Leaving Eden (16 page)

sixteen

Cora was right about the TV people. By Tuesday noon, they covered the town like fleas on Old Straw. It got so crowded in Wayland’s Diner that Mr. Wayland had to take on extra help. The reporters acted like the place was their own private club and the booths were their personal desks. Mainly they were from Lynchburg, but some came all the way from Richmond. I thought about how people passed every day, and wondered what made some people more deserving than others of special attention. Raylene said it was because Mr. Reynolds was rich. If it’d been one of us, she said, the only reporter interested would be Miss Gibbons from the
Eden Times
. There were vans all along Main Street, dish antennas on their roofs big enough to contact Mars, and camera crews had set up on the sidewalk outside Mr. Reynolds’s law office. “The scene of the brutal murder,” I heard one reporter saying into her mike, her voice all edgy and excited. I swear some people would dance on the grave of the newly dead. I could never figure what caused people to be so taken with the misfortunes of others. A couple of reporters tried to set up over on Carlton’s Way, outside the Reynoldses’ house, but someone complained, so Sheriff Craw blocked the road off with sawhorses and said only residents could drive through. He put extra men on duty to enforce this rule. After work, I rode by on my Raleigh, trying to catch sight of Spy, but the front curtains were drawn tight and his red Camaro was nowhere in sight. When I got home, I phoned, but I got an answering machine telling me to leave a message, so I hung up.

On the six o’clock news a reporter “live on the scene” (like they’d use a dead one?) said the murdered man had been a prominent lawyer in the community. There was a picture of Mr. Reynolds and one of Mrs. Reynolds, too. They called her a former model and mentioned she’d been a Breck Girl. They said stuff about how this was “the second time the family had been visited by tragedy,” and told how Sarah had drowned. And they showed her picture, too. Then the reporter said the local sheriff had no leads and the people in Eden were locking their doors at the thought of a killer in their midst. Which was a big fat lie. You wouldn’t believe they could just make up stuff like that and get away with it. Raylene said they did it all the time. She said the only ones who told the truth were Dan Rather and the weatherman, and you couldn’t always count on them.

It was crazy like that for twenty-four hours; then on Wednesday afternoon a huge scandal broke in the mayor’s office in Lynchburg, something about a secretary and misspent funds, and the lot of them cleared out like they’d never been. “Sex, politics and money,” Raylene said. “That beats a murder anytime.” Then on Thursday morning, the
Glamour Day
people returned to the Klip-N-Kurl with everyone’s pictures, and for a while, believe it or not, we all forgot about Mr. Reynolds’s murder.

We were expecting the two blondes, Sylvia and Patty, but this time the company sent men, as if ladies weren’t to be trusted with this part of the transaction. There were two of them and they wore suits with narrow legs and narrower lapels and sported slicked-back hair, the kind of men who called you honey and made you hold tight to your purse.

I’d observed that most men felt out of place in the Kurl, but these two waltzed in with giant-sized cups of take-out coffee and fake leather briefcases, acting like they owned the lease. Without even asking Raylene, they shoved the magazine table over by the sinks, where we’d have to walk around it all day, and set up a card table.

Miss Tilly was first on the schedule. They made a big fuss over her, calling her the “lovely Miss Pettijohn” and pulling out a chair for her to sit in. After they had her settled in, one of the men reached for his briefcase and took out a large white envelope with
Glamour Day
in pink letters in one corner. Raylene and I left off what we were doing and went over to watch. The pictures were wrapped in two sheets of tissue, which one of the men unfolded slowly, making a big deal of it. Then he spread them out on the table: one 9 x 12, three 8 x 10s, five 5 x 7s and twelve wallets, in a combination of the five poses.

“Will you look at that,” Raylene said.

“Oh, my,” Miss Tilly said, her voice hushed like you’d use in church.

“You’d have to go far to find a prettier picture,” the first man said. He picked up the one of her in the tiara and set it in front of her.

Miss Tilly reached out to finger her image. She looked like she might cry.

At this point, the second man took over. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to let you keep the nine by twelve at absolutely no cost,” he said. He smiled like he was giving her a special treat, like the 9 x 12 wasn’t already included for the original twenty dollars.

Miss Tilly’s eyes were stuck on those pictures. I didn’t even know if she was listening to him.

“The complete package, all twenty-one photos, is yours to keep, too,” said the first man.

That got her attention. Miss Tilly looked up at him, her mouth shaped in a perfect O.

“That’s right,” he said. “All twenty-one photos.” He moved them around the table, drawing Miss Tilly’s eyes back to the pictures. She reached out to pick one up.

“The whole package,” he said, “for only ninety-nine dollars.”

Miss Tilly’s hand fluttered to her lap.

“That works out to less than five dollars apiece,” the second man chimed in.

I looked over at Raylene. I wondered if she knew about this part of the deal.

“Oh,” Miss Tilly said, her voice gone all flat.

“Now, we can offer an installment plan if that’s convenient,” the first man said. “We can break it down into payments for you.”

“How much would that be?” Miss Tilly asked in that flat tone.

“Let’s see,” said the second man, as if he were only at that moment doing the figuring. “We can give it do you for—let’s see—for twenty dollars a month spread out over a period of five months.”

“Interest free,” said the first.

“Twenty dollars?” Miss Tilly said.

“That’s right,” said the second. “And absolutely no additional interest for the entire five months.”

“None,” said the first.

Willa Jenkins was next on line, and she crowded in to look at Miss Tilly’s photos. “Jesus, be praised,” she said, “but, girl, don’t you look
fine
.”

And she did. The way Raylene had fixed her hair you couldn’t see her scalp shining through, and Patty, the camera-woman, must have played some photographer’s trick with the lighting, which Mama’d told me was a technique photographers used. Lighting, Mama said, was everything; it could be your friend or enemy, add ten years or take them away. They must have done something like that, because most of Miss Tilly’s wrinkles were ironed out. She looked like she could be the queen of some important country. England, maybe. Or France. It didn’t take five minutes for Miss Tilly to decide on the installment plan, her hand barely trembling at all as she signed on the line. I imagined her drinking watery tea for the rest of her natural life.

Willa settled in the chair next, and when they unfolded the tissue and brought out her shots, she tossed back her head and laughed right out loud. “Praise, Jesus,” she said. Her two friends elbowed their way in and repeated the praise to Jesus. I had to admit she looked amazing. Sparkling in a red satin top. All cleavage. Like Aretha, only fatter. “Praise, Jesus,” she said again. Just like Miss Tilly, she couldn’t seem to stop staring at her pictures. As she was putting her signature to the installment payment contract, I was wondering how she’d break the news to Baylor, who was still looking for work. But maybe, seeing his Willa look like a star, maybe he’d think it was worth five months of grits and boiled greens. When it was their turn, her girlfriends took the whole package, too. They left, sashaying out like they’d won the lottery.

With customers coming in all morning and us leaving off shampoos and sets to go take a look, we ran behind on the schedule, but no one complained. It was the same story whenever anyone saw the photos. They were intoxicated, plain drunk on these visions of themselves, and every single one of them ended up buying the whole lot. I couldn’t imagine what they were going to do with all these photos. How many pictures of yourself in rhinestones and elbow-length gloves could you hang on the walls of a four-room house? How many wallet-sized ones could you hand out? How much could you sacrifice to get them?

I understand a lot more about the power of dreams, now, but until that day I didn’t know that you could make a living by selling them. I didn’t understand that people would spend a lot of money, money they didn’t have and had no way of getting, spending it to buy something that wasn’t real in any sense except in their heads. I hadn’t yet discovered that people yearned to taste
possibilities,
to see what it would be like if only they had the chance to live another life, to look like a star.

At lunch the men sent me over to the diner to pick up sandwiches. Extra bacon on the BLTs, and double sugars with the coffee, they told me, like I was their personal slave. I was supposed to be sweeping up from two cuts and folding a load of towels and I expected Raylene to tell them to go get their own sandwiches, that I worked for her, but she didn’t say anything.

Just after three, Martha Lee came in. She was wearing her stained nurse’s uniform, and her hair looked like it hadn’t seen a comb in a week. I caught one of the men winking at the other, but I didn’t think she noticed. She wasn’t looking at much. She didn’t even want to see all the shots, though I was dying. “Just give me the nine by twelve and throw the rest away,” she told them straight out. The one who’d winked lost his smile. I could see they weren’t used to dealing with someone like Martha Lee. The second man put on this real phony voice and said surely a handsome woman like herself would want to see them all. No, she said, she just wanted the one, like she’d told them. This made the first man get pushy. I could have told him to save his breath, that he was taking the wrong tack, but I was on Martha Lee’s side. Somehow her not taking all the pictures, or even wanting a look at them, was making up for Miss Tilly and Willa Jenkins and all the other women who’d been signing up for the installment plans all day. Martha Lee asked him was he deaf, what part of this wasn’t he hearing, she wanted the one 9 x 12, that was the deal, and if they wanted a suggestion what to do with the others, she’d be happy to give it to them. The first man’s face got all flushed. He muttered something too ugly to repeat and pulled the 9 x 12 out of the white envelope. Then he made a big show of ripping up all the others. Without another word, he thrust the photo at Martha Lee, like it was suddenly contaminated. She grabbed it and beat it out of the Kurl, not caring one bit that the men were mad.

After she left, things settled down and the men got back their smiles. Sue Beth came in and Bitty Weatherspoon and Aubrey Boles, and every one of them took the whole package. Ashley Wheeler was the only one who paid cash. Finally,
finally
, it was my turn.

First thing, I didn’t even recognize myself. In the cowgirl outfit, I was pure Wynonna Judd. You wouldn’t even know it was me. I swear I looked twenty. “Oh, Tallie,” Raylene said, and gave me a little hug. I was filled with so many feelings, I couldn’t speak. I was stunned to see this vision of myself, this
transformation,
and I was deeply regretting Mama wasn’t there to see, too. She’d be so happy. Then I remembered what Preacher Tillett had told me about how now Mama was watching over me and could see everything, how she was my guardian angel. I was thinking that if it was true and Mama really could witness everything, she must have been mostly disappointed lately what with me drinking beer and Frenching with Spy and stealing from her very best friend on the planet. But, I was hoping that maybe somehow she’d understand all that. For sure if she was looking down at that photo, I know she’d be happy. “See, sugar,” I could hear her say, “listen to your mama. Didn’t I tell you you were beautiful?”

One of the men was explaining about the installment plan, like I hadn’t heard it so many times, I could have recited it to him. All day long I’d been thinking about it and I’d been knowing no installment plan was possible for me. I didn’t even bother asking for a miracle. Ninety-nine goddamn dollars was as far away as the moon, and if they agreed to let me spread it out over two hundred months it wouldn’t help one bit. But looking at these glossy pictures of me, facts didn’t matter. I didn’t want the one 9 x 12. I wanted them all, and I swear I’d have promised just about anything to get them. I wanted to paper the walls of our house so that no matter where I looked my eyes would rest on this creature staring back at me, this glorious creature who was saying, yes, you’re beautiful, yes, you can be a star. I wanted to divide up the wallet-sized sheet and send one to Goody in Florida and another to Uncle Grayson in Atlanta and one to Elizabeth Talmadge, just to show her who was the true Queen of the Universe. I wanted to tack one of the bigger ones up on the school bulletin board where they posted clippings about the football team. I wanted to put one up at the Eden Post Office next to the poster of the newest commemorative issue. I wanted to blow them up and plaster them on the billboards on the way into town. On the way out of town. I wanted to own them. I wanted to
eat
them.

Most of all, I wanted to paste them on the bathroom mirror so that when I brushed my teeth and washed my face, a different me would look back, a face that could belong to a movie star or a country singer, a woman who could wear flowers in her hair, a woman a boy like Spy Reynolds could love. I wanted to see this vision instead of the face I was used to, a face that had a lot more of my daddy in it than my mama.

When I could trust my voice, I told them thank you very much, but I’d just be taking the one.

The second man started in on how maybe I should call my mama and have her come and take a look ’cause for sure if she saw them she’d want to have them all. That’s when Raylene came over and told them my mama’d passed four years back.