Tending to Virginia (36 page)

“Oh, a Kotex is a Kotex no matter how you ask for it.” Felicia waves her hand. “Miss Emily and I are good friends, aren’t we?”

“What about me?” Lena asks. “Everybody always said I was the prettiest.”

“And you are pretty.” Felicia laughs, looks around the room. “You all are lucky to have these two.” Felicia points to Emily and Lena and puts back on her slicker. “And how
is
the mama?” She asks and turns to Virginia.

“She’s so much better,” Madge says. “I don’t know what we’d have done if you hadn’t helped her the other day.” Again she has taken the words right out of Hannah’s mouth.

“You folks beat on the wall if you need anything,” Felicia says and goes to the front door.

“Won’t you stay with us?” Emily asks. “Mag Sykes brung me a big pot of butterbeans.”

“I would,” she says. “But I’m having cramps myself and think I’ll just go stretch out and take a nap. I’m lost without electricity.”

“Yes, they say in some cities they got lights,” Emily says and laughs. “My mama says it will be a long time coming to fangle up any wires out this way. Lord, yes. Gotta live by the God-given light of day. Eat yourself some garlic,” she says. “Garlic will cure the cramps,” and Lena just stares in disbelief as Felicia goes out the front door.

“Everybody knows,” Lena says. “That if I don’t have the cramps and me being the woman that I am that she doesn’t have the cramps being not a woman. And did you hear her? She stood right there and called me pretty.”

Madge turns back to the window and watches Felicia run to her
side of the duplex and who would have ever thought? Who’d’ve thought just from looking at Madge and Felicia, that Madge was the one with a life to feel ashamed over. Madge hears Felicia’s door slam right when the rain picks back up, heavy, and that wind blowing the trees against that strange-looking sky.

Ben calls Hannah again to say that another twister has touched down between here and Clemmonsville and for Hannah not to think she can get out and drive in this weather, hailing at their house, tomatoes ruined. Hannah repeats it all to them while she stands with the receiver pressed to her ear and Madge cannot help but wonder what it would feel like to be like Hannah, to stand so little and straight with a firm hand on the hip that says, “you all can relax; I got it under control,” to have a man telling you to do something because he loves you and not because he’s so taken with himself.

“You guess Catherine and likoor-sucker have blown off the earth?” Cindy asks.

“Lord, where is my mind?” Madge asks. “Cindy, call and check.”

“Me?” Cindy asks, but decides to do it anyway. Would Hannah do it? Ginny Sue? Yes. Cindy dials while Madge calls out the number, then waits for an answer. She starts to hang up when Catherine answers but something about her mama’s face makes her ask just as nice as possible if their house has blown off. “Mama’s with me,” Cindy says, then holds the receiver away from her ear while she laughs. “A condo for me?” Another pause but this time Cindy is listening, her face serious. “Does it have a Jacuzzi?”

Cindy has plaited all the hair around Virginia’s face in what she calls “an almost Bo Derek” style. She will do anything to forget, plait hair, talk about Jacuzzis, anything to keep those pictures out of her mind. Hannah and Madge have played hand after hand of honeymoon bridge just like they used to at the beach. Traveler’s advisory until seven o’clock, Gram’s radio weatherman says, if you spot a tornado open all windows and doors and get in a hallway windowless area protect your head those with cellars . . . again seven
P.M
. stay where you are unless an emergency . . .

A key turns in the lock and before they can all look up, Esther
has rushed into the room with a paper sack torn and spread over her head. “I been in the Piggly Wiggly for hours,” Esther says. “Lights never came on and they finally let us go by checking us out one by one with a flashlight to make sure we hadn’t taken anything.” Esther flops down in a chair and shakes her head back and forth. “God knows,” she sighs. “I got to get home and make sure my house hasn’t floated off. I bet my man can’t even come tonight.”

“I think you should stay here,” Hannah says but Esther shakes her head. “No sir, I gotta get home. I want to be there if things start floating.” Esther stares hard at Hannah and then the rest of them. “Y’all gals been crying?”

“I don’t cry before others,” Emily says. “Tears is personal.”

“I cry at the drop of a hat,” Lena says. “That’s what Roy says.”

“I was telling everybody about a sad old movie,” Cindy says, her mind shifting up to fourth gear. “I told about this movie called
An Unmarried Woman
and when I got to the part about that fool traipsing down the street with a picture and leaving Alan Bates right by himself, everybody cried.”

“I didn’t care for that show myself,” Esther says. “But I do like a movie that can make you cry. I like
Madam X
Lord, yes, now that’s a tearjerker, and
Imitation of Life.

“I wish David would come on home,” Emily says, the lamp behind her flickering back on. She looks at all of them with their eyes swoll up like they’ve been stung by a bee, except Lena. Lena looks as pretty as ever with that fur cap tilted on her head.

“So do I,” Lena says. “Roy, too.” She fumbles in her purse until she finds cigarettes and some matches. “They say don’t keep no matches at the school but I do,” she laughs and waves the little book back and forth. “I stole these matches.”

“From where,” Hannah asks.

“When me and you went in that store,” Lena says and opens her purse out toward Hannah. “Got me two packs of cigarettes and four books of matches.”

“Do hush your mouth,” Emily says. “You know better than to steal.”

“You got to go after what you want is what Roy always said,”
Lena says and laughs, holds those two packs up for Hannah to see. Yeah Lord, she and Roy went after what they wanted, they went like wildcats. “I want so many cats there will always be a motor running,” she told Roy and he said he wanted so many cars that there’d always be a motor running. Lord, yeah, tell it. She had stopped saying she wanted a baby by then. “Shit, I’ll smoke right there in the school yard. I’m too old to be paddled.”

“You needed paddling long ago,” Emily says. “You needed your fanny smacked that time you stole candy from the store. Just walk in and take something like it’s your own.”

“Your children are like my own,” Lena says and puts the packs back in her purse, zips it up tight so that nurse teacher with them barrel legs won’t find them. If that woman takes those cigarettes, she will arch her back and hiss real loud and scratch that woman’s eyeballs out.

“But you didn’t take my children,” Emily says. “You didn’t.” She shakes her finger and watches that Lena blow some smoke out into the room. “The Lord took David and Hannah’s right here.”

“Well,” Lena says and shakes her head, her face primping. “I use an ashtray.” Now she points her finger, her voice loud and defensive. “I have smoked my whole life and ain’t St. Peter or nobody gonna tell me to quit.”

“Told you,” Cindy says to Virginia and lights a cigarette herself. “You ain’t gonna drop dead from smoking a cigarette.” Virginia looks at the window where the sky is a little lighter, late afternoon, a fine drizzle of rain still coming down.

“I thought you quit,” Virginia’s mama says. “You told me you had.”

“I have,” Virginia says and then catches herself, continues. “But I’ve slipped a couple here and there.” She feels suddenly like making a confession. It’s why people trapped in elevators of burning buildings spill their guts, trapped; it’s why people remain friends or remain married. “I have smoked and Mark doesn’t know. There’s a lot he doesn’t know and I’m glad because there’s a lot that I don’t know about him. He has a whole life that I don’t know a thing about.”

“What, his past?” Cindy asks, her eyes wide, mascara on her cheeks. “We all have one. I do, you do, Mama does.” Cindy glances at Madge and then turns back to Virginia. “It’s better to forget, just pretend nothing happened.”

“But I haven’t kept mine a secret,” Virginia says. “I have told him everything. I wanted him to know everything about me
before
he married me. I wanted him to know who I was.”

“It’s not good to tell everything,” Gram whispers. “You got to have something that you keep for yourself. That’s what I told Tessy.”

“But I didn’t have anything big or important enough to keep it to myself,” Virginia says, irritated when Madge mumbles, “be glad” and Cindy nods.

“Did you tell him what Daddy did?” Cindy asks slowly, glancing away.

“No.” Virginia shakes her head and sits up. “But that’s different. I never told anyone; I couldn’t.” Virginia doesn’t even look at her mother; she knows that eventually her mother will want to hear the whole story, every detail and she can’t stand to think about it. “But I told him about Bryan Parker. I told him because it didn’t matter to me and I didn’t want him to hear years from now that I had lived with someone and wonder
why
I hadn’t told.”

“You never even told me that you lived with him,” Cindy says, and Virginia feels her face burn with her mother’s stare.

“No. Mark is the only person that I told,” Virginia says. “I made a mistake and I wanted him to know it. And if his marriage and Sheila were all behind him then he would’ve told me everything in the beginning.”

“Maybe he knew you well enough not to,” Cindy says now, eyebrows lifted, nothing funny coming out of her mouth. “Maybe he was afraid he’d lose you, maybe he was afraid that you’d act like you’re acting right now.”

“Well I wouldn’t have,” Virginia says and has to look away from Cindy, that face so calm and serious like she has never seen it before. “He could have told me, could have told me that he was hurt. At least I would have felt like he had gotten over it.”

“Well maybe there are some things you don’t get over,” Cindy
says. “Part of me will probably always love Charles Snipes but am I supposed to tell that? It’s something I can’t help. I can’t help what happened to my daddy.”

“Part of me will always love Raymond,” Madge whispers. “The Raymond I knew in those early years.”

“But you didn’t love him later,” Cindy says and turns to Madge. “Tell the truth. Even though you had loved him, you didn’t in the end did you?” Madge sits, her face twisting like she’s not sure what to say, and then she sighs and shakes her head. “And I bet sometimes you think about when you did love him don’t you?” Cindy asks and Madge nods, mouths a yes. “But that doesn’t mean you want to go back does it?”

“God, no.”

“But you would go back,” Virginia says to Cindy. “You’d go back to Charles.”

“Yes, yes, I would,” Cindy says. “I will if I have the chance, too. But it would be different. I’m different.”

“Some people never get a chance,” Gram says. “Tessy never really had a chance. Her life would’ve been so different if she’d had her way.”

“You mean she never would have married my daddy,” Madge says. “Or if she had married him, that she would have left him later on to be with that fiddler.”

“Fiddler,” Lena says and nods her head. “He was a fiddler!”

“I never would have been born,” Madge says, her voice speeding up. “If my mama had had her way I never would’ve been born. If my mama had lived right now when everybody and his brother gets a divorce, then I wouldn’t even be here. I’m on this earth and it has nothing to do with love.” Madge looks at Emily but she is looking away, toward the front door. “She never loved my daddy. Not even in the beginning did she love him.”

“I think she grew to love Harv,” Emily says slowly. “I do.”

“But did she ever tell you that?” Madge asks. “Did you ever hear her say that she loved my daddy?” Madge waits but Emily isn’t talking, and why? Why does she even care if they ever loved each other? It has all been one big miserable mistake.

“If I had lived when Grandma Tessy did,” Cindy says, “then Charles and I would’ve stayed together. We would have made it work.”

“And Sheila would have stayed with Mark,” Virginia says.

“And you wouldn’t have lived with a man, either,” her mama says, but Virginia doesn’t look at her. Her mother will want to know all about that, too. “And I don’t see what good any of this is doing anybody,” her mother continues. “I think it’s all gone far enough. We’re here right now. It is 1986. And what’s gone is gone. Mark is a human.” She stares hard at Virginia. “He made a mistake and you made a mistake. God knows we’ve all made mistakes.”

“That’s right,” Cindy says. “You can’t hold Mark’s past against him.”

“It’s not his past that I hold against him,” Virginia says. God knows, where have they all been? It’s not the past, it’s now. He called her Sheila once, right after they were married, in his sleep, in a dream, he called her Sheila and she had not even told him. She had tried to overlook it, overlooked the time before they got married when she saw that envelope with Sheila’s return address in a stack of letters on his bedside table. “Do you ever hear from her?” she had asked, and he told her not really, that occasionally he’d get a change of address card. And there were all those times that the phone would ring and Virginia would answer to silence and then a click, the time a woman asked to speak to Mark and then left no message. And she took it, took all of that, rationalized it away until that night a month ago when for some God only knows reason, he decided to tell her everything, all of these things that he has thought about in secret.

“Then what do you hold against him?” Madge asks. “Does he make you buy the biggest box of Kotex in the world?” She has done it; they smile and she doesn’t even have to lay out a solitaire board. She’s done it and to quote Cindy, though the Lord’ll have to pardon her, fuck solitaire.

“No,” Virginia shakes her head, crying again. “I just feel so out of place sometimes. I get homesick.”

“For this?” Cindy asks. “You get homesick for True Confessions
in the Twilight Zone?” Cindy laughs, her mind speeding. “That would make a fine title of a book now wouldn’t it?”

“I get homesick for y’all.” Virginia nods, focuses on Gram who is clicking the TV on, the volume turned down.