Ten minutes later, as Vivi sat on the pool patio with Teensy, she fell into the shorthand of their long friendship. A luxuriant honeysuckle supported by a trellis hung lazily over their heads, while caladiums, impatiens, and elephant ears grew in wild profusion around a fountain from which sprang a stone mermaid. It was an old patio, an old tile pool, and the feeling was one of a meticulous balance of cultivation and wildness.

"The Sidda thing with the scrapbook has me thinking about Genevieve," Vivi said.

Teensy said nothing for a moment, then asked, " 'Without a doubt'?"

"Exactly." Vivi nodded, comforted by the fact that she was not alone with this memory.

Arriving with a tray with drinks for the two women, Chick looked at Vivi and Teensy and tried to gauge their mood. "Yall want me to put on a couple of filet mignons?"

"Give us an hour or so, please, Bebe," Teensy responded, blowing him a kiss through the air.

"Sans moi?" he asked, looking at the two old friends.

"Yep," Vivi said, giving him a smile. "Sans toi."

"Holler if yall need anything, mesdames," he said, giving a stagy little bow. "I'll be inside marinating-vegetables, that is."

Vivi and Teensy reached for their drinks, then sat in silence. The hissing of lawn sprinklers and the soft slap-slap sound of water as it circulated out of the swimming pool mixed with the growing songs of crickets and the trickling sound from the fountain. Early-evening sunlight hit the pool water as Vivi sipped her bourbon, and Teensy, her gin.

Amazing how that one phrase "without a doubt" held such meaning. How it recalled Genevieve's long decline: her inability to accept Jack's death; the short-wave radio in her bedroom; the middle-of-the-night calls to the White House; the all-night "strategy sessions" to stage Jack's return. Then finally after the war, the disastrous trip to France, where there was, of course, no trace of her son. Only devastation, disorientation, displacement. And the years that followed, years when Genevieve did not leave her bedroom, which had become a pharmacopoeia.

"It's the things that aren't in that scrapbook," Vivi said elliptically. "The little big things. Dog tags."

She heard a sharp intake of breath from Teensy.

"Oh, if there had been anything, Teens," Vivi continued. "Anything. His dog tags, his boots, the Saint Jude scapular. Anything. Genevieve could have accepted it if there'd only been something for her to touch, some little piece, some stupid tiny object. I have sent my oldest daughter-The Grand Inquisitor-our 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.' But there is so much I didn't give her, cannot give her. Cannot give myself."

Vivi took a deep breath.

"I don't suppose yall have any Goddamn cigarettes around here, do you?" Vivi asked. "I know none of us smoke anymore, but I could use something to gesture with."

Teensy walked over to a hutch at the outdoor kitchen end of the patio. She returned with a silver cigarette case, which she opened and offered to Vivi. Vivi took two cigarettes and handed one to Teensy.

"Shall we light?" Teensy asked.

"Will Chick find out?" Vivi asked, sounding like a girl.

"He knows," Teensy said.

"Let's light, then," Vivi said, and allowed Teensy to light their cigarettes with a box of matches that sat on the glass patio table beside them.

"Every time I light a cig these days, I say a 'Hail Mary' for Caro," Teensy said.

Vivi turned to look at her old friend. Teensy was still tiny, with stylishly cut, subtly colored dark hair, with just the right amount of silver peeking through. She wore a pair of red silk pencil-legged pants with a black shell. On her size-five feet were a pair of little black-and-white-striped espadrilles. As she smoked, Vivi could see the sun spots on her friend's small hands.

"Maman," Teensy said, as though the word itself were an incantation. "There is no escape from our mothers. I don't even want to escape anymore."

Gazing out at the pool, then over at the fountain, Vivi thought: Maybe we aren't meant to escape our mothers. What a Goddamn scary thought.

She pictured Genevieve wearing a turban, dancing and singing while she cooked crayfish etouffee. Genevieve with that Cajun patois, that laugh of hers, those misbehaving eyes. Genevieve hauling the four Ya-Yas to Marksville for the pirogue races, the hot boudin, the cochons de lait, the thick black cafe at four-thirty in the morning on the way to the Fisherman's Mass. Genevieve hauling her out of that hellhole of a boarding school. Vivi Walker's life would not have been the same without Genevieve Whitman.

"Sidda wouldn't be such a worry wart if she'd known Genevieve," Vivi said.

"Don't kid yourself," Teensy said, "Maman retreated to some bayou in her head long before Sidda saw the light of day."

Vivi knew that was true, but still could not help wishing her daughter had known the woman who had been such a beacon. Why were memories flooding in like some internal levee had burst? Was it age? Was it the fight with Sidda?

As Vivi smoked, she remembered how she'd visit with Genevieve when she was pregnant with Sidda and the twin. Sometimes, on good days, the Ya-Yas would spend whole afternoons with Genevieve in her bedroom. Vivi six months and huge; Teensy, four months, but barely showing; Necie pregnant for the second time, and beginning to put on weight all over; Caro, the biggest of them, fit and strong and big as a horse. The four of them, beached whales, surrounding Genevieve, snacking on sandwiches and Bloody Marys that Shirley brought up on a tray. Genevieve's boudoir on a good day had the feeling of an intimate if slightly bizarre bistro.

Genevieve would be propped up, dressed in one of her gorgeous bed jackets, ten thousand pill bottles on her bed table, her thick black hair piled up on her head, her nails perfectly done, surrounded by freesias, her favorite flower. She'd listen to every single detail of the Ya-Yas' pregnancies, no detail bored her. Then, lapsing into her patois, Genevieve would give them remedies she'd learned growing up on the bayou.

"To keep the devil away, let the bebe teethe on a necklace of alligator teeth. Show dem spooks who is boss! For teething, take crawfish, rub de chillun's teeth, will make them cut easy.

"Always remember," Genevieve would say to the expectant Ya-Yas: "Sometime the bebe she has to get sick to get well."

On bad days, the boudoir lamps weren't even turned on. Genevieve's room was kept dark. She wanted no light. The bad days finally stretched to weeks, then to months. Finally, only Teensy was welcomed into her mother's bedroom.

One afternoon when Sidda was a little over a month old, Vivi stopped in to show Sidda to Genevieve. It was Vivi's first trip out after losing the twin, and she was trying to pull herself out of depression. She intended to ask Genevieve to be Sidda's godmother.

Caro had driven Vivi and the baby to the Whitman home. When they arrived, Shirley met them at the front door.

"Miz Vivi, Miz Caro, yall kindly wait in the living room?"

When Teensy came down the stairs, she looked exhausted. Her swollen body looked like a volleyball had been placed in the waistband of an adolescent girl's skirt.

"Maman's sleeping today," she said. "I'm sorry. She's not doing so good."

"Is she sleeping," Caro asked, "or did they give her another shot?"

"Another shot," Teensy whispered. She lifted the baby blanket to peek at Sidda sleeping in Vivi's arms.

"Lashes to die for."

"Like Shep's," Vivi said.

"Little one," Teensy whispered to the baby. "I don't think my maman can be your marraine." Then she folded the blanket back over Sidda's tiny head. She did it quickly, as if she couldn't bear to see the baby's face for another instant.

"Vivi," she said, "ask Caro to be the godmother."

"Why?" Vivi asked. "It doesn't matter if Genevieve can't be at the baptism. I want Genevieve to be-"

"Don't argue with me, Vivi," Teensy said. "Please."

"Couldn't I just show Sidda to Genevieve?" Vivi asked.

Teensy looked as though she were barely holding on. "I'm sorry, Vivi," she said.

Sidda never got to meet Genevieve St. Clair Whitman.

A month after Sidda's baptism, Vivi was lying on a green-and-blue-plaid spread on top of the daybed. Sidda lay next to her, sucking on her bottle. It was a moment when she had managed to put the lost twin in God's hands for a few hours, and cuddle up inside her life, and she was thankful. Shep was in the kitchen, mixing a drink and slicing some cheese to go with crackers. He was the one who took the phone call from Chick.

Vivi could hear the sound of him talking, but couldn't make out what he was saying. She was in a sweet, dreamy time with her new baby. My husband is going to bring me appetizers, then broil me a steak, she thought. I look pretty damn good for a woman who has just had a baby.

"Baby," Shep said, walking back into the room with her bourbon.

" 'Baby' yourself," she said, patting the bed. "Come sit."

Vivi wanted her little family curled around her. She was a new mother with a handsome husband and a beautiful and healthy redheaded daughter. She might have lost a child, she might have been doing battles with the demons, but that evening she was in a glow and she knew it. Vivi could feel the bright center spotlight shining on her.

"Look at this darling girl," she whispered to Shep. "Just look at her."

Vivi took a sip of her drink, then set it on the table next to the day bed. She began to whisper to Sidda. "You have pretty eyes big as plates and a perfect nose and sweet little lips. You have ten yummy toes and ten yummy fingers and pretty little legs. I just want to eat you up."

Shep looked at his infant daughter for a moment, then at his wife. He hated to ruin the sweetest moment they'd had since the twin died.

"The good French lady has left us, Vivi," he said softly.

Vivi wasn't paying attention to him. She was in Sidda's sweet, powdery little world. She was holding the bottle to Sidda's lovely lips. She watched her daughter's eyes starting to get heavy as she finished the bottle.

Bending down, Shep started to pick up Sidda. He had slipped one of his hands under her tiny back.

"Don't pick her up, yet, Baby Doll," Vivi said. "Let her drift all the way off, then I'll burp her and put her to bed."

Usually Shep let Vivi tell him what to do with his daughter. He didn't touch Sidda without Vivi's instruction or permission. This time, however, he left his hand under Sidda's back for a moment, hesitating. Then he scooped her up, taking the bottle out of Vivi's hands.

"What are you doing, Shep? You want to finish feeding her?"

Shep stood holding Sidda in one hand at his hip.

Vivi sat up, still in a good mood, ready to indulge her husband.

"Vivi, Genevieve has passed over," he said, watching his wife closely.

The taste of iron seeped into Vivi's mouth. She stood up. Strange, she thought. I did not taste iron when the twin died. I have not tasted it since Jack died.

"What happened?" she asked, not wanting to know.

Shep looked down at the baby girl in his arms. He did not want to tell his wife what he had to say. "Babe, I'm awful sorry. But I think the alligators got her."

Vivi looked down into her daughter's sleepy eyes. For a moment, Vivi could not see her daughter. She could only see her own shocked expression reflected back to her from the baby's large hazel eyes.

"Can I do something, Vivi?" Shep asked. "Is there something I can do for you, Babe?"

Vivi shook her head. "There's nothing you can do for me. Finish feeding your daughter. Then burp her and check her diaper. I'll be in the bedroom on the phone. Please don't disturb me."

Then Vivi turned and walked out of the room, and Sidda began to cry. Shep Walker lifted the infant up in the air so that Sidda's baby body was slightly above his face. He did not know why she was crying. He did not know how to make her stop.

"Hey, Little Butterbean," he said. "Everything's okay. You got your papa's eyes, you know it? You got your mama's set of lungs and your papa's eyes."

"Can I talk?" Vivi asked Teensy, who was now stretched out on a lounge chair, her shoes kicked off.

"What do you mean can you talk?!" Teensy said. "The only way any of us are going to stay out of The Betty is to talk."

"I have realized that I do not forgive Holy Mother Church," Vivi said. "I thought I had, but I haven't. They should have let us bury Genevieve in the Divine Compassion graveyard."

"HMC still doesn't like final exits via barbiturate-vodka cocktails," Teensy said, sounding vulnerable in spite of her tough words.

"I kept going to Mass," Vivi said, "even though you quit. Even though Caro gave up on Confession. I kept up everything, just like Necie. Even after I had to switch confessors after Sidda told the world I was the Hitler of motherhood. All my life I've been a sucker for that pure, light feeling you get for two and half minutes after you've come clean in Confession. The feeling that if you got run over by a truck you'd be just fine."

"I gave up on that when they told me my striptease was a mortal sin," Teensy said.

"You're smarter than me, Teensy-boo."

Teensy laughed. "In the land of the blind, the nearsighted man is king."

After taking a sip of her drink, Teensy continued. "I am not smarter, Vivi. But I know Maman loved me. She did not kill herself because she did not love me. She killed herself because she believed she had let my father kill my brother. She left that in her note. My father is the one she punished the most."

Teensy sighed, then took a sip out of her drink.

"Do you miss him?" Vivi asked.

"I miss Jack every day of the world," Teensy said softly. "But not in the way you do. He was my brother. I have spent my life with the man I love."

"I can still close my eyes and see Jack," Vivi said. "See him running down the court with the basketball, jumping off that rope swing at Spring Creek. Teensy, I can still see him-I don't know if you even remember the time at the Gulf when-"

Vivi paused to look away. "God, am I crazy, still carrying on like this? Am I one of those nuts who never get over high school, for Christ's sake?"

"My brother was your true love, Bebe," Teensy said.

"Yes," Vivi said, and took a sip of her bourbon. "And I would still give everything I have to smell his scent one more time before I die."

"That's something I don't forgive," Teensy said.

"What?" Vivi asked.

"God taking Jack. I'm glad we beat the Japs and I'm proud we stopped Hitler, but I still don't think my brother should have died in that war. It's how come you and I understood the kids when they were against Vietnam. Patriotism is a crock. True love is not a crock, but patriotism is, cher."

"The Catholic Church and the United States military really ought not to mess with the Ya-Yas," Vivi said.

Opening the set of French doors that led from the living room to the patio, Chick said, "Do I hear yall plotting against Church and State? Please, Teensy, I don't want the FBI bothering us again."

Teensy and Vivi laughed.

"You crazy fool," Vivi said. "How's your marinade?"

"Just call me Julia Child," Chick replied, affecting the famous chef's voice. "Yall need refreshing?"

"Oui, oui, s'il vous plait," Teensy said. "And, Bebe, we're almost ready to eat. What can we do to help?"