Leaving Eden (17 page)

I could have killed her for telling these two men with their greasy, slicked-back hair something so private that was none of their goddamn beeswax. They got that fake, sad look people put on when they heard about Mama. Then one of them wrapped the 9 x 12 in tissue and gave it to me, calling me honey and acting like he was doing me the world’s greatest favor. I took it with me to the back room and got busy refilling bottles of shampoo and conditioner. I folded towels and then started on the ladies’ room, scouring the toilet and refilling the paper towel box and taking the Ajax to the stubborn rust spot in the sink. I planned on keeping busy back there until the men packed up and got out. Then I heard Raylene calling me and when I came out she was standing there with the men and one was holding a
Glamour Day
envelope.

“Here you go, little lady,” he said. “You just take these with our compliments.”

They were waiting for me to thank them and act like they were deserving of some big prize for being so generous, which I had no intention of doing. I was going to tell them no, thanks. I planned on telling them that just ’cause I didn’t have a mama didn’t mean I had to take charity. I was going to copy Martha Lee and tell them I had a suggestion for what they could do with the goddamn photos. I took a second to get the words straight and when they came out what I actually said was, “Thanks.” Then I grabbed the envelope right out of his hand before he could change his mind.

Wanting is a powerful thing. You’d be surprised at what it could make a person do.

Tallie’s Book

Wanting is a powerful thing.

seventeen

After I left the Kurl, I rode directly over to Martha Lee’s. I figured I’d show her the shots of me and she’d make a big fuss, like Raylene had, but when I got there, Martha Lee wasn’t home, a huge disappointment. I’d been looking forward to showing the pictures to
someone.
I sat on the steps and opened the
Glamour Day
envelope, carefully unwrapping the photos from the tissue. The one good part of being alone was that I could take my time looking without anyone saying I’d gotten too big for my britches. Each one was perfect: the one of me in the blue sequined tube, long gloves, and blue dangling earrings, my mouth curved just a little, like I knew a secret; the Wynonna cowgirl one, all sass and attitude; the one of me dressed in the square pearl earrings and the low-cut velvet, where I was displaying some cleavage and grinning like a bad girl. But the best by far was the shot of me in the black satin halter. No jewelry, just the rhinestone hair clip. Patty was right about my shoulders, and I was glad she’d insisted on that top. I wasn’t gazing directly at the camera, but off a little, like I was half dreaming and half looking at something no one else could see. But what made it the best was the way the light reflected in my eyes, like they held little suns. Mama would say it was a picture that glowed. That was the one I’d be using in L.A. Sure as sunrise, that was the photo that would make me a star.

After a while, I wrapped the photos back in the tissue and slipped them into the envelope. I wondered if Martha Lee was ever coming back. I fished the key out from its usual spot and let myself in. I helped myself to a beer and did a little straightening up. The envelope of money was still on the kitchen shelf. Curiosity killed cats, according to Goody, but I couldn’t help counting it, just to see how much was there. Well, believe it or not, there was more than a thousand dollars. I mean, hadn’t Martha Lee ever heard of banks? I knew Martha Lee’s daddy was rich, but I hadn’t pictured Martha Lee as actually having money. Believe it, if I had that kind of cash lying around, I’d sure be driving something better than a rusty old pickup and living like white trash in a place no better than a trailer. So would most people, I guess. But Martha Lee was different from most, and that wasn’t fresh news. I replaced the envelope exactly where I’d found it and went back outside. To keep myself occupied, I checked the garden. The grass all around was yellow as straw, but in spite of the heat and continued lack of rain, nothing in the garden had wilted. The irrigation bottles were nearly empty, so I unrolled the hose and got to work filling them. I helped myself to the bush beans, snapping the ends off, eating them right off the vine. The cherry tomatoes were ready for picking, too, so I had some of those, popping them in my mouth like candy till I had my fill.

By six-thirty, when Martha Lee still hadn’t arrived, I went back inside. I headed straight for Martha Lee’s room and opened the bottom drawer. The pictures of Mama were still there. Only weeks had passed since I’d seen them, but this time looking at them was different, like I was looking at someone I used to know a long time ago, someone who’d moved away. You wouldn’t think it was possible, but in spite of thinking of her every day and hearing her voice speaking clear in my head, in spite of my lists and my rule book, I was losing Mama. Without a picture to hold, I feared she’d disappear entirely.

Half listening for the sound of Martha Lee’s truck, I went through them all, slowly this time. There was no way photos could capture the truth of Mama, they could only suggest the liveliness of her. I looked at the ones where she was with Daddy and Grayson and Martha Lee, and the ones of her in school, always in the front row near the framed board with the class and year spelled out in block letters. The ones where she was older could have been photos taken out of her Hollywood scrapbook. That’s how pretty she was.

There was sound outside then, and I froze, straining to catch the rattle of the pickup, but everything fell quiet. Still, it made me nervous and I began to put everything back. I’d nearly shut the drawer when I saw another envelope, shoved toward the rear. I knew, even before I looked, that it was about Mama. There were two photos inside. The one on top was of Mama in the front seat of a fire-red convertible, sitting close to a blond boy I’d never seen in my life. Mama was smiling out at the camera and looking like she was queen of the homecoming parade. There was a dog in the backseat, which surprised me. Mama was afraid of dogs, even Old Straw, who was completely harmless and so old he didn’t even chase squirrels. Because of the dog, I thought maybe it wasn’t Mama at all, maybe it was a picture from her scrapbook, one of the real Natalie Wood, but when I turned it over, there was Mama’s round handwriting, as familiar as my own.
Gordie and Me,
it said in blue ink.
April, 1965.
I did the math quick and determined Mama’d been fifteen. Almost the same age as me. I stared at Mama and the man named Gordie. Now that I had a name for him, he seemed real. He was real good-looking, a look-alike for this movie star named Tab Hunter who was another actor in Mama’s scrapbook. He and Mama looked just right together, though it made me feel disloyal to my daddy to be thinking that. I’d never heard Mama or Goody or Martha Lee ever mention anyone named Gordie. For sure he didn’t live in Eden. It was weird to think of Mama having another life, a life before she married my daddy. Before me. I wondered where she’d met this Gordie guy and if it was when she was in school in Lynchburg and doing some theater there, but the date on the back didn’t match up. I wondered what had happened to him and why she’d never mentioned him. Had she ever kissed him, like I’d kissed Spy? I wondered if she’d had that first shock at the hardness of him and if she’d felt that melting, aching feeling of wanting deep inside. I wished the picture could come alive like a TV show, so I could hear what they were saying, so I could hear what music was playing on the radio. For sure, there’d be music playing in that car. You couldn’t think of Mama without putting her together with music. For the first time I really understood that Mama had a whole history before I was born, and there were whole parts of my mama that I didn’t know at all.

The second photo was of Mama, too. She was standing in front of a tree, and as impossible as it was to believe, she was with a girl who could have been her twin, like somehow the photographer’d made one of those trick double images. Except not really double, ’cause each person was dressed in different clothes. And one wore a bracelet on her left wrist. I looked on the back.
Natalie and me. September ’65,
it said in blue ink. I’d have sworn on the Bible, Mama had never met the real Natalie. Never. If she had, for sure, I’d have known. Mama couldn’t have kept something like that quiet if you’d paid her a million dollars and promised her the sun. If this picture was real, it would have been hanging on our living room wall instead of being stuck in a drawer in Martha Lee’s bureau. I stared at it a long time, trying to understand, but nothing about it made sense.

The last thing in the envelope was a postcard. It was a picture of the big Hollywood sign, just like the one Mama’d sent me, except it was addressed to Martha Lee.
I found her,
she’d written on the back. That’s all.
I found her.
Found who? For a minute I thought she must have meant Natalie. Who else? Of course that was impossible. That summer Mama left Daddy and me and headed off to Hollywood, Natalie’d already been dead for seven years. My head was dizzy from trying to make sense of it. I almost missed one other thing in the envelope. A slip of paper holding a name and an address and phone number. I stared at the name. Sasha. Sasha Upton; 344 Mississippi St., Los Angeles. I put everything back in the envelope and when I left Martha Lee’s I took it along with me.

The last thing I expected was to uncover a mystery about Mama, but one had been placed right before my eyes. I wondered if Uncle Grayson knew about what Mama’d been doing the year she was fifteen, and if she’d really met Natalie Wood. And if she had, why she wouldn’t have told me. The mystery was so big, it took my mind right off all the things that were happening in Eden. That’s how I pretty much forgot about Spy until Saturday, the day of Mr. Reynolds’s funeral.

The funeral was this really big deal, so I was glad I’d worn my new skirt and the blue cotton top, even if I had been saving it for a more festive occasion. The church was full up, and Mr. Wesler was running around telling people to move over and make room so other people could sit down. When he’d packed us in so tight you couldn’t breathe, when I swear you couldn’t slip a blade of sour grass between us, he ordered some men to set up folding chairs in the back. They formed a little assembly line, passing the chairs from one to another, snapping them open with efficient clicks. Even so, people had to stand. I figured every store in Eden must have closed up, like it was a national holiday instead of a funeral. It was three hundred degrees in the shade, and the overhead fans were going top speed. Between the heat and the overpowering smell of lilies and roses, you had to concentrate not to faint. Everybody was fanning away with this program that had been printed up, like it was a regular Sunday service except the program was all about Mr. Reynolds, even had his picture inside.

Just as the church bell was sounding one o’clock, there was a stir at the door and this group of strangers came in. They headed for the front pews that had been tied off with black ribbons, so I knew they were Reynolds kin from Lynchburg. An old lady led the way, making her way down the aisle with the aid of one of those ugly aluminum walker things, taking so long, it made you just itch to pick her up and carry her. Someone should have arranged for a wheelchair or something. It took her about three hours to get to the front. The rest of them shuffled along behind her like her own personal little parade. One of the men looked so much like Mr. Reynolds, he could have been a twin, right down to the black suit and hat. After they got themselves seated, there was a pause and people made those little impatient waiting noises with their feet, then Mrs. Reynolds came in. She had never been a big woman—Sarah took after her in that way—but now she looked plain tiny, all shrunk up like cotton washed in hot water by mistake. Spy was holding her arm. He was dressed in a suit, and you could see the white skin on his neck where he’d had a recent haircut. As they made their way to the front, Mrs. Reynolds stopped to touch people’s hands and thank them for coming, but Spy looked straight ahead, his eyes blank, like overnight he’d lost his sight.

When the family was finally seated, six men rolled in this huge casket, big enough to be a bank vault and looking like solid brass. It made my chest hurt to look at it and I was glad my daddy hadn’t come. I knew he’d be thinking about Mama, too. Then, from outside somewhere, came this wailing sound that raised the hair straight up on your arm and made your heart about break, like an invisible hand had reached right through your skin and grabbed hold and squeezed. Everyone turned as the rear doors swung open and a man came in playing a real bagpipe. It gave out the most sorrowful sound I’d ever heard, worse than a woman crying. The hand was clenching hard around my heart, so I found the dark place inside and held on to that and held on to that until things settled down. Behind me I heard Aubrey Boles’s mama say, “Just like them to be different.” Then the piper walked to the front, taking his time, head held proud, shoulders straight, little plaid skirt swaying with each step. When he was done, he stood for a moment until the last echo faded away, then he left through the side door, the one usually reserved for the preacher. Things were quiet for a minute, then up in the choir loft, Mrs. Duval started up, singing “Amazing Grace” in her screechy voice, erasing the ache the bagpipe man made, and the funeral got under way.

It lasted about a hundred hours. You wouldn’t believe a service could last that long, even for an important man like Mr. Reynolds. The preacher talked first, saying how this was not a sad occasion, but a celebration of a life and like that. Then Mrs. Duval sang again. Then the preacher read some passages from the Bible, the one about the mansion with many rooms. I think it’s a law or something that you have to read that at funerals. Then we all had to stand and sing from the hymnal. “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
All five verses.
One would have been more than enough, as far as I was concerned. But that was only the beginning. Mr. Reynolds’s brother got up and stood at the pulpit and read some more from the Bible, and another man got up and said he knew Mr. Reynolds from working with him at the chamber and a finer man never was born and ours was not to reason why or question the will of God but to remember the good things about Mr. Reynolds and carry on his work. It sounded like he wanted people to send money to the chamber in memory of Mr. Reynolds. Then we had to sing another hymn, “Abide with Me,” which only had three verses, thank the Lord. Everyone was sweating, and my new skirt was getting all wrinkled from all the sitting and standing and sitting again. After a while I stopped listening to what was going on up front. I found if I moved a little to the left, crowding so close to Mrs. Purvis I was practically sitting on her lap, I could catch sight of the back of Spy. He didn’t move at all. Not once. Then I looked at the picture of Mr. Reynolds they’d printed in the program. Gone to clay. Just like Mama. And Sarah. And Granddaddy Adams. And the people on the train in that tunnel collapse in Lynchburg. And all the people in the Eden Cemetery. And in the black cemetery out by Elijah Baptist. And movie stars, like Natalie Wood. And all the people who had ever died anywhere in the world, since time began. And dogs, too. And birds. And butterflies. It didn’t seem like there was enough ground to hold all the dead, even with the dead people in India being burned. It made me wonder why the earth didn’t weep, just holding all those bones.