The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “How do you think Pepper got AIDS, Neddie?” Harmony asked. No matter how hard she tried to distract herself with thoughts of Eddie’s skepticism about religion, or Pat’s bad effect on Wendell’s new career, little bombs of pain kept exploding inside her, and they were all about Pepper.

  “Harmony, she’s at peace now, however it happened, it’s over,” Neddie said.

  “She was my daughter, I need to know,” Harmony said. “She’s been gone for six years. I wish I’d gone to visit her.”

  “Why didn’t you, hon?” Neddie asked.

  “She didn’t want me to—we weren’t real close,” Harmony admitted. “Pepper was ashamed of my clothes, or something.”

  “That’s just daughters, mine are the same way,” Neddie said. “You just have to ignore the friction and do what you think ought to be done, anyway.”

  “I was scared of Pepper, she was always so sure of herself,” Harmony said. “I should have taken Eddie to meet his sister, though—even if I was scared.”

  “There’s lots of things I wish I’d done that I didn’t do, honey,” Neddie said. “That’s life. We’re all scared of something.”

  “What are you scared of?” Harmony asked. Her sister Neddie had never seemed to be the scared type. The one time Harmony had visited Neddie and Dick on their farm, Neddie had killed three rattlesnakes in her yard in one day. Having that many rattlesnakes around would have made Harmony too scared to move, but it didn’t seem to faze Neddie at all.

  “I’m afraid one of my kids will die,” Neddie said. It was something she had never been able to get off her mind, during all her years of motherhood—and now the very thing that she had always feared had happened to her sister Harmony. Often she had dreamed that a child of hers would be taken by one of the common afflictions: car wreck, drowning, hunting accident, fatal disease, drugs. And yet it had turned out that Harmony’s gifted daughter was the only second-generation loss the family had suffered.

  About all Harmony could remember about her brother-in-law, Dick Haley, was that he believed every word of the Bible to be literally true. Whether he had been a good husband to Neddie she had no way of knowing. It seemed to Harmony that it was just as well that Eddie and Dick had never met, given the fact that Eddie had his doubts about some of the Bible stories. She didn’t know how Dick would react to some of the information Eddie had picked up on the Discovery Channel, even though most of it was just normal information about animal life, as far as she could tell.

  “Why don’t you come home with us, Sis?” Neddie asked.

  “Do what?” Harmony asked. She had been wondering whether Dick and Eddie would hit it off; she had read an article in a magazine she had browsed through at the hairdresser’s, an article about role models. The article made her feel a little guilty, because she definitely had not provided Eddie with much in the way of role models. Jimmy Bangor was a recent example of a boyfriend who hadn’t been really bad but who also wasn’t much to write home about if you were picking role models for a bright little boy like Eddie.

  “Come home with us,” Neddie said again. “You been out here in this desert too long, Harmony, and the glory days are over. Come home to Tarwater and let Pat help you raise your little boy.”

  “But Pat’s a sex addict, you just said so yourself,” Harmony said. Actually, the remark took her by surprise; she wanted to give herself a little time to think. With Pepper dead and her heart so weighted down, with bombs of grief exploding inside her practically all the time now, it was hard to know where she was going to find the spirit to be a good mom to Eddie. The thought of having her sister’s help was so appealing and so comforting that she was a little afraid to let herself really consider it. What if Neddie had just said it without really meaning it? What if Dick Haley vetoed the notion because she had not given Eddie good training in regard to the Bible? Having her sisters to help her was almost too much to hope for, though part of her certainly wanted to hope for it.

  “Oh, Pat’s wild, but she’s got her good points,” Neddie allowed. “She’s good with kids, as long as they ain’t her kids. She’s been a good aunt to my kids—they’d go to her in a crisis ten times quicker than they’d come to me.”

  “Eddie does like her biscuits, he ate four,” Harmony said. “But he’s in school here—he’s got his little friends.”

  “Harmony, Eddie’s five years old,” Neddie reminded her again. “He’s sociable too. He could make friends in Oklahoma.”

  “I guess so,” Harmony said. “Eddie’s just always led an urban life.”

  “Tulsa’s urban,” Neddie reminded her. “I didn’t mean you’d have to live right in Tarwater—I know our schools ain’t as good as the schools in town. You can live where you please, as far as that goes. I just think you need to be closer to your kinfolk, so we can help you in this time of grief.”

  “Oh, Neddie,” Harmony said. “Why did she have to get AIDS?”

  Then a big bomb of grief exploded, and all Harmony could do was cry.

  8.

  “Where’s Aunt Pat?” Eddie asked the next morning, when he came bounding down the stairs. His mom was asleep on the couch, wrapped up in an old red blanket, and his Aunt Neddie was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking and drinking coffee.

  “Good question, where is your Aunt Pat?” Neddie asked.

  “Maybe a dinosaur ate her?” Eddie speculated. He owned several small rubber dinosaurs himself; but he knew that real dinosaurs were very large—and, unlike whales, they didn’t just eat plankton.

  “Dinosaurs might even eat aunts,” he told his Aunt Neddie. “Is my mom just taking a nap?

  “I’m in the mood for an omelette,” Eddie added. “My teacher says eggs are fine as long as you don’t eat them every day.”

  “Why wouldn’t they be fine?” Neddie asked. “Your Uncle Dick eats three or four of them every day and he’s pretty healthy.”

  “Bad cholesterol!” Eddie said. “You’re not supposed to eat them every day. Are there any biscuits left?”

  “One,” Neddie said, looking in the oven. She cut the last biscuit open and buttered it for Eddie, who munched on it while she made the omelette. Now and then he went over and peeked at his mother, to see if there was any sign that she was about to wake up from her nap.

  “She doesn’t usually nap when it’s time to get me off to school,” he informed his aunt.

  Harmony wasn’t sleeping that deeply; she was just a little reluctant to open her eyes and face the truth, which was that her daughter was dead. Her son was alive, though—she heard his quick voice through the fog in her head. When she reached out to Eddie, she happened to catch him by the hand that held what was left of the buttery biscuit.

  “Uh-oh, Mom—crumbs on the carpet,” Eddie said. “Aunt Neddie’s making an omelette, would you like to share?”

  “No, but you’re sweet to offer, honey,” Harmony said, pulling Eddie up onto the couch with her, crumbs or no crumbs. He was still in his pajamas, and smelled sweet, the way he always smelled when he had just bounced out of bed.

  “Aunt Pat’s gone, we think a dinosaur ate her,” Eddie said. “Aren’t you going to work today, Mom?”

  “Not today,” Harmony said. “I think I’ll just stay home and visit with your aunts.”

  “One aunt,” Eddie corrected. “A brontosaurus ate Aunt Pat.”

  “I hope so,” Harmony said. “That’s better than having your Aunt Pat eat Wendell—how dare she stay out this late?”

  “Ever since Pat got money she’s been a law unto herself,” Neddie said. “Come eat your omelette, Eddie.”

  “I love having my aunts here to cook, Mom,” Eddie said, pouncing on his omelette. “That way you can take naps.”

  “It wasn’t so much a nap as just going to bed too late, honey,” Harmony said, sitting up. The movement made her realize that her head hurt—her stomach didn’t feel in the best condition, either. Later in the evening, after Neddie had dozed off, she had had a few rum Cokes; she wanted to fog out, if p
ossible, and not sit there feeling that she would have to be awake forever, with little bombs of regret and sadness exploding over and over in her consciousness—the little bombs seemed to rock her harder each time.

  “What kind of cookies do you have for my lunch?” Eddie inquired.

  “Maybe just Oreos,” Harmony said, dragging herself up.

  “I’ll make his lunch, hon,” Neddie said, seeing that her sister was not too steady on her feet.

  “No,” Harmony said. “I want to.”

  “Yes, because my mom knows exactly how I like lunches,” Eddie said. It was fine having his aunts to cook breakfast, but he preferred to have his own mother make his lunch and pack his lunchbox, even though she usually had a variety of cookies, not just Oreos.

  Harmony and Neddie stood in the yard and waved at the school bus as it pulled away—through the window Eddie, sitting, as usual, with his friend Eli, waved back.

  “One of my aunts didn’t come home last night,” Eddie informed Eli. “I think a dinosaur ate her.”

  “It couldn’t have been, because dinosaurs are extinct,” Eli said. “You know that.”

  “There might be just one that isn’t extinct,” Eddie said. “It could be over there behind that building eating my aunt. Maybe it will eat this school bus and then we’ll all be deaded.”

  Eli didn’t take the remark seriously. As usual, he was eating the licorice out of his lunch.

  The school bus had barely rounded the corner when a white limo pulled up at the apartment building and stopped.

  “I wonder if that’s Giovanni?” Harmony said. She had briefly had an Italian boyfriend who was a limo driver—once in a great while Giovanni would cruise by, and stop in for a little visit.

  It definitely wasn’t Giovanni this time, though, because Pat got out of the limo and came sauntering up the sidewalk, as if being dropped off by limo at her sister’s apartment in Las Vegas was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Boy, they make lousy margaritas in this town,” Pat said. “You’d think with all the Mexicans here they’d make better margaritas. I hope you have lots of coffee—I’ve got a headache that won’t quit.”

  “Probably if you tried sleeping normal hours you wouldn’t get them bad headaches,” Neddie suggested.

  “I’ll sleep when I’m old, like you,” Pat said. She appeared to be in a very cheerful mood, headache or no headache.

  “What’d you do with Wendell?” Harmony asked. She still felt a little annoyed that Pat had just marched off with him.

  “Wendell dulled out on me,” Pat said. “That’s why I started guzzling margaritas. Listening to the ice clink is more interesting than trying to make conversation with that big lug.”

  “I told you he wasn’t good at conversation,” Harmony reminded her.

  “You should have just said he was mute and left it at that,” Pat said. “I don’t know where you find these men, Harmony—or why you find them, either. There’s livelier old boys than Wendell in pretty much any beer joint in Oklahoma.”

  “They may be livelier but I bet they aren’t sweeter,” Harmony said—she hadn’t seen Wendell but once in several years, though she felt obliged to defend him against her sister’s insults.

  “So who popped for the limo?” Neddie inquired, once they were back inside. Pat poured coffee into a cup until the cup ran over, and then started drinking the coffee out of the saucer.

  “Some high roller from Venezuela, I never gave him the time of day,” Pat said. “He ain’t discouraged, though—I expect I’ll hear from him later.”

  Both Harmony and Neddie received this news skeptically.

  “If you never gave him the time of day, why’d he send you home in a limo?” Neddie asked.

  “Because he thinks I’ll give him the time of day and put a little sugar on it, at some point,” Pat said. “Why does any guy loan a lonely-looking lady his limo?”

  “Pat, I’m worried about Wendell, he isn’t sophisticated,” Harmony said.

  “That’s the understatement of the year,” Pat said.

  “Wendell’s been sweet to me ever since I’ve known him,” Harmony said. “He used to do a real good job on my windshield, when he worked at the Exxon station. I hope you weren’t rude to him, or anything.

  “If I hadn’t been drunk at the airport I never would have agreed to the date,” she added.

  “Why not, if he’s so sweet?” Pat asked.

  Harmony didn’t answer. The last thing she needed to be discussing with her sister was her reasons for not dating Wendell—actually, the main reason for not dating him was that she hadn’t even known he was still in town, that plus loyalty to Myrtle. Once Myrtle laid claim to a man she never really entirely relinquished the claim. Myrtle had been known to reclaim boyfriends from thirty or forty years back. No doubt she would immediately try to reclaim Wendell if she thought Harmony had the least interest in him.

  “I meant to read the letter last night,” Harmony said. “But we couldn’t find it—it must still be in your purse.”

  Pat opened her purse and handed Harmony the letter without comment.

  “I think Harmony ought to move back to Oklahoma, what do you think?” Neddie asked Pat.

  “I think she’d be bored shitless in Oklahoma, but maybe I’m wrong,” Pat said, looking at Harmony in a kindly way. “It’d be good for Eddie, though—he don’t need to be growing up in an environment like this.”

  “Pat, it’s a good environment, the air’s real clear,” Harmony protested. “Eddie hardly ever gets a cold.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about the air, Harmony,” Pat said. “This town is about gambling and sex and drugs and staying up all night wasting money.”

  “The very thing your kids are into, back in Oklahoma,” Neddie said, in her dry voice.

  “I know, but at least we don’t have a whole city of it, with twenty-four-hour roulette,” Pat said. “Harmony, haven’t you lived here long enough? Wouldn’t you like to come home with Neddie and me and live a normal life for a while?”

  “Maybe,” Harmony said. “I want to read the letter before I decide.”

  She took the letter and started outside with it. Both sisters looked startled.

  “What’s wrong with just sitting on the couch and reading it?” Neddie asked.

  “No, I’d rather sit in Gary’s car, he’s going to want it back pretty soon,” Harmony said.

  “You’re going to sit in a car and read that letter?” Pat asked.

  “Pat, it’s where I feel safe—maybe it’s because Gary has been such a good friend,” Harmony said.

  Or it might have been because she had borrowed so many cars in her years in Las Vegas that sitting in a borrowed car made her feel at home or something. Actually, the letter from the girl named Laurie did not take a long time to read; Laurie’s handwriting was quite large.

  Dear Mrs. Plamer,

  I regret to inform you that your daughter Pepper died last week. Some friends and I took up a collection and had Pepper cremated, as was her wish. I will be glad to send or bring you her ashes at your request.

  Pepper and I had lived together for three years—it is a great loss for me, as I know it is for you.

  The cause of death was AIDS. We were able to bring Pepper home about six days before the end—she died in the bed we shared so happily.

  I am sorry I have to bring you this horrible news. Also, I’m sorry we haven’t met. Pepper was always ambivalent about inviting you to come to our home, but I’m the same way about my mother and I love her very much. I guess girls just sometimes have trouble being friends with their mothers.

  If you would ever like to come and stay with me and talk a little about Pepper’s life you would be more than welcome.

  I’m from California, if you don’t feel up to a trip to New York perhaps someday we could meet in the west.

  Pepper was the love of my life—I will miss her forever. She was a beautiful dancer and would have been a great star, had she lived.

&nb
sp; Yours,

  Laurie Chalk

  Harmony sat in Gary’s car for more than two hours, looking at the letter. Now and then she reread part of it, but mostly she just sat in the car, thinking about Pepper, thinking about Eddie, thinking about the future. Once the sun really got going it became a little too warm in the car, but Harmony rolled all the windows down and made the best of it. After an hour her sisters began to worry about her; they came out to the car to see whether she was behaving rationally or not. Harmony told them she was fine. Neither of them believed it but there wasn’t a great deal they could do about it, so they finally drifted back to the apartment.

  For about five minutes Harmony considered the notion of stealing Gary’s car and just driving away. Gary was a very understanding man; probably he would think it over and forgive her for stealing his car. Meanwhile Pat and Neddie could take Eddie home with them and raise him in a healthy rural place; he would grow up and be happy and maybe avoid the fate of his big sister: the fate of dying young. She knew she could count on her sisters to do a good job with Eddie. Even if Pat was troubled with sex addiction Neddie said she did a good job with children.

  While daydreaming about stealing Gary’s car and taking off, Harmony didn’t develop much of a sense of what her own future might be. She thought she might just leave it to luck, her future. She would drive around America in Gary’s car until the car suffered a final breakdown. Wherever that occurred, west, east, north, or south, Harmony would then live for the rest of her life. Fate would have decided the location for her. Perhaps it would be Biloxi, Mississippi, or somewhere, she had no idea how far Gary’s car would make it, but at least it would make it to a place where no one knew her, a place where she would not have to conceal how guilty she felt about failing her children. Maybe some of the people she got to know would suspect that she had had a tragedy, but they would have no way of finding out what it was.