The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  She took the letter out of her purse—Gary was right, she would have to read it sometime, it might as well be now, while she was safe in the stall. The whole ladies’ room was empty, she had finally found a neutral zone; probably when people arrived in Las Vegas they were so eager to gamble that they just rushed right to the casinos and let their bladders make the best of it—no doubt that was why the ladies’ room was so empty.

  Harmony unfolded the letter and got the pages in the correct order and was about to begin reading it—certainly it was written in a very clear hand—when her eyelids began to get heavy. It felt as if someone had attached little tiny weights to them; despite her efforts to focus on the letter her eyelids just kept descending. Finally she had to give up; she leaned her head against the side of the stall for a moment. Since no one was in the rest room she thought it might be permissible just to nap for a few minutes; after all, it had been a long night.

  It seemed to Harmony that she had barely closed her eyes when she heard her sister Neddie say something to her sister Pat. No doubt it was a dream—Neddie and Pat lived only a mile or two from one another and talked to one another in person or on the phone ten or fifteen times a day; it was logical to dream of them having a conversation, they had them constantly.

  In this dream, though, Neddie and Pat seemed to be talking about her—they were wondering what could have become of her. Of course, nothing had become of her, she had just dozed for a minute or two, in a stall in the ladies’ room.

  “She never has developed no sense of direction, she could be halfway to San Francisco by now—and still expecting to come to the airport any minute,” Neddie said.

  “I figure some man waylaid her,” Pat said. “She’s prone to having that happen, you have to admit.”

  “I wouldn’t talk, if I were you,” Neddie said dryly. On the whole Neddie stuck to a very dry way of speaking.

  “Look at it this way, she’s got a bigger pool to fish in,” Pat said. “If I’d had Las Vegas to fish in, instead of Tulsa, I expect I’d have held my own in the boyfriend department.”

  “No, because you keep marrying them,” Neddie said. “Harmony didn’t make that mistake but once.”

  Harmony was getting a little more awake, but the dream wasn’t stopping, exactly. It was almost as if Pat and Neddie were right there in the ladies’ room with her, Pat in the stall to the left and Neddie in the stall to the right. Harmony glanced at her watch and almost fainted: four and one half hours had gone by since she sat down in the stall. Her sisters’ plane could have landed. It wasn’t a dream. Her sisters themselves were right there in the ladies’ room, talking about her.

  To make sure, she peeked under the partition between her stall and the stall to her right. She saw a plain brown shoe and knew she hadn’t been dreaming at all, her sisters were in the ladies’ room, in stalls on either side of her. It seemed a little peculiar that they had just gone on talking, with an innocent third party in the stall between them; but, then, Neddie and Pat weren’t very formal, they tended to continue speaking their minds whatever the circumstances.

  Anyway, Harmony was excited that they were there, she wanted to make her presence known before either sister accidentally said something that would create an awkwardness.

  “Neddie, I’m not lost, I’m here—I’ve been asleep,” she said. “Pat, don’t say anything too mean about me.”

  About that time the toilets on both sides of her flushed—she wasn’t too sure her sisters even heard her; if they hadn’t heard her they might just walk off—neither of them was the type to hang around waiting very long.

  She popped out, and there they were. Neddie was skinny and Pat was chubby; both were soberly dressed, as befitted the occasion.

  “Poor thing, I guess you cried all night,” Neddie said, taking Harmony into her arms.

  “What’s that red splotch on her cheek?” Pat asked, waiting her turn to hug. “Is that from going to sleep in the crapper or did some big bozo slug her?”

  “I guess from going to sleep in the john,” Harmony said, hugging her. Pat still wore a strong perfume.

  Then Harmony realized she still had the letter from New York in her hand—the letter that had brought her the news.

  “Pat, would you carry this letter?” Harmony asked, quickly handing it to her.

  Pat took the letter and began reading it as they walked out of the airport. It irked Harmony a little, that Pat would just immediately start reading the letter, instead of putting it in her purse. It was just like Pat, though—she had always been nosy about family matters.

  “Pat, you don’t have to read it right here in the airport,” Harmony said. “You could read it when we get home.”

  Neddie glanced at her when she said it—she could tell from Harmony’s tone of voice that she was a little bit irritated with Pat for diving right into the letter.

  Then, as Pat read the letter, she stopped walking along in stride with the two of them. When she finished a page she carefully put it behind the others. Her pace had definitely slowed.

  “What’s the matter with you, can’t you keep up?” Neddie said. Just looking at Pat’s face made Harmony really apprehensive. It might be that the letter contained news that was worse than any they had expected to receive.

  Harmony began to wish she had never handed the letter to Pat. She wished it had blown away in the night. Pat was hardly walking at all, as she read. Then she came to a complete stop, right in the middle of the airport; she had a very sad look on her face.

  “Pat, was she murdered, is that it?” Harmony asked; she suddenly couldn’t bear not to know what the letter said.

  Pat stood right where she was until she had read all three pages of the letter, which she then very carefully folded and put in her purse. She started to take out a compact and powder her nose, an act that was almost a reflex if she happened to have her handbag open. In this case, though, she decided to let the handbag be.

  “Was she murdered, Pat?” Harmony asked, again—she knew from watching the news that crime was bad in New York City.

  “No, honey,” Pat said. “Pepper wasn’t murdered. Pepper died of AIDS.”

  “Oh,” Harmony said—then the bomb of grief exploded, right there in the airport. It was a quiet explosion, so far as the public knew; she didn’t even scream. All she did was cry so hard that she became a little unsteady on her feet. The ten Bombay martinis probably hadn’t helped any—though they had made her drunk enough that she could go to sleep in the toilet stall.

  Her sisters, who held her arms, had to ask her for directions several times before she was able to guide them across the parking lot, in the bright Nevada sun, to Gary’s car.

  7.

  When Wendell showed up at the door of the apartment, expecting to have a date with her, Harmony lay on the couch, semiconscious from having cried herself out. Neddie was reading Eddie a Bible story from a book she had bought in a religious bookshop in Tulsa. Specifically, she was reading Eddie the story of Daniel in the lion’s den, when the doorbell rang.

  “Get it, Pat, maybe it’s Gary,” Harmony said—after all, she still had his car.

  Eddie liked it when his Aunt Neddie read him stories, but he was not totally convinced by the story of Daniel in the lion’s den.

  “Lions are supposed to be fierce,” he said. Then he made his grr sound for his aunt.

  “I know that—they’re fierce,” Neddie said.

  “Then how come they didn’t eat Daniel—were they wimpy lions or what?”

  Pat opened the door, spoke briefly to Wendell, and shut the door again.

  “It’s not Gary,” she informed Harmony. “It’s some big clunk who says he has a date with you.”

  “Oh, no … it’s Wendell,” Harmony said. “He’s a bartender at the airport. I got drunk this morning while I was waiting for your plane. Maybe I told him I’d have a date with him. He used to go with Myrtle.”

  “Well, he’s here—do you want to have the date with him or don’t you?�
�� Pat asked. She had been making biscuits for Eddie and had flour on her hands.

  “No, I don’t, I must have said the wrong thing while I was drunk,” Harmony said.

  “Then would you mind if I go in your place?” Pat asked. “I kinda like his looks.”

  “Pat, you’re making biscuits!” Harmony protested—it had never entered her mind that Pat might want to go out with Wendell.

  “The biscuits are made,” Pat said. “All Neddie’s got to do is take them out of the oven in about ten minutes. I’ve already set the timer.”

  “You shouldn’t have let her answer the door,” Neddie said, in her flat way, giving Harmony a look. “Pattie, she’ll take just about anybody she finds on her doorstep.”

  “Well, do you care or don’t you?” Pat asked. “I hate to keep the man waiting—it’s hot out there.”

  “No, you can go with him, I don’t care—where was he planning to take me?” Harmony asked, feeling extremely confused. Her daughter was dead of AIDS and now her sister was itching to go out with Wendell, who had arrived expecting to have a date with her.

  “Burger King, he said, but I’ll see if I can’t raise his sights a little,” Pat said. “I feel more like Hawaiian food.”

  “Pat, Wendell doesn’t have much money,” Harmony said, remembering the days when Wendell had been a gas station attendant—sometimes he would have to go Dutch with Myrtle even if they just went to the Taco Bell.

  “He’ll have less before the night is over,” Neddie predicted.

  “What about the lions, why didn’t they eat Daniel?” Eddie wanted to know. He hated it when stories were interrupted.

  “Daniel prayed to God and God made the lions gentle,” Neddie told him.

  “But lions can’t be gentle, they have to be fierce,” Eddie insisted.

  Pat opened the front door a crack and smiled at Wendell, who stood on the front steps as if planted. He looked a little confused.

  “My sister’s prostrate with grief,” Pat told him. “She don’t want to ruin your evening, though. How about if you and I go eat some Hawaiian food?”

  Wendell had been a little frightened at the prospect of actually going out with Harmony, though he had been wanting to do just that for at least ten years. He knew she had been drunk that morning, when she made the date, and was prepared for her to inform him it had all been a mistake; but now her plump sister was proposing to take him off to eat Hawaiian food, whatever that might be. Despite being plump, the sister looked pretty in the face, too.

  “Okay, don’t go away, I’ll just be a minute,” Pat said, shutting the door in Wendell’s face before he had a chance to think up an excuse.

  “Pat, you could have asked him in,” Harmony said. “You said yourself it was hot out.”

  “Why risk it, he might remember it’s you he’s in love with,” Pat said, taking off her apron. “Seeing you in your nightgown might jog his memory or something, and then I’d have a boring evening.”

  At that point Harmony remembered how irritating her sister Pat could be. Supposedly she had come all the way from Oklahoma to provide a little comfort in time of grief, but now all she could think of was making Wendell buy her a Hawaiian dinner that was probably way more than he could afford.

  “Pat, he’s not good at conversation,” Harmony said, but Pat had already raced upstairs to freshen up; two minutes later she raced back down and was out the door without a fare-thee-well.

  Meanwhile, Neddie was having hard going with the Bible stories. Harmony had never told Eddie much about God, mainly because she didn’t know much about God; she sort of believed in letting children figure religion out for themselves. Now Neddie was reading Eddie the story of Jonah and the whale and Eddie had the look on his face that he got when he was hearing something from an adult that he didn’t believe. It was a skeptical look—if Eddie didn’t believe something, he didn’t believe it, even if it was from the Bible. Harmony began to feel a little guilty; probably she should have been taking him to Sunday school instead of letting him watch TV so much.

  “Aunt Neddie, whales don’t eat people,” Eddie said immediately, when Neddie finished the Jonah story. “Whales eat plankton—they’re like little tiny shrimps. Whales eat millions and millions of plankton. I learned about them on the Discovery Channel.”

  “This story happened a long time ago, Eddie,” Neddie said. “Maybe whales ate different foods in those days.”

  “But whales are gentle creatures,” Eddie protested. He loved the Discovery Channel—it was full of information about animals he was interested in.

  “People can swim right up to them and pet them in the water,” he added. “They don’t swallow people.”

  “Well, the Bible says one swallowed Jonah, but at least the story had a happy ending,” Neddie said, closing the book of Bible stories. She had three grandchildren and none of them had any trouble believing that the whale had swallowed Jonah. All of her grandkids were as mean as little wildcats, whereas Eddie was a sweet, bright boy, who said “Please” and “Thank you,” and who probably didn’t bash his playmates, as her own grandchildren were always doing. He just happened to have a skeptical attitude toward Bible stories, which was no doubt mostly his mother’s fault, for not taking him to Sunday school, not to mention letting him watch too much weird TV.

  Later, after Eddie had gone to bed, Harmony wanted Neddie to read the letter from New York; she decided it was time to try and absorb a little more information about Pepper’s death—how Pepper got AIDS, if anyone knew, and where her ashes were now, and what procedures needed to be followed in the next few days. She was also curious about who Laurie was, the kind of person who had written the letter. Harmony had the feeling that someday she would maybe want to go meet Laurie and try to find out what Pepper’s last years had been like.

  But when Neddie went upstairs to get the letter she discovered that Pat apparently still had it in her purse, and now Pat had left on a date with Wendell.

  “I guess we’ll just have to wait till your friend brings her home—if he does,” Neddie said.

  “What do you mean ‘if he does’?” Harmony asked. “It’s just a first date. They won’t do anything on their first date, will they?”

  Neddie didn’t answer. She had begun to smoke more lately, and she was smoking now.

  “It was me he was supposed to have the date with, not Pat,” Harmony said. The fact that Pat had casually taken the letter off with her seemed to be just one more example of how inconsiderate her sister could be. She had not only taken the letter, she had also taken Wendell, who was Harmony’s admirer, if he was anyone’s.

  “It wouldn’t hurt you to take Eddie to Sunday school once in a while,” Neddie said.

  “Neddie, I never got in the habit,” Harmony said, a little defensively. Mainly Eddie watched cartoons on Sunday morning, when Sunday school was happening.

  “He’s just five,” Neddie pointed out. She didn’t know why she bothered, though—Harmony was never likely to take Eddie to Sunday school. “It wouldn’t hurt him to have another point of view and not just have his head totally filled with things he’s learned on TV.”

  Harmony couldn’t quite get her mind off the vexing problem of Wendell and Pat.

  “You don’t think she’d do anything on the first date, particularly since it was supposed to be my date, do you?” she asked—she was beginning to feel a little insecure.

  “Do you know about Masters and Johnson, that couple in St. Louis?” Neddie asked. “They’re doctors.”

  The names sounded familiar but, tired as she was, Harmony couldn’t quite place them.

  “Do they have a talk show?” she asked.

  “No, they’re them sex doctors that they send molesters to, and stuff,” Neddie said.

  “Oh,” Harmony said. “What about them?”

  “Your sister’s been to see them three times,” Neddie said. “They’re trying to get her cured of sex addiction, but so far they ain’t had much luck.”

  “Wh
at?” Harmony asked. Her mind had been sort of switching channels, it had just switched back to the Pepper channel; the fact that Pepper was dead just wouldn’t go away, not for long—it kept returning, to weigh down her mind and her heart. She didn’t understand what Neddie was getting at, when she mentioned Pat and the sex doctors in St. Louis.

  “She’s been there three times for sex addiction,” Neddie repeated, in her flat voice.

  “Pat’s got sex addiction?” Harmony said—that was certainly a channel-switching piece of information.

  “Yep,” Neddie said. “It’s the talk of Tarwater, and has been for years. Masters and Johnson thought they could get her calmed down, but they ain’t having no luck. If you ask me, Pat’s more revved up than ever.”

  “Oh, my God,” Harmony said—it had never occurred to her that anyone could be a sex addict, much less one of her own sisters. Though, thinking back, she could imagine that maybe sex addiction was what had been wrong with Denny, a boyfriend from years ago. If anyone in her own life had been afflicted with sex addiction, it was probably Denny; he had not been interested in much of anything else, not while he had been with Harmony anyway. The reason she broke up with him was because he had had the gall to ask Pepper for a blow job, this was when Pepper was no more than sixteen. But that was just Denny, he was no prize—she had booted him right out of her life the day she found out he had made that offensive suggestion to Pepper.

  “Neddie, are you sure?” she asked.

  “I guess I’m sure—I drove her to St. Louis myself all three times,” Neddie said. “Every man in Tarwater knows better than to go within thirty feet of Pat.”

  “Good Lord,” Harmony said. “I wish you’d told me that before I let her go off with Wendell.”

  “I meant to but it’s kind of hard to work sex addiction into a conversation, particularly with Eddie bouncing around,” Neddie said. “He liked them biscuits, didn’t he?”

  Eddie liked the biscuits so much that he had eaten four, with various jams and jellies. But now all Harmony could think of was that she had sent her sister off with Wendell, never dreaming that her sister was a sex addict who had been to St. Louis three times to get help. Years back, when Wendell had been dating Myrtle, Harmony remembered that Myrtle had been trying to slow him down a little bit, sexually, on the grounds that he had a bad back that was apt to go out and cause him excruciating pain if he wasn’t careful in his movements. Pat had just met Wendell and was unaware of the problem with his back—Wendell, of course, was unaware that Pat had sex addiction. What if Pat’s addiction flared up and tempted Wendell into some movement that caused him to become paralyzed? It would be terrible if, after going to bartending school and struggling to improve himself, Wendell became paralyzed because her sister Pat didn’t have the self-discipline to keep her hands off him.