Part of a short story written by Maxine Daley and posted by
Malibufats.
April 2007
THE OUTING OF A VIRGO
I hate, despise and loathe Virgos. They enjoy tormenting me and turning me into a card-carrying bitch.. It comes naturally to them. They just grate away, non-stop, om my nerves, without any idea of the damage they’re doing. My only defense is to steer clear, never to give them an easy shot. Lacking a restraining order, I have to be on alert for Virgos at all times.
To stay alert, I must concentrate. This is not as easy for me as it once was. My mind wanders, sometimes I know not where. And when this lapse occurs, it seems there’s always a Virgo waiting to pounce. This is how Beth came into my life.
We have a small Post Office in our neighborhood that I try desperately to avoid. But there I was standing in the conga-line-to-nowhere gripping a package to mail to my grandson for his birthday. The gift was more out of habit than affection. He’s eighteen now. I seldom see him, and never hear from him. Still I send along a sports shirt or a sweater each year because that’s what a grandmother is suppose to do. I was trying to remember what my grandson looked like when I realized, with a sudden uneasiness, that I had dropped my Virgo guard. My God, there was one standing right ahead of me! I didn’t even have to see her face. The wisp of her inoffensive cologne told me all I needed to know. Or maybe it was the delicate scent from her shampoo. On cue, she tilted her head and slowly fluffed her hand under one side of her hair. Yes, she was a Virgo. She had shampooed at least twice already, and the day was young. Her hair was as clean as yours on the day of your first bath as a baby.
With a slightest step to my right, I was able to examine her immaculate outfit. Her bright white shirt (which I’m sure she called a blouse) was flawlessly laundered and ironed to perfection. She had it buttoned all the way up to her neck, and there was a modest ruffle hiding teeny-weeny pearl buttons that prevented access to her adequate breasts. Her pleated skirt was full and flowing as if she had just finished a square dance. A dark blue belt cinched her waist without a hint of strain, and matched perfectly the color of her flats with the Cuban heels. The flats were highly polished. I could have bent forward and used them to put on my lipstick while staring at the shine. The total effect was more of a costume than an outfit, and it would not be a stretch to imagine her mother before her wearing something similar.
She was standing with her neatly shod feet so close together that her ankles touched. I didn’t know if this was an effort to minimize her butt, or to decrease the space she was taking up in the line, or to stifle any notion that soon she might have to pee. In her hand was a balled up hanky with coins inside, a trick she had been taught in a bygone era. I just knew that this morning at home she had counted out the correct change for the stamps she intended to buy and put it in the hanky. When the postal clerk called out “next” she pushed her shoulders back and crossed to the counter with a bouncy stride. I should have bolted for the door that very moment, but I’ll be damned if I was going to give up my place in line. That would have been stupid.
When she had finished, the clerk called “next” yet again. I hesitated because the Virgo was standing just to the side of the counter smiling back at me, making no effort to move on. I walked a wide path around her, but she remained fixed. When I approached her, she greeted me with, “Good Morning! Isn’t it a wonderful day?” She was like one of those flight attendants at the airport who pretends to welcome you at the plane’s open door, but who is really trying to decide if you’re going to blowup her airplane. I gave the Virgo a weak smile and placed my package on the counter with the address label up. This was a mistake.
“I see you live on Maple Street,” she said with delight, as she read over my shoulder. “Hello, I’m Beth. We’re almost neighbors. I live on Oak. It’s so nice to meet you.”
The Virgo had struck. I didn’t want to meet her, I didn’t want to know her name, and we were not neighbors. I didn’t even know where Oak Street is. One has to wonder how many hamlets in this country were so lame that they had to name their streets after trees. Beth stuck to my side as we both left the Post Office. She talked about absolutely nothing. We finally parted company but not before she gave me a sweet smile and urged me to “Have a nice day.” No chance of that. Beth had pierced my defenses, and it was going to make for a rotten day.
A couple of weeks went by and I had forgotten about Beth. I was inside my little house when I discovered yet another houseplant dying from my evil touch. With the poor wilted thing in hand, I went out the front door planning to toss it in the monster trash container I had rolled to the street earlier. With the next day being trash pickup day, it was necessary to put the container out a day early before the god-awful truck came at 6:00 A.M., rattling both my house and me awake. I called the trash container the city had given me “The Big Blue Tank.” Someday it’s going to rollover on top of me and that’ll be the end of it.
As I looked up, there was Beth, who seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Hello again, Grace,” she called. “I’ve been thinking of you, my dear, wanting to see you. How have you been?” A visit from a Virgo. How ominous can that be?
It just took a moment for Beth to grab the pot from my hand. She held it up to her face and examined it. She held the stem between her fingers as if she was taking its pulse. “You shouldn’t give up on this one,” she said. “Do you have a potting shed?” I laughed out loud. I’d get more use from an outhouse than a potting shed. So she suggested, “Perhaps we can take it to your kitchen sink.”
No way I wanted a Virgo in my house. She’d find a hundred things in there to criticize. But before I could say anything she was half way up the walk to the front door. I was left to shuffle along behind.
Beth did her work on my plant at the sink, and then searched through the house until she had found several other plants in pots that were on their “last legs.” This was her description, not mine. She brought them one by one to the kitchen where she preformed her magic act of bringing them back to life. She kept up a running commentary and issued instructions on what I must do from now on to keep them healthy. She was really wasting her breath, considering the hell the plants had been through..
After her lesson on indoor horticulture, Beth moved to my bookshelves. She grimaced upon seeing all the dust, as I knew she would. She didn’t actually touch any of the books, just leaned in to read the covers and sniff them for tobacco. She asked who Milan Kundera but was uncertain about Diderot. Then she had the nerve to ask, “Are these books just for show? What are you really reading?” I would have been offended, except she had caught me. In truth, I was reading “Jailhouse Madam” and “A Cast of Killers” the story of King Vidor’s hunt for the killer of Desmond Taylor years and years ago and one of the most boring, poorly written books ever committed to paper. Of course I didn’t reveal this to Beth. She wanted to know if I had read “Tuesdays with Morrie” and I told her I regretted wasting my time on it. Morrie should die after just three pages of that bowl of clabber referred to as a book. Being a Virgo, Beth knew what clabber is.
Finally she decided to leave, probably sensing that I was about to ask her to take a hike. When we stepped out on the front porch, the dreadful dog in the yard next door raced to the fence and went into its frenzy. I’m sure my nosey neighbor had let out her the snaggled toothed beast to harass us. She most likely hoped it would leap the fence and kill us both. The glassy-eyed mongrel barked in loud bursts, sounding like the intermittent firing of a large machine gun. I knew too well that this canine boom box could bark eight straight hours without taking a breath. Beth studied the dog for a few moments, and then started walking toward it. Virgos are rooted with an ability to show no fear. Goodbye, Beth, and good luck. When she reached the fence, she talked softly to the dog saying I don’t know what. It didn’t take long for the dog to stop barking. I held my breath when she reached her hand over the fence and petted the animal’s broad head. After Beth left, the dog did not bark for the rest of the day.
I was still in my robe and bunny slippers at 2:00 in the afternoon and here came Beth again. She had a newspaper tucked under one arm that had the ragged look of having been read one too many times. Without a greeting, she launched into the subject of the day: Paris Hilton. Beth was enraged over a letter to the editor of our local paper that called Paris an “evil woman.” Beth was the last person I’d expect to defend Hilton. To say I was amazed at her liberal attitude is an understatement. She was so upset her hands shook, and so hyper her eyes bounced around in her head like ping pong balls. She frantically flipped through the paper trying to find the piece she wanted me to read. A Virgo outraged by someone calling Paris Hilton “evil” was a sight to see.
I sat Beth down and made her a cup of tea. She finally became rational enough that we could discuss the letter to the editor with some objectivity. We reread the letter together. Basically, the woman who wrote it wanted Paris to be put in stocks and displayed on the Town Square with the word “Whore” burned into her forehead with a hot iron. I suggested that the writer could well be a bitch herself who was jealous of Paris. Beth agreed.
Then we talked about Paris Hilton. I’ve always wondered if Paris Hilton was conceived in the Paris Hilton, and that was the reason they gave her the name. Somehow the entertainment TV shows had overlooked this angle. But not much else. Never has anyone made so much out of absolutely nothing. I explained to Beth that Paris has no discernable talent that might be judged as admirable. Her so-called beauty comes only from the fact that she’s young. She doesn’t have a curve in her body that’s not manmade. And she’s certainly not bright. As unlikely as it might sound, all of these are reasons why Paris is so “popular.” And why she, with the name and money of Hilton, might just go on forever. How can you tear down someone who starts out being of no value, and then never gets any better?
Beth sat there, frozen, as I went for Paris’s throat. I told her Paris stole my 15 minutes of fame, and Beth’s 15 minutes of fame, and the 15 minutes of fame of almost every woman on the planet. And because of Paris Hilton and her posse of rehab nitwits, 5-year-old little girls are getting makeovers,
Beth was still speechless, her mouth forming a perfect “O.” I told her that was the last I wanted to hear from her about Paris Hilton.
Beth stayed away for over a month. Then one day she was back. When I opened my door, she pushed by me. I could tell she was on edge about something. When I asked her if she was okay, she gave me the pursed-lip look that Virgos often get and answered, “Of course, Grace.” She pointed to a satchel she had in her hand and declared she was there because it had come to her in the night that my hair was all wrong, and today was the day she was going to save me from myself. Beth guaranteed that when she was finished there would be no more dirty, stringy hair with split ends. I protested, but she wasn’t listening. Her chatter went on and on until the usual Virgo hogging of the oxygen won out.
She gave me a plastic container from her bag filled with what she described as “my own personal shampoo” and instructed me to go into my shower, shampoo twice, rinse thoroughly, towel dry, then report to the kitchen. When I finished, I had the same delicate smell that Beth had. I found that off-putting. When I returned to my kitchen, Beth had turned it into her own private hair salon workstation. She stood there in her beautician smock and declared herself ready to transform my hair into a state of beauty every woman in the neighborhood would envy.
Beth was right about one thing: My hair desperately needed attention. I had been meaning to get to it. Really. I was secretly happy she had taken on the job. When left to my own devices, there was no telling what I might do. Take my bangs… please. I might cut them off out of sheer whimsy. I was not to be trusted with bangs, even though they were doing the job of hiding the liver spots around my hairline, which was the whole point. I decided to let Beth have her way, but told her not to try anything fancy. I knew Virgos.
As she worked me over, we passed the time with “beauty-shop talk.” She wanted to know how much exercise I was getting. I admitted it was not enough. She thought my skin didn’t look like I’d been eating properly. She wanted to know what I had eaten for breakfast that morning. I lied. It didn’t dare tell her that I had three slices of buttered toast – two white, one brown with raisins – a cup of chocolate pudding, and a plate size coffee cake, along with two cups of coffee with cream and sugar. I had that much for breakfast because-- being a Libra I I liked the reading of the newspaper and eating of the food to come out even. It makes a lot of sense if you think about it.
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