Thalia

by Larry McMurtry

  When he told Ruth about the ear-kissing incident he half expected her to be flattered that her husband would miss her so, but instead she looked miserable and forlorn. They had already finished lovemaking and she was so dispirited by the news that she neglected even to cover herself with the flannel shirt.

  “I don’t care,” she said, tears seeping out of her eyes. “I don’t care who he likes. If he wants to play around with little boys and they think it’s funny why should I care? I just get tired of everybody thinking he’s such a mighty man just because he coaches football. I’m the one they think is nothing, just his mousy wife, and they’re right, I am mousy. I might not have been if I hadn’t been ignored for twenty years. Now I’m forty and I don’t have any children and I can’t even do . . .” sniffed, “I can’t even do sex.”

  Sonny was stunned. He had never been so surprised.

  “Why did you stay with him?” he asked finally. Then it was Ruth who was dumb. It was a question she had avoided for years.

  “I wasn’t brought up to leave a husband,” she said in a small voice. “I guess that’s why. Or maybe I was just scared to.”

  “But how did you come to marry him?” Sonny asked, still curious.

  “Because my mother didn’t like him, I guess,” Ruth said. “I was fooled too. I was twenty years old and I thought hairy-chested football coaches were about it. I’ve paid for my own bad judgment.”

  There the conversation stalled—Ruth was too depressed to talk, and Sonny was confused. It seemed to him that Ruth must think the coach was queer or something, and the coach was the last man that anyone would accuse of such a thing. A few of the boys thought Mr. Cecil must be—they knew he got some kind of a kick out of watching them all swimming and horsing around naked at the irrigation ditch—but Mr. Cecil was much too much of a gentleman to do anything out of the ordinary, and nobody knew for sure about him. To suspect the coach of being that way was entirely too much—he didn’t even mention the conversation to Duane. In fact, he had never told Duane he was sleeping with Mrs. Popper because he was afraid Duane would make fun of him for sleeping with an older woman.

  It was that night, after that conversation, that things began to change for Ruth. She dreamed she was having a baby. She had had such dreams for years, but usually they were vague and fragmentary, but this one was vivid. It was not just a baby she had, though; it was Sonny. He was removed from between her legs, and afterward lay at her breast.

  The next day Sonny came, and while they were spreading the blue quilt on the bedroom floor Ruth remembered the dream. It was very vivid in her mind as she undressed. She lay quietly, her eyes closed, as Sonny began, but almost before she knew it she became excited, so much so that she could not be still. She thought of the dream again, hoping the excitement would die before she became completely possessed by it, but insead of dying it became keener. Because of the dream, pleasure took her over: with her eyes shut she could pretend she was giving birth. Sonny was inside her but in truth she was bringing him out—it was that which excited her. She grabbed his hands and put them on her thighs, so that he would force them wider. She was filled with a strength that she had not suspected and held him with her thighs, just at the entrance, just connected, both of them struggling, until she was finally seized, rent by what she felt. Then she took Sonny back to her, her heart was pounding, her eyelids fluttering; she almost fainted with the relief of delivery. For half an hour she slept, not moving, and Sonny lay on top of her, not knowing if he dared move. He had no doubt that Ruth had broken through, but her success was as strange and almost as frightening as her failures. The strength she had called up amazed him: for minutes she had held him with just her thighs, his arms pinned to his sides so tightly he could not get one free. Yet, sleeping beneath him, she might have been a girl, so still and at peace she seemed.

  When Ruth awakened she did not want Sonny to leave. She felt entirely comfortable, and she wanted to touch him, play with him, have his hand on her. After that, she never used the dream again, but she kept it in her mind as a safeguard, and even though she still sometimes missed, having the dream was a great reassurance.

  In the weeks after Ruth’s breakthrough the two of them became very close and comfortable. Once Sonny quit worrying about her response or lack of response, he found her much more pleasant to be with, and there were even afternoons when he visited her, not to make love but just to talk, hold hands, or watch television.

  Only one problem arose, and that was one they had been expecting: the town knew about them. A couple of the housewives who lived along the alley compared notes, and in a few days the town knew. Sonny worried about it a lot, Ruth hardly at all.

  “What do you think the coach would do if he found us?” Sonny asked one day. Ruth was sitting on the quilt combing her brown hair. She had decided to let her hair grow longer.

  “Probably shoot us both,” she said lightly. “He’s always glad to have an excuse to use his deer rifle.”

  Sonny mused on that and decided she was right. “What do you think we ought to do about it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ruth said, puckering her mouth at him happily. “Why don’t we buy a new quilt? This one’s about had it.”

  The next day she got one, for sentimental reasons also blue.

  Twelve

  ONE NIGHT IN MID-MARCH SONNY WOKE UP TOO EARLY—around 3:30 A.M. The first thing that occurred to him was that Sam the Lion would be asleep. Sam the Lion had made his decree of banishment stick, and, though Sonny had endured it as best he could, he had about reached the point where he could endure it no longer. It occurred to him that if he got dressed and went down to the café Genevieve might let him sit and talk awhile. A cold March norther was blowing and the warm blankets were hard to leave, but the chances were he would have to leave them in an hour or so anyway, to make an early butane run.

  Genevieve was sitting in one of the booths, reading an old issue of the Ladies Home Journal. To his immense relief she looked delighted to see him.

  “Come on in here,” she said, “I’m not going to throw any bottles at you.”

  “Could I have a cheeseburger?” he asked quickly. One of the worst parts of the penalty had been eating at the drive-in, where the cheeseburgers were half raw and the tomatoes soggy.

  “You can have two if you want them,” she said, and she made him two while he sat nervously in the booth. When she brought them in he swallowed the first one in only five or six bites.

  “Quit eating so fast,” Genevieve said. “You’ve lost weight. Even if it was a terrible thing to do to Billy, I’m on your side.”

  Sonny was grateful. “I couldn’t talk them out of it,” he said. “It was Leroy’s idea.”

  “Where was Duane?” she asked.

  It was a ticklish question. Duane had gone right on using the café and the poolhall, just as if he hadn’t been along. It was a sore spot with the other boys, and a few of them wanted to tell Sam the Lion about Duane’s part in it. Thinking about it made Sonny uneasy.

  “He was there,” he admitted. “Just don’t tell Sam.”

  “I figured he was,” Genevieve said quietly. “He just didn’t have the decency to own up and take his punishment. He probably got just as big a kick out of it as Leroy did.”

  Sonny was embarrassed and kept eating the cheeseburger. Nobody had ever criticized Duane in front of him before—for no reason that he could think of life was becoming more complicated.

  “Well, I won’t say no more about it,” she said. “That’s between you and him. But you’ve got to make up with Sam, that’s for sure. I won’t have you eating at that drive-in anymore. He misses you and he’ll make it up if you do it right. He knows you too well to think you really went out of your way to upset Billy.”

  “How’s Dan?” Sonny asked.

  “Coming along. He’s well enough to be contrary.”

  Sonny began to relax. The café was just the same: the jukebox, the booths, the high-school football schedule pi
nned on the wall. Genevieve cradled the coffee cup in her hand and stared at the frost-smoked windows.

  “I’ve gotten into something else,” Sonny said tentatively. She was the only person he could think of that he might be able to talk to.

  “Got a new girl friend?” she grinned, and then she suddenly remembered the gossip. Until that moment she had not taken it at all seriously.

  “I guess I have,” Sonny said. “Not a girl friend, a lady friend. It’s Mrs. Popper.” He didn’t know whether he was glad to have the secret out, and Genevieve was not sure at all that she was glad to have received it.

  “Ruth Popper?” she said, amazed. “How do you mean, Sonny? Have you been flirtin’ with her like you do with me, or is it different?”

  “It’s different,” he said. “It’s . . . like in a movie.”

  She saw that he was watching her face, dreadfully anxious to know what she thought about the news.

  “I don’t know what to think about you,” she said. “Quit lookin’ at me that way. This is an awful small town for that kind of carrying on, I can tell you that. You can’t sneeze in this town without somebody offerin’ you a handkerchief.”

  “Coach Popper don’t care nothin’ about her,” Sonny said. “I don’t see why he should care.”

  “He cares about himself, though—and about what people think of him. He owns a lot of guns, too.”

  Sonny looked so young and solemn and confused that after a moment it all amused her and she chuckled. He looked far too confused to be into anything wicked.

  “All right,” she said. “I won’t say no more about it. You’re a man of experience now, you don’t need my advice anyway.”

  Sonny didn’t know about advice, but he was glad to have her approval, however he could get it. He had some pie and chatted about lesser things until the streets outside were gray with a cold dawn. Genevieve got up to tend to the coffee maker.

  “I better go on,” Sonny said. “Sam’s going to be coming any time.”

  “You stay,” Genevieve said, not even turning around.

  Sonny didn’t like the idea, but he didn’t have long to worry about it. In a few minutes the café door opened and Sam the Lion and Billy stepped inside. Sam had on his old plaid mackinaw, his khakis, and his house shoes. When he saw Sonny he opened his mouth to say something but Genevieve cut him off.

  “Don’t say a word,” she said. “I won’t have him eating at that drive-in no more. He can apologize like a civilized person and you can listen to him.”

  When Billy saw Sonny his face brightened and he went right over and sat down by him. He had forgotten all about the bad night, and didn’t remember anything bad that Sonny had done. Sonny turned his baseball cap around backward for him.

  “I’m sorry,” Sonny said, when Sam the Lion came to the booth.

  “Scoot over,” Sam said, a little embarrassed. “If Billy can stand you I can too.” He sat down by Sonny and ordered his sausage and eggs. Sonny was so relieved that he couldn’t think of anything to say, and Sam the Lion was so relieved that he couldn’t keep quiet. There was the basketball team to talk about, a disgraceful, hapless basketball team that hadn’t come within thirty points of winning a game. Sam the Lion gave it hell, and continued giving it hell as the café filled, as the cowboys and the truckers came in, blowing on their cold hands. Soon smoke was rising from a dozen or more cups of Genevieve’s coffee. Sam the Lion poured his in a saucer and went on talking while the two boys, not listening, happily ate their breakfasts.

  Thirteen

  IT WAS IN THE EARLY SPRING, WHEN SONNY WAS REALLY beginning to get in touch with Ruth, that Duane really began to get out of touch with Jacy. He forgave her for going to the nude swimming party in Wichita, but somehow they were never as comfortable with one another as they had been before that happened. The thing that bothered Duane most was that, instead of going to Wichita less and less, Jacy was going more and more. It got so he was lucky if he spent one Saturday night a month with her. Time after time she drove off to Wichita with Lester Marlow, always, she said, because her mother insisted. Duane raged and stormed, but he never quite got up the guts to have it out with Lois. Instead, he decided to concentrate on getting Jacy to marry him as soon as they graduated. He knew she had her application in to several fancy girls’ schools, and he realized that if she got away to college he would have seen the last of her. His only chance was to marry her sometime during the summer, while she was still at home.

  Jacy, however, had put aside all thought of marrying Duane. She had convinced herself that that would be a very selfish thing to do. Her parents, particularly her father, would never stand for it: he would have it annulled, Duane would lose his job and would probably be in the army before the summer was out. It would clearly be unfair of her to put Duane in such a position. If she sacrificed what she felt for him, he could keep his job and stay out of the army several months longer. It was the sort of thing he would thank her for someday.

  The truth was, Jacy had been very strongly affected by the nude swimming party. Unknown to anyone but herself and Lester she had been back several times to exactly the same type of party. All the Saturday night trips were of her own arranging, but she told Duane they were her mother’s doings. Duane was too naïve to understand her wanting to mix with kids like herself, kids who had money and lived recklessly. It would save everyone misery to let him think it was her mother’s fault.

  Jacy had begun to be very attracted to Bobby Sheen, the leader of the wild set. He was not especially handsome, but he combed his hair in a rakish fashion and he was always merry and lustful. It was rumored that he and Annie-Annie made love four times a week, sometimes in curious ways. He had an air of absolute confidence, as if he were ready for anything and could do anything that might be demanded of him. At first Jacy didn’t give herself much of a chance with him, supposing that he and Annie-Annie would soon get married; but then she danced with him one night and took hope. He got erections while dancing with her, just like other boys did.

  A week or so after that she thought it was really going to happen between Bobby and herself. After one of the naked swimming parties the boys and girls paired off and went to bed in various bedrooms of the huge Sheen house. Jacy had to share a bed with Lester Marlow, but that was all right; the first time it had happened she made it quite clear to Lester that sharing the bed was all she intended to do. Anything more intimate was out of the question. Lester had red pubic hair, which seemed to her ridiculous. After this particular party Lester and Jacy both went to sleep, as usual, but somebody woke Jacy up by kissing her. It was Bobby Sheen, and he didn’t have any clothes on. When he saw she was wide awake he quietly motioned for her to follow him, and she did, trembling a little. Fortunately she had on some green pajamas, so it was not too immodest.

  Bobby led her down the carpeted hall to an empty bedroom and the minute he got her through the door he unbuttoned her pajama top and began to play with her breasts. He was merry and confident about it all and it didn’t occur to Jacy to stop him. There was a huge double bed in the room and once they got on it Bobby undressed her completely. Jacy was excited and decided to cast caution to the winds. She let him get between her legs and was prepared to let him go all the way, but he stopped wanting to. He started to and did something that hurt a little before he stopped, looking at her with disbelief.

  “Are you a virgin?” he asked.

  “I guess so,” Jacy admitted miserably. “But I don’t want to be.”

  Bobby made a face of mock-horror, as if he had discovered a leper in his bed.

  “What a letdown,” he said, but with his usual good cheer. “I’m sorry I woke you up. Why don’t I give you the name of a gynecologist? There’s no point in being messy on Momma and Daddy’s bed.”

  “Okay,” Jacy said, eager to be agreeable. She was not sure what having the name of such a person committed her to, but she was willing to try anything Bobby recommended. The look on his face made her realize that it was absolut
ely ridiculous for her to be a virgin: she was probably the only one in the whole house. That thought was so mortifying that she sat up and reached for her pajamas, prepared to go ignominiously back to bed. Bobby, however, was not all that discouraged.

  “Don’t run off,” he said cheerfully. “I was just surprised. If you’re not sleepy we can still play around a while.”

  Jacy was not sure what that involved either, but she dutifully lay back down. “What about Annie-Annie?” she asked.

  “That bitch sleeps like a horse,” Bobby said.

  Jacy was quite shocked to discover all that “playing around” involved. Bobby Sheen knew amazing things to do, things she would not have put up with one second if it had been anyone other than him. As it was, she was determined not to show her ignorance and just let him do whatever he pleased. Him doing things was okay, but when he wanted her to do things to him she was so nervous and shaky that she got goose bumps all over. Bobby couldn’t help giggling.

  “Don’t boys have cocks in that town you live in?” he asked, laughing.

  Jacy was at a loss for an answer. For days she could not get the evening off her mind. It seemed to her she had come off very badly with Bobby. He didn’t call her for any dates afterward, and every other boy who had ever been near her had promptly called her for dates. The only conclusion possible was that Bobby found her backward and country, and if there was anything she hated and loathed it was to be thought backward and country. It was clear that she was going to have to get rid of her virginity. She gave the matter much thought and came up with a plan that seemed to have multiple advantages. The week after graduation the senior class was going on what was called their senior trip. For four years the class had saved up money for it, and had given bake sales, conducted scrap iron drives, and done all sorts of other chores to make the money. They were going all the way to San Francisco and back on the bus and it would take every bit of the money they had made. She and Duane would thus be together practically all the time for a whole week, and it occurred to her that if she let Duane sleep with her sometime during the trip it would solve all kinds of problems. For one thing, it would make the senior trip. She and Duane would be regarded as extraordinarily daring, and all the kids would talk about them all the way home. Also, if she slept with Duane a time or two it would make it that much easier for her to break up with him after the senior trip was over. Duane would have something beautiful to remember, and he wouldn’t be able to say she had promised him anything she hadn’t delivered.