Tending to Virginia

by Jill McCorkle

  “Mess took to more than the music,” Lena says. “And he was married. Married to one of his own kind. We didn’t have many of his kind in these parts.”

  “What kind are you?” Cindy asks and Lena just stops and stares at her.

  “Where was his wife?” Madge asks, feeling so uncomfortable that she never knew her mother at all. Her mama wouldn’t let her get close, and that’s why she married Raymond; that’s why she let Raymond make his promises and carry her away from the dull silence of a house she had always hated.

  “She lived over in Spottsville,” Emily says. “He come by train ever so often to teach some music lessons. Tessy told me he was a sad sweet man; him and Tessy were the same age.”

  “Harv said he was a freeloader,” Lena says. “Harv said he was a bum.”

  “My parents never agreed,” Madge says. “If they talked at all, it was to disagree.” She feels them all staring at her, and that rain pounding the ground outside, the street steaming, and she’d like to go right on, tell how her daddy had slapped her mama’s face and how her mama picked up the gun. “I’ve had enough now, Harv,” she said and Madge was crouched in her nightgown behind a chair, her feet so cold on that old cracked floor, and her daddy said, “I give up, Tessy. Just go right on hating me for the rest of your life. I’m sorry I took you from that shack where you lived, sorry I’ve given you a home and a family. Sorry that I’m not what you want. But as long as you stay here, you’ll do as I say.” And she had seen her daddy crying when he was out in that clearing, blasting those bottles and she had seen her mama’s cheeks glisten while she sat by the window and sewed, humming tunes that Madge had never heard before. That’s why Madge never wanted to sew; it was sad and lonely and that’s all sewing meant. Madge didn’t want to be like her mother; she didn’t want a life like her mother’s and that’s why she had married Raymond.

  “I never noticed them arguing,” Hannah says, watching Madge stare out the window. “I loved Aunt Tessy and nobody on this earth will ever sew like she could.”

  “She was lucky to get Harv,” Lena says. “And look how she said thank-you.”

  “But she was too young to marry,” Emily says, remembering Tessy clutching her hand. Tessy was not but thirteen with eyes like saucers, knowing she was going to have to climb in bed with a man she barely knew when the sun went down and Harv come up from that field. “I’m so scared,” she had whispered to Emily. “I know there ain’t a God for this to happen to me.” Emily squeezed Tessy’s hand, scared to even imagine what goes on in a bed. She told Tessy that now they were like sisters and all her secrets were safe. She wanted Tessy to believe that there is a God, even though she could see why Tessy felt like there wasn’t. “Tessy wasn’t but thirteen when they married and Harv was already thirty,” she says.

  “I never knew she was that young,” Hannah says. “I thought she was at least sixteen when she married and I had no idea he was that much older.”

  “Neither did I,” Madge says and turns from the window. “You see how much I know.”

  “Tessy had herself a hard time,” Emily says. “Tessy lost two babies right early on.”

  Virginia instinctively clasps her hands over her stomach and presses until she feels a little kick, a little knee or elbow. Then she lies back, eyes closed, imagines that she can hear the heartbeat.

  “Thirteen,” Cindy says. “Good God, that sounds like,” Cindy pauses. “Ginny Sue, what’s that book about that child screwing that old man? I saw the movie.”

  “Lolita” Virginia says and opens her eyes, the heartbeats disappearing.

  “Honestly, the way you choose to say something,” Madge says to Cindy.

  “She could’ve said the F word,” Lena says but nobody laughs. They’ll laugh at Roy though. Yeah, they’ll laugh when it isn’t funny.

  “Oh I’m sorry,” Cindy says. “Let’s see Miss Purrio, that child that was engaging in relations.”

  “Tessy didn’t want to marry,” Emily says. “She had no choice about it.”

  “I didn’t know that either,” Madge says. “I was never told anything.”

  “And I’m never told anything,” Cindy says, and Madge catches herself feeling like she’d like to go and wrap her arms around Cindy and hold her so close like she did when Cindy was a tiny baby. That’s why she loved being in a dark room when she nursed her babies. It felt so good to have that warm little body there. “First sign of a tooth and I’m done,” Hannah had told her right after Robert was born. And when Ginny Sue came, Hannah said, “I can’t work and nurse, too. Ginny Sue’s on the bottle.” But, it was the happiest part of Madge’s life when she was nursing, those helpless babies, her ignorance that they were gonna grow up and be so indifferent to her.

  “You were such a pretty baby,” Madge says to Cindy, the words rolling from her tongue before she can stop them.

  “And now I’m not? Is that what you mean?” Cindy asks and watches her mama sigh one of those long pitiful sighs.

  “That’s what Tessy and Jake had in common together,” Emily says. “They were both told to marry the people they married.”

  “That’s why she didn’t want me to marry Raymond,” Madge whispers. “But she should have told me the truth. She should have told me that she never loved my daddy!”

  “And you should have told me that you never loved mine!” Cindy says.

  “But I did love Raymond,” Madge says, the rain hitting the sidewalk, rushing from the gutters over the duplex stoop. “When I married Raymond, I loved him very much.” There is a flash of lightning, low rumbling thunder.

  “And I loved Charles Snipes,” Cindy says. “I get so damned tired of everybody acting like I’m so terrible for being married two times when the truth is that I loved Charles Snipes and he walked out on me.” Cindy feels herself wanting to cry and that’s the last goddamned thing she wants to do in this creepy place. Whoever thinks of her feelings? Who? Name one.

  “I loved Roy,” Lena says. “But he’s dead isn’t he?” She looks around the room and they all nod, and they’re not laughing this time. No sir, they learned a lesson.

  “Divorce is worse than death.” Now, Cindy walks over near where her mama is sitting and watches the rain, listens to the slow rumbling of the thunder. “At least when somebody dies you can cover him up and forget it. You don’t have to see him out places.”

  “Have you seen Charles?” Ginny Sue asks, her voice a whisper, the kind of kindness that has always made Cindy nervous. Relative, good friend, it doesn’t matter, they will yank out your gut and smear it from here to tomorrow if you care enough to let them. “Your body is a tomb,” her daddy had told her once. “And there you must hide all that is bad, all the secrets of all your life.”

  “Roy’s dead you know,” Lena tells Emily and Virginia watches Gram’s eyebrows go up in surprise and then the recognition on her face as she nods that she remembers. “James, too,” she says.

  “But y’all had years together,” Cindy says quietly and Virginia is almost holding her breath, so rare to see Cindy so serious; Cindy is framed by the window, that dark black sky, her face pale. “You don’t have to sit around and wonder if he’s gone because of you.” Cindy faces Madge now, her hands clutching her necklace. “And the same for you,” she says. “Daddy took his own life because he was sick and Roy had a stroke and James . . .”

  “Heart attack,” Hannah whispers as she feels herself calling the roll of the others; Tessy, so old and pitiful; David, burned in the helicopter so far from his home, his body destroyed; Curie, murdered. And her mother is so old and helpless, and Lena.

  “Anyway,” Cindy continues. “They are dead, but I tell you, every time I lay my eyes on Charles Snipes, I have to ask myself why? Why didn’t it work?”

  “It’s just never going to work,” Charles Snipes had said that day, early morning, Chuckie not even awake yet, Fisher Price people without arms and legs strung across the hallway, and he put those greasy plumber’s hands up to his face while she slowly f
illed a Coke bottle with water and put an African violet leaf in it to root. She loved to see his hands that way, loved to smell those old blue shirts that had “Charles” written up on the pocket. She must have used a ton of laundry powder during those first three years and she always bought the big size just like her mama always did. She’d use extra-strength whatever on Charles’s and use Snowy Bleach for Chuckie, and there were times when she was happy, really happy. “I’ll never be able to satisfy you,” he had said. “I’m a plumber, okay?” He wrapped his arms around her from behind, squeezed, and then walked away. “I asked you not to ask your daddy for money. I told you we didn’t have to have a new car, that stereo, the TV.”

  “I thought you’d be happy,” she told him, spitting the words with an anger that she really didn’t even feel. “I can’t sit around here and never try to improve when my sister is flying to Aruba with likoor-sucker to get a tan.”

  “You knew it was going to be hard when you married me,” he said.

  “And why did I marry you? Why?” she yelled and turned to see Chuckie in the doorway in his little sleeper pajamas. “That’s why,” she said, and she watched Charles squat there and hug Chuckie. “It’s somebody else, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s not exciting for you now that I’ve shown all that I have to show.”

  “No, no, you need more,” he said. “You and your dad need more.” And she had spent that whole day crying before she pulled herself right together. “It was mutual,” she had told everybody. “He doesn’t try, will never get ahead because he is lazy and is not good in business. He beat me up a couple of times,” she told a few but none of that was true.

  “Sometimes I ask myself why it didn’t work,” Cindy says now. “Ginny Sue made a fool of herself that time she called off her engagement, but at least she didn’t marry somebody who would leave her.”

  Virginia just listens now, the words, the rain. Why didn’t it work?

  “I’m sure you thought it would work,” Hannah says, the nicest that Cindy has ever heard her be. “You wouldn’t have married him if you had thought otherwise.”

  “She had to get married,” Lena says. “Everybody knows she had to. Roy said it didn’t surprise him one bit.”

  “But I didn’t have to,” Cindy says. “I could have got an abortion!”

  “Don’t you say such with Ginny Sue about to give birth,” Emily says, her eyebrows raised and lips pursed.

  “Chuckie is a blessing,” Madge says. “Don’t you ever say that in front of that child.”

  “I just said I could’ve,” Cindy says, sits in a chair and pulls her knees up to her chest. “I didn’t say I would’ve. It’s the wondering about it all which is why I say that divorce is worse than a death.”

  “Death sounds pretty good to me,” Lena says and lights a cigarette. Cindy points out to Madge a card that she can play up on the board.

  “I didn’t love Buzz Biggers, though,” Cindy whispers. “I know that I didn’t.”

  “Then why did you marry him?” Hannah asks and Cindy just shrugs and pulls on those wisps of hair near her face.

  Cindy had known in the first week that she and Buzz Biggers would never share a double monument, no way would they die together; they couldn’t even live together. He’d say, “I’m a steak and potatoes man—a man’s man.” He’d say all those “man” things that in the beginning turned her on, and he’d tell crude jokes that made even Cindy blush. All those things that she liked about him were all those things that made him so different from Charles Snipes. “The niggers and women are taking over the world,” Buzz had told her. “They got a place and they ought to stay there.” And he made fun of Jane Fonda, too, knowing full well that Jane Fonda is one of Cindy’s very favorite people in the world. Jane looked up to and took after her daddy the same way that Cindy looked up to hers. “Liberals,” Buzz Biggers would say and crush a beer can on the side of his head which Cindy had grown tired of; it didn’t make her laugh anymore to see him do that. “There’s no place in this world for liberals.”

  “I like Jane Fonda,” Cindy had said.

  “I don’t,” he said, his cap pulled low, a little Skoals in his gum, a Confederate flag patch on his army jacket. “I’d fuck her, though.”

  “You’d fuck a whale,” she said and he grabbed her arm tight and twisted it. “I’d fuck your cousin, too,” he said and grinned. “I think that’s what she needs, too. I’d love to fuck those long lean bones.”

  “Don’t you talk about Ginny Sue,” she said and it made her feel sick. She didn’t even want Ginny Sue around because of the things Buzz Biggers would say about her after she left.

  “Jane Fonda sucks,” is what he had said when he saw Cindy all dressed up in new leotards that she had gotten on sale at Belk’s. Magenta tights, a magenta and black striped leotard with a low “V” cut in the back. She thought he’d like it; she thought he’d get off his talk about Ginny Sue, thought he’d like the fact that she and Constance Ann were going to the Saxapaw YMCA three nights a week so that when she hit forty, she’d look like Jane. “That’s a bunch of shit,” he said and grabbed her suit by the “V,” near about stretched it all out of shape.

  “It makes me feel good to Fonda,” she said and took off her outfit before he could stretch it any more. “Where’s Chuckie?” she asked and before she could get those tights from around her ankles he had pushed her back on the bed and had her feet pulled up just below his belt buckle. “I’ll show you what feels good,” he said and forced her legs back, knees bending, and leaned over her. “I like this little fleshy part here,” he said and pinched up the soft white skin around her navel.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Charles Snipes had told her and rubbed his hand over her navel where Chuckie had stretched her all out of shape. It was her first night home from the hospital, Chuckie finally asleep. “Who’s gonna see but me and I think you look beautiful,” Charles said and he was so gentle with her like she might have been a virgin; it was just like the first time they were ever together, both of them virgins, up in her bedroom on a Saturday afternoon while her parents were at a doctor appointment. And then, who fucking saw but that wide-assed redneck mobile home salesman, Buzz Biggers.

  “Think about it,” Buzz had told her the night they were sitting in the Bonanza steak house and decided to get married. “You’ve come up a notch or two, come from the sewer up to a home.” If Charles Snipes hadn’t been sitting in the corner of Bonanza with grease under his nails and a copy of Popular Mechanics spread out in front of him, she might not have even married Buzz Biggers. And if Charles Snipes hadn’t been at the Ramada the other night with what’s her name, Cindy probably never would have gone back to see Randy Skinner again.

  “Oh, oh, oh,” Buzz Biggers had said, digging into her like a fence post digger and it didn’t sound like a thing but divorce, loud and clear, it said divorce, and Cindy hopes that her Grandma Tessy at some point in her life did get what she wanted. She hopes there was some moment when that old spooky woman was everything all at the same time, that she was a child and a virgin, and a whore all rolled into one.

  “I didn’t love Buzz Biggers,” Cindy says. “It was a mistake. I made a mistake. I got left the first time and the second time I made a mistake.”

  “Well, just don’t make another,” Madge says.

  “Just don’t make another,” Cindy mimics. “Like a person knows when he’s making one.” Cindy sits up straight and looks at Madge. “Only one of those was my mistake so you might as well say I was only divorced once.”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” Madge says.

  “Well, y’all think Mark is so great,” she says, glances at Ginny Sue who is rising up on her elbows like a ghost from a coffin. “And Ginny Sue is his second.”

  “Cindy,” Virginia says but with one glance around the room, she sees that no one is surprised.

  “Oh I told them ages ago,” Cindy says and waves her hand. “I told them before you told me not to tell.”

  “I told
you not to tell before I told you,” Virginia says, the blood rushing to her face.

  “Now, don’t get upset,” her mama says and pushes her back down flat on her back. “You are in no condition to get upset.”

  “You knew?” she asks her mother. “All this time you knew he was divorced and you never mentioned it?”

  “I told Ben,” her mama says, sits down on the daybed and toys with the top of Virginia’s sock where the yarn is pulled. “I don’t know why you felt you couldn’t tell me. You must think I have no sense of what goes on in this world.”

  “It’s not that,” Virginia says. “I was just scared of what you’d think.”

  “What?” her mother asks, still staring at the pulled sock, her eyebrows raised. “That he made a mistake? You think I wouldn’t forgive someone a mistake?”

  “Tessy knew she made a mistake,” Gram says.

  “By marrying my daddy or with that other man?” Madge asks but Emily just shakes her head.

  “But it’s the same difference,” Cindy continues. “If Ginny Sue ever leaves Mark then that man will be divorced two times and only one will be his fault and he’ll have to carry his mistake and Ginny Sue’s mistake right on with him forever.”

  “The first wasn’t Mark’s mistake,” Virginia says and rises to her elbows. “You know that. Why didn’t you tell everything you know?”

  “You told me it was mutual,” Cindy says. “You said that Mark said it never would’ve worked.”

  “That’s what he says now,” Virginia says, feeling her mother’s stare, so she concentrates on Gram who is staring into the blank TV. “He got left. She made a mistake. She left him just like Charles Snipes left you and what happened? What happened?” Virginia feels her heart beating faster, face flush. “Buzz Biggers, that’s what. Your mistake!”

  “It’s not the same,” Cindy says. “Good God, I just used you as an example.”