Terms of Endearment

by Larry McMurtry

  She took to lingering at Aurora’s longer and longer every day, not because she had anything to do but because she didn’t want to go home. Aurora and the General were getting along happily and her house was a jolly place to be, but almost every day, on the bus ride back across Houston from the quiet palaces of River Oaks to the stews of the Fifth Ward, her spirits gradually sank. At night she had so little that she could hardly recognize herself. After keeping her fight for forty-nine years, she had finally lost it. Fortunately Little Buster and Lou Ann had a repertory of only three bedtime stories, and once Rosie had droned through one or two of them she was free to be as spiritless as she felt and to sit on her bed and sip cups of coffee most of the night. It was no life, she thought, night after night, and yet her only options were to take it or leave.

  Rosie looked around the dingy bus station, in which forty or fifty people were sitting in separate silences, and reflected that the new thing about her life was that it had become sort of like the bus station—silent. She had always had plenty to say about everything; but suddenly she was finding that though she still had plenty to say she had no one to say it to. Her sister Maybelline was too married and too religious to be much help. All she ever did was quote the Bible and suggest that Rosie think of some way to get Royce to church more often. “Fine, Maybelline. All he’s ever done in church his whole life is to go to sleep and snore,” Rosie said. Maybelline had been married thirty-four years to her twenty-seven, and to the most stable man in the world, Oliver Newton Dobbs, who managed a shoe polish factory on Little York Road and had never missed a day’s work since he left the oil fields in 1932. With a man that steady there was no use talking to Maybelline about marital problems.

  Nor could she talk to Aurora, in good conscience, because Aurora had already heard about her problems with Royce fifty times, and had already advised her to divorce him. Rosie agreed that that was what she ought to do, but somehow she never quite got around to calling a lawyer. She had not told Aurora that she was leaving, or why. Aurora didn’t understand how it was to bounce across Houston every afternoon to a house on Lyons Avenue that she had never liked anyway and two kids that weren’t being raised well. Lou Ann and Little Buster were a constant reproach to her; they just weren’t getting the raising the other five kids had had. Kids deserved parents with some enthusiasm, and she no longer had much. That was why she was going home to Shreveport—maybe there, away from all thoughts of Royce and his slut, she could shake off her blues and become the enthusiastic person she had always been. It was home, after all—Shreveport—and home was supposed to count for something.

  She stared at the row of telephone booths across from her and wondered if she dared call Aurora, just to let her know. If she wasn’t told something she would worry herself into a frenzy, but if she was told too soon she would just try to stop her from going. Then she thought of Emma. She didn’t feel strong enough to deal with Aurora, but dealing with Emma was no problem.

  “It’s me,” she said when Emma answered the phone.

  “I believe I recognize the voice,” Emma said. “What’s happening?”

  “Oh, honey,” Rosie said. “I don’t know why I even called you. I’m just scared to call your momma, I guess. I got to get out of here before I go plumb crazy. I’m going home to Shreveport tonight, and I ain’t comin’ back.”

  “Oh, dear,” Emma said.

  “Yeah, I stay too tore up here,” Rosie said. “It ain’t fair to the kids. Royce ain’t comin’ back an’ there just ain’t a whole lot to stay for.”

  “There’s us,” Emma said.

  “I know, but you and your momma got your own lives to live.”

  “All right, but you’re part of them,” Emma said. “How can you leave when I’m finally about to have my baby?”

  “Because I’m here at the bus station an’ I got my nerve up,” Rosie said. “I might not never get it up agin.” The very sound of Emma’s voice made her want to stay. Part of her felt that it was insane to leave the few people who really cared about her, but another part felt that nothing could be more insane-making than another night on Lyons Avenue.

  “I best go on, honey,” she said. “Tell your ma I’m sorry I didn’t give no proper notice—she’d just have talked me out of it. It ain’t that she don’t mean well. It’s just that … well … she don’t know how I’m livin’.”

  “All right,” Emma said, realizing it was no use.

  “Be sweet, honey. I got to go,” Rosie said, choking suddenly. She hung up and in a kind of panic of emotion, weeping profusely, managed to get across the station to her suitcases.

  She was not the only traveler who was upset, though. The line of people waiting to board her bus, when it was finally called, was long and forlorn. Two teenage lovers were being parted, and they clung to one another miserably. Rosie had managed to compose herself, but just in front of her a family of country people were putting a son on the bus for Fort Dix; a mother, grandmother, and two sisters were all bugging the boy at once and weeping, while the father stood by looking awkward. A family of Mexicans waited stoically, and a peroxided mother with two children kept dragging one of them out from under Rosie’s feet as the line shuffled forward.

  Finally, though, all were loaded. Rosie sat by a window and played peekaboo with a little boy who sat in the seat in front of her. The bus rose onto a freeway, over the bayou, over the railroad yards, and, in a surprisingly few minutes, was among the dark pine groves of East Texas. Rosie yawned, exhausted by the leaving; the speed and the hum of wheels lulled her past all awareness of trouble. Soon she was asleep, leaving her young friend, full of energy, to play a one-handed game of peekaboo, on past Conroe and Lufkin, far into the night.

  3.

  AURORA RECEIVED the news of Rosie’s departure in silence.

  “You’re too quiet,” Emma said. “Have I called at a bad time?”

  “In fact you have called at a terrible time,” Aurora said, looking angrily at the General. He was sitting at the foot of her bed glaring at her.

  “I’m sorry. I thought you’d like to know right away.”

  “I would have liked to have known two hours ago,” Aurora said. “If I had I would most certainly have stopped her.”

  “She didn’t want to be stopped. That’s why she didn’t call you. She knew you’d talk her out of it.”

  Aurora was silent.

  “I’m sorry I called at a bad time,” Emma said.

  “Oh, stop apologizing,” Aurora said. “Bad news has a way of coming at awkward times. That’s all this is, I suppose: awkward. It may force General Scott to vary his inflexible schedule by a few seconds or so, but perhaps he can live with that.”

  “Oh, he’s there,” Emma said. “I’ll hang up and you can call me later if you want to.”

  “Hector is not God, you know,” Aurora said. “He just thinks he is. The fact that he is in my house doesn’t mean we can’t discuss this little catastrophe. In fact Hector is almost always in my house these days, so if we’re to talk at all we’ll more or less have to talk around him.”

  “I can goddamn well leave, if that’s your attitude,” the General said.

  Aurora took the receiver away from her ear and covered it with her hand. “Do not swear at me while I’m talking to my daughter,” she said. “I won’t stand for it. Suppose you just sit silently until I’ve finished this conversation. Then we can take up where we left off.”

  “We didn’t leave off,” the General said. “We didn’t even take up.

  Aurora looked at him sternly and put the receiver back to her ear. “If she’s gone she’s gone,” she said. “Nothing can be done tonight. Tomorrow we’ll just have to set about getting her back. In all likelihood I shall have to go up there. It’s what I get for not bringing her over here to live when Royce left the second time.”

  “Maybe you can talk to her on the phone and coax her back.”

  “No, she’s too stubborn. I can’t do anything with such a stubborn person on the pho
ne. You’re too pregnant to go with me, so someone else will just have to go. I’ll have to go at once. It’s not wise to give Rosie time to dig in.”

  “Sorry to disrupt your evening,” Emma said again.

  “My evening is just beginning,” Aurora said and hung up.

  “Go where?” the General asked. “I’d like to know where you’re planning to go now?”

  “Now?” Aurora said. “I’m not aware of having been anywhere lately.”

  “You spent all day yesterday shopping,” he said. “You’re always going somewhere.”

  “I’m not a plant, Hector,” Aurora said. “I know that you would prefer that I never leave my bedroom, or even my bed, but that’s your problem. I’ve never liked being house-bound.”

  “Anyway, where are you going now?”

  “Shreveport. Rosie’s left. She’s in considerable distress these days. I’ll have to go bring her back.”

  “That’s goddamn nonsense,” the General said. “Call her on the phone. Besides, she’ll come back anyway. F.V. ran away and he came back, didn’t he?”

  “Hector, I know Rosie better than you do, and I don’t think she’ll come back,” Aurora said. “Don’t you think we’ve argued enough for one evening? Anyway, it won’t hurt you to go to Shreveport.”

  “Who said I was going?” the General asked. “She’s your maid.”

  “I know she’s my maid,” Aurora said flatly. “You’re my lover-God help me. Are you telling me that you’re going to be so inconsiderate as to allow me to drive three hundred miles by myself, when not twenty minutes ago, if I’m not mistaken, you were trying to drag me into bed?”

  “That has nothing to do with the issue at hand,” he said.

  “Pardon me, but your behavior is the issue at hand, Hector,” Aurora said with a flash of anger. “I seem to be making an unpleasant discovery about the person I’m sleeping with, namely that he doesn’t care enough about me to ride to Shreveport with me and help me retrieve my poor maid.”

  “Well, I might if it isn’t on one of my golfing days,” the General said.

  “Thank you very much,” Aurora said, coloring with fury. “I’ll certainly make every effort to see that you don’t miss your golf.”

  The General failed to notice the fury and took her remark at face value, something he was apt to do when his mind was elsewhere. He reached across the bed to take her hand and to his amazement her hand eluded him and slapped him right in the face.

  “What’s that for?” he said, very startled. “I said I might go.”

  “Play back your last five statements, General Scott,” Aurora said. “I believe you’ll find that you just ranked me second to golf.”

  “But I didn’t mean it that way!” he said, noticing the fury at last.

  “Of course not. Men never seem to feel that their statements mean what they very clearly do mean.”

  “But I love you, Aurora,” the General said, horrified at the turn things had taken. “I do, remember?”

  “Yes, I do remember, Hector,” she said. “I remember that you made your usual rather clumsy pass at me at around eight-thirty. You happened to break the band of my wristwatch this time, and also one of my earrings fell behind the bed. I remember those details precisely.”

  “But you yanked your arm away,” the General said. “I didn’t mean to break your wristwatch.”

  “No, and I don’t mean to be screwed at eight-thirty so you can be asleep by eight forty-five, or more accurately eight thirty-six, and up for your goddamn run at five,” Aurora shouted. “That is not my idea of amore, as I’ve told you countless times. I’m a normal woman and I’m quite capable of staying awake until midnight, or even later. I had rather hoped that in time I’d become more important to you than your golf or your run, or even your dogs, but I see it was a vain hope.”

  “God damn it, why are you always so much trouble!” the General said. “You always are. I do my best.”

  They looked at one another in angry silence for a moment. Aurora shook her head. “I’d rather you left,” she said. “It’s just like golf to you, you know, Hector. All that interests you is the shortest route to the hole.”

  “There’s no goddamn short route to yours, that’s for sure!” the General yelled. “You’ve made me a nervous wreck. I can barely get to sleep now anyway.”

  “Yes, I suspect I’m the most difficult course you ever played, General,” she said, looking at him coolly.

  “Too difficult,” the General said. “Too goddamn difficult.”

  “Well, my doors are open,” Aurora said. “We can go back to being neighbors, you know. You blundered into this, you know, and there’s no tank around to protect you.”

  “Shut up!” he yelled, enraged that she had acquired command of herself when he was still shaking with confusion.

  “You just talk to hear yourself talk,” he said. “I haven’t had a tank for twenty years.”

  “All right,” Aurora said. “I merely wanted you to think seriously about what we’re doing. I’ve gone to quite unusual lengths to be accommodating to you, and we still seem to fight all the time. What’s life going to be like if I suddenly decide to be troublesome?”

  “You can’t be any goddamn worse than you are,” the General said.

  “Ha ha, little you know,” she said. “I’ve made almost no demands on you. Suppose I decided to make a few.”

  “Like what?”

  “Sensible demands. I might demaqd that you get rid of that broken-down car, or those two overweening dogs.”

  “Overwhat?”

  “Overweening,” Aurora said, amused by the look of astonishment that the General wore.

  “I might even demand that you give up golf, as a special test of your seriousness,” she said.

  “And I might demand that you marry me,” the General said. “Two can play at that game.”

  “Only one can play at it successfully,” Aurora said. “I’ve grown surprisingly fond of you and I’d like to keep you, but don’t you bring up marriage again.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I said not. Unless one of us changes drastically, it’s out of the question.”

  “Then go get your own goddamn maid,” the General said, angered beyond endurance. “I don’t ride a mile with any woman who talks to me this way. I don’t like your goddamn maid anyway.”

  “No doubt she reminds you of me,” Aurora said. “Anything less than a total slave reminds you of me.”

  The General stood up suddenly. “Neither of you have any goddamn discipline,” he said, feeling more and more pressured.

  Aurora hadn’t moved. “Beg pardon,” she said. “I admit to being hopelessly lazy, but the same hardly applies to Rosie. She has discipline enough for both of us.”

  “Then what’s she doing in Shreveport?” he asked. “Why isn’t she here where she belongs?”

  Aurora shrugged. “The fact that she has problems doesn’t mean that she doesn’t have discipline,” she said. “If you want to do something useful why don’t you get my earring out from under the bed? I’m not interested in your opinion of Rosie.”

  “I just said she should stay where she belonged,” he said.

  “I’m sure she would have, if her husband had stayed where he belonged. Let’s drop the subject and all other subjects. Please get me my earring and we can go watch television.”

  “You can’t talk to me this way,” the General said. “To hell with television. Get your own goddamn earring.”

  He waited for her to apologize, but she merely sat looking at him. Her words were bad enough, but her silence was so infuriating that he couldn’t stand it. Without another word he strode out of the bedroom and slammed the door.

  Aurora stood up and went to the window. In a minute she heard the front door slam and saw the General stride across her lawn and down the sidewalk toward his own house. His bearing, she observed, was excellent.

  She waited for a few minutes, thinking the phone might ring; but when it d
idn’t she went to the closet, got a clothes hanger, and got down on her hands and knees to rake the lost earring out from under the bed. It was an opal, and she took the other one off, looked at them a moment, and put them in her jewel case. Her house was silent and cool and peaceful. Without another thought for General Scott, she went downstairs, poured herself a glass of wine, and settled contentedly down in front of the television. Tomorrow she would deal with Rosie.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  1.

  THE REASON Royce Dunlup had called his wife and told her to be careful with the truck was because he and Shirley Sawyer had in mind to take a trip in it. Shirley was so delighted to have Royce back with her that she immediately began to take steps that would make him hers forever.

  “You ain’t never gettin’ away from me agin, puddin’,” she told him pointedly on the day of his return. Then to drive her point home, as it were, she proceeded to fuck him into a stupor.

  For three intense weeks Shirley didn’t allow the pace to slacken, either. Every time Royce showed the slightest signs of liveliness Shirley immediately set about wearing him back down. After three weeks Royce was so totally pussywhipped that there was little danger of his ever escaping again, and it was then that Shirley began to make plans for a vacation.

  “We could go to Barstow,” she said one day after a long bounce.

  “Where is Barstow?” Royce said, thinking she meant the dog. He had a vague memory of a grudge against the dog, but in his lethargy he couldn’t remember what the grudge was. He drank some more beer.

  “You know where Barstow is, honey,” Shirley said. Sometimes Royce’s bad memory got on her nerves.

  “On the porch?” Royce said, opening one eye.

  “Aw, not the puppy,” Shirley said. “My home town, Barstow, California. I’d like to take you there and show you off.” She wiggled his cock a little, out of habit.

  “Some day when you’re not doin’ nothin’, whyn’t you get your truck?” she said. “I don’t see why she should get to have it. Whose truck is it anyway?