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PROLOGUE

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 and what she was doing here, 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, Jesus,” 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 looking up and staring at the house, like she'd been deposited before the home of strangers and 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 in her arms, hugging her so close it made her gasp. What I really wanted was to wrap my legs around her waist and my arms around her neck, the way I used to so she would have to carry me up to the house, but I was way too old for that and—I realized suddenly—now as tall as she. That smashing hug had to suffice.

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
Splendorin 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. People were forever telling her this, and although she made quick to deny it politely in public, her mirror just reflected back the same truth. Which I guess was what started all the trouble. Trouble that began, though I wouldn't know this for years, began back before I was even thought of.

“Did you get it?” I screamed. “Did it happen?”

“Shush, baby,” she said, and then she held me out at arm's length and looked me over. “You've grown up.” She eyed my bosom. “Up and out.”

She'd missed my birthday back in May. I was twelve and, like I said, nearly as tall as she was. For that instant—her commenting on how I'd changed since she left—I wanted to feel as I truly should have felt. Mad at her. For everything. For deserting us, no matter how urgent the cause that took her away. For missing my birthday. For not being there when I'd started my period and, too embarrassed to ask my daddy for help, had to ask old Mrs. Harewood at the drugstore whatever to buy. Most of all, I wanted to be angry at her for leaving me alone, the only girl in all of Eden without a mama, except Rula Wade, whose mama died birthing her and even she had a stepmama, though one only eleven years older. I wanted to be mad but I couldn't. All that anger just melted like spring ice off Baldy. It's gospel that no one could stay angry long at Mama. It always was.

“Your daddy inside?” she asked. I couldn't tell if she was hoping he was or wasn't.

“At the mill,” I said. For sure, Daddy hadn't the least idea that Mama was coming home today. I sent off a prayer that he wouldn't stop at CC's Bar and Grill—a dive a lot more bar than grill.

Mama drew a deep breath and lifted a hand to shade her eyes as she looked around. “Spring in the Blue Ridge,” she said. “It surely shows the Lord's gift with a paint box.” Then she said she regretted missing the redbuds in bloom and the dogwood. She said dogwood in blossom looked like “sulfur moths floating over the fields.” Like she was telling
me
about the dogwood blossom and redbuds
. I
wasn't the one who had left. What I needed to know was where she'd been and exactly what she'd been doing. I was hungry for details beyond those three-line messages scrawled on the backs of postcards.

Before I could say a word, she headed into the house, and from that moment on she acted like she hadn't been anywhere more exciting than Lynchburg. While she unpacked and got reacquainted with the house, she asked me a hundred questions about my school and friends and how I had celebrated my birthday. (Which she hadn't forgotten after all. She gave me a little purse covered with beads she said were sewn by hand. Inside was a tube of real lipstick. The six-dollar kind. It made me sick with impatience to think it was summer and I'd have to wait until school to show it off.) Naturally I tried to tell her everything that had happened in the past six months, but when I asked her if she got the part in the movie she just said, “Did you see me riding up here in any Cadillac?” I kept pushing for details, but she deflected my questions with a weary, “Later, sugar.” I believed her, believed I'd be learning everything before long, and so let things be. Maybe I shouldn't have, but that day I didn't have a clue four years would pass before I'd learn all the things my mama wasn't telling. By then—by the time I'd unraveled mysteries that took me clear across the country—I'd be bearing secrets of my own.

After lunch, she pleaded exhaustion from the trip (trip from exactly
where
?) and went in to take a nap, not even bothering to change the rumpled sheets, a fact that revealed how tired she was. The linens were gray with grime, and Mama always was finicky about towels, corners, toilet seats, such like. I had tried my best while she was gone, but it was amazing how much work a house required. And I had school, too, which was
supposed
to be a girl's full-time job.

Mama slept through most of the afternoon while I waited outside her door, edgy with unsatisfied curiosity and fretting about Daddy's maybe stopping at CC's. I plotted about how to get word to him. So he would be prepared. So he would come straight home without detouring for a drink or three. Finally I called the mill, an act so bold it had occurred only once in our family history, when I was knocked out cold by a pitched ball in P.E. But on this of all days, he couldn't be reached.

I could have saved myself the trouble. As if he had some special radar where Mama was concerned, Daddy came directly from work. When he walked through the door she was sitting at the kitchen table, freshly showered and dressed in a becoming pink blouse. The second he saw her he wasted no more time getting mad than I had.

“Welcome home, Dinah Mae,” he said.

“Deanie,” Mama said.

“Dinah. Deanie. Whatever, darlin'.”

It amazed me how a man could welcome his wife back like that without one single word about what she'd been doing since January. Course, Daddy always was a fool for everything about Mama. He thought she hung the moon. His sister Ida said he would carry Mama around on a pillow if it would make her happy. He displayed his love so openly I was embarrassed for him. I thought it was plain silly for a man to act so crazy over any woman. Even Mama. But I guess it's hard to express what there was about Mama. It was as if her even noticing you was a favor, though not in a conceited way. It was just her manner. Long before the phrase ever entered the vernacular, Mama
ruled
.

Daddy's overalls were dirty, and there was flour dust on the back of his neck, creased with a line of sweat. I wished he'd washed up before he'd come home. He was a big man, my daddy, but he always seemed to shrink when he was with Mama. Even though he was capable at the mill and with any kind of machine, around her he was all helpless thumbs.

At last, I thought, we'll find out everything.

To my disappointment, Daddy didn't seem to share my fiery interest in what Mama'd been doing. He was happy to have her back and made it plainer than two sticks. He hadn't been home more than fifteen minutes when they disappeared into their bedroom, not even bothering to glance my way to see if I was watching. At first all you could hear was talking, and once Mama laughed and that set her off in a coughing fit. Then nothing came from that room but silence. They didn't care a whit that they'd left me sitting alone.

I went out to the porch and picked up
Gone with the Wind
, which I was reading for the second time that summer. I loved the first sentence and knew it by heart.
“Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom
realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.”
Mama was exactly like that. Loaded with charm. But beautiful, too. Feature by feature. Truly, Mama'd put Scarlett to shame. Whenever I pictured scenes from the book, it wasn't Vivien Leigh I was seeing. It was Mama.

I was at the part where the army was driven back to their winter quarters in Virginia and Christmas was approaching. Ashley Wilkes was on furlough, and Scarlett was frightened by the violence of her feelings for him. She loved Ashley “to desperation,” a phrase that thrilled and frightened me every time I considered it. Violence and desperation didn't seem like good things to associate with love. In books, uncontrollable love might sound romantic, but in real life it was sure to be messy. Dangerous. How dangerous, I couldn't imagine, though I was to find out.

I read and reread the paragraph describing how the war had changed Ashley, but I couldn't concentrate. A honeybee kept circling the swing, driving me crazy with its buzzing, but what was really pulling my attention was the silence from behind the bedroom door. I didn't need any road map to tell me what was going on. I picked at a scab on my knee until it bled and was sure to make a scar, then sucked the blood off my finger and made up my mind that I wouldn't even speak to Mama when they reappeared.

When they finally reappeared—all rumpled and giggly—neither of them had the good grace to look shamefaced. Daddy sat down at the table and drank a Pabst while Mama set about making dinner. Fried ham steak, sweet potatoes, and creamed corn. When I smelled the ham frying, I felt my resolve to stay silent soften, and then the little seed of anger melted into relief. You see, it wasn't that Mama was heartless. She was just carefree, and that could feel like plain not caring.

I sipped a Coke, and something clenched loosened inside my chest. Mama was here, cooking dinner and flirting with Daddy. All was well in my world. We were a family again, not just a daddy and his daughter trying to be one, with a mama off somewhere on her way to becoming someone else.

Later, after dinner, we all settled in on the couch and Daddy switched on the TV. Outside, the Bettis twins were cranking by on their dirt bikes. Wiley called for me to join them, but I was staying exactly where I was, snuggled in next to Mama. We watched
Wheel of
Fortune
and a rerun of
Moonlighting
. Although she wasn't our type, Mama and I both agreed that Cybill Shepherd knew a thing or two about looking fine. “That girl's got
attitude
,” Mama said, like it was a good thing.

Midway through the show, Daddy swung her feet up into his lap, like he had a zillion times. “Size five,” he announced to the room, his voice swollen with awe and pride, as if he were both surprised and personally responsible for the miracle of her tiny feet. I swung my own feet up. “Size eight,” I said. We all laughed.

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.