The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  G. failed to respond. He was looking out the window, and wore an inscrutable expression.

  “G. is not going, due to worries about leaving family,” Omar said. “G. has one dozen children.”

  “By how many wives—is he one of them bigamists?” Pat asked. “Just from looking at him …”

  “G. has only one wife,” Omar said. “He is not going to Oklahoma.”

  “He is going to Oklahoma,” Salah said. “He is confiding in me a desire to see America. Will accept small fee.”

  Omar was annoyed because Salah had contradicted him.

  “Give me back my taxicab,” he said.

  “Taxicab is in Bayonne,” Salah reminded him.

  “Give me back the key,” Omar said. “Go be shoeshine boy. Abdul will drive the cab now.”

  “Abdul is passionate boy, only wanting women,” Salah said.

  Abdul, the passionate boy, had developed a terrible crush on Laurie Chalk.

  “I am going to die when Laurie dies,” he said, to everyone’s surprise.

  “Abdul, you don’t have to,” Laurie assured him.

  Just at that moment Sheba danced out of the bedroom. She had already done her makeup, and looked snappy.

  “Good morning,” Eddie said—he liked Sheba.

  “Good morning, Bright,” Sheba said. “Man, I like this sleeping in beds.”

  “I think we have to settle the question of whether G. wants to take us anywhere,” Laurie said. “We need to sit down and discuss this sanely.”

  “Discuss what?” Neddie asked.

  “Well, our next move, or the rest of our lives,” Laurie said. “There’s twelve of us and we all just met. We’re from different places and we don’t know one another very well. It’s worked fine so far, but what if it stops working when we’re in the middle of Tennessee?”

  Eddie had been walking around in circles, but he stopped and got the tough look in his eye that he sometimes got when he didn’t like the direction a conversation was going.

  “I mean, what if we all start hating one another’s guts, in a day or two?” Laurie asked.

  Harmony saw her point. Unusual circumstances had brought them together. It was true that lots of things fizzled and went bad; that would describe every romance she had ever had. It was nice to think they could all just get on a bus and set off for Oklahoma and be friends forever, but what if it didn’t work out that way?

  “She don’t want us to go,” Otis observed, mildly.

  “That isn’t it, Otis,” Laurie said. “It’s not about not wanting any one of us to go. I don’t know that I want to go myself, but, by the same token, I don’t know that I don’t want to go. We’re all from different places—I’m just worried.”

  “She’s right, I might be missing Jersey City pretty soon,” Sheba said. “I ain’t never lived noplace but Jersey City—Oklahoma don’t mean shit to me.”

  “I mean, we don’t all have to go,” Laurie said. “It’s like an option we should all consider for a few minutes.”

  “Those words are wrong, we do all have to go!” Eddie said. It was startling how emphatic he could be when he put his mind to it.

  “We do all have to go and we have to go today!” Eddie added.

  “Well, but why, Eddie?” Laurie asked. “Why do we all have to go?”

  “Because that’s what families do,” Eddie said. “They go on trips together, with their dogs.”

  “Bright’s got an answer for everything,” Sheba said, smiling at Laurie.

  “If we go off down to Oklahoma, time we get back somebody else have the Dumpster,” Otis said, looking at Sheba.

  “Let ’em have it, who wants to live in an old rotten-egg Dumpster anyway,” Sheba said.

  All of a sudden G. delivered himself of a long statement in his native tongue. Because of his deep voice, everyone listened. The only person who wasn’t listening was Sonny, who was offering Harmony little smiles, obviously hoping she would soften up, take him into the bedroom, and do something about his hard-on.

  “What is he saying?” Laurie asked.

  “G. is saying he needs to change the oil in school bus,” Omar informed her. “Then he is saying he wants to see America, Washington Monument and giant redwoods. He is requesting that we leave in one hour’s time.”

  “I’m for that,” Neddie said.

  “Hey, I know how to change the oil in a school bus,” Pat said, fluffing her hair. “I drove a school bus for years. Maybe I’ll go with G.”

  Laurie got up, looking upset, and went into her bedroom. Harmony decided she ought to see what was wrong. When she got in the bedroom Laurie was staring at herself in the mirror.

  “Laurie, are you upset that we’re all going?” Harmony asked.

  “No, it’s Abdul—do you ever wish you could make yourself less attractive?” Laurie asked.

  “Laurie, it’s just a crush,” Harmony told her.

  “I wish I could be completely plain,” Laurie said. “I’d like to pass unnoticed through life from now on.”

  Harmony was a little shocked by what Laurie said, and by the way Laurie was looking in the mirror. Lots of times she had looked in her own mirror and hadn’t exactly seen herself looking her best. There had been mornings when she was hung over; she wasn’t a big drinker but now and then she forgot to stop drinking and went on until she was really drunk. There had been mornings when guys had punched her, or mornings when she had cried for an hour or two for no reason—probably she cried just because life was the way it was. There had been mornings since Eddie arrived when the complications in the way of female problems meant that her color wasn’t too good. But at least her hope had always been to be attractive, if not immediately, then later in the day. She had every intention of doing her best to look attractive—maybe it was just her showgirl training.

  But Laurie obviously meant what she said; she wished to make herself less attractive.

  “Is it because you don’t want to be hit on by guys?” Harmony asked.

  “Or girls,” Laurie said. “I don’t want to be hit on by anyone. When someone acts like they think I’m attractive I get real disturbed. I was happy about being a girl while Pepper was alive, but now I’m not.”

  “People will always be able to tell that you’re nice, Laurie,” Harmony said.

  “I try to be, but I don’t think I am, really,” Laurie said.

  “Well, we’re not angels,” Harmony said. “Gary says that. In fact he says it about forty times a day.”

  “Who’s Gary?” Laurie asked.

  “He’s my best friend—he’s a costume manager,” Harmony said. “Didn’t Pepper tell you about him?”

  “Nope—she didn’t like to talk about Las Vegas,” Laurie said. “Pepper wasn’t a big talker. Dancing was her way of talking.”

  Even so, Harmony felt sad. She couldn’t help drooping a little. If Pepper didn’t like to talk about Las Vegas it was probably because she hadn’t really liked the part of her life that she lived at home. Harmony felt some of her old guilts rising—why should Pepper have liked it particularly? They moved too much, they never had a car, guys came and went—it probably hadn’t been that enjoyable a home environment, and whose fault was that?

  “Don’t look so gloomy, we have to decide about Oklahoma,” Laurie said. “You were a good mom, and I’m a nice person. I don’t want us to get the mopes, not right now.”

  “Okay,” Harmony said—nonetheless, her spirits weren’t as high as they had been when she got up. It only took a chance remark to remind her of all her mistakes, and Laurie had made the chance remark. Harmony couldn’t help thinking how hurt Gary would be if he knew Pepper hadn’t even mentioned him to the woman she lived with. Gary adored Pepper, he would go into a major decline if he knew Pepper had just sort of forgotten him once she moved away.

  “This trip seems like madness,” Laurie said. “What are any of us going to do in Oklahoma?”

  “Meet my family,” Harmony said. “I think you might like Billy, he has
a good sense of humor.”

  “Who’s Billy?” Laurie asked. She picked up a brush and began to brush her hair.

  “My brother—he’s in jail for making obscene phone calls,” Harmony said.

  Laurie shook her head, but at least she smiled.

  “I thought you were trying to sell me on this trip,” she said.

  “I am, but Billy being in jail just happened to be the first detail that popped into my mind,” Harmony said.

  “If that’s the first detail, maybe you better not hit me with any more,” Laurie said. “One or two more details like that and I might decide to do something sensible, such as stay here and get a job.”

  “Laurie, you have to come,” Harmony said. “Eddie would be heartbroken if you don’t.”

  “Or else he’d be mad as hell,” Laurie said, smiling. “Would you come with me to the record store before we leave? I want to pick out some tapes.”

  5.

  Harmony decided she was not inviting Sonny Le Song to go to Oklahoma with them no matter what—she had only included him in the count of twelve because he happened to be standing there. The fact that he had already had the nerve to make a sexual overture was highly annoying.

  Then it turned out that Pat and Neddie had invited him earlier that morning, while they were all having coffee. That was pretty annoying too—what business did her sisters think they had inviting her old boyfriends to go places?

  “If we take him with us I’ll have to introduce him to Mom and Dad,” Harmony pointed out, while they were examining their clothes to see if they had any clean enough to get across America in.

  “So what? We’ll have to introduce this whole zoo to Mom and Dad anyway,” Pat said. “They’re gonna think a lunatic asylum showed up on the porch.”

  “They’re gonna be right, too,” Neddie said. “I don’t care, though. I just want to get home and smell the breeze.”

  “If it’s blowing in the wrong direction all you’ll smell is the fertilizer plant,” Pat said.

  “Pat, you don’t know Sonny,” Harmony said. “He doesn’t have a cent and the only jobs he can get is to sing in old folks’ homes.”

  “Good, he can sing to Mom and Dad then,” Pat said. “Don’t gripe at me. All I did was be friendly to your old sweetheart.”

  “Are you sure it was just friendly?” Harmony asked.

  Pat stopped raking through the pile of wrinkled clothes in her suitcase and looked annoyed.

  “Harmony, he’s not my type,” she said.

  “That’s odd,” Neddie said.

  “Why is it odd—don’t I have a right to a type?” Pat asked.

  “Sure, but out of a hundred guys you can usually find ninety-nine that are your type,” Neddie said.

  While they were packing, Eddie and Iggy ran up and down Ninth Street with two little Chinese girls they met in front of a bakery. Everyone on the street recognized Eddie and Iggy from their TV appearances—several people stopped to wish them well. Pat and Neddie chatted with some ladies outside a beauty shop. Meanwhile, G. insisted that all baggage be strapped to the top of the bus, although it was a big school bus and there was lots of room inside. None of them had much luggage. Sonny Le Song didn’t even have a clean shirt. He just had a toothbrush and a razor.

  “Omar, why do the suitcases have to go on top?” Harmony asked. “All Eddie’s stuffed animals are in that big suitcase. If they blow away he’s going to be really upset.”

  “G. is from Bangladesh, suitcases must go on top of bus,” Omar assured her. “G. is saving room, there may be more peoples coming.”

  “Forget that,” Laurie said. “We’ve got quite enough peoples here right now and half of us aren’t too sure about this trip, anyway.”

  “Yeah, me,” Sheba said. “Don’t they have cows in Oklahoma?”

  “Any kind you want,” Neddie said.

  “I don’t want no kind,” Sheba said. “I don’t want no cowboys, either.”

  Harmony thought Sheba and Otis looked the most scared. The turban men seemed happy to throw in their lot with Pat and Neddie and herself, but Sheba and Otis looked like frightened children. For a moment Harmony thought they shouldn’t even go, but then she remembered what they had been doing when she met them. Sheba was a parking lot whore and Otis had been sniffing glue in a Dumpster. Going to Oklahoma might give them a little different perspective.

  Just as she was worrying that maybe it was wrong to take Sheba and Otis out of their lives, even though they didn’t have great lives, Eddie came dashing up at top speed and jumped up into Sheba’s arms. As soon as Sheba had a good grip on him he leaned back and gave Otis a high five. Otis smiled and they did a little high-five game that Otis had taught Eddie. The little Chinese girls, their black hair neatly combed, stood on the sidewalk, watching.

  “Aren’t those little Chinese girls cute?” Neddie asked. “There’s Asian people in Tulsa—they’re real good at science.”

  Pat came walking up with Sonny Le Song. They had gone to a T-shirt stand two blocks up and bought Sonny some T-shirts, so at least he could make a clean appearance on the trip.

  “Pat’s a sucker, I bet she shelled out the money for those T-shirts,” Neddie said, observing her sister. “There’s nothing she’d rather do than steal one of your boyfriends, either.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, Neddie,” Harmony said. “Every man I bump into on the street is not my boyfriend.”

  “That’s not how Mom will look at it,” Neddie said. “How she’ll look at it is how you brought home this deadbeat who doesn’t have a dime and you’ll expect her to feed him.”

  “I don’t expect her to feed him,” Harmony said. “I don’t even expect her to feed me.”

  “If you think Mom was tight when we were growing up, you ought to see her now,” Neddie said.

  “Neddie, don’t talk to me about it, I don’t want to be discouraged before I even start,” Harmony said. Then she stepped on the school bus and almost immediately had to break up a fistfight between Omar, Salah, and Sonny Le Song, all of whom assumed that they would get to sit by her during the trip. Omar started to sit by her and Sonny practically knocked him over in his effort to get there first.

  “That’s my seat,” he said. But he didn’t quite dare sit down, because Harmony was glaring at him.

  “I was sitting here—lady is teaching me English lessons,” Salah said.

  “Give me key to taxicab,” Omar thundered. Evidently he was still mad about the insult.

  “I want to sit by Laurie, if you gentlemen don’t mind,” Harmony said, to all three men. “You need to be a little better mannered. We have a long trip ahead.”

  Sonny Le Song got a puzzled look on his face; probably he had figured out that Laurie was gay. Feeling as he did about his own dick, it was no doubt a big shock that a woman he was interested in would rather sit by someone who was gay than sit by him.

  Laurie was the last one on the bus; she looked a little wistful at the thought that she was leaving the streets of New York. Harmony could understand that; people got dependent on their routines. Time after time she had stayed with some guy mainly because he had managed to become a habit. Obviously Sonny Le Song was hoping to become a habit again—little did he know he had no chance.

  “Mom, I’m going to sit with Sheba, she’s never been on a trip before and she’s scared,” Eddie said. “Iggy and I are going to stay with her all the way to Oklahoma so she won’t be scared.”

  “He has the sweetest impulses,” Laurie said, looking at Eddie fondly. She managed to ruffle his curls, as he was passing down the aisle toward Sheba and Otis.

  “I wish he got to see his father more,” Harmony said. It was one of the sorrows of her life that Eddie, who deserved excellent fathering if any little boy ever did, had had no father to speak of. She tried never to mention his father to him—if she did he got a hopeful look in his eyes; she couldn’t bear to see the hopeful look in Eddie’s eyes because it meant that he was only going to be disappointed.

/>   Harmony had been dreading the tunnel so much that G. agreed to leave Manhattan Island by way of the George Washington Bridge. Laurie worked it out with him. G. was respectful of Laurie and always did what she asked.

  Harmony was glad they were going over a bridge rather than through a tunnel. It also meant that she got to have a peaceful look at New York City, as the bus made its way from downtown to uptown. As she looked out and saw all the people on the streets, old and young, fat and thin, blond and dark, rich and poor, she had the sense that she was leaving New York before she had even arrived. It wasn’t that New York hadn’t been there, with all its noise and beauty, its buildings and taxicabs, it was that she hadn’t been there. She had only brushed by the city; she hadn’t been able to be there because events had removed her from herself—she had been a little like a ghost during her hours in New York. She thought that maybe someday, when Eddie was grown and she didn’t have responsibilities, she could come back to New York and mingle with the people, as she had mingled with people in the casinos all her life. Just mingle, walk, have a cup of coffee here and a bagel there, chat a little, hear about people’s problems, maybe mention a few of her own if she happened to sit by someone who had a friendly ear; it could be an old lady in a coffee shop, it could be a guy waiting for a bus—it could be anyone. She had the fantasy, as the bus was going up Sixth Avenue, that maybe she and Laurie Chalk would stay friends for the rest of their lives, so that someday she could come back; then the two of them could walk around New York together. Maybe on that visit she could connect with all the things she hadn’t been able to connect with this time, because of her ghostly state.

  “I’m getting a little excited,” Laurie said, with a smile. “Despite myself, I am. It’s going to be an adventure, isn’t it?”

  “I hope it’s a good adventure,” Harmony said. “I hope we don’t go off in a canyon or something, like my trailer did.”

  “I haven’t heard about many canyons between here and Oklahoma,” Laurie said. “I wonder if we could stop and buy a map, at some point. I’m not sure G. understands where Oklahoma is.”

  “Neddie will tell him, she’s a homebody,” Harmony commented. “She’s not going to go past it or anything.”