Virginia dropped down onto the floor, her heart beating in her ears as if she were underwater. She felt submerged, her movements measured, her legs heavy. What was she looking for? What did she hope to find, to not find, in this woman’s house?
The louvered closet door screeched as she pushed it aside and there she saw what she came for. His frayed jeans with the torn pocket. Scarred hunting boots. Proof.
A metal tang came to her mouth—an angry taste she recognized. Her fingers itched to rake everything in the room into a shattered pile. She imagined the perfume bottles on the woman’s vanity, the hand mirror and brushes and combs in a grotesque dance on the hardwood. The cut-glass lamps and crystal ashtrays—one with Roger’s cigarette stubs, the other with her long skinny ones all crinkled down—she could sweep from the bedside tables with one swipe. She could find scissors and cut blouses and skinny little jeans to shreds. Bleach would ruin every carpet and drape and bed linen in the house.
She felt a stinging on her leg and turned in the vanity mirror to check where she had caught her pants. A right angle was neatly cut from the thin material and her skin underneath was abraded. She saw herself fully then—ruddy cheeks and dark hair in riotous curls around her shoulders. She didn’t like what she saw, this woman with a set jaw and hollow eyes.
She jerked suddenly, her attention focused down the narrow hall. Was that a car door thudding shut? Virginia reactively laid her hand to her heart. Its staccato throb under her fingertips threatened to burst through her bones. She crept to the kitchen, where she scanned outside through the kitchen sheers. Nothing in the carport. She peeked through dust-filmed windows in the front room. No truck on the gravel road beyond. She moved from window to window, checking every possible angle before she was satisfied that nobody had arrived. It was her imagination. She’d checked to be sure they were in town before she came.
She gave a little laugh then. Silly, she whispered. Why was she so jumpy? She’d thought this through. She knew what she was doing. Her car was hidden on the other side of the woods behind the house. There was a farm road that cut through fields to the next road over. She’d have to open and close a few cattle gates, but she could slip away and never have to drive back down the road in front of this house.
But even if she got caught breaking and entering, nobody would blame her. She’d never spend one night in jail, not with the way Roger was doing her. Did he think she was stupid? Didn’t he know how the town talked? How people were always primed for gossip?
At first, Virginia hadn’t realized anything was amiss. Then her sisters had come to her with what they’d heard at church, at the factory. Virginia chalked it all up to how much she and Roger fought. They didn’t make a big secret out of their intense marriage. But when she really paid attention, Virginia recognized that Roger’s absences had grown longer and more frequent. One night at supper, she’d watched his mind wander. He’d turned preoccupied, even when he was physically there.
Virginia hated to admit she missed Roger’s touch, but she did. She missed his hand on the small of her back when he kissed her in the morning. He’d grown to treat their infrequent contact as an obligation and then finally stopped all together. The past few months, he’d grown more distant from her and the kids. Her children didn’t seem to notice, but once Virginia realized something was wrong, she saw it in his mannerisms and inflections and even his appetite. What had been a sort of foreplay in their high-tension marriage now held no interest for him. He had changed. It was as if, after all these years, their roles were reversing.
Now her whole body ached for his weight against her. She regretted the times she’d pushed him away, imagined she was somewhere else when he reached for her. Now that his interest had shifted, it might be too late. He was getting his fantasies fulfilled elsewhere, from this whore nobody around here knew. So she was all painted up and teased and bleached. So she owned a beauty shop. Roger probably thought that was exotic. Maybe he was tired of a good woman who cooked his meals and took care of his home and children.
Maybe this woman reminded him of those whores in that movie Shampoo. Roger had insisted they make a special trip up to Louisville to see it. Three women were practically clawing the hair off Warren Beatty’s chest to have sex with him. If that was Roger’s fantasy, he could just dream on. In real life, things were definitely the other way around. Even after they’d been married a number of years, it was a constant source of tension between them. This movie was apparently another of Roger’s attempts to “spice things up.” He talked about that awful movie for days, pointing out things he found enticing, but it made Virginia feel dirty. Roger knew she couldn’t handle strange sex, and he knew why.
She turned her attention back to the woman’s house, to the kitchen, where she opened the refrigerator. There wasn’t much. Beer. A bottle of wine. Butter. Pickles. Old bread. There was a fast-food bag stuffed in the garbage under the sink. This woman didn’t cook. Virginia opened drawers and picked through mail on the counter. She didn’t think Roger had enough sense to forward his mail.
She opened and slammed cabinets. There were no Sports Afield among the Hair Styles and Beauty Salon magazines on the coffee table. She went through the bathroom cabinets and saw medicine for yeast infections and birth control pills and an old-fashioned silver razor. She went through the dresser and found leopard print and red lace. She slammed those drawers. She even looked under the bed, but she didn’t find the second thing she had come for.
A sign. Any sign that her husband intended to stay.
Virginia checked her watch. She’d been inside twenty minutes. She lowered the bedroom window and shut the closet door. In the kitchen, she locked the door handle and was ready to pull it closed behind her when she saw the photo. It was pinned to the side of the refrigerator with a magnet, nearly hidden by a newspaper clipping. She slid it out.
The shot was grainy and dark, probably taken at dusk. They were seated at the picnic table in the backyard. She was on his lap, kissing him on the cheek. He was laughing. His hands nearly encircled her tiny waist.
So this was it. They looked like a couple. They took photos. It wasn’t just sex. Somebody had snapped the photo, so at least one other person knew. Maybe that person had been talking. Spreading lies was what Virginia had thought. But it wasn’t a lie. She had known. Inside she had known or she wouldn’t be here.
She considered taking the photo as evidence; had actually put it in her pocket. But at the last moment, she balked. What good would it do? She would obsess over it, make herself sick with it. Plus, they might wonder where it went. Women know where things like a favorite photo live. She pinned the glossy paper back under the torn newsprint, checked that the handle locked, and pulled the kitchen door closed behind her.
Her vision was liquid. The cool of shadows brushed her shoulders as she moved beneath the heavy canopy of oaks and tulip poplars toward her car. Although vines tripped her up and logs blocked her way, she walked with purpose. She knew now. At least she had that much. She was no longer a fool. Now she knew.
2
Shannon found it peculiar that people said her daddy ran off, as if he just disappeared one night and nobody knew where he went. The truth was that Roger Lemmons moved only a few miles past the blacktop down their same road. All summer his car barreled past. He never stopped; but sometimes, if he saw her in the yard, he waved.
“It was like if he slowed down his old house might suck him right back in the front door,” Shannon told the guidance counselor.
“That’s rough.” Ratliff spent the first weeks of a new school year playing catch-up with students whose parents had separated during summer break.
Shannon shrugged. “It was hardest on Momma.” Cheerleader hopefuls were already practicing on the front lawn. They bounced and jerked, breasts heaving, ponytails whipping. Their mouths opened and closed in unison, but all she could hear was the hiss from the air conditioner in the window behind Ratliff’s head.
“How did she react?”
“She took the high road. Didn’t scream or cry or anything. Just watched him haul his