Terms of Endearment (48 page)

Her daughter’s eyes were quite luminous, she noticed.

“I would have liked to hear your grandmother’s comment on that child,” she said. “If your first child wasn’t a girl, then your last one is sure to be. I imagine that would have been her comment were she here.”

She noted that Emma was quite exhausted. Her fatigue was tinged with a kind of delight, or triumph, but it was fatigue nonetheless. The unusual brightness of her eyes only served to highlight her exhaustion. She felt it incumbent upon herself to stop fretting, if that was what she was doing, and to behave in a motherly and, she supposed, grandmotherly fashion.

“I’m being quite bad, Emma,” she said. “You’ve done everything properly, I can see, aside from forgetting my gown, and I’ve no excuse for rattling on this way.”

“I just want to know why you’re itsy,” Emma said.

Aurora looked at her directly, and for a long time. “I shall give you the Klee,” she said. “Come and get it when you’re on your feet.”

“All right,” Emma said. “I hope you don’t mind that we named him Thomas. We would have named it Amelia if it had been a girl.”

“It’s of no moment,” Aurora said and reached over and took her daughter’s light, almost lifeless hand.

“You must get your strength back,” she said. “You’ve a lot of safety pins to bend.”

“I have time,” Emma said.

“Yes, well, I shall keep the Renoir yet a bit,” Aurora said.

Emma stopped looking delighted—a look of slight downcastness came into her face. “You don’t like being a grandmother, do you?” she said. “You don’t accept it as being a natural part of life, or anything like that, do you?”

“No!” Aurora said, so fiercely that Emma jumped.

“Okay, but I hoped you would,” Emma said faintly, in the beaten, retreating tones Aurora’s own mother, Amelia Starrett, had employed so often and so tellingly when faced with her own daughter’s sudden angers.

“I’m stripped … don’t you see?” Aurora began passionately. But then her heart twisted and she blushed, very ashamed, and took Emma into her arms.

“I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” she said. “You’ve been a perfect and proper daughter and I’m simply crazy … just crazy.”

Then she seemed to pass out for a while, holding her weak white daughter, and when she looked up she was enough herself to notice that Emma’s hair was as awful as ever. She refrained from comment, though, and stood up and walked around the bed.

Emma’s eyes had recovered a bit of their shine. “Why did you decide to give me the Klee?” she asked.

Aurora shrugged. “My life is crazy enough without that picture around,” she said. “It’s probably had an influence on me all these years, you know. It’s probably why my lines never meet.”

She took out her mirror and looked at herself thoughtfully for a while, neither really calm nor really wrought up.

“How come you brought two men?” Emma asked.

“I’ve decided to force them down one another’s throats,” Aurora said. “Those two and Alberto and any others that come along. I’m going to require plenty of attendants from now on, I can tell you that.

“You must consider that I’ve only been a grandmother as long as you’ve been a mother,” she said. “It’s likely I’ll come to feel differently about the role, or if not about the role at least about the child.”

She noticed that her daughter was smiling shyly. In her fat way, with almost no hair to speak of, she yet managed to be an
endearing, even a fetching girl, and nicely mannered, despite her dreadful marriage.

“Count yourself lucky you’ve got my Boston, my dear,” she said. “And don’t tell me it was only New Haven. If you just had your father’s Charleston I’d not count on you for very much.”

She shook her fist at her daughter’s shy smile and northern eyes, and turned and left.

3.

I
N THE
lobby of the hospital the General and Vernon were walking around and around feeling uncomfortable with one another, but less uncomfortable with one another than either of them felt at the prospect of Aurora’s return.

“I’ve felt all day she was somewhat out of sorts,” the General said several times. “There’s no predicting her moods, you know.”

Vernon would have agreed, but before he could she stepped out of the elevator and took them by surprise. “What’d you think of the baby?” she asked at once.

“We didn’t go see it,” the General said. “You didn’t tell us to.”

Aurora looked haughty. “You’ve spent thirty minutes in the same building with my grandchild and haven’t even gone to see him,” she said. “That shows rather a lack of ambition, or generalship, or something, and that includes you, Vernon. I hope you’ve at least made friends while I’ve been busy.”

“Of course,” Vernon said.

“I bet,” Aurora said. “Would you please take me back to the building where my car is? I’m tired. I’ll meet you at home quite shortly, Hector, if you don’t mind.”

The General stood by the Packard and watched them drive off in the Lincoln. F.V. held the door open for him.

“It’s true this car’s becoming a bit inconvenient, F.V.,” the General said. “A Lincoln would be somewhat more convenient, I’ll admit.”

“A Lincoln?” F.V. said in disbelief.

“Well, or something comparable,” the General said.

4.

A
URORA RODE
downtown in silence. Vernon could not decide whether she was happy or unhappy, and he didn’t ask. She held her silence until they were eight stories up the garage ramp.

“Up, up, up,” she said and yawned.

“Yeah, you been up a while,” Vernon offered.

“Not brilliant, but it’s conversation,” Aurora said and yawned again. She spoke no more until Vernon pulled up beside her Cadillac.

“It doesn’t look as classic as it used to,” she said. “I’ve a feeling that one of these days my key is going to refuse to go in the ignition.”

“Gimme a buzz if you need me,” Vernon said.

“A buzz indeed,” she said, collecting her shoes, which she had kicked off. “I’ll settle for having you at my door at seven this evening, and bring some cards.”

“Seven today?” he asked, noticing her yawn again.

“Seven today,” Aurora said. “We’re going to have a reckless middle age, the several of us. Maybe I’ll win enough money to buy a Lincoln and a beach boy, and then I won’t need any of you.” She pointed her bent key at him and got in and left.

5.

W
HEN SHE
got home she found the General sitting at her kitchen table, ramrod straight, eating a bowl of Rice Krispies.

Aurora wasn’t fooled. She went over and gave his lean neck a good hard squeeze to see if she could make a dent in it. She didn’t make much of a dent, and the General didn’t look around.

“All right, why are you looking like Don Quixote?” she asked.
“There’s nothing more ridiculous than a General with a mournful countenance. What have I done now?”

The General kept eating, which annoyed her.

“Very well, Hector,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind being friendly, but if you’re going to sit there eating that stupid cereal I don’t see why I should bother.”

“It isn’t stupid,” the General said. “You’ve no goddamn right to criticize my cereal. I’ve been eating Rice Krispies for years.”

“I can believe that—it’s why your calves are so skinny, more than likely,” Aurora said.

“No, that’s because I run,” the General said. “I keep in shape.”

“What’s the point of keeping in shape if you’re going to be gloomy every time I’m friendly?” Aurora asked. “I’d rather have you friendly and with a little more meat on your calves. Legs are crucial, you know. In fact, where I’m concerned, little else counts.”

The General didn’t pursue the argument. He poured some more milk on his cereal and listened to it snap, crackle, and pop, faintly. In the rare intervals when he wasn’t chewing he clenched his teeth. He felt like having an angry fit, but was trying to control himself.

Then Aurora gave him a silent, haughty look, as if to say she had never seen anything more ridiculous in her life than him eating Rice Krispies. Exasperated beyond control, he let go his fit. He grabbed the box of Rice Krispies and shook it at her, and then slung it back and forth in great sweeps, scattering Rice Krispies all over the kitchen and even getting some in Aurora’s hair, which is what he had really meant to do. He wanted to dump the whole box over her head, in fact, but unfortunately he had been feeling nervous for a couple of days and had been eating Rice Krispies steadily to calm his nerves and there weren’t enough left in the box to pour over her head—at last not satisfyingly. When he had slung the box around until it was empty he threw it at her, but it was no very effective throw. Aurora managed to catch the box easily, with one hand, and she strolled over lazily and dropped it in a wastebasket.

“Had your fun, Hector?” she asked.

“You’re going to mess up our life with that little oil man,” the
General shouted. “I know you. You’ve already humiliated me with that Italian. How much do you think I’m going to put up with? That’s what I want to know.”

“Oh, quite a lot,” Aurora said. “I’ll sketch it in for you after I’ve had my nap. I think you better come and have one too. After all this excitement you’re bound to be exhausted, and I’ve planned a little party for tonight.

“You can bring your cereal,” she added, seeing that he still had half a bowlful. Then she crunched her way across a light skein of Rice Krispies and went up to her bedroom.

6.

S
OME HOURS
later, in her bedroom, as the evening was commencing, she sat in her window nook with a Scotch in her hand, listening to the General grumble as he tied his tie. It was a red tie she had bought him a few days before; it went beautifully with his accustomed charcoal gray.

“If we’re going to play poker, why do you want me in a suit and tie?” he asked. “Alberto and Vernon certainly won’t be dressed up.”

“I’m glad you’re able to call them by their first names,” Aurora said, looking down at her darkening yard. “That’s a promising beginning.”

“It doesn’t answer my question,” the General said. “Why am I the only one who’s required to dress?”

“You aren’t,” Aurora said. “I intend to dress splendidly, pretty soon. You are the host, Hector—a position I’d think you’d appreciate. Also you look quite attractive in your suits and rather ridiculous in sports clothes. In our new life you will be the one that dresses, if you don’t mind.”

“So far I don’t like a goddamn thing about our new life,” the General said. “You seem to think it’s going to be pleasant to have three men around.”

“Four when Trevor’s in town,” Aurora said. “Not to mention anyone entertaining I may meet.”

“I know my days are numbered,” the General said grimly, getting into his coat. Instead of feeling angrily gloomy he had started feeling resigned and nobly gloomy.

“I know you’re getting rid of me,” he said. “I can tell when I’m being phased out. You don’t have to pretend. Old soldiers never die, you know … they just fade away. I guess that’s my duty now, just to fade away down the street.”

“Jesus,” Aurora said. “I certainly never thought I’d hear a speech like that in my own bedroom.”

“Well, it’s true,” the General said stoically.

“On the contrary, it’s bullshit, if I may make use of a vulgar phrase,” Aurora said. “You know perfectly well how reluctant I am to alter my basic arrangements.”

“Oh,” the General said.

“It won’t hurt you to have some friends, Hector, even if they are my other suitors,” Aurora said. “You’ve seen no one but your chauffeur and those dogs for far too long.”

“All right, I’ll try it,” the General said, standing at attention and looking in the mirror. “I just don’t know what you’re doing, Aurora. I never know what you’re doing—I’ll never know what you want. It’s all a mystery to me.”

“Some gaiety,” Aurora said, smiling at him. “That, principally—and perhaps another Scotch, after a while.”

The General looked at her silently, still at attention.

“Admirable bearing,” Aurora said. “Why don’t you go down and get out some ice? Our guests will be arriving soon, and I shall be awhile.”

Later she looked out her window and saw two cars arriving at once, the old Lincoln and the new. She raised her window a bit higher so she could watch the arrivals and hear whatever was said. Alberto, she could see, had his arms full of flowers. When he saw Vernon beside him and the General at the door, he looked puzzled. His instinct was to bristle, and yet he was not quite certain that he should bristle just then. Vernon had put on a Stetson hat for the occasion. Aurora waited, smiling, and then by peeking over saw the General step out on her porch and extend his hand.

“Come in, gentlemen,” he said in his scratchy voice. Vernon took off his Stetson and the gentlemen went in.

Aurora watched the evening for a bit, and then stood up and pitched her dressing gown at the bed. She went to her closet and selected a dress for the evening, and when she had selected it and put it on and found the right necklace to go with it she took her hairbrush and stood for a while in front of her Renoir, brushing and looking at the two gay young women in their yellow hats. It occurred to her, as it often had, that their gaiety seemed a good deal quieter than her own had ever been. Then the young women blurred and the painting became like an open window, the window of memory, and Aurora looked through it and saw her own happiness—with her mother in Paris, with Trevor on his boat, with Rudyard beneath the mosses of Charleston. It seemed to her that it had mostly been all happiness then, before quite so much had been said and done.

After a bit her eyes ceased to swim and the two simple young women smiled once again from their pinks and yellows. Aurora felt quite peaceable. She dried her cheeks, finished dressing, and descended gaily to her fellows, all of whom, all evening, found her to be a high, indeed an inestimable, delight.

BOOK II
Mrs. Greenway’s Daughter
1971-1976

E
MMA’S FIRST
lover was her banker, a large, lugubrious Iowan named Sam Burns. He had something of the melancholy of a basset, and had been married twenty-six years when the affair started.