The Late Child

by Larry McMurtry

  “Pat, I didn’t, that’s silly,” Harmony said. “I just went into the jail for a few minutes to see Billy. Peewee didn’t even say much.”

  “Peewee’s tongue-tied when he gets the hots,” Pat said. “That’s always been his problem—no conversation.”

  Harmony was feeling torn—she was still feeling the need to leave. Even Laurie seemed to fit in Oklahoma better than she did—she seemed perfectly relaxed, standing around the pickup yakking with Eddie’s cousins.

  “You don’t look too happy, Harmony,” Pat said. “Maybe you ought to date Peewee a few times. He might be more interesting than he looks.”

  “I don’t want to date Peewee,” Harmony said. At least she was sure of that much. Too many times in her life she had taken pity because some guy looked as if he needed to have his expectations raised. The next thing she knew, she would find herself involved with some man she really didn’t want.

  “After breakfast we’re going to go to Neddie’s to eat lunch,” Pat said. “Dick’s even planning to stop plowing long enough to barbecue chicken, just for you and Eddie.”

  “I wonder how much a car costs?” Harmony said.

  “Different prices, why?” Pat asked. “What do you want with a car?”

  “Pat, just to drive it,” Harmony said. She skipped the fact of having no license.

  “You just got here,” Pat reminded her. “It’s your first visit in years. You have to remember that you’re the only celebrity Tarwater’s ever produced. A lot of people are going to have their feelings hurt if you don’t stay around long enough to have a decent visit.”

  “They don’t know me, though,” Harmony reminded her.

  “No, but they think they know you,” Pat said. “You grew up here.”

  “No, I was a child here,” Harmony said. “I grew up in Las Vegas, raising Pepper.”

  “Harmony, what’s the matter with you?” Pat asked—she sounded a little impatient.

  Harmony didn’t want to answer. They were on the highway, heading toward Tulsa. The wind was blowing her hair. Pat seemed to be driving very fast. Harmony felt no appetite at all. She didn’t know how she was going to manage to eat waffles and barbecued chicken, when she wasn’t hungry. Even the thought of barbecued chicken made her queasy. Another thing that didn’t help with the queasiness was all the dead animals on the highway. First there was a coyote, then two skunks, then a possum, then an armadillo. It made her wonder if maybe animals had a need to commit suicide—either that or they were just careless. Pat was driving ninety. If an animal wandered into the road Pat would probably hit it—it would just be smushed.

  “I didn’t know you had a pickup, Pat,” she said. “You work in a bank. Why do you need a pickup?”

  “Because you can put a mattress in the back and fuck pretty comfortably,” Pat said. “A pickup’s useful if you’re a sex addict. It’s hard to enjoy yourself in them little Jap cars.”

  “I didn’t know you were a sex addict until Neddie told me,” Harmony said. “What’s that all about?”

  “It’s about being addicted to sex, just like it sounds,” Pat said. “The term sort of speaks for itself.”

  “You could have low self-esteem,” Harmony said. “After I got fired I slept with a whole lot of guys. In my case it was probably low self-esteem.”

  “Yeah, but that was your case,” Pat said. “I don’t have low self-esteem. I just like to fuck.”

  “But it’s not safe anymore, Pat,” Harmony said. “You could get what Pepper got.”

  “Nothing’s much fun if you can’t be reckless,” Pat said. “I was born reckless.”

  The plains mostly consisted of weeds, Harmony decided, looking at them. She had wanted to question Pat about the sex addiction a little bit more, but, thanks to the fast driving, they were already pulling up to the waffle house. The other pickup was already there.

  Iggy was jumping up and down in the cab, indignant at having been left in the pickup.

  “Celebrities don’t like to be locked in pickups,” Pat observed. She waved at Iggy as they went in.

  “Mom, we ordered my waffles,” Eddie said. He sat between Deena and Debbie.

  “We love Eddie,” Debbie said. “He knows stuff about everything. I think he’s a genius.”

  “Well, I am a genius,” Eddie agreed. Harmony had some doubt that he knew what the word meant.

  “Either that or he watches the Discovery Channel,” Pat said.

  Harmony only had coffee. Even with the coffee in her she had a hard time connecting with the group. It was as if the part of her brain that had kept her sociable for so many years had broken off or something. Now, instead of feeling sociable, she just felt dull, as if her pores were stopped up with sunblock or some other gooey substance. More and more she had difficulty in getting out of her own insides. It was a little bit like being in the Holland Tunnel; she had claustrophobia even though she was only in a waffle house in Tulsa. She was with her own family, too. It was horrible to be so locked into herself when her own nephews and nieces were sitting there hoping she would tell them anecdotes about her life as a showgirl.

  In the light of day her nephews and nieces didn’t have the old look they had had last night. What was obvious though was that they weren’t really into skin care. None of them had very healthy complexions. The boys’ skin was windburned and the girls’ skin was rough—maybe it was the water. Some of them had brought their children. One little girl Eddie’s age was very withdrawn. Eddie made repeated efforts to engage her in conversation, but for once he was unsuccessful. The little girl refused to say a word.

  “Mom, Julie won’t talk to me—maybe she’s deaf,” Eddie said. They had taught him how to sign a little, at his school, so he tried signing, but that didn’t work either. The other little children were rowdy and hit one another. Usually Eddie would have criticized such behavior, but this time he kept quiet.

  Fortunately, Laurie was being a wonderful guest. Harmony felt proud that Pepper had chosen such a nice, composed young woman to be her mate. Laurie talked to all the nieces and nephews. She got all their names right straight off, and the names of the little children too. The little children got even more unruly as the meal went on; they yelled and shrieked. One little boy bit his sister on the cheek hard enough to leave teeth marks. Harmony could see that Eddie was shocked by such bad behavior. The other customers didn’t seem to mind, though. Most of them were truck drivers who seemed content to eat and smoke.

  “Mom, don’t they have a no-smoking section?” Eddie asked. “It’s not very good for our lungs to be in here.”

  “Every place doesn’t have to be virtuous, Eddie,” Laurie said. She was doing her best to wipe all the little children’s mouths and keep them cleaned up. All the little girls had hair the color of straw. They kept dropping silverware and pulling food off one another’s plates. Harmony began to feel that she might lose her mind if she didn’t get to leave soon. Two of the little girls were Pat’s granddaughters, but Pat didn’t say much to them; she left it to their parents, who left it to Laurie. Due to her claustrophobia, her feeling of being locked inside herself, Harmony didn’t take a hand. Mainly she was grateful that Laurie was so poised.

  Harmony knew the nephews and nieces were a little disappointed that she wasn’t able to be more outgoing. Maybe they had been hoping she would talk about Elvis, or Mr. Sinatra. You couldn’t blame them—there couldn’t be much glamour to the lives they led.

  Finally, Donna, the boldest girl, took the lead a little bit.

  “We heard you knew Elvis, Aunt Harmony,” she said. “Was he nice?”

  “We don’t never get to hear about nobody famous,” Debbie said. “No one famous ever shows up around here.”

  “He seemed nice,” Harmony said. “I just have had my picture taken with him two or three times. He was real busy, you know. He liked to keep his time for himself, as much as possible.”

  “Who else famous did you know?” Don asked—those were the first words he had spoken.<
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  “We’re just dying to have you tell us about every famous person you ever met,” Davie said.

  “Gosh,” Harmony said. “I met a lot, but mostly I was just passing them on stage, on the way to my spot. None of them ever spent any time with me, although Mr. Sinatra sent me flowers once.”

  “Who?” Debbie asked. It turned out that none of her nieces and nephews had ever really heard of Frank Sinatra. David sort of had an inkling that Frank Sinatra was a famous singer or something, but he was real vague about it. Mr. Sinatra didn’t mean nearly as much to them as Elvis—it just went to show how different worlds could be. In Las Vegas Mr. Sinatra was even more of a god than Elvis—of course, Mr. Sinatra was still alive.

  Harmony managed to come alive enough to tell a few stories; she reeled off the names of every celebrity she could remember meeting, including President Nixon and President Ford; they were also pretty impressed that she had met Muhammad Ali.

  “She actually met a President,” Debbie said.

  “Well, I’m a celebrity now too, and Iggy’s a celebrity and we met the President,” Eddie chimed in—he was a little tired of listening to his mother reel off stories about celebrities she had met.

  “Iggy’s the best celebrity,” he went on. “He’s the best celebrity because he fell all the way off the Statue of Liberty and he did not die.”

  “He better be careful around here, though,” Davie said. “Old coyote might get him.”

  “No, old coyote won’t get him, because he’s in the pickup and he’s very safe,” Eddie insisted.

  Even so, he rushed out to the pickup the moment breakfast was over, to reassure himself.

  Despite having listed celebrities and talked about them a little bit, Harmony still had a sense that, where her nephews and nieces were concerned, she was a bit of a disappointment. She hadn’t produced the stories of glamour and excitement that they wanted to hear. It was her fault, she knew; her heart hadn’t really been in it when she tried to talk about celebrities. The years when she had been a showgirl and was in a position to know celebrities were long past; those events now seemed like events that had happened to someone else. Nothing like that would ever happen to her again. For one thing, since leaving the casinos, she had sort of let herself get heavy. When she happened to catch a glimpse of her own body in the mirror it was always a shock; she didn’t have a flat belly anymore. She had kept a perfect figure for so long that it was a little hard to recognize herself, now that she didn’t have one. All those years of having the best figure in town, in a town that really appreciated good figures, had failed to prepare her for the aging process.

  Her main problem as a showgirl had been dealing with the envy of the other showgirls, all of whom constantly worried about some part of themselves—their butts or their bellies or something. But she had never had to worry, she had the perfect body, or at least she had been told that she did, many, many times. Mostly she hadn’t done much to deserve it, either; maybe a little exercise now and then, plus keeping to a reasonable diet. For many years a day rarely passed without her getting some compliment on her looks—it didn’t always come from a guy who wanted to date her, either. It might just be from someone on the street, or in a drugstore or somewhere.

  But those days were just over: now she had a middle-aged body that was definitely too heavy; not too many compliments came her way anymore. Probably one of the reasons she had trouble talking to her nieces and nephews about the old days was that she didn’t feel she was still the person who had had the experiences with the celebrities. When she tried to talk about it she felt she was talking about someone she no longer knew well: herself, as she had once been.

  All the way down the highway toward Neddie’s house, with Pat blazing along at more than ninety, Harmony more and more felt that it had all gotten away from her; she no longer felt at home, either in the past or in the present. She didn’t have a clue as to what to do next, but she was afraid—very afraid—that she was going to be a big disappointment, not only to her family in Oklahoma, but also to Laurie and Eddie. More and more she had the fear that she might just stop functioning altogether.

  “What if I get so I can’t function?” she asked. She had begun to feel very anxious, as if she were tearing inside. This time, though, it wasn’t just a tearing grief over Pepper’s death. It was as if her whole frame or structure was splintering and collapsing. It was a very bad feeling. What if it collapsed and she let Laurie and Eddie down in a major way?

  “Harmony, if you’re having a panic attack, take deep breaths,” Pat said.

  “Deep breaths won’t stop it, Pat,” Harmony said. “I think I’m cracking up. I’m going to fail Eddie, and everybody else.

  “I may just have to give up,” she added. That was how she felt.

  “We all give up now and then,” Pat said. “Life’s too heavy a matter. I guess our kids just survive those times, somehow.”

  “Pat, this is worse, I may need to go away,” Harmony said. “I may not be able to be around anyone I know.”

  “Okay, if you do you do,” Pat said, looking at her kindly. “I’ve often had to resort to strangers myself—my kids kind of took it in stride.”

  But they didn’t, Harmony wanted to say. She didn’t believe that Pat’s kids, or Neddie’s, were particularly bad, but she didn’t want Eddie to grow up to be like them, either. She wanted Eddie to have unrestricted opportunity—she wanted him to have an unthreatened childhood, too. It couldn’t be said that her sisters’ children had had that.

  “Harmony, leave him with us if you have to go bonkers,” Pat said. “Just leave him and don’t worry. Dad loves him. We all love him, and we really haven’t got to spend enough time with him. You can come back and get him whenever you’re feeling better.”

  Harmony thought she really was going to break down if she didn’t get away from her family immediately. They were just passing the Best Western when the feeling became unbearable.

  “Pat, stop,” she said. “I forgot something. I have to go to my room for a while.”

  “But Neddie’s waiting,” Pat said, a little horrified by the way her sister looked.

  “Dick took off from plowing,” she added. “It’s once every twenty years that Dick takes off from plowing. You can’t skip out now.”

  Nevertheless, she braked and pulled to the side of the road. She looked annoyed for a moment, but when she realized how bad Harmony was shaking she just looked scared. She stopped the pickup, but she caught Harmony’s arm, so she wouldn’t jump out.

  “Now calm down,” she said. “Just calm down.”

  “Pat, shut up!” Harmony said. “I can’t calm down—it’s like that time I beat you with the stuffed dog, only there’s no stuffed dog. You have to let me out.”

  Pat took a good look at her sister.

  “I guess it ain’t that big a deal, that Dick stopped plowing,” she said. “What’s a couple of barbecued chickens?”

  “Bye, Pat—tell Neddie and Dick I’m sorry,” Harmony said. “I just have to be alone right now.”

  “Harmony, I’ll drive you to your room,” Pat said. “In the state you’re in you might get run over if you try to cross this highway. Forget about the barbecue. Just don’t jump out. I’ll drive you right to the door.”

  “Okay,” Harmony said—she was so upset that she knew Pat was probably right. Maybe she would run right in front of a truck, if she tried to cross the four-lane highway on her own.

  Pat slowly started the pickup and drove down the road to the exit by the Best Western; then she drove Harmony around to the back of the motel.

  “If there’s anything I can do to help, I will,” she said, as Harmony was getting out.

  “No, just tell Eddie his mother will see him later,” she said. She knew it sounded formal but it was the best she could do.

  “I like Laurie, for what it’s worth,” Pat said. “I think she’s a real nice young lady.”

  “She is, bye,” Harmony said, getting out.

 
; Once she was in the motel, Harmony only sank lower. She felt she was going to die of the tearing and splintering feeling inside. I can’t die, she kept telling herself. I can’t die, I’ve got Eddie. Who would he have if I died?

  She didn’t get an answer to that one. Whether Eddie would be lucky enough to get anyone good to raise him if his mother died was a question there was no one to answer. Little boys all over the world lost their mothers, without having any replacement ready. She knew that. It could be a war that took the mother; or it could be a fire, a flood, an earthquake, a tornado, even just a disease or a divorce. It was a thing that happened constantly, wherever there were mothers and children; then the little boys or girls would just have to get by on whatever guts or strength they had. Probably luck was what they needed most; not too many little children could be expected to be strong enough to deal with the loss of a mother particularly well. Harmony didn’t want Eddie to have to try. At least she was in her room; she had managed not to get run over on a four-lane in Oklahoma.

  After Harmony had been in the room a minute or two she thought she still heard the pickup, so she looked out. Pat was just sitting there; probably she was concerned. Even so, Harmony checked to be sure the door was locked; she even put the little chain across it. She didn’t want Pat or anyone else coming in. She sat on the bed, expecting to cry her eyes out, but no tears came. She just sat there, trying to cope with the terrible sense that she was lost. There was no way back to where she needed to be. She needed to be the self she had once been, but she couldn’t. That self had gotten shattered; there were just pieces of it floating around, she didn’t think she had much hope of getting the pieces to fit together into a person again. She didn’t know what her next step was; she had no clue.

  She heard the pickup turn slowly in the motel parking lot; then it left. Probably Pat had just lingered because she dreaded showing up at the barbecue without Harmony. Evidently it was a very big deal that Dick had taken off work in order to cook.

  After Harmony sat for a few minutes on the end of the bed, feeling crazy, so crazy that she could not predict her next action, she began to take her clothes off. Her mind was whirling. She began to have the fantasy that a lover was coming to sleep with her, to hold her and help her be a little less upset. Even while she was having the fantasy she knew she had been dislodged from sanity: there was no lover coming, there was no one coming; what sickness or sadness was loose inside her to make her suppose or even imagine that a lover was coming? The fantasy kept flickering, though. She even went to the bathroom and combed her hair.