The Last Picture Show

by Larry McMurtry

  “I was right the first time, wasn’t I?” she said hopelessly. “I’m too old and ugly for a young man like you. I don’t know how to do this anyway and maybe I’m too old to learn. I can’t do anything without crying about it—how could you like me?”

  “I like you,” Sonny said awkwardly—actually he was not sure. All her crying upset him and made him nervous about himself, and she was certainly not as pretty as a movie star or as pretty as Jacy. Still, he did like her some. Since they hadn’t got caught he had begun to feel elated about the whole thing. It was an adventure to have slept with somebody’s wife. He didn’t know if he would tell anybody or not, but it was sort of a feather in his cap, nonetheless.

  Ruth sighed. “If you like me then you decide what to do about me,” she said. “I’m not going to chase after you anymore. If you really like me you figure out how to come and see me—I sure don’t want you to drive me to the doctor. I think right now you just like what you can do with me. That’s fine, but now that you’ve found out women think you’re good looking you’ll probably want to go do it with somebody younger and prettier. I wouldn’t blame you one bit.”

  Suddenly she wanted him to leave. She had become embarrassed about her body and didn’t want him to see her naked anymore. She stayed curled up on the bed, her breasts and loins hidden from him.

  “Track starts pretty soon,” Sonny said. “I just won’t go out. I can sneak up the alley and in the back door.”

  He sounded like he really wanted to, and Ruth changed back to hoping. What if he did only want her for sex? It was more than anyone else had ever wanted her for. Suddenly she felt like doing something a little wanton and she sat up and kissed him, her naked breasts against his shirt. Sonny liked that, and when he left he looked back through the doorway and saw her, still naked, bending over the bed to strip away the sheets. It would be well worth giving up track to come and see her, even though the coach would rage and storm at losing his only decent hurdler.

  The second time Sonny came, Ruth wanted to tell him that the squeaking bedsprings bothered her, but she didn’t quite have the nerve. She really wanted them to lie down on the floor, but she was afraid if she told Sonny he would think her depraved or something. She knew men were curious when it came to women’s desires. Nothing revolted Herman more than to think that she was enjoying him that way. Once or twice in their marriage she had felt something good, but when she began to move or wiggle beneath him to make it feel even better it made Herman furious. “Lay still,” he said. “What kind of woman do you think you are, anyway?” After that she lay still, and if she happened to feel something a little good she didn’t let him know. Herman was so heavy that most of the time she just felt mashed.

  She had not really expected Sonny to come again; when he slipped inside the back door she was filled with delight, and determined not to make any mistakes that might scare him away. They were both still very nervous, and the bedsprings bothered Ruth even more than they had the first time. They were almost too much. She felt something a little good but the springs kept her from concentrating on it; every time she felt it the grinding of the springs drove it away, and finally she simply endured them, waiting for the quiet lovely time when he was still, dozing on her body.

  Sonny knew something was wrong because Ruth’s body was cold and her arms and legs were tensed—she was trying to hold herself in such a way that the springs would be silent. She managed not to cry, but it took a long time for the tension to drain out of her—she was so tense that even the aftermath was not so enjoyable. Neither of them spoke—they simply had no words. Ruth was not sure she wanted him to come anymore; it was not working out at all like she had imagined. But when she felt a little better she began to stroke his back and to play with the shaggy hair at the back of his neck, and she decided she did want him again. Something about it was good, even if much was bad.

  On his third visit she gathered up her nerve and told him, as they were undressing, that the noise of the bed-springs bothered her. She asked if they could lie on a quilt on the floor. Sonny was mildly surprised, but it was okay with him. When Ruth saw that he didn’t think it was wrong of her to want it all to be nice she was so relieved she couldn’t speak. She walked to the hall closet, naked, and got an old blue quilt that she and Herman had quit using years ago.

  They spread the quilt on the floor by the little gas stove and sat a moment watching the flicker of the blue gas flames as they touched one another. They still couldn’t talk, but they had ceased to be nervous, and they quit trying to conceal their loins from one another. For Ruth the quiet was wonderful. All she could hear was Sonny’s breath and her own and she knew no one in the street could hear them breathing. She realized too that Sonny was enjoying her keenly and that made her glad. He was in no hurry and Ruth had moments of pleasure that were stronger than any she had ever known before. She discovered that Sonny didn’t mind at all if she moved: in fact, he liked it. She became excited enough that her breath was ragged, but it was all still new to her and she could not pull the moments of pleasure together into one that was complete. For her the beautiful time was still afterward. Sonny was still inside her when he went to sleep, and Ruth found that lovely. It was almost as if he were a child inside her, and she put her calves over his legs to keep him there. When he finally came out she slipped upward on the quilt so that his warm cheek was against one of her breasts. It was so lovely that she wanted it not to change. That day, for the first time, she was regretful when he had to leave.

  By the time Sonny had paid her a half-dozen visits he was everything to Ruth: he was what made the days worth confronting. The thought that he might quit coming filled her with terror. The thought of going back to the existence she had had before he came was too much to face.

  Sonny allowed her to love him, though it was strange to him and he had to get used to it slowly. They were soon able to spend four or five hours a week on the old blue quilt. Ruth learned a great deal about Sonny and also a great deal about herself. After the first weeks she did nothing that would frighten him. She learned that he liked to be naked around her—it gave him a sense of adventure. She gladly let him, often mending his shirts or patching his pants after they had made love. She discovered that she had no particular modesty about her loins, only about her breasts, which seemed to her too small. Also she was afraid the small scar might disgust Sonny, since apparently it disgusted Herman. She took to wearing one of Herman’s old hunting shirts while they talked. Sonny didn’t like for her to wear anything while they were making love, but she always put it on afterward. She learned gradually how to play with him and how to tease him. One day she got a brush and comb and showed him a way to comb his hair that she felt was more becoming. Sonny was delighted. She would have liked to cut his hair for him, but there wouldn’t have been time.

  She soon made terms with lovemaking itself, though for a time they were not the best possible terms. She thought that once they relaxed with one another the beautiful thing would happen, the whole moment toward which all the sharp little individual moments tended. She had read about it, she expected it, she longed for it, and came very close to it, but it eluded her. For a week or two she was sure, every time, that it would happen. Once or twice she came so close that she was desperate for it to happen, and when she missed it after all her agitation was very intense. The violence of her excitement surprised Sonny and disturbed him a little: despite her weeping spells he thought of her as a quiet, rather timid woman. Her movements were sometimes so strong and unexpected that he was thrown off balance—once when she missed she was beside herself with disappointment. “Oh please,” she said. “Please keep going.” Sonny was already gone, but she continued to struggle against him until they were both soaked with sweat; he could not call himself back, and she gave up.

  After that Sonny didn’t come back for three days and Ruth was fearful she had ruined it all. When he did come she was so thrilled and relieved that she resolved not to seek the moment if it was going t
o put everything else in danger. If he would keep coming, keep wanting her, that would be enough. They sat on the blue quilt and she opened his shirt and rubbed his chest with her palm. When she looked past him, at the green wallpaper and Sears and Roebuck furniture she realized that she had lived for years in a room that was terribly drab.

  Sonny was hesitant about making love, worried that he could cause Ruth disappointment again. “No, look,” she said, taking his hand and kissing his palms and fingers. “Nothing was your fault. You have to remember that I’ve been lonely for a long time. Loneliness is like ice. After you’ve been lonely long enough you don’t even realize you’re cold, but you are. It’s like I was a refrigerator that had never been defrosted at all—never. All these years the ice has just been getting thicker. You can’t melt all that ice in a few days, I don’t care how good a man you are. I didn’t even realize it, like I didn’t realize till just now how ugly this room is. I don’t know, maybe at the center of me there’s some ice that never will melt, maybe it’s just been there too long. But you mustn’t worry. You didn’t put it there.” She moved her hand up to his shoulders.

  The talk of ice and refrigerators meant little to Sonny, but he was relieved that she wanted him to make love to her again. That day she was very warm and amenable, but much calmer—calmer than he had ever known her. He recognized that in a way she had withdrawn from the struggle, but his own pleasure was so strong that he merely felt grateful, not responsible. She saw to it that he didn’t feel responsible, and for herself, had no difficulties except at the very end—then, for a wistful, regretful moment, she felt like crying.

  After that, for more than a month, she concentrated on making Sonny welcome. He came often, sometimes just to make love, sometimes staying to drink some hot chocolate or to let her mend his clothes. He tolerated the chocolate and the clothes mending, but Ruth knew very well that what they did on the quilt was what he really liked, what he enjoyed doing with her. It thrilled her that that, of all things, would be what made a person want to come and see her. She expected, almost from day to day, that he would tire of her, and when she saw him coming in the door wanting that same thing of her, she was always happy for a moment.

  . . .

  Then, in March, things changed. Sonny came in one day and repeated a story about Coach Popper, one he had just heard. The week before the coach had taken the track boys to a meet in Forth Worth. Bobby Logan was sharing a room with the coach and in the middle of the night the coach mistook Bobby for Mrs. Popper and kissed him on the ear. All the boys thought that was pretty hilarious, and Sonny repeated the story to Ruth because he thought it might get her to talking about the coach a little. He could not help being curious about their life together. She told him that the coach seldom touched her, but Sonny could hardly believe that. The coach was so hairy and horny looking that the boys all supposed he kept after her all the time. Around the gym and the practice field the coach gave the impression that he was an inveterate woman chaser. “Find ’em, fool ’em, fuck ’em, and forget ’em,” he was often heard to say. Sonny had the nagging feeling that the reason Ruth couldn’t come with him was because the coach’s tool was bigger and better. Time and again the coach had pointed out to one boy or another the ignominy of having an insufficient tool.

  “Why hell yes, Joe Bob,” he would say. “A feller can get along with false teeth and a glass eye and hearing aids and even a hook or a wooden leg if he has to, but there ain’t no known substitute for a big dick. I guess you’re just out of luck.”

  When he told Ruth about the ear-kissing incident he half expected her to be flattered that her husband would miss her so, but instead she looked miserable and forlorn. They had already finished lovemaking and she was so dispirited by the news that she neglected even to cover herself with the flannel shirt.

  “I don’t care,” she said, tears seeping out of her eyes. “I don’t care who he likes. If he wants to play around with little boys and they think it’s funny why should I care? I just get tired of everybody thinking he’s such a mighty man just because he coaches football. I’m the one they think is nothing, just his mousy wife, and they’re right, I am mousy. I might not have been if I hadn’t been ignored for twenty years. Now I’m forty and I don’t have any children and I can’t even do…” sniffed, “I can’t even do sex.”

  Sonny was stunned. He had never been so surprised.

  “Why did you stay with him?” he asked finally. Then it was Ruth who was dumb. It was a question she had avoided for years.

  “I wasn’t brought up to leave a husband,” she said in a small voice. “I guess that’s why. Or maybe I was just scared to.”

  “But how did you come to marry him?” Sonny asked, still curious.

  “Because my mother didn’t like him, I guess,” Ruth said. “I was fooled too. I was twenty years old and I thought hairy-chested football coaches were about it. I’ve paid for my own bad judgment.”

  There the conversation stalled—Ruth was too depressed to talk, and Sonny was confused. It seemed to him that Ruth must think the coach was queer or something, and the coach was the last man that anyone would accuse of such a thing. A few of the boys thought Mr. Cecil must be—they knew he got some kind of a kick out of watching them all swimming and horsing around naked at the irrigation ditch—but Mr. Cecil was much too much of a gentleman to do anything out of the ordinary, and nobody knew for sure about him. To suspect the coach of being that way was entirely too much—he didn’t even mention the conversation to Duane. In fact, he had never told Duane he was sleeping with Mrs. Popper because he was afraid Duane would make fun of him for sleeping with an older woman.

  It was that night, after that conversation, that things began to change for Ruth. She dreamed she was having a baby. She had had such dreams for years, but usually they were vague and fragmentary, but this one was vivid. It was not just a baby she had, though; it was Sonny. He was removed from between her legs, and afterward lay at her breast.

  The next day Sonny came, and while they were spreading the blue quilt on the bedroom floor Ruth remembered the dream. It was very vivid in her mind as she undressed. She lay quietly, her eyes closed, as Sonny began, but almost before she knew it she became excited, so much so that she could not be still. She thought of the dream again, hoping the excitement would die before she became completely possessed by it, but insead of dying it became keener. Because of the dream, pleasure took her over: with her eyes shut she could pretend she was giving birth. Sonny was inside her but in truth she was bringing him out—it was that which excited her. She grabbed his hands and put them on her thighs, so that he would force them wider. She was filled with a strength that she had not suspected and held him with her thighs, just at the entrance, just connected, both of them struggling, until she was finally seized, rent by what she felt. Then she took Sonny back to her, her heart was pounding, her eyelids fluttering; she almost fainted with the relief of delivery. For half an hour she slept, not moving, and Sonny lay on top of her, not knowing if he dared move. He had no doubt that Ruth had broken through, but her success was as strange and almost as frightening as her failures. The strength she had called up amazed him: for minutes she had held him with just her thighs, his arms pinned to his sides so tightly he could not get one free. Yet, sleeping beneath him, she might have been a girl, so still and at peace she seemed.

  When Ruth awakened she did not want Sonny to leave. She felt entirely comfortable, and she wanted to touch him, play with him, have his hand on her. After that, she never used the dream again, but she kept it in her mind as a safeguard, and even though she still sometimes missed, having the dream was a great reassurance.

  In the weeks after Ruth’s breakthrough the two of them became very close and comfortable. Once Sonny quit worrying about her response or lack of response, he found her much more pleasant to be with, and there were even afternoons when he visited her, not to make love but just to talk, hold hands, or watch television.

  Only one problem arose,
and that was one they had been expecting: the town knew about them. A couple of the housewives who lived along the alley compared notes, and in a few days the town knew. Sonny worried about it a lot, Ruth hardly at all.

  “What do you think the coach would do if he found us?” Sonny asked one day. Ruth was sitting on the quilt combing her brown hair. She had decided to let her hair grow longer.

  “Probably shoot us both,” she said lightly. “He’s always glad to have an excuse to use his deer rifle.”

  Sonny mused on that and decided she was right. “What do you think we ought to do about it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said, puckering her mouth at him happily. “Why don’t we buy a new quilt? This one’s about had it.”

  The next day she got one, for sentimental reasons also blue.

  CHAPTER XII

  ONE NIGHT IN mid-March Sonny woke up too early—around 3:30 A.M. The first thing that occurred to him was that Sam the Lion would be asleep. Sam the Lion had made his decree of banishment stick, and, though Sonny had endured it as best he could, he had about reached the point where he could endure it no longer. It occurred to him that if he got dressed and went down to the café Genevieve might let him sit and talk awhile. A cold March norther was blowing and the warm blankets were hard to leave, but the chances were he would have to leave them in an hour or so anyway, to make an early butane run.

  Genevieve was sitting in one of the booths, reading an old issue of the Ladies Home Journal. To his immense relief she looked delighted to see him.

  “Come on in here,” she said. “I’m not going to throw any bottles at you.”

  “Could I have a cheeseburger?” he asked quickly. One of the worst parts of the penalty had been eating at the drive-in, where the cheeseburgers were half raw and the tomatoes soggy.