Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  Emily was in the kitchen when James died. She was standing at that sink washing dishes and looking out the window at all the leaves blowing from her trees. She had just finished making a little clown doll for Ginny Sue and had him propped up in a chair at the kitchen table so that Ginny Sue would be surprised when Emily called the two of them in to lunch. They were in the bedroom, the big stuffed chair over near the window where James liked to sit and read to Ginny Sue. He didn’t know how to read too well, but he didn’t need to; he knew those Brer Rabbit stories by heart and she loved to hear him making his voice go different for each character, loved to hear Ginny Sue squeal with laughter and beg him for more stories.

  She thought so often then that she didn’t know what the two of them would have done without Ginny Sue and Robert to fill up their days. James had given up his farming not long after David died, had men that moved onto all that farmland down where James came from, and he gave them most of the profit when the tobacco was sold. He’d walk down to the warehouses every now and then or get Hannah and Ben to drive him out past his land, but that was all. They didn’t talk about David too much because it didn’t even seem real that he was dead; there was no body to bury down where she and James had a plot not far from where his parents were buried. There was just a piece of paper signed by the president and she didn’t even have that anymore because James tore it up and threw it in the fire. It was always on the tip of her tongue to say, “David would have done this” or “David would have said that” but she’d see Ginny Sue sitting there on his lap, making him laugh and there was no cause to upset him, no cause for a child to hear of such sad things that young.

  For years James had gotten up early and crept behind her where she was building a fire in the living room, or washing up breakfast dishes, wrapped his arms around her waist and squeezed; she would squeal out in alarm and then press her face into his dark neck, the thick black hair, the oils of his face carrying the faint trace of the cigars that he smoked. For years now, she has felt that bare emptiness of her shoulder and waist, as she sat on the porch or when she pressed her face into her pillow pretending that it was the tight weathered skin of his neck and face, the sparse gray hair of his old age.

  “If anything ever happened to me,” he had asked, the first time when they were so young, when it was a cold winter morning and she had not even gotten up to light the fire, David just a little baby in a cradle, Hannah barely walking and talking. “Would you marry someone else?”

  “Never,” she told him that morning and all the other times over the years, the last being the day before he died, his face as weathered as that pecan tree, hit by lightning and split in two.

  “I will never marry again,” she told him. “I will never love anybody like I love you.” And she had hugged him so close, not wanting to think of anything happening. She had already lost David and she couldn’t stand to think of losing him. She would tell herself that she would still have Hannah and Hannah’s children.

  She looks over at Hannah, now, sitting there holding Madge’s hand just like they did when they were children out skipping rope. Lena’s got her head back and her mouth dropped open like she might be dead and she might as well be. Lena wants to die and the Lord is making her wait until he feels she’s ready. And the Lord is sending rain; the rain is falling and the river’s gonna rise, gonna rise, gonna rise, and she feels so excited when she thinks of standing out in that yard, Curie telling her to dance a jig, dance yourself a rain dance, and she had felt so free right that second with her skirt lifted and her feet turning her around and around in a circle, slow at first and then faster, with Curie just a dark blur off to the side as she spun around. “Just let go and dance, Miss Emily,” he called out, and she did; she danced herself a rain dance and she felt like nobody had ever felt so free, just a child letting go, her hair falling out of the neatly pinned bun, her white apron dusty from the dirt she was kicking up, pantaloons showing, and sweat trickling down her neck, until she finally got tired and sprawled out flat of her back on a grassy spot and laughed until her stomach ached, laughed until she heard her mama come out that front door. The river’s gonna rise now and Ginny Sue is lying there with her eyes closed. “Sweet dreams,” she has always said to Ginny Sue and James would say, “don’t let the bed bugs bite.”

  She was right there in the kitchen when he died, right there at the sink when Ginny Sue came in and told her that he fell asleep right in the middle of The Tar Baby.

  “Do I have to take a nap, too?” Ginny Sue had asked and she took that child by the hand and led her over to the chair where the clown was sitting.

  “I’ll go check on Gramps,” she told Ginny Sue and she had known, she had known with each and every one of her steps on that floor that sounded so loud to her ears. She knew as soon as she walked into the room and saw his head turned to one side, the direction of the window, the book opened on his lap with his still hand marking the place. “I’m going to miss you so bad,” she whispered and leaned close to his face, the breathless mouth. Hannah came within minutes of her call, her face so small and pale-looking. And then the ambulance came and then others started coming so by late afternoon her house was full of people. Tessy came, her eyes swollen and she made her way across that crowded living room so slowly.

  “Why you?” she had asked and squeezed Emily so tightly. “First your son and now your husband, why you?” And later, Tessy stood on that back porch and stomped her feet and cursed, looked up in the sky and cursed until Emily went and got her, pulled her back inside where it was warm, and Emily didn’t care what any of those other women might think, didn’t care what Lena said about Tessy.

  “Tessy didn’t mean to cut a shine when James died,” she says now. She doesn’t care what they think, these women here to cry and say they’re sorry that James is dead.

  “Mama, we know that.” It is Hannah, Hannah.

  “Tessy didn’t mean those curses,” she says and shakes her head.

  “We know,” Hannah whispers and takes her hand.

  “I told James I’d never have another man,” she says. “I loved James and I told him that I’d do right by him.”

  “And you have,” Hannah says. “Now dry those tears and let’s talk about something happy. You too, Madge.” And Madge nods, smiles a weak smile.

  “Happy,” Lena mumbles and lights a cigarette. “I used to be happy. I used to stroll down Park Avenue happy as a lark. I used to sunbathe down in Florida, me and Roy, and I was never so happy as then. I was happy.”

  “Well, be happy right now,” Hannah says, looks at the daybed where Ginny Sue is just staring out the window like she’s not even listening.

  “How?” Lena asks. “How can I be happy while Roy’s dead?” Roy never should have died; he wasn’t even sick. He had never been sick, full of energy, do this, do that. She should have died. After all those years for him to up and leave her so fast. It makes her so damn mad.

  “Roy? Roy, lunch is ready,” she had called out the back door. He was under the house messing with the plumbing, fixing, always fixing something, wires and pipes, or sitting at that kitchen table with all those rulers and pencils, drawing up something that would need wires and pipes. “I’m an engineer,” he had told her the first time they met and he was driving around in that car with a rumble seat, his pants cut short with bright argyle socks and that light brown hair parted down the middle. She had been in New York then, working and modeling a little; she worked in cosmetics, spent her day taking simple-looking women and doing something with them.

  “Guess you get to travel a lot,” she said. “But I’d get tired if all I did was sit on a train.” And he had laughed great big, offered her a cigarette from that little gold case he kept in his coat pocket.

  “A mechanical engineer,” he told her. “I build things.” They were at a party, sipping champagne and eating shrimp, and she was wearing a skirt that showed her knees. Emily would have turned purple and dropped dead if she had seen Lena at that party; her ma
ma would have let her have it, but they weren’t there to see. They were way out in the country, out in Saxapaw with chickens and pole beans and slop jars and she was at a party in a swanky hotel in New York City. She wore a red silky dress and beads that hung near about to her knees and Roy Carter pulled her onto that dance floor and she twirled until everybody else backed off and watched; just she and Roy Carter cutting a rug. “But I am going places,” he had told her later. “I go all the time, Washington, Chicago, you name it. But if I’m on a train, I’m going first class, not the clown tooting the whistle.”

  “Roy?” she had leaned out that back door and yelled again, rang that little bell that he had put on the back porch for her to ring for the cats. The turnips were getting cold and all those cats sitting there rubbing on her legs but not a word from him. That was so like him, get off with some machine or pipes that he could take apart and put back together, and never pay her a bit of attention.

  She had finally had to put on her housecoat and go out there herself. Her whole life she felt like she had to go after that man. He’d talk to this person or that person for as long as they’d listen, would talk to that Mrs. Simms across the street some afternoons and it would make Lena so mad that she couldn’t see straight. “What have you got to say to that ugly old widow anyway?”

  “She’s not ugly and she’s not old,” Roy had said time and time again, then patted her on the fanny and kissed her cheek. “You just get a little jealous, that’s all.”

  “Jealous?” Lena had asked time and time again. “Why in the hell would I get jealous of that?” But she had gotten jealous, had always been jealous. God, she loved him, would have done anything for him. But she never would have died and left him all alone; and she couldn’t have a child. It wasn’t her fault that she couldn’t. She didn’t make him stay. But she always knew he was wishing for somebody that could have children.

  “That’s ridiculous, Lena,” he had said once when he had found her crying. They were in Florida then and it was so damn hot; it was so damn hot and she told him that that was why she was crying.

  “I don’t want a baby,” she had said. “I’ve seen what Emily went through. I was right in her kitchen watching after Hannah when she had David and I heard what she went through.”

  “I don’t want a child either,” he said. “Having you is like having both, a wife and a child.”

  “Go on to hell,” she had said and pushed him away, then quickly pulled him to her with those old tree frogs making so much noise she thought her head would split wide open.

  “Go on to hell then,” she had said and looked through the opening to the cool, damp darkness under the house. “Just go on to hell.” And somebody called the police, the ambulance, probably old lady Simms with her ugly self, still interested in Roy and him under the house dead as a doornail.

  But she saw him after that; she saw him in their house having a party, women half-naked chasing after him. He stopped by her bed and asked her if she wanted to go see the royal wedding over in England and she said, “I am tired, Roy, tired.” But he wouldn’t leave her alone, wanted her to party, and a policeman was at that front door and she yelled for Roy to open it up but he didn’t, too busy entertaining himself, so she did it herself, embarrassed that anybody should see such goings-on in her house, but thinking maybe he could get it to stop.

  “One of your neighbors reported that you were screaming,” he had said and she asked him in.

  “Who wouldn’t? Just look around here.” She had gone and sat on the sofa with all that noise coming from the kitchen. “They’re the ones.”

  “Who?” he had asked, walked around her house and then came and sat down beside her. “Is there someone that I can call for you? A friend? A relative?”

  “Emily can’t go nowhere,” she had said. “I never had a child.” Finally she had given him Hannah’s name and then Hannah had come and taken her to their house to spend the night and neither of them, that police or Hannah, let on like they had seen what Roy was up to.

  She saw him the next day as well; he was up on the roof of that house that he loved more than her, and he wouldn’t come when she called him. He just stood there and opened that raccoon coat to show that he wasn’t wearing any clothes. “Get the hell down, Roy,” she screamed, so embarrassed because old lady Simms was in her yard watching. Roy wouldn’t even look at her. “I can’t get him to come inside,” she told Hannah. “First he was on the house and now he’s under it.”

  Hannah took her to the doctor and she left Roy a note on the table in case he should come home. “Don’t leave me, Roy,” she had written and the doctor gave her a shot and he was a nice doctor, handsome. “I know your wife’s proud,” she said, feeling so tired, that room so cool with those white sheets. “I bet your mama is, too,” and she could barely see Hannah standing there, barely feel that nice man’s hand on her arm.

  “Roy’s dead,” the man said. “You were dreaming, bad dreams, and we’ll take care of you now.” Roy’s dead and they wouldn’t let her stay at home. She should have died; she should have been the one up under that house dead.

  It is raining hard now and Madge watches the drops collecting on the window, moving together, rolling down. “Feeling better?” Hannah asks her and she nods as she watches Cindy park in front of the duplex and run through the rain.

  “Whew!” Cindy says when she comes through the door, her hair wet and stringy. “I hope you’ve decided to stop talking about Daddy,” she says and looks at Madge. Madge feels like she could bust wide open, like she could grab Cindy’s tiny little body and shake some sense into her.

  “Cindy, what I said was the truth,” Madge says, swallows hard, and stares back.

  “Oh yeah, I know. I know how much you loved him and all.” Cindy sits on the floor facing Ginny Sue, her back to Madge. “She didn’t even cry at his funeral,” she says to Ginny Sue.

  “I did,” Madge says. “I had already cried for years.”

  Madge’s house had been full of people the day of the funeral. Cindy was at the kitchen table with Raymond’s necktie clutched in her hands. “I couldn’t let him wear it,” Cindy wailed. “He looked like he would choke.” Cindy picked up a napkin and blew her nose, wiped away those flakes of blue mascara that had fallen to her cheeks. Cindy looked more like Raymond than she ever had, that little thin nose, her blue eyes too large for her thin face.

  “I want to keep this tie,” Cindy had sobbed while she pulled a thin strip of hot pink polish from her thumbnail. “I want to save this tie because he wore it to my sophomore dance when y’all chaperoned. I might frame this tie. I might hang it out in the hallway near little Chuckie’s bedroom just so I can think of Daddy whenever I tell my little baby goodnight.”

  “Keep it,” Madge said and went to stand by the window, the sky so blue, the limbs of the pecan tree rattling against the house. She couldn’t wait for that day to be over, couldn’t wait to get back to the dental office, to wash those ashtrays that were filled to the brim and put them away forever.

  “Charles stopped by this morning.” Cindy got a glass of water and popped something into her mouth. “Can you believe that?”

  “Well, that was nice,” she said and sat at the table, wondering why Ginny Sue or somebody didn’t come and do something with Cindy. Catherine was in the other room talking about selling houses and Roy Carter talking about building houses and Lena talking about cleaning house. She had never felt so all alone in her whole life. Hannah would whip past every few minutes with another dish that somebody had brought, or she’d be over at the sink washing dishes, but nobody, nobody sat down at that table and took hold of her hands and said, “Tell me about it, Madge.”

  “Nice? Nice? Some whore woman was out in the car. He had a date. And there he was in my house, in my room with me in nothing but a robe and do you know that he hugged me? He hugged me with me in nothing but a thin silky Vanity Fair robe and I hope he remembered that he gave me that robe. I hope he remembered it all and that his you-kn
ow-what aches for having thought of it.”

  “That’s enough,” Madge had said.

  “Yeah, tell me.” Cindy shook her head back and forth and paced. “He was making a move on me with that woman sitting right out there in the car, said they would take care of Chuckie for me. That wasn’t what he was thinking of taking care of right that minute, no sir, he had other thoughts in that skull of his.”

  “Cindy, could you please be a little quieter.” Catherine came into the kitchen and sat down beside Madge, a Southern Living in her hand. “This is a funeral.”

  “What in the hell would I do without you to inform me of what’s going on,” Cindy said. “Since when have you decided to talk to me, breaking your oath of the King James Bible.”

  “I think we should try to get along,” Catherine had said. “For mother,” and she patted Madge’s hand like Madge might have been a dog. How? How did she get two children like that? Then Catherine waved and went into the other room to speak to somebody who was talking to Brent. Madge had never cared for Brent; all he did was sip liquor and talk big, like Raymond.

  “It probably would have been a good thing for Charles to keep Chuckie today,” Madge had said and watched Cindy pace back and forth.

  “Chuckie needs to be exposed to things like this. God knows I’m the only person to teach him what’s going on in the world.” Cindy twisted the necktie round and round her hands. “Daddy is dead,” she sobbed. “I don’t know if I can stand it. I fainted while Charles was there and next thing I knew, I was laid out on the bed with my robe all loosened up. He could have done anything to me with me in that state.”

  “You’d know if he had,” Madge said and got up from the table. “I’m sure he didn’t. Charles isn’t that kind.”

  “Oh you have always taken up for Charles. You like Charles more than you’ve ever liked me or ever liked Daddy.”

  “You know that’s not true.”