Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  A key turns in the lock and before they can all look up, Esther has rushed into the room with a paper sack torn and spread over her head. “I been in the Piggly Wiggly for hours,” Esther says. “Lights never came on and they finally let us go by checking us out one by one with a flashlight to make sure we hadn’t taken anything.” Esther flops down in a chair and shakes her head back and forth. “God knows,” she sighs. “I got to get home and make sure my house hasn’t floated off. I bet my man can’t even come tonight.”

  “I think you should stay here,” Hannah says but Esther shakes her head. “No sir, I gotta get home. I want to be there if things start floating.” Esther stares hard at Hannah and then the rest of them. “Y’all gals been crying?”

  “I don’t cry before others,” Emily says. “Tears is personal.”

  “I cry at the drop of a hat,” Lena says. “That’s what Roy says.”

  “I was telling everybody about a sad old movie,” Cindy says, her mind shifting up to fourth gear. “I told about this movie called An Unmarried Woman and when I got to the part about that fool traipsing down the street with a picture and leaving Alan Bates right by himself, everybody cried.”

  “I didn’t care for that show myself,” Esther says. “But I do like a movie that can make you cry. I like Madam X Lord, yes, now that’s a tearjerker, and Imitation of Life.

  “I wish David would come on home,” Emily says, the lamp behind her flickering back on. She looks at all of them with their eyes swoll up like they’ve been stung by a bee, except Lena. Lena looks as pretty as ever with that fur cap tilted on her head.

  “So do I,” Lena says. “Roy, too.” She fumbles in her purse until she finds cigarettes and some matches. “They say don’t keep no matches at the school but I do,” she laughs and waves the little book back and forth. “I stole these matches.”

  “From where,” Hannah asks.

  “When me and you went in that store,” Lena says and opens her purse out toward Hannah. “Got me two packs of cigarettes and four books of matches.”

  “Do hush your mouth,” Emily says. “You know better than to steal.”

  “You got to go after what you want is what Roy always said,” Lena says and laughs, holds those two packs up for Hannah to see. Yeah Lord, she and Roy went after what they wanted, they went like wildcats. “I want so many cats there will always be a motor running,” she told Roy and he said he wanted so many cars that there’d always be a motor running. Lord, yeah, tell it. She had stopped saying she wanted a baby by then. “Shit, I’ll smoke right there in the school yard. I’m too old to be paddled.”

  “You needed paddling long ago,” Emily says. “You needed your fanny smacked that time you stole candy from the store. Just walk in and take something like it’s your own.”

  “Your children are like my own,” Lena says and puts the packs back in her purse, zips it up tight so that nurse teacher with them barrel legs won’t find them. If that woman takes those cigarettes, she will arch her back and hiss real loud and scratch that woman’s eyeballs out.

  “But you didn’t take my children,” Emily says. “You didn’t.” She shakes her finger and watches that Lena blow some smoke out into the room. “The Lord took David and Hannah’s right here.”

  “Well,” Lena says and shakes her head, her face primping. “I use an ashtray.” Now she points her finger, her voice loud and defensive. “I have smoked my whole life and ain’t St. Peter or nobody gonna tell me to quit.”

  “Told you,” Cindy says to Virginia and lights a cigarette herself. “You ain’t gonna drop dead from smoking a cigarette.” Virginia looks at the window where the sky is a little lighter, late afternoon, a fine drizzle of rain still coming down.

  “I thought you quit,” Virginia’s mama says. “You told me you had.”

  “I have,” Virginia says and then catches herself, continues. “But I’ve slipped a couple here and there.” She feels suddenly like making a confession. It’s why people trapped in elevators of burning buildings spill their guts, trapped; it’s why people remain friends or remain married. “I have smoked and Mark doesn’t know. There’s a lot he doesn’t know and I’m glad because there’s a lot that I don’t know about him. He has a whole life that I don’t know a thing about.”

  “What, his past?” Cindy asks, her eyes wide, mascara on her cheeks. “We all have one. I do, you do, Mama does.” Cindy glances at Madge and then turns back to Virginia. “It’s better to forget, just pretend nothing happened.”

  “But I haven’t kept mine a secret,” Virginia says. “I have told him everything. I wanted him to know everything about me before he married me. I wanted him to know who I was.”

  “It’s not good to tell everything,” Gram whispers. “You got to have something that you keep for yourself. That’s what I told Tessy.”

  “But I didn’t have anything big or important enough to keep it to myself,” Virginia says, irritated when Madge mumbles, “be glad” and Cindy nods.

  “Did you tell him what Daddy did?” Cindy asks slowly, glancing away.

  “No.” Virginia shakes her head and sits up. “But that’s different. I never told anyone; I couldn’t.” Virginia doesn’t even look at her mother; she knows that eventually her mother will want to hear the whole story, every detail and she can’t stand to think about it. “But I told him about Bryan Parker. I told him because it didn’t matter to me and I didn’t want him to hear years from now that I had lived with someone and wonder why I hadn’t told.”

  “You never even told me that you lived with him,” Cindy says, and Virginia feels her face burn with her mother’s stare.

  “No. Mark is the only person that I told,” Virginia says. “I made a mistake and I wanted him to know it. And if his marriage and Sheila were all behind him then he would’ve told me everything in the beginning.”

  “Maybe he knew you well enough not to,” Cindy says now, eyebrows lifted, nothing funny coming out of her mouth. “Maybe he was afraid he’d lose you, maybe he was afraid that you’d act like you’re acting right now.”

  “Well I wouldn’t have,” Virginia says and has to look away from Cindy, that face so calm and serious like she has never seen it before. “He could have told me, could have told me that he was hurt. At least I would have felt like he had gotten over it.”

  “Well maybe there are some things you don’t get over,” Cindy says. “Part of me will probably always love Charles Snipes but am I supposed to tell that? It’s something I can’t help. I can’t help what happened to my daddy.”

  “Part of me will always love Raymond,” Madge whispers. “The Raymond I knew in those early years.”

  “But you didn’t love him later,” Cindy says and turns to Madge. “Tell the truth. Even though you had loved him, you didn’t in the end did you?” Madge sits, her face twisting like she’s not sure what to say, and then she sighs and shakes her head. “And I bet sometimes you think about when you did love him don’t you?” Cindy asks and Madge nods, mouths a yes. “But that doesn’t mean you want to go back does it?”

  “God, no.”

  “But you would go back,” Virginia says to Cindy. “You’d go back to Charles.”

  “Yes, yes, I would,” Cindy says. “I will if I have the chance, too. But it would be different. I’m different.”

  “Some people never get a chance,” Gram says. “Tessy never really had a chance. Her life would’ve been so different if she’d had her way.”

  “You mean she never would have married my daddy,” Madge says. “Or if she had married him, that she would have left him later on to be with that fiddler.”

  “Fiddler,” Lena says and nods her head. “He was a fiddler!”

  “I never would have been born,” Madge says, her voice speeding up. “If my mama had had her way I never would’ve been born. If my mama had lived right now when everybody and his brother gets a divorce, then I wouldn’t even be here. I’m on this earth and it has nothing to do with love.” Madge looks at Emily
but she is looking away, toward the front door. “She never loved my daddy. Not even in the beginning did she love him.”

  “I think she grew to love Harv,” Emily says slowly. “I do.”

  “But did she ever tell you that?” Madge asks. “Did you ever hear her say that she loved my daddy?” Madge waits but Emily isn’t talking, and why? Why does she even care if they ever loved each other? It has all been one big miserable mistake.

  “If I had lived when Grandma Tessy did,” Cindy says, “then Charles and I would’ve stayed together. We would have made it work.”

  “And Sheila would have stayed with Mark,” Virginia says.

  “And you wouldn’t have lived with a man, either,” her mama says, but Virginia doesn’t look at her. Her mother will want to know all about that, too. “And I don’t see what good any of this is doing anybody,” her mother continues. “I think it’s all gone far enough. We’re here right now. It is 1986. And what’s gone is gone. Mark is a human.” She stares hard at Virginia. “He made a mistake and you made a mistake. God knows we’ve all made mistakes.”

  “That’s right,” Cindy says. “You can’t hold Mark’s past against him.”

  “It’s not his past that I hold against him,” Virginia says. God knows, where have they all been? It’s not the past, it’s now. He called her Sheila once, right after they were married, in his sleep, in a dream, he called her Sheila and she had not even told him. She had tried to overlook it, overlooked the time before they got married when she saw that envelope with Sheila’s return address in a stack of letters on his bedside table. “Do you ever hear from her?” she had asked, and he told her not really, that occasionally he’d get a change of address card. And there were all those times that the phone would ring and Virginia would answer to silence and then a click, the time a woman asked to speak to Mark and then left no message. And she took it, took all of that, rationalized it away until that night a month ago when for some God only knows reason, he decided to tell her everything, all of these things that he has thought about in secret.

  “Then what do you hold against him?” Madge asks. “Does he make you buy the biggest box of Kotex in the world?” She has done it; they smile and she doesn’t even have to lay out a solitaire board. She’s done it and to quote Cindy, though the Lord’ll have to pardon her, fuck solitaire.

  “No,” Virginia shakes her head, crying again. “I just feel so out of place sometimes. I get homesick.”

  “For this?” Cindy asks. “You get homesick for True Confessions in the Twilight Zone?” Cindy laughs, her mind speeding. “That would make a fine title of a book now wouldn’t it?”

  “I get homesick for y’all.” Virginia nods, focuses on Gram who is clicking the TV on, the volume turned down.

  “I got so homesick,” Gram says. “I’d go to my mama’s during the day I’d get so homesick. I never would have married a man who would carry me from my home.”

  “I know,” Virginia says, speaking only to Gram now, wanting so much to be told that everything’s okay. “But I have married somebody who’s going to take me from my home. He already has and I don’t know what it is but sometimes I feel like I’m going to lose everything, that bit by bit everything that I love is going to be taken away from me.” She looks at her mother now. “I have always wanted to be like Gram. And I’m not, look at me. I have never been like I want to be.”

  “Yes, you always said you wanted to be like me,” Gram says. “And I always said ‘yes Sweets, I know, but you’ll have to be more than me; the world will change.’”

  “You never said that,” she says and shakes her head. “How could I be more when I can’t even be like you? I’ll never be like you.”

  “Then be like me,” Lena says and smiles, adjusts her hat.

  “That’s who I wanted to be like,” Hannah says and points to Lena. “I dreamed of being just like Lena, so funny and exciting.”

  “I wanted to be like Emily,” Madge says and drops her deck of cards into the trashcan. “Or you, Hannah.”

  “Better watch it, Ginny Sue,” Cindy says and laughs dramatically, trying so hard to act normal. “I bet your baby will want to be just like me.”

  “Oh God,” Lena says and shakes her head.

  “That baby will be fine if it takes after me,” Cindy says. She feels the life coming back into her body, the sun after the storm and all that kind of shit that people will say to make you feel better. This has all gone far enough. “Ginny Sue? You know your idea about me finding a hobby?” Cindy stands in the center of the room, her hands on her hips. “Well, you were exactly right. I have found that I’m good at putting words together in a funny way. I make up titles for books and I make up lines to country songs. I’ve even been thinking I might take me a poetry class at Saxon Tech ’cause I’ve got it in my mind that I could write some funny greeting cards.” Her mind is flying; it has to. There’s no other way to go.

  “Good,” Virginia says and grips her stomach like she might be dying, probably had a little kick and she better get used to it. Children, parents, men, and life will kick you right in the teeth and you best get used to it, learn to live with it. Cindy feels better, stronger, lightheaded; she knows she is never going to see Randy Skinner again; she is going to try to get Charles back, make it all up to him before it’s too late. “I’ll show you,” she says now, Ginny Sue still so pale and long-faced. “Here’s one thing I came up with just off the top of my head.” Cindy tilts her head to one side and laughs. “My name’s not Merle, but I am Haggard. My name’s not Charlie but I got some Pride. My name’s not Tanya, but I am Tuckered so Parton me, ‘cause your Dolly’s got to ride.” Cindy bows and Madge and Hannah clap, Ginny Sue smiling a weak smile. “That’s as far as I got. I was at work and you know my job is complicated, serious and complicated, everything from cardiac arrest to anorexia nervosa, to the major depression.”

  “Oregano is good for the melancholy,” Emily says.

  “Well I need to eat spaghetti every day,” Madge eyes the trashcan but decides to forget that deck of cards. She has carried that dogeared deck around for eight years and it’s time to say good-bye.

  “We can have spaghetti tonight,” Hannah says. “I think Mama’s got all we need right there in the kitchen and y’all can stay.”

  “I might have plans,” Cindy says, still wondering if she’s got the nerve to get on her knees and tell Charles how she knows that she fucked up. No, no, that’s not her style. He loved her for being wild and so that’s how she’ll be. He’ll open that front door and she’ll say “I’m a doctor I’m a lawyer I’m a movie star; I’m an astronaut and I own this bar. I’d lie to you for your love,” and she’ll grin and he’ll let her in because Charles Snipes loves the Bellamy Brothers and then she’ll start singing what was their first song that they had together, Grass Roots, “Sooner or Later,” and then Don McLean’s “American Pie,” and then a little of Paul Anka’s “You’re Having My Baby.” Faster, go faster. She turns to Emily. “I don’t think doctors would agree about oregano.”

  “Makes no difference if they agree or disagree,” Emily says. “It’s true.”

  “Well, listen to this then,” Cindy says and waits until she has Ginny Sue’s attention. “I also make up songs about Jane Fonda and they’re all to the tune of hymns.” Cindy waits, her palms held out while she turns around to make sure everybody is paying attention; you can’t really expect Lena and Emily to pay attention but she still waits until they’re looking at her. She clears her throat. “What a friend we have in Jayyyne, all our cellulite to spare. It’s a privilege to Fonda, all it takes is tights and air.” Emily’s eyebrows go up, Hannah’s too, but it looks like Ginny Sue might laugh any minute now. “Praise Jane when you ain’t got cellulite, praise Jane when you can touch your feet. Praise Jane when your butt don’t shake. Praise Jane when you feel your muscles ache.”

  “Hush now,” Emily says and finally Ginny Sue smiles; Ginny Sue is about to laugh and then the phone rings and everything stop
s.

  Emily has the receiver pressed against her ear before it even rings the second time. “Ginny Sue,” she whispers. “It’s a man calling for you. I think it’s James or Raymond.”

  “God, I hope not,” Cindy says and forces a laugh. It makes her scalp ache to think of such a thing for real, to imagine her daddy’s voice coming through a wire. “God,” she shakes her head from side to side. “Let the dead stay where they are,” and she sinks to her knees, runs her hand through her hair.

  “Hello?” At first Virginia cannot focus on Mark’s voice, Gram and Lena saying how they wish they’d get long-distance calls, the static on the wire. “Thank God,” he says. “I’ve been calling for two hours and couldn’t get through. I was about to drive down there but the radio said there were some lines down on the highway, that the traffic is backed up.” Virginia twists the cord, listening, his voice so strange and distant. “I want you home, really, I called your doctor here and he said that it would probably be okay if I come and get you this weekend. Virginia? Are you still there?”

  “Yes.” They are all watching her, listening, so she turns and faces the wall. “How were the tests?”

  “I don’t know,” his voice comes through in sketchy breaks. “I think I did okay but right now I really don’t care. God, they said on the news that two tobacco warehouses down there were blown away.” His voice quickens. “Look, I’m coming tomorrow, okay? Virginia?”

  “I’m not ready,” she says. “I don’t want to go back.” She concentrates on the faces around her, shapes and shades of mouths and eyes that know everything there is to know about her life. He is talking now, his voice cracking in her ear, cracking like plaster where she could reach her fingers and strip away, layers at a time.