Terms of Endearment (42 page)

“I don’t appreciate anything,” the General said hotly. “I find all this very goddamn mysterious. I find it irritating too, I might say. What does he think he’s doing here?”

“What is you doing here!” Alberto said, growing suddenly red in the face. He pointed a finger at the General.

Aurora slapped his hand lightly. “Come on, put your finger away, Alberto,” she said. She looked around to see that the General was silently shaking his fist.

“Stop shaking your fist, Hector,” she said. “May I remind both of you that none of us met yesterday. Whether either of you like to admit it or not, I’ve known both of you for a very long time. We’re products of a rather lengthy acquaintanceship, and I think the less finger pointing and fist shaking we have the more we’ll all enjoy the evening.”

“What do you mean, enjoy the evening?” the General said. “I certainly don’t intend to enjoy any evening with
him
around.”

Alberto chose that moment to rise and burst into tears. He started for the door, abasing himself as he went.

“I go, I go,” he said. “I am the one who is wrong to be here, I see it Aurora. Is nothing. I was just bringing some flowers for old times’ sake, and perhaps say hello, but I make a mistake. You can be in peace.”

He threw her a tearful kiss, but Aurora raced around the table and caught him by his shabby brown coat sleeve just before he got out the door.

“You come right back here, Alberto,” she said. “Nobody’s leaving just yet.”

“Ha!” the General said. “That’s the goddamn Italian heritage that I remember. They’re all a bunch of crybabies.”

Alberto switched abruptly from tears to rage. Several large veins stood out on his forehead. “You see, he has insult!” he said, waving his left fist. Aurora clung calmly to the right and managed to drag him back to his chair.

“Sit, Alberto,” she said. “This is extremely colorful and on the whole flattering to a lady of my years, but my tolerance for colorful behavior is limited, as you both ought to know.”

When she saw that Alberto was going to sit, she released him and walked down to the other end of the table. She put a hand on the General’s arm—which, despite his pretense of cool, was quivering somewhat—and looked him calmly in the eye.

“Hector, I would like to inform you that I have decided to ask Alberto to take dinner with us,” she said.

“Oh, you have, have you?” the General said, faintly intimidated. Being looked directly in the eye had always made him somewhat uncomfortable, and Aurora did not shift her gaze in the slightest.

“I don’t see that I need to repeat myself,” she said. “Alberto is a friend of long standing and I have been rather negligent lately where he is concerned. Since he’s been so considerate as to bring me these nice flowers, I think it’s only appropriate to use the occasion to repair my negligence, don’t you?”

The General was not about to say yes but did not quite dare say no. He held his silence.

“Besides which,” Aurora went on, with a slight smile, “I have always felt that you and Alberto should get to know one another better.”

“Like fun we should,” the General said grimly.

“Yes, it would be fun,” Aurora said, blithely ignoring his meaning. “Don’t you think so Alberto?”

She glanced down at the table and fixed Alberto with the same
direct gaze. Alberto took refuge in a profound if somewhat exhausted Italian shrug.

“You’re being goddamn dictatorial, you know,” the General said. “Nobody’s going to enjoy this dinner but you, and you know it.”

“Far be it from me to dictate to you, Hector,” Aurora said. “If you feel this to be the slightest imposition, then of course you know that you’re free to leave. Alberto and I would be sorry to lose you, but we’ve dined alone before, and once more probably wouldn’t hurt us.”

“Oh, no you don’t,” the General said. Aurora continued to gaze at him. She seemed to be smiling, but he hadn’t the least idea what she was really thinking, so he repeated what he had just said. “Oh, no you don’t.”

“You’ve said that twice, Hector,” Aurora said. “If it’s some kind of military code, would you mind translating? Does that mean you’ve decided to stay for dinner after all?”

“Of course I’m staying for dinner,” the General said. “I was invited properly, I might remind you. I didn’t just come driving up with a car full of flowers and force my way in. At least I do these things by the book.”

“So you do,” Aurora said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s not why you and I so often find ourselves in disagreement, Hector. My old friend Alberto and I leave a bit more room for impulse in our lives, don’t we, Alberto?”

“Sure,” Alberto said, yawning despite himself. He was already exhausted from his own emotion. “Anything we can think of, that’s what we used to do,” he added, once he had completed his yawn.

The General merely glared. It was not to be his last glare, nor Alberto’s last yawn either. As soon as she saw that she had command of the situation, Aurora applied herself to it with complete precision. She forced a large rum drink on the General, having found from long experience that rum was the only drink that was likely to cause him to mellow. Alberto she restricted to wine, on the grounds that it was better for his heart. Then she sang a medley of Alberto’s favorite songs while she whipped up some pasta, an excellent sauce, and a salad. Alberto’s eyes shone
briefly. He managed to compliment her twice, and then, quietly, halfway through his third glass of wine, he went to sleep. He went to sleep sitting up, at a tilt, but Aurora got up, removed his plate, lowered him gently until his head rested where his plate had been, and, after thinking a moment, left him his wine glass.

“I’ve never known Alberto to spill wine,” she said. “He might want to drink it when he wakes up.”

Before the General could say anything she took his plate, which was empty, and gave him another helping of pasta and what was left of the sauce. She set his plate in front of him sharply, as if she were a military orderly, and then gave him a little rap on the head with her knuckles before sitting down to finish her salad. She glanced for a moment at Alberto, peacefully sleeping, before turning back to the General.

“He’s not got quite your vigor, you see,” she said. “You were quite foolish to make that scene. What’s it to you if Alberto comes over and goes to sleep at my table once in a while?”

Alberto’s quick fade left the General mildly abashed, but not so abashed that he lost sight of the main point. “I don’t care if he went to sleep,” he said. “Look at all those flowers.”

“If you make me lose my patience with you you’re going to be sorry,” Aurora said with a bit of flash in her eye. “Your jealousy is understandable and I understand it. I’ve put Alberto to sleep and pointed out to you that he’s harmless. Sometimes I think you’re a waste of good meat sauce. All I want is for him to go to sleep at a friendly table once in a while. His wife is dead and he’s lonely—considerably lonelier than you are, since I seem to have taken you in. Nothing that exists between us requires me to drive my old friends from my door, that I can see. Is that what you want? Are you really prepared to be that ungenerous at your age?”

The General ate some pasta. He knew he should leave well enough alone, but despite that he still felt anxious.

Aurora pointed to Alberto. “Does a sight like that make you feel threatened, Hector? Don’t you think you might stop and count your blessings before we continue this discussion?”

“All right,” the General said. “I suppose there’s no harm in a meal. It was those flowers that made me mad.”

Aurora took up her fork again. “That’s better,” she said. “I like
flowers in my house. Alberto loves to give them to me, and you don’t. There’s no point in pretending that you do. I doubt you’ve smelled two flowers in your life.”

“All right, what do you think the man’s after?” the General said loudly.

“Sex, probably, since you’re too prudish to say it,” Aurora said. “Once again you’ve managed to miss the point by your usual mile, Hector. The fact that most men have the same ultimate motive doesn’t mean that they have the same qualities. Desires may not vary that much, but their expressions do. Alberto’s little floral offerings show some real appreciation—appreciation of me, appreciation of flowers too. I wouldn’t think of denying Alberto that little expression. It would mean that I didn’t appreciate him—which I do. I’d be remarkably shallow if I weren’t able to appreciate an affection that’s persisted as long as his has.”

“Mine’s persisted as long as his has,” the General said.

“Not quite,” Aurora said. “It might surprise you to know that Alberto had already won and lost me before I met you. He predates you by four years, if I’m counting right. The fact that he’s still around is quite endearing.”

“But he was married. You were married,” the General said.

Aurora continued her meal.

“Well, at least you admit he’s got an ultimate motive,” the General said. “I heard you.”

Aurora looked over at him. “Well, the bittersweet is not your sphere, Hector,” she said. “Perhaps you’re better off—I’m not the one to say. However, if I had chosen to remain dependent for appreciation, or kindness either, solely upon those who could achieve their ultimate ends, I’m sure I would have often eaten alone.

“I ate alone enough, anyway,” she added, thinking back on her last few years.

They were quiet. The General was not without sense. Aurora poured herself a bit more wine and turned the wine glass slowly in her fingers. She was sitting, he saw, not so much with him as with memory, and he stopped trying to argue about Alberto and switched from wine back to rum. The rum mellowed him, so that when Alberto awoke and managed to fumble his way out to his
car he heard himself trying to persuade the tired little man that it would be safer, tired as he was, to spend the night on Aurora’s couch. He even heard himself asking him to drop in again sometime, since after all it had been harmless, quite harmless. Alberto, yawning and rumpled, didn’t hear him. He backed the Lincoln into a shrub and eventually managed to steer it into the street. Aurora stood on her lawn smiling a little, evidently not at all alarmed by the way Alberto was driving. The General, rather drunk, forgot her until she put her hand on the back of his neck and gave it a hard squeeze.

“What a hard neck,” she said. “Nothing bittersweet about you, and that’s fine. I must say I’m deeply pleased.”

“What?” the General said, still peering after the weaving car.

“Yes, you and Alberto will end friends,” she said, walking off a few steps and looking up at the waves of night clouds. “Who knows? Maybe you’ll take in old Vernon and old Trevor and a few more of my others before you’re done. All of you can sit crying into your drinks at the memory of what a lot of trouble I was.”

“What?” the General said. “Where are you going to be?”

“I’ll have caught the tide,” Aurora said. Her head was tilted back. She was watching the rapid, passing Houston clouds.

CHAPTER XVII

1.

D
EEP IN
the fall, with her time at hand and the weather still almost as hot as it had been in July, Emma came home with a cart full of groceries just in time to catch her husband in the midst of a poetic flirtation with her best friend Patsy. Flap was sitting at one end of the couch, and Patsy, slim and lovely as ever, was sitting at the other end blushing.

“Hi, there!” Flap said, a little too enthusiastically.

“Hi, hi,” Emma said, dragging the groceries in.

“Thank God,” Patsy said. “He was reading me improper verse.”

“Whose?” Emma asked dryly.

“I’ll help,” Patsy said, jumping up. She was very relieved to see her friend. Her own tendency to flirt was an embarrassment to her, yet she could seldom resist. Males were always surprising her with compliments, and she responded with witticisms and blushes, which seemed to bring even more compliments. With Flap Horton a flirtation was the only way around listening to him
pontificate about literature, but that was all it was good for. She had always found him slightly repulsive physically and couldn’t imagine how her best friend Emma could stand to sleep with him. She went over and gave Emma a big smile so she wouldn’t think anything had really been afoot.

“Nobody ever reads improper verses to me,” Emma said, casting herself as the unromantic drudge, for the sake of convenience.

Patsy helped her unpack the groceries and they made iced tea and sat at the kitchen table drinking it. After a while Flap got over being embarrassed at having been caught flirting and came and joined them.

“Has your mother got rid of that repulsive old general yet?” Patsy asked.

“Nope,” Emma said. “She’s caused him to mellow a little.”

“Bullshit,” Flap said. “They’re both just as snobbish and arrogant as they ever were.”

For a moment Emma got angry. It always angered her to hear people coolly dismissed. “They’re no more snobbish than some other people I could name,” she said. “No more arrogant. At least they don’t spend all their time fishing, like Cecil.”

Flap hated all conflict, but he particularly hated conflict in front of guests. He looked at Emma, large, hot, and hostile, and couldn’t see anything about her that he liked.

“Why shouldn’t Cecil fish?” he asked. “He wouldn’t be any better off if he were out chasing women all the time.”

“I didn’t say he should chase them all the time,” Emma said. “I just don’t think he’s better off for avoiding them.”

“Maybe he was a one-woman man,” Flap said.

“Sure, like you,” Emma said. She knew she shouldn’t be acting that way in front of her friend, but she didn’t want to stop. Patsy was part of it, in a way, and would have to take her chances.

Patsy was even less able to bear conflict than Flap. “Oh, cut it out, you two,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t asked about your mother. I was just popping off.”

Flap turned sullen. “Her mother’s never had less than three men trailing her around,” he said. “That doesn’t happen by accident, you know. Men don’t trail unless women leave a scent.”

“I don’t particularly like your choice of words, but I’ll remember what you’re saying,” Emma said. She gripped her iced-tea glass tightly, wishing Patsy were gone. If she weren’t there, anything might happen. She might fling the glass at him, or ask him for a divorce.