Tending to Virginia Read online

  “Is that all you ever do?” Cindy comes in and slams the front door after Chuckie slouches in. His face is starting to get bad and it makes Madge hurt so for him. “It depresses me the way that is all you do.”

  “I enjoy it, okay?” Madge goes over and hugs Chuckie who slumps his shoulders and twists away from her. God, she misses the way that he used to come straight to her and cling to her dental suits like he loved her to death. “I’m so glad you’re going to spend the night, Honey.”

  “Can I plug your phone in the other room?” he asks, those long legs so bony and awkward-looking under those bright-colored britches that have a little surfboard on the tag.

  “Yes, but you can’t stay on all night,” Madge says and turns to Cindy who is posed in front of the mirror over the mantle, her chest thrown out like the Himalayas. “Ginny Sue got so sick they had to call a doctor. She fainted and her legs have begun to swell like balloons. That’s what Hannah said. I haven’t been over to Emily’s to see her.” Madge goes back to her card game while Chuckie carries that phone upstairs to Cindy’s old room and closes the door. “I told Hannah I couldn’t get by tonight because I was keeping Chuckie but that maybe you could stop by long enough for Hannah to run by Hardee’s and pick up some burgers for Ben’s dinner.”

  “Now you know I have plans!” Cindy flops down on the sofa and puts her feet on it even though Madge has asked her not to a hundred times. “You volunteer my services all the time.”

  “It would take all of five minutes,” Madge says and Cindy hates that tone in her voice, that pitiful, sighing, might as well bury my bones voice. It’s a goddamned wonder that her daddy wasn’t half-crazy after years of solitaire and that drab face of hers.

  “Why can’t Ben get burgers himself? He can drive,” Cindy says. “Aunt Hannah does all but pee for that man. Daddy would have gotten in that Chevrolet and gone for himself. You don’t know how lucky you were.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Hannah giving him some attention. He is her husband.” Madge just lost $37.00 and she adds it to her debt.

  “Well, you had a husband and I don’t recall that he got any attention.”

  “And you’ve had two.”

  “Turn it around,” Cindy says, gets up and paces over to the mantle where she touches that picture of Raymond when he was Lion of the Year. Madge would like to burn that picture, and when she’s alone she turns it face down so that he can’t see what she’s doing. “What’s Ginny Sue’s problem anyway? I saw her earlier and she’s huge; she’s just pregnant.”

  “The doctor said toxemia.”

  “Oh, toxemia,” Cindy says, still staring hard into that picture, probably angling the glass so she can see her own face. “All that means is she gets to lay around flat on her back for awhile and have somebody wait on her. I should have toxemia.”

  “It can be serious,” Madge says. “Hannah said she’d never seen anybody so sick. Ben had to come and carry Ginny Sue to the commode that’s how sick she’s been.”

  “Well, I hope he didn’t strain himself,” she says. “People, civilians, get so upset over medical matters and it’s because they don’t know any better. Ignorance is why doctors can charge an arm and a leg for services rendered.”

  “You are not a doctor,” Madge says and lays out what she’s hoping will be a winning board. She sure could use it.

  “But I might as well be.” Cindy stands there with her purse over her arm and her car keys in her hand. “I’ll go by there. I’ll go because Ginny Sue will need me to set her straight on toxemia before she has to go back in for therapy. I’ll do it but Hannah better go to Hardee’s and get back fast. If I’m late getting to the Ramada Inn I will never forgive you.”

  “Thank you, Cindy,” Madge says and finally turns up an ace. “I’ll take good care of Chuckie while you’re out on the town.”

  “Chuckie will be just fine if you leave him alone.” Cindy opens the front door after stopping by Madge’s candy dish and filling that suitcase purse of hers full of peppermints. “He says that’s what he can’t stand about coming over here, the way that you cling so to him and watch everything he does.”

  “That is not . . .” Cindy slams the door before her mama can launch into something else. If she is late to Ramada, she will never forgive any of them.

  When Cindy gets to the duplex, Lena is out pacing up and down the sidewalk, that thin hair of hers looking far worse than the hat she’s holding and wringing in her hands. “It’s about time!” Lena yells when Cindy comes up the walk. “We have been waiting for hours and I’ve got to get home. I’ve got to get to Hardee’s and get Roy’s dinner.”

  “Roy is in a box and in a hole,” she snaps and turns when Hannah comes out the front door. “Hey Aunt Hannah. I’m sorry Ginny Sue has had such a spell of toxemia.”

  “Well, thanks for helping out,” Hannah says and takes hold of Lena’s arm. “I hate to call on Felicia again and I don’t want to leave Ginny and Mama all by themselves.”

  “I know what you mean,” Cindy says and stares up at the telephone pole there on the corner. Looking Hannah in the eye sometimes is like having to look at God; it’s like that woman can see to your bone. “I don’t mind a bit. Mama was fussing and saying how she knew it would be a hassle for me since I’ve got a date meeting me at the Ramada Inn at 6:30 sharp, but I said, no, no man is more important than my cousin Ginny Sue and her bout with toxemia, poisons there in her blood, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, legs swollen like she might have elephantiasis.”

  “I’ll be back well before 6:30,” Hannah says before Cindy even gets to speak of the fear of eclampsia. “I’m just going to take Lena home and pick Ben up a burger.”

  “You are so good to him, Aunt Hannah,” she says.

  “I was good to Roy, too.” Lena shakes her finger at Cindy and then looks at Hannah. “She told me that Roy is in a box and in the ground.”

  “Lena,” Cindy says, feeling Hannah’s stare the whole time. “I told you that he is deceased.”

  “Diseased,” Lena puffs. “I’ll tell who’s diseased.” Hannah pulls that old bag along and Cindy doesn’t even wait for them to pull away before she goes into that duplex to find Ginny Sue perched on that daybed like the Queen of Sheba with pillows underneath her feet, sleeping away and Emily over there with snuff dust all over the front of her gown. Emily is just staring at the news on the TV without one sound coming from it.

  “Don’t you wake Ginny Sue,” Emily says in a harsh whisper. That woman could scare the devil with those sharp uppity looks of hers. Cindy tips over and lifts those blankets around Ginny Sue’s feet just so she can see how big her legs really look.

  “Umm,” Ginny Sue grunts, that head going from side to side.

  “I’ll not tell you again!” Emily says. “Sit down and try to be quiet.”

  “I don’t have to,” Cindy says and shakes Ginny Sue’s shoulder. “Hey girl,” she whispers when Ginny Sue’s eyes squint open. “Hear you been regurgitating to beat the band.”

  “Please,” Ginny Sue says, and widens her eyes, blinks a few times. She doesn’t have on any makeup, not a trace. Cindy has tried to tell her, tried to tell her that getting furniture down to bare wood, painting up pictures and learning how to make food like people might eat in India is not how you can keep a man, but to look sexy at all times of the day and night is how. She read in a book once, “If you’ve got butter in the fridge he won’t look for margarine on the street,” and she herself knows that it works. That’s why Charles Snipes has never gotten over her.

  Ginny Sue better wise up. Cindy read that in a book of her mama’s, so as she figured, most of the book was horseshit; it was kind of Christian-related, kind of like the woman who is close to God behind the man, but it did have a few good tips in it like that butter thing and like how you might get him to do it under the dining room table or dress up in boots and Saran Wrap.

  “You want me to put some makeup on you?” Cindy asks and Ginny Sue just rolls her eyes back.


  “I told her not to wake you,” Emily says.

  “It’s okay.” Ginny Sue sits up a little and pulls on the strap of that yellow sack that she has worn just about since the day of conception.

  “Well, then I’ll just turn up the TV a little.” Emily aims her remote and the sound goes real loud, so loud Cindy has to close her eyes, then down, up and down, up and down, until that crazy old woman gets it right. “I can’t bear to hear that racket on the front porch, those banjos, I’ll not have it.”

  “There is not a front porch.” Cindy says. “There are not any banjos.” Deception and hallucination, both common to Alzheimer’s disease.

  “Don’t,” Ginny Sue presses Cindy’s arm and shakes her head like Cindy might be the baby she hasn’t had. That child is going to be nervous as a cat by the time it gets in this world, if it does. Things can happen right there during birth, freak knottings of the umbilical or such but Cindy is not about to tell Ginny Sue of the trauma she might have to face. “It’s okay, Gram.” Ginny Sue says and turns her head so that she can smile at Emily. “They’ll go on home soon.”

  “I hope so,” Emily says. “It’s hard for me to bear.”

  “It’s all hard for me to bear.” Cindy laughs and looks at Ginny Sue so she won’t have to see Emily with her chin thrust out and those sharp beady eyes. “Honey, I’m going to Ramada Inn and have a high old time. Randy Skinner is like the man I have searched for and as we know, have yet to find. He’s big, tall and built, and he doesn’t look like what you think of when you hear ‘pharmaceutical sales.’ Uh uh. Oh no, he’s got a decent job being a pharmaceutical salesman but he looks more like one who would sell real drugs you know? He’s got a beard, not long, but a beard and hair that bushes around his head like he just rolled from the sack, big brown eyes.” Cindy looks back down at Ginny Sue whose eyes are closed again. You’d think she’d be interested, since Cindy has, after all, always been there to give her support when she needed it. “Ginny Sue?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Will you leave her alone?” Emily aims the remote and turns the TV off now that the weather report is over. God, that’s all that woman does, dip snuff and watch the weather. “You could drive a sane person to do himself in.”

  “Don’t you talk about my daddy!”

  “Daddy, foot,” Emily says and cleans down in her gum with a Kleenex. “Who said ‘Daddy’ anything. You pick on Ginny Sue like she’s a chicken with a sore.”

  “That is not true.”

  “Ginny Sue has already bled today.” She clicks the TV back on and of all things it’s the new “Newlywed Game.” If Cindy had gone on that show with Charles Snipes or Buzz Biggers either one they would have lost and she wouldn’t have cared because they give shitty prizes; matching Lazy Boys and who wants them? Lazy Boys are for the sick and the old.

  “Bled?” Cindy shakes Ginny Sue’s shoulder again. “Mama didn’t tell me you had bled. Was it a hemorrhage? Have you been hemorrhaging?”

  “God,” Ginny Sue mumbles.

  “That’s right,” Emily says. “Talk to him and ignore her. You’ll be better off.”

  “I’m back.” Hannah steps in the front door in a different outfit from when she left and a little overnight bag with her. It’s not a piece of Samsonite, either; Cindy can tell from one glance. “Is everything okay?”

  “The patients are just fine,” Cindy says, ready to get the hell on to Ramada. She has got ten minutes to get there and find a parking space, which isn’t always easy on a Friday night. “Ginny Sue, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. I’ll tell you all about my date.” Cindy squeezes that damp puffy hand and pulls her bag up on her shoulder. “That’ll perk you up.”

  “I’m sure it will,” Hannah says and laughs and Cindy can’t tell what kind of a laugh it is, if it’s laughing with or at her. “Thank you so much, Cindy.” Hannah follows her to the front door so she can put on a few hundred dead bolts. Those people are scared of their shadows.

  Cindy hates that it’s daylight savings; she hates that she and Randy Skinner have to wait until practically nine o’clock for it to be dark enough that they can go and sit in her car. Tonight, she’s not going to wait. Tonight, she’s going to suggest that they go to her house and just order a pizza.

  She pulls into Ramada and she has to drive around for five minutes at least looking for a place to park. She has to park at the far end of the lot near that lot of woods, which is fine. Randy Skinner will walk her to her car.

  She goes in and there’s a woman who looks like she’s on MAO inhibitors playing the piano and singing. Cindy doesn’t know what MAO stands for; she just knows that shrink was wanting to give her some and telling how she couldn’t eat cheese with that drug, but that she wouldn’t be depressed. “Nobody says I am but you,” she told him. “How in the hell can you eat a nacho without cheese?” But that woman, with her veiny neck straining on every note looks like that’s what she’d be taking; she looks like she has the major side effects what with wearing a turquoise shirt with brown slacks. And she’s singing of all things, Blue Moon. That broad is depressed and Cindy is glad when she gets past that woman and can look for Randy Skinner. He is over in a far corner where it’s good and dark and he lifts his hand when he catches sight of her. But Lord God, Charles Snipes is sitting right there at a table that she’s got to walk past. She has never seen him here before and there he sits with a stiff-looking broad, her hair all neat and fixed, boring. She has teeny little flashes at her ears which must be minute earrings and nobody wears little dainty earrings except people like her mama and on occasion Ginny Sue who has never really taken an interest in style.

  She keeps walking with her eyes straight ahead, eyes on Randy Skinner. “Hello Cindy,” Charles says, halfway smiling, in that dull quiet way of his. “This is Nancy Price.”

  “Hi,” Nancy Price says and smiles. Nancy Price is drinking a pina colada, a pink pina colada like she’s somebody she’s not. “I’ve heard so much about you,” Nancy Price says and Cindy can just hear it, just hear all that Charles Snipes has told of her. “Chuckie is a wonderful child.”

  “Chuckie’s twelve,” she says and looks at Charles, the tips of those Prince Charles looking ears turning red. Prince Charles—imagine that she used to actually call him that. “Remember?”

  “Of course I do,” Charles says but looks at Nancy Price when he says it and lowers those cow eyes of his.

  “I hear matrimony is in the air,” she says and stares hard at Nancy Price who doesn’t wear much makeup and should.

  “Yes.” Nancy Price says like she’s voting on something, picks at that pineapple sitting on top of that drink.

  “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you first,” Charles says, those ears like they’re about to ignite and hemorrhage at the same time. “I wanted to be the one to tell Chuckie.” Fly to Disneyland, Dumbo!

  “What? And not let us have the fun of hearing it through the grapevine?” She waves to Randy to let him know she’s coming just as soon as they’ll stop talking and let her. “I wish I could chat a little more,” she says and smiles. “But my date is so jealous. He has watched every move I’ve made since I passed that MOA-inhibitor-popping lard-ass over there who made Blue Moon sound like two dying alley cats screwing in a brush fire.”

  “That’s my baby sister,” Nancy Price says.

  “That’s the only reason we’re here,” Charles says, reaching his hand across the table to take hold of Nancy Price’s hand which has a diamond on it like he sure can’t afford, probably a zircon.

  “Well,” Cindy says. “I hear those drugs will do wonders if you stay off the dairy stuff.”

  “I don’t know what . . .” Nancy Price is saying when Cindy turns her back and twists her fanny the way Charles used to think was so cute all the way over to the table.

  “I ordered you two kamikazes for the price of one,” Randy Skinner says and she is so glad. She could drink a kamikaze for every one there ever was. “That woman sure is bad isn’t she?” he asks. “I’d
rather have the piped-in stuff.”

  “She is going to be my ex-husband’s sister-in-law,” Cindy says and bites into a pretzel.

  “I’m sure glad she’s not my sister-in-law,” he says. “My sister-in-law may be fat but she can sing.” Cindy stops midchew and looks at the three empty glasses in front of Randy Skinner. He must have meant ex-sister-in-law; Cindy knows that he’s an only child.

  “How fat is your ex-sister-in-law,” Cindy says. “Could be a thyroid.”

  “Oh,” he says and just stares into that bowl of pretzels. “I guess I had to tell you sooner or later,” he says. “I mean you strike me as somebody real open, you know?”

  Cindy watches Charles and Nancy Price go over and hug that girl by the piano. And when the three of them are safely outside of the lounge, she turns to Randy Skinner and takes a big swallow of her kamikaze. “Separated?” she asks and he hangs his head and shakes it no.

  “Gonna be separated?”

  “I might,” he says and takes her hand. “Whenever I’m with you, I really start thinking that I might.” He is staring at Cindy’s boobs and then slowly back up to her face.

  “Well, let me know when you do.” She finishes that first kamikaze and takes a big gulp of the second before she pulls her bag out from under the table. She starts to tell him what she had planned for the night just so he’d get all erect and couldn’t follow her out to the parking lot, but she doesn’t. She’d rather get to the parking lot in time to see Charles and that Nancy Price and Nancy Price’s sister getting into that new Toyota Camry that he just recently bought with what the God Jesus holy ghost only knows.

  “Oh Cindy, Cindy,” Randy Skinner says and rubs his hand over that beard like he might be a man that studies the comets and the stars. “Just stay until dark, you know, dark when we can go to your car. One last time to remember.”

  “Suffer, baby,” she says just like in that old joke where that mosquito is trying to screw a elephant. “Just suffer yourself unto me,” she says, relying on what she has always known to work. If you quote a little scripture it will usually shut somebody right up. A little scripture will go a long way, and with that she walks right out of the Ramada Inn and into the lobby where Charles and Nancy Price and Nancy Price’s sister are waiting while the man behind the counter writes out a check and gives it to that sister. Two cents is what she was worth, if that much.