Moving On

by Larry McMurtry

  “Patsy,” he said.

  It was very nice that he used her name. Even though she was hurt and angry, it was nice. Jim had taken to calling her “you.” He had called her “you” for years, it seemed to her.

  “What?”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “Why should I be? It’s only natural that you would prefer the company of your intellectual peers. I’m just a girl who reads Mc-Call’s. I feel very inferior, and you did it to me.”

  “It was accidental,” he said. “You’re certainly not inferior to her.”

  “I’ll thank you not to compare us,” she said stiffly. “I’m sure you know her well enough to speak with authority about her, but you don’t know me.”

  She turned and walked to the park and Hank walked with her, not asking her permission. She cried a little but the wind quickly dried her tears. When they got to the park she felt very strange, confused, and agitated but also absurdly warmed by the fact that he had followed. He seemed very depressed, as if he feared that he had spoiled their friendship.

  “I apologize,” she said. “You really are going to be late. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I interrupted you in the midst of your bowl of chili and made you late for your seminar. Do go on.”

  “I’m sorry I teased you,” he said. “You’re all full of emotion.”

  Patsy didn’t know what to say to that and stood watching his face, hoping he would tell her what he meant by it. He had said it in a tone of surprise, as if the fact that she was full of emotion made her unique in some way. He was looking at her face too. Both of them felt that there was something explanatory that ought to be said, but neither could think what. Patsy felt suspended, immovable, very at the mercy of the moment. All she could think of to do was stand and watch Hank watch her.

  “Anyhow, I’m sorry,” he said finally, as if he could not quite remember what he was apologizing for. He sighed and said he had to go and started off in a leisurely jog, so leisurely that she felt she could sit on the park bench and watch him jog through most of the afternoon. She looked and he was there, and looked and he was still there. The third time she looked he was gone. The whole park was quite empty. She wandered over to the swings. Falling leaves were blowing and a cloud had covered the sun. The park, in its wintry grayness, reminded her of the brown park in Cheyenne. “I’m always having adventures in parks,” she said to herself. Increasingly since her pregnancy had advanced, she was prone to uttering statements into the air. She was sure that when her baby came she would say such things to it—one thing she felt sure of was that the baby would be a baby she could talk to.

  She sat in a swing and swung, thinking of Hank, who was somewhere in the tree-hidden buildings of Rice. Nothing had really happened, and yet she felt as if something had. There was the bump that had almost turned into a kiss—she was sure he had wanted to kiss her. There was his hand pulling her across the street, then the silly argument, then the mean thing he had said. In the park he had looked so confused that she hadn’t known whether to walk away from him or not. Images flickered through her head like frames from a movie, but a movie with no plot. She swung while they flickered, lifting her legs, happy that her ankles were still neat ankles, pregnancy or no. In the midst of swinging she decided that she had wanted to be kissed, and the thought didn’t bother her. But how could he have wanted to kiss her—she was too pregnant. She thought about it some more and decided she really had no idea what he might have wanted. It would be nice if Emma happened by, but it was Teddy’s nap time and there was little chance that she would.

  She bent her head, arms locked around the chains of the swing, and watched the gentle movement of the ground beneath her. When she looked up she discovered that she was no longer alone. Lee Duffin stood on the sidewalk a few yards away looking at her. She had on sneakers, white socks, gray slacks, and a trench coat, all drab enough, but Lee had managed to turn all the drabness to good effect with a wonderful blue driving cap, sharply peaked and perfect with her short hair.

  “Hello,” she said. “You’re Patsy, aren’t you? Mind if I swing too? The truth is I’m bored to desperation.”

  She took the swing next to Patsy’s and began to swing lightly, pointing her toes in the air but not trying to make the swing go very high. She wore no makeup, and her face was not as Patsy had remembered it; her character seemed not so definite as it had the night of the party. She looked both older and younger. Without the marvelous cap she would have looked quite ordinary, Patsy decided; but she was to learn that Lee Duffin always had a marvelous cap, or the equivalent of one. She never looked quite ordinary.

  “I envy you that baby you’re going to have,” Lee said. “They’re a great out. Even the ability to have them is a great out.”

  She dipped a toe into the sand and dragged it, slowing the swing. “I’m tied off,” she said quietly. “Bill willed it that way. After three girls he decided the odds were against him getting a son out of me and the thought of endless girls was not to his liking. I’ve been tied off ever since they learned how to tie you off.”

  “Where are the girls?”

  “Schools. They all left last night, going back. Bill isn’t home from the MLA yet. I guess that’s why I’m so mopy. I always get blue when the girls go.”

  Patsy’s sympathies were near the surface. She saw Lee Duffin in a new light and felt sorry for her. She was not the ultimate sophisticate she had seemed; she was just a lonely woman. Lee got up from the swing and turned restlessly, looking into the wind.

  “Why don’t you walk down to the house with me for a bit?” she said. “I’ll make us some tea and show you some pictures of my girls.”

  “All right,” Patsy said. She was a little tired and would rather have gone home, but Lee seemed nice and she was curious to see the Duffin house without the distractions of a party. They walked along silently and when they got there Lee went immediately to make the tea and Patsy had a very nice time wandering about the large living room and den looking at the pictures, the chairs, and the books. The living room had high windows and the afternoon light came through them and seemed warmer on the books, the fireplace, the couch, and the blue Mexican rug than it had seemed outside. “I love your rug,” she said when Lee came in with a tea tray and some rye crackers.

  “There were a couple of lucky years when we summered in Mexico,” Lee said. “It came from San Miguel.”

  Lee moved her chair slightly so as to catch the occasional ray of sun and looked at Patsy through the smoke that rose from her teacup. Patsy was restful, slightly drowsy, quite relaxed. She fiddled idly with her hair and rested her feet on a stool Lee had provided.

  “I’m glad we’re going to Connecticut this summer,” Lee said. “If we weren’t you’d probably have some trouble with Bill.”

  Patsy was startled. She had forgotten for the moment that she had ever had trouble with Bill. Lee seemed neither hostile nor desperate—she was just quietly depressed.

  “Does he proposition people just for a joke?” Patsy asked. “I can’t quite figure him, frankly.”

  Lee was silent for a moment and Patsy became embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to be too frank,” she said.

  “You couldn’t be,” Lee said. “Not with me. I’m at a point in my life where I don’t care ever to beat around another goddamn bush. That’s all I did for fifteen years, while Bill was on the rise. Now I couldn’t care less who knows what I think.” A throb of anger had come into her voice, and she was pressing a fingernail into the flesh of her thumb. “No, he doesn’t proposition people for a joke. He’s too well organized for simple flirtation. When he propositions somebody he usually means it.”

  Patsy didn’t know what to say. She had never been in such a conversation. “I don’t understand it very well,” she said.

  Lee set her teacup on the table and hugged her knees. “You said that,” she said. “Lucky you. I understand it so goddamn well that practically the only thing left to do is cut my throat. If I weren’t a coward I
would cut my throat. It’s awful to be trapped and a coward.”

  There was a quality in her voice that frightened Patsy terribly. She spoke of cutting her throat as matter-of-factly as she had spoken of the blue rug. Her face had become pinched and pained, as if she were having a waking nightmare.

  “But this is so nice,” Patsy said, meaning the lovely room.

  “Yes,” Lee said. “I love this room in the afternoon. But it isn’t always the afternoon.” She stood up, got herself a cigarette, and lit it.

  “Bill and I have been married twenty-one years,” she said. “The way it’s worked out is that I still love him and he doesn’t give a damn about me. I’m sure it works out that way for a lot of people who have been married that long, but I’m really only interested in how it’s worked out for me. He likes to have me around to cook his breakfast and do the normal wifely stuff, but that’s it. He doesn’t need me as a woman. If he doesn’t think I’m worth screwing I get to where I agree with him. It’s got so about the only times he thinks I’m worth screwing is when somebody else is screwing me, or trying to. I used to be quite a piece, I guess. All his colleagues were hot for me and we worked it out pretty well, but here I am forty-four and those of his colleagues who go in for that sort of thing have got to the age of screwing graduate students, or undergraduates if they’ve got the guts. Lately none of his faculty pals have wanted to be bothered with an aging damosel like me—maybe they don’t think I’m worth screwing, either. I can’t tell. All I know is that nobody’s made a pass at me since we moved here, including Bill. Once in a while I make a successful pass at him, but it gets to be humiliating, having to seduce your own husband. It’s particularly humiliating with a bastard like Bill, who seduces hard. If I didn’t love him it wouldn’t be such a trap, but I seem to love him. I guess I’m a masochist. Usually when we get to this stage he starts bringing home queers. Nice ones, but it makes my predicament even worse, because I scare them to death. It really only leaves me graduate students. I took my first student lover in Michigan, four years ago, and it got Bill and I going again, for a little while. So here we are in Houston, which seems to be a wretched town for men, or anything else, as far as that goes. What am I going to do to survive here? I don’t want to cut my throat, so I’ll have to take another graduate lover, most likely. Maybe the lucky victim will be your husband—Bill’s certainly grooming him for me. Sooner or later you two will get in a slump or something and I’ll probably strike. He’ll like me. I could make him awfully pleased with himself. I’m very good at that, and you probably aren’t. Then Bill will get awfully pleased with me and we’ll have some fine times and you’ll get sad and confused and miserable because you won’t have anyone and Jim will have quit screwing you, and one day when you’re all sad and vulnerable my rapacious husband will leapfrog right from my bed to yours and screw you about nine times before you know what’s hit you. He’s a master at such leaps. He’ll wait until just before we’re ready to go away, and as soon as he’s got the maximum mileage out of your confusion we’ll be gone and you and Jim can muddle along for a year or two and get divorced and Bill and I will be off somewhere doing it all over again. I suppose it will work until I’m about fifty. I’m that well preserved.”

  And she sat down again, perfectly composed, as if delivering the prophecy had freed her in some way. She clasped her graceful hands on her graceful knees and looked at Patsy shrewdly and not unkindly.

  “Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked.

  Patsy had taken her feet off the stool. She was staring at Lee. She felt herself begin to tremble and couldn’t stop it. No one had ever spoken so to her.

  “I don’t know what I think,” she said. “I wouldn’t be so scared if I did. You can’t go around doing things like that.”

  “Why not? We have done things like that. Nothing is likely to stop us from doing them again. I don’t want to, particularly. I’m not naturally predatory. I’ve really had to push myself to do what little preying I’ve done. Bill’s the natural predator, I guess, and since I’m stuck with him I’ve got to survive somehow.”

  “But you can leave him,” Patsy said. “If he’s that kind of monster why don’t you leave him?” She was trembling noticeably.

  “Oh, stop shaking,” Lee said, pouring her some more tea. “Maybe it won’t happen. I’ve given you warning, maybe you can thwart our evil designs.”

  “But why don’t you leave him?” Patsy insisted.

  Lee sighed and gave her a long look. “You could be my oldest daughter,” she said. “She knows a bit about her father and me and she asks the same thing. I was going to show you some pictures, wasn’t I?” To Patsy’s astonishment she went off to the bedroom and came back with some color snapshots of the three girls, all of whom were tall like their father and thin like Lee. All were pretty, with long dark hair.

  Lee sat down and rubbed her eyelids with her forefingers, as if she were very tired.

  “Do leave him,” Patsy said. “It’s your only hope.”

  Lee snorted. “Don’t go presuming to tell me what my only hope is,” she said. “For all you know, your husband might be my only hope.”

  “But why stay?”

  “Because I’m scared to leave. Twenty-one years is a long time. I’d never really get free, and besides it’s just scary, unless you have a bird in the bush. I don’t know what kind of bird I could find at my age. We don’t have any dough, either. We live well and Bill buys lots of books, but the girls cost a lot to educate and we never have any ready money. I’d have to go to work and I don’t want to. I worked for years and I want leisure now, even if just to be bored.

  “I don’t have enough guts to leave,” she added. “I only have guts enough to play around now and then, when I can find someone young and nice.”

  Patsy stood up. She had been about to get calm, but at the thought of Jim and Lee her agitation returned and she wanted very badly to be away. “You better leave us alone,” she said. “I’d have to be put in a cage before I’d come in this house again.” And to her great annoyance she began to cry. She wanted very badly to be strong and stony, but instead she cried.

  Lee got her some Kleenex. “You’re a little like Melissa,” she said. “She’s our oldest. It’s too bad you couldn’t have met them. You might like me better if you had. At least I’m a good mom, I think.”

  Patsy whirled around, very distressed. Everything was so confusing. The girls had looked intelligent and happy in their pictures, and the woman who had raised them stood before her talking of seducing Jim. She moved toward the door, still crying.

  “I’m sorry,” Lee said. “I really didn’t set out to spoil your afternoon.” Patsy turned to look at her, too confused to answer.

  “Sometimes I hate this fucking life,” Lee said sadly. Patsy stood with her back to the door, tears dripping off her cheeks. “Come on, honey. Wipe your face. It’s not so bad.”

  “It is bad!” Patsy said, bursting out. “I’d run away to China before I’d get involved in anything like that.”

  Lee sighed. “It was a mistake for me to say those things to you,” she said. “I know too much more than you know for us to be really able to talk.”

  “I don’t like that!” Patsy said, feeling suddenly vengeful and hateful. “You didn’t say anything so smart. All you did was point out what a crud your husband is. I started out feeling sorry for you but I don’t feel sorry for you any more.”

  “I should hope you don’t,” Lee said hotly. “Never feel sorry for a woman—we bloody well get what we deserve. By the same token I won’t need to feel sorry for you when your husband comes dawdling around.”

  “He never will!” Patsy said furiously. “He’ll never sleep with you. Why would he?” And she drew herself up in anger.

  The moment she found her dignity and hit back, all Lee’s dignity left her. She stood looking at the floor, not answering Patsy’s question. She compressed her lips very tightly for a second, as if to hold in all words, all emotions, all hurts
, and then to Patsy’s consternation she began to settle to the floor weeping. She didn’t fall, but she let herself fold downward until she was sitting hunched over on the hard floor sobbing and squeezing her hands into fists. Patsy was stunned. She didn’t know what to do. Lee kept bending over until her forehead almost touched the floor, sobbing loudly. Then suddenly she looked up, choking but trying to talk. “Go away, you bitch,” she said. “Why did you want to hurt me this way? What am I that everybody wants to hurt me . . . always wants to hurt me.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Patsy said, her anger gone. She could hardly believe that the woman who had been so proud and so possessed a few minutes before had suddenly become the abject woman on the floor. “Please get up,” she said. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me,” Lee said, sniffing and calming a bit. “You couldn’t hurt me. I hurt myself. You’re not smart enough to hurt me. Just get out of here and stay away from my husband.”

  Suddenly she got up, strode past Patsy out the door, and stood on her front porch wiping her face with her hands and looking far up into a big elm tree that stood in the yard.

  Patsy decided there was nothing to do but leave. She went timidly past Lee, down the steps.

  “I’m sorry again,” Lee said. “I’m the one to blame, but you needn’t come back here any more. I don’t know why you’d want to. I hope you manage to keep your principles polished. With a face like yours it’s going to take a lot of polish.”

  “You either cry or you say awful things to me,” Patsy said.

  “No, I’m going to rake some leaves. I only have fits once or twice a year, and you’re not enough of a threat to make me have a real fit.”

  She gave Patsy one flat glance and then turned and walked up her driveway. Patsy walked home and lay on her bed for three hours, waves of agitation sweeping through her. They didn’t completely subside for two days. Lee had somehow had the last word. Dozens of comebacks occurred to her as she lay on her bed, and it irked her terribly that she would never get to make them.