Terms of Endearment

by Larry McMurtry

  Just as they drove past, the General put his binoculars to his eyes and started to focus them on Aurora Greenway’s house. Patsy was so disconcerted at the sight that she didn’t know whether to speed up or slow down.

  “That’s creepy,” she said. “If I were your mother I wouldn’t go out with him anymore.”

  “Look at that car,” Emma said, pointing at the long white Lincoln. “No wonder Momma hit it.”

  Patsy parked behind it and they got out and looked in the windows. “How can you talk on two telephones and drive?” Emma asked. They looked up the street and saw that General Scott was still planted on the sidewalk, the binoculars pointed straight at them.

  “The nerve of him,” Patsy said. “Let’s do something risqué while he’s watching.”

  “Okay,” Emma said. “I think he deserves something for his persistence.”

  Both girls lifted their skirts and did a rapid sideways dance up the driveway. They danced faster and faster and lifted their skirts higher and higher, finishing with a can-can kick just before they ran in the side door. Both were giggling when they burst into the kitchen.

  Aurora and Rosie and Vernon—much smaller and more red-faced than the girls had expected him to be—were sitting at the kitchen table feasting on an array of curried eggs and sausages, with honeydew melons on the side. A small brown and white goat wandered around the kitchen, bleating plaintively.

  “Oh, I want that goat,” Patsy said. “It just matches my dress.”

  Vernon popped to his feet immediately. Aurora merely raised an eyebrow at Patsy and went on dishing up sausages.

  “That’s you, as usual, Patsy,” she said. “You invariably want whatever I have. Vernon Dalhart, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Emma Horton, and her friend Miss Patsy Clark.”

  The phone rang just as Vernon was shaking hands. Rosie got it.” ‘Lo, General,” she said. “You been banished, you know.”

  “The nerve of such a man,” Aurora said. “You girls sit down and eat. I was feeling rather Asian this morning so I resorted to curried eggs.”

  “Mr. Dalhart, that’s the most charming goat I’ve ever seen,” Patsy said, helping herself to the eggs.

  “Sit back down, Vernon,” Aurora said. “No need to stand on formality with these girls. Their manners are not all a person of our generation might expect.”

  Rosie was apparently getting an earful from the General. She had her mouth opened to speak, but had not been able to get in a word and finally closed it. “You better talk to him a minute,” she said, handing the phone to Aurora. “I think he’s gone bee-serk. He says the girls walked up the driveway naked, or something.”

  “I knew he wouldn’t let bygones be bygones,” Aurora said, covering the phone with her hand.

  “Hector, I think I recall rescinding your privileges,” she said, uncovering it. “If you must remonstrate with me, be brief. I have a number of guests and we’re right in the middle of breakfast.

  “It won’t get you anywhere either,” she added.

  “Look at my knot,” Rosie said, leaning over and pulling back her hair so the girls could see. She had a sizable lump on her temple.

  Across the table, Aurora’s eyes had begun to flash. They flashed in silence for a few moments, and then she took the receiver away from her mouth. General Scott’s scratchy voice could be plainly heard.

  “He seems to think you two young ladies exposed yourself indecently,” she said, looking at them coolly. “What substance is there to that?”

  “Oh, well, he was out there with his binoculars,” Patsy said. “We did a little dance.”

  “Let’s show her,” Emma said, and they got up and did their dance again, or did it until they noticed that Vernon was blushing. They omitted the can-can kick. Aurora watched them without expression and turned her attention back to the phone.

  “Their dance was hardly as scandalous as you make it sound, Hector,” she said. “I’ve just seen it. We’ve had quite enough of you and your binoculars up at this end of the street.”

  She was about to hang up, but the General said something that evidently caused her to change her mind. She listened for a moment, and the cheerful devil-may-care expression left her face. She looked over everyone’s head, evidently somewhat concerned.

  “Hector, there’s no point,” she said. “I’m in the midst of a crowd. There’s really no point. Goodbye now.”

  She glanced at Vernon and then looked down at her eggs. After a moment she straightened up and resumed her cheerful manner. “Well, nobody’s all bad,” she said.

  “These eggs are wonderful,” Patsy said.

  “Lookit, he almost made her cry,” Rosie whispered to Emma. “I never knowed her to enjoy losin’ a beau, did you?”

  “What business are you in, Mr. Dalhart?” Emma asked, to change the subject.

  “I guess the oil business,” Vernon said. “That’s what keeps me run ragged leastways.”

  “Vernon has locutions that go right back to Appalachia, if not to the Scots ballads,” Aurora said, forcing herself to speak crisply. She would not have thought Hector Scott could affect her so.

  “Are you one of the giants of the oil industry?” Patsy asked Vernon. “I’ve heard that the real giants go about incognito.”

  “What a naive question,” Aurora said. “If Vernon were a giant of anything he wouldn’t be having breakfast with me at this hour of the day. Giants don’t waste their time.”

  “Naw, I ain’t a giant of nothin’,” Vernon added.

  Emma watched him closely. She was always surprised by any sign of versatility in her mother, and Vernon was such a sign. He looked more suitable to Rosie than to her mother, though actually he didn’t look suitable to anybody. The little goat wandered over to her, bleating, and she gave it a piece of rind off her melon.

  “You girls haven’t told me what brings you out so early,” Aurora said. “Are you off to do social work perhaps?”

  “Ha,” Patsy said. “We’re off to go shopping.”

  The breakfast went on and the talk veered this way and that. As soon as it was polite Patsy left the table and wandered off to snoop. It was very irritating to her that Mrs. Greenway had such good taste.

  Rosie commenced trying to get the dishes off the table, no easy task with Aurora still there. Everyone else yielded theirs up, but she kept hers and continued to find tidbits on various platters, little bites that her guests had overlooked. Vernon sat and watched as if he had never seen a woman eat before.

  “She’ll eat all day if you don’t keep after her,” Rosie said. Emma scraped the plates and drew Rosie off to the patio as soon as she could to hear about the trouble with Royce. They passed Patsy, who was in the downstairs study poring over a Viking amulet that Aurora had picked up in Stockholm.

  “I never find things like this or I’d buy them,” Patsy said.

  “Did you ever wake up and feel like you was stranglin’?” Rosie asked.

  “Not really,” Emma said.

  “I never either, until last night,” Rosie said, a pinched look on her freckled face. “I guess I went home too quick. Your momma tried to stop me, but I guess I figured if I was gonna go home at all I better get with it.”

  “Was Royce mad at you?” Emma asked.

  “Aw, no, he was happy as a lark, all six minutes that he stayed awake,” Rosie said bitterly. “Beat me over the head yesterday and told me about his carryin’ on an’ all, an’ then just because Vernon was nice enough to offer him a new job he thought it was all settled an’ forgotten. I don’t know why I even let Vernon send him home. There I went home—to do my best to forgive him—an’ the sonofabitch never even stayed awake long enough to rub my back.”

  “Aw,” Emma said. “Want me to rub it?”

  “Would you?” Rosie said, turning around immediately. “You was always the best child. At least the best one I knowed. Rub hard. I been tight as a wire for two weeks now. I guess I must have knowed it was coming on.”

  “I don’t
understand,” Emma said. “Royce has always seemed so docile. I wouldn’t have thought he would dare do anything to make you mad.”

  “Maybe he finally seen through me,” Rosie said. “Maybe he finally realized I ain’t as mean as I sound.”

  They paused to think about it, and Emma kneaded her thin, hard back.

  “You didn’t tell me about the strangling feeling,” Emma said.

  “Just came on me,” Rosie said. “Royce wasn’t hog drunk, but he wasn’t sober neither. I had some things I needed to talk to him about, but he flopped down an’ went right off to sleep like nothin’ had happened. I got in bed an’ turned off the light an’ first thing I knowed I was shakin’ like a leaf. I couldn’t get him an’ that slut off my mind. I ain’t an angel of the lord or nothin’, but at least I been a good wife an’ done most of the child raisin’ an’ all. But then I ain’t been too accommodating to Royce lately, if you know what I mean—sometimes I am but most times I ain’t. Anyway, the more I thought about it the more I got to feelin’ it was my fault and not his, so I cried over that for a while, and Royce just kept laying there, snoring and snoring, and I finally started getting this choking feeling, like my throat closed up.”

  She put a hand to her throat, remembering, and reached around with her other hand and pointed to a spot below her shoulder blade that was particularly sore.

  “It ain’t that Royce is bad so much,” she said. “It’s just that he ain’t that good, and I ain’t either, you know, and I got to thinkin’, here we’ve muddled along for twenty-seven years an’ brought seven kids into the world, and what’s it all amount to if he can lie there snorin’ when I’m shakin’ like a leaf and chokin’ to death? Half the time he don’t no more know what I’m feelin’ than the man in the moon. The more I thought about it the more I was panting and heaving and strugglin’ to get my breath, an’ there wasn’t a soul to care, so finally I thought, Rosie, it’s get up now or die before mornin’. It was that serious. So I got up and drug the kids out of bed an’ got a cab, like your momma said to, and took the kids to my sister’s an’ come on here.”

  “Why didn’t you just stay at your sister’s?”

  “An’ let her think I was leavin’ my husband?” Rosie said. “Religious as she is, I’d never hear the end of that. I just told her your ma was sick. She wasn’t even surprised to see me—said she knowed there wasn’t no use in my goin’ home. First thing she did this mornin’ was get mad at Vernon for bein’ too generous with Royce.”

  “What’d he do that was too generous?”

  “Give Vernon his first week off, thinkin’ we might want to take a vacation. Shoot, I don’t want to go nowhere an’ have to be alone with Royce right now. We never had a vacation farther away than Conroe anyway that I can remember.”

  Patsy wandered out just then, looking faintly irritated. “Your mother certainly sounds happy as a lark,” she said.

  “I know, it’s irritating,” Emma said. “She’s like a balloon. Any nice puff of air and she’s floating.”

  “Aw, hush,” Rosie said. “You girls just don’t know how to have fun. Your ma took me in in my time of trial and ain’t nobody gonna talk bad about her today unless it’s me.”

  She stood up and picked up a broom that she had laid down when they started talking, but she seemed in no hurry to leave. “Lord I’m old,” she said, looking down at Emma. “Now you’re having a baby. Who would have thought it would happen so soon?”

  “It’s not so soon,” Emma said. “I’ve been married two years.”

  Rosie tried to smile but wanted to cry. Seeing Emma sitting there, so trusting and goodhearted, such a happy-looking young woman, filled her with memory suddenly, until she felt too full. She had come to the Greenway house two months before Emma was born, and it was all so strange, the way life went on and seemed the same even though it was always changing. It never quite slowed down so you could catch it, except by thinking back, and it left some people more important than others as it changed.

  She had had her children and loved them as much as she could, and she had six grandchildren already, and more to come, and yet somehow Emma had always been her special child, more hers than any of her own—always bright-eyed, always hoping to please, always running to her for hugs and kisses and help of all kinds, watching solemnly while Band-Aids were put on, holding her breath and squeezing her eyes shut while she waited for iodine to sting, racing her tricycle along the front walk as fast as she could go while Rosie pretended to be trying to spray her with the garden hose.

  “Two years isn’t too soon,” Emma said again.

  “Naw, precious, that wasn’t the kind of soon I mean,” Rosie said. “So soon since you was one yourself, that’s all I meant.” She shook her head to clear it of memories and took her broom and went in.

  Patsy had observed more of the scene than Emma had, for Emma was looking at the yard and wondering if Flap would still be in a good mood when she got home.

  “I don’t know what Rosie would do without you to adore,” Patsy said. “Come on, go talk to your mother while she feels good. Maybe she’ll let you by a dress.”

  When they went back in they discovered that Aurora and Vernon were no longer in the kitchen—they were in Vernon’s car.

  “Look at her,” Patsy said.

  Aurora was in the back seat watching television. “I made Vernon let me do it,” she said gaily. “For the novelty.”

  “I’d like to get in and see,” Patsy said. “I’ve never done it either.”

  “Come ahead,” Aurora said. “I’d better extract myself, anyway. If I lie here long I’ll go right to sleep and there’s no telling where Vernon will drive me away to.”

  While Vernon was showing Patsy the wonders of his car Emma and her mother went back in the house and up to the bedroom, where, to Emma’s surprise, her mother sat down and wrote her out a check for a hundred and fifty dollars.

  “What have I done to deserve this?” Emma asked.

  “I don’t know that you do deserve it,” Aurora said. “As it happens, I had forgotten how well Miss Clark dresses. It’s certainly a mark in her favor—perhaps the only mark in her favor. I think I deserve a daughter who dresses at least as well, which is why I’m giving you this.”

  Emma felt slightly embarrassed. “How are you?” she asked.

  Aurora went over and sat down in her window nook, from which she could look down on the lawn and the street. Vernon was just handing Patsy a Coke from his refrigerator.

  “Honestly,” Aurora said, flopping on her pillows, “she’s just finished one of my better breakfasts and now she’s drinking a Coke.”

  “Pick, pick, pick,” Emma said. “Why do you always pick?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Aurora said. “I’ve never been particularly passive.”

  “So how are you?” Emma asked again.

  “How am I?” Aurora said, looking down at the scene below intently, to see if she could pick up the drift of whatever conversation was passing between Patsy and Vernon.

  “Why I’m fine,” she said. “No one has been obnoxious to me in almost twenty-four hours, and that always brings my spirits up. If only people won’t be obnoxious to me my spirits do quite well.”

  “I like Vernon,” Emma said, going to her mother’s dressing table. She tried on the newly rediscovered amber necklace. Aurora eyed her watchfully.

  “It’s a wonder I have a piece of jewelry left, the way people make free with it,” she said. “What did you say about Vernon?”

  “I said I liked him,” Emma said.

  Aurora snorted. “That’s as noncommittal as Cream of Wheat,” she said. “Obviously nobody could dislike Vernon. In point of fact you’re as puzzled as I am as to why he’s here. He’s supposed to be in Canada today, not ruining Miss Clark’s teeth with beverages she can’t possibly need.”

  “Why is he here?” Emma asked.

  “As you can see, he hasn’t chosen to leave, so he’s here,” Aurora said. “He’s reputed to be qui
te a good cardplayer, and we’re planning to play some cards afterwhile.”

  “You’re leaving matters in his hands, I take it,” Emma said, keeping the necklace on so she could enjoy her mother’s mild anxiety about it.

  “Oh, well,” Aurora said. “I don’t see that you need worry about Vernon. He’s a self-made man and those are always the most resilient. If he doesn’t want to be bothered with me he doesn’t have to, that I can see.”

  Emma took off the necklace and Aurora turned her attention back to the scene on the lawn. It was hard to tell who was the more fidgety, Vernon or Patsy. Both seemed to be talking at once.

  “That girl rattles on worse than I do,” Aurora said. “She’s not letting him get a word in edgewise. It’s high time she married, you know.” She got up suddenly and started for the stairs.

  “Where are you going so soon?” Emma asked, trailing along.

  “I don’t see that he needs to spend the whole morning talking to your rattly little friend,” Aurora said. “You two need to be on your way.”

  “This must be a case of opposites attracting,” Emma said.

  Aurora didn’t look around. “You got your check, be off with you,” she said. “Your witticisms are beginning to grate on my ears. My experience is considerably more extensive than yours and I have found cases of opposites attracting to be far more uncommon than everyone supposes. When it does happen, the attraction is usually short-lived. In point of fact opposites usually bore one another. All my opposites certainly bore me.”

  “Then what about Vernon?” Emma said.

  “Vernon and I just met,” Aurora said. “All I want is a simple game of cards and a little friendship, for pity’s sake.” She stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked at her daughter indignantly.

  “All right,” Emma said. “You were the one who said he was in love with you.”

  “Oh, well, that was yesterday afternoon,” Aurora said. “I wouldn’t know about him today. I gave him a severe lecture about Royce. A vacation is the last thing a married man like Royce needs right now.”