met in her beauty shop. Roger never went to the grocery store, or shopping at all. He ordered his supplies from that taxidermy catalog. He could have met her when he was setting up his displays at the Big Kmart. People were all the time gathering around to watch. His wildcat display got a lot of attention, had even made the front page of the News-Journal. Roger had been so proud, had put one of those damn cat’s paws up on a blue-and-white basketball and gave its face that crazy UK Wildcat snarl. But it didn’t take long for those bible college kids to complain to the Big K manager. They let him leave a few fish over rods ’n’ reels, but his deer business had died back when he took the big mounts down.
Reader’s Digest ran an article about people like those private-college kids who went around bellyaching about fur coats and farming practices and hunting. Activists they called them. Virginia would like to tell some of those activists that around here you couldn’t go to a restaurant every night and have somebody else serve you a steak or some tenderloin all cooked and pretty on a plate so you wouldn’t have to feel guilty. Here most folks ate what they raised and hunted and fished for. Nobody she knew left a carcass in a field with only the antlers sliced off.
That same issue of Reader’s Digest had a story about depression. Virginia took the quiz and the results said she was “a likely candidate.” What good would that bit of information do her? The factory wouldn’t let her have sick leave for being crazy. No doctor around here would give her anything. They would tell her to buck up. They would tell her it was the change. Virginia knew it wasn’t the change. She wasn’t even forty yet. A woman had to be careful what she complained about or she was likely to end up on an operating table having her female parts out.
She didn’t feel depressed, more like she was ready to have a go-to-pieces. Maybe she would be like her mother and have to be carted off to Our Lady of Peace over in Danville where they took nervous breakdowns. When Virginia was little she had been embarrassed by her mother’s illness (which stopped when all the children left home). Everyone flocked around her mother, warning the smaller kids to be quiet, while Patsy and Virginia ran the house, took care of the kids, cooked for their father and the field hands. Their father even stopped drinking when Ruby had one of her spells. Clyde would drive over to Danville and come home with a running list and spend the rest of the day fixing drippy faucets and replacing weather stripping. Virginia now respected her mother’s strategy of checking out and checking back in when it suited.
Virginia had wanted to scream this morning when the kids were banging around upstairs, arguing. Patsy was sopping egg yolks with a biscuit and talking with her mouth full, but Virginia was thinking about slapping Will the day before. Instead of a boy’s smooth skin, her hand touched the prickly stubble of a young man, and that thought made her want to jerk open the junk drawer and root around for her hidden pack.
Once the kids had gone, Virginia wrapped up the leftover ham and biscuits and washed the dishes and skillet. She swept the floor and fed the dog and put in a load of laundry. She refilled her coffee mug and finally slouched into a chair at the table to pay a few bills while Patsy rattled on.
“You know how much I appreciate this, “Patsy said. “It’ll be a good chance for me and the kids to have some time together. You know family is so important.”
“I hope the kids see it that way. They probably think you’re here to spy on them.”
“What a thing to say.”
“Because you’re not, you know.”
“I’m not a busybody. I won’t run another one off for you.”
“You’re implying that I ran Roger off.”
“Not really, but he always loved you, so he must have left for some reason.”
Virginia slammed her mug on the table and a spot of coffee sloshed out. “I know you’ve always wanted to think of Roger a knight in shining armor, but that’s not the way things were.”
“All I’m saying is you could have done worse.”
“Comments like that make me want to scream. If we’re going to make this work, your living here with us, then you’re going to have to be a part of this family. This is my family now. Not Roger’s and not yours.”
Patsy’s eyes darted from Virginia, out the window and back again, as she summoned soap opera tears. “You don’t have to remind me that I don’t have children.”
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Virginia slid her car keys across the table. “Take the car. Go to the revival. I’m not working today.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I need to sleep. I’m tired.”
“I know what’s wrong with you—”
“No, you don’t. Now, do you want the car or not?”
Virginia waited on the back porch while her sister lumbered across the yard to the Impala that used to be a dark green. Patsy’s pocketbook dangled from her elbow. Her feet were stuffed into ugly black shoes, her hips heaved under a tent of floral dress. She scooted the seat completely forward so her feet would touch the pedals and then wedged herself behind the wheel. Neither woman waved as the car pulled away.
Now Virginia stood on the bath mat, careful not to drip on the tile. She leaned over to towel-dry her hair, and when she stood, she got a full-length view of her body in the mirror on the bathroom door. Everything from her neck down quivered. She stopped and then shook again. A slight, crazy giggle escaped her. She walked closer to the glass and pulled her dark hair up to check behind her ears for the gray hairs she knew were sprouting there. She noticed a little line at the edge of her left eye. Her twenty-year reunion was coming up. She’d have to cover that gray. Maybe everything wasn’t as firm as it used to be, but she was still well proportioned. Her clothes fit fine. Nobody could tell there was a little jiggle underneath. At least her green eyes would never age. Her eyes had always been her standout feature. She’d been the FFA sweetheart in high school and voted “Most Attractive” in her class two years in a row. There had been opportunities to cheat on Roger. Times when all she’d have had to do was give Ed Feathers at Houchens Grocery the right smile. And of course there were those men, like Emmett Hord, who tried to act like she didn’t exist, but she knew they were still drawn to her. The last time she stopped to pay her insurance bill, Emmett’s wife was playing receptionist. When he came around the corner and saw Virginia he was stunned for a second, a little tongue-tied. He shoved paper at his wife and hurried back down the hall. Virginia still had power over men, even if she could stand to fix up some.
She pulled on an old pajama bottom of Roger’s and a shirt, grabbed the wedding ring quilt off the bed, and on her way through the kitchen found her pack of cigarettes in the junk drawer. On the back porch, she took up in the rocking chair again, distracted by clouds battling with sunlight. In the distance, sunbeams crawled across a field before being eaten again by shadows. Sunshine during rain meant rain tomorrow. Some people said it meant the devil was beating his wife. At least that’s one thing Roger never did. He never raised his hand to Virginia or the kids. He even left the spanking to her.
Will spoke the truth when he said Roger would never come back while Patsy was here, but at the moment there wasn’t another option. Life was one big compromise. Even with three other people in the house, Virginia felt all alone. Like now, if Roger were here he might have some idea what to do with Shannon. She’d had the sex talk with her, but it hadn’t done any good. She kept saying, “I know, Momma. I know.” What her daughter didn’t know about men could fill Green River Lake.
Virginia had hoped that her daughter would develop slowly, be a late bloomer. Instead, Shannon’s body had filled out early and boys quickly took notice. Shannon had been promoted a grade in elementary school, a move that had helped make her academically on par with the other children but that had put her at a social disadvantage. A year younger than her classmates, Shannon would be the last to drive and the last to date. This understandably frustrated her, but there was nothing for Virginia to do but enforce rules to protect her. As she had expected, high school saw her daughter’s innocent, naïve ways rapidly vanish.
Virginia