Terms of Endearment (24 page)

Emma’s fat paperback of
Adam Bede
was lying handy and she grabbed it and threw it at him. He wasn’t looking at her, hadn’t looked at her since he had come back in the room, and he didn’t see her throw the book. It was a perfect throw and hit him on the neck. Flap turned, his eyes full of hate, and jumped across the bed at her. He grabbed her arms and shoved her at the open window so hard that her bare behind split the screen almost out of its frame, all the way around. When she felt the frame give Emma thought she was going to be shoved right out the window. “Stop it. Have you gone mad?” she said, squirming out of the window desperately.

While her mouth was open Flap punched her and she felt something jolt against her teeth. She fell backwards onto her couch, and before she could get her senses about her he grabbed her and started trying to drag her to the window again. She saw that he did mean to shove her out, and she wiggled free and fell back on the couch and began to sob, holding on to her end. One of Flap’s hands was red. He fell on top of her, apparently meaning to hit her again, but he didn’t. He just lay on top of her, his face a few inches from hers, and they stared at one another in surprise, panting and gasping for breath. Neither spoke, because neither had any breath to speak with.

As they were panting, calming a little, Emma suddenly noticed that one of his hands was bleeding all over the couch. She began to try and squirm free. “Get off a minute; you can kill me later,” she said and went across the room and grabbed a handful of Kleenex. When she came back Flap was holding his hand up indecisively, apparently trying to decide whether to drip on the couch or drip on the floor. “Drip on the floor, dummy,” she said. “The floor can be mopped.”

The hatred had gone out of his eyes and he looked friendly
and fond of her again. “I got to respect you,” he said. “You’re hard to throw out a window.”

Emma gave him some Kleenex and used the rest to soak up the worst of the blood on the couch. “Boy I’m really going to get fat now,” she said. “If I was my mother’s size nobody would ever be able to throw me out a window.”

“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to talk in the middle of a fight?” Flap said. “It’s easier to get your jaw broken if you have your mouth open. If you hadn’t been talking I wouldn’t have cut my hand.”

Before Emma could reply someone knocked on the door. They both jumped. Flap was dressed from the waist up and she wasn’t dressed at all.

“It’s either Patsy or your mother,” Flap said. “One of them always arrives when we’re having a crisis.”

“Who’s there?” Emma asked.

“It’s Patsy,” a cheerful voice said. “Let’s go shopping.”

“You see,” Flap said, though actually Patsy’s visits always pleased him.

“Give us two minutes,” Emma said, springing up. “Flap’s not quite dressed.”

In the time it took Flap to put on his undershorts and a pair of trousers she got herself decent, made the bed, and, with the expenditure of a good many washrags and paper towels got rid of most of the blood. Flap was barefooted and looked rather plaintive, probably because his hand was still bleeding.

“You must file your front teeth,” he whispered. “I’m cut to the bone. What are we going to tell her?”

“Why should I lie to my friend?” Emma whispered. “She may get married someday. Let’s give her a glimpse of what it’s like.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Flap said.

“Go run some water on your hand,” Emma said. “She’s my friend and I’ll handle it.”

He snuck into the bathroom, still plaintive, and Emma opened the front door. Her friend Patsy Clark stood on the landing in a beautiful brown and white dress reading the Hortons’ paper. She was a slim girl, with long black hair—beautiful anyway, and even more so in such a dress.

“I don’t think I want to let you in,” Emma said, holding the screen shut. “You look too good. I wish you’d stop dressing up when you come over here. You’re worse than my mother. Both of you make me feel more squalid than I am.”

“If she’d just turn loose of a little of her money you could buy yourself some clothes,” Patsy said. “I’ve always thought it was awful of her to criticize the way you dress when she won’t give you money to buy clothes with.”

“Let’s call her and tell her that,” Emma said. “Maybe she’ll give me some today. Otherwise I can’t go shopping with you.”

She held the door open and Patsy swept in, smelling nice and looking wonderful, cheerful and happy. Their bedroom was also their living room, and the minute Patsy stepped into it she said, “I smell blood.” The next minute she noticed the smashed-out window screen and she immediately looked keenly at Emma and narrowed her black eyes.

“Did someone try to throw someone out a window?” she asked, slightly puckishly.

Emma opened her mouth and pointed at her own front teeth. “Yes, and someone cut his hand on my front teeth too,” she said. Patsy had the same genius her mother had for seeming to perceive the truth of the matter instantly. Emma’s secret opinion was that the reason Patsy and her mother couldn’t stand one another was because they were exactly alike. No one but her mother could be as totally self-absorbed as Patsy was, and yet, like her mother, she was usually interesting to have around. She was quick-minded, active, and incessantly curious about every aspect of Emma’s life. The only difference between the two women that Emma could see was that her mother had had a great deal more practice at being who she was. She was better at everything than Patsy, and she never ceased to press her advantage when the two of them were together.

Patsy looked with a certain fascination at Emma’s tooth. “I always knew they were all brutes,” she said. “Why didn’t it crack it? None of them better ever hit me, boy.” She went over and peered through the damaged window screen. “It’s not too far down,” she said. “I guess you would have lived.”

Emma felt better about life than she had in several days. Her
husband seemed to have gotten something out of his system, and her friend was there to help her make her day. She yawned and flopped down on the couch to read the paper Patsy had brought in.

“You can read that later,” Patsy said, walking restlessly around the room and inspecting things. “Call your mother and see if you can get some money.”

“No, we have to wait until Flap leaves,” Emma said. “Don’t be so restless. We haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.”

At that moment Flap emerged, a washrag wrapped around his hand. He looked his most most sheepish, which was also his most appealing. Emma was completely won by the way he looked and forgave him everything, but Patsy was not about to be so softhearted.

“I used to think you were nice,” she said, giving him a genuinely cold look.

It only made Flap look doubly sheepish, because Flap adored Patsy and would have given almost anything to seduce her. Her attraction for him was so obvious that Emma took it as one of the givens of life, and yet Patsy had never been an awkwardness in her marriage, like Danny was. Whatever she and Danny felt for one another was mutual, whereas Patsy obviously didn’t feel the slightest attraction to Flap and was more or less in agreement with her mother that she had been a fool to marry him. Emma sometimes picked at him about Patsy, when she had nothing else to pick at him about, but Patsy’s disinterest was so emphatic, in its way, that instead of feeling jealous she felt smugly amused. All Flap would get for his desire was a lot of torment, and that, she felt, was punishment enough.

“These things have two sides,” Flap said.

“Not in my book they don’t,” Patsy said.

“Well, you single people don’t understand the provocations,” he said.

“I don’t understand them either,” Emma said, turning to the want ads. “I think I will call Momma.”

“Why, for God’s sake?” Flap asked.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe we could all go over there for breakfast,” Emma said. “I don’t feel very inspired. Maybe she’s
having a beau in and would like us to come and help entertain him.”

Once or twice a week her mother had one of her suitors in for breakfast, and the breakfasts that sometimes resulted were among her most wonderful and certainly most baroque productions—omelettes with various herbs and cheeses, special spicy sausages that she bought from a strange old woman who lived in the Heights and did nothing but make sausages, pineapples covered in brown sugar and brandy, a porridge she ordered from Scotland and ate with three kinds of honey, and sometimes a crispy kind of potato pancake that nobody but her could make. All her mother’s most closely guarded recipes emerged and were called into play for her suitors’ breakfasts, which often ran on until the middle of the afternoon, at least.

“You mean it might be breakfast day?” Patsy said. She forgot about Flap and her eyes lit up with the special eager light that always came into them when she thought she might be about to get something especially good to eat. She couldn’t stand Emma’s mother and lost no chance to ridicule her, but nobody was all bad, and cooking was the one area where she was willing to give Mrs. Greenway her due. Patsy was particularly fond of breakfast, and Mrs. Greenway’s were the best she had ever eaten. Also, going there to breakfast gave her a good chance to snoop. Mrs. Greenway was always too busy cooking and flirting with her suitor of the day to bother about her, and Patsy could wander around the house and admire all the wonderful objects Mrs. Greenway had somehow accumulated. The paintings, the carpets, the furniture, and the objects were all more or less exactly what she wanted for her own house, if she ever had one, and she loved to sneak away and examine them and dream.

Emma noted the look in her friend’s eye and got up to go to the telephone.

“Well, you two can go over there if you want to,” Flap said. “I’m not. Do you think I want to face your mother after I just tried to throw you out a window? What do you think she’d have to say about the fact that my finger’s half bitten off?”

“I don’t know, but I’d love to hear,” Patsy said. “I think she’s got the right idea about you after all.”

Emma stopped on the way to the phone and hugged her husband to show him that she at least was still a fan.

“Quick, quick, call,” Patsy said. “Now that you mentioned food I’m starving.”

Emma called and Rosie answered. In the background Emma heard her mother’s voice singing an aria. “What’s going on over there?” she asked.

“Cookin’,” Rosie said, but at once the phone was snatched from her hand.

“Well,” Aurora said, abruptly breaking off the aria. “Calling to make your apologies, I hope. And where were you this morning when I needed to consult you?”

“I was very sleepy,” Emma said. “I sat up late reading a serious novel. I’m trying to improve my mind.”

“I suppose that’s admirable,” Aurora said. “What do you want now?”

“I wondered if you were cooking breakfast, and if so, who for?”

“For whom,” Aurora said. “Why don’t you let your mind go and just try improving your grammar. I don’t like it that you deliberately ignored my call. I might have been in dire straits.”

“I apologize,” Emma said cheerfully.

“Don’t apologize!” Flap and Patsy said in unison.

“Hum,” Aurora said. “Do you have a Greek chorus living with you at the moment? Ask it why you shouldn’t apologize to your own mother.”

“I don’t know why everyone in the world but me is so difficult,” Emma said. “Actually Patsy and I wondered if we could come over for breakfast.”

“Oh, that little snippet,” Aurora said. “Miss Clark. Yes, by all means bring her. It always pleases me to see a young lady of such high principles stuffing herself with my food. Wouldn’t Thomas like to come too?”

“No, he cut his hand,” Emma said, making a face at him. “He has to go get a stitch.”

“He hasn’t exposed himself to me in some time, you know,” Aurora said. “He can’t hide forever. Vernon’s brought me a goat, by the way. Unfortunately I don’t think I can keep him, since he
eats flowers, but it was a nice thought anyway. You two hurry. I’m just putting my sausages in.”

2.

E
MMA SPRUCED
herself up a little and she and Patsy zipped off in Patsy’s blue Mustang.

“You haven’t told me about your fight,” Patsy reminded her. “I want to know all you can tell me about marriage, so I can weigh the odds.”

“It’s a waste of time telling you about marriage,” Emma said. “No two sets of odds are the same. Look, there’s the General.”

They had just pulled into her mother’s street, and General Scott, in a charcoal gray pullover and immaculate slacks, was standing in his driveway looking irritable. He had his binoculars around his neck, and F.V. stood behind him in his undershirt, a spade in one hand. The General was flanked by his Dalmatians, both of them as erect as he was.

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.