Terms of Endearment (3 page)

“Sorry,” Aurora said. “I don’t like using nicknames, even charming ones, and my son-in-law’s is hardly charming. It sounds like part of a loincloth.”

Emma gave up again. “He should be here any minute,” she said.

“Thomas is not likely to be prompt,” Aurora said. “He was late on several occasions while you were engaged.” She stood up and picked up her purse.

“I’m leaving at once,” she said. “I doubt if you’ll mind. Where are my shoes?”

“You didn’t wear any,” Emma said. “You were barefooted when you came in.”

“Remarkable,” Aurora said. “They must have been stolen right off my feet. I am hardly the sort to leave my house without shoes.”

Emma smiled. “You do it all the time,” she said. “It’s because all seventy-five pairs of them hurt your feet.”

Aurora didn’t deign to reply. Her departures, like her moods, were unpremeditated and always quite abrupt. Emma got up and followed her mother out the door, down the steps, and along the driveway. It had come a little summer shower and the grass and flowers were still wet. The lawns up and down the street were a brilliant green.

“Very well, Emma,” Aurora said. “If you’re going to contradict me I suppose it’s a good thing I’m leaving. We should inevitably quarrel. I’m sure you’ll find my shoes the minute I’m gone.”

“Why didn’t you look for them yourself if you’re so sure they’re there?” Emma said.

Aurora looked aloof. Her seven-year-old black Cadillac was parked, as always, several yards from the curb. She had had a lifelong horror of scraping her tires. The Cadillac was old enough, in her view, to pass for a classic antique, and she always paused a moment before she got in, to admire its lines. Emma
walked around the car and stood looking at her mother, whose lines, in their way, were also classic. West Main Street, in Houston, was never very busy, and no cars disturbed their silent contemplation.

Aurora got in, adjusted her seat, which never seemed to stay the same distance from the pedals, and managed to insert her key in the ignition, a trick only she could manage. Years before she had been forced to use the key to pry open a screen door, and since then it had been slightly bent. Perhaps by now the ignition was bent too—in any case Aurora was firmly convinced that the bentness of the key was all that had kept the car from being stolen many times.

She looked out her window and there was Emma standing quietly in the street, as if waiting for something. Aurora felt inclined to be merciless. Her son-in-law was a young man of no promise, and in the two years that she had known him his manners had not improved, nor had his treatment of her daughter. Emma was too poor and too fat and looked awful in his T-shirts, which, had he any respect, he would not have allowed her to wear. Her hair had never been one of her glories, but at the moment it was a distinct stringy mess. Aurora felt inclined to be quite merciless. She paused a moment before putting on her sunglasses.

“Very well, Emma,” she said once again. “You needn’t stand there expecting congratulations from me. I was not once consulted. You have made your bed. You no longer have an open destiny. Besides, you’re far too stubborn to be a parent. Had you cared to take me into your confidence a little sooner, I could have told you that. But no, not once did you consult me. You haven’t even a proper residence—that place you live in is just the top of a garage. Infants have enough respiratory problems without having to live with cars beneath them. It isn’t likely to do much for your figure either. Children never think of these things. I am still your mother, you know.”

“I know, Momma,” Emma said, stepping close to the car. To Aurora’s surprise she didn’t argue, did not defend herself. She merely stood by the car, in the awful T-shirt, looking, for the first time in years, mild and obedient. Emma looked down at her
quietly, in the manner of a proper daughter, and Aurora noticed again something she was always forgetting: that her child had the loveliest eyes, green, with lights in them. They were the eyes of her own mother, Amelia Starrett, who had been born in Boston. And she was so young, really, Emma.

Suddenly, to Aurora’s terror, life seemed to bolt straight from her grip. Something flung her heart violently, and she felt alone. She no longer felt merciless, she just— She didn’t know, something was gone, nothing was certain, she was older, she had not been granted control, and what would happen? She had no way to see how things would end. In her terror she flung out her arms and caught her daughter. For a moment the only thing she knew was the cheek she was kissing, the girl she was hugging to her; and then, abruptly, her heart settled back and she noticed, quite to her surprise, that she had pulled Emma half through the window of the car.

“Oh, oh,” Emma said repeatedly.

‘What’s wrong?” Aurora asked, releasing her.

“Nothing,” Emma said. “I just bumped my head on the car.”

“Oh. I wish you weren’t so careless, Emma,” Aurora said. She had never that she could remember lost so much dignity so quickly, and she scarcely knew what to do to recover it. Ideally she would have driven straight away, but the shock, or whatever it was, had left her shaken. She didn’t feel quite up to working the pedals. Even when at her best she sometimes forgot to work them, and did inconvenient things to cars that stopped in her way. Often people shouted at her at such times.

Besides, it was not the moment to drive away. In her panic she felt sure she had given her daughter the upper hand, and she was not disposed to leave until she had it back. She twisted her rearview mirror around until she could see herself in it, and she waited patiently for her features to compose themselves again. It certainly was not turning out to be one of her better days.

Emma watched, rubbing her bumped head. She had gotten her due, more or less, but she could see that her mother had no intention of letting her keep it.

“You don’t have to tell your boy friends for a while, you know,”
she said. “You rarely let me meet them anyway. I could probably have the kid off to prep school before they suspect a thing.”

“Humph,” Aurora said, combing her hair. “In the first place the child, if there is to be one, will almost certainly be a girl. That’s customary in our family. In the second place they are not my boy friends, they are my suitors, and you will please refer to them as such, if you must refer to them at all.”

“Whatever you say,” Emma said.

Aurora had wonderful hair—it was auburn and abundant, and had always been her daughter’s envy. Arranging it invariably left her looking pleased, and soon she looked pleased again. Despite all, she had kept her looks, and looks were a great consolation. She rapped the steering wheel with the back of her comb.

“You see, I told you Thomas would be late,” she reminded Emma. “I can’t wait any longer. If I don’t rush I’ll miss my shows.”

She elevated her chin several degrees and bestowed upon her daughter a slightly impish grin. “As for you,” she said.

“As for me, what?”

“Oh, nothing,” Aurora said. “Nothing. You’ve brought this upon me now. There is nothing more to say. No doubt I’ll manage somehow.”

“Stop trying to make me feel guilty,” Emma said. “I have my rights, and you’re no martyr. It’s not like the stake and the pyre await you around the corner.”

Aurora ignored the remark—it was her custom to ignore all cleverness of that sort.

“No doubt I’ll manage somehow,” she said again, in a tone which was meant to indicate that she considered herself absolved of all responsibility for her own future. She was, for the moment, rather cheerful, but she wanted it clearly understood that if anything bad happened to her in what remained of her life the fault must be laid at doorsteps other than her own.

To forestall argument, she started the car. “Well, dear,” she said, “at least it may force you to diet. Please oblige me and have something done to your hair. Perhaps you ought to dye it. Honestly, Emma. I think you’d look better bald.”

“Leave me alone,” Emma said, “I’m resigned to my hair.”

“Yes, that’s the trouble with you,” Aurora said. “You’re resigned to far too much. That garment you’re wearing verges on the pathetic. I wish you’d go take it off. I’ve never allowed myself to be resigned to anything that wasn’t delightful, and nothing about your life is delightful that I can see. You must make some changes.”

“I think they’re being made for me,” Emma said.

“Tell Thomas he might be more prompt,” Aurora said. “I must sail. My shows won’t wait. I hope I don’t meet any policemen.”

“Why?”

“They look at me wrong,” Aurora said. “I really don’t know why. I’ve never hurt one.” She took another gratifying look at her coiffure and twisted the mirror more or less back into place.

“I imagine it’s that negligent look you cultivate,” Emma said.

“Pooh, I’m going. You’ve delayed me long enough,” Aurora said. She dismissed her daughter with an airy wave and peered down the street to see whether any obstructions had been put in her path. A small green foreign car had just chugged past, but that was minor. Probably if she honked loudly enough it would turn into a driveway and let her by. Such cars ought to be driven on sidewalks anyway—there was little enough room in the streets for American cars.

“Bye, Momma, come again,” Emma said, for form’s sake.

Aurora didn’t hear. She seized the steering wheel commandingly and poked her foot at the appropriate pedal. “Little Aurora,” she said fondly as she drove away.

3.

E
MMA HEARD
her and smiled. “Little Aurora” was an expression her mother used only when she considered herself alone against the world—alone and supremely adequate.

Then she jumped. Her mother had begun immediately to honk at the Volkswagen, and the Cadillac had a very loud horn. Hearing it unexpectedly gave everyone, Emma included, apprehensions
of emergency. Against such honking the little green car had no chance—the Cadillac swept it aside as easily as an ocean liner might sweep aside a canoe. The driver, assuming that catastrophe had overtaken someone, turned into a driveway and didn’t even honk back.

Emma stretched the T-shirt as far down her legs as it would go. The trees overhead were still dripping from the summer shower, and drops of water fell on her bosom, such as her bosom was. The T-shirt did emphasize certain of her inadequacies. Her mother had not been entirely wrong.

As usual, after one of her mother’s visits, Emma found herself feeling antagonistic, not merely toward her mother but also toward her husband and herself. Flap should have been there to defend himself, or her, or them. Her mother hadn’t really been on the attack; she had just been exercising her peculiar subtle genius for making everyone but herself seem vaguely in the wrong. There was never any peace with her mother around, but somehow, once she left, there was even less. Her most absurd remarks had a habit of hanging in the air. They were always uncalled for and outrageous, but never, for Emma, simply dismissible. Hair, diet, the T-shirt, Flap, and herself—no matter what she said in retaliation she was always left with the feeling that she had let her mother get away with murder. Actually, Flap was no great help, even when he was there. He was so scared of losing what little standing he had with Mrs. Greenway that he wouldn’t fight.

Two minutes later, while Emma was still standing in the driveway feeling dim-witted and slightly annoyed with herself, running through in her mind the brilliant rejoinders she might have made to her mother, Flap and his father drove up. His father was named Cecil Horton, and when he saw Emma he turned his neat blue Plymouth right up beside her, close enough that he could reach out and squeeze her arm without getting out of the car.

“Hi, Toots,” he said, smiling broadly. Cecil was a man of the 1940s—“Toots” was his customary gallantry. Emma hated it and looked forward to the day when Cecil forgot himself and used it with her mother. His smile also annoyed her, because it was automatic and completely impersonal. Cecil would have smiled broadly at a fire hydrant if he had had occasion to greet one.

“Toots yourself,” she said. “Did you buy the boat?”

Cecil didn’t hear the question. He was still smiling at her. His graying hair was neatly combed. He was only sixty, but he had grown a little deaf; in fact, he had stopped expecting to hear most of what was said to him. When he found himself being addressed by someone he was supposed to like, Cecil held his smile a little longer and if possible patted a shoulder or squeezed an arm to assure whoever it was of his affection.

Emma was not sure she believed in his affection, since it carried no real attention with it. She was convinced that she could have stood in the driveway dripping blood, both arms amputated at the elbow, and Cecil would still have driven up, said “Hi, Toots,” smiled broadly, and squeezed her stump. Her mother couldn’t stand him and left wherever she was at the mention of his name. “Don’t argue with me. When you talk about people they soon appear,” she would say, going out the door.

A few minutes later, when Cecil and the Plymouth had gone their way and she and Flap were walking up the driveway, Emma felt piqued enough to raise the issue.

“It’s two years now, and he’s never really noticed me,” she said.

“It’s not just you,” Flap said. “Daddy doesn’t pay much attention to anybody.”

“He pays attention to you,” Emma said. “Strict attention. I only enter his consciousness when he notices that I’ve failed to provide you with something he thinks you should have, like a clean shirt. You’ve told me that yourself.”

“Stop picking on me,” Flap said. “I’m tired.”

He did look it. He had a long nose, a long jaw, and a mouth that turned down easily when he was depressed, which was often. Perversely, when she had first known him, it was the fact that he was so frequently and frankly depressed that had attracted her to him—that and his long jaw. His depression had seemed touching and somehow poetic, and within two days Emma had become convinced that she was what he needed. Two years had passed and she was still reasonably convinced of it, but there was no denying that Flap hadn’t really responded as she had expected him to. She was obviously what he needed, but
nine days out of ten he was still depressed. Time had almost forced her to admit that his depression wasn’t something that was going to go away, and she had just begun to ask herself why. She had also begun to ask Flap the same question. Not for nothing was she Aurora Greenway’s daughter.