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

a trap, all of it. Cindy would lose her mind if it wasn’t for Friday afternoons at the Ramada happy hour and the fact that her mama will keep Chuckie, let him spend the night. One night. She gets one night to herself and her mama and Chuckie both acting like it’s the end of the world just to give her that one night. Chuckie doesn’t want to go over there; who would blame him? But he has to. That’s the bottom line. He has never had control over what’s done and at age twelve, is not going to start trying. It’s times like that when she knows that she needs a man, a big strong hunk of man to look at that wirey pimply child of hers in a way that would make him go back to popping wheelies on his bike in front of the house. Now what he does is sneak in her underwear drawer so he’ll know what to imagine those seventh graders are wearing under those ripped up tee shirts and miniskirts. God, Cindy would like some minis herself as hot as it is. She’d look good in a mini and her mama would say, “That’s too young-looking for you,” like she always says. Her mama was born old and plain.
    Cindy is thankful every day that she did not take after her mama. Every day, she thinks at least once, “Thank you, Jesus, that I ain’t huge like my mama.” A man could take care of this frustration. She needs a man like Randy Skinner who works as a pharmaceutical salesman out of Raleigh and who for the past three weeks has come into the clinic on Fridays and gone with her to Ramada.
    “This might be the next Mr. Cindy,” she had told Constance Ann, but Constance Ann has never been married and so doesn’t know how important it is. Addicting and habit-forming; sex is justlike using the bathroom and eating supper. Just try going without something you did so often you didn’t even notice. Ginny Sue ought to count her blessings instead of feeling sorry for herself. Feel sorry for yourself, pout and carry on and that man will leave sure as shit. A little pregnancy shouldn’t make everything else stop. God knows, that’s when you need to keep his interest up. That is just good common sense. She knew when she was carrying Chuckie that Charles was lying there thinking he had a fat wife. Well, not really because Cindy didn’t get enormous like Ginny Sue has. But, still, had to keep that fire burning. If she didn’t feel like trying to angle herself some way, then she’d just borrow books from Constance Ann and she’d say, “Here, baby, read a little of this and then I’ll come back and take care of things.” It kept him off the streets. Ginny Sue ought to wise up; men will leave women and women will leave men just for that reason.
    Constance Ann will need to wise up if she ever finds somebody. She can talk up a blue streak and doesn’t know a thing about it all. Constance Ann will sit right there and eat a danish which she needs like a hole in the head and talk about the “zipless.” The Zipless Fuck is the exact title, which Cindy doesn’t like to think about because it reminds her of her first date with her second husband, Buzz Biggers, which she’d just as soon not think about. It was a vulnerable time in her life; blame it on frustration. Blame it on that shrink. Blame it on whoever said, “if you fall off a horse you got to get back up and ride.” Buzz Biggers was standing at the bar inside Blind Tom’s Bar and Grill out in the county. Old Tom ain’t really blind because Cindy asked the management. Old Tom just acts blind so people who don’t know better will leave big tips. “I’ll fuck your eyes out if I get half a chance,” Buzz Biggers said after about five minutes of talking.
    “Just see if you can,” she said, and of course he didn’t. Those baby blues are still right up in her head. She rode again, all right, but she had saddled herself with pure trash. It was that scar across the side of that rough hairy face that made him so exciting, made her mama look white as a sheet and say, “What kind of man