Small Town Famous (The Small Town Trilogy Book 1)

by Alison Ryan

  She came out of the closet, her arms filled with clothing. She dumped it on the bed next to me.

  “Grandma needs us. Aunt Shayla called me a few days ago. That’s all I can say for now because there’s not much else I know.” I knew it wasn’t the truth. Aunt Shayla was Grandma’s sister and she had never called my mother before, she couldn’t stand her. I remembered the look on her face when she got the phone call. She knew much more than what she was saying she knew.

  I didn’t want to connect the dots. I learned a long time ago never to ask questions I didn’t want to know the answers to.

  I picked up the pile of clothes and asked, “When are we leaving?”

  “Now,” she said, “As soon as we can.”

  “We gassed up, girl?” Mom asked as she tossed me a pack of sunflower seeds.

  “Yeah. All set. You can’t put it off any longer,” I said opening the passenger side door.

  “Put off what?” Momma stood outside her open door pulling her long hair into a knot.

  “Seeing Grandma. I figured that’s why we’re gassing up even though we’re only two minutes away from our destination.” I pull open the sunflower seeds.

  “I just like to be prepared,” she said slowly pulling her lithe body into the driver’s seat.

  “Prepared for what? We’ll get there, she’ll say something snide, you’ll get offended, she’ll comment on how skinny you are, you’ll ignore it, she’ll bitch about the smell of cigarettes on you and you’ll stomp up to your room. She’ll wait a few minutes and go out to the back porch to have a cigarette not caring it makes her a bit of a hypocrite,” I smile at her, “It’s such a beautiful relationship y’all have.”

  “Well. I don’t know what’s going to happen this time,” she says staring at nothing.

  We sit there for at least a minute waiting for her to turn the car on.

  Even having lived with my mom on our own for ten years she remained the ultimate mystery to me. She never elaborated on where she had been the first six years of my life except to say the clichéd “I was finding out who I was.” I had no inkling who my father was and my greatest fear was that my mother didn’t know either. I hid under a fear of who my mother might really be on the inside. I feared it was genetic and that her brokenness sat inside my DNA, waiting to be triggered so it could flourish.

  As we silently drove up the long and winding road that is Grandma’s driveway I figured that we must be running from something. I was happy not to know what it was. Ignorance, in my case, was my best friend and ally. I couldn’t be anxious about things I didn’t know were happening.

  Grandma has one of the longest driveways in the world. It’s always seemed that way, anyway. It’s lined with live oaks, branches that hang over the drive. I count them as we slowly move up. There are twenty-three total.

  When we get closer to the house I can see my Aunt Shayla’s minivan. She’s had it since I was a kid. It’s blue with wood paneling on the side and Bush/Quayle stickers pepper the bumper.

  “Aunt Shayla needs a new car.”

  Momma nods, not saying a word. She really is anxious.

  Our car slows to a stop next to Grandma’s truck. Momma pulls up the emergency break and reaches for another cigarette.

  “Momma! Not now! Can’t you wait?” I open my door and can hear the song of the cicadas in the woods behind Grandma’s house.

  “No. I can’t. I need it. Addie, there’s something you should-“

  Momma is interrupted by the opening and slamming of a screen door. My Great-Aunt Shayla stands on the porch in one of her muumuu dresses, slippers, and a bottle of beer in her hand.

  “Y’all took your damn time,” she says taking a swig.

  “Nice to see you too, Auntie,” I say walking back to the trunk, “Mom, can you pop it?”

  The trunk pops and I start pulling out the garbage bags filled with our life. The suitcases are heavy. I decide to leave those for later.

  “What took y’all so long? She stayed up waiting. Naomi, you told us you’d be here this mornin’.” Aunt Shayla waddled down the steps of a house that had been in my family for almost a century, “I mean, the last thing your momma needs is to be worried.”

  Mom finally stepped out of the car. Aunt Shayla eyed her disapprovingly, “Smoking? Oh good Lord, Naomi. Where’s your head at?”

  “Shayla, Addie doesn’t know yet.”

  Everyone froze.

  “Addie doesn’t know what?” I said slamming the trunk shut, “What the hell is going on?”

  Aunt Shayla shuffled down the stairs, “What the hell? You drove across country and it never came up?”

  Momma stared down, “I just didn’t know how to tell her.”

  I was shaking. I dropped the bags as Aunt Shayla took me by the shoulders. I looked into her cloudy eyes and underneath her droopy lids I could see how wet they were. Tears.

  “Oh sweet, baby. Honey, your grandma is real sick. She’s got the cancer. Lung cancer.”

  My stomach dropped. I pulled away from her and leaned on the LeBaron. The hood was hot under my hand.

  The cicadas kept singing. But my world as I had known it, no longer existed.

  3

  “We are the result of thousands and thousands of people who fell in love. You are a piece of all of them.”

  My Grandma told me this the day I called her to tell her I was being bullied at school in Texas. I had bought a phone card from the 7-11 and after my mom left to go out on a date with her latest boyfriend, I had taken my chance.

  “Grandma, what does that have to do with anything?” I was eleven years old. My period had come two weeks before. Mom had run out of pads and was too hung over to go to the store so she told me to stuff my underwear with toilet paper. I wore tapered jeans that rode up my shins because I had been wearing them since I was nine. My hair was different than the girls in my class. Everything about me was different and wrong. I needed my Grandma to impart practical wisdom. I wanted her to share the secrets that everyone else seemed to know but me.

  “It has to do with everything. These girls are simple. They don’t have the layers of depth that you have. You frighten them because you are a mystery and unlike anything they have seen. You are the product of generations of survivors and people who traveled far to get you here. Simple girls from Texas can’t bother you. Their cruelty only shows their own fear.” I could hear her lighting up a cigarette. The flick of the lighter was unmistakable.

  “I thought you quit?” I walked with the cordless phone over to the refrigerator. I might as well eat my feelings if I wasn’t going to get the validation I needed.

  “I’m weaning myself. It’s bad to quit something all at once,” she said. I rolled my eyes as I pulled cold cuts and mustard off the almost barren shelves.

  “Grandma, I seriously need help. I don’t need any sort of veiled wisdom dressed up like advice. I need answers. I need to know what I can do to make life less shitty.”

  “Oh, Addie. Don’t swear. Let’s start there.”

  “Sorry, Grandma. I just don’t know what to do. I find myself slipping into the role of wallflower and that’s not what Saved By the Bell promised me. I’m not a background player. I’m a Kelly Kapowski. I just can’t afford to look like one.”

  Grandma exhaled on the other end, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, sweetie. All I know is Kelly could never compare to Addison McCurtis. You’re smart and funny. A little quirky but you’re also beautiful so you can get away with that. And I’ll be blunt with you, angel. None of this is important. In five, ten years you won’t remember the names of these girls. You’ll be too busy doing something that matters. So why give them this power over your mind? The worst thing you could do to them is not care what they think. And the person that cares the least in any relationship is always the one with the most power. Remember that one, Addie. It will help you more than you realize.”

  That was incredibly easy for Grandma to say. She had never been someone like me. People
who were beautiful didn’t live in the same universe as everyone else. My grandma was a former beauty queen. Runner up in the Miss Virginia pageant in 1954. She had done catalogue modeling and been proposed to almost a dozen times before my granddaddy had pinned her down. I doubted she had lived through this kind of thing. And weren’t people back in the 40’s too busy fighting a war to be cruel to one another? In our history book there were photos of women in overalls and makeup, working in factories, smiling at one another over the conveyor belt of an assembly line. Women united for the cause. The girls in my class were an entirely different animal. All that mattered to them was that I wasn’t like them. It was possibly the worst crime a middle school girl could commit.

  “Grandma, I appreciate you listening to me. I should probably do my homework. If I have to fail socially at least I can try to rise above mediocrity academically.” I slumped against the refrigerator door and shoved an entire slice of thick pastrami into my mouth.

  “You aren’t failing anything, angel. I wish I could say what you needed me to say but you know I would never lie to you. Certain phases in life just have to be survived. I believe junior high is probably the first of the tough ones. You’ll be fine, my love. Remember that I am always here for you. Even when the storm is raging, you have me to come home to.”

  And with that, we hung up.

  4

  “Addie?”

  My mother’s voice seemed far away. My hand still lay on the hot hood of our car.

  I stumbled forward, away from her and my aunt. I needed to sit. I found the front steps of my grandma’s porch just as I had left them last. I laid down and faced the haint blue painted ceiling and watched the porch fan whirling. The sound of “cancer” still echoed in my ears.

  Grandma had smoked all my life and probably many of my lives before that. Every photo I had of her included a cigarette. Her closet would open and menthol would hit your nostrils. I shouldn’t have been this surprised, but I was shocked. Statistics mean nothing to most people. Especially teenagers. They were the numbers that applied to other people. Not to Grandma.

  “Addie, are you okay?” Aunt Shayla’s doughy, concerned face was above mine now. I shook my head.

  “Naomi, I can’t believe you didn’t tell her!” My aunt turned to my mother who was sitting on the grass, legs crossed, like a sullen teenager.

  “I didn’t know how! I thought about doing it the entire drive but there was never a good segue.” My mom buried her head in her hands, “I always screw up.”

  Aunt Shayla rolled her eyes and looked back at me. I was sitting up and staring at the lawn gnome.

  “Addie, I’m so sorry. What can I do, baby?” My aunt collapsed next to me on the steps causing the wooden boards to cry under her weight.

  “Nothing,” I said, “I’m just so tired. I want to fall asleep and wake up yesterday where this isn’t happening.”

  As usual, my mother had decided to keep my own life a secret from me.

  Momma had gotten in her car and left. It’s what she did best. She promised to be back in a little while but I didn’t care if she ever came back. My life had always been more peaceful in her absence.

  Crying myself to sleep was nothing foreign but sobbing myself to sleep, choking on my own despondency, was something new. The thought of my life without Grandma was too much to bear. She had been my constant; the thing in my life that I knew was there even when I was swept thousands of miles away from her in a sea of my own mother’s bullshit.

  I tossed and turned most of the night. At 3 am it rained very hard for about five minutes. I stared at the ceiling fan and thought about how much I wished I could rewind my life. I would go all the way back to the beginning and somehow fix all of this. I would have gone all the way back to the beginning of time if I could.

  I finally drifted off into a dreamless sleep. I woke up around nine, hot from the sun pouring in through the plantation blinds. I sat up and listened to the house. I could hear voices in the kitchen but they were hushed. I assumed it was Mom and Aunt Shayla. I was still wearing my clothes from the previous day and the scents of nicotine and gas stations coated my hair and skin. If I had to face this day, I would face it clean. I headed to the shower.

  Thirty minutes later I sauntered into the kitchen. Aunt Shayla’s wide back was to me at the stove, making eggs and bacon from the smell of it. As I turned the corner to sit at the table my heart dropped.

  Grandma was at the table, or at least someone that would be mistaken for Grandma if they were prepared to see her weighing about 90 pounds. My grandma has always been more voluptuous, wide hips, big boobs, rolls. This woman with Grandma’s face was gaunt. Her eyes had dark circles, her cheeks were sunken. She wore a terry cloth robe that swallowed her up. Her hands were delicately folded in her lap, one scrawny leg crossed over the other.

  “Addie…” she said, her voice thin, not the voice I had last spoken to just a month prior.

  She reached out her hand for me and as much as I didn’t want to, I began to cry.

  Aunt Shayla stood there quietly as I kneeled in front of Grandma, putting my head in her lap like I did when I was a little girl. I could feel her hands combing through my wet hair.

  “It’s ok, sweet Addie,” Grandma said, her voice stronger, “I’m right here. Your hair smells so nice. I have missed you, darlin’. I’m sorry you’re seein’ me like this.”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Aunt Shayla spoke, “Addie, believe it or not, she’s doin’ real good today. It’s a rare thing that I get her into the kitchen for breakfast. I think you might be her best medicine yet.”

  I knew she was saying it to make me feel better but it made me cry harder. If this was Grandma on a good day, I dreaded the bad ones.

  When I was finally able to calm down a bit, Aunt Shayla brought me a plate of fried eggs, bacon, and grits. Grandma nibbled on some dry toast, a pile of pills next to a glass of water sat in front of her.

  “My remedies,” she smiled.

  “That’s a lot of pills. What do they do?” I asked pushing the eggs around on my plate.

  “Nothin’ much, to be honest. Been thinkin’ about not takin’ them anymore.”

  We ate in silence. I could hear the television buzzing in the other room. Kathie Lee and Regis were interviewing Tom Cruise. Someone’s lawnmower rattled in the distance.

  “Have you seen Mom?” I finally said. Aunt Shayla and Grandma looked at one another.

  “Your momma came home around six. She’s sleeping her night off,” Aunt Shayla said shortly. She wasn’t happy and neither was I. Mom had gone out drinking last night? What the hell was wrong with her?

  Grandma could sense my agitation and touched my arm, “Why don’t you go get the mail, baby? Maybe take a walk? It’s a pretty day.”

  “What are you going to do?” I picked up both our plates and put them in the sink, “Do you need to go anywhere?”

  “No, honey, I’m just going to rest on the porch today. Take a nap. Maybe read a bit. We can play cards later if you want.”

  “Yeah, that would be great.” I stared out the window above the sink, “Maybe a walk would be nice. I won’t be gone long. Aunt Shayla, will you be around awhile?”

  Aunt Shayla nodded, “Yep. I want to catch up on some laundry. Might even snap some beans for dinner tonight.”

  I looked at Grandma who looked so small and helpless, so far from who I remembered. I thought of Mom sleeping in her room like nothing was wrong and I wanted to throw something, to scream.

  “I hate to leave you. It’s just…”

  “Addie,” my Grandma’s old voice was back for a moment, “It’s just a walk. I’ll be here when you get back and we can talk as much or as little as you like. Shayla told me this was a big surprise for you and I am so sorry. But get some air, baby. Take a walk and clear your precious head.”

  Grandma’s mailbox sits at the end of her driveway, a long walk.

  I decided to sit in the backyard for a whil
e. My old swing set still sat in the back, rusty with its legs sunk into the grass. My ass barely fit in the seat. The house stared back at me, along with everything that had happened to me in it. My mind wandered to all the games of hide and seek, the late mornings running under sprinklers, and burnt hamburgers and hotdogs in the dog days of July. Grandma would sit behind me on the back steps and braid my thick, frizzy hair and spray insect repellant all over my body. My mother wasn’t around and I was happy. Some would say even happier than the days since her return.

  I had spent my life asking so many questions of myself. Who was my dad? Hell, who was my mother? What was there before me? What had made her leave? What had made her come back? Any time I had broached these questions with her I had gotten nothing in return. So I stopped asking. Grandma and Granddaddy were no better at connecting the dots and they seemed to be as lost as I was. I knew there was something I was missing, but I figured maybe it was better I didn’t know. Maybe it was better not to ask questions you didn’t want to know the answers to.

  This situation with Grandma was different. My mother should have told me as soon as she knew. I was fifteen now. I knew a little bit about how life worked. Why hadn’t she told me? Because it was too hard for her? As usual, she had wanted someone else to do the things that were hard. It was her way. I was sick of it. Now she was laid up in her room and hung over. Grandma was dying and my mother just drank.

  As I pushed myself on the swing, I thought about what happened next. How sick was Grandma really? Was she doing chemo? I had never seen anyone look as sick as Grandma looked.

  “It’s been at least ten years since anyone’s been on that swing set.”

  I turned toward the voice. A pretty blond girl, around my age, stood against one of the oaks. Her hair was half up, half down. She wore overalls with a bikini top underneath, no shoes. She looked familiar but I couldn’t place her.

  “Has it? You’ve been around that long?” I asked. She smiled.