Everything was exactly the way it had been before Mama left.
FOR WEEKS, I STAYED EDGY AS A KIT FOX, ALERT FOR ANY sign Mama was unhappy or getting ready to head off again. But she didn’t. She stayed on for another six months. Until she left us for good.
CHAPTER 1
1992
THE PROMISE OF BEAUTY—THE KIND OF REAL PERSONAL beauty that can transform a person’s life—arrived in Eden, Virginia, on the fourth Thursday in June.
As usual I arrived through the rear door of the Klip-N-Kurl, and so a few minutes passed before I caught sight of the sign in the front window. I’d been working at the Kurl since school let out. Mostly I did chores: swept the floor, cleaned the sinks and mirrors, refilled the shampoo and conditioner bottles, dumped the ashtrays, straightened out the magazine table, that sort of thing. Because I wasn’t licensed, that was supposed to be the extent of it, but once in a while, when she got behind, Raylene let me do a shampoo or a comb-out.
I found soaping a head of hair pleasurable. You would be surprised to discover the wide variety of hair. Thin. Coarse. Thick. Wiry. Growing in ways that defy imagination. Hair with three natural parts or platinum streaks there since birth.
It is not false pride when I tell you that my hair was my best asset, though I’d cut it that spring—a mistake that never would have happened if Mama’d still been with me. I’d started out planning to give myself a little trim, like Elizabeth Talmadge’s new do, but getting it so the sides matched wasn’t as easy as you might think, and Raylene had to fix up the mess. I’d vowed when it grew out never to cut it again. Just trim the dead ends. I planned on wearing it down over my shoulders, like Kim Basinger, an actress I continue to admire even though that town she bought went bankrupt.
“Morning, Tallie,” Raylene said. She was working up a head of suds on Sue Beth Wilkins. An unfortunate mop of hair topped the list of Sue Beth’s sorry features. Some of the meaner boys in our class called her LB—short for Lard Bucket—but a kindhearted person like Mama would call her sturdy.
Mrs. Wilkins was sitting over by the dryers, flipping through the style magazines. Raylene caught my attention in the mirror and gave a quick eye roll. You had to feel sorry for Sue Beth. Every year in late June—when they held all the practices that led up to tryouts for next year’s Flag Corps—her mama dragged her in, and armed with pictures she’d clipped out of some teen magazine, set Raylene to work. Sue Beth wasn’t in the least consulted about this and had told me herself she didn’t want to be a Corps member—as if that were even a remote possibility. The whole time she sat in Raylene’s chair she looked about as happy as a rain-soaked rooster. It was clear as crystal Sue Beth wasn’t going to make the Corps or the cheerleaders or the Sparkette twirlers or much of anything else, except maybe, maybe the chorus. It wasn’t just her weight, which certainly wasn’t any asset. It was her whole yard-dog look, which—having Mrs. Wilkins for a mother—you could understand.
Still, year after year, Mrs. Wilkins persisted. Last fall she’d had a wooden floor installed in their basement and a lumberyard banister attached to the wall and told anyone who would hold still for a minute that she’d built a dance studio for her Sue Beth. She even hired a private teacher to come in once a week to give lessons. The whole thing about drove Raylene mad.
“Hi, Sue Beth,” I said.
“Hi,” she said from beneath a cap of foam. She wasn’t really so bad. Mama might have found possibilities in her.
“I hear girls’ soccer has openings this year,” I said. “You thinking about trying out?”
“Sue Beth doesn’t go for that sort of thing,” Mrs. Wilkins said.
Raylene gave me a warning look like Don’t even get started. Mrs. Wilkins was a steady customer. Shampoo and set every week, and once a month the whole works—color, cut, and nails. Raylene didn’t want me antagonizing her.
“Anything special you want me to do?” I asked.
“Got a load to be folded,” Raylene said.
“Right,” I said, and headed for the back room. Raylene had installed a new washer and dryer, and my job was to keep up with the laundry. You would be amazed at the number of towels we went through in a day. We never reused them. Like some shops I won’t name. Raylene was insistent about that.
“Then you can give the plants a drink.”
“Okay,” I said. I opened the dryer and lifted out a full load of towels. They smelled sweet from the little sachet sheets Raylene used, something Daddy had forbidden me to buy. I took my time, finding pleasure in folding a neat stack.
On and off since I started working for her, Raylene talked about my going to the cosmetology school over in Lynchburg after I graduated Eden High and then coming back full time for her, something I can tell you that I had absolutely no intention of doing. Whenever she brought it up, I just nodded, but my resolve remained firm. A person has to take care not to let other people push their dreams on you. I had ideas of my own. They weren’t jelled, but they were cooking.
Other than her plans for my future, I liked working for Raylene. For one thing, she was dependable as a ceiling fan. My own life was not so solid, and I liked this about her. The other thing I liked was being in the shop, listening to the sounds of women’s voices. Even back when Mama was with us, Daddy had never been much for conversation, and now— with Mama gone and just the two of us—Daddy barely spoke at all. The talk at the Kurl balanced the silence of our home. I listened to the women talk about men and cooking recipes and when to plant bulbs, sorting through the particulars of what they were saying, testing things in my mind and adding the useful items to the book I kept. I’d started the notebook as a way of remembering everything about Mama—so I wouldn’t forget—but it had grown into a book about how to be a woman, the kind of stuff a girl usually learned from her mama. You’d be amazed at the things a person could learn just by being attentive.
I was carrying the watering can up front for the ivy when I saw the sign perched on this easel Raylene had set up in the front window. It was a blowup of a blonde all prettied up like a Hollywood star, with a feather boa streaming over her bare shoulders like pink lemonade, and Raylene had angled it so it could be seen by anyone in the shop as well as those walking by. On the bottom, Glamour Day was spelled out in red letters rimmed with gold.
“Raylene,” I called. “What’s this?”
“What’s what, Tallie?”
“This poster. This Glamour Day thing.”
Raylene left Sue Beth sitting at the sink with a towel wrapped around her head. Within minutes she was explaining the whole thing, how this company was sending in a team of trained professionals— that’s what she called them, a team—to make you over. For twenty dollars you got the complete works—hair, makeup, the whole job— and then a photographer took your picture in five different outfits entirely of your choice. Glamour Pics, the company called it, like you were a Movie Star or heading for center stage at Nashville.
“For the twenty dollars,” Raylene continued, “they also let you keep one nine-by-twelve photograph.”
I thought about that for a minute, then asked, “Well, how does the company figure on making any money—the glamour makeover and the photo all for twenty dollars?”
“Tallie, honey,” Raylene said, “the Glamour Company’s lack of business acumen is not our problem.” She was as pleased with the whole deal as a cream-fed cat.
Mrs. Wilkins was hanging on every detail. Naturally she’d already signed up for both her and Sue Beth.
Suddenly I was filled with missing Mama. I could just imagine her sporting the pink boa. If she were here she’d probably end up directing Glamour Day herself. Mama knew everything about Hollywood. She had direct experience. The fact was that four years ago, when I was in the eighth grade, my mama’d headed off to California. She went there to be in a movie. You may doubt me on this, but it’s true.
When Mama left, my daddy and me and her best friend, Martha Lee Curtis, were the only people in Eden to know why she went off
and what her plans were. Tell people I’m off visiting kin and let it go at that, she said. Mama never did care a fig about what others thought. In that way she was unlike most women. So we told people just like she said. When their pointed questions met with no satisfaction, the majority of folks let the subject drop. Town gossip was that she’d left my daddy and run off with another man, which, believe me, was incredible but made sense to just about everyone in Eden. People were always saying my daddy was sweet, but no one pretended to think he deserved my mama. Her included, I suppose.
Of course I was dying to tell the whole county what Mama was up to, but she said no. She made us promise. She had her reasons, she said. I couldn’t imagine what they might be. Wasn’t it better to have people knowing the truth than thinking she ran out on us? But like I said, Mama didn’t care about the good opinion of others. Still, if it were me, I’d want to tell everyone what I was setting off to do. It was the most exciting thing in the world.
Mama’s plan for becoming an actress wasn’t as impossible as it might seem. First off, she’d been acting for years. In Eden High, she was the star of the annual play every year from freshman to senior. Then later, after she graduated and was at school learning how to type and take dictation, she performed in the theater over in Lynchburg. She had the photo album to prove it. All her life Mama dreamed about being a movie star. She believed it was her true destiny.
Then one day that winter, just after I’d brought in the mail and was sitting on the porch drinking a Coca-Cola, Mama started screaming. By the time I got to the kitchen, she was dancing around the table and waving a magazine in the air. Finally she calmed down enough to tell me how they were going to make a movie about the life of Natalie Wood and how the director still hadn’t settled on the actress for the leading role and was, in his words, looking for a fresh face, someone who could capture the essence of Natalie. Mama said this was her big chance. She was as close to the essence of Natalie Wood as anyone. She was practically a twin.
According to my granny Goody, from the time Mama was five years old, people were always commenting on the astonishing likeness, first as the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street, a video we owned and watched every Christmas, then in all the ones that followed. Rebel Without a Cause. Splendor in the Grass. West Side Story. Gypsy. It was like Natalie Wood was holding up a beacon for Mama to follow. Final proof was Mama’s high school yearbook photo. She looked exactly like Natalie in Splendor. That year was when she started insisting on being called Deanie, after the girl in the movie.
“I’m doing it, Luddy,” she told my daddy that night. “It’s my big chance. It’s fate.” The way she said fate, in a flat, determined voice, refused argument.
Daddy wasn’t convinced, though he wanted to agree with Mama— it nearly killed him to disagree with her. At the time, I believed he was afraid she might go off and find another life and was afraid, too, that lying at the other end of her dream was only disappointment. He couldn’t bear the thought of Mama being let down any more than he could entertain the thought she would leave him. I myself was torn between wanting Mama to be a star and despairing at the idea of being left without her.
Mama jumped up and tore out of the room. A minute later, she was back holding two pictures that she slapped down on the table in front of my daddy. One was of Mama taken the previous Christmas, and the other was an autographed photograph of Natalie Wood. I’d always believed Mama got that picture from a Natalie Wood fan club or a film studio. It was that kind of glossy up-close photo. A person— looking at the two pictures—would be hard-pressed to tell which was the real Natalie.
“See,” she said. “I’m supposed to get this part. It was made for me.”
“Oh, baby,” Daddy said, “it’s not that I don’t want you to go. I just don’t want you to be disappointed.”
Mama’s mind didn’t hold room for such thoughts. “You know what I believe, Luddy,” she said. “The sky’s the limit. The sky’s the limit, and all we have to do is reach for it.”
The sky’s the limit. Mama always said that. But sometimes—and I do love my daddy—sometimes I wondered if Mama really believed that the sky was the limit, why had she settled on a man like Luddington Brock. Half the men in Eden were in love with her. You could tell this by the way their eyes followed her when she walked down the street. She could have had any man in the county. But she picked my daddy.
Goody had a theory about this. She said in our family women marry down. We marry down, she said, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to elevate our men. Goody had married my granddaddy when he was a clerk at Simpson’s Cash Store and then dedicated her days and her daddy’s money elevating him until he ended up a doctor for the Southern Railroad. I don’t know for sure about Goody’s marrying theory, but there is no denying that Luddington Brock was a big step down for the only daughter of Taylor and Jessie Adams.
In spite of Mama’s conviction and the two photos on the table staring up at him, Daddy still wasn’t persuaded, so Mama just perched herself on his lap, cupped her hands on his cheeks, and made him look straight at her.
“It’s something I have to do, Luddy. I have to. If I don’t, my life will be filled with regret.”
At that time, I truly didn’t apprehend the true nature of dreams. I didn’t understand they held the power to take hold of you with both hands and pull you along, just sweep you off your feet and turn your entire life on its back. That day, I only recognized my mama’s determination. The next day, she was planning it out, showing a lot of grit for someone who’d never been out of Amherst County—and at that time I really did think that Mama had never been outside the county in her life. We rented all the old Natalie Wood movies Mama didn’t already own, including The Last Married Couple in America and This Property Is Condemned , two that most people probably never have heard about. We kept them so long, the video store charged us extra. It was weird, sitting there on the sofa by my mama, her hand in mine, all the time staring at the TV screen and seeing her face reflected back at me. Sometimes I had to tighten my fingers around hers to convince myself she was still there beside me.
Mama didn’t just watch. She memorized, never taking her eyes off the screen. All the while she’d smoke and drink diet cola. No beer. You have to be careful, she said. On film, the camera adds ten pounds, she said. Between movies, she’d tell me things about Natalie. Mama was a walking, talking Natalie Wood encyclopedia. Where she got this stuff, I didn’t know. Like how Natalie had made twenty movies by the time she was sixteen. And how she’d dated Elvis and had even gone to Memphis once, but that Gladys didn’t approve of the match and his mama came first with Elvis, before any woman, so that was the end of that.
“Look, Tallie,” she’d say. “See how she always wears a bracelet on her left wrist. That’s because she had an accident and her wrist has a bump. She always wears a bracelet to cover it up.” It was amazing to me that someone as pretty as Natalie Wood would worry about something as insignificant as a bump on her wrist. “How did she hurt it?” I’d ask. “It was back in the late forties,” she’d say. “When she was making a movie with Walter Brennan, a bridge on the set collapsed. She broke her wrist and it wasn’t set properly.” “What movie?” I’d ask, testing her. “The Green Promise,” she’d answer, naming a movie even the video store people hadn’t heard of.
Mama particularly loved Splendor in the Grass, a film I could hardly bear to watch, especially the part where Natalie gets sent off to that place. No matter how many times I saw that part, it always made me cry. That was back when I still could cry and Mama never minded. Sometimes, she’d cry right along with me. Her other favorites were Gypsy and West Side Story and Rebel Without a Cause, but she didn’t like Inside Daisy Clover, and not just because that creepy Ruth Gordon was in it. “Natalie was going through a hard time when she made that picture,” Mama told me. Like I said, Mama knew everything about Natalie, so I never thought to question the truth of her knowledge or how she’d gained it.
“She was terrified of water,” Mama told me more than once. “She had nightmares she was going to drown in dark water.” Here, Mama’s voice would drop and she’d shiver. “That girl had a premonition. Even as a child. She knew she was going to drown.” Mama used to say that Natalie drowning off Santa Catalina Island was the saddest thing she’d ever heard. Sometimes the way she acted each November twenty-ninth—the day Natalie died—it was like our family really had lost blood. Mama’s sister. Her twin.
Once Daddy gave in, Mama put her plan into action. Before two weeks passed, she’d wangled traveling money out of Uncle Gray-son, bought her ticket and new luggage, and talked the people at the Lynchburg AAA out of a map even though she wasn’t a member. Then one night, Daddy drove her to the train. I was asleep when Mama departed, but I always had a clear picture of how she must have looked holding her gray suitcase and a one-track resolve that would not be refused.
I STARED AT THE BLONDE IN THE FEATHER BOA. I MISSED MY mama so much, it hurt to take a full breath. All the wanting in my heart, all of the missing her was focused on that poster and the possibilities it possessed. The moment I’d seen the sign sitting on the easel and Raylene explained what it was about, I knew I had to do it too. As I said, I had plans. Of course, I knew better than to tell anyone in Eden. Not much remained a secret in a small town like ours, and nothingwas a secret at Raylene’s. My plan was this: Like Mama, I was going to be a movie star. Hollywood, for all its falseness, would be more forgiving than acting in New York. For example, you didn’t have to know all the lines at the same time. Just the one day’s worth.
I recognize the possibility that Mama was the one who had planted the idea of acting in me, but it was not as unreasonable a dream as you might think. Two years before, when I was only a freshman at Eden, I’d played Emily Webb in the drama club production of Our Town, and when I read Emily’s speech on learning about life, people were actually crying. For a fact, Mama would have been proud. She would say I got all my talent from her.
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