Category:

THREE

My bedroom at Punk's was pure heaven. Cypress floor, shiplap walls, a poufy sleigh bed, and the dreamiest linens I'd ever slept on. They smelled like distilled springtime. Then there was my favorite part—tall windows overlooking the gulf, with a window seat big enough for two. I couldn't believe I was actually here, in this bedroom, this house, this place.

A burst of laughter floated up the stairs. The Ten Spots had landed. That's what I call Punk and her three closest friends, sisters Sugar Vansant, Cookie Harris, and Coco Menard. They're far too frugal, not to mention Presbyterian, for the gaming floor, but they do enjoy the restaurants and shopping promenades at your better casino resorts. The Ten Spots have an ongoing contest to see who can score the best loot for ten dollars (hence the nickname). Punk's the current champ, having landed an elegant print scarf marked seventy-five percent off at "the Beau," one of the ladies' favorite hangouts.

I grabbed a quick shower, put on a blue and white kaftan dress Punk bought me on my last visit, and bounded downstairs with wet hair and bare feet.

"Edie!" Sugar jumped up from the table and ran to me, squeezing me in a tight hug. I kissed her on the cheek. "How evah are you, honey?" A few summers back, Sugar spent a month with friends in Selma and insisted that she could not shake the South Alabama accent she picked up there (evah, buttah, sugah). The accent, however, tended to appear sporadically, leaving the rest of us to suspect that Sugar intentionally conjured it whenever the notion struck her.

"I expect Edie was a whole lot better before you squeezed the life out of her." That was Cookie, who got up from the table and joined her sister in checking me out. I hugged her before she took a strand of my wet hair in her hand. "You've let your hair grow long, darlin'. I think it's beautiful."

"Oh, me too," Sugar said. "And it's the most gaw-uh-geous colah! That deep chestnut with those green eyes..." Sugar was Miss Louisiana of 1941, and it shows. She is always "done," her chin-length bob professionally blonded and styled just so to frame her face, which never sees the light of day without full-on Estée Lauder.

"Nonnie Tucker's granddaughter dyed her hair purple," Cookie was saying. "And I understand she's dating a young man in the illegal substance industry."

Sugar closed her eyes and shook her head. "He wears leather in the summertime. That has to smell."

It was hard to tell which of the boyfriend's flaws left Sugar more horrified—his line of work or his wardrobe.

"If my granddaughter started going with somebody like that," Cookie said, "I'd tie a rock around my good leg and jump in the bay."

Cookie's short crop and straight bangs look all the whiter against her year-round tan. She favors pedal pushers, sandals, and men's shirts, insisting that "the boys shouldn't be the only ones who get to be comfortable."

Punk herded us all back to the table and set a bowl of shrimp and grits in front of me, along with a steaming mug of coffee.

"Did y'all eat already?" I asked Punk before taking a long sip.

"We did," she said, "but I wanted you to catch up on your sleep, so I wouldn't let these hooligans wake you up for early breakfast."

Punk's shrimp and grits is transformative. Some cooks leave the shrimp bland and smother the grits with what Punk calls "tomatoey nonsense." But my grandmother flavors her crustaceans with bacon, lemon, garlic, and Tabasco, while keeping the grits creamy and cheesy. Nothing on top but a light sprinkling of crumbled bacon and scallions.

"Have mercy, Punk," I said as I tasted a big spoonful. "Nobody can beat you at shrimp and grits."

"Not so fast," Sugar said. "You've never had mine."

"That's true, Miss Sugar. I'm always available for a tasting. I'll even bring my own fork. Or spoon. I never can make up my mind which one shovels more shrimp and grits into my mouth."

Sugar's real name was Collette. Cookie's was Corinne. Their daddy nicknamed them both, as well as their older sister, Marguerite, whom he called Coco. She graduated high school with Punk. My grandmother says Coco and her sisters have been her closest friends "since Methuselah was a toddler."

"Where's Miss Coco?" I asked.

"Torturing her only child," Cookie said as Punk freshened everybody's coffee. "She's got a sickly sago palm she's tired of, and she's been nagging Francis to get rid of it. He finally went over there early this morning with his backhoe."

No sooner were the words out of Cookie's mouth than we heard the front door slam and an unmistakable loud, raspy voice. "Punk Cheramie, where are you? And where's the kid?"