Terms of Endearment

by Larry McMurtry

  “Bye, Momma, come again,” Emma said, for form’s sake.

  Aurora didn’t hear. She seized the steering wheel commandingly and poked her foot at the appropriate pedal. “Little Aurora,” she said fondly as she drove away.

  3.

  EMMA HEARD her and smiled. “Little Aurora” was an expression her mother used only when she considered herself alone against the world—alone and supremely adequate.

  Then she jumped. Her mother had begun immediately to honk at the Volkswagen, and the Cadillac had a very loud horn. Hearing it unexpectedly gave everyone, Emma included, apprehensions of emergency. Against such honking the little green car had no chance—the Cadillac swept it aside as easily as an ocean liner might sweep aside a canoe. The driver, assuming that catastrophe had overtaken someone, turned into a driveway and didn’t even honk back.

  Emma stretched the T-shirt as far down her legs as it would go. The trees overhead were still dripping from the summer shower, and drops of water fell on her bosom, such as her bosom was. The T-shirt did emphasize certain of her inadequacies. Her mother had not been entirely wrong.

  As usual, after one of her mother’s visits, Emma found herself feeling antagonistic, not merely toward her mother but also toward her husband and herself. Flap should have been there to defend himself, or her, or them. Her mother hadn’t really been on the attack; she had just been exercising her peculiar subtle genius for making everyone but herself seem vaguely in the wrong. There was never any peace with her mother around, but somehow, once she left, there was even less. Her most absurd remarks had a habit of hanging in the air. They were always uncalled for and outrageous, but never, for Emma, simply dismissible. Hair, diet, the T-shirt, Flap, and herself—no matter what she said in retaliation she was always left with the feeling that she had let her mother get away with murder. Actually, Flap was no great help, even when he was there. He was so scared of losing what little standing he had with Mrs. Greenway that he wouldn’t fight.

  Two minutes later, while Emma was still standing in the driveway feeling dim-witted and slightly annoyed with herself, running through in her mind the brilliant rejoinders she might have made to her mother, Flap and his father drove up. His father was named Cecil Horton, and when he saw Emma he turned his neat blue Plymouth right up beside her, close enough that he could reach out and squeeze her arm without getting out of the car.

  “Hi, Toots,” he said, smiling broadly. Cecil was a man of the 1940s—“Toots” was his customary gallantry. Emma hated it and looked forward to the day when Cecil forgot himself and used it with her mother. His smile also annoyed her, because it was automatic and completely impersonal. Cecil would have smiled broadly at a fire hydrant if he had had occasion to greet one.

  “Toots yourself,” she said. “Did you buy the boat?”

  Cecil didn’t hear the question. He was still smiling at her. His graying hair was neatly combed. He was only sixty, but he had grown a little deaf; in fact, he had stopped expecting to hear most of what was said to him. When he found himself being addressed by someone he was supposed to like, Cecil held his smile a little longer and if possible patted a shoulder or squeezed an arm to assure whoever it was of his affection.

  Emma was not sure she believed in his affection, since it carried no real attention with it. She was convinced that she could have stood in the driveway dripping blood, both arms amputated at the elbow, and Cecil would still have driven up, said “Hi, Toots,” smiled broadly, and squeezed her stump. Her mother couldn’t stand him and left wherever she was at the mention of his name. “Don’t argue with me. When you talk about people they soon appear,” she would say, going out the door.

  A few minutes later, when Cecil and the Plymouth had gone their way and she and Flap were walking up the driveway, Emma felt piqued enough to raise the issue.

  “It’s two years now, and he’s never really noticed me,” she said.

  “It’s not just you,” Flap said. “Daddy doesn’t pay much attention to anybody.”

  “He pays attention to you,” Emma said. “Strict attention. I only enter his consciousness when he notices that I’ve failed to provide you with something he thinks you should have, like a clean shirt. You’ve told me that yourself.”

  “Stop picking on me,” Flap said. “I’m tired.”

  He did look it. He had a long nose, a long jaw, and a mouth that turned down easily when he was depressed, which was often. Perversely, when she had first known him, it was the fact that he was so frequently and frankly depressed that had attracted her to him—that and his long jaw. His depression had seemed touching and somehow poetic, and within two days Emma had become convinced that she was what he needed. Two years had passed and she was still reasonably convinced of it, but there was no denying that Flap hadn’t really responded as she had expected him to. She was obviously what he needed, but nine days out of ten he was still depressed. Time had almost forced her to admit that his depression wasn’t something that was going to go away, and she had just begun to ask herself why. She had also begun to ask Flap the same question. Not for nothing was she Aurora Greenway’s daughter.

  “You shouldn’t be tired,” she said. “All you’ve done is help your father look at a boat. I’ve done a laundry and had a fight with mother, and I’m not tired.”

  Flap held the screen for her. “Why was she here?” he asked.

  “That’s an odd question,” Emma said. “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” Flap said. “You weren’t very friendly to Daddy. I’d like a beer.”

  He went into the bedroom and Emma held her peace and got the beer. His touchiness about his father didn’t really upset her—the two of them had always been very close and she was an intrusion into their relationship that Flap hadn’t learned to handle gracefully, that was all. There were times when he was comfortable with her, and she assumed there were times when he was comfortable with his father, but there had never yet been a time when all three of them had been genuinely comfortable together.

  Still, Cecil at his worst couldn’t make her a tenth as uncomfortable as her mother could make Flap without even trying.

  He was stretched out on the bed reading Wordsworth when she brought the beer.

  “What do I have to do to get you to stop reading and talk to me?” she asked.

  “I’m just reading Wordsworth,” he said. “I hate Wordsworth. Almost anything will get me to stop reading him. You ought to know that. The smell of cooking would probably do it.”

  “You’re a difficult man,” she said.

  “No, just selfish,” Flap said. He closed Wordsworth and gave her a nice friendly look. He had brown eyes and could look hopeless and friendly at the same time. It was his best look, and Emma had never been able to resist it—almost any sign of friendliness was enough to win her over. She sat down on the bed and took his hand.

  “Did you tell her you were pregnant?” Flap asked.

  “I told her. She had a fit.” She described the fit in full detail.

  “What an absurd woman,” Flap said. He sat up suddenly, smelling of beer and salt water, and began to make a pass. His passes were always sudden. Within five seconds Emma was flustered and breathless, which seemed to be exactly the effect he wanted to make.

  “What is it with you?” she asked, struggling to get at least partially undressed. “You never seem to want to give me time to think about it. I wouldn’t have married you if I wasn’t willing to think about it.”

  “One of us might lose interest,” Flap said.

  It was the one thing he did quick—everything else took him hours. Sometimes, in cool moments, Emma wondered if it might not be possible to reverse his priorities, get him to do sex slow and other things quick, but when put to the test she always failed. At least, though, when he sat up afterward to take off his shoes he looked really happy. Ardor seemed to stay in his face longer than it did elsewhere, which was actually all right with her.

  “You see, doing it my way neither of us lo
ses interest,” he said over his shoulder while on the way to the bathroom.

  “Getting laid by you is more like getting sideswiped,” Emma said. “Interest has little to do with it.”

  As usual, she finished undressing after the fact and lay with her head propped on two pillows, looking at her feet and wondering how long it would be before her stomach rose and blocked them from view. Hot as it was, the late afternoon was still her favorite time. She was cooled for a few minutes by her own sweat, and a long slanting shaft of sunlight fell across her, right where her panties should have been. Flap came back and flopped on his stomach to resume his reading, which made her feel slightly left out. She put one of her legs across his body.

  “I wish your attention span were longer,” she said. “Why are you reading Wordsworth if you don’t like him?”

  “He reads better when I’m not so horny,” Flap said.

  “Momma isn’t really absurd,” Emma said. Her body had somehow been rushed off far from her mind, but that was over and her mind wanted to go back and have the conversation it had been beginning when the rush occurred.

  “I’d like to know what she is then.” Flap said.

  “She’s just absolutely selfish,” Emma said. “I wish I knew whether that was bad or not. She’s a great deal more selfish than you are, and you’re no slouch. She may even be more selfish than Patsy.”

  “Nobody’s more selfish than Patsy,” Flap said.

  “I wonder what would have happened if you two had married one another,” Emma said.

  “Me and Patsy?”

  “No. You and Momma.”

  Flap was so startled that he stopped reading and looked at her. One of the things he had always liked about Emma was that she would say anything that popped into her head, but he had never expected that particular thought to pop into anyone’s head.

  “If she heard you say that she’d have you committed,” he said. “J should have you committed. Your mother and I may not have much integrity but we at least have enough to keep us from marrying one another. What an abhorrent thought.”

  “Yes, but you’re a classicist, or something,” Emma said. “You think people only do reasonably normal things, or reasonably abnormal things. I’m smarter than you and I know that people are apt to do anything. Absolutely anything.”

  “Especially your mother,” Flap said. “I’m not a classicist, I’m a romantic, and you’re not smarter than me.”

  Emma sat up and scooted over near him so she could rub his back while he read. The sun had moved down her legs and onto the floor, and she had stopped being sweaty and cool and could feel the mugginess of the evening coming through the open window. It was only April, but already so hot at times that the patches of hot air were almost visible. Emma sometimes thought of them as having shapes, like Casper the Ghost, only these were unfriendly little hot ghosts that settled on her shoulders or curled around her neck, making her splotchy with heat.

  After a while she began to try to decide what might make the coolest possible supper. She decided cucumber sandwiches, but it was only an abstract choice. Flap would never eat them and she didn’t have any cucumbers anyway. Unless she cooked something great he would probably read for hours without saying a word; after having sex he almost always read for hours without saying a word.

  “It would have been strange if one of us had married someone who didn’t like to read, wouldn’t it?” she said. “There must be millions of interesting people in the world who just don’t like to read.”

  Flap didn’t answer, and Emma sat looking out the window at the deepening evening, turning supper possibilities over in her mind. “The only thing I don’t like about sex is that it always means the end of a conversation,” she said.

  “Still, I guess it’s what keeps us together,” she added, not really thinking.

  “What?” Flap asked.

  “Sex,” Emma said. “We don’t talk enough for it to be conversation.”

  But Flap hadn’t really heard her. He had just spoken in response to her voice, to be polite. Emma got off the bed and began to gather up her clothes and his, feeling suddenly that she didn’t know quite what to make of things. Her own chance remark disconcerted her. She had no idea why she had said it, and no way of knowing whether she meant it or not. In the whole two years of their marriage she had never said anything similar, anything to indicate that she felt their being together was something less than a part of natural law. She had forgotten how to imagine life apart from Flap, and besides she was pregnant. If there was anything neither of them needed to think about it was the basis of their being together.

  Emma looked at him, and the fact that he still lay sprawled on the bed reading, perfectly content, perfectly solid, and completely oblivious to her, tipped her back from her strange momentary list toward the unreal. She padded off and showered, and when she came back Flap was poking in the chest of drawers looking vainly for a T-shirt.

  “They’re on the couch,” she said. “They’re even folded.”

  She felt inspired to make a Spanish omelette and hurried off to try, but it was one of the fairly frequent occasions when her inspiration didn’t quite carry her through a dish. Flap contributed to what proved a minor debacle by sitting at the table and tapping his foot while he read, something he often did when he was really hungry. When she set the dish before him he looked at it critically. He fancied himself a gourmet. Only the fact that they had no money kept him from being a wine snob as well.

  “That doesn’t look like a Spanish omelette,” he said. “That’s just Tex-Mex scrambled eggs.”

  “Well, my mother was too patrician to teach me to cook,” Emma said. “Eat it anyway.”

  “What a great day this has been,” he said, looking at her with his nice friendly eyes. “Daddy bought a new boat, I got home too late to see your mother, and now I get scrambled eggs. A perfect run of luck.”

  “Yeah, and you also got laid,” Emma said, helping herself to some of the omelette. “It happened so fast you may not remember it, but you did.”

  “Oh, stop pretending you’re neglected,” Flap said. “You aren’t neglected and you couldn’t look bitter if you tried.”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said. “I might learn.”

  It had begun to shower again, heavily. While they were finishing the omelette it stopped, and she could hear the trees dripping. The darkness outside was wet and deep.

  “You’re always saying, ‘I don’t know,’” Flap said.

  “Yes,” Emma said. “It’s true too. I don’t know. I don’t think I ever will. I bet that’s what I’ll do when I’m old. I’ll sit in a chair somewhere saying ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ Only then I’ll probably drool when I say it.”

  Flap looked at his wife, once again a little startled. Emma had unexpected visions. He didn’t know what to say. Though unorthodox in appearance, it had actually been a very good omelette and he felt unusually content. Emma was staring into the wet night. Her quick face, which was almost always turned toward him—to see what he might be thinking, or might be wanting—was for the moment turned somewhere else. He had been about to compliment her but didn’t. Emma could sometimes make him feel reticent, at odd times and for no reason he knew, and it had just happened. A little baffled and very reticent, he fiddled with his fork for a while, and they sat and listened to the dripping trees.

  CHAPTER II

  1.

  “YOU WILL be pleased to know that I’ve softened,” Aurora said, quite early the next morning. “Perhaps, after all, it isn’t entirely to be lamented.”

  “What isn’t?” Emma asked. It was only seven-thirty, and she was barely awake. Also, she had stubbed her toe getting to the telephone, which was in the kitchen.

  “Emma, you do not sound alert?” Aurora said. “Have you been taking drugs?”

  “Momma, for God’s sake!” Emma said. “It’s dawn. I was asleep. What do you want?”

  Even in a confused state and with her toe hurting she realiz
ed it was a stupid question. Her mother called every morning, and never wanted anything. The fact that the phone was in the kitchen was the only thing that had saved her marriage. If it had been by the bed and had rung every morning at seven-thirty Flap would have divorced her long ago.

  “Well, I hope I don’t have to remind you again about drugs,” Aurora said firmly. “I read about them everywhere I turn.”

  “I don’t take drugs, I don’t take drugs,” Emma said. “I don’t take anything. I haven’t even had coffee yet. What did you say to begin with?”

  “That perhaps it isn’t entirely to be lamented.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Emma said. “What isn’t?”

  “Your state,” Aurora said. Sometimes she was plain-spoken and sometimes she wasn’t.

  “I’m all right,” Emma said yawning. “I’m just sleepy.”

  Aurora felt mildly exasperated. She was not being given credit for what seemed to her highly admirable intentions. Fortunately she had a cruller to hand, on her breakfast tray, so she ate it before saying anything more. Her daughter, a mile and a half away, dozed a moment with the phone held to her ear.

  “What I was referring to is the fact that you are with child,” Aurora said, making a fresh start.

  “Oh, that’s right, I’m pregnant,” Emma said.

  “Yes, if you must use plain words,” Aurora said. “Speaking of words, I have been reading the news. Your friend the young writer seems to be publishing a book.”

  “Danny Deck is,” Emma said. “I told you that months ago.”

  “Humph. I thought he was living in California,” Aurora said.