Read Online Leaving Eden by Anne Leclaire - Free Book Online Page A

the farmers from out of town found me in the back feeding one of the mill cats and, quicker than you can imagine, he opened the front of his overalls and exposed his pale, wrinkled thing that made me want to puke-puke-puke. Sure wasn’t nothing to be so proud of, is what I wished I’d told him. And a few days after that, I saw a rat as big as a small-sized dog. After that I stopped spending time at the mill. And Daddy began spending more time at CC’s.
    For a long time, when Mama first came back from L.A., he stayed clear of CC’s and I had hopes this good habit would stick, but after she left us, he started up again. At first I felt alone, like a real orphan. The only thing worse would have been to live with Goody in Florida. After my granddaddy died, Goody sold the house that had been in her family for three generations, moved south, and took up golf. She announced to anyone who’d listen that she lived in a “gated community,” like this was a place to be proud of instead of sounding like some sort of prison. And wouldn’t you know, the year Mama left us for good, Goody started her campaign to have me move there with her.
    “We can’t have Natasha staying here with you,” I heard her tell my daddy. “She’ll be running wild in no time and turn up pregnant.” She said this like she was privy to special knowledge, like one of Etta Bird’s revelations, but the only thing it proved was how little she knew about me.
    My daddy stood right up to her and said I’d be staying with him right where I belonged thank you anyway. He made it sound like we were a team. Even if it didn’t exactly work out that way, staying with him was better than any gated community in Florida with Goody, who played golf and wore gardening gloves all the time to protect her hands and spent the rest of her time warning people not to be getting too big for their britches or go getting a swelled head, which pretty much took care of both ends.
    I picked out four pork chops, some fresh green beans, and a jar of applesauce. Mr. Simpson hesitated when I told him to add the total to my daddy’s bill, then lowered his voice so everyone in the universe wouldn’t hear. “Okay this time, Miss Tallie,” he said. “But you tell your daddy to come see me.”
    I felt my face heat up. I knew this meant Daddy hadn’t settled up. Mama used to say Daddy was a hardworking man but no darn good with money. I felt the weight of the quarters from Cora Giles in my pocket and considered putting them toward our account. But with the Kurl closed Sundays and Mondays, I only had eight more workdays until the Glamour Company people came.
    “Okay,” I said to Mr. Simpson, and grabbed the bag off the counter before he could reconsider. Just as I was settling the bag into the basket on the Raleigh, wouldn’t you know, Spy Reynolds pulled up to the gas pump in his souped-up, T-top Camaro. I felt my heart contract under my ribs.
    “Hey there, Tallie,” he said. His hair was wet, like he’d just been swimming, and I was close enough to see the way the teeth of his comb had separated the strands into neat stripes. He was dressed in clean chinos and a white shirt, the sleeves rolled back revealing muscular arms. When he smiled, he looked pirate handsome, like the hero in one of Mama’s old black-and-white movies. “How’s it going?”
    “Just fine,” I said, hugging the package to my chest and pretending I was pretty as my mama and thinking
shitfuckpiss
. He
never
saw me when I was looking good.
    “Hot day to be riding a bike.”
    “Sure is.” I never acted right around Spy. Sometimes, alone at night, I’d practice conversing with him, but whenever I saw him, all the things I’d rehearsed just stayed locked on my tongue, leaving me struck dumb and looking stupid.
    “Want a ride home?”
    “No, thanks,” I said. Course I wanted more than anything in the world to be sitting in Spy’s Camaro, but I wasn’t going to do it looking common as dirt. I held