by Cathy Holton
The room got quiet. Redmon chewed a celery stick and blandly watched his wife. Charles stared at his mother with a look of dawning horror. One eye fluttered and wandered off on its own. His top lip spasmed and rose on the right side like it was being pulled by invisible strings. In the long silence that followed, Charles thought about moving out of state to open a new practice. He wondered how hard it would be to pass the Alaska bar exam.
“That's not all we know,” Nita said grimly. She wasn't letting Virginia get off that easily.
“Yes, yes a daughter,” Virginia said, squaring her shoulders like a prizefighter. It felt good to get it off her chest, the secret guilt she had worn for forty-nine years like a hair shirt. Virginia was overcome suddenly by a feeling of buoyancy and elation. She looked around the room and said loudly, “I gave up a daughter. So what? What do you know? You girls had birth control. Legalized abortion. What did we have? Shame. Homes for unwed mothers. I did what I had to do. I had my baby and I gave her up for adoption and I never looked back. It was the right thing to do, the only thing I could do. And I never told Hamp Boone. I never spoke to him again, after my wedding day. I kept it all inside and never told anyone.” She lifted her head triumphantly. “So go ahead. Do your worst. Spread your rumors. I don't care. I've gone up against bigger villains than you three and survived.” She put her hand over her heart and lifted her pointed chin, looking a little like Napoleon in that famous portrait by David, only with more hair.
Nita said fiercely, “I want my daughter back.”
Virginia shook her head. She lifted her Bloody Mary like she might be going to throw it. “You shouldn't have tried to blackmail me,” she said.
Nita looked desperately at Eadie and Lavonne. “I know something else you may not want to hear.” Across the room, Grace Pearson stopped writing in her little notebook.
Virginia laughed. “Nothing you can say will make me give up now.”
“I know who your daughter is.”
Grace quietly closed up her notebook and slid it into her purse.
Virginia's mouth twitched. She kept her face blank. “I don't care,” she said. “You can't blackmail me. Nothing you say will make me change my mind.”
Nita stood there staring at her. Her knees shook. Her mouth trembled but she couldn't say it. She couldn't hurt Grace by telling her the truth here in front of all these people. She couldn't ruin her life that way.
“Well?” Virginia said, steadying herself for the blow. “We're waiting. If you know, tell us.”
Nita tightened her hands into fists and stared helplessly at her feet. A blue shadow hung in the hollow of her cheek. Her lower lip trembled as if she might be talking, wordlessly, to herself.
“It's me,” Grace said in a loud clear voice. She pushed herself off the wall and stood where they all could see her. She smiled gently at Nita. “I'm your daughter,” she said.
IT TOOK VIRGINIA A FEW MINUTES TO COLLECT HERSELF. HER jaw sagged. She swayed slightly but remained standing. A tremor started in her feet and traveled up through her knees like an electrical current. She stood there swaying, slack-jawed and stunned, her face a mixture of outrage and disbelief. She knew it was true, though. Grace looked just like Virginia's father with her big hands and feet and red-gold hair. And she looked like Hampton, too, around the eyes and mouth.
Charles said, “I'm confused.” He said, “Father must be spinning in his grave.”
Redmon said, “Where's that boy with those drinks?”
No one else said anything. Eadie and Lavonne went over and stood on either side of Grace. Virginia watched them. Nothing stirred but her eyes, which seemed to blur as something feeble struggled in their depths. A look of gradual understanding came over her face. Her expression softened, and then went blank. The guests milled around and looked at each other over the rims of their glasses. They whispered to one another in low voices. A few pulled out cell phones and began to send frantic text messages. Virginia drank steadily and then set her glass down on a Chippendale table. She clutched the back of a wingback chair like she was standing behind a podium, facing the crowd.
The room got quiet. Everyone seemed to sense a cathartic moment and maintained a respectful silence not unlike that the ancient Greeks must have maintained while waiting for the sibyl to speak. Even Redmon stopped munching his celery stick and watched Virginia expectantly. She stood behind the wingback chair, swaying like a sapling in a fierce storm.
“No one knows what it's like to be me,” she said, putting her hand over her heart. “To be Virginia.” Everyone tried not to notice that she said Vuhshinya. Duckie snorted again but Celia shot her a warning glance. Charles stared at his mother like a man about to be injected with the Ebola virus.
“Do you know what it's like to grow up in a town where everybody looks down on you? Just because you're poor? Where the kids at school all call you names just because your dresses are homemade?” She scowled and flung a malevolent look around the room.
“Actually, I do,” Eadie said.
“Shut up, Eadie! This isn't about you. It's about me. Virginia.” She thumped herself on the chest and went on. “Do you know what it's like to have to put up with snotty girls like Maureen Hamilton who everyone thinks is so pretty, so nice, just because her daddy owns the Chrysler dealership. Just because she can dress in department store clothes and lives in a big house and drives a new car.” Virginia sniffed, glaring at the stunned spectators. She put her finger up against her nose and tapped. “Well,” she said. “She wasn't nice. She was mean. She said things about me that weren't true. She spread rumors. When me and Hamp started going out, she went to his mama and she forbidded him, she forbade him—oh, what the hell— she said he couldn't see me anymore. Just because my daddy truck-farmed!”
Charles said, “Mother, I think you need to lie down for a while.”
Virginia waved her hand like she was swatting at a gnat. “And later when he married her, she lorded it over me every chance she got. Coming into Roobin's and buying new clothes, making me wait on her, saying, Oh, I wonder if my husband would like this, Oh, I wonder if my husband would like that, Oh, my husband he spoils me so!”
“Della, maybe we can have some coffee?” Charles said, but Della just stood there. She wasn't going anywhere. This was better than The Sopranos and All My Children and Days of Our Lives all rolled into one. She'd pay good money just to see a performance like this one.
“But I fixed her,” Virginia said in a harsh voice. “I married the Old Judge, her husband's own law partner, and then what choice did she have but to be nice to me?” She chuckled to herself.
Eulonia Drucker stood at the edge of the crowd looking like she might faint. “I don't understand,” she said in her soft, fluttering little voice. “What's happening? What does this mean? Should we leave?”
“Hush,” Judge Drucker said.
Charles began to back slowly out of the room, edging his way out of the family circle and pushing himself backward through the crowd.
Virginia pulled on her drink and looked around the room as if daring anyone to leave. “Do you know what it's like to have an old man touch you on your wedding night? Well, do you? His hands shook. His skin smelled like mothballs.”
Charles stopped retreating. “Okay kids, Nita, get your things,” he said firmly. “We're leaving.”
Whitney, Nita, and Logan, who had come back in carrying a fresh pitcher of Bloody Marys, did not move. Virginia pointed at Charles with her Bloody Mary. “No one leaves until Vuh-shinya says they can go.” Logan looked at his father and grinned, shrugging his shoulders. He went around to top off everyone's drinks. Virginia tried hard to concentrate. She was having trouble staying on track. She had a lot to say but the thoughts kept flying away before she could catch them. She pointed at Eadie, Lavonne, and Nita. “After they blackmailed the husbands, I lost everything. Everything,” she said, clenching her fist and pointing down with her thumb, like water being poured through a funnel. “All gone,” she said. “No mon
ey and no way to make any more. So I did what I had to do. Just like before. I got married.” She stopped and looked at Redmon. “I married you for your money,” she said.
He grinned. “I know that, honey,” he said.
“That prenup,” she said, tapping herself on the forehead. “Very good idea. Very smart.”
“Thanks, Queenie.”
“And just so you know, it was me who called the state and got the project shut down.”
“I figured it was.”
She frowned and looked at Redmon. “You're a pretty good husband,” she said as if this thought had just occurred to her. “You're a miser and a pervert, but other than that, you're a pretty good husband.” Virginia nodded. Redmon blushed with pride. “Even though I didn't really want a husband. If I had to choose between poverty and disgrace, or marriage to you, I'd still choose you.”
Redmon was too choked up to speak. He lifted his glass in a silent toast.
Virginia would have lifted hers, too, but it was empty. Logan leaned over and emptied the rest of the Bloody Mary pitcher into her glass. “I'll make another round,” he said cheerfully, taking the empty pitcher and heading for the kitchen.
“Goddamn it, don't make any more drinks,” Charles shouted.
“The vodka's in the second cabinet to the left of the refrigerator,” Redmon called.
“If I had to choose between poverty and disgrace, or marriage, I'd choose you,” Virginia repeated to Redmon. “But my first choice would be freedom. Or no, no, my second choice would be freedom. My first choice would be Keanu Reeves.” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.
Whitney said, “Ew.”
Eadie lifted her glass and said, “I'll drink to that.”
Lavonne said, “It's a brave new world. Women don't have to marry for money anymore. They can make their own.”
Virginia said, “Oh, ha, ha.” She said, “Mind your own business, Lavonne.”
“That's what the women's movement is all about,” Lavonne said. “Choice.”
Virginia pulled on her drink. She set it down and stared glumly at the mantel centerpiece, a tasteful arrangement of pumpkins, gourds, and English ivy, trying to remember what they were arguing about. “I don't believe in that women's lib crap,” she said, finally.
“Mother, sit down,” Charles said firmly.
Virginia shook her head. The hole in her head had opened up like a broken hive. Her thoughts buzzed around in her skull like a swarm of angry bees. She blinked. “I like a man to hold the door for me,” she said.
Lavonne said, “So you're willing to give up equality under the law in exchange for someone holding the door for you?”
Virginia leaned against the chair to steady herself. The droning in her head got louder. “You shut up,” she said. “Vuh-shinya is talking. Vuh-shinya has something to say.” She snapped her fingers, barely missing Lavonne's nose. “You been to college. You know what my daddy said when I said I wanted to go to college? He said, You don't need college. You'll get married and your husband will take care of you. Words of wisdom. From a man who went to eighth grade. So you know what I did? I got a job at Roobin's selling clothes and I waited until I figured out who I had to marry and then I caught him. I caught the Old Judge, I run him to earth, as my daddy used to say. He didn't like the Judge. He didn't want me to marry him. He wanted me to marry someone young. But I was tired of being poor. I was tired of watching Maureen Boone drive all over town in her new Chrysler New Yorker like she was some-body! Like she was the cat's meow! So I fixed her. I married the Judge.”
Virginia laughed, remembering the way Maureen had been forced to attend the wedding, the way Hampton had held on to her elbow and dragged her down the aisle to the front pew. And Virginia's dress had come from New York. She had gone up there on the train with her mother to buy it, compliments of the Judge. Everyone said she was the prettiest bride to ever come out of Ithaca, and they said it in front of Maureen Boone, which made Virginia giggle with glee. It had been her crowning moment. But then the night came, and she was alone in a room with her new husband whose hands shook and skin smelled like mothballs. She wasn't laughing then. Virginia put her fingers on her forehead and squeezed, trying to squeeze that memory out of her head. She sighed, realizing it was useless. She dropped her hand and lifted her Bloody Mary. Why did they call it that? Bloody, she understood, but Mary? Who the hell was Mary?
“Mother, you've had enough to drink,” Charles said sharply. First his wife, and now his mother. He had spent his whole life being disappointed by women.
Virginia made a vulgar noise. She clutched her drink and wagged her finger at him. “Don't you talk to me like that,” she said. “Don't you talk to me like your father did. For twenty-six years he told me what to do and I had to pretend to do it. I had to sneak around like a thief in the night and do what he said, Yes, Judge, No, Judge, Whatever you say, Judge, just like the coloreds had to do. That's all I was to him, a colored.” She stopped suddenly and looked at Della. “Sorry,” she said. “No offense,” she said.
Della chuckled and shook her head. “Rich folks can't wait for trouble to find them,” she said. “They have to go out and hunt it down.”
“Where was I?” Virginia said, frowning. “Oh yeah. I've made some mistakes in my life.” She looked at Grace and Nita when she said this. “I've done some things I'm not proud of.”
“Mother, I think you might need to lie down for a while,” Charles said.
“Go ahead and get it all off your chest,” Lavonne said. “You'll feel better. Say what you have to say.”
“Goddamn it, Lavonne, this is none of your business!” Charles said. He'd had three Bloody Marys and with each succeeding drink, the veil of illusion that had blinded him had slipped further from his eyes. He wondered now why he had brought Nita here. He wondered why he had not remarried and started a new family like Leonard Zibolsky had done, a family that would be loyal and supportive to him no matter what the costs. He wondered why he had spent the last year and a half pining for something he could never have and didn't want now anyway. Why remodel an existing family when it was simpler to start from scratch and build a new one?
Virginia squinted her eyes and glared at them. The room had gone hazy. The droning in her head had subsided to a dull hum, more like the cooing of doves now than the buzzing of bees. She lifted her chin and looked at Grace who watched her with an expression of futile detachment. “What I have to say is this. I did what I had to do. I survived a childhood of loneliness and prejudice. I survived twenty-six years of marriage to a man I didn't love. I loved another man who wasn't worthy of me, and I paid for that love every day of my life. I'm still paying for it. But, by God, I did the best I could do with what the good Lord gave me. I didn't lie down and let life run over me like a steamroller, I stood up to it the best I could. Before you judge me, walk a mile in my moccasins. And that's all I've got to say.” She staggered around the wingback chair and sat down.
Redmon raised his glass to his wife in love and admiration. “Here's to you, Queenie,” he said. “Goddamn, what a woman.” Eadie and Lavonne lifted their glasses.
Lavonne said, “No one can say you don't have guts, Virginia.”
Eadie said, “It doesn't excuse what you did, but it does explain why you've been such a whack-job all these years.”
The antique clock ticked steadily on the mantel. Sun slanted through the long windows and fell over the scattered wreckage of the pre-Thanksgiving party, on the roving cameramen, on the stunned guests who woke up and stumbled around like toddlers learning to walk, like drunks uncertain of their legs. Judge Drucker looked at his wife. “Mama, get your coat,” he said.
Whitney said, “This is embarrassing.” She said to Nita, “Can we go home now?”
Charles tried to put a good face on it. He rubbed his hands together and looked around the room. “Thank you for coming!” he said. “Coats are in the foyer closet!” He wondered if he still had the phone number of the accountant with the thick a
nkles. He could get it from his mother if he had to, later, after she sobered up.
Duckie snorted suddenly and clamped her hand over her mouth as if she was just now catching the punch line to a joke. Celia hissed like the brakes of a runaway Winnebago. She said loudly, “She should have charged admission to this party. This is better than opening night on Broadway!”
Grace picked up her purse and slid it over her shoulder. “How's Casey liking rehab?” she said to Celia.
Caught up in the wonder of it all, Virginia smiled at her daughter. Her daughter. She had thought of Grace for so long as an enemy, it was hard to think of her as anything else. But now, miraculously, she could feel something growing inside her, a small, glowing ember of maternal feeling, like a tumor, like an ulcer eating away at the lining of her stomach.
She grinned and raised her empty glass. “Bring Mommy another cocktail,” she said to Grace. “And let's see if we can't get reacquainted.”
VIRGINIA AWOKE THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO A DULL thumping headache and a vague persistent feeling of nausea. It was her first hangover and she found it to be unlike anything she had ever seen depicted on TV. For one thing, she didn't crave strange beverages concocted with Alka-Seltzer and raw egg yolks. For another, she could remember everything that had happened the day before with perfect clarity. She remembered the pre-Thanksgiving dinner down to its smallest detail; her own rambling confession; her guests' sly, amused expressions; the cold, steady eye of the camera lens; her son's stricken face as he fled her house, alone, like a man escaping a tsunami.
She rose groggily to her feet, finding that the headache seemed less pronounced when she stood. She looked down at her toes and frowned. It was only then that she realized she was naked. Redmon groaned and rolled over in bed, flinging one arm wide. Oh God, he appeared to be naked, too. He opened his eyes, blinked, and then sat up on one elbow, grinning at her.
“Damn, Queenie,” he said. “Who needs Viagra when we got Bloody Marys?”