Terms of Endearment (6 page)

Emma didn’t care. She was frankly glamour-struck, and she adored the Kennedys. Her mother, who paid no attention to presidents at all, had grown so tired of hearing the two of them argue about Eisenhower and Kennedy that she had forbidden them to so much as mention a president at her table again.

“Well, maybe we’ll bring home some good fish,” Flap said lightly.

Emma took her hand off his stomach. His face had lightened as quickly as his tone. All it had taken to cheer him up was her polite refusal of his little
pro forma
invitation. He turned and bent over and began to drag his fishing gear out of the bedroom closet, and he began to whistle “The Wabash Cannonball.” One
or another of her dresses was always getting snagged on his fishing gear, but it was their only closet and he had no other place to keep it. When he bent over to get his tackle box the T-shirt he was wearing rode partway up his back. Emma stood looking at the bumpy lower part of his spine. It was a place her hand loved, at certain times. But she felt chilled and sullen. She would have liked to have a heavy chain in her hand, and if she had had one she would have hit him with it, right across the lower part of his spine. If it broke his back, so much the better. He had somehow made her betray herself by refusing her own right to go with him; then he had offered her the possibility of a fish to cook as a reward for refusing her own right. She had done nothing really honest all day, and she stood looking at him, feeling that she didn’t know how to begin to do anything honest. Only a chain would have made it possible for her to do something honest, and she didn’t have one.

All she had was a sullen coldness, and the secret of Danny. Flap could have found out the secret if he had read the morning paper as attentively as her mother had, but he had only glanced at the headlines and read the sports page. He knew he was going away fishing and hadn’t even looked to see what was on at the movies. At two or three points during breakfast Emma had almost confessed what she knew, not exactly out of loyalty but because a strange wavery apprehension came over her and went away and then came over her again. If Flap had ever once looked at her right, she would have come right out with Danny, but she could tell from the happy way he was whistling “The Wabash Cannonball” that he was not going to be thinking about her much for a couple of days. She made no effort to look any way but hostile as they were leaving, but it made only a dim impression on him.

“You look sort of resentful,” he said, pausing a moment on the steps. The tone he used was the tone he would have used if all he had said was “Nice weather.”

“I am,” Emma said.

“Why?” he asked politely.

“It’s not my place to say,” Emma said. “If you really care, then it’s your place to find things out.”

“Well, you’re just impossible,” he said.

“I don’t agree,” Emma said. “I’m possible when I’m handled with a little care.”

Flap was in perfect spirits. He didn’t want to fight, and didn’t answer; nor did he notice that when he waved to her from the car she didn’t wave back.

Cecil didn’t notice her omission either. He too was feeling very good. “That girl’s the cat’s meow,” he said. “Marrying her was the smartest thing you’ve done with yourself yet. Hope we can bring her some good fish to cook.”

2.

T
HE GIRL
who was the cat’s meow went in and attempted to arm herself against the alternating senses of anger and futility, emptiness and apprehension that had invaded her heart and spoiled her pleasure in what she had thought might be a wonderful morning. All she had wanted was for Flap to face up to her for a minute—maybe just look really friendly, and not friendly-guilty, as he had looked. He knew what a pushover she was, how easy she was to please. Two nice minutes would have done it, and it seemed disgraceful to her that he had married her and yet didn’t care enough to produce two nice minutes when she needed them.

She pushed the dirty dishes out of the way and sat down by the window where she had sat the night before to listen to the rain. For weapons she had coffee and cigarettes, the want ads and the crossword puzzle, and even her old shabby copy of
Wuthering Heights.
The book was one of her unfailing comforts in life, but for once it failed her. She couldn’t lose herself in it, and all it did was remind her of what she already knew too well: that in her life nothing that total would ever be at stake. No one would ever think she was that crucial—not truly or absolutely, not life or death, commit or die.

While she was staring at the want ads the phone rang.

“You again,” she said, knowing perfectly well who it was.

“Of course. You didn’t let me have the last word,” her mother
said. “That was rather selfish of you, dear. You know how much I enjoy the last word.”

“I was busy,” Emma said. “Also, I was thinking of your fellows.”

“Oh, them,” Aurora said. “Emma, you still sound resigned. Honestly. Here you are about to have a nice baby and you don’t even sound happy. You have your whole life before you, dear.”

“You’ve been telling me that for ten years,” Emma said. “Some of it must be behind me by now. That’s what you told me when I got braces, as I recall. It’s also what you told me when I got engaged.”

“Only to bring you to your senses,” Aurora said. “Unfortunately, I failed.”

“Maybe I’m just a resigned person,” Emma said. “Ever think of that?”

“I’m hanging up,” Aurora said. “You’re very unrewarding today. I don’t think you like me when I sound gay. I may have erred on occasion in my life, but at least I’ve kept a healthy attitude. You have responsibilities now. No child wants a mother who’s resigned. If you ask me you’d do well to diet.”

“You’d better stop picking on me,” Emma said flatly. “I’ve had enough. You weigh more than I do anyway.”

“Humph,” Aurora said, and hung up again.

Emma stared at the want ads, quivering slightly. She had stopped feeling angry at Flap; what she could not stop feeling was disappointed. Life had far too little of
Wuthering Heights.
Now carelessly, now meticulously, she peeled an orange, but it lay on the table uneaten until late that afternoon.

CHAPTER III

1.

B
Y TEN A.M
., after a short nap to calm her nerves, Aurora had made her way downstairs and onto her patio. Rosie, her maid for twenty-two years, found her there, recumbent on a chaise.

“How come all the phones in this house is off the hook?” Rosie asked.

“Well, it’s not your house, is it?” Aurora said defiantly.

“No, but the world could be comin’ to an end,” Rosie said serenely. “Nobody could call an’ tell us. Maybe I’d like to get a runnin’ start.”

“I can see the world from where I’m lying,” Aurora said, glancing at it. “It does not appear to be coming to an end. You’ve been listening to your preachers again, haven’t you?”

“I still don’t see no point in having four phones if you’re gonna go around leavin’ them off the hook,” Rosie said, ignoring the question. Rosie was five one, freckled all over, and weighed
ninety pounds, sometimes. “I might not be no bigger than a chicken, but I got fight,” she often said. “I ain’t afraid to work, I can tell you that.”

Aurora knew that. She knew it only too well. Once Rosie let herself loose on a house, nothing was ever quite as it had been. Old and familiar objects disappeared forever, and those that were allowed to remain were consigned to places so unlikely that it was sometimes months before she came across them. Having Rosie for a maid was an appalling price to pay for cleanliness, and it was perpetually unclear to Aurora why she paid it. The two of them had never got on; they had fought tooth and nail for twenty-two years. Neither of them had ever intended for the arrangement to last more than a few more days, and yet years passed and no good stopping place appeared.

“So?” Rosie inquired. It was her way of inquiring if it was all right to hang up the phones.

Aurora nodded. “I was punishing Emma, if you must know,” she said. “She hung up on me twice and was not apologetic. I don’t regard that as forgivable.”

“Aw, I do,” Rosie said. “My kids hang up on me left and right. That’s just kids for you. Kids don’t know what manners is.”

“Well, mine knows,” Aurora said. “Emma didn’t grow up in the street, like some people’s children.” She lifted her eyebrows and looked at Rosie, who squinted back at her undaunted.

“All right, just keep off my younguns,” Rosie said. “I’ll light into you like a rat terrier, first thing you know. Just because you was too lazy to have but one doesn’t mean other people ain’t got a right to a normal-sized family.”

“I’m certainly glad all Americans don’t share your view of what’s normal,” Aurora said. “If they did we’d be standing on top of one another right now.”

“Seven ain’t a one too many,” Rosie said. She snatched several pillows off the chaise and began to pound them. Aurora seldom moved without eight or ten of her favorite pillows. Trails of pillows often led from her bedroom to whatever part of the house she came to rest in.

“Can’t you leave me my pillows?” she yelled. “You’re no respecter
of a person’s comfort, I must say. I didn’t like your tone just now, either. You’re a fifty-year-old woman and I don’t intend to see you through another pregnancy.”

Rosie’s fecundity was a source of constant apprehension to both of them, but particularly to Aurora. The youngest child was only four, and there seemed reason to doubt that the tide had really been stemmed. Rosie herself was ambivalent. She scarcely gave her children a thought for months on end, but when she did give them a thought she found it difficult to give up the notion of having another one. It had pepped her up too many times. She moved around Aurora in a crouch, snatching every pillow she could reach. Those that had pillowcases she instantly stripped.

“Emma was probably just washing her hair and never wanted to talk,” she said to divert Aurora’s attention. “Anyhow, she’s got a heavy cross to bear. That sickly dog of a husband of hers ain’t fit to kick off the porch.”

“I’m glad we agree on something,” Aurora said, kicking out at her idly. “Straighten up. You’re far too short as it is. No one wants a maid who’s two feet tall.”

“Got a date for lunch yet?” Rosie asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” Aurora said. “If you don’t stop hovering around me I’m going to swat you.”

“Well, if you’re goin’ out I’m having Royce in then,” Rosie said. “I just thought I’d clear it with you.”

“Of course,” Aurora said. “Have him in. Make free with my food. I don’t know why I don’t just deed the house to you. I’d probably be happier in an apartment anyway, now that I’m an aging widow. At least no one would snatch my pillows.”

“That’s just talk,” Rosie said, still grabbing and shucking. Naked pillows lay everywhere—the only ones that weren’t naked were the three Aurora was lying on.

“In point of fact it’s not just talk,” she said. “In point of fact” was one of her favorite phrases. “I ought to move. I don’t know what’s to stop me, unless I marry, and this is far from likely.”

Rosie snickered. “You may marry but you ain’t gonna move,” she said. “Not unless you marry some old coot with a mansion. You got too many doodads. There ain’t an apartment in Houston that’d hold this many doodads.”

“I’m not listening to any more of your twaddle,” Aurora said, rising and clutching her three remaining pillows to her. “You’re as difficult as my daughter and your grammar is worse. Now that you’ve spoiled my rest I have no choice but to go outside.”

“I don’t care what you do as long as you don’t get in the way of my work,” Rosie said. “You can go poo-poo in the frog pond for all I care.”

“No choice,” Aurora muttered, abandoning the field. It was another of her favorite expressions, and also one of her favorite states. As long as she could feel robbed of all choice, then nothing that went wrong could be her fault, and in any case she had never really enjoyed choosing, unless jewels and gowns were involved.

She kicked several naked pillows out of the way and left the patio with as bad a grace as possible to go out in the sunny back yard and inspect her bulbs.

2.

W
HEN SHE
came down from her bedroom two hours later, dressed for her luncheon date—or nearly so—Rosie was in the kitchen having lunch with her husband, Royce Dunlup. In Aurora’s view Royce was even less inspired than Rudyard had been, and it was a wonder to her that Rosie had somehow prompted him to seven kids. He drove a delivery truck for a company that sold packaged sandwiches, pigs’ feet, barbecue chips, and other horrible foods. Somehow or other he always managed his deliveries so as to be in the Greenway neighborhood at lunchtime, so Rosie could feed him a home-cooked meal.

“There you are, Royce, as usual,” Aurora said. She was carrying her shoes in one hand and her stockings in the other. Stockings were one of the banes of her existence, and she only put them on at the last minute, if at all.

“Yes, ma’am,” Royce said. He stood in great awe of Aurora Greenway, and had remained in awe of her despite having eaten lunch in her kitchen almost every day for twenty years. If she
was home, she was usually still in her dressing gown at lunch-time—indeed, it was her custom to change dressing gowns frequently during the course of the morning, more or less as a prelude to serious dressing. Often, proceeding quite frankly on the premise that any man is more interesting than none, she would descend to the kitchen and attempt to get a conversation out of Royce. It never worked, but at least she got to consume her rightful share of whatever Rosie had cooked—usually an excellent gumbo of some sort or another. Rosie was from Shreveport and had a fine touch with shellfish.

“You’re looking thinner, Royce. I hope you’re not working too hard,” she said, smiling at him. It was her traditional opener.

Royce shook his head. “No, ma’am,” he said without taking his nose out of his gumbo.

“My that looks good,” Aurora said. “I believe I’ll just have a cup to bolster me before I start. Then if I get lost on the way to the restaurant I won’t have to drive around feeling hungry.”