Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  “Get Billy,” that woman screams right now, but Lena is used to it, get Billy and God willing, get some butter cookies, sister, yeah, get some butter cookies and get Billy and wear that damn rug out.

  “Let’s clean you up for your visit today,” nurse teacher says. “Your niece is coming to take you for a visit. Come on, now.” That woman pulls her shirt up over her head and it’s cold there to her back. “We’ll get you feeling good.”

  “You can try,” she says. “But I’d just as soon be dead.”

  “Oh, don’t you be that way today. You’re going to look so pretty.”

  “Shit, I used to be pretty. Everybody said so. I was on Broadway once and people said I was so pretty. Roy said I was the brightest broad on Broadway, and my baskets used to bring in more money than anybody’s at the Saxapaw church socials and I couldn’t even cook. I’d have some fruit and cheese in my basket and those other girls with their fried chicken and ham dumplings.”

  “I bet those men just wanted your company,” nurse teacher says and wipes a warm sponge all around her neck and chest.

  “They did,” she says. “They’d rather eat an apple and be with me.”

  “Not too many women who can say that.”

  “Tell it sister!” the roommate says.

  “She can’t.” Lena points to her roommate and laughs because that sponge feels so good in between and around her breasts, up and down her back. “No, not many women that had men falling all over themselves like I did. I had more boyfriends than you could shake a stick at. They’d hang around calling ‘Miss Rolena’ till it made me sick. I’ve never gone by Rolena. Whoever heard of a star named Rolena?”

  “I would’ve liked all those boyfriends,” nurse says and buttons Lena’s clean blouse up, makes Lena pull her britches off.

  “Psshhh. You’d have tired of it. I knew if I ever met a man like Roy Carter, that I’d marry him. Roy Carter knew women and I liked that; Roy knew just what to do. He split a beer with me down there at Myrtle Beach and he said ‘you’re beautiful, Lena.’ My stomach felt sick like he might be just like all the others. I drank my beer and I reached in that bucket and got me another one. Those seagulls were squalling so loud I thought I’d go crazy. Then he grabbed me tight, near about as tight as you’ve got my foot, let go a little. He said, ‘goddamnit, Lena, all I’m trying to do is tell you that I love you.’”

  “Shhh,” that woman whispers and picks up her other foot.

  “That’s what he said and I fell flat that’s how hard I fell. He said that and he squeezed my arm so tight it hurt and I knew he was the man. He said, ‘you crazy broad’ and I could’ve died right then and there.”

  “There now, aren’t you feeling better?” Nurse teacher hands her the sponge. “Now you wash yourself and we’ll change your underwear, too.”

  “Yourself. My mama always said ‘yourself’ when she meant your. . . .” She stops and stares at the woman. “But he died. I can’t believe he died and left me like that.” She takes that warm sponge and rubs it up between her legs, up and down, while that nurse turns around so she won’t have to see. “Seen one, you’ve seen ’em all,” Roy used to say and she told him just remember that then ‘cause he’d never see another but hers. “And mine ain’t quite like everybody else’s,” she had added.

  “What makes it different?” he asked, pulled her up close to him and pressed in with his hips.

  “‘Cause it’s mine,” she said. “And that makes anything I’ve got different. What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine.” They had laughed and laughed and that sponge is getting a little cool. She gives it back and puts on her underwear; it has her name in it; it says Lena Carter.

  “Let’s comb your hair and put on some lipstick and you’ll be all ready.”

  “Get Billy! Get Billy!” comes from the hall and the roommate says, “Tell it!”

  “I might have me a Pepsi-Cola while I wait,” she says and hands her mink hat to the maid.

  “Oky doke.” The nurse maid pulls Lena’s hat in place. “Won’t you be hot in this hat?”

  “I’ve been hot my whole life,” she says and laughs. Roy used to call her a hot number, his hot number. “Did you say Roy is stopping backstage?” she asks, reaches up to feel that silky mink on her head.

  “No, Hannah, your niece, is coming here, here to Pinegrove.”

  “Oh yeah.” She follows the nurse out into the hall by the Pepsi machine. “You’re a right cute woman yourself,” she says. “I bet you could get a man if you’d change your shoes.”

  “I’m married,” the nurse teacher says and laughs.

  “Well, did you ever know that hayseed sister-in-law of mine, Tessy Pearson?”

  “No.”

  “No, I guess not,” she says, shakes her head. “Tessy is dead, been dead. Tessy was married to my brother, Harv, and it didn’t stop her none from looking for a man. She found one, too. We all knew. Harv didn’t know.”

  “Hmmm.” The nurse hands her the Pepsi-Cola and leads her down the hall to the front where the hotel is so pretty with all the flowers left from opening night.

  “I never cheated on Roy,” Lena says. “I had chances but I didn’t do it.”

  “You sit right here in the sunshine, now,” nurse says. “I’ll see you tonight.” God knows, the nurse maid couldn’t get another man but Tessy Pearson did, God bless and rest her soul and keep it wherever it is. Lena called her Messy ‘cause she was so filthy to have done that and because her clothes were so bad; she wore such baggy old dresses over those skinny bones that she could have robbed a watermelon patch and nobody would’ve known.

  “Get Billy!” Lena turns to see that old woman in her wheelchair there in the shade, that doll baby held to her chest like it might be nursing. Lena gets up and walks past some of the others on a bench, sitting and staring like old fools, and she stops beside that woman, bends down close to her. “I’m going after Billy right now,” she whispers and that woman looks at her, squints up those old cloudy eyes. “As soon as I find Roy, we’ll go to get Billy. Me and Roy got a great big car.”

  * * *

  Hannah went to Merle Norman two months ago and had them do her face. Now all the products that she bought after seeing her new self, her retired self, are spread out across the bathroom counter while she tries to remember what each one is for. “Good God, Hannah!” Ben said that first night when he walked into the bedroom and there she was relaxing on the bed while her Miracol Facial did whatever it was supposed to besides making her face look like hot pink rubber. “You scared the hell out of me. Retirement’s not looking real good on you.”

  “We want to accent those big green eyes,” the Merle Norman woman said. Hannah picks up her eyeliner and tries to remember which way the woman pulled her lid to apply it. “You’ve got some slight red tones in your hair, pretty, a little rinse would do wonders to tone down the gray. We’ll want to stay away from light pinks though,” the woman said and dabbed a damp cloth over Hannah’s mouth, removing the color that Hannah has worn for so many years that her lips looked naked.

  “I can’t believe you got a makeover, Mama,” Ginny Sue said on the phone. “I can’t wait to see.” Makeover, it sounded the same as when Ben talks about overhauling a motor down at the garage.

  Lena would know what to do with all of these concoctions, or rather there was a time when she would have. And sure, the Merle Woman knows; it’s her job and she gets paid for doing it. What if Hannah was to give that woman a bolt of cloth and a needle and thread and send her home to make christening gowns with tatted edges and smocked tops, or a pair of lined drapes? Everybody cannot know everything. She gives up and puts on her usual dab of mascara and a touch of her own lipstick. Something you have done your whole life can’t be all bad and she doesn’t have time to sit and match up every color in the rainbow like Ginny Sue would do if she could.

  She brushes her short hair back from her face and fluffs it a little. She is not about to start with hair rinses, either. It would
be just one more thing to keep up with and who has time? She has always been amazed that you can go to the grocery store at seven-thirty in the morning and there are women fixed and made up like they might be going to church. There was a time when she wanted to be flashy like Lena, but she just could not get herself to go about it. It didn’t feel right. You can’t sew or wash or do anything with fingernails that are long and pointed. She thinks that growing out and keeping long fingernails is a good excuse not to work. Lena once got her hand in an ad for a dishwashing detergent and Roy Carter said she didn’t wash dishes for two months.

  Hannah wishes she could just plop down and relax but even retired, she can’t. The only times that she has ever relaxed in her adult life have been short little weekend vacations, long enough to relax, but not so long that she had to start worrying over dust that collected or having to get back to her routine. Two or three days is vacation enough and it can’t be done at home where the phone’s gonna ring or the doorbell or the dirty laundry starts stacking up.

  She would like to be on a little vacation right now; she would like to be some place where she could dial room service and get a breakfast tray, sit there and read a magazine. She’d like to be sitting on a balcony somewhere, watching the people go by and not having to say a word to one of them. She would like to kick up her feet and say, “I’m not cooking, cleaning, or talking today.” She knows from past experience that that would not last more than a day if that long. And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with staying busy if that’s what makes you happy?

  She goes into the kitchen and looks out the window and across the backyard where Ben is out in that garden, working away, every bit of his body covered because he sunburns, probably drenched in sweat. He’ll probably do that all day long, take a few showers of towels to wash. It seems that he would just give up on growing some gigantic vegetable and be satisfied that he grows enough every summer that they eat fresh vegetables all winter.

  She can keep herself busy with full retirement, but sometimes she wishes that Ben had never decided on going semiretired and would just keep on going down to the garage every day. He might as well the way that he calls those men on the phone ten times a day, wanting to know every car that’s come in and what was wrong with it and where was it going. He spends his whole day talking on the phone and walking around in the garden. It wouldn’t surprise her if she looked out there and saw him dressed like an Indian and doing a rain dance. “When is it going to rain?” he has asked every night for the past three weeks, waiting for her response like she might know.

  No way could she get him to go on a vacation right now, not during this dry spell. They used to always go to the beach in the summer when the children were growing up. They’d rent a big ocean-front house with Madge and Raymond for a week and she and Madge would just sit on the beach, have a drink if they wanted, and watch the children splash around and play. She could always trust Robert to stand there at the edge of the ocean and keep a watch on Ginny Sue and Madge’s Catherine and Cindy. He’d stand there at the edge of that ocean with his hands on his hips like a miniature lifeguard and say things like, “Out too far, Ginny,” or “Close your mouth when you go under.” Hannah will never forget that, Robert’s high steady voice like a mimic of a grown man. It made her think of all those times Lena and Roy took David and her down to the Saxapaw River. Hannah was like Robert, standing on the shore and watching over her baby brother while he splashed and went out too far.

  Things seemed so easy on those vacations to the beach. She and Madge would drive, just the two of them, up to the shopping center and try on shoes and hats and sunglasses like they might have been teenagers. She misses those times, times when she could dial home and her father would answer. He’d tell Hannah not to worry, to have fun, that her mother was out working in the garden, that they were baking a hen for dinner, might walk down the street to the store once it got cool.

  Hannah would like to go right now and pull a yard chair under the shade of that dogwood tree that she named after Aunt Tessy and just sit until the cows come home. The tree shades a large part of the yard now and it seems like no time at all that she got out there and planted it, digging so carefully, every spade of dirt. It was planted on the day that Tessy died, but Hannah had waited months before telling anyone the story, the way that Tessy had awakened in the hospital that day, taken hold of Hannah’s arm and said, “I hope that dogwood will live.” Tessy said that and then fell back into a deep sleep that never ended. It sent chills through Hannah, then, and the whole ride home in that old station wagon where she had her dogwood waiting, the burlap tucked around its roots. No one, not even Ben, knew that she was going to buy a dogwood tree that day. She didn’t even know it herself. Even now it gives her gooseflesh, and yet a good feeling, the hope that Tessy knows even now about that tree, can see how big it is, knows what a fine seamstress Hannah has been all these years. Tessy is the one that got her started sewing all those years ago. Tessy and Hannah’s mama, Emily, would sit for hours sewing or quilting and those are some of the best memories of her childhood. She loved sitting in front of the window fan in that high-ceilinged room, where the conversation might lapse into quiet for a bit, but their hands never stopped, shiny silvery needles and brightly colored threads constantly moving.

  But that’s all water under the bridge and too much to think about when she’s got a million and one things to do today. She’s got to run by the shop and pick up her payment from those two young girls that are buying her out. Already, the shop doesn’t even look like her own; they’ve brought in two brand new sewing machines and have all these strange-looking mannequins with their blank faces nothing more than a stuffed piece of cloth. “It’s not yours anymore,” Ben keeps reminding her and that’s true. She has moved most all of her belongings into Robert’s old room, carefully placing machine, ironing board and her work table in the same position they were in at the shop.

  She looks up at the clock and she knows that Lena is sitting and waiting for her to get there—just sitting and waiting and thinking—Hannah can’t help but wonder if that’s what it takes to be able to sit and rest, getting old and feeble and unable to do anything else like her mother and like Lena. Of course, Madge will sit and play solitaire for hours when there are dishes in her sink. Hannah couldn’t stand that, and she can’t understand why some of her neatness hadn’t rubbed off on Ginny Sue.

  “Nobody can see it,” Ginny Sue whined her whole childhood when Hannah pointed out the dust under the bed.

  “That doesn’t make it go away.” Hannah had been able to use that answer for years and then Ginny turned it on her.

  “There’s a man in my closet,” Ginny Sue told her one night after screaming bloody murder. “A man with a knife.”

  “I don’t see a thing,” Hannah had said, the lights on, closet door open, Ben’s snores that could wake up the dead coming from their room.

  “That doesn’t make it go away,” Ginny Sue said. “He’ll be back as soon as you leave me.” And she had kept on until Hannah had let her make a pallet on the floor of Robert’s room. He hadn’t minded, so calm and protective; looks just like his father, tall and lean. Hannah misses him, misses that laundry basket full of dirty baseball socks which she knows his wife Susie probably never gets clean. Susie is sweet and cute and gets along with everybody so well the couple of times a year they fly in from California, but she doesn’t use bleach. She stood right there in Hannah’s kitchen while Ginny Sue was stenciling a heart over the doorway which Hannah didn’t particularly want over her doorway but was too tired from fixing the big Christmas dinner to say anything, and said, “I can’t ever get Rob’s socks clean.” Clorox, is what Hannah was thinking, Clorox and nobody has ever called him Rob, I didn’t name him Rob. A son is a son until he takes a wife she told herself, wondering why in the Sam hill Ginny Sue was making that heart green when there’s not a thing in her kitchen that is green except for her eyes when she’s in it. You have to bite your tongue and be thank
ful for what you’ve got, though, and she reminded herself of Madge sitting in that plastic-covered house with Raymond dead and two daughters that fuss all the time.

  She could handle that heart over her door, it’s still there, and she could handle Ginny Sue’s spooky stage that seemed to go on for years. What Hannah could not handle was when Ginny Sue finally, years later, came out of it all and made an about-face and thought things were so lovely, so interesting, and she’d talk about people and music that Hannah had never even heard of. Hannah had to break in and say something like, “I’ve seen a mimosa tree, Ginny Sue. I know how pink they are.”

  “One day I’m going to have long blonde hair and be on the front of a magazine,” Ginny Sue said one day and Hannah had not been able to take it. Her mama and Lena just feeding right into those tall tales like it might be possible. Some parents may go right along with all of that, telling their daughters that they’re the prettiest thing to land on earth, the smartest and so on like Raymond Sinclair did to that Cindy, but Hannah wasn’t one of them.

  “Ginny Sue,” she said. “You may be on the front of a magazine, nobody knows, but you will never have blonde hair unless you bleach it out and look like a streetwalker.”

  Ginny Sue had cried and pouted a little, wanted to blame Hannah for her dark hair, but it hadn’t really changed things, hadn’t stopped her from staring off and making up all these wonderful, beautiful things either. She’d go on and on about how her life was going to be, a long list of college courses and types of furniture, how her yard would be landscaped, what colors would be best for a wedding and not even a ring on that hand, and not one thing out of all that Ginny Sue wanted even resembled anything that Hannah had. “No life is perfect,” Hannah told her. “If you are happy, then you’ve got more than a lot.”