Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle Read Free Book Online Page B

independent means who toured the country with her paintings, who on a whim would reupholster the furniture in an array of watercolors in the spring and warm rich plaids in the winter when a blazing fire filled the fireplace that she does not have, and she sat in a worn cherry rocker and knitted just as she has imagined her great-grandmother, the other Virginia Suzanne. And people would say, “How have you done it all?” and they would look at Mark, wink and say, “You better hold onto her for life” and he’d say, “don’t worry” and all traces of Sheila would float away forever.
    Sheila is a design consultant in New York, wealthy Richmond family, northeast girls’ school, though Virginia isn’t sure which one. Sheila would say, “women’s college” and emphasize the point. She has some advanced degree, probably making money hand over fist, probably has a baby named Thurstan Beauregard Something IV, probably would laugh her bony anorexic ass off if she saw Virginia’s house. Well laugh! Just goddamn laugh! That’s what she’d say. She’d say, “You need to eat meat! You need some bloody beef, good for you, give you color!” It makes her furious just to think of that woman even though she has never met her and never seen her except a small wedding snapshot that Virginia found mixed in with some of Mark’s old photos at his mother’s house in Pennsylvania. She could havefixed that picture right up with some Flair pens had Mark’s mama not been sitting there. The photo was too small, too blurred. She doesn’t know that Sheila is thin as a post with long silky blonde hair and blue eyes, at least not the picture that comes to mind with that description of blonde hair and blue eyes. She might be gangly and transparent with buck teeth and thin stringy hair. For all Virginia knows she might even eat meat, though she bets not; it’s easy enough to get the whole picture from the bits and pieces that she knows, such as Sheila wanted everything natural, health food store food, which is why Mark hates herbal teas and such. That’s the fact: Sheila was into health foods. But, Virginia knows as well as the next what follows that: Perrier and brie, which she thinks tastes like what dirty feet smell like, granola, wine coolers and little spritzers if she drinks at all but no, probably not, and Virginia would love a drink right now; she’d love a shot of bourbon and a beer chaser. The doctor would say. “Have you been drinking?” No, Sheila doesn’t drink. A Perrier with a twist, thank you for not smoking, no caffeine, no soda? Why that is a vile filthy liquid; I only wear cotton; I only wear hypoallergenic cosmetics. My shampoo is pH correct and natural, it’s all natural. I use tartar-buster toothpaste and floss every single day. Nutra Sweet is poison. I jog and I play tennis and I go to the spa to work out and do aerobics three times a week and I only watch PBS, never anything other than PBS, and I never have PMS, and I only listen to classical radio stations and I would never hang a print on my wall and I would never think of anything but professional stripping for my fine furniture. Yeah, Virginia knows the type, that touchy feely, do it all perfectly, I’m okay you’re okay, my child can read at age two and will have a volume of Haiku by the time he’s four, type.
    Virginia would tell her a thing or two right then and there. She would tell her that she loves bloody beef and coffee and Coke and Budweiser and Formby’s and 96 Lite which plays everything from Smoky Robinson to Dolly Parton to Lulu “To Sir With Love,” and that she likes to bowl and eat things with preservatives and take a Goody’s for a headache. “I’ll watch the goddamn ‘Brady Bunch’ if nothing else is on.” That’s what she’d like to say. And people standingclose by would applaud and Mark would never ever look back again. If Mark would just say that he hates Sheila and never wants to hear about her again, she would feel