Terms of Endearment (16 page)

Aurora glanced over at him and was forced to sigh. He had a point. “Dear, you put that rather sweetly,” she said, reaching over
and making him uncross his arms so she could give his hand a squeeze. “I do wish I was feeling more compliant these days, but the fact is I’m just not.”

“You don’t try!” the General burst out. “I should think you’d at least try! How many four-star generals do you think are going to come your way?”

“Now, you see, you always go one sentence too far, Hector,” she said. “If you’d just try shortening your speeches by one sentence each I might find myself feeling a little more compliant one of these days.”

Despite her earlier promise, the Cadillac’s right wheels were off the pavement and edging farther and farther toward the ditch all the time, but the General compressed his lips and said nothing about it. He considered that the responsibility was mostly his anyway—he was well aware that she wasn’t to be trusted on the open road and should not have let her bring him to a restaurant thirty miles out of town.

“Be that as it may, I still think you might try,” he said irascibly.

Aurora ignored his tone and drove a mile or two in silence. Then she reached over and squeezed his hand again.

“Trying is not precisely what’s required, Hector,” she said. “I am not by any means the most experienced woman in the world, but I do know that much. You have such wonderful taste in food, dear, that I really hate to let you go, but I’m afraid I may have to. I seem to be very set in my attitudes these days, and I don’t think even a trip to Tahiti would change me very much.”

“What are you talking about, Aurora?” the General asked, disturbed by what he was hearing. “Why would you let me go, and where do you think I’d go if you did?”

“Well, as you pointed out, I’m behaving in a rather frustrating manner,” Aurora said. “I’ve no doubt you’d be better off if I let you go. I’m sure there are any number of nice ladies around Houston who’d simply be delighted to have a four-star general come their way.”

“Not as nice as you,” the General said, almost before her mouth was closed.

Aurora shrugged and glanced at herself briefly in her rearview
mirror—as usual it was turned so she could see herself better than she could see the road.

“Hector, that’s very romantic of you,” she said, “but I think we’re both aware that whatever charms I may have are more than offset by my difficulties. Everybody knows I’m impossible, and you might just as well admit it and quit wasting what time you’ve got left. I’m afraid I’ve come to share the general view. I’m haughty and willful and very sharp-tongued. You and I irritate one another in a number of ways and I don’t think we could keep the same roof over our heads for six days, even if we tried our best. Anyone as particular as myself deserves to have to live alone, as I shall probably have to. It’s purely self-defeating for you to sit there training your binoculars on my garage and dreaming your dreams. Find some nice woman with a taste for good food and whisk her right off to Tahiti. You’re a military man and I think it’s high time you regained the habit of command.”

The General was so amazed by what he was hearing that he forgot to remind Aurora that they were approaching the turn that would bring them back to Houston.

“But, Aurora, I still have the habit of command,” he said angrily. “It just so happens that you’re the only woman I want to command.”

Then he noticed that she hadn’t noticed the turn and was about to sail right past it. “Turn, Aurora!” he yelled, loud enough to have turned a column of tanks.

Aurora drove straight on. “Hector, this is no time to show off,” she said. “Your voice just isn’t what it used to be and that is not precisely what I meant when I spoke of the habit of command, anyway.”

“No, no, Aurora,” the General said. “You missed the road. As many times as we’ve driven out here, God damn it, it does seem to me that you’d know the way. I’ve had to show you the way every single time.”

“You see, that’s just what I meant by us being unfitted for one another,” Aurora said. “You always know your way to places and I never do. I’m sure we’d drive one another mad in a matter of days. Can’t I just turn at the next road I come to?”

“No!” the General said. “The next road you come to leads to El Paso. Turn around.”

“Oh, well, all right,” Aurora said. “You spend half your life talking to me about foreign climes and now you won’t even let me try a new road. I don’t think that’s very consistent Hector. You know how I hate to retrace my steps.”

“Aurora, you have no goddamn discipline,” the General said, losing his temper. “If you’d only marry me I’d fix that in no time.”

While he was losing his temper Aurora executed one of her most masterful U-turns, sweeping from bar ditch to bar ditch.

“You didn’t signal,” the General said.

“That may be true, but it’s your car that’s always broken down,” Aurora said, lifting her chin. Hector had suddenly become unrewarding to talk to, so she stopped talking. The effects of her excellent meal had not worn off, and she was still in a fine mood. They were on the great coastal plain southeast of Houston. Flights of gulls were going over and the smell of the nearby ocean mingled with the smell of the tall coastal grass in a pleasant way. It was a very nice road to drive on, it seemed to her, and it was easy enough to look at the strings of white gulls and the extraordinary masses of clouds that were beginning to pile up on one another, certainly far pleasanter than looking at Hector Scott, who had his arms crossed again and was obviously quite annoyed with her.

“Hector, I don’t believe you were nearly as sulky before you went bald,” she said. “Don’t you think a hairpiece might improve your spirits, dear?”

Without a moment’s warning, the General sprang at her. “Turn, Aurora!” he yelled. “You’re missing the road again!”

To her annoyance he actually leaned over and started to grab the wheel himself, but she quickly slapped his hand away. “I’ll turn if that’s all you can think about, Hector,” she said hotly. “Just let me do it.”

“No, it’s too late,” the General said. “Don’t turn now, for God’s sake.”

But Aurora had had enough of such talk. Without further ado
she turned, too late to quite hit the road she was aiming at but just in time to avoid hitting the barbed-wire fence that ran beside it. What she did not fail to hit was a large white car that, for no reason in the world that she could see, was parked right in the ditch by the fence. “Oh, my,” she said, braking.

“I told you!” the General shouted just at the moment that they hit the rear end of the parked car.

Aurora never really drove very fast, and she had had time to do quite a bit of braking, but still when she hit the white car she hit it with quite a loud wham. She herself experienced no discomfort from the wham. Almost immediately there was another wham—she had no idea where that one came from—and then to her surprise the car seemed to be enveloped in a cloud of dust. She hadn’t noticed any dust before the accident.

“My goodness, Hector, do you suppose we’re in a sandstorm?” she asked, and noticed that the General was holding his nose.

“What’s wrong with your nose?” she asked as the Cadillac lurched back in the direction of the barbed-wire fence. It stopped before it got to the fence, but the cloud of dust remained. After a while it settled and Aurora took out her brush and began to brush her hair.

“Don’t talk to me, Hector, just don’t talk to me,” she said. “I’m sure you’re going to say I told you so, and I refuse to hear it.”

The General was still holding his nose, which had bumped on the windshield.

“Aren’t those nice sea gulls, though?” Aurora said, noticing with some satisfaction that they were still flapping along overhead, probably giving no thought at all to a world in which pedals were constantly having to be worked.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” the General said. “I always knew you’d do it and now you have.”

“Well, Hector, I’m glad to have given you
that
satisfaction at least,” Aurora said. “I should hate to have been a disappointment to you in every way.”

“You’re a ridiculous woman!” the General burst out. “I hope you realize that. Just ridiculous!”

“Well, I sometimes suspect it,” Aurora said quietly. “All the
same I wish you weren’t quite so eager to turn me against myself.”

She continued to brush her hair, though with fading spirit. The dust had settled, and she had had at least one accident, if not two. Hector Scott, far from being a help, was settling back to gloat, and her instincts were confused and subdued. Ordinarily when things went wrong her instinct was to attack, but in this case she had too strong a feeling that whatever had happened had been entirely her fault. Perhaps, as Hector said, she was ridiculous—that and nothing more. She felt rather lost, in her heart, and would have liked for Rosie or Emma to be there, but neither of them was.

“Hector, I do wish you’d let me try the next road I came to,” she said sadly. “I don’t think I’d have hit anybody if I hadn’t had to retrace my steps.”

At that moment, to her surprise, a small man of no pretensions appeared at her window. It was obvious at once that he had no pretensions. “Hello, ma’am,” he said. He was short and had sandy hair and a very freckled complexion.

“Yes, hello, sir,” Aurora said. “I’m Aurora Greenway. Are you one of my victims?”

The small man reached a freckled hand in and shook hers. “Vernon Dalhart,” he said. ‘You folks ain’t hurt, are you?”

“I bumped my nose,” the General said.

“No, we’re fine,” Aurora said, ignoring him. “Were you injured?”

“Aw, no,” Vernon said. “I was just lying in the back seat talking on the phone when you popped into me. I ain’t hurt an’ the phone never even went dead. We got to work out our story quick, though, because that boy that hit you was a highway patrolman.”

“Oh, dear,” Aurora said. “I knew they didn’t really like me. I never thought one would run into me, though.”

“You glanced off my tail end and skidded up on the highway, you know,” Vernon said. “I seen it. He just happened to be coming along right then. He’s all right, but it kinda knocked the wind out of him. It’ll take him a minute or two to get cracking on this thing.”

“Oh, dear,” Aurora said. “I suppose it means jail. I wish I could remember my lawyer’s last name.”

“Aw, nobody’d take a nice lady like you to jail,” Vernon said, smiling at her rather nicely. “All you have to do is tell him it was all my fault.”

“Be careful, Aurora,” the General said. “Don’t commit yourself.”

Aurora paid him no mind at all. “But Mr. Dalhart,” she said, “it was quite evidently all
my
fault. I’m known the world over for my erratic driving. I certainly wouldn’t think of putting the blame on you.”

“Won’t hurt a thing, ma’am,” Vernon said. “I play poker with the boss of the highway patrol just about every week of the world, an’ he ain’t won in years. You just tell this boy that you was idlin’ along and I backed into you. All I got to do’s drop the ticket in the next pot. It’s simple as that.”

“Uum,” Aurora said, considering. The small man, Mr. Dalhart, seemed unable to stand still. He shifted from one foot to the other, fiddling with his belt buckle. Yet he smiled at her as if she had done nothing wrong, and that was so refreshing that she felt inclined to trust him.

“Well, Mr. Dalhart, you make it sound very practical, I must say,” she said.

“I don’t trust this man, Aurora,” the General said suddenly. He didn’t like the way Aurora was perking up so quickly. If only the catastrophe had deepened a little bit more she would have been forced to come to him for comfort, he felt sure.

“Mr. Dalhart, this is General Scott,” Aurora said. “He’s a good deal more suspicious than I am. Do you think I can carry off this little deception, really and truly?”

Vernon nodded. “No problem at all,” he said. “Them old boys who drive patrol cars got simple minds. It’s just like bluffin’ a dog, you know. Just don’t act scared.”

“Well, I’ll try,” Aurora said, “although I can’t claim to have bluffed very many dogs.”

“Now stop it,” the General said, straightening himself up and making the knot in his tie a little neater. “After all, I was a witness to this accident. I also happen to be a man of principle.
Suppose I don’t happen to want to sit here and listen to you give false evidence. Lie, in other words. That is what you were about to do, isn’t it?”

Aurora looked down at her lap for a moment—she sensed real trouble. She stole a look at Vernon Dalhart, who was still bobbing around outside the car, and still smiling at her. Then she turned and looked the General in the eye.

“Yes, Hector, go on. I’m listening,” she said. “I’m not so noble but that I lie on occasion. Is that the point you wish to make against me?”

“No, but I’m glad you admit it,” he said.

“You’re not getting to the point, Hector, and I wish you’d hurry,” Aurora said, not taking her eyes off him.

“Well, I saw the accident too, you know, and I’m a four-star general,” he said, a little unnerved by her look but not quite unnerved enough to back away.

“I don’t think you saw a bit more than I did, Hector, and all I saw was dust,” Aurora said. “What does this come down to?”

“What it comes down to is that I’ll support your little lie if you’ll take a perfectly proper, perfectly respectable trip to Tahiti with me,” the General said with an air of triumph. “Or if Tahiti doesn’t suit you it can be anyplace else in the world that you might want to go.”

Aurora looked out the window. Vernon was still fidgeting, but he was also looking at the ground, as if embarrassed to be privy to such conversation. She could hardly blame him.

“Mr. Dalhart, could I ask you a great favor, point blank?” she said.

“Why sure,” Vernon said.

“If your car is still working, after that lick I gave it, I wonder if you’d mind giving me a ride to town?” Aurora asked. “After we’re finished with the police, I mean. I don’t think I’m quite up to driving in the state I’m in.”

“Your car won’t run anyway, ma’am,” Vernon said. “The back fender’s mashed against the tire. “I’ll run you right in as soon as we’ve settled with the law.