The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “Was he nervous or what?” Harmony asked. Her sister had always been liberal with details of her sex life—evidently nothing had changed.

  “No, boring,” Pat said. “I told him he might as well keep on crawling, if that was the best he could do.”

  “Pat, Pepper’s cremated,” Harmony said—after all, Pepper’s death was the reason they were talking. So what if Pat’s honeymoon hadn’t been so thrilling, sexually? The fact that her sister couldn’t think of anything else to talk about was just another reminder of what she had always known, which was that Pat was selfish.

  “Yes, and I’d like to skin whatever Yankee did it to that poor little soul,” Pat said. “You’re her mother—you should have been consulted about the remains.”

  Remains was a very bad word choice; Harmony couldn’t bear to think of Pepper just being remains now, ashes. Harmony began to sob so violently that she had to hang up on Pat; even that didn’t help, Juliette finally had to hold her tight for several minutes; she felt as if she might be dying herself, she must have gasped out something that scared Juliette because she got a horrified look on her face.

  “Harmony, you mustn’t talk like that, remember that sweet little boy upstairs,” Juliette said.

  “Juliette, I just got carried away for a minute—I’ll never say it again,” Harmony assured her—the look on Juliette’s face made her feel guilty. She managed to stop crying quite so hard—of course she had to go on living, otherwise Eddie would have no mother.

  “He’s a wonderful little boy, Harmony—you have to go on, no matter what,” Juliette said, just to be certain that Harmony got the point.

  Harmony knew well enough that that was the point; she had only had a momentary lapse, she wasn’t going to let Eddie down. Just when she was finally calming down to the point where Juliette didn’t have to hug her quite so tightly the phone rang.

  “I better get it,” Juliette said.

  “Maybe it’s Jimmy,” Harmony said—she couldn’t help grasping at straws.

  “Is my sister hanging in there?” Neddie asked Juliette.

  “She’s shaky, it has to be expected,” Juliette said, handing Harmony the phone.

  “You hung up on me and you hung up on Pat—I guess we’re worried,” Neddie said.

  “I wish you’d told me it was Pat’s wedding day,” Harmony said—then she remembered, a beat too late, that Pat had been keeping that very fact a secret from her older sister.

  “What wedding day?” Neddie asked.

  “Oh, no … now I’ve done it, won’t the night ever end?” Harmony asked. “I forgot it was a secret, but there’s no harm done, she was thinking about breaking up with the guy anyway.”

  There was dead silence on the line, for several seconds: Harmony could imagine the look on Neddie’s face; it was the kind of look that could easily make a selfish person like Pat shrivel up until she felt about the size of a grain of sand.

  “This family gets more like the CIA every day,” Neddie said, in her same, matter-of-fact voice. “Of course, if I was gonna marry Rog Blankenship I’d keep it a secret too, at least until I could arrange to divorce the son of a bitch.”

  The conversation just seemed to end there; whether she hung up on Neddie or Neddie hung up on her, Harmony didn’t remember—she had begun to feel very tired. At that point she sort of faded for a few minutes; actually it must have been longer than a few minutes. When she opened her eyes again Gary was there, and also Jessie and Myrtle. Juliette had evidently taken the initiative and called a few people—Harmony was relieved to see that there didn’t seem to be any hostility between Gary and Juliette.

  “Harmony, it’s the worst thing ever, I’ll never get over it,” Gary said. It was obvious he had been crying a good deal, his eyes were red. As for Jessie, she was a total basket case, that was only to be expected. Jessie had never been a strong person.

  “Oh, Harmony, what will we ever do without her?” Jessie said. The whole front of her dress was wet from tears. She tried to come over and hug Harmony but just wasn’t up to it; her legs began to go out on her and she had to flop into a chair, she was really upset. Jessie had known Pepper since birth; Harmony was touched that she took it so hard.

  Myrtle was harder to judge; she was rapidly drinking a bottle of vodka that Jimmy Bangor had left behind. After quaffing about three glasses she wobbled over and gave Harmony a hug.

  “You poor thing, what killed that precious child, was it a mugger or what?” Myrtle asked.

  “Myrtle, I don’t even know, it’s in the letter but I never got past the cremated part,” Harmony said.

  Then she started crying again, and so did everybody else, even Myrtle. The last time Harmony could remember Myrtle crying was when her beloved goat Maude passed away.

  5.

  When Eddie came downstairs for breakfast, carrying Ernie in one hand and Bert in the other, he was surprised to see his mom and Jessie and Gary and Myrtle and Juliette all in the living room—the TV was on but nobody was watching it and it wasn’t on the right channel anyway—no Sesame Street.

  “Is it a birthday party, Mom?” Eddie asked. He had never seen so many people in their house so early in the morning. If it was a birthday party Eddie was glad, he liked them, although he knew it couldn’t be his birthday party because his birthday came in October.

  “Eddie, it’s not a birthday party, your sister died, now you’ll never meet her,” Harmony said.

  Everyone in the room took the position that the sooner she told Eddie the better; now that she had told him, she really didn’t think it was for the better. Eddie had come downstairs looking like his confident, happy self. Sometimes it amazed Harmony that her own body had yielded up a little boy as confident and as happy as Eddie. But there he was, you couldn’t doubt it, not if you were in Eddie’s company for five minutes.

  “She deaded?” Eddie asked—it seemed to him a better word than died.

  “Yes, but your aunts are coming today,” Harmony said. “Your Aunt Neddie and your Aunt Pat, they haven’t seen you since you were three.”

  “Could I have a waffle with real maple syrup before they come?” Eddie asked. “Aunt Pat is so squeezy, I want to eat my waffle now, before she gets here.”

  “He doesn’t understand it, he’s too young, bless his little heart,” Myrtle said.

  “Is it okay if I change the channel?” Eddie asked, grabbing the remote. “Sesame Street is on.”

  “It’s good that Eddie has a positive attitude,” Gary said, wiping away some more tears. “I wish I had one.”

  “Are you crying because she deaded, Mom?” Eddie asked. He had never met his sister, Pepper, and had only heard her voice on the telephone, once or twice. It was too bad that she deaded, if it was going to make his mother sad, but the main things on his mind were the waffle with real maple syrup and watching as much as possible of Sesame Street before the school bus came to take him to school. He wanted to see Kermit and Grover and Bert and Ernie, of course, and also Oscar the Grouch, if he had time.

  All the women went into the kitchen at once, to make him his waffle.

  “There’s four ladies in the kitchen,” Eddie said to Gary. “What if they make too many waffles?”

  In fact Harmony and Jessie and Myrtle and Juliette all wanted to make Eddie his waffle—it would give them something to do and help get their minds off the tragedy for a few seconds.

  “Harmony, let us do it, you’ll just wear yourself out,” Jessie said. “You need to save your strength.”

  “I don’t need to save it, either, Jessie,” Harmony said, a little annoyed to find herself suddenly squeezed out of her own kitchen. They weren’t going to let her make Eddie’s waffle, though, so she opened the door and went out into the bright Nevada sunlight. The heat of the morning sun felt good—it was the first thing that had felt good since she opened the letter and read that Pepper was dead. Besides the sunlight, the only other thing that felt good was the sight of Eddie coming down the stairs, his usual cheerful
self. Inside the happiness that sight gave her was a pain, though, for now her two children would never meet one another: Pepper would never know what a beautiful little brother she had, and Eddie would never meet his talented sister. Of course she was always sending Pepper pictures of Eddie, and had shown Eddie a great many pictures of Pepper; but it would never be face-to-face, brother and sister, as it should have been. Eddie and Pepper would never sit and talk, or call one another in the night if there was a crisis—the way she had just called her sisters, Neddie and Pat. Once or twice Pepper had vaguely mentioned that she might come home someday and meet Eddie, but she never found the time, one show followed another, she had to think of her career—that was something Harmony certainly understood; only now it was too late, that was that.

  Outside in the sunlight Harmony remembered the day she had driven Pepper to the airport and put her on the big shiny airplane for New York. Pepper had looked so grown up, that day; she had perfect confidence in her own dancing and was certain that she was flying away to become a big star on Broadway. Still, Harmony knew that underneath Pepper’s confident manner she was still a seventeen-year-old girl; she wasn’t so grown up, not really. Pepper said goodbye and got on the plane and was gone. On the way back from the airport Harmony had cried so hard she had to stop at a Jack in the Box and have several cups of coffee in order to regain her composure.

  Harmony reflected that if she had known the truth, that day—that she had just seen her daughter alive for the last time—all the cups of coffee in all Las Vegas would not have been enough to restore her composure. If she had had any inkling of what was to come she would have given up right then; and there would have been no Webb, no Eddie, no job at the recycling plant, no nothing.

  But mainly, that day, she had just felt like a mom might feel whose child had gone away to college—Pepper had departed for the big college called New York City; she would be home for Christmas, probably, or at the worst, for summer vacation—she could not have imagined that nearly six years would pass without Pepper coming home for a visit. Harmony was soon to have Eddie inside her; she had to concentrate on having a healthy pregnancy—after all, she was almost forty-two at the time, she might not sail through this pregnancy quite as easily as she had sailed through her pregnancy with Pepper.

  While she was thinking back to that day, which she had not realized would be her last day in the company of her daughter, Jasmine Legrande came wobbling along the sidewalk—very likely she had been out drinking all night. Jasmine had once been the reigning showgirl of Las Vegas herself, from an era earlier than Harmony’s—well, much earlier, really; there had hardly even been a Las Vegas at all when Jasmine reigned at the Sahara from the very day that it opened. Even Gary, who was sort of the oral historian of Las Vegas, hadn’t been there the day the Sahara opened.

  “Harmony, I had a bad dream, is something wrong in your life?” Jasmine asked; she was a kind old woman even if she was almost always drunk and even if she did weigh three hundred and fifty pounds. Once her days as a reigning showgirl were over Jasmine had definitely let herself go.

  “Oh Jasmine, Pepper died,” Harmony said—why conceal it? Everyone she knew in Las Vegas would know it soon enough, probably most of them already did know it.

  To her surprise, Jasmine began to tremble, and the next thing Harmony knew, she fainted dead away and fell against the little faux picket fence in front of the apartment building. The pickets were just plywood or some other very weak wood; when Jasmine collapsed on the fence a whole section of fence collapsed with her—the apartment manager certainly wasn’t going to like that, and who could blame him?

  Still, the fact was Jasmine had fainted and was lying in the yard. Harmony knew she couldn’t lift her, so she raced back in the house to seek help; everyone was just sitting around watching Eddie gobble his waffle when she appeared.

  “Help me, please, Jasmine’s fainted,” Harmony said. Everyone looked completely startled except Eddie, who went calmly on eating his waffle.

  “Is she deaded too, Mom?” he asked—the concept of deading had interested him ever since he watched Benjy the first time and had to grapple with the question of whether the black wolf was really gone forever once he fell off the cliff.

  “Eddie, I hope not—I think she just got too hot or something,” Harmony said.

  “I’ll get a cold rag,” Gary said, and he did; pretty soon they were all standing over Jasmine, fanning her and trying to shade her with newspapers. Harmony couldn’t quite get her mind off the destroyed fence; the manager was a Mormon who didn’t like for things of an unexpected nature to happen around the apartment building.

  Gary’s cold rag was having a good effect, Jasmine was definitely still breathing. Harmony realized she was going to have a close call when it came to getting Eddie ready for school—when she went back inside to see about him he was flipping channels with the remote despite the fact that his fingers were sticky from the maple syrup.

  “Eddie, you’re getting the buttons sticky, the remote won’t work if you do that,” she said. “Jimmy won’t be able to switch to the ball game.”

  “I thought you said he had gone away,” Eddie reminded her. “He wasn’t here for breakfast.”

  “You’re right,” Harmony said—she had forgotten that little fact. “He’s not here but it’s still not a good idea to get the buttons sticky on the remote.”

  “Did he fart himself away?” Eddie asked; he was in one of his giggly moods, which was fine with Harmony. In three minutes she had him upstairs and dressed and back down to the front step, just in time, too; the school bus pulled up ten seconds later, while Gary and Juliette and Jessie and Myrtle were still trying to get Jasmine to her feet.

  “I don’t need to latch the gate this morning, Mom, because the fence is down,” Eddie observed, just before he gave her a kiss and raced up the steps into the school bus.

  “What happened?” Eddie’s friend Eli asked, seeing a crowd around a fat woman in Eddie’s yard.

  “Jasmine fainted and broke our fence and my sister died,” Eddie said. He always tried to sit by Eli on the bus.

  “I wish my sister would die, she’s a dickhead,” Eli remarked.

  Eddie wanted to giggle, but tried to hold it in. He knew that dickhead was an even worse word than fart—if the teacher ever heard Eli say a word like that Eli wouldn’t get to go out at recess for many days—probably for a whole week.

  Eli was eating licorice; his Mom put it in his lunch and he always got it out and ate it on the school bus on the way to school. The licorice made his teeth black.

  “Did you have to smell farts last night?” Eli asked. He was interested in the fact that Eddie’s mother’s boyfriend farted a lot.

  “No, he didn’t even come home last night, I think he deaded, too,” Eddie said. The last was just something pretend he thought up to impress Eli.

  “Boy, you’re lucky, a lot of people die at your house, it must be exciting,” Eli said.

  6.

  Driving to the airport, later in the day, Harmony reflected that it was a little bit of a sad comment on her years in Las Vegas that she was still borrowing cars—Gary’s, in this case. It was an old Mercury that had been involved in a few fender benders. After all, she had been a reigning showgirl too, for more years than Jasmine had; and yet she had never quite got far enough ahead to buy a car. Even carpooling for Pepper or picking her up at dance class had always been in borrowed cars—usually she would just borrow one at the casino, at the last minute. Once or twice she had sort of chipped in with boyfriends and owned parts of cars for a while, but, without exception, when the boyfriends left they forgot about Harmony’s chipping in. They always took the cars with them.

  Recently she had promised Eddie that they would get a car and a puppy soon. She knew she had to pull herself together and make good on the puppy at least. In view of the wall-to-wall carpet, getting the puppy housebroken quickly was important—the manager wasn’t going to take kindly to any messy puppies, not
after Jasmine smashed his fence.

  After Jasmine had recovered enough to come inside and drink vodka with Myrtle, Gary took Harmony aside and reminded her that Jasmine had also lost a daughter—the daughter had been involved with a trapeze artist, but, after that, the story grew vague. Not many people left alive had been in Las Vegas when it happened.

  “Even if you knew exactly what happened I wouldn’t want you to tell me about it,” Harmony said. “I just don’t care to hear about it right now, Gary.”

  But it did make her feel a sadness for Jasmine—that was probably what caused her to let herself go to the extent of weighing three hundred and fifty pounds.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Gary said. He had known Harmony so long that much of the time he actually did know what she was thinking—at least he usually came close.

  “I’m trying not to think, Gary,” Harmony pointed out. “The fewer thoughts I have right now, the better.”

  “Harmony, you’re not going to turn into a drunk who weighs three hundred and fifty pounds,” Gary said. “This is the worst tragedy ever, but you’ll survive. You have to. You have Eddie.”

  Well, it was the truth—and if any little boy deserved a good mom it was Eddie. For sure he deserved a mom who could afford to own a car. Right now, when he was only in kindergarten, maybe it didn’t matter so much; but in a few years it would be a big embarrassment for him, that his mom couldn’t even afford a car; there probably weren’t two hundred people in Las Vegas so poor they couldn’t afford some kind of car. When he got big enough to go on dates—after all, that would only be another seven or eight years—lack of a car would amount to a serious problem.

  “Maybe they’ll make me manager of the recycling plant,” Harmony said, thinking out loud. Gary got a look on his face that suggested that he didn’t think being manager of a recycling plant was aiming high enough—but, from Harmony’s point of view, it was sort of shooting for the stars. After all, she didn’t have many skills—for most of her life her beauty had been the only skill she needed, nobody else had been chosen Miss Las Vegas Showgirl three times running.