay until the baby comes.”

Teddy’s words came out as feeble as his legs. “I have a spare room at my apartment. It isn’t far from the University Medical Center and its clinics.”

“Is that a charity place? Because I don’t want my baby born in no charity place. Besides, I figured I’d be staying at that famous ranch. Took all the money my boyfriend give me to get there. I almost perished by the side of the road. Did Miss Nell tell you?”

“We hadn’t gotten that far in discussing your situation.” Nell’s intercom buzzed. “My next appointment must be here.”

Marvelle’s mellow voice announced, “Your eleven o’clock just cancelled.”

Nell shook her head. “Why do the ones who need it most always cancel? It appears I am free for an early lunch.”

“Great, because I’m starvin’. Eatin’ for two.” Ella Sue patted her bulging stomach.

“I’d planned to dine at my daughter’s house, just the two of us. Let me call and see if she has enough to go around. If not, we’ll go out. Would you mind waiting in the lobby, Ella Sue?”

“Fine by me. Either way is good.” After two tries, the pregnant girl heaved herself out of the chair and headed for the lobby.

Teddy also rose, steadier now that he’d had a few minutes to think. “Stay a minute,” his mother said. “Do you really want your sister living with you in Lafayette? We have plenty of room at the ranch.”

“Yes, I think that was her intention, to sponge off of you and Dad. If all she really wants is a place to stay, mine should do. You’ll have Xochi check her out, right?”

“Oh, absolutely.”