Tending to Virginia Read Online Free PDF

who I don’t speak to and so can’t recall her name, are the only signs that my mama ever did the act. If I didn’t know that Tessy had been as petite as me and hair just as blonde, I’d think I was adopted.”
    “Do you want that dress?”
    “I’ll take it, wouldn’t wear it to Ramada but I might wear it around the house.” She pulled off the dress and put back on her tee shirt. “I mean I hope that baby of yours is the product of a little lust, ‘cause if it isn’t then your marriage might be on shaky turf.”
    “Just take the dresses,” Virginia said and thrust the other one at Cindy.
    “What is bugging you?” Cindy took the dress and crammed it into her purse. “Did I hit a raw spot or are you just in need of somenicotine? Mark won’t know. I say play while the tomcat’s away.”
    “He’s not the reason I’ve quit smoking.” Virginia fluffed up the pillows on the bed, wadded up that orange nightshirt and stuffed it in a drawer.
    “Shit. That is the reason, scared he’ll get upset with you. I learned from Charles Snipes and then with Buzz Biggers that you can’t please ’em all the time so you might as well do what you take in your head to do.”
    “Well, I needed to quit. It’s not good for me, not good for either of us.”
    “Mark is not perfect. God knows that no man is perfect.” Cindy pulled her car keys out of her back pocket. “I mean he’s divorced, not perfect I’ll tell you, now I know you hate to think about it but it’s the truth, the God’s truth. Your husband is divorced.”
    “He made a mistake. Look at you, you’ve made two mistakes.”
    “And I might make a third but I don’t pretend like I never made them. I don’t pretend that none of that ever happened.”
    “Mark doesn’t pretend.” Virginia felt her face getting hot again and she wished suddenly that Cindy would get the hell out, take those skimpy-looking dresses and get out.
    “No, but you do,” Cindy said. “You can’t stand to think that there was somebody before you.”
    “Of course I can. I mean there were people before him. I almost got married myself one time, remember?”
    “Do I ever?” Cindy bit her bottom lip and then came over and slung her arm around Virginia’s shoulders. “I’m just picking is all. All I’m saying is that he made a mistake so if he says, ‘Ginny Sue,’”
    “He calls me Virginia.”
    “See? I always forget how you went off to college and changed your name. When he says, ‘Virginia, where there’s smoke there’s fire. I smell smoke on your breath and in your hair’ well, then you say, ‘Marcus,’”
    “His name is not Marcus.”
    “‘Mark, I made a mistake just like you made a mistake and I can’t take that smoke out of my lungs just like you can’t get back all the sperm you lost with what’s-her-name.’”
    “You’re gross.”
    “But I’m your favorite cousin.”
    “You’re not even a first cousin!”
    “It’s like we’re first cousins, though. It always has been and I see no reason to get into removal shit or second this or that. The fact is we’re cousins which makes me your favorite cousin due to the fact that my sister is a slut and so you wouldn’t choose her over me.” Cindy tightened her arm around Virginia and squeezed once, then abruptly moved away. “C’mon, Ginny, admit it. You’re pregnant and that’s okay; you aren’t going to die like they used to do back in those old days that you think were so perfect. Women had a baby and dropped dead, some of ’em right in the middle of a push with that baby half in and half out. I’m telling you there’s nothing to be afraid of. I work in a medical clinic so I know these things. You’re pregnant and it’s okay. Your husband was married once before, got her pregnant and that’s okay, too.”
    “Cindy,” Virginia said. “I asked you never to mention that.”
    “I haven’t told anybody. I’m telling you. I don’t know what the big damn secret is anyway. I’ve been