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Eppes, Cindy South of Reason: A Novel ISBN 13: 9780743437998

South of Reason: A Novel - Hardcover

 
9780743437998: South of Reason: A Novel
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Widow Lou Jean Perry finds her life turned upside down by the arrival of her new neighbors, the Sanders family, especially by perceptive thirteen-year-old Kayla, whose growing relationship with Lou Jean could reveal old secrets that bind both families together, in an evocative coming-of-age novel set in 1960s Texas. A first novel. 35,000 first printing.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:
Cindy Eppes grew up as part of a ranching family in the mesquite country along the Rio Grande. She teaches eighth-grade Spanish, operates a small architectural cast-iron business, and takes frequent trips back to south Texas to "ride shotgun in helicopters flying three feet over the backs of stubborn cattle." Eppes lives with her husband in Fairfield, Texas, and South of Reason is her first novel.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One

Charles Dale Perry's mother was known for washing her hands. The summer that Charles Dale came to live with my family, she was up to at least forty times a day. If she forgot and took the mail out of the box before the sun had time to bake off the postman's germs, or if she had to give Charles Dale's little brother an enema, the count could go as high as fifty.

When my mother told me that Charles Dale was coming to stay with us and that his mother was going to North Austin to a psychiatric hospital, I cried like a kid Charles Dale's little brother's age. It wasn't that I didn't want him to live with us -- he was my second best friend -- it was that his mother was my best friend.

Lou Jean Perry was the only person I ever knew who could scare both my mother and my grandmother. Neither of them was afraid of Jesus, and only one of them was afraid of God, but both were afraid of Lou Jean. My grandmother was afraid of her because of the effect Lou Jean had on my mother. My mother was afraid of the black hair that hung over Lou Jean's shoulder and straight down the center of her cleavage, a braid as thick as a woman's arm, and of the black pencil, soft as a Crayola left on a hot sidewalk, that Lou Jean used to color the pale white skin around her blue eyes.

When Lou Jean left that day, sitting with her right shoulder blade against the passenger door of her mother's white Cadillac, everyone on the street noticed just one thing. She didn't wave to Charles Dale or David, who stood with me on our lawn. My mother stood behind the three of us, her arms spread out to catch me on my right shoulder, Charles Dale on his left. With David in between us, where he could feel it too, she sent waves of motherly concern down her hands, out her fingertips, and into our August-brown bodies. The neighbors watched and thought how lucky Charles Dale and David were to have my mother step in. My mother watched and thought how lucky she was to have Lou Jean drive off. My father stayed at work.

Just as the Cadillac got to the end of our block, before it pulled on to Fifth, Lou Jean turned in her seat and leaned through the window, her hair crow's-wing shiny under the noon sun. And still she did not look at us.

Instead, she tilted her head back further and further, lifting her chin until her eyes were locked on the tallest point of her house, where the second story was capped by a tiny bell tower. She stared at a point high up on the hot stucco, and seeing where her eyes went, Charles Dale, David, and I turned to stare at the exact same spot. While the neighbors poked each other to make sure nobody missed this, her last broad daylight act of craziness, and my mother tried to decide what we were staring at and if she should herd us on into the house, we looked at the spot and then back at Lou Jean, making sure we knew exactly where she was looking. When we could no longer see the car or hear its motor, my mother took David by the hand and led us inside, away from the twelve-o'clock glare of neighbors' eyes. I tried to glance at the spot one more time as we started to the door, but I couldn't see around my mother's body.


"My mom said you can come over if you want" was the first thing Charles Dale Perry ever said to me. I was sitting on the curb the day we moved in, hoping kids would come out of one of the houses. In the three and a half hours we had lived there, I had seen none. He spoke from directly behind me, and I had to turn all the way around to look up at his face. The late afternoon sun was so strong behind his head that I couldn't see what he looked like, but I was so ready for company that it didn't matter. I said, "Okay," got up, and followed him into the house next door to ours.

The Perrys had lived in that big Spanish house since before the boys were born. "Old money," said my dad. "And crazy as peach orchard boars, every one of them," said my grandmother. My mom said nothing.

The house had been bought for Lou Jean and her husband by her parents just before Charles Dale was born. When I followed Charles Dale through that door for the first time, Lou Jean's husband had been dead a year and a month, the first and only person in Rosalita to be killed in Vietnam.

Lou Jean was in the kitchen, a huge room covered in Mexican tiles and hand-painted wooden cabinets. The floors were spotless gleaming saltillo. The counters and walls were cobalt blue with small touches of terra-cotta and forest green. The cabinets were painted with jungle birds, toucans and macaws and parrots, with tiny hummingbirds feeding at the knobs. Even the ceiling was painted, in swirls of icy blues and greens. It was like walking into a magic cave with a stream flowing through it, where birds and animals come to get out of the heat. I wanted to lie down on that tile floor and turn my face side to side, press each cheek against the shine until I soaked up all the cool.

Lou Jean turned from the carrot she was grating and saw me staring at the floor. "Hi, Kayla," she said, surprising me by knowing my name, and then added, as if she could read my mind, "I just mopped it. It's clean." Thinking she meant it was all right for me to lie down, I did, stretching out on my stomach and extending my arms so my elbows and palms could feel the cool too.

Charles Dale laughed, a snort really. His voice was shocked. "She's lying down on our floor." It dawned on me then that his mother must not have meant for me to lie down on her tiles; she was just saying that they were clean. Now I was stretched flat on the kitchen floor of a house I'd never been in, in front of the first kid I'd met, whose name I didn't even know, though for some reason, his mother knew mine.

I pushed myself to my knees as quickly as I could, wanting to be up and out of there before I did anything else stupid, but just as suddenly, Lou Jean was at my side, her hand on my shoulder. "Charles Dale Perry. What do you think you're laughing at? This is what tile floors are for. This is how they do it in Mexico. Down in old Mexico, I mean. Away from the border." She lifted her braid from where it hung between her breasts, threw it out and around her right shoulder to her back, and got down on the floor in the same position I had been.

I looked at Charles Dale to make sure they weren't playing some kind of joke on me, but he was staring at his mother, as surprised as I was. Slowly, I got down on the floor beside her, moving over from the last place I'd lain, to make sure the tiles were as cold as possible. I turned my face on its left side and out of the corner of my right eye, I could see Charles Dale staring at us, a grin on his face. His smile was familiar, like someone I knew, and I decided he wasn't really mean, just not sure how you were supposed to act when people lay down on your kitchen floor.

"Y'all are crazy." He shook his head and sighed as he climbed down beside us, slowly, shyly, although by now I could tell he was dying to try it too. Pressing against the floor, his face was dark, tanned, almost the color of the saltillo. His hair was the same color as mine, the kind of hair that bordered between brown and blond, depending on the time of year. His eyes were also brown, with golden flecks, as if the sun had claimed them too.

We lay there until our undersides were cold as grass snakes, grinning at each other and occasionally changing the position of a foot or arm to let another part get cool. Finally, Lou Jean got up, stretched her arms back over her head until they touched the floor, a perfect backbend in the middle of a kitchen, then rose up and went to the sink. She washed her hands and said over her shoulder, "If you two will go drag David out from in front of that television and wash his hands and yours, and wash them good, now, I'll make you raisin-and-carrot salad with baby marshmallows in it."


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  • PublisherAtria
  • Publication date2002
  • ISBN 10 0743437993
  • ISBN 13 9780743437998
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages288
  • Rating

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