Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  She rubs her hand over her stomach and feels so detached from it all, this house, this room, that man that eats, sleeps, reads, and showers here. She has to think of things familiar, things that keep her busy, things that can put it all in perspective. She has stripped down to bare oak four chairs that once belonged to her Great Aunt Lena and is working now on the table where Lena and Roy Carter ate every day for thirty-five years. The table had been a permanent part of Lena’s life; it lived with her and Roy in New York, Florida, Detroit, right back to Saxapaw. It had always been in the kitchen when she got up. It never made Lena cry or feel sick.

  She has read a crock of Spock and every Southern Living she can get her hands on just so she can salivate when she sees what people do to walls that they own and do not rent. Glamour is too depressing at this stage with her dark frizzy hair still frizzier. And she has this dark patch, a dark patch just above the cheek. And, she hates yellow. She wishes there was absolutely nothing yellow in the entire world. “Yellow is perfect for a nursery because it can go either way—boy or girl, yellow,” the tennis guy’s wife had said. Screw her, impregnate her, paint her life yellow. But, hadn’t Virginia said thank you? Yellow, a good idea. And she had gotten permission from the landlord to paint that small spare room yellow, and the woman had arrived with rollers and cans and the two of them, Virginia and this friendly stranger, had painted and laughed and talked about how exciting it all was.

  Virginia’s own nursery had been half of her brother’s room, pale blue walls and white curtains with blue ball fringe. Her crib was in one corner, Little Bo Peep and Jack and Jill cutouts on the wall beside her. There are pictures of her sitting there, propped up and baldheaded, while Robert reached his arms inside the bars to touch her. The rest of the room was cluttered with cars and trucks, his kindergarten paintings decorating the walls of his half. He had his “big boy” bed with the blue and white striped spread that their mother had made, George, the big stuffed monkey that sat on the bed while Robert wasn’t there. Though Virginia’s mother is not the kind to hold onto everything that has some sentimental value, she has never been able to part with George, or with Virginia’s equivalent, Pinky, a large pink rabbit that in the pictures is bigger than Virginia. George and Pinky have been wrapped in plastic and sitting in the attic for years now.

  When Virginia was old enough for a bed, and Robert complained that she broke his crayons and touched his things when he had told her not to, Virginia was moved into the sewing room where her mother sat and worked most of the day, the hum of her machine nonstop, bolts of cloth piled in the corner at the foot of the “big girl” bed, which had a pink polka-dot spread that her mother had made. “Don’t sit on the cloth,” her mother would say, her words garbled by the straight pins that she held between her lips.

  “It just isn’t fair is it?” her mother asked one day after she had told Virginia that she couldn’t take her shoes off until the room had been swept free of pins. They had already started having to keep that headless black mannequin in the living room at night because Virginia couldn’t sleep with her in the same room. “It isn’t fair to either one of us.”

  Soon after that, her mother rented a part of a small building downtown. It was a green cinderblock building that had been attached like some kind of afterthought to the long line of tall stores and offices on Main Street. Two men came to their house in a pickup truck and loaded the sewing machine, floor lamp, bolts of cloth, and headless woman and took them to the building where Virginia stood and watched the backwards letters as her mother stood outside and carefully stenciled “The Busy Bee” on the large plate glass window.

  “It’s all yours now,” her mother had said, and in came the maple dresser and mirror that Lena had grown tired of, up went the white curtains with the pink ball fringe. “Now you have your very own room just like Robert.”

  She had always had her own room at Gram’s house, at least that’s what Gram said. Gram had two bedrooms that no one ever even used unless she had company. Virginia’s room there had a big high double bed that sank when she got in the middle, the feather mattress fluffing up all around her so that if she got up very carefully, she could see where she had been, her shape like a snow angel, left there until Gram came in and fluffed it back up. It was a corner room that got the late afternoon light that made everything look golden, the specks of dust riding the thin planes of light that came through the Venetian blinds. There was a large wardrobe, the inside piled with quilts, and a big overstuffed chair positioned such that whoever sat there could see out into the side yard and into Gram’s garden.

  Virginia loved to spend the night with Gram, and she would go first thing and place her clothes in the top drawer of the big dark dresser, put Pinky in the center of that bed. But when it started getting dark, she would have to go get Pinky and bring him into Gram’s room. Virginia only slept in her room in the daytime, at nap time, when she could raise the blinds and see Gram out working in the garden or picking up pecans in the side yard. When night came, she slept with Gram, a secret which Gram promised never to tell. “This is my room,” she would tell Cindy whenever Cindy went with her to spend the night. “This is where I keep my clothes,” and she would show Cindy her drawer and then offer the one beside it.

  “It’s not really your room,” Cindy would say and flop down on the soft bed which Virginia would then fluff back up. “It’s your grandmother’s room. It used to be your uncle’s room and he’s dead. He might even come back at night and want to sleep here and then what are you going to do?”

  “That is nonsense,” Gram said, when it was just the two of them. “If David did come back, which he isn’t, he wouldn’t hurt a hair on your head.”

  When Virginia turned thirteen, her mother said that she could decorate her room any way that she wanted, within reason, of course. Getting a set of French provincial furniture like Cindy had with a canopy bed and little velvet-seated vanity was not within reason, so they painted Virginia’s furniture white. She had in her mind that she could then get some gold paint and edge around all of the drawers and her headboard; her mother said that she didn’t think that was a good idea so they compromised on a trip to Sherwin-Williams, where Virginia was allowed to pick out her wall paint. Her mother liked the pale, iced pink and Virginia liked the flamingo pink, a color that would have matched a piece of Bazooka bubblegum. They finally settled on lavender and waited while the man mixed the colors to match the little card that Virginia held.

  “And look what I just happen to have,” her mother said when they got home with the cans of paint, and she pulled a bolt of cloth from under the living room sofa; it was a bolt of thick shiny cotton, stripes in pastel colors. “The lavender is a perfect match,” she said and held the card against the cloth; the pale iced pink would’ve matched it, too. “I can make curtains and a bedspread.” But Virginia wanted the white eyelet one that she had seen in the J.C. Penney’s catalog; she didn’t want a pastel baby room, and had already imagined that white spread with lots of velvet pillows in a deep purple.

  “Isn’t that beautiful?” her mother asked when Virginia showed her the picture. “I could never make one like that I’m afraid.” And while Virginia waited, trying to imagine what she could do with the room if it had those pastel stripes, her mother went to the phone and called J.C. Penney’s to place the order.

  Now, she goes into its room, its pale yellow room, where she has halfway painted a large canvas, her version of The Animal Kingdom, a cross between Noah and the Ark and Mutual of Omaha, a clear hot blue sky and the yellow eyes of a tiger. She bought that canvas with such a nice picture in her mind, tame gentle animals with cute little faces like Care Bears and Peppi Le Peu, but she has done the opposite.

  “Maybe if you didn’t use the encyclopedia,” Mark had said last night when he finally came home from the library, dark circles under those big blue eyes. She didn’t feel sorry for that, a little sleep or an erase stick will cover that; his fate is not in a jar of Porcelana. The library is
where he said he had been but he could have been anywhere at all and how would she know? Don’t believe everything you hear. Whole truths, half truths, believing in something only to find that there’s more to it. “You know, maybe you could use the Frosted Flakes box for a tiger, Kix for a rabbit.” He leaned against the doorway and smiled, tired, earnest eyes.

  “Look,” she said, her paint brush dipped in serpent-tongue pink. “Am I going to tell you how to run a divorce when somebody comes to you wanting one? Am I going to tell you how to divide and separate somebody’s life like an egg?”

  “You might,” he said and shook his head. “I wish you’d get off the divorce thing; it’s not like that’s all I’ll be doing. I mean people get divorced and occasionally I’ll probably be handling one. Somebody has to do it.”

  “Somebody has to collect trash,” she said and drew that long serpent tongue out further than she’d intended. “Why don’t you do that? You can start with your first wife.” Eat this fly, and she dabbed a blob of black just short of the tongue. She watched him leaning there, his eyes staring into a borrowed crib, blankets and tiny quilts that Gram had made years ago, stacked there. His shoulders curved forward, head shaking slowly.

  “Look,” he said. “I never lied to you about being divorced. You knew from the very beginning. You’re the one that wanted to keep it a secret from your family. I’m not ashamed that I made a mistake.”

  “But I didn’t know you had other secrets,” she said, glancing away from his stare. “I was afraid my family might get the wrong idea about you if I told them in the very beginning.”

  “And what’s the excuse now?”

  “Because now, I see that I had the wrong idea about you,” she said. “I mean, divorce I could handle; I lived with someone. I almost got married myself. You told me your divorce was mutual, a joint mistake.”

  “And I should have left it at that,” he said. “I never should have tried to explain. I just wish you could leave it back where it belongs.”

  “Leave it?” She painted spiky hair on the camel’s hump because that’s how it really is, not soft like a stuffed one but sharp and coarse, a thin bony face with bared teeth. “You lied to me. You said you were both so unhappy, both wanted out. You saved the other part; you didn’t want out. Let me get big as a horse and then tell me all about it. If Sheila hadn’t gotten an abortion, if Sheila hadn’t made that big decision, you would have stayed with her.”

  “Yes,” he said, still staring in the crib. “But I knew it wouldn’t have worked. It would not have worked.”

  “But you cared enough to try,” she said, bending her knees to reach another brush. “I don’t know why you felt the sudden urge to confess unless it’s that now I’m well beyond the point of Sheila’s decision. I mean, I have no choice. Here’s your baby.” She stood and patted her stomach, paint from the brush dripping to the floor. “After all these years, here’s your baby.”

  “What do you want, Virginia? Would it make you feel better if I was the kind of person who didn’t take marriage seriously, the kind who would look at his wife and say, ‘sure, get an abortion, I don’t care.’”

  “I don’t like being the substitute. At least before I didn’t know that I was just filling in where Sheila decided to spread her wings and fly away.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything, or I should have said everything sooner, I realize that now.” He stepped closer, his voice attempting softness. “I just wanted you to know how important it all is to me, how very lucky I feel. I guess I wanted to be reassured that you feel that way, too.”

  “Yeah.” Give that rhino a long sharp blood-spearing horn. “It’s on your mind, been on your mind since you got that offer in Richmond—home to Richmond, Sheila’s hometown. She might even decide to move back there one day, you know?”

  “She might,” he said with an edge like she might be a child, like she might be a sixth grader putting papier-mâché on a balloon. “And then, she probably won’t; she lives in New York, has for years, married. She might even have a child.”

  “Might even have a child, well.” She stood, her hands pressing the small of her back, every ounce of blood draining to those puffy flounder-looking feet. “What do you mean might? You know. You keep in touch with some of the same old friends. You hear everything about Sheila and I guarantee she hears what she wants to hear about you.”

  “Okay, she has a child. She’s an interior designer, married to a banker. I can probably find out more information if you need it.” He slapped his hand against the side of the crib, a little stack of blankets falling to the side. “Can’t we leave it alone? Please?”

  “I can. I had forgotten all about Sheila. You’re the one that started feeling like your life was repeating itself, started questioning. Ask me if I’m sure that I want a baby. Look at me! Come touch it now.” She watched the paint make another drop on the floor. “I mean it’s a little late to change my mind.” She started a big black cloud in the corner just above that elephant’s eye. He never asked her questions about how she almost married Bryan Parker; he said it was in the past and didn’t matter. No damn wonder. It was a part of her life wasn’t it? “I don’t even know why you married me,” she said, attempting to choke back whatever emotion was rising in her throat. “Except to have a baby, somebody to work so there would be a salary and health insurance so that this baby could be born in a hospital instead of the backyard.”

  “Might as well be the backyard if that’s what he’s going to grow up looking at.” He pointed at her vulture circling the sky. “I mean look, a vulture? A vulture in a baby’s room?” She reached up, magenta, a drop of magenta on the vulture’s beak. “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “How about a carcass? A collie’s maybe? Let’s put Lassie’s skeleton right here.” And he pointed to the olive-green swamp where the alligators live. “How about a big bulge in the snake here and then you can tell all about how snakes eat rabbits, little bunnies like the Easter Bunny, and the Lord God made them all.”

  “This vulture up here is your daddy,” she said in a storytelling voice. “And this is you.” She dotted a dot of brown in the swamp. “You are the little baby parasite here in the water.”

  “Good,” he said. “Funny.”

  “It’s a shame you didn’t handle your own divorce,” she said. “Maybe Sheila would have paid alimony.”

  “Maybe I’ll handle ours,” he said and she had not turned from the jungle until she heard the front door slam and the car crank and she outlined a fat pregnant monkey and started crying. She had faked sleep when he came back, crawling up beside her, whispered murmurs of sorry and love and everything will be fine, all of the things that she wanted to hear and believe. And just like this morning, she wanted to turn and say it all back to him, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t pretend nothing had happened.

  Virginia goes and plugs in the Mr. Coffee, her mind still on last night, still on the night a month ago when Mark, in the darkness when she was almost asleep, began talking, leaving her first silent, then hurt, then angrily separated from him as if Sheila had found her way into their home and into their bed. And it comes and goes, silence, anger, fatigue, thoughts of Gram and Lena and her mother, all of them carrying on their days so quiet and simply, thoughts of leaving it all behind, everything here, and going home where the history and knowledge is solid.

  Too much caffeine is not good, not good for the two of you. She makes an eight-cup pot and goes to sit on the screened porch, first reaching up to that rotted rented rafter to find two stale Virginia Slims all wrapped up in a baggie, given to her by Cindy just last weekend, one of the quiet days when she had returned Mark’s morning hug and clung to him with a brief feeling of hopefulness that she could put it all behind.

  “He isn’t going to know if you smoke one little cigarette,” Cindy said, reaching into her Kenya bag, interrupting Virginia’s thoughts of the wonderful mural she would paint for the nursery, friendly pastels. “I hate this fucking purse,” Cindy said while pulling ou
t tube after tube of lipstick. “I wouldn’t even carry it if everybody else wasn’t. Here.” She handed Virginia the mashed up pack. “It’s got your name written right there on the pack,” Cindy laughed. “I hope you don’t mind that I still call you Ginny Sue. I mean if I suddenly up and went to college and switched off to Cynthia, you’d have a hard as hell time changing.” Cindy shook her head, those short mousse-spiked bangs not even moving. “I don’t know why you changed it to begin with. Go on, smoke up. Beats the hell out of having a fit.” Cindy plopped down on the door stoop. “I didn’t smoke during the Smoke-Out except two right before I went to bed. I sat there at the clinic and honest to God I got to feeling like I wanted to bite somebody. You know how it is to go without a cigarette till you want to bite somebody? I mean hard, leave teeth marks and everything. I smoked all the way through my pregnancy and look at my Chuckie, full of air, talks on the phone the tee-total time these days, runs track—and Lordy, baseball, there ain’t a thing up in his head but a soggy baseball.”

  “Chuckie’s fine,” Virginia said and Cindy laughed, her thin eyebrows arched and Virginia thought how young Cindy looked sitting there in her cut-off jeans and fashionable cropped, paint-splashed-looking tee shirt. It could have been one of those days when they were teenagers and their families went to the beach, Cindy whistling and waving out of car windows to boys they passed while Virginia bent over and fumbled with the radio, painfully aware of her flat chest behind an oversized shirt and her hair too frizzy for a cute pixie cut like Cindy’s, her hair too dark for Sun-In.

  “Chuckie is fine. That’s what I’m telling you,” Cindy said. “I probably could’ve smoked even more. They say it’ll make the baby smaller but that’s good, I mean, look at my stomach.” Cindy lifted her shirt, stood and patted her flat, tan stomach. “Smoke.” Cindy fumbled through her bag again and finally gave up and took one of the three that Virginia had removed from the pack.