Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  Cindy took her jeans back off and pulled a pair of underwear from her drawer. It was underwear that looked like camouflage and said U.S. Marine Corp. on the back. “It was a flutter, just a flutter,” she said lifting her hands to the ceiling.

  “I hope he can’t find it!” Virginia said. “I hope that one day you’re all old and it comes up and out of your ear!”

  “It made my legs feel real funny, kind of wobbly.” Cindy took her Arrid Extra Dry off the top of her dresser and sprayed the underwear before she put it on. Cindy always talked about things like Arrid Extra Dry like it was the best deodorant and just because it was more expensive and had that picture of a man and a woman’s shadows on the front. “Secret’s just as good,” Virginia had told her one day and Cindy had just rolled her eyes. “And I know you’re still using Prell, too,” Cindy had said. “Prell and Crest like you’ve done your whole life, just like your parents. I have my own. I have Close-Up and Pearl Drops and Protein 21.”

  Cindy sprayed deodorant into her jeans and buttoned them back up. “When I flutter,” she continued. “I flutter like a leaf in a warm breeze.”

  “I never said that!”

  “I believe you did.”

  Virginia did not say one word the whole way home. She sat in the backseat while Cindy and Madge bickered in the front about what Cindy was going to say to Dr. Wilson.

  “Ginny Sue, don’t ever tell anything that goes on at our house,” Madge said and her words sent a chill over Virginia’s scalp.

  “I won’t,” Virginia said and looked at Cindy.

  “I won’t tell either,” Cindy finally said and smiled that certain way that let Virginia know that she had been teasing, that she wouldn’t really tell.

  “I hope everything’s okay,” Virginia had whispered and stepped up on the curb.

  “I’ll let you know how it comes out.” Cindy grinned and turned around in the front seat while Madge sat gripping that steering wheel.

  “It’s the craziest thing,” Cindy said when she called Virginia late that afternoon. “I would’ve sworn there was something up me and we had to pay fifteen dollars to find out there wasn’t. I told him I use ’em all the time, ride horses and do splits, too, just in case he could tell things about me.”

  “Aren’t you glad?”

  “No, no I’m not. Mama blessed me out so bad when we got back in the car and she made me go in the Kroger’s and buy a box of those big old things. She made me buy the biggest box that was in the store. She said, ‘your daddy likes for me to buy the biggest size because it’s a better buy.’ My mama is crazy, certified and bona fide. You know my daddy don’t give a damn about what size box of Kotex I have. He could care less.”

  “Where are you, Mars?” Cindy asks now and Virginia opens her eyes. “God, try to stay with it.” Cindy walks over and stands in front of Gram, her hands on her waist where she has a hot pink string tied around the leotard. “Doctors say there’s not a thing wrong with tampons as long as you don’t leave them in forever.”

  “Or lose it,” Virginia says and laughs, wanting to stay awake but feeling so sleepy.

  “Like losing virginity?” Cindy asks and sits practically on top of her on the daybed. “Like being a teenager down at the beach like a missionary.” She raises her eyebrows at Virginia and Virginia knows it’s no use, Cindy is going to hold things over her the rest of her life. Now Cindy laughs and pats her hand. “I’m glad you’re not regurgitating so. I need to be getting home. A man that I’ve been seeing is supposed to call so that we can work out a difficulty of our relationship.”

  “Is he a doctor?” Madge asks and sits up straight.

  “No, but he could be. He knows as much if not more than they do.” Cindy reaches in her bag for her car keys and Virginia wishes that she could get off the daybed and go somewhere other than the bathroom. “He’s the one that sells them the medicine.”

  “I thought when you got that job that maybe you’d meet a doctor,” Madge says and leans back in her chair. “That would be something if Ginny Sue had the lawyer and you had the doctor.”

  “And you had the Indian chief,” Cindy says. “I know those doctors, know every one of them but most of them are married so somebody can wash those white coats. Do you want me to go out with a married?”

  “Hush you mouth,” Gram says. “You should do nothing of the kind. Madge? Madge did you hear that?”

  “She’s not going with a married man,” Madge says and Cindy turns and winks at Virginia, mouths a “yes.” Oh God, Virginia does not even want to know about it if that’s the truth. “She said most of the doctors she knows are married.”

  “Most of the doctors I know are dead,” Gram says. “Just about everybody I know is dead.”

  “We’re here,” Virginia says and Gram nods, flips on the TV by remote but keeps the sound down.

  “Where’s Chuckie?” Madge asks and Cindy turns back around.

  “He had baseball. I got to run some errands, might get a little something to perk Ginny Sue up. I told Chuckie just to let himself in your house between school and baseball since you live right there. I told him where you keep the key.”

  “Where?” Madge asks now, glancing at her watch.

  “The side yard for godssakes, now let me go so I can get something done.”

  “Cindy, I haven’t left that key out in that side yard in a year.”

  “Well, he probably figured that out. See ya Ginny Sue,” she says and the door slams shut.

  “She ought to keep up with him better than that,” Madge says but Virginia just keeps her eyes closed because it seems Madge is talking to herself more than anyone else. She does that, talks to herself, has as long as Virginia can remember. “I don’t care if he is twelve, children have to be watched. Anything can happen to them, anything.”

  “I always watched my children,” Gram says and turns up the volume, game show music and Madge flipping pages, page after page after page.

  “No sir, a child’s got no business by himself,” Madge says. Yes, that’s true but Virginia was at Madge’s house by herself that one time, her parents at the beach, Robert at a friend’s house, Gram at home.

  Virginia had lifted the rock in the side yard and there in a little case surrounded by granddaddy longlegs and roly-polies was the key. Already it was getting dark and she stood on the steps another minute, looking up and down the street, hoping to see Madge’s car, her breath visible as she stood and waited. “We’re having a wonderful time,” her mother had said on the phone and she had felt so jealous of her mother’s laughter, her father’s voice in the background calling out “we love you.” Virginia had imagined them all bundled up and sitting on the pier, waves breaking. She imagined them saying “we sure wish Ginny and Robert were here” and she imagined huge conch shells, skyrockets, a strand of shells like she and her mama always strung in the summer.

  The house was quiet and dark and she had flipped on the switch beside the front door and walked up the stairs to Cindy’s room. She raised the blinds and sat on the bed where she could see the street, could see when Madge’s car turned the corner. It was a pretty room, the French provincial canopy bed, pink walls and hot pink shag carpet, the glass case filled with Madame Alexander dolls, more dolls on the cornice.

  “Don’t cross this line,” Cindy had said the first night, two nights ago, and she had run her finger down the middle of the bed. “And don’t you EVER open this up,” and she had pulled a diary out of the bedside table and sat there writing. She would laugh and write a little more and then look over at where Virginia was sitting in the chair and reading Old Yeller, and laugh again. “I mean it. This is personal,” Cindy had said. “You wouldn’t understand the first word. I mean you’re into dogs, you know?”

  “It’s a good book,” Virginia had said.

  “Who cares?” Cindy asked. “I saw the movie. They kill a mad dog, big deal.”

  Virginia’s impulse was to open that drawer and just see what Cindy had written in that book, but
instead, she went to the cabinet and pulled out her favorite doll, a doll with a rose velvet dress and a little parasol with lace, dark hair pulled up in a twist with a loose feather hat. Virginia was feeling the feathered hat when she heard something in the kitchen; Sparkie, a Pekinese that was almost blind and as old as Cindy.

  “Sparkie?” She had stood in the doorway and waited, the doll in one hand. “Here Sparkie,” and she thought she heard him stirring, thought she heard him in the kitchen, and then he barked and whined, outside; she looked out the window at the top of the stairs where there was an old trunk filled with dress-up clothes and she saw Sparkie out there chained to the clothesline where he could run up and down. She heard the dull ticking of a clock somewhere upstairs, probably in Madge’s room and the sounds again in the kitchen, a glass clinking, silverware shuffled through. “Catherine has a school meeting and Cindy has tap,” Madge had said. “Just go on in and I’ll be there soon. Lock the door and you’ll be fine there by yourself.” She turned on the light in the stairwell. “Catherine?” she called.

  “Catherine?” came a high mimicked voice from below and she froze, her hand on the stair rail, dusk outside the window.

  “Catherine?” she called again softly and stepped back from the top of the stairs. Nothing, and then footsteps, a closet door opening, closing. “Uncle Raymond?”

  “Uncle Raymond?” came the mimic again, and she just stood, her breath held, ready to run into Cindy’s room, slam and lock the door; she could call Gram, open a window and scream, climb out Cindy’s window and onto the roof like they did last summer. It was dark at the bottom of the stairs, faint gray light through the venetian blinds in the dining room. “Hickory dickory dock,” came a deep throaty whisper. “The mouse ran up the clock.” Jingling, pockets jingling, footsteps. “Please stop, now, please stop,” she said. “I know it’s you Catherine, or Uncle Raymond. It’s one of you.” And a hand, black glove, a long silver knife reached around the corner of the stairwell, a wingtip shoe on that bottom step.

  “No,” she says and sits up, Gram in the Lazy Boy, Madge with her magazine.

  “What is it?” Madge asks and puts down her magazine. “Are you hurting?”

  “No, nothing.” She lies back down, her hands on her stomach. “A dream, just a dream.”

  “What is it?” Madge had asked, turning from that vanity top where the mirror was cracked, Cindy’s cologne bottles turned and spilled. “I can’t believe you’re going to sit right there and not admit you did this. This isn’t like you Ginny Sue. I’m going to have to tell Hannah how you’ve behaved.”

  “I want to go to Gram’s,” she whispered. “Please call Gram.”

  “I hate you,” Cindy had said. “Just look at what you’ve done. Look at my doll.”

  “She broke a mirror and wouldn’t admit it,” Uncle Raymond told Gram. “And then she turned on all of us like we were the ones who had done something.”

  “Ginny Sue,” Gram had said and hugged her close, the tears coming so fast by then. “That’s not like you, baby,” she said and stroked Virginia’s hair.

  “I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to, Gram.”

  “Didn’t want to admit it, you mean,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Didn’t mean to what?” Madge asks now. “Are you awake or asleep, Ginny Sue?”

  “I didn’t break the mirror,” Virginia says.

  “No, you didn’t break a mirror,” Gram says. “You have worried your whole life over a mirror you didn’t break. Now forget it.”

  “What mirror?” Madge asks. “Ginny Sue?” Madge is there now, leaning over her. “What mirror, honey?”

  “I was dreaming. I dreamed I broke a mirror.”

  “Well,” Madge sighs and goes over to the window. “Don’t worry over a dream. No sense in worrying over that.”

  “It was scary,” she says, her eyes so heavy, Madge a blur of white there by the window.

  “I know, I know,” Madge says. “I’ve had some scary ones myself. Seemed so real. But at least you can wake up and find they aren’t real?”

  “Yes, yes,” she nods, a car door slamming outside.

  “Your mama’s back, right on time,” Madge says and goes to the front door. “Hannah’s so dependable, always right on time.”

  “She’ll be here,” the patrolwoman at school had said and patted Virginia’s shoulder. “Your mama is always here to get you, must be running a little late is all.”

  “I thought you had forgotten me,” she sobbed all the way home. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Ginny Sue, now you know better. When have I ever left you alone?” her mama asked, and Virginia sat staring down at her bluehorse notebook, her name and little pictures that she had drawn on it during class. “I got tied up taking some drape measurements and didn’t notice how late it was. Now what is the matter?”

  “I’m here,” Hannah says, the front door closing, the rustling of grocery bags. “We’re going to have a good dinner. Madge, won’t you stay?”

  “Thank you, I believe I will,” Madge says. “Sometimes I can’t stand going into an empty house.”

  “What are you doing standing here in the parking lot?” Bryan Parker had asked.

  “I got tired of being inside,” she told him, and it all slapped her in the face, the heat, the neutrality of his face staring at her, a feeling like she could mold his features and face like clay, smooth them all into a flat neutral surface and she thought why am I here? Why am I here this way? It wasn’t Bryan Parker’s fault; it was hers—scared to be alone, in a room, condo, house. It was nothing more than loneliness, nothing more than the fear of waking up one day to an empty house.

  “What are you doing?” Mark had asked and squatted down beside where she was digging little holes, planting marigolds. “I thought you said you had planted all you were going to plant.” And his hand was on her waist, a firm grasp that made her want to pull away.

  “I got tired of being inside,” she told him. “I don’t like being alone.”

  “You’re not alone,” he whispered. “Come on,” and she had moved away from him, felt her throat go dry, wanting to scream again with no reason whatsoever coming to her mind and his features too strong to blend and mash together so she had to stare into those holes, a slimy worm living off dirt, marigold roots and marigolds stink; she hates marigolds but they’re cheap, a cheap thrill. Get out of the house, buy some marigolds, get your fingernails dirty, rub a little dirt on your face so no one wants to touch.

  “You’re never alone, Ginny Sue,” Gram had said. “When you’re lying in your bed at night, God is there with you. God is always with you.”

  “But I’m scared to be alone,” she said. “I want somebody with me.”

  “It’s not so bad being alone,” Gram had said and ran her finger down that hull, the peas plopping into the tin pan. “I’ve got things to think on, things I didn’t have time to think on before,” and Virginia sat there beside her, reaching her small bare foot to the porch banister to push the swing while they sat there and waited for dark. “Your granddaddy and me had too many good years for me to question why I’m left here alone.”

  “But I’m with you.”

  “Yes, you are,” Gram said, her hair just starting to gray then.

  “So, you’re not alone. You’re not by yourself because you’ve got me and Mama and Daddy and Robert and Lena and Roy.”

  “You’re right,” Gram said. “And it fills up the ways that I am alone.”

  “But then, you’re not alone,” she had insisted and Gram stopped her shelling and stared out in the yard like she might have seen something or was listening to something.

  “There are many ways a person can be alone,” Gram whispered. “One day, you’ll understand that. Sometimes I feel so alone and what I’m lonely for is my mother. There’s a kind of day that makes me lonely for her, winter days mostly, winter days when it’s a bit cloudy because those are the days we’d be sitting there in the h
ouse. She’d say, ‘You’ll take a cold out there on a day like today,’ and so we’d just sit there indoors, her rocking in that chair and knitting and teaching me and Lena.” She laughed and went back to her shelling. “Lena couldn’t knit. She’d make her yarn into a mess and then throw it outside for some old cat to play with.”

  “These cats keep me so much company,” Lena had said. “Roy’s got to work, work, work, go, go, go and as soon as that car cranks, that’s an invitation for all the cats to come on in. I let ’em in and they are such good company.”

  “I’m so lonely here,” she had told Bryan Parker, for the first time really wanting to hug him but he moved away. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I thought this was what you wanted,” he said. “You acted so sure this was what you wanted.”

  “I know it isn’t exactly what you’d want,” Mark had said when they were standing in that rented kitchen with the sink backed up and boxes to unpack. “But we won’t be here forever.”

  “You ain’t ever gonna find what you want,” Cindy had said. “You’re looking for a brain like what’s his name, you know the Jew with the bushy hair.”

  “Einstein?”

  “Yeah, you know you’re looking for a brain like his, and a bod like Rocky.”

  “I don’t like Rocky.”

  “Well who then? Whose body do you want?”

  “Borg, lean and graceful like Borg,” she had said, laughing. “Or maybe Nureyev when he was younger.”

  “Shit, I don’t know who they are,” Cindy said. “And whose face? Huh? Paul Newman? Al Pacino? Richard Gere?”

  “Or William Hurt.”

  “God, you see?” Cindy asked. “Honey, they ain’t out there. Believe me if they were, I would’ve found ’em. And you probably want poetic too, don’t you?” Cindy had poured herself another drink. “You want Joyce Kilmer,” she said and Virginia laughed until she ached. “Or is Joyce a woman?” Virginia held her sides while Cindy continued, a straight face while she drank her rum and Coke. “Oh yeah, and your man can’t think of sex as anything but a moment out of space and time, a union of love.” And Cindy had reached her arms to the ceiling and hummed “Trees.” “Like that boy at the beach made you float.”