Tending to Virginia Read online

  “Good-bye, Cindy,” Charles says, the three of them standing there like they might be posing for Olan Mills. Snap Snap.

  “Have a hematoma of a wedding,” she says and walks as fast as she can so that she doesn’t start to cry and make her makeup run. She is not going to go and get Chuckie; God no, ‘cause she can’t take him and his bump mashing and her mama’s card shuffling tonight. She drives straight home and calls Constance Ann on the phone. “I’m right in the middle of a show,” Constance Ann whines, her mouth full of something like potato chips it sounds like.

  “If you are my friend, you’ll come over here, and you’ll come ready to spend the night if I feel I can’t make it through the night,” Cindy says. It’s not the nicest thing in the world to make a person feel guilty but it works. “Even my best friend has turned against me—a woman I completely trusted; how often we ate together. Psalms 41:9”

  “Okay, I’m coming,” Constance Ann says, though Cindy knows she’ll watch that show till it’s over. Cindy unplugs the TV and binds the end of that cord in electrical tape; she’ll tell Constance Ann it has a short. Constance Ann will pout and threaten to go home to watch “Dallas,” but Cindy can handle that. “Be ye not selfish.” If she’s feeling better by nine, she’ll pull off the tape and plug the set in. You can’t tell what will happen. Randy Skinner might leave his wife; he might sit at Ramada, drink about four more drinks and have a head-on collision. You just can’t ever know for sure what will happen, from Friday to Friday, from man to man.

  * * *

  Virginia wakes to the absence of the window where the streetlight shines through; she turns to feel for Mark and instead there is a wall, hollow-feeling plasterboard.

  “Ginny Sue?” A lamp goes on and she squints to see her mother standing by Gram’s dining room table, her nylon gown a filmy pink shimmer. “Honey, you’re to lie quietly.”

  She watches her mother cross the room, quietly, ghostlike, and sit on the floor where she has made a pallet of quilts and blankets. Gram used to make pallets like that when Virginia pretended to be camping out; she would hide there with the stuffed clown that Gram had made. She could close her eyes tightly and see all the colors on her eyelids; she could think of a picture and it would form like a movie: Lena and Roy in New York City, Gramps walking home from work. Now, she is on the daybed, her legs lifted with a mass of pillows, a trashcan on the floor right beside her head. “You have been so sick,” her mama says. “There’s the trashcan and you call if you need me. Don’t try to get up.” Her mother looks so young sitting there in that short gown, her hair in loose curls pushed back from her face, just a few shimmering strands of gray.

  “It’s the baby isn’t it?” Virginia asks, suddenly remembering Felicia’s friend gripping her wrist, looking at her watch. “Sky high,” the woman said when she took her blood pressure.

  “You’re going to be fine,” her mama says. “You’ve just got to stay in bed awhile, at least a week, maybe longer.”

  “Here?” Virginia asks and she feels a second of relief, relief to be home, a reason to stay without telling the truth.

  “Yes. They said I can take you to our house later in the week if you’re feeling better.” Her mother stretches her legs out and leans back on her elbows. “Mark was so upset when I called him.”

  “What did he say?” Virginia asks, trying to picture his expression, upset, the phone cord twisted around his hand with those long legs swung up on the coffee table. His face is white, guilty, under those bright overhead lights, the glaring freak-show lights that he always switches on instead of a lamp where the light is soft, filtered by a shade. His face is white, tennis shoe going back and forth like a windshield wiper.

  “He said he was afraid something like this was going to happen. He said that you’ve been feeling awful lately.” Her mother stares at her now, eyebrows lifted and waiting for the confession.

  “He wasn’t,” she mumbles. “He feels guilty is all.”

  “For?” Again the eyebrows, but Virginia doesn’t answer, just shakes her head. If she didn’t feel so sleepy, so fuzzy, she’d tell everything.

  “You’ve just been sick,” her mama says. “Your hormones can do all kinds of things to you.”

  “Hormones,” Virginia repeats; her mother has always relied on hormones, irritability, sudden tears, lack of energy, full of energy.

  “Well, it’s true,” her mother says. “Mine are doing strange things right now, hot, cold, and hot, cold. They talked about PMS on Donahue the other morning and I knew just what those women meant; I believe in PMS.” Virginia wants to smile, to nod, I believe in PMS, but she pictures Mark standing in front of her Animal Kingdom. If she died right now, that’s what he’d have to remember her, snarls and death and a fat pregnant monkey; and if Sheila had wanted that baby, if Sheila had wanted things to work, then Mark would already be living in some city, some condo-miniblinds-art deco-thank you for not using that lucite ashtray-living room. And he would be snuggled under some satiny comforter-covered waterbed with the long and lithe Sheila stretched out beside him, her long blonde hair falling in sparkly webs onto a satin pillowcase, and Sheila’s long slender fingers would squeeze his thigh and he would say all of the things to Sheila that he has said to her. She feels herself sinking slowly onto that waterbed, ghostlike, while he lies there with Sheila.

  “I’m going to turn the light out now,” her mama whispers. “I don’t want Mama to get back up. She was so confused when she went to bed; Lena always gets her confused.” She hears the lamp click off and her mama tiptoeing through the darkness back to the pallet. “Of course, Lena confuses me,” she whispers and laughs. Virginia wants to say “me too” but the words will not come, only Sheila with her blonde hair on his pillow, his mouth moving down Sheila’s sleek ivory throat. “If I’m ever that way,” her mother whispers. “You and Robert don’t worry about it. I hope I never am.”

  “You won’t,” Virginia tries to say, hoping her mother will not talk about all of that again, wills and funerals, and how she likes Lena’s idea of being buried in pajamas, plant a dogwood. Her mother has always talked about these things as easily as she would say how she wanted her hair fixed. “I think it’s nature’s way of helping people to let go.” Her mother’s voice is low and whispery now, far away like a whippoorwill song. “Don’t let go, Ginny Sue,” Gram says. “Hold tight now.”

  “God has his way,” her mother whispers. That could be Gram saying those words, the thunder and lightning, death and illness all figuring into the grand scheme of things. “God has taken my child and my husband,” Gram said. “And I am not to question why.” And Virginia had stood at the kitchen window and watched while the ambulance took Gramps away, her mama and Gram clutching one another and sobbing like children. “Think about it,” her mama whispers, her voice getting slower and slower. “If you hadn’t come home today, I’d be worried sick over you flat on your back and alone in that house. Mark’s got his studies and those big tests coming up. It’s a blessing that you came today.” The thought of being alone in that house, in any house, sends a chill over her scalp and she pulls Gram’s quilt up close around her face and breathes in the heavy old smell. “You know who is with you always?” Gram had asked that night that Uncle Raymond took her to Gram’s house to spend the night. “God is always there with you, no reason to be afraid.”

  “But what if somebody else is there, too?” she asked, still clutching her Barbie overnight case. “What if there’s a man coming to get you?”

  “No man will get you,” Gram said and the nightlight burned while they lay on that featherbed, the lights from cars passing on Carver Street circling the room, the clock ticking. She focuses on the ticking of the clock, the ticks in rhythm with Sheila’s heartbeats as Mark’s mouth moves down her body, so pale in the glow of the streetlight, her breasts and stomach, eyes closed, lips parted, her breath rising and falling, slight and then quickened.

  “Mama?” Virginia calls, her eyes focused on the heavy outline of
Gram’s highboy. “I’ve come home to stay. I made a mistake and I’ve come back.” She waits, the outline of the highboy becoming clearer and sharper, the quiet answer of her mother’s steady breathing, broken only by the ticking. “I’ve always had a feeling when the time was right,” Gram said and stared into the sky, her face held back, turning slowly to face the wind, her pockets filled with seeds and a tin of snuff. “I’ve just always known.”

  * * *

  Cindy wishes that Constance Ann would just go on home with her potato chip-stuffed self. How can you talk to someone that if she’s not asleep and snoring her ass off, is matching every story that you’ve got to tell? Cindy told about the trauma at Ramada and Constance Ann said she has a cousin from somewhere that’s going through the exact same thing except the cousin also has to have a hysterectomy.

  “Now, she’s got it bad,” Constance Ann said, her hair pulled up in a high pony tail and rolled over three juice cans. Nobody has done their hair in juice cans for years. Everybody stopped using juice cans when Cindy was in high school. Orange juice cans went out, with sanitary belts and vanilla Cokes.

  “I’ve got it bad,” Cindy screamed. “I still . . .” and she caught herself. Constance Ann is a talker; besides Constance Ann doesn’t listen to anybody but herself. All she’s done all night is stuff herself and stare into a Cosmopolitan or walk around looking for the TV. “I thought you were my friend,” Cindy screamed and Constance Ann said that she was, that she had recently taken a friendship test for feminists and that their friendship came out to be slightly above mediocre.

  “I am not a feminist,” Cindy screamed. “I’m liberated, though. You can just look at me and know I’m liberated but when you get right down to it, every woman whose hormones are in drive instead of reverse or neutral wants herself a man.”

  “But I can live without one,” Constance Ann had said, those juice cans rocking on her head. Constance Ann could lose about twenty pounds and cut that hair and she’d look fine. Constance Ann has always looked this way, though, just like she does right now with that big ass facing Cindy. It’s her home training. Constance Ann was never taught the things about being attractive and seductive, never taught what men like and what men might mean when they say something like, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” Some women think that’s a stupid line but it’s more than that. When a man says that, what he really means is “Hey chick, I wanna jump your bones.” And when a man says, “let’s meet for coffee,” that means that he is all tied up but wants to get something simmering on the back burner. If he says, “What a lovely sweater or blouse,” then he means, “good boobs.” She knows all of that and thank God, her daddy cared enough to tell her the things that she would need to know. All her mama said was, “Don’t show the merchandise if you ain’t selling.”

  “You can live without one,” Cindy said, her voice suddenly filled with sympathy, more than that, downright gutwrenching depression. “Because you’ve never really had one. An alcoholic who’s never had booze, ain’t an alcoholic.” And Cindy had watched Constance Ann smile that twisted smile that halfway said “I hurt” and halfway said “You don’t read enough, Cindy.” Constance Ann put down her magazine and stared at Cindy, those pale eyes filming behind her polo glasses that Cindy talked her into buying, telling Constance Ann that if what she wanted to be was an egghead glued to magazines and sex books then she should look the part and they are an improvement over what Cindy called the cat glasses. God helps those that help themselves. “And you’ll find somebody, Constance Ann,” Cindy said. “Somewhere in this world there is a man for you.” And Cindy smiled even though she doesn’t believe that. It was hard as hell for her to get the two that she did, Buzz Biggers not fit for anything short of a Hefty trashbag and Charles Snipes; Charles Snipes might not have even married her if she hadn’t been pregnant. His mama didn’t want him to marry Cindy and just who did they think they were? Cindy’s house was bigger and her daddy made more money and she had her own car which Charles did not. “He will never measure up, Little Goldilocks,” her daddy said and gave her a hundred dollars to go buy some lingerie she had seen in Belk’s, safari gown with matching robe, wild, like Charles said he liked her. “Take a walk on the wild side,” she yelled at him and jumped from the bathroom, her stomach then looking like Ginny Sue’s does now and she was never sick with Chuckie, not a day, sex like clockwork and no busted up veins. Ginny Sue might be faking a little, wanting some attention and God knows she doesn’t have to beg for it; she can walk in that old duplex and sugar drips from every old sapless tree in the joint.

  “I sure will,” Charles said to her and got up from the couch where he was reading a plumbing book, his face so red, those Prince Charles ears so red, just like tonight at Ramada.

  “You said ‘I still’ and then stopped,” Constance Ann said, mind like a steel trap that girl, doesn’t forget a thing, and Cindy just told her that she was so upset over their friendship that she completely forgot what was on her mind. “I still feel something for Charles Snipes,” is what she wanted to say.

  She does feel something but she can’t figure out what it is. “Always want what you don’t have,” she can hear her mama saying, her mama always bending forward a little so she doesn’t look so big, not fat, but big, big boned. It’s pitiful when her mama stands next to Hannah.

  “That shit about the apple don’t fall far from the tree doesn’t apply to me,” Cindy had told Charles way back. “I’m my daddy’s child and so look at him, lean and still good-looking.”

  “I like your mama,” Charles said and when Cindy told her daddy that, he laughed, threw back his head with those lifeless paralyzed arms clutching the Lazy Boy and laughed. “Learn from that, Goldilocks,” he said. “Your mama has never attracted men.”

  “But she got you.”

  “I felt sorry for her,” he said slowly, shook his head and then burst into laughter which made Cindy laugh, too. Laughter is contagious, everybody knows that. “And, it was a way for me to redeem myself after all of my wild years. But you, my baby girl,” and he paused and stared at her with love in his eyes. “You haven’t had your wild years, yet.”

  “Your old man is trying to bust us up,” Charles had said and made her look at him. She was rinsing out Coke bottles and Chuckie was asleep. “Please don’t let him,” Charles said, that same look of love in his eyes, the water running, her hands dripping with water until Charles pulled them up and kissed that water away. It makes her chest pound to think of it, makes her wish that was Charles Snipes over there snoring instead of Constance Ann. Charles is probably right this minute with Nancy Price; he doesn’t have to worry about where Chuckie is spending the night. There’s no way that Nancy Price could ever look as good as Cindy there naked in a bed.

  “My daddy just wants what’s best for me,” she had told Charles. “If you really loved me, you’d just live with it.”

  “If he really loves you,” Charles said and looked at her in a way that went clear to the bone just like Hannah can do, making you feel like you need to confess something, “he would let you go.”

  “Let me go? You make it sound like I’m tied up and in a closet.” And he just stood there and looked at her with a look that said “maybe you are, Cindy” or “maybe you need therapy, Cindy” or “maybe you need to read more books.”

  “He is my daddy and you are my husband,” she said, Chuckie screaming his ass off from the other room. “I don’t have to make a choice do I? Nobody on God’s green earth has to make a choice like that. It’s sick. That’s a sick thought.”

  “I’m not saying make a choice,” Charles said, stopping in the doorway on his way to Chuckie’s room. “Just figure out which is which.”

  “Are you gonna sit up all night?” Constance Ann asks now and reaches for her glasses on the table beside her. “I mean really, Cindy, what do you care if he remarries. You did.”

  “I don’t. I don’t care,” Cindy says and takes off her nylon leopard robe that she bought when she
burned a hole in the safari one. “It’s more than that, Constance Ann. You might know what I’m feeling one day if you find yourself married and then divorced.”

  “I’ll never get divorced,” Constance Ann says. “I’ve read enough to recognize all the warning signs and know what to do if I see them.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Cindy says and gets under the cover without even taking off her makeup. Never say never. When the Lord slams a door, a window flies open. She gets so sick of the way people act about divorce; even Ginny Sue can’t see beyond that bloated-up belly that things change, sometimes so suddenlike, like the weather. Nobody says, oh it’s never gonna rain, never gonna snow. But they think my house will never get uprooted from the dirt by a tornado and I will never get VD or cancer or tetanus or hardening of the arteries. Just look around and know that ain’t so. Just put your quarter in one of those machines and get what you never in your life wanted but take it and live with it. Bodies are like that, those little clear plastic eggs, and you take what’s good out of it, a red rubber worm or a fake diamond ring and then throw that little egg in the trash. Her daddy gave her all that he had that was good. “Take what you can get,” he told her. “Get all that you can get and take it with you.”

  “Are you crying?” Constance Ann asks and sits on the edge of the bed. Constance Ann wears men’s pajamas; Cindy has never known a man that wore pajamas, not even her daddy. “I’ve never seen you crying.”

  “Well, I don’t do it often,” Cindy sits up and pulls the covers close to her neck. She ain’t used to sporting her lingerie in front of women, not even Constance Ann. It’s okay with Ginny Sue because she’s related and doesn’t seem to check you out like Constance Ann does behind those polo glasses.