Tending to Virginia by Jill McCorkle Page A

washed clothes that would be hanging and blowing in that warm country air. Virginia Suzanne, a familiar name, a name shared, Virginia Suzanne Pearson, she thinks as she gets up and goes to the bathroom. Virginia Suzanne Turner, Ginny Sue Turner, Virginia Turner Ballard, little Monet. Suddenly an image comes to her mind of a tombstone with all of those names listed on it, last of which is Mrs. Ballard, whispered in her mind with the voices of those first graders whose faces are now so sharp in her mind, faces that she may soon forget, faces that will change and perhaps pass her unnoticed. Virginia Suzanne White, wife of Cord Pearson, devoted mother and child of God. Virginia had seen that tombstone, had knelt there in what used to be a churchyard and now is the back side of a parking lot, and she read those words over and over while Gram placed a plastic flower arrangement that the two of them had made.
    “Mama would be so proud of this arrangement,” Gram said and bent the wire stem of a rose down so that it didn’t block the word “child.” “I know she wouldn’t like all these cars pulling in and out, though. It would scare her good, I know.”
    “Would she have liked me?” Virginia asked and turned to Gram who was shielding her eyes and staring up into the sky, the horizon that she knew as a child, trees and tobacco fields, now cluttered with mobile homes.
    “Oh, she would have loved you,” Gram said. “She’d have been so proud that you have her name.”
    “Do you think she can see me?” Virginia asked, followed by a series of beeps from Roy Carter’s Lincoln. He and Lena had driven them out there and now were ready to leave. Virginia stood, her eyes level with Gram’s waist, and while Roy whistled and clapped and tooted the horn again, Gram knelt, ignoring the parking lot as if it weren’t even there.
    “Do you see that tree way out yonder?” she asked and pointed to a huge oak, underneath which someone had abandoned an old car. “That’s where we had our pump. That’s where I’d sit sometimes and wait for my daddy to come in from the field.” Gram’s voice was low and quiet, like she was telling a secret. “I loved my home.”
    “Do you think she can see us right this second?” Virginia whispered and moved in closer to Gram, a sudden chill coming over her as if she had been lifted and carried to a place different from anything she knew.
    “I hope so, Sweets,” Gram said. “I hope she knows.”
    “Knows what?” Virginia asked and Gram smiled, shook her head, Lena’s shadow falling over them.
    “Roy is getting fidgety,” Lena said and fanned herself with a neat little patent leather clutch bag. “God, it’s a blessing Mama don’t know she’s out here in such a cheap part of town. She’d turn cartwheels there in that grave.” Lena waved to Roy and walked ahead of them. “I can’t believe we used to live here, can you, Emily?” But Gram just smiled and shook her head, turning back once to look at that tree and squeezing Virginia’s hand so tightly that all of it was pressed into her mind.
    Virginia is suddenly so aware of the stillness of the house, the fact that she left the door to the porch open, the fact that she is alone. What would she do if she heard someone come in through the porch right now, footsteps through the house like that time at Cindy’s. What if she heard that kitchen drawer open, the fumbling of silverware, while she’s here in this bathroom, as pregnant as possible in an orange nightshirt. Barefoot and pregnant. Barefoot and pregnant. She closes the bathroom door, locks it, checks behind the shower curtain. She turns on the bath water and starts to turn on the shower when she realizes that she can’t hear anything in the house with the water running, couldn’t hear the phone ring if Mark called, if he called to say that he was serious, did want a divorce, or if her mom called with the words that she has dreaded for years, “Gram is dead.” No, no, she