Leaving Eden

by Anne Leclaire

  He kissed me, soft, like our mouths were melting together. The place where the vodka had turned my belly warm was heating up again, and it wasn’t only the liquor that was making my head spin. I didn’t think it could be true, what the girls said in school about having to go to the movies before a guy could kiss you. That kiss was the sweetest thing, just filled with his feeling for me. I didn’t believe it was possible to fake something like that. His hand slid to my shoulder and he rubbed his thumb in little circles over my collarbone and in the hollow right above it, then it moved lower, near my breast. I didn’t want him to stop, but he did. He drew away and leaned back against the door, then he looked at me and his eyes didn’t have the faraway look. He took his finger and ran it down my nose, like something my daddy used to do, and I thought maybe that was it, that was the end of the kissing, but it turned out it was just the beginning. He pulled me to him so we were both lying back against the door and I could feel his chest and hip where I was pressed against him. I could hear my own heart beating and I thought he must have heard it, too. We started kissing again, harder. He opened his mouth and I must have opened mine without even planning on it, ’cause our teeth clicked. Then his tongue was pushing between my lips and into my mouth and we were Frenching.

  Back in eighth grade, Rula Wade told me boys liked to kiss like that but it sounded like pure barf to her and she’d bite off a boy’s goddamn tongue if he tried. I agreed because I kept thinking about all the germs you’d get, plus I didn’t even like a dentist looking in my mouth. But this was different. You couldn’t imagine.

  Spy ran his tongue over my teeth and up over my gums, way up to where they attached to my cheeks, then around my tongue, under my tongue, like he was trying to know every part of me, till there wasn’t one secret part he hadn’t touched. I opened my eyes a slit. His were closed, and he had the tight, shut look on his face. He moaned, like something hurt, and cupped his hand against the back of my head. I closed my eyes. His shirt was moist beneath my hand and I could feel the beating of his heart, fast and strong. I couldn’t think straight. My body started moving of its own accord, like it was trying to get closer. He took his tongue out and started running it over my lips, round and round, in no hurry, like he could do it forever, and I felt that attraction pulling on me, turning me weak. When he slid his tongue back inside my mouth, I welcomed it. I wasn’t thinking about germs or anything except how I liked the feel of him filling me and I wanted more. The hollow place in my belly began to ache, deep, like my moon ache, but different, too, a wanting ache. Between my legs was damp. It was lovely. Spy was lovely. For an instant, the dark, hard place in my chest softened, like it was wanting to open, too.

  A bird called then, shrill and scolding, and close to the car. It brought me to my senses. It was like Goody was in the car, calling me cheap-cheap-cheap, a piece of trash like my daddy, and other things worse. I tried to ignore her, to return to that lovely place of aching, of opening, but the vodka was swirling in my belly and this time it was working its way up, not down. I pushed Spy away, hard, and grabbed for the doorknob, fighting the sourness rising in my throat. I got out just in time, not even making it behind the car, but puking right in full view, like a dog who’d eaten bad fish. My face heated thinking of Spy seeing me hunched over and puking like that, hearing the ugly sound of it. If I’d had a choice I would have walked home rather than get back in the car. My mouth tasted sour and I knew I smelled that way, too, from where I’d puked a little on one of my shoes. I cleaned myself up the best I could and got back in the Camaro. “Spy?” I hated my little girl voice.

  He was still slumped back against the door, just like I’d left him, with his head tilted back and his eyes shut.

  “Spy?”

  He sat up and looked toward me, but that inward look was back.

  “Do you have any gum? Mints, or something?”

  He reached across and opened the glove compartment and started pawing around. A comb fell out, and a car manual and some Kleenex. Then a gun.

  “Jesus,” I said. “What the hell is that?”

  “What’s it look like?” His words were pushed together, all icy, and I hate-hate-hated the sound of it. He picked up the gun.

  “Jeez,” I said. “It’s not loaded, is it?” That warning flicker started up again. Even my daddy knew guns and booze were not a combination you’d want to be fooling with.

  Spy laughed, like I’d said something really funny. He opened the door and got out, then he pointed that gun—a revolver, I guess it was—down toward the valley and fired. Just like that. The noise hurt my ears so bad I thought I might go deaf. It wasn’t at all like you see in the movies, with people running around, shooting and talking, and I had to wonder why they never showed people covering up their ears when the shooting starts, because, believe you me, that was what you wanted to do. Then he started waving the gun around and firing fast, one after the other, bang-bang-bang, and I was afraid he was going to kill a bird or maybe even me.

  “Spaulding Reynolds,” I screamed. “You stop that. You hear.”

  He turned and stood there, staring at me like he didn’t even know my name, like he didn’t know where he was. The kissing and the sweet, aching feeling were like they’d never been. We got back in the car and he tossed the gun on the floor by my feet. Then he switched on the ignition and threw it in reverse. He backed out so fast, gravel shot up all around, and the tires squealed when we hit pavement. I sat tight, praying we wouldn’t be killed. It was hard enough to drive on the Blue Ridge stone sober. He didn’t say a word, just drove me home, forgetting to let me out at the Cash Store so I could pick up my bike.

  “Bye,” I said. “I’ll see ya.” I waited for him to say something, even just so long, but he didn’t. Not one word. He just stared straight ahead waiting for me to move, like he couldn’t wait for me and my puke-spotted shoe to get out. When he took off, he left another stretch of rubber. I figured in spite of the kissing, he hated me, hated the way I turned into such a baby, puking all over the place. I figured within twenty-four hours every one of the popular kids would know about it.

  I could hardly stand to look in the mirror. There were dark smudges of mascara beneath my eyes, and my lipstick was smeared on my chin. It was like Glamour Day had never been. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the rhinestone hair clip, which would have made me cry if I’d been the crying kind. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, scrubbing every place Spy’s tongue had touched. The tree outside the front room was scratching at the window, a sound I usually found comforting, but now the screetch-screetching of it sounded like someone trying to get in, like there were eyes staring in. I wanted to turn the TV on so I wouldn’t hear it, but if the set was on, I wouldn’t be able to hear if someone really did try to get in. Stop being a baby, I said, but I couldn’t help it. I turned the lights off so it would look like no one was home. I would have locked the door, but I’d done that one time after Mama passed, and when Daddy came home late from CC’s, he broke the door, just kicked it in. He didn’t listen when I told him I’d been scared. He told me never again to lock a man out of his own house. Finally I stumbled through the dark to my room and pushed stuff around in the closet until my hand located Mama’s red sweater. It had to be ninety degrees, but I put it on and sat on the bed, listening for the sound of someone on the porch, someone at the door, someone coming in. I kept picturing Spy with the gun.

  I tried to hold on to the good parts of the day. How I had looked in the sequin top with the crystal earrings and in the cowboy getup; how it felt to be pretty; sitting in the front of Spy’s car; that first, soft kiss. Just remembering the good parts made the jumping settle down in my chest, but it made me sad, too. If God was so good, why did He give you a thing so beautiful that it could make you ache with the beauty of it and then take it away? Why didn’t He make it so that once—just once— things that were perfect and true stayed that way without the bad stuff mixing in? Good things like my mama’s laugh, or her brushing my hair, or how
it was to watch her dance with my daddy. Things like having a mama. Or feeling beautiful and deserving of attention. Or being kissed in a way that made your whole body ache with the wanting for more.

  Why couldn’t the good ever stay?

  Tallie’s Book

  A girl is not a slut if she Frenches on the first date.

  thirteen

  On the radio, the weatherman was yammering on about the weather and about how we were in the midst of an official heat spell. Like we needed him to tell us that. Just breathing, a person got sweaty. Lawns were turning yellow, and Old Straw had collapsed under the tree in our yard and didn’t even wag his tail when you called his name. The heat was all anyone talked about. At the Kurl, Raylene kept the AC cranked on high and even so, the ladies fanned themselves with magazines. Mamas brought their sons in for buzz cuts.

  Everything was back to normal there. Glamour Day had rolled through our lives like a spring storm, leaving us with only the memory. Raylene took the poster down from out front, and she didn’t mention anything about foiling my hair again. It was like when the clock struck midnight in that movie Cinderella and her ball gown turned to rags and the coach became a pumpkin and the horses were mice. That was how it felt. At least Cinderella had a glass slipper. I had nothing, not even the rhinestone hair clip, not even a picture, since Raylene said it would be another two weeks before the company came back with the photos. Spy had disappeared, too. I didn’t see him at the Cash Store or at the creek or even at the lake when I went one afternoon to check. I called his house once, but no one picked up. I thought maybe his family was on vacation. I dialed his daddy’s office, too, but lost my nerve and hung up before anyone could answer. I wondered if he thought about me at all and if he remembered the kissing. For sure, I hadn’t forgotten. The memory occupied my mind night and day and turned my legs to water. Sometimes, thinking about Spy shooting the gun and driving off without saying good-bye, I thought I didn’t care if I ever saw him again, but mostly I wanted to have him kissing me again.

  I had my Hollywood plan to hold on to and that helped get me through. I kept telling myself how Mama’d always said if a person could dream something, she can do it. The possibilities seemed stronger after my Glamour Day transformation. My original idea was to head for L.A. in the spring, right after graduation, but I began to consider the possibility of leaving sooner. You didn’t have to graduate high school to be an actor—half the people in Mama’s Hollywood scrapbook hadn’t, including Clark Gable— and there was less and less to keep me in Eden. Finally I called the Lynchburg airport and inquired about the cost of a flight to L.A. I wrote down all the information, including how long the trip took and where the stopovers were. I decided I’d ask Uncle Grayson for the money. He’d never let Mama down, and I was hoping he’d extend the same courtesy to me. At night, I studied Mama’s scrapbook. I looked at the pictures of the old-time actors like Lana Turner and Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake and Grace Kelly. And the new ones like Farrah Fawcett, though there weren’t as many of those. Mama just loved the old ones. I pretended she was there with me, encouraging me and giving me advice. No one knew how I missed Mama. Sometimes it was like the flu the way the missing made my whole body ache, a giant hole that never went away and no one could understand. Girls at school would say things like how dumb their mamas were, or how they hated them. Once, I heard Ginny Wheeler going on about how mad she was that her mama wouldn’t let her buy this dress she had her heart set on and how she wished her mama’d die. I wanted to shake her and tell her what it was like to have your mama gone. For real. Forever.

  Even when Mama got real bad, I couldn’t truly believe she was really going to die. Mamas didn’t die. I imagined one morning I’d get up and go in the kitchen and she’d be making corn bread. Mama, you’re up, I’d say, and she’d nod and say, well, thank God that’s past, like she’d only had a summer cold. So I kept waiting for a miracle to happen. I’d move the flowers people sent close so she could see them without turning her head and I’d hold a Popsicle for her to suck on because her mouth was always dry. And I’d keep waiting for her to be cured.

  In the middle of November, Mama had Daddy cut down a fir tree, though it was way too early and the needles would drop off before Christmas. She watched while I decorated it, pointing out the spots that needed tinsel. She wanted the lights turned on round the clock. One morning I went in and she was talking to the tree, like it was a person who’d dropped by to visit. Martha Lee explained it was the morphine that made her act that way. Mostly she didn’t talk at all, like silence was required, but Martha Lee seemed to know what she was thinking. Once, when I was about ten, Mama and I’d had a conversation about the silent languages and we’d made a list of all the animals that didn’t make a sound, and bugs, too, like butterflies, and deer and snakes. Mama said she thought they communicated by mental telepathy. I wondered if dying people could do that, too.

  In movies, they made people pretty when they were dying. They never showed the truth of it. The truth wasn’t pretty. It was messy. Hard to watch. One night the doctor told Daddy there wasn’t much time left. How much? Daddy asked. Weeks? Dr. Cullen said he didn’t think so. Not weeks, he said. Not even days. Fact was, he said, we were down to counting hours. Dr. Cullen had known Mama since she was born and you’d think by then he’d know she wasn’t going till she was ready, no matter what he said. I stopped going to school, but no one cared, not even when I missed a week.

  Mama lived for two more weeks. One day when I’d gone to the kitchen to make some tea, I heard Mama make Martha Lee promise something, but I didn’t catch what. “Promise me,” she said. “The exact day. It will make me close to her.” I thought she was talking about me.

  Mama passed on November 29, the exact same day Natalie drowned. Martha Lee had been there all night and had made me leave the room for a while in the morning. When I came back, Mama was barely breathing, and you only knew that because of the sound it made. You could stare at her chest and not even see it move. And then she died. One minute Mama was alive, and the next she was gone, no more than a piece of clay, her hand turning colder by the second, drawing the heat from mine. Martha Lee cleaned her up, wiping away the snot that dripped out of her nose and straightening the sheets, and then she made the phone calls while Daddy sat at the kitchen table and cried. She called Goody and Uncle Grayson and Daddy’s sister, Ida. Finally she called Dr. Cullen and he came over and examined Mama and then told Daddy that it was official, she’d passed. Like we couldn’t see that for ourselves.

  Then they took Mama away and the house got real empty, even with us still there. We just sat around and said thank you to the folks who brought food and waited for Goody to arrive. She was flying up that very night.

  The next morning, when we weren’t even used to the idea that Mama was truly gone, Mr. Wesler came by. He had this little notebook and he kept asking all kinds of things: what hymns did we want played at the service; when could Daddy come and pick out the coffin; where was Mama to be buried; would we write out something about Mama for the paper; had Mama left any personal instructions. He wanted us to answer all these things when we weren’t able to think straight to save our souls. He wanted to know if we wanted him to arrange to send a limousine for the family. Daddy said no, not if it cost extra. When Goody heard that, she hit the roof. She called Daddy a cheap son of a bitch and told Mr. Wesler to order the limousine, she’d pay for it herself. Fact is, from the moment she’d arrived, Goody took over everything. First thing she got me aside and told me she didn’t want me to spoil everything by crying and carrying on like a baby and that I was to behave myself. Then she made the arrangements for the flowers and the viewing hours and what was going in the notice for the Eden Times. I asked her if I couldn’t put something of mine in the coffin with Mama, like the teddy bear they’d put in with Sarah, but she said no, it was a tacky thing do to, and so that was that.

  First there was the viewing, which is exactly what it sounds like. Mama was laid out in a caske
t with a cream satin lining and a two-part lid. The top part was open and the bottom closed, so you couldn’t see her from the waist down, which made me glad because if her feet hadn’t returned to their normal size, I didn’t want everyone to know. Two things Mama was vain about: her feet and her hair. Her hair they’d fixed real pretty. Raylene did it. She did all the funerals. You’d think it would be creepy, but she didn’t mind. I’d heard her talk about it whenever Mr. Wesler had a job for her. “Only got to do the front half of the head, but I get paid full price,” she said. They put flowers in Mama’s hair. Roses, not the gardenia Daddy wanted. Mr. Wesler said a gardenia would turn brown before the first visiting hours even ended. Everyone said Mama looked beautiful, like she was sleeping. A fat lie. There’s no mistaking a dead person. They don’t look one goddamn bit like they’re sleeping.

  She wore a pale green dress with pearl buttons down the front, and a sweater with a lace collar attached, the one she kept in a plastic bag in her bureau and never, ever wore, exactly like the one Natalie Wood wore in Splendor in the Grass. Once, she told me it was the sweater Natalie Wood wore. At the time I thought it was a fib, the only lie she ever told me. At that time, I had no idea of the secrets a person could hold.

  At the funeral, Martha Lee sat next to me. She let me hold her hand and ignored all the black and evil looks Goody sent her way. Daddy sat on my other side, shrunken and wiping his eyes. His sister, Ida, was there, cracking her knuckles till I could have screamed, and passing Kleenex to Daddy since Goody hadn’t told him he couldn’t cry. Goody was next in the row. She sat there straight as a yardstick, muttering things about Martha Lee having the nerve to sit in the front pew with the family like she was kin. She was too far away to continue her lectures warning me not to start crying or make a scene, but every now and then she’d turn her attention my way and one look was enough to get the message. As if I needed it. I knew I wasn’t going to cry. All my tears were locked in that tight place in my chest and I didn’t think they would be coming out for the rest of my natural life. Uncle Grayson didn’t come from Atlanta. Daddy’d phoned him earlier and when he heard about Mama, he started to cry and couldn’t talk. He sent every gardenia in the local flower shop and probably the rest of Virginia, too. Then he sent a bunch of roses and daisies. According to what he’d written on the card, daisies meant beauty and roses meant love and he said that was Mama all over. Just filled with love and beauty. The arrangements he sent were nearly as big as the casket. “Show-offy,” I heard Ashley Wheeler’s mom whisper at the viewing, like she was one to talk. Later, Uncle Grayson wrote a letter to me and Daddy telling us how much he loved Mama and that he hoped we’d understand, but he just couldn’t bear to come to the funeral.