Leaving Eden

by Anne Leclaire

  “Did you find them, honey?” Mrs. Boles said.

  “I found a few,” I told her. “What I was really looking for was the old ones.”

  “Old ones?”

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “Oh, honey,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you. We only have them from the last five years.”

  Well, I could see that. “Where would I find the old ones?”

  “Well, we don’t keep them here,” she said. “I’m afraid I can’t help you. You might want to try over at county historic museum.”

  “The historic museum?” I said.

  “That’s right.” She squinted up at the big clock behind the desk. “You hurry over there right now and you might get there before Mr. Beidler closes up for the day.”

  When I arrived, Mr. Beidler was sitting at a card table. Before he’d answer a single question, he made me put a dollar in the donations jug and sign the official visitors book. According to the book, I was the first visitor he’d had in more than a week. I was writing out Tallie Brock when it hit me that that would probably be the last time I’d be signing my old name. Once I hit Hollywood I’d be Taylor Skye. The idea made me smile.

  “Yearbooks?” Mr. Beidler said when I repeated my request. “What year would you be looking for, little lady?”

  “Nineteen sixty-five,” I said.

  “Well, I think I can help you with that.” It took him about two hours to make it up the stairs and to the section where they stored the yearbooks. Then it took him about another two hours to locate the correct year. Finally he slid it out and set it on the table. “Now, when you’re done with it, you leave it right here,” he said, tapping the table. “Right here. I’ll put it back.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Be sure about that,” he said. “We don’t want things going back on the wrong shelf.”

  Honestly, sometimes old people just killed me. When I’d promised to follow his exact directions, practically swearing an oath not to return the book to the shelf, he went back down the stairs, which only took him about an hour going down. Finally I opened the book. I was operating on instinct, and Mama always said if you trusted your instincts, they wouldn’t let you down.

  I flipped open to the A’s and found Mama’s picture straight away, the same one the Times had printed with her obituary. Beneath the photo there was a list of everything Mama’d done, including her four years in the Drama Club and being Queen of the Prom and Homecoming, too. It hurt my throat just to look at it, that burning kind of hurt, like when you’re coming down with a real bad cold. After a while, I flipped back to the first page and started through the whole book, taking my time and checking every picture. I found him in the W’s. His full name was Gordon Allen Wheeler. The only Wheeler I knew was that stuck-up Ashley, and I wondered if she was related to him. For sure, I’d never heard of him, and sure as shooting I’d never seen him before, except for that photo with Mama. According to the yearbook, he’d been class treasurer, played baseball and football, and had been captain of the debating team. I liked that about him. Brains and brawn. A good match for Mama. I knew I could probably go to jail for what I was about to do, but that didn’t stop me. I just ripped the page right out, folded it up, and stuck it in my new pocketbook. I left the book on the table and went down to find batty old Mr. Beidler. He was back at the card table.

  “You all done up there?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Did you leave the book out on the table like I told you?”

  I said I had—neglecting to mention that I’d ripped out a page—and then I asked him if he’d ever heard of a boy named Gordon Wheeler. Gordon Allen Wheeler.

  Mr. Beidler repeated the name twice, staring up at the ceiling like he expected to find the answer written there. “Name sounds familiar,” he said after a few minutes of checking the acoustic tiles.

  “Class of sixty-five,” I said.

  He shuffled over to this filing cabinet, pawing through until he located the right folder. “Yup,” he said after he’d looked over a couple of pages. “Here he is right here. Gordon Allen Wheeler.”

  My fingers pure itched to grab the folder right out of his hands. With a name to go on, I was figuring it would be easy to track him down, even if he had left Eden. And that was when Mr. Beidler told me where to find him, for all the good it would do me. The Baptist Cemetery, he said. Then he told me that Gordon Wheeler had been killed over in Vietnam. Six months after he graduated from Eden. Thinking about it, remembering the picture of Mama sitting with him in the fire-red car, I had to wonder what would have happened if Gordon Wheeler hadn’t died. Would my mama have ended up with my daddy? It was weird to think how close I’d come to not even being born.

  Tuesday I went to work, same as usual. As soon as I walked through the door, I got busy with the regular chores—folding towels and such—and tried to avoid Raylene. I was sure she’d be able to read my plans plain on my face. I needn’t have worried. No one was paying the least bit of attention to me. Spy’s murder confession was the main topic of conversation, and the women were mostly talking about Mrs. Reynolds. Clear as springwater she wasn’t winning any popularity contests.

  “Never did like her,” Hattie Jones said, going through a roll of Tums like they were peanuts. “Always ‘yes ma’am-ing’ me to death and acting like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

  “Always did act better than anyone else,” Easter Davis said. “That woman believed her farts smelled sweet.”

  “Do you think she knew what was going on between him and the girl?” Raylene said.

  I knew she was talking about what Spy had said about his daddy and Sarah.

  “I just can’t imagine how a woman could know what was going on right in her own house, right in front of her nose, and pretend she didn’t,” Hattie said.

  “I’d a thrown his ass right out the front door,” Easter Davis said. “I don’t care how much money he had.”

  It made me sad to think about what Spy had said about why he’d killed his daddy. I pictured Sarah smiling at everyone as she stood in front of the school auditorium in her pretty dress with the wide lavender sash, the same one they’d buried her in. I remembered her at the spelling bee, acting so confident, like she had nothing more important on her mind than where to place the vowels, sailing right through every word Miss Banks gave her: Odyssey. Eucalyptus. Resplendence. Decoupage, a word I couldn’t spell if I had the dictionary to help me. I remembered the times we sat together on the bus rides to swim meets. All those times she might have said something and didn’t. Then I wondered if I’d been her, if my daddy had been doing what hers had, if I would have told anyone either. I pictured Mr. Reynolds dressing up in his suit and shaking hands with the teachers at the school picnic, and cutting the ribbon to the new chamber building, not giving the least sign that at night he was going to his own daughter’s bed. Deception ran deep in that family. Then I thought about Spy setting to go off to UVA and becoming a lawyer, and kissing me like he meant it, all the time planning on killing his daddy. My mama told me once that a person could never tell what was going on in another person’s house or in his mind. Experience was proving this true as a plumb line.

  Just about then, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, and I looked the same as usual. If Raylene or Lenora looked over at that moment, they’d see me sweeping up and preparing to water the ivy, and nothing about me would indicate in the least that I’d stolen more than a thousand dollars from my mama’s best friend and that right at that moment hidden in my closet was a packed suitcase and a new black bag holding a ticket to L.A.

  It was spooky to think about. It made me wonder if everyone had a secret self. A secret story. But if it was possible to hide what you’d done and what you were thinking, how was it possible to ever trust anyone? Thinking about all this made me get real quiet, and Raylene asked if I was feeling all right.

  “Just thinking,” I said.

  She said I was
looking a little peaked.

  “Really,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  “You thinking about that boy?” she asked. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  “Do you think he’ll go to prison?” I asked.

  “No need to worry about that,” Raylene said. “Rich folks don’t go to jail.”

  I took comfort in her words, but she would prove to be wrong. Sometimes rich people did land themselves in jail, and all the high-priced lawyers in the world couldn’t prevent it.

  Easter Davis was under the dryer, and Lenora was putting the last of the wave solution on Hattie. Raylene went and poured herself a cup of coffee, then checked the schedule. I thought she’d forgotten about me, but the next thing she told me to go and sit at one of the sinks. She said she had a half hour before the next set. She said that wasn’t enough time for her to do a foil, but she could give me a shampoo.

  “You sure?” I said. I loved having a shampoo. Some people can’t stand being touched, but not me. I lay back and let her get to work. She’d done the first rinse and was just working up the suds again when the phone rang. Lenora got to it first.

  “It’s for you,” she yelled to Raylene. “It’s Jackson.”

  Jackson was Raylene’s husband. Her first husband, she always told people, when she talked about him. Like she was auditioning for another one, though everyone in Eden knew Raylene would never leave Jackson. Easter Davis always laughed when she heard Raylene say that, and she’d tell her she’d better get busy if she wanted to beat her record. Easter liked to say she’d had five husbands, three of them her own. Raylene said that was just talk.

  When Raylene went to answer the phone, Lenora took her place at the sink. “I’ll finish up with Tallie,” she said, and smiled like she’d been waiting all year for the opportunity to get her hands on me.

  The last thing on earth I wanted was to have Lenora anywhere near me, but short of jumping off the chair and running out with a head full of soap, there was no way to avoid it. No telling what she’d see. I had a lot to hide. The money I stole from Martha Lee. My plans for L.A. The night I’d taken Spy into my bed. Take your pick. I was praying I’d get off without her seeing anything. She started scrubbing away, working up a head of suds. Her fingers were stronger than you’d expect, given her arthritis and all. I said a little prayer that she wouldn’t see anything, and crossed my fingers under the shampoo cape. Not that it did one bit of good.

  “Well, I’ll be goddammed,” Lenora said. “Will you look at that?” Heat rose up from my chest, flooding my cheeks.

  “Clear as can be,” she said. Everyone in the whole place looked over. Whatever the hell she was seeing, I didn’t want to know and I most certainly didn’t want every busybody in town to hear.

  “Is it a boyfriend?” Easter Davis said, practically cackling. “Has Tallie got herself a boyfriend?”

  Lenora was chuckling to herself. Honestly, I wanted to throttle her.

  Hattie got up and came over to the sink, dripping wave solution the whole way.

  “See,” Lenora said. She pointed into the sink with a crooked finger.

  Hattie squinted into the sink. “What?”

  “Right there. See?”

  “Don’t see nothing but a bunch of soap,” Hattie said.

  “There,” Lenora said again. “And there. And there. Couldn’t be any clearer if you took a picture.”

  Raylene was off the phone and she came over, too. “What is it?”

  “A baby,” Lenora said.

  “A baby?” I nearly shouted.

  “Not just one,” Lenora said. “Lots of them. Oh, yes, I see lots of babies ahead for you.”

  Hattie was oohing, like isn’t that the cutest thing, and Raylene was saying, yes she thought that she could see them, too, and that got old Easter Davis out from under the dryer to come take a look.

  “Yes, sir,” Lenora said. “Looks like there’s babies in your future.”

  I sat there frozen, thinking it couldn’t be true and trying to remember what I’d heard the girls say in the locker room about whether or not you could get pregnant the first time. All the while I heard Goody’s voice saying I was stupid, stupid, stupid, no better than white trash.

  Tallie’s Book

  If you trust your instincts, they’ll never let you down.

  You can never tell what’s going on in another person’s mind.

  People hide their secret selves.

  twenty

  While Raylene was blow-drying my hair, I tried to calm down. I kept telling myself there was no sense freaking over g.d. soap bubbles and that it was not possible that Lenora could actually be seeing a person’s destiny in a sink full of suds. Soap was only soap, I told myself. Besides, my future was already decided, and I had the packed bag and ticket to prove it. Still, it wasn’t as easy as you might think to forget the absolute certainty in Lenora’s voice. Babies, she’d said. Lots of babies.

  For about the eighty millionth time, I was missing my mama and wishing she was there. She’d know what to do. She’d know for sure if it was possible for a person to get pregnant even if she’d only done it once. Course if my mama were still living, I’d never have gone to bed with Spy in the first place. If Mama were alive we would be heading out west together, preparing to be movie stars, and I wouldn’t be left alone trying to figure everything out by myself.

  Say it was possible to get pregnant that easy. How long before a person’d be getting some sign? Wouldn’t a person feel something if there was a baby growing in her belly? I’d seen kits you could buy at the drugstore, but I hadn’t the least idea how far along you had to be for them to work. More than a few days, for sure. Besides, before I’d even walked out the door, Mrs. Albert at the drugstore would be on the phone spreading the word all over Eden and the next thing Miss Gibbons would probably have it written up in the Times.

  Raylene was combing my hair under her round brush, setting the curl with the dryer, and our eyes locked in the mirror. She smiled, real sweet, probably thinking my future with babies was waiting a ways down the road. For a minute, I thought about seeking her advice—later, in private—that’s how desperate I was, but I wasn’t sure I could count on her to keep quiet about something that important. She’d probably feel obligated to tell my daddy. Fact was, I didn’t think there was anyone I could trust. Not even Rula. I knew Rula. Even if she promised on a blood oath, she wouldn’t be able to keep my secret. Like the time she’d told everyone that Rita Jean Purvis had gone all the way with Dusty Newman, even though she’d sworn on her dead mama’s grave not to. All I’d need was to be having Elizabeth Talmadge and the rest of the Sparkettes hearing about Spy and me.

  Calling Spy was out of the question, even if he wasn’t under house arrest or something for killing his daddy. It didn’t seem to me a girl could be with a boy twice—neither time on a real date—and then call him up and tell him she might be carrying his child. I knew Martha Lee would have information about this kind of thing, being a nurse and all, but I couldn’t ask her. Not after I’d stolen her money. For a fact, I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look her in the face for the rest of my natural life. I’d got myself in a pickle and it didn’t look like there was any way out. Just then I wished I could be more like Scarlett O’Hara and put the entire mess off to another day, but if I knew one thing for sure it was that trouble didn’t evaporate like smoke just because you decided not to let it occupy your mind.

  Raylene held up the hand mirror so I could look at the back, but not even the soft way she styled my hair could cheer me up. If Lenora really had seen my future, my life was pretty much over. I’d probably be packed up and sent to live with Goody, who’d spend every waking moment reminding me of what trash I’d become. She’d say I only got what I deserved for sinning with Spy. If she knew about the money I’d stolen from Martha Lee, she’d probably say I was paying for that, too. Goody wouldn’t give one hot damn that every dream I ever had would be over, ended before I even turned seventeen. The burden of not
being able to tell one living soul weighed on me all afternoon, festering inside, but when we closed up at five I said good-bye to Raylene same as normal, just like I’d be seeing her in the morning, not giving her one clue that in the morning I’d be sitting on a plane heading for L.A.

  When I got home, I poured myself some tea, then settled on the glider and tried to be practical. Mama always said losing your head only caused bad problems to get worse, and the thing you had to do was stay calm and reason things out. Just recalling her advice helped quiet my heart. I closed my eyes and tried to figure out when I’d had my last moon. I wasn’t always regular and generally didn’t pay much attention. Then I must have fallen asleep, ’cause that’s when my mama came to me.

  Right after she passed, I used to pray that Mama’d give me some sign that she was still with me, like Preacher Tillett at Elijah Baptist said. I’d sit by the creek and listen, trying to hear her in the liquid song of birds. Or I’d wake in the night and watch the fireflies, studying their fitful light as if it held a code she’d sent. Oh, I looked and listened everywhere for Mama, but in four years I hadn’t had as much as a whisper. Now here she was appearing plain as day. If I’d been capable of tears, I would have wept from the joy of it.

  “Hi, baby,” she said.

  I’d heard that when people were dreaming, they couldn’t smell or taste things or see beyond black and white, but it wasn’t true. I could smell her perfume—My Sin—coming through clear as my daddy’s coffee perking in the morning, or the wave solution at the Kurl. And she appeared in full and living color, dressed in the green dress we’d buried her in, with three pink roses Mr. Wesler put in her hair. For the first time since she passed, Mama was truly with me. “Hi, baby,” she said again. Not aloud, because we didn’t exactly converse. It was more like we had ESP or something, like the silent communication of butterflies, like there wasn’t any need for speech. Right off, she knew about everything—even about me being with Spy and what Lenora had said about seeing babies all around me. I thought for sure that would make her real mad, but it didn’t. You might not believe this, but she wasn’t even disappointed I’d gone to bed with Spy. Or that I’d taken all that money from Martha Lee. All the time I’d spent worrying about her looking down watching me behaving like a bad girl and now it seemed like there was nothing on God’s green earth I could have done to gain her displeasure or disappointment. She had the sweetest smile, like she had a secret, the good kind, and there wasn’t one thing worth the effort of worrying about. She was so full of love and forgiveness, I could feel it around me, enfolding me like the softest fabric you could imagine, softer even than her red cashmere sweater. With all she seemed capable of, I expected she would have the power to tell me if I was truly carrying Spy’s child, so I asked her that, but it turned out she couldn’t tell about things like that. When I asked her what I should do, she told me straight out, surprising me with her advice. Then Old Straw must have barked or something, because I woke up.