Terms of Endearment (2 page)

“Emma, you really should diet,” Aurora said. “You’re such an unyielding person, dear. I want you to know that I’m
raather
vexed.”

“Why?” Emma said, poking in the clothes pile. As usual, several socks had failed to mate.

“Raather
vexed,” Aurora repeated, on the chance that there was something wrong with her daughter’s ears. She had put the full weight of Boston behind her “raather,” and was not disposed to have it ignored. Emma, who possessed—among other unladylike qualities—an annoying interest in precision, would have insisted that it was only the full weight of New Haven, but quibbles of that sort cut no ice with Aurora. Boston was hers to employ, and the full weight of it was meant to strike thunder. Had they been in Boston, or perhaps even New Haven—any place where life could be kept in hand—no doubt it would have; but the two of them, mother and daughter, were in Emma’s hot, muggy oversmall living room in Houston, Texas, where the full weight of Boston seemed to strike nothing at all. Emma went on distractedly counting socks.

“You’re letting yourself go again,” Aurora said. “You’re not taking pains with your appearance. Why won’t you diet?”

“Eating makes me less frustrated,” Emma said. “Why won’t you stop buying clothes? You’re the only person I know who has seventy-five of everything.”

“The women of our family have always prided themselves on their dress,” Aurora said. “All except you, at least. I am not a seamstress. I do not propose to sew.”

“I know you don’t,” Emma said. She herself was wearing jeans and one of her husband’s T-shirts.

“That garment you have on top of you is so disgusting I scarcely know how to refer to it,” Aurora said. “It belongs on a pickaninny, not on a daughter of mine. Of course I buy clothes. The selection of a tasteful wardrobe is a duty, not a pastime.”

With that, Aurora lifted her chin. When justifying herself to her daughter she often liked to assume a touch of majesty. Emma
was seldom impressed, and the look on her face at that moment smacked of defiance.

“Seventy-five tasteful wardrobes is a pastime,” Emma said. “I reserve judgment about the tasteful part too. Anyway, what happened about your female problem?”

“Stop it! Don’t talk about it!” Aurora said. In her indignation she not only sat up but attempted an outraged flounce, causing the old couch to creak loudly. It was not merely the moral weight of Boston that she embodied.

“All right!” Emma said. “Good God! You told me you were going to the doctor. I just asked. You don’t have to break the couch.”

“You needn’t have mentioned it,” Aurora said, genuinely upset. Her lower lip was trembling. She was not ordinarily a prudish woman, but lately all mention of sex upset her; it made her feel that her whole life was wrong, and she didn’t like to feel that way.

“You’re absolutely ridiculous,” Emma said. “Why do you have to be so touchy? Shall we correspond about it?”

“I am not ill, if you must know,” Aurora said. “Not ill in the least.” She held out her glass. “However, I should like some more iced tea.”

Emma sighed, took the glass, got up, and left the room. Aurora lay back down, almost depressed. She had her strong days and her weak days, and she had begun to feel a weak day coming on. Emma had not anticipated her wants in any way—why were children so incapable of keeping their minds on parents? She was in the mood for a fit of despond, but her daughter, determined to thwart her at every turn, came back immediately with a glass of iced tea. She had stuck a sprig of mint in the glass and, perhaps as a gesture of contrition, had brought a little dish of sassafras candy—one of the several candies that her mother particularly enjoyed.

“That’s sweet,” Aurora said, taking a piece.

Emma smiled. Her mother, she knew, had been about to go into a fit—a lonely-widow, unappreciated-mother fit. The candy had been a brilliant stroke. The week before she had squandered a whole dollar and sixty-eight cents on a variety of it, all of which
she had hidden and about half of which she had already eaten herself. Flap, her husband, would not have looked kindly on such an expenditure. He professed strict ideas about tooth decay but would undoubtedly just have spent the money on his own vices, which were beer and paperbacks. Emma was devil-may-care when it came to teeth, and liked to have candy around to stave off fits—her mother’s or her own.

Aurora, her little sinking spell conquered, had already drifted back into happy indolence and was gazing around the living room, hoping to find something new to criticize.

“The reason I brought up the doctor was because I went yesterday myself,” Emma said, settling herself on the floor again. “Maybe I’ve got some good news.”

“I hope he’s persuaded you to diet,” Aurora said. “No one should be so intractable as to reject the advice of their physician. Dr. Ratchford has had long years of experience and except where I am concerned it’s been my observation that his advice is invariably good. The sooner you start to diet the happier person you’ll be.”

“Why do you always make an exception of yourself?” Emma asked.

“Because I know myself best,” Aurora said serenely. “I certainly wouldn’t allow a physician to know me this well.”

“Maybe you’ve got yourself fooled,” Emma suggested. The laundry really was depressing. All Flap’s shirts were worn out.

“I have not,” Aurora said. “I do not permit myself delusions. I never try to whitewash the fact that you married badly.”

“Oh, shut up,” Emma said. “I married okay. Anyway you just said two minutes ago that the success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman. To use your very words. Maybe I’ll make this one a success.”

Aurora looked blank. “Now you’ve made me lose my train of thought,” she said.

Emma snickered. “That was thought?” she said.

Aurora took another candy. She looked aloof. Sternness might present problems, but aloofness was her element. Life often required it of her. In gathering after gathering, when her sensibilities were affronted, she had found it necessary to raise her
eyebrows and cast a chill. There was little justice. It sometimes seemed to her that if she were remembered at all it would probably only be for the chills she had cast.

“I have often been complimented on the clarity of my expression,” she said.

“You didn’t let me tell you my good news,” Emma said.

“Oh, yes, you’ve decided to diet, just as I’d hoped,” Aurora said. “That
is
good news.”

“Damn it, I didn’t go to Dr. Ratchford to talk about dieting,” Emma said. “I don’t want to diet. I went to find out if I’m pregnant, and it looks like I am. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for an hour.”

“What!” Aurora said, looking at Emma. Her daughter was smiling, and had said the word “pregnant.” Aurora had just taken a sip of iced tea—she almost choked. “Emma” she yelled. Life had struck again, and just when she was almost comfortable. She sprang up as if jabbed by a pin, but fell back heavily, breaking the saucer and causing her almost empty tea glass to spin around erratically on the rugless floor, like a child’s top.

“You’re not!” she cried.

“I think so,” Emma said. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Oh, God,” Aurora said, clutching her stomach with both hands.

“What’s wrong, Momma?” Emma asked, for her mother looked genuinely stricken.

“Oh, my iced tea jiggled when I fell,” Aurora said. “I don’t know.” Blood was rushing to her head, and she began to hyperventilate. She could only breathe in gasps.

“Of course that’s wonderful for you, dear,” she said, feeling terrible. It was a shock, it wasn’t right—something was out of order, and she felt confusion closing in on her. Always she fought confusion, yet it seemed to lie in wait for her, no matter where she went.

“Oh, God!” she said, wrenching herself into a sitting position. Her hair, which she had more or less caught in a bun, came completely loose, and she opened the neck of her robe to assure herself more air.

“Momma, stop it, I’m just pregnant,” Emma yelled, angered that her mother would indulge herself in a fit after she had been so generous with the sassafras candy.

“Just pregnant!” Aurora cried, confusion turning suddenly to rage. “You… negligent…” But words failed her, and to Emma’s intense annoyance she began to smite her forehead with the back of her hand. Aurora had been raised in an era of amateur theatricals and was not without her stock of tragic gestures. She continued to smite her forehead vigorously, as she always did when she was very upset, wincing each time at the pain it gave her hand.

“Stop that,” Emma cried, standing up. “Stop smiting your goddamn forehead, Momma! You know I hate that!”

“And I hate you,” Aurora cried, abandoning all reason. “You’re not a thoughtful daughter! You never have been a thoughtful daughter! You never will be a thoughtful daughter!”

“What did I do?” Emma yelled, beginning to cry. “Why can’t I be pregnant? I’m married.”

Aurora struggled to her feet and faced her daughter, meaning to show her such scorn as she had never seen before. “You may call this marriage but I don’t,” she yelled. “I call it squalor!”

“We can’t help it!” Emma said. “It’s all we can afford.”

Aurora’s lip began to tremble. Scorn got lost—everything was lost. “Emma, it’s not the point… you shouldn’t have… it’s not the point at all,” she said, suddenly on the verge of tears.

“What’s the point then?” Emma said. “Just tell me. I don’t know.”

“Mee!” Aurora cried, with the last of her fury. “Don’t you see? My life is not settled. Me!”

Emma winced, as she always did when her mother cried “Mee!” at the world. The sound was as primitive as a blow. But as her mother’s chin began to shake and pure fury began its mutation into pure tearfulness, she understood a little and put out her arm.

“Who will I ever… get now?” Aurora cried. “What man would want a grandmother? If you could… have waited… then I might have… got somebody.”

“Oh, dear,” Emma said. “Aw, Momma, stop that.” She went on crying herself, but only because she had a sudden fear of laughing. Only her mother did that to her, and always at the most unlikely times. She knew she was the one who ought to feel outraged or hurt—probably she would when she thought about it. But her mother never had to think; she was just outraged or hurt, immediately, and with a total purity of feeling that Emma had never been able to command. It always happened.

Emma gave up. She let herself be beaten once again. She dried her eyes just as her mother burst into tears. The whole fit was ridiculous, but it didn’t matter. The look on her mother’s face—an utter conviction of utter ruin—was too real. The look might not last five minutes—seldom did—but there it was, on a face that Emma felt sure must be the most helplessly human face that she or anyone she knew had ever had to confront. The sight of her mother looking blank with distress had always caused whoever was handy to come rushing up at once with whatever love they had available in them. No one had ever been able to stand to see her mother looking that way, Emma least of all, and only love would change it. She began immediately to make loving sounds, and her mother, as usually, tried to fight her off.

“No, get away,” Aurora said. “Fetuses. Ugh. Yick.” She recovered her capacity for motion and floundered across the room, waving her hands and making swatting motions, as if she were knocking tiny batlike embryos out of the air. She didn’t know what was wrong, but it was a blow at her life. She knew that much.

“See! Now I’ll lose all my suitors!” she yelled, turning for a last moment of defiance.

“Now, Momma… now, Momma, it’s not that bad,” Emma kept saying as she advanced.

When Emma finally cornered her, in the bedroom, Aurora took the only course open to her: she flung herself on the bed, and her light pink garment billowed down after her like a sail falling. She sobbed for five minutes uncontrollably, and for five more with varying degrees of control, while her daughter sat on the bed beside her rubbing her back and telling her over and over again what a dear, wonderful person she was.

“Now, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” Emma asked when her mother finally stopped crying and uncovered her face.

“Not in the least.” Mrs. Greenway said, pushing back her hair. “Hand me a mirror.”

2.

E
MMA DID
, and Aurora sat up and with a cool, unsentimental eye inspected the damage to her face. She rose without a word and disappeared into the bathroom; water ran for some while. When she emerged, a towel around her shoulders, Emma had just finished folding the clothes.

Aurora settled herself on the couch again, mirror in hand. There had been doubtful moments, but her image had somehow struggled back to where she thought it ought to be, and she merely glanced at herself thoughtfully a time or two before turning her gaze upon her daughter. In fact, Aurora felt quite ashamed of her outburst. All her life she had been prone to outbursts, a habit which ran contrary to her preferred view of herself as a rational person. This outburst, considering its cause, or at least its starting point, seemed particularly unworthy of her. Still, she did not propose to apologize until she had considered the matter carefully—not that her daughter expected an apology. Emma sat quietly by her neatly folded clothes.

“Well, my dear, I must say you’ve behaved rather independently,” Aurora said. “Still, the times being what they are, I suppose I should have expected it.”

“Momma, it has nothing to do with the times,” Emma said. “You got pregnant, didn’t you?”

“Not consciously,” Aurora said. “Not with unseemly haste either. You’re only twenty-two.”

“Now stop it, just stop it,” Emma said. “You’re not going to lose your suitors.”

Aurora’s expression was once again a little bemused, once again a little aloof. “I can’t imagine why I should care,” she said. “All of them are miles beneath me. I’m not at all sure that’s why I
cried. The shock may have made me jealous, for all I know. I always meant to have more children myself. Is Thomas coming home soon?”

“I want you to call him Flap, please.” Emma said. “He doesn’t like to be called Thomas.”