Leaving Eden (21 page)

“I swear,” Spy said again. “I never meant to kill him.”

“I believe you,” I said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“I should have been able to stop it,” he said.

I told Spy there were some things that, once set in motion, can’t be stopped or derailed no matter what our will or intention. I think we could have sat there talking for the rest of the evening and all through till morning, but he had to go home. Before he left he told me he was sorry about a lot of things but not about the night we’d spent together and he hoped I wasn’t sorry either.

Then Spy Reynolds said the sweetest thing a girl could ever hope to hear. He told me he thought that I was beautiful, beautiful in a real, true way, the kind of beauty that was a lot more than surface. He said he knew I’d still be beautiful even when I was an old lady, as old as Easter Davis. He said he’d thought that was so for a long, long time, even years back when I was just a kid on the swim team with Sarah. Then Spy said I was the kind of girl a person could trust to hold his secrets and hold his heart and not betray either one, and that that was a rare and precious thing. He said he was sorry the way things had turned out, him shooting his daddy and all, sorry it had happened before we’d had a chance. I memorized every single word he said.

I supposed that was the time to tell him about the baby. I almost did. It seemed like there should be no secrets between us. Then I figured he already had enough worrying his mind and there was no sense adding to the list a baby that neither of us was ever going to see. That was one sorrow I’d be bearing by myself.

He kissed me and asked me if he could call me and I said yes, no more able to tell him I was leaving in the morning than I’d been able to tell Raylene. I had this feeling that the more people I let know I was leaving, the harder it would be to go. It hurt to tell this lie, hurt to imagine what he’d think when he learned I’d gone, but I locked the hurt up with all the others and waved good-bye, whispering God bless. And I meant it, too, me who didn’t even believe in God, saying it like just for a minute I’d been transformed into Reverend Tillett or one of the ladies at Elijah Baptist.

You might think as soon as Spy left I’d get right to mixing up Allie’s cure, drinking it down and being done with it, but I didn’t. I stuck the bag in Mama’s suitcase, along with the rest of what I’d need. I figured I’d wait until I arrived in L.A. Another day or two wouldn’t matter. Besides, if I got sick, like Allie said, it was best I was alone without anyone around to ask questions.

Just before I fell asleep, I pressed my hands against my face and inhaled the smell of Spy.

Tallie’s Book

Losing your head causes bad problems to
get worse.

It is a mighty and terrible possibility that
a person can do great harm without the
least intention.

twenty-one

It started to rain in the night and by morning it was coming down like it’d been saving up all summer for just this occasion. The radio was tuned to the weather station, and the man was going on about flash floods and washed-out roads. I lay there waiting for my daddy to head off to the mill and trying to figure out how I’d get to Lynchburg. Riding the Raleigh was clear out of the question. I stared up at the ceiling and looked at the little stars Mama’d stuck there so long ago, wondering if I’d ever see them again. I’d been planning this for years, but the idea of leaving Eden made me the tiniest bit sad. I wondered if Mama’d experienced the same confusion of feelings that summer she left us.

At the last minute, I heard my daddy revving up his truck. I jumped out of bed and tore to the kitchen door, but was too late to catch more than the sight of the rusted-out tailgate as it disappeared around the curve. I waved anyway. I fried up a couple of eggs, checking the sky about every two minutes, but like the weatherman said, the storm showed no sign of letting up. After breakfast I made up my bed and washed the dishes, then I retrieved Mama’s suitcase from the closet and checked the contents one last time. Then, without planning on it, I took out the bag Allie Rucker had given me. I pulled on one of my daddy’s rain slickers and took that bag and went out to the yard by the miracle butterfly bush. I dumped the stuff out—stuff that would get rid of any baby I might be carrying. Even now I can’t say why I did that. It wasn’t ’cause I thought I’d be sinning if I took it. Or because I suddenly was attached to the idea of having Spy’s baby. A baby would complicate my life and mess up my plans and I surely didn’t want one. Preacher Tillett would say I dumped it out because I was trusting that whatever God sent me I would take, no matter how it turned my future on its back. He’d say I was operating on faith, and maybe I was, although I didn’t think Mama was wrong when she’d gotten rid of the baby she was carrying. Before I returned to the house, I took a good look at the seeds and bark and stuff and wondered what, if anything, would be growing out of it.

I was soaked through by the time I finished up and was still fretting about how to get to Lynchburg. I considered hiring Mr. Tinsley, but that meant spending some of the money I was saving for L.A. Finally I thought of Wiley. I gave him a call and asked for a ride to Lynchburg and he said yes, no questions asked. Five minutes later he pulled into the yard and I was on my way. Anyone else would have to be knowing exactly what I was up to, but Wiley just plunked the suitcase on the seat between us and shifted gears. Tired of keeping it to myself, I nearly blurted out my plans, but then I told him I was going off to Florida to visit Goody, same story I’d left in the note for my daddy. My plan was to have Wiley drop me outside the airport, but he insisted on coming in. I practically had to be rude to get rid of him. He surprised me by grabbing a kiss at the last minute, and I astonished myself by kissing him back. He was my oldest friend and even if he had been acting weird all summer, I was going to miss him. Leaving a place was more complicated than I’d realized.

I sailed through the gate, prepared with my birth certificate and acting like I’d done this a few hundred times. The rain continued and I was wondering if they’d call off the flight, but pretty soon they told us to get on board and then we took off. I didn’t have a window seat and had to lean way over in order to see Lynchburg disappear. Except for the part where the plane took off and you rose up to greet the sky, boring right through the clouds, I thought flying was mostly overrated. I was crammed in the middle seat between a lady with the worst head of hair you could imagine and a man with a bad cold. I about broke my neck twisting away so as not to get his germs. About halfway to our first connection in D.C., he complained about his ears hurting and I thought it served him right for flying with a cold, spraying bacteria everywhere.

At Washington, we had to wait for a while before we got on another plane, and I spent the time getting a Coke and using the ladies’ room, checking my panties to see if my moon had come yet. When there was no sign of it, I felt I must have been crazy to dump out Allie’s baby cure. The thing about operating out of faith was that faith didn’t always stay steady. When we got back on the plane, I was glad to see I had a window seat. After about two hours, they gave us each this little tray of food, all divided up with salad and chicken with some kind of sauce that even Goody would say had too much salt. There was some foil-wrapped cheese, a little cellophane packet of crackers, and another containing three cookies. The woman sitting next to me offered me hers, but I declined, mindful of the extra weight a camera added to a person’s frame. Then, believe it or not, I fell asleep. I woke up hours later, drool running down my chin.

From then on, for the rest of the trip, I was torn between imagining my future in Hollywood and thinking of everything I was leaving behind. I figured by then my daddy must have discovered the note I’d left telling him I’d gone to visit Goody. I wondered if he’d believe it or would think I’d run away, and if he’d be relieved to be rid of me or if he’d miss me a little. And I wondered when Martha Lee and Raylene would hear about it and what they’d think. I figured Martha Lee must have discovered the missing money and known I’d taken it. I’d probably have to spend the rest of my life begging her forgiveness. Then I thought about Spy and that warm, wanting feeling spread through my belly. Maybe it was a train-wreck romance, but it sure was powerful. I remembered what he said about not meaning to shoot his daddy and wondered what would happen to him. I wanted to believe what Raylene’d said about rich people not going to jail, but I didn’t think they let a person completely off the hook if he’d shot his daddy, even if it was an accident.

The oddest thing was, believe it or not, I wasn’t one bit nervous and that was because Mama was with me. I could almost hear her voice, getting me prepared, telling me everything about Hollywood, stuff she’d told me a million times, like how the movie stars live in big mansions, and people stand on street corners selling actual maps so you can drive by and look at them, and about how Lana Turner had been discovered sitting at a drugstore soda fountain, and how Rita Hayworth had married a real prince, and Grace Kelly, too, which just went to show you that Hollywood was a place where dreams could come true beyond a person’s liveliest imaginings.

There were two things I planned on doing as soon as I got there, even before I got a job. One was for Mama and one was for me. First thing, for Mama I was going to find Natalie’s grave. When I found it, I was going to leave some flowers there, gardenias if I could find them, no matter what the cost. I knew that’s what Mama would have done if she’d been able to go there like she’d wanted. Before she ran out of time. Then, for myself, I was going to track down the Sasha woman. I was determined to discover who she was and exactly why my mama’d had her name written on a paper.

For just a moment, when I got off the plane and was waiting to retrieve Mama’s gray suitcase, I came near to panicking. People were shoving and pushing and speaking in about three hundred languages and it was so crowded, you couldn’t imagine. It was enough to turn a person dizzy. Off to one side there were about two dozen men holding up signs with people’s names written on them, and if I could have wished for one thing at that moment, it would have been that there was someone there holding up a sign saying
Tallie Brock,
or at least someone telling me where I could find a bus that would take me straight to Hollywood. I located the baggage claim and waited for Mama’s gray suitcase to show up. I was just beginning to think maybe it had gotten lost somewhere along the way when it came riding by on the conveyor belt. I was reaching for it when this man wearing a white suit and baseball cap grabbed it up. I thought he was trying to steal it, but it turned out he was only trying to help. I thanked him, polite as can be, and he inquired whether I had someone meeting me or if I needed a ride. “My car is right outside and I’d be happy to give you a lift,” the smiling man said. I was thinking that people in L.A. were just as nice as people in Eden and was just about to accept his offer when this bossy girl butted in and told him to get lost. Before I had a chance to tell her to mind her own beeswax, the man disappeared, melted right into the crowd like he’d never been there at all.

The bossy girl told me the man was as nice as he looked and was always trying to pick up girls who’d just arrived. She said I had
virgin
written all over me. I told her I didn’t care what she
thought
she saw written on me but one thing for sure was that I wasn’t any virgin. If I’d said something like that to Elizabeth Talmadge or anyone back at Eden they’d have fainted for sure, but not this girl. She laughed and said, “Not that kind.” She said I was an L.A. virgin. “Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re here to be an actress.” I said I was, and next thing we were talking like old friends. She said everybody called her Jazz, but her name was Jasmine Jade, which I thought was perfect since it matched her eyes, which were an astonishing shade of green. (Later I learned she had colored contact lenses, and that her real name was Cynthia.) She said she was a professional dancer, and was presently employed at Jumbo’s Clown Room, but only temporarily. I told her my name was Taylor Skye. She asked if I had a place to stay, and the next thing I knew we were sitting in this VW Bug painted hot pink and heading for Hollywood. She was staying in a youth hostel. For the time being, she said. Until she got her big break. It was cheap and located right in the middle of the action, she said, and that suited me fine. I didn’t tell her that if she was looking for a big break she should think about wearing something besides combat boots and a baggy house-dress that looked like it belonged to Etta Bird.

She drove the little Bug like a maniac, zipping in and out of traffic. Talking a blue streak the whole time. She said she’d been at the airport—LAX, she called it—to pick up a friend flying in from Denver, but the girl never showed up and she must have been there to meet me. I agreed. I knew Mama was directing things, and all I had to do was relax and go along. We passed a giant, round building that looked like a pile of long-playing records stacked one on top of the other. Jazz said it was the Capitol Records Building. For sure Elizabeth Talmadge had never seen anything like that. Then she pointed out the Griffith Observatory and asked if I recognized it. She was surprised I knew it was where they’d filmed the final fight scene in
Rebel
Without a Cause
. I didn’t tell her I knew everything about Natalie Wood, since that was private between Mama and me, and even if I wanted to I couldn’t have gotten a word in sideways. Next she pointed out the famous Hollywood sign, the one the girl jumped off. She said the letters were fifty feet tall. It looked exactly like it did on Mama’s postcard. Then I saw a boy sitting under an umbrella right by the curb holding an orange sign that said
Maps to 300 Movie Stars’ Homes.
There were palm trees, and the sky was brown in the distance—smog, according to Jazz—and I might as well have landed on Mars. The hills were brown, too, and Jazz said they were always brown in the summer because they don’t get enough water. It made me wish I could show her the Blue Ridge, all green, like mountains should be.

The hostel was located right on Hollywood Boulevard. It was quiet when we got there—everyone was working or asleep, but Jazz said I would meet them later. She said there was a party that night up in the hills. She said “industry” people would be there, and why didn’t I come along. Well, I almost fainted right on the spot. I hadn’t been in Hollywood one day and I was already going to a party. She said parties were important. “All you have to do is meet the right person and your career is set,” she said.

First thing, she said, was that I had to get myself some clothes. She said I needed to fit in. People look at you and you’re either Us or Them, and the way I was dressed, I might as well be carrying a neon sign saying
Them.
This from a girl with no more fashion sense than Rula Wade. I thought if I was going to be taking advice from anyone about style, it wouldn’t be from someone wearing combat boots and a dress with ugly squiggles all over it.

She said I should take myself over to Aardvark’s Used Clothes, but if I was too tired to get there she’d lend me something for that night. The next thing I knew she had me dressed in leopard-print tights and an oversized top and was ratting up my hair. I didn’t know if I looked like Us, but for sure I didn’t look like me.

She said she was going to take a nap and we’d leave for the party around eight. Wesley’d pick us up, she said. He played lead guitar in a band called Electric Lash and knew the people having the party. Then she warned me not to go walking around by myself. She said it wasn’t always safe, especially after dark. She said things had been crazy since the Rodney King verdict and I nodded, like I knew who Rodney King was.

They gave me a room with four other girls, not one of them overly neat, and I settled in. I thought about calling my daddy, just to let him know I was all right and not to worry, but then I figured it was night back in Eden and he was probably sitting at CC’s. Then I went down to the shower room that everyone shared and checked again to see if my moon had arrived.

Tallie’s Book

Faith doesn’t run steady like a river. It
takes working at.

Leaving isn’t as easy as you might
imagine.