Terms of Endearment

by Larry McMurtry

  “Boston,” Vernon said.

  Old Schweppes sucked in his breath. “Good God a’mighty!” he said. “Boston, Mass. Let me walk on that for a while.”

  They walked, Vernon with his hands in his pockets. Old Schweppes was usually a non-stop talker, and the fact that he had fallen silent at the mention of Boston was a little upsetting. Not a word was said on the sixth and seventh levels; when they got to the eighth Old Schweppes walked to the edge of the building and looked down.

  “She’s a widow then,” he said. “Don’t take no Sherlock Holmes to figure that out. She wouldn’t come off down here by herself, not if she’s from Boston, Mass.” He sighed heavily and started walking upward again. “Not a young widow, I don’t guess?” he asked.

  “She ain’t fifty,” Vernon said. “At least I’m older than she is.”

  “Naw, widows mostly marry down, age-wise,” Schweppes said. “That’s a fact I’ve observed. They don’t want to have to get used to somebody else if they’re just apt to die. Havin’ to watch one husband play out’s enough for most women. Course you’re as fresh as a pullet. That’s some advantage. It means you’ll be easy to outsmart, once the warfare starts. Also means you ain’t got nobody to compare them with. It ain’t often a fifty-year-old woman gets a chance to be first on the scene. I think that’s your biggest advantage.”

  “She done knows I ain’t got no experience,” Vernon said. “I never made no bones about that.”

  Schweppes began to shake his head. “You ever think about night school?” he said. “The oil business is one thing and ladies from Boston, Mass., they’re something else. They’re particular about speech up in that part of the country. You can get away with just so much of that old country-boy talk, an’ then they’re gonna let you know it’s gettin’ old. Right there’s one problem.”

  Vernon began to feel downhearted. He began to wish he’d left Old Schweppes to Sports Illustrated. It was all beginning to sound like a lawsuit, and one that was going against him. For every advantage he had, Old Schweppes was finding two disadvantages.

  “She’s already jumped on me about that,” he said. “Schweppes, I can’t go to night school. I’d feel plumb ridiculous.”

  “Well, if you’ve reached the stage where you’ve got to have a woman, you’re going to feel ridiculous the big part of the time anyway,” Schweppes said. “I was never mixed up with nobody from further east than Little Rock neither. I never said more than howdy to a smart woman in my life, and I still went around feeling dumb half the time. They’re smarter than us—that’s what it boils down to.

  “Not as ornery, just smarter,” he added.

  Then he fell totally silent, and they walked up and up. A late night fog had risen, and they gradually rose above it. Old Schweppes began to belch and clear his throat. “Vernon, you’re a lot like me,” he said. “You ain’t ever gonna be a drinkin’ man, or a dopey. I know you gamble, but that ain’t serious. Gamblin’s only serious if a poor man does it. I guess a woman’s about the only chance you got to stay human, if you come right down to it. I guess a fat brunette from Boston, Mass., is as good a place to start as you’re gonna get. I’d hate to see you get any crazier than you are, if you want the truth of the matter.”

  “Me?” Vernon said. “I ain’t crazy, Schweppes. I ain’t even been sick in the last fifteen years.”

  “Well, you ain’t dangerous crazy, but you’re crazy anyhow,” Schweppes said, looking Vernon over as he said it. “Normal people sleep in beds, you know—beds with other people in them, if they can manage to. Normal people don’t bed down for the night in Lincoln Continentals on the top of parking garages. That’s a sign of craziness in my book. You’re just a crazy person that ain’t lost his ability to make money in the oil business—at least you ain’t lost it yet.”

  Vernon didn’t know what to say. It seemed to him that Old Schweppes was a lot like Aurora when it came to speaking out. He had never spoken out that way to anybody in his life. He couldn’t think of anything to say in his defense, so he said nothing. They were up eighteen floors and he had the impulse to go over to the elevator and shoot up the last six. He had tried company and it hadn’t worked out.

  Then, just when Vernon was feeling darkest, Old Schweppes patted him on the shoulder. “Buy her a present,” he said. “Women and politicians ain’t got much in common, but they can’t neither one of ’em totally resist bribes.”

  “All right,” Vernon said, brightening a little. “Then what?”

  “Buy her another present,” Schweppes said. “You’re a rich man. My grandmother was a Yankee and she couldn’t get enough of nothing. A woman that don’t like presents is bound to have a mean streak in her.”

  When they reached the twenty-fourth floor Old Schweppes walked over and peered in the Lincoln. He shook his head and sucked in his breath again, making the deep hollows in his cheeks appear even deeper.

  “Only a crazy man would own a television set anyway,” he said. “You got one in your car—that makes you double crazy. I hear they give out X-rays. You ain’t gonna win no widow from Boston, Mass., if you soak up too many of them X-rays.”

  He reached out and shook Vernon’s hand and immediately began to hobble off. “It wouldn’t hurt you to try to get used to sleeping in houses,” he said, leaving his boss in as much of a quandary as ever.

  2.

  VERNON MADE his seat down into a bed and lay on it, but when the sky became gray he still couldn’t claim to have slept. He had thought about the things Aurora had said, and about the things Old Schweppes had pointed out, and it was clear to him that Old Schweppes must be right: he was crazy. Twenty years back, when he was in his thirties, he had thought so himself for a time, but he kept so busy he forgot about it. Of course it was crazy to sleep in a car on a roof; no lady would like that, and Aurora seemed to be more particular than most ladies, besides. So it was all hopeless and he had been foolish to speak out so absurdly, and there was nothing to do but give up. Still, he had told her he would come back and see her, and he thought he could allow himself that pleasure at least once more.

  He started the Lincoln, coasted slowly down the twenty-four levels of ramp, and drove out South Main to a little all-night cafe he was fond of near the Astrodome. The Dome was a ghostly sight in the morning mist; from a certain distance away it looked like the moon suddenly come to rest on the earth.

  The cafe where Vernon customarily ate his breakfast was called the Silver Slipper, for no good reason at all. It was not silver, and no one who had worn a silver slipper had ever been inside it, so far as anyone knew. It was run by a husband and wife team named Babe and Bobby, who made it their life. They had a tiny house trailer hitched to the back wall like a Shetland pony, and whichever one of them was tiredest slept in it while the other cooked. It was really an antique one-man trailer dating from the 1930s, and they had taken it in payment for two hundred dollars’ worth of cheeseburgers owed them by a one-time friend named Reno, who had lived for a while in the smelly little trailer camp a few yards up the street. Reno had eventually found life in the trailer camp too stable and had moved downtown to the Trailways bus station, where he became a wino. The bed in the trailer was the width of a narrow shelf, and Babe and Bobby had never figured out a way to sleep in it side by side, though they could copulate in it fairly well if they were careful. It didn’t really matter, since they couldn’t both leave the cafe long enough to sleep together. Their help was sporadic and they were proud of their ability to do it all themselves.

  “Scrapin’ by” was what whichever one of them was up said every morning when Vernon came in for his sausages and eggs and asked how they were doing. He had offered to buy them out many times so they could afford some help and maybe a better trailer, but Babe and Bobby were too independent to cotton to such talk. Babe was a fat redhead who thought Vernon was cute as a button, and she teased him about his intentions every time he offered to buy them out.

  “I know you, Vernon,” she said. “Soon as you got
me on the payroll you’d get ideas. I get enough guys in here with ideas in the course of a day. I’m gettin’ too old to worry about all you boys and your ideas.”

  Vernon could not help but be embarrassed by such talk. “Aw, I’m too old,” he said usually.

  Babe and Bobby were both sitting at the counter stirring their coffee when Vernon walked in. Nobody else was in the Silver Slipper.

  “Mornin’,” Vernon said.

  Bobby kept on stirring his coffee and said nothing—more and more he was prone to lapses. Babe got up and got Vernon some coffee.

  “Thank God for a customer,” she said. “Me an’ Bobby was fallin’ asleep in all this quiet. You look like you got the jumps today. About to make another million?”

  “Not today,” Vernon said. He had been brooding on the matter of a present for Aurora, and it occurred to him that maybe Babe might have an idea.

  “Let me ask you a question,” he said, fidgeting on his stool. “I met this lady, you know, an’ she was right nice to me. What if I was to get her some kind of present, you know, sort of to pay her back?”

  Bobby came out of his lapse suddenly and slapped Vernon on the back. “Well, what’ya know, Babe,” he said. “Think about that. You mean you finally done went an’ got laid?”

  Vernon blushed and Babe leapt to his defense.

  “Shut your dirty mouth, Bobby,” she said. “Vernon wasn’t raised that way and you know it. All these years I been feedin’ him he ain’t never even had an idea, that I could tell. You just shut up an’ let Vernon do the talkin’ now.”

  Vernon had done the talking, though. He had no more to say. “She fixed me dinner, was what it was,” he said. “I been thinkin’ a present would be the right thing to do, but I don’t know what to get.”

  “How about a diament ring,” Babe said. “I been wantin’ one all my life. Course if you give her a diament ring she’s gonna think you got ideas.”

  “Well, if you never got laid I ain’t interested,” Bobby said, stirring his coffee some more. “You an’ Babe work it out.”

  Babe was cooking Vernon’s traditional sausages and smiling, briefly enjoying the fantasy that she herself was going to receive a wonderful gift from Vernon.

  “Well, there’s diament rings an’ fur coats an’ candy and flowers,” she said. “Mums is pretty. Chocolate-covered cherries. Bobby even bought me some of them one time in a weak moment.”

  “Is she fancy?” Bobby asked, more interested than he cared to let on. “Why don’t you bring her in an’ let us have a look at her? Me an’ Babe can tell you in a minute if she’s good enough for you.”

  “Aw, she is,” Vernon said.

  “You got as much business courtin’ a fancy woman as I got ownin’ a Cadillac automobile,” Bobby said, getting up and leaving. “I’m takin’ a nap.”

  Babe was still musing on the question of the present. “How about a pet of some kind?” she said. “I’ve always wanted a pet, but Bobby’s too sorry to let me have one. How about a goat? A feller over in the trailer camp’s got the sweetest little goat you ever saw, and he wants to sell it too. It’d be unusual. Ever’ woman’s got a problem of what to do with scraps, an’ a goat would sure take care of that.”

  Vernon liked the idea immediately. The nicest thing about it was that the present was handy. He could buy it and take it right over. He gave Babe a dollar tip, more because she helped him solve his problem than because the sausage was anything special.

  “You’re gonna spoil me yet, Vernon,” Babe said, looking at the dollar. “Bobby thinks I’m sweet on you now, if you want the truth. I guess it’s a good thing you finally dug you up a girl friend. I’m too old to have Bobby beatin’ on me like he used to whenever somebody happened to give me a dollar tip.”

  Vernon walked around amid the house trailers until he found one with a goat tied outside. It was a small brown and white goat, and a sleepy lady in a pink bathrobe sold it to him for thirty dollars, without really even waking up. By seven o’clock the Lincoln was parked in front of Aurora’s house, with the goat and Vernon both in the front seat. Vernon was fidgeting badly. The hopelessness of it all seemed more obvious the longer he thought about it, and he had also begun to have second thoughts about the goat, which kept trying to nibble his maroon seat covers.

  While he was fidgeting Aurora stepped out her front door. She was barefooted and wore a bright blue dressing gown. She was evidently in search of her morning paper, and she got halfway across her wet lawn before she noticed the Lincoln sitting at the curb. The sight didn’t seem to surprise her. She smiled in a way that Vernon had never seen anyone smile, at least not at the sight of him.

  “Why there you are, Vernon,” she said. “What an active man you are. Is that little goat for me by any chance?”

  “You don’t have to take it,” Vernon said, abashed that she had spotted it so quickly.

  “Now, now,” Aurora said. “There’s no reason for you to act apologetic about such a charming goat. I don’t think you ought to keep it cooped up in that car. Let it see how it likes my lawn.”

  She stretched out her hands and Vernon handed it out the window to her. Aurora set it on the lawn. The little goat stood stock still in the wet grass, as if it might fall off the world if it took a single step. Aurora spotted her newspaper and walked over to pick it up, and the goat tiptoed after her.

  Aurora opened her paper to the comics and scanned them quickly to see if anything crucial was happening. Since nothing was, she picked up the little goat and started for the house.

  “Are you coming, Vernon?” she said. “Or did you spend the night having second thoughts? I bet that’s it. You probably just ran by to fob this goat off on me before you set out for Alberta, or wherever it was.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere,” Vernon said, getting out of the car. How she had figured out that the goat was a farewell present was beyond his understanding. Her eyes were flashing, though thirty seconds before she had been smiling as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Excuse me, but you’re not being very convincing,” Aurora said. “Obviously you’ve come to regret your words. It’s quite all right, I’m sure. You needn’t look so hangdog. As I said quite frankly yesterday, I’m a terror. You practical men soon get enough of me. Evidently I do something to your little brains that interferes with the making of money, or whatever you do. I can’t say I’m not somewhat disappointed, though. You sounded for a time like a man who stood behind his statements, and I hadn’t expected you to be ready to scamper away quite so soon.”

  Vernon felt the same thing happening that had happened in the car the day before. Confusion and fear filled him. “I ain’t backing out,” he said. “I ain’t going to Canada. I meant ever’thing.”

  Aurora looked at him silently, and he felt that she could see everything that he was thinking; it was as if she were in the process of translating his thoughts into her kind of English the instant they formed in his brain, though it didn’t feel like anything was forming in his brain anymore but in some center of pressure somewhere in his chest.

  “I mean I am,” he said. “Just like yesterday. I still am.”

  Aurora nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, but you’re poised to retreat at the slightest setback, aren’t you?” she said. “I’m afraid that makes me rather scornful, Vernon. You’ve spent the night deciding there’s no hope, if I’m not mistaken. Retreats and apologies are hardly the sort of actions that make a woman feel wanted. If you’re not going to take the trouble to believe in yourself for a few days, then you might as well go on hiding in your car. No harm can come to you there. I’m not likely to crawl into your car and try to make you speak good English, am I? Nor can I see to it that you stop hunkering over your food like a crab when you eat, if you’re going to eat out of the back end of a Lincoln. Your habits are a little disgusting, if you want the truth, and I was ready to expend some energy helping you replace them with something resembling healthy behavior, but if you’ve no more enthusiasm for me
than you’ve exhibited this morning, then I don’t suppose I’ll get the chance.”

  She stopped and looked at him, waiting. Vernon had a feeling she was going to wait all day, until he spoke.

  “If we was better acquainted I’d do things better,” he said. “I ain’t had no time to learn. Don’t that make sense?”

  To his great relief Aurora smiled, almost as gaily and mysteriously as she had smiled at him when she first saw him sitting at the curb. Another storm appeared to have passed.

  “Yes, that makes a certain sense,” she said. “What did you have in mind for us to do today?”

  Vernon had nothing in mind. “Eat breakfast,” he said, though he had just eaten one.

  “Of course, breakfast can be assumed,” Aurora said. “That will hardly be sufficient for a day’s amusement, though. I take a great deal of amusing, I can tell you that.”

  “Well, I know a lot of card games,” Vernon said. “I don’t guess you like to play cards?”

  To his astonishment Aurora took him by the arm and began to shake him vigorously. He didn’t know whether to resist or not, and looked very puzzled. Still shaking, she began to laugh, and then took his arm and tucked it into hers and began to walk across the lawn. The lawn had been mowed the day before and her bare feet were covered with wet pieces of grass.

  “I see “I’ll just have to shake you out of these diffident spells,” she said. “For a woman of my temperament they’re quite unendurable. Fortunately for you, I’m excessively fond of cards. If you’ll really stay and play cards with me I’m quite likely to forgive you everything.”

  “That’s my plan for the day,” Vernon said, although it hadn’t been two minutes before.

  “Then I’m very nearly ecstatic,” Aurora said. His arm still tucked in hers, she led him into the house.

  CHAPTER IX

  1.

  AT SEVEN-THIRTY that morning Emma’s phone rang, but as she was getting out of bed to go answer it, or, in other words, to go see what her mother wanted, Flap grabbed her ankle and wouldn’t turn loose.