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LEAVING
EDEN (Ballantine Books)
by Anne LeClaire
For Tallie Brock,
Glamour Day at the Klip-N-Kurl beauty parlor is her ticket out of
the friendly confines of Eden, Virginia. She dreams of going to Hollywood
and becoming the star that her late mother always wanted to be. But
Glamour Day has more than one surprise in store for Tallie. “Funny,
heartbreaking, and deeply honest.”—Kristin Hannah
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Excerpt from Select Editions’ Leaving Eden
I was asleep the night Mama left us, but I remember every detail of
the moment she came home: June 21, 1988. Hot enough to poach perch in
Bald Creek and officially the first day of summer, although I had already
been swimming for weeks. Country 99.7 was on in the kitchen, and I was
forming a trio with the Judds. “Girls Night Out.”
Daddy
had already departed for the mill when Mr. Tinsley’s taxi pulled
up to the curb, belching blue. I peered through the kitchen window and
saw the passenger door open and a dark-haired girl step out. She wore
black flat-heeled shoes, black pedal pushers, a red-and-white-striped
sailor shirt, and, cinching her waist, a black leather belt. Before
I even got to wondering who she was, she looked directly up at our house,
and—although I had been praying steadily for just this moment—I
couldn’t believe what was laid out right before my eyes.
Mama
had come home.
“Thank
you, Lord,” I said. Just that. Back then, I still had faith that
what you asked for would surely come if you prayed with sufficient fervor,
and I sincerely believed it was the power of my prayers that had brought
my mama back.
She
stood there for a moment, suitcases plopped on the grass, just staring
up at the house, like she’d been deposited before the home of strangers
and she wasn’t sure whether to walk up the path to our front door
or get back in with Mr. Tinsley and drive away. I didn’t give her
time to make her decision.
Quicker
than you could say Sam Hill, I lunged forward, screen slamming behind
me. “Mama,” I cried, and flung myself into her arms, hugging
her so close it made her gasp.
I
didn’t see then how tired she looked—just how pretty. Even
then, nearing her forties, she was the prettiest woman in all of Eden.
And if you believed some people, Spring Hill and Redden, too.
You
see, Mama was the spitting image of Natalie Wood. Not everyone my age
knew about the actress who was queen of the screen in the 1960s—how
they’d charcoaled her skin so she could play a Puerto Rican in
West Side Story, how the crazy bathtub scene in Splendor in the Grass
didn’t have to be faked. I knew all that. I was raised on Natalie.
Mama had even named me Natasha, which was Natalie’s pet name, a
fact not many people knew.
Mama
was five feet tall, exactly like the actress, and had the same dark
hair and black velvet eyes and perfect, pouty mouth—so alike they
could be twins. Which I guess was what started all the trouble. Trouble
that began, though I wouldn’t know this for years, back before
I was even thought of.
“Did
you get it?” I screamed. “Did it happen?”
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