“The weeds have just about taken this old field,” Roger said as they rode home. The weeds had a thin dry smell. That night they had the same suppers they had had the night before, and afterward sat on the porch talking of light matters. Roger lectured her at length on cows and their ways. She slept well, and the next morning at the airport told Roger she would speak to Jim about the ranch. She stood at the flight gate blinking in the bright sun and clutching Davey and her purse and a diaper bag. She had left her sunglasses at the ranch and had been too embarrassed to ask Roger to go back for them.
“Bring old Davey back to see me before he gets too old to ride double,” he said, kissing her. He smelled dry, of the sun.
“I will, I promise,” she said, half blinded. “Please take care of yourself and learn to do something besides fry. I’m going to send you a cookbook.”
“Send her on,” he said. “Be nice to have something new to read.”
14
WHEN ELEANOR TOLD LUCY there would be a guest for the week, Lucy was immediately apprehensive. Only very occasionally were there guests, and the few who came were usually there on business of one kind or another. Eleanor had never liked bringing her friends to the ranch; there was nothing for them to do there. The three or four women she liked, and the three or four men, she preferred seeing in cities, preferably in the East, where they could shop together and where there were theaters and galleries and shows.
She had learned while in college that it didn’t work, bringing people to the ranch. They were fascinated by it and awed by its scale, and they expected to be given tours and treated as if they were on a dude ranch. They wanted to be taken riding, and to be allowed to watch the work. It made both Eleanor and her cowboys uneasy. Work on the Guthrie ranch had always been work—it was never sport. They had no show cattle, no race horses, no polo field. A few old family friends—doctors and lawyers mostly—were allowed to come and hunt, dove in the fall, quail and geese and duck in their seasons; but other hunters were warned away. The grand medieval hunts which the owners of the great South Texas ranches held seasonally for their hundreds of acquaintances did not appeal to Eleanor. She did not want to be mistress of a hunt. Her ranch was a great ranch, and that was enough.
For years Sonny had been the only regular guest, and he was too restless to stay anywhere for more than a week. Besides, he could join in the work if he chose. He seldom did, but he and the cowboys got on with one another and he was never a problem. When he came he came essentially to rest and eat and see her, and no one was made uncomfortable.
But Jim was a new name, and until she saw him Lucy was apprehensive. He might be a threat—some young man from Hollywood who would do Miss Eleanor harm. Lucy was a worrier, and it did no good to tell her that Jim was just a young man she was fond of. Fond was the word she used in speaking of him, and if it did not convince Lucy it was no wonder. It did not convince Eleanor, either. Lucy held a simple view of young men—they were out to get what they could, and get it free if possible. A young man, finding Eleanor miraculously without a husband, would be out to marry her. If he succeeded there would be no way he could lose. He would either get money or love or both. But the ways Miss Eleanor could lose were various. Lucy was the mother of seven boys—all tacitly assumed to be by her first and only husband, though he had not been seen in the vicinity of the ranch since World War II. She was a woman of position herself, and the wiles of the young were familiar to her.
For Eleanor the reverse was true. She had never known the young. The men she had known as a girl were invariably a decade older than herself, established men, of the sort her father thought might be good for her. She had had only two college romances, both short, for she had been very uncertain of herself and very puritanical—painfully so. Then there had been her marriage, and then Sonny. There were a few men, such as the broker in New York, who served as a contrast to Sonny. She liked them, but Sonny had no serious rival. She had no son and had observed only distantly and without much interest the sons of her few friends. She could see that some of them had a certain charm, but it was not a charm that drew her to them.
Thus, when she met Jim in Phoenix she thought him nice but no more. His image didn’t linger in her mind. When he appeared again in Amarillo she thought the same. He was appealing and, in his fondness for her, rather touching. When Sonny needled her about Jim’s crush, she shrugged, not much interested. The first thing out of the ordinary that she noticed about Jim was that he never ceased noticing her. He could not be with her without looking at her. She had often been the object of admiring glances, but after a while Jim’s admiration began to take on her in a way that was new. He looked at her constantly, and yet, she began to realize, he was blind to her. His vision of her was not her at all. It didn’t include her age—to him she was without age. It didn’t include Sonny, with whom she slept. To Jim she was a womanly ideal—beautiful and intelligent, rich in the flesh and rich in the spirit. When he left, on evenings when the three of them dined together, his eyes returned to her from the door, as if he were looking so as to be able to take her image with him and keep it for the night.
At first it irked her a little, his idealization. It made him seem childish and made her nervous. She found herself wanting to shake him loose from the image he had, or else shake the image until it became her. A time or two she dressed sloppily. Once or twice she said things which were coarse. But the vision refused to be dimmed. He made her sloppiness or her coarseness part of the womanly ideal. He wouldn’t see or hear anything that he didn’t want to see or hear. Eleanor began to understand why he had trouble with his wife. Adoration disconcerted her.
But by the time two weeks had passed it began to disconcert her less. She began to feel a little tender toward Jim, for thinking she was so much better and more beautiful than she actually was. And he made no demands, no unseemly displays of affection. It seemed to her admirable and quite touching that he could like her so much and want her so much and yet behave with restraint, so as not to risk making trouble with Sonny. She began, after a while, to be very sympathetic to him, sympathetic because of his loneliness and his marital troubles. For a few days, when his attentions had made her nervous, she was sympathetic to Patsy, but that changed. He was obviously a very nice, very considerate, very loving young man. A woman who would not recognize that and make much of it was obviously either a fool or a bitch or both.
Gradually she began to wish she were the woman Jim thought she was. At times, combing her hair, she wished it. At times, with Sonny, she wished it. Sonny did not think her ideal; he knew she was proud and gluttonous. He had no interest in changing her, or in marrying her. He would never make her better, nor she him. They could only get worse, more violent, more emotional, more sordid. There would be less and less tenderness, less and less grace, less and less consideration; a great deal of lessening awaited her with Sonny. He had been a continent, her continent, Sonny had. What she feared was that she had come to the end of him. What was left of it, that country where she had been alive? Phone calls, a few visits, some sex, many fights. The plains, the forests, and the valleys, those were behind her. There was just the coast, with a nice wave now and then to watch for, and the beach littered with beer cans and chewing gum wrappers.
Jim could not be a continent, but he was at least a clean beach, and perhaps the best she would find. It would be nice to entertain him, to let him discover her. And when he did perhaps she would not be the lonely mistress of a great ranch or the shrieking bitch she became with Sonny; perhaps she would be the woman Jim saw, someone gentle, someone with grace, someone to give him a kind of comfort his nervous young wife was never going to give him. She began to feel considerate of him and a little responsible for him. It was a pleasing thing, to be suddenly guardian of the confidence of a young man. She began to feel an urge to teach him, to lecture him, to show him things.
Even so, as much as she had begun to like Jim, it would not normally have occurred to her to ask him to the ranch. Instead
she had asked Sonny. There was to be a free week, while the production shifted to L.A., and she had supposed Sonny would spend most of it with her. Except for a fight or two they had gotten on well while she was in Amarillo. Sonny had more or less agreed to drive her home and spend three or four days. It was agreed upon for a week, and then, for no reason but restlessness, Sonny changed his mind. There was a rodeo in Flagstaff, and Highway Sixty-six ran right from Amarillo to Flagstaff to L.A. Eleanor was not overly surprised when he told her he was going to the rodeo, but she was furious anyway.
“Why go, damn it?” she asked. “You can’t ride until the movie is finished. You’ve been to thousands of rodeos. What’s so important about this one?”
“It ain’t especially important,” he said. “I just feel like going.”
“Thanks,” she said, crying a few angry tears. “It’s always nice to be reminded how little I mean to you. It restores my perspective, for what that’s worth.”
“What are you bitchin’ about? You been here three weeks.” He was lying on her bed reading a rodeo newspaper.
“Oh, boy, keep on,” she said. “You’re in rare form. Three weeks. That’s how long it takes you to get enough of me, is it? A year or two more and it’ll drop to two weeks, or one week, or just long enough to screw.”
In a fit of fury she snatched the newspaper out of his hand and flung it at the wastebasket. Sonny was mildly amused.
“Hard to resist the highway when I get an itch to go,” he said.
“Fine. Don’t resist it. Go on. I too can have itches that are hard to resist.” She sat down at the dressing table, put on her shoes, and began to comb her hair.
“Going somewhere to scratch one?” he asked, grinning at her arrogantly. He knew she wasn’t.
“No, I’m going to see Joe Percy. I’ve neglected him this whole visit. Maybe you can find a rodeo to go to tonight. Make it in North Dakota, if possible.”
But her visit to Joe was brief. Eleanor was on edge, fearful that he might make a pass. Joe realized it and did nothing of the sort, but the edge remained. He fixed her a drink and they chatted and she looked about restlessly, so much so that he finally suggested they take a walk. The suggestion was so ludicrous that it restored her calm.
“A walk. Where?”
“I’ve discovered a back street,” he said. “It runs behind the motel. It’s possible to walk on it without getting run over. When do you suppose they’re going to introduce sidewalks to Texas?”
So they actually went for a walk on the graveled street behind the motel. Dogs barked at them from yards, and the sky was pale with starlight. Eleanor began to feel comfortable again.
“I have no intention of letting that one-night stand spoil our friendship,” Joe said. “In case you were worrying.”
“Forgive me,” she said. “I used you to get over a very bad mood. Why do you put up with me?”
He shrugged. “We could get snakebit on this road,” he said.
He seemed to sink briefly into a bad mood of his own, but as they were standing on the motel sidewalk, waiting for her taxi, he cheered up again. For a minute she considered asking him to the ranch but decided against it. Los Angeles was the place to see him—his house was there. When she got back to the hotel Sonny was on the bed where she had left him, watching a Joel McCrea movie on TV.
The next day Jim announced that his wife was coming for the weekend, and Eleanor’s mood dipped badly. It was an irrational dip, for Jim seemed nothing but depressed at the thought of the visit. Sonny was not depressed though, and his attitude depressed her. She found she still resented Patsy. It was at such times that she hated the play and counterplay of desire, and would have agreed with Lucy that it was better to be done with it all, to be safe, serene, only interested in magazines and in the ranch. Unfortunately she was not serene. The weekend would be a tangle of emotion, most of it bad. She did not want to compete with a young wife for her husband’s attention, nor did she want a young wife competing with her for Sonny’s. When it occurred to her that she did not have to stay, it was a great relief. Immediately she remembered the ranch, and missed it, and was eager to be out of the hotel and out of Amarillo, back to her own balcony. If Sonny wanted a drive to Flagstaff, let him have it.
When she told Jim she was going he was very obviously disappointed.
“Gee, I’ll miss you,” he said wistfully. “There’s no telling when I’ll see you again.”
His tone touched her. She was not accustomed to being missed. Sonny never seemed to miss her, or at least never admitted it if he did. Jim sounded as if he really would not know what to do without her.
“You’ll hardly have time. You have to go to California next week.”
“Sometime next week. I don’t know exactly when.”
It would be nice to sit on her patio with him and talk. He was looking very droopy and he looked much better when he was cheerful; then he was boyish and attractive. And she always felt awful after leaving Sonny, as if for a day or two her blood had stopped moving. She could do nothing and enjoy nothing and was nervous and irritable. She swung the sash of her dress thoughtfully. Jim was not the sort of person to put the cowhands off. He was too quiet. Effusive women and loud-mouthed men put the cowhands off.
“You might visit me for a day or two, if you’re at loose ends,” she said. “I’d like you to see my house.”
He was no good at hiding delight, and it was pleasant to see his face change. “Gosh, I’d love to,” he said. Then he looked confused for a moment, as if he were afraid she would ask him to bring his wife and baby; but when he realized she had no such intention he became very happy and animated, livelier than she had even seen him. He even persuaded her to come to the motel and swim. She liked the water, but she waited until evening, when most of the crew was gone.
Later that evening she had second thoughts about the invitation. Sonny had been at the motel, and had brought her home after the swim. They were arguing about whether to eat out or eat in, while her hair dried. Somehow, seeing Jim out in the open, and not at dinner or with Sonny, had put the whole business in a different light. In that light he looked more of a boy, and his admiration had embarrassed her a little. She had been glad when Sonny had strolled up and taken charge of her. She had more or less forgiven him his decision to go to Flagstaff and they were arguing on good terms, so she told him about inviting Jim to the ranch and told him she had second thoughts about it.
“Uninvite him,” he said. “It’s your ranch.”
“Yes, but it would crush him. I suppose there’s really no problem. Maybe Lucy will like him. What’s a day or two.”
“A long time to be bored,” he said. “Pore Jim. Nobody wants him.”
Hearing him dismissed piqued her a little. “Don’t run him down,” she said, opening a jar of hand cream. “He’s quite wantable. I don’t know what bothers me about him.”
Sonny came up behind her, bent over, and enveloped her in his arms, nuzzling and swaying her from side to side. She got hand cream on his forearms when she grabbed them. They looked at themselves in the mirror, both amused.
“Probably too young for you,” he said. “Ain’t much sport to be had with kids.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. I thought young women were second only to bulls in your affections.”
She had meant to leave before Patsy came, but in the end decided to stay another day. She felt too good to do any of the things that leaving involved and instead of packing spent the morning in bed reading. When Jim spirited Patsy away, she was just as glad. Sonny deposited her at her airplane at dawn the next morning. She felt better about him and about herself than she had in a long while.
“I’ll see you when I get done in Hollywood,” he said. “Maybe we’ll go to May-hi-co this fall.”
“Okay,” she said. “Have fun in Flagstaff.”
She stood by the plane trying to chat with her pilot but in reality watching the white hearse streak back down the highway toward Amarillo. It was so
on lost in the morning grayness. She saw the sunrise light the whole Texas plain, but the sight didn’t touch her. That night she called Sonny and he was not in, and what had seemed simple in Amarillo became a confusion in her breast. It had always been that way, as soon as they lost sight of each other. She remembered him well enough, but memory never brought her contentment.
Jim came on Monday, and it seemed to Eleanor that his mere arrival caused a demon to seize her. All weekend she had fretted about Sonny; she had come a dozen times to the old conclusions that she had been coming to for years: that they were bad for each other, that she would never have him like she wanted him, that he would trifle with her forever. If she were wise she would break it off. If she were even reasonably sensible she would break it off. Or, if she could not be either wise or sensible, she ought to move in the other direction, take a wild gamble and marry him. He would marry her, if only for the hell of it, or to be able to say he had. Or for the sense of triumph it would give him, or for the ranch, or because she really did have more that he liked than any other woman. She had always known that: Their peak was not an age, but each other. If that were not the case some other woman would have risen from among his anonymous seductions and made herself visible; and in many years none had. So she fretted, and missed him, and wondered if she ought to go back, ought to make some gesture. All she did was call, and he was never in.
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