Leaving Eden (10 page)

Tallie’s Book

The only dumb questions are the ones
you don’t ask.

Women with fat faces shouldn’t wear
bangs.

Conceiving of possibilities is as important
as attaining them.

eight

I stayed in bed late Monday morning. No sense in getting all excited about the prospect of a driving lesson since there’d probably be another broken hip or heart attack calling Martha Lee away. Before I ever learned to drive I figured I’d be courting brittle bones myself. I’d probably be so ancient, I’d present a danger to oncoming traffic, like half the Tuesday customers at the Kurl. I swear their cars looked like rejects from the demolition races over in Spring Hill. Fenders scraped. Doors dented in so far, they hardly opened. Those old ladies were always backing into something. Only thing that kept most of them alive was they drove about as fast as a milk cow standing in the rain. It made Daddy mad enough to suck spit when he got stuck behind them. Except for Easter Davis. She was so tiny, she had to sit on four cushions to see over the steering wheel, but that didn’t stop her. Even with every dryer in the Kurl going full blast, you could hear the squeal of brakes every time she pulled into the lot. “Glad to see no radar coming up the road,” she’d tell Raylene, testy as usual. One time she lost it on a curve and then walked away and left her car in a ditch somewhere. Daddy said Easter was a hellcat when she was younger, and nothing I could see indicated anything had slowed her down.

It remained a mystery to me why someone like Easter Davis or the Tyree sisters went on living and someone like Mama died. No sense asking questions like that, Goody told me before the funeral, it’s just the Lord’s way. Which is where I thought He was wrong. It didn’t make bit of sense. If He was so powerful, then I hated Him for taking Mama. And if He wasn’t and things like people dying had nothing to do with Him, then what was the point of praying? All that talk about the mysterious ways in which He worked was what people like the Reverend Tillett said when they couldn’t find meaning in it, either.

Sometimes I wondered how Spy sorted it out after Sarah died. Nights when I used to practice how I’d talk to him if we ever got alone, that’s one of the things I worked on. I also wanted to explain why I didn’t go to the funeral, how I just couldn’t. I wanted to tell him how nice Sarah was, not stuck-up like her friends. I wanted him to know that I never believed the mean-hearted things some of the other girls said about how Sarah died and that I for one truly believed it was possible for a person to drown in Elders Pond, even if she was the best swimmer in the school.

Sarah died the summer we were twelve. The same summer Mama came back from L.A. Mama was the one who told me about Sarah. “Com’ here, sugar,” she said. “I got something to tell you.” I knew it was bad, ’cause all the music was gone from her voice. I thought something had happened to Goody. Or maybe even Daddy. Accidents and fire were the big dangers of working at the mill. When Mama told me Sarah’d drowned, I thought it was a mistake. I didn’t think kids like us could die.

The Reynolds had Sarah’s funeral at the Episcopal Church, and everyone in town went, but I took myself out to the creek instead and that’s where Mama found me. She didn’t scold me for not going to the church, or try to make me talk. Mama always knew when it was time for words and when it wasn’t. She sat with me until it got dark and didn’t say dumb things like it was all right to cry if I wanted to.

“Do you think it hurt to drown?” I finally said.

“I don’t know, sugar,” she said. “Maybe it’s like falling asleep. Maybe after the first—I don’t know, panic, I guess—maybe when that goes, you just drift off. Maybe it’s like being a baby inside a mama’s belly, taking water into your lungs. In that way, maybe it’s like returning home.”

Talking like that, Mama made it sound almost comforting, but I didn’t think it was that way at all. Not close. One time I’d swum too far out in the same pond where Sarah drowned and I was taken by a cramp. Before Wiley and Will could get me, I went under twice, thrashing my arms like a crazy person, screaming for my mama and choking till it burned. All the things I knew about swimming just went flying clear out of my brain. When Wiley got me to shore, I nearly puked. Then I made both of them swear not to tell Mama. From this personal experience, I didn’t think drowning was some kind of drifting off at all. I was fixing to tell Mama that, but something stopped me. Maybe she was needing to think it’d be peaceful. Maybe she was thinking of Natalie Wood. Mama had nightmares about Natalie drowning. She knew all the details by heart—how Natalie’d been all alone and maybe crying out for help while that awful Robert Wagner, who always looked like he had makeup on, was getting drunk with that other creep Christopher Walken. I wondered if Sarah had cried out. I wondered if she’d screamed for her mama. I wondered why she was swimming alone in Elders Pond, something she’d told me her mama forbid.

Rula Wade told me about the funeral. She said Sarah was wearing the white dress she’d worn for the awards assembly, the one with the lavender sash, and was laid out in a white coffin covered with flowers, thick and complete as a blanket. She said someone put a teddy bear in with Sarah, which was a baby thing to do, ’cause she was twelve, but later all the girls agreed it was okay because when they closed the lid and put her in the ground, it would be nice to think of her not being alone. Rula said at the visiting hours every table in Wesler’s Funeral Home was covered with flowers except the ones holding photos of Sarah. There were about a thousand photos, she said, starting from the time Sarah was a baby, all the way to her class pictures. Her trophy from the spelling bee was there, too. And all her ribbons from swim meets. Rula said the kids from school were crying, even the boys. Even Spy? I asked, and she said yes, everybody. She said Sarah’s mama was talking crazy and grabbing on to everyone and saying what a beautiful girl her Sarah was, what an angel, and how her angel was with God now, but Rula said she wouldn’t let go of your arm and you had to kind of jerk it away, and the adults were whispering she was acting that way because she’d taken too many of the pills that were supposed to calm her down but didn’t. Hearing about it, I determined funerals were spooky and I vowed I was never going to one. Not even when Goody passed.

Mama’s funeral came that November.

A horn blasting outside interrupted my thinking. Not the dum-da-da-dum-dum honk that Mama used to sound when she was impatient to get moving. This was serious blasting, someone lying on the horn, not about to give up. “Okay, okay,” I shouted. “Keep your damn pants on.” I stripped off my pajamas and struggled into a pair of too tight cutoffs. Daddy never noticed things like my needing clothes. Pretty soon I’d have to talk to him about getting things that fit, a prospect that was none too pleasing. He’d take me to Shucks Discount or one of the outlets on the way to Lynchburg and wait in the truck while I shopped for something my size, which was better than the first time when he went inside with me and made me so nervous, I shoved this dumb pair of purple and blue striped pants in the cart just so we could get out of there. “That all you need?” he kept asking and, desperate to escape, I’d said yes.

Martha Lee was waiting outside. “Come on, Cookie,” she said. “We’ve got places to go and people to see. Where’ve you been, anyway? I thought you’d be waking me up instead of the other way around. I thought you wanted to learn how to drive.”

“So stop talking and let’s go,” I said, and slid into the cab without looking at her.

“You okay?”

“Sure,” I said. It was hard to look directly at Martha Lee. The money I stole kept getting in the way.

“You had breakfast?”

“Not hungry,” I said.

She pretended to push a buzzer on the dashboard. “
Bzzzzz.
Wrong answer.” She swung into the drive-thru of the doughnut shop and ordered two jumbo coffees, with double cream, and a box of chocolate-covered. “Got to fuel up, girl. We got serious business at hand.” For a nurse she wasn’t overly concerned about nutrition. Diet wasn’t even in her vocabulary. Once on the road, we headed west, out toward the Blue Ridge. She downed two doughnuts before I got the lid off my coffee. A blind man could see how she got to be so big. But then she didn’t have to worry about the extra ten pounds the camera added to your figure.

The whole cab smelled of grease. “Where’re we going?” I asked. I reached for a doughnut. One wouldn’t hurt, even if the sweetness of it so early in the day might make me a little sick.

“Someplace where you can get behind the wheel without smashing into anyone so I won’t have to be getting a loan to pay for insurance.” She licked her fingers clean, then fished around in the box for another chocolate-covered.

“I’m not going to hit someone,” I said. Jeez, if Elizabeth Talmadge could learn to drive, or Rula Wade, for God’s sake, how hard could it be?

Finally we got to this stretch of dirt road so overgrown, it looked like it hadn’t been used since the Baby Jesus was teething. She pulled over and switched the engine off so we could change seats. Then we went through all the stuff about the clutch and brake and accelerator, the business about shifting gears, which she made me practice. The first time, I ground those gears like hamburger ’cause I didn’t depress the clutch all the way in, but pretty soon I could do it smooth as milk and she said I was going to be a natural. At last she told me to turn the key and set the gear in first. I pushed the clutch in so hard, it almost went through the floorboard, then stepped on the gas, letting up the clutch at the same time like she told me, but the old pickup started to buck and jump and the box of chocolatecovereds went flying off the seat, and then we stalled. Martha Lee didn’t get mad, she just said real patient-like, “Ease up on the clutch. That’s the secret. Let it up real easy. Okay. Let’s try again.” I could just imagine how Mr. Nelson would be acting if this were driver’s ed. He’d be having a double coronary.

I tried again, but I was getting pretty nervous and the damn truck was jumping so much, you’d think I was riding a bronco. Pretty soon the cab was such a mess with spilled coffee and smashed doughnuts, it’d take a washing with a hose to clean it out, but Martha Lee was laughing like crazy, like that was the least of her worries, and that set me off, too. We got screaming so hard, I had to concentrate not to pee my pants and it didn’t even matter if I was going to learn to drive or not. All the laughter erased all the bad feelings in my heart about stealing the money, and I could look Martha Lee straight in the face, but each time I did, we’d just start up again. The last time I’d heard her laugh like that—the screaming laughter that ended with you crying or peeing your pants—was when Mama was alive.

By the end of October, Mama pretty much stayed in bed, and Martha Lee had all but moved in. Goody even came up from Florida, and for once she was in the house more than ten minutes without getting in a spat with everyone. She kept calling Mama her baby and fixing little bowls of vanilla custard for her. She’d make cups of peppermint tea, which she said always soothed a sour stomach. Even after a couple of days passed and she’d returned to being her usual bossy self and kept telling Daddy that Mama should be in a hospital or someplace where there were real nurses to take care of her and not an LPN, my mama stayed calm. That’s enough, she told Goody in this real quiet voice, and wonder of wonders, Goody just shut up.

After that, Goody started cleaning the house like dirt was her enemy. She scoured everything but the inside of the toilet tank and probably would have done that if she’d thought of it. She grumbled on about how Mama was born stubborn and if she didn’t change her ways her pigheadedness would be the death of us all, and the trouble with Mama was that no one stood up to her, least of all my daddy, that in the eyes of most people Mama could do no wrong, and any sane person could see she should be in a hospital where she’d get sufficient care. She was careful to say these things when Mama couldn’t hear. She’d save most of it up until night, when we were in bed, then she’d start in, like I was at fault. The whole bed smelled of her dental adhesive and the sour smell of old skin, and I’d think, God, if you’re listening, if you’re even
there
, why can’t you take this mean old woman instead of Mama? In spite of everything, I don’t think any of us— Goody or me or Daddy—really believed Mama was going to die. How could someone that beautiful and alive die?

At Halloween, Mama asked me what costume I was going to wear, just like this was an ordinary year, but I told her I was too old to go off with the Bettis twins. I said I’d stay home and hand out Tootsie Rolls. The next day, when I came home, Martha Lee was there as usual and there was a dummy sitting on the mechanical bed with Mama. He was dressed all in black, both the suit and hat, and was wearing sunglasses, just like the ones of the Blues Brothers. For the face, Martha Lee had used a mask of Bill Clinton. It drove Goody crazy. She was sputtering and slamming things around in the kitchen. Every time she came in the front room where Mama’s bed was, she’d give Martha Lee an evil look.

“Is it Duane?” I asked Mama. It drove Goody bughouse when they started in on the Duane stories. Usually she’d get up and leave the room, dragging her sniffy disapproval with her.

“Nope.”

“It’s not?” As far as I knew, they’d never made a dummy that wasn’t named Duane.

“Nope.”

“Then who?” In spite of herself, Goody was getting interested.

“G. R.,” Mama said.

“G. R.?”

“Yep.”

In my head, I ran through the list of everyone we knew. “Mr. Rollins?” I asked, though I had no idea what his first name was.

“Nope,” Mama said.

Then I thought of George Reynolds, Spy and Sarah’s daddy. He always wore a suit and tie, even at the annual school picnic when even the teachers knew enough not to dress up.

“No,” Mama said.

“Give me a hint,” I begged.

“One hint,” Mama said. “It isn’t anyone from Eden.” She and Martha Lee couldn’t stop grinning.

I studied the dummy, looking for some clue. “A movie star?” I said. “Or someone on TV?”