“You’re getting dotty in your old age,” Rosie informed him unsentimentally. “That woman’s always late, and you know it.”
“I know, but not this late, and not after dark,” the General pointed out. “There’s a subtle difference between being late and being this late.”
At that moment they heard a car turn into the driveway. “That’s not Pascal,” Rosie said. “He wouldn’t dare park in the driveway and risk getting in Aurora’s way when she’s trying to steer the Cadillac in.”
She darted to the front window and saw the familiar Cadillac idling in the driveway. She rushed instantly back to the kitchen, feeling that the General should be the first to know.
“It’s her, she’s safe,” she said, dropping into a chair. Suddenly she felt a little weak in the legs.
“Home is the sailor—no, home is the hunter,” the General said, feeling that he might cry. To his surprise, he did cry, a sight that unnerved Rosie so much that she immediately joined in.
“Why is my kitchen full of smoke?” Aurora asked, before she noticed that both Hector and Rosie were sobbing, or very nearly. In fact, she had made a hasty trip to the Pig Stand, just managing to consume three pig sandwiches and two pieces of pie before rushing home. She had two extra sandwiches and two extra pieces of pie with her as a bulwark against future emotional emergencies. Now, to her surprise, there seemed to be an immediate emotional emergency right in her kitchen.
“Good lord, what is all this?” she asked, fanning herself vigorously in order to clear a path through the smoke.
“Home is the hunter,” the General managed to mutter, accepting a hug. His emotions were still in riot, and he didn’t trust himself to say more.
“Poetry, cigarette smoke, and tears,” Aurora commented. “I suppose you two must have concluded that I was murdered—I doubt anything less could cause you to quote Stevenson to me, Hector.”
“Pascal said you’d been kidnapped and that he thought you were a drug addict,” Rosie blurted out, drying her eyes. Now that Aurora was standing there, a big Pig Stand bag in her hand, it all seemed a little ridiculous, and she was glad to be able to shift some of the blame to Pascal.
“Besides that, he was supposed to show up and help us locate your body, but he ain’t here yet,” Rosie went on.
“You called the right man, though—locating bodies is more or less Pascal’s life work,” Aurora said. She noticed that her companions were shell-shocked and saw no reason not to be a little witty at the expense of her new boyfriend.
“He didn’t come when he said he would—I despise him,” the General said. “He’s unreliable, like his nation.”
“Hector, I’m right here, alive and well—you don’t need to foam and rage at Pascal just now,” Aurora said. “Since it’s obvious that my tardiness has upset you both, I feel I should be noble and offer you a pig sandwich and a piece of pie as an antidote to your ordeal. Would you like that?”
“I would,” Rosie said, sniffing.
“I might if it’s a kind of pie I like,” the General said. He made a massive effort to regain control of himself, but his hands were still a little shaky.
“That’s what I love about you, Hector—picky even in extremis, just like me,” Aurora said, as she unwrapped the pie.
6
“Would you rather I never came here again, Tommy?” Aurora asked of her grandson. They sat in the visitors’ room at the prison. Some small effort had obviously been made to make the visitors’ room cheery, but the small effort failed. Aurora could never come into the room without feeling that she herself was a criminal, come finally to be punished for a lifetime of sins, omissions, crimes—all of them irrevocable, irredeemable, and far beyond her power to change or make up for.
She didn’t need the unintentionally grim room to remind her that her crimes were irredeemable, either. The evidence was there in Tommy’s eyes, and in his indifference—an indifference that was more unyielding than any she had encountered in her long life.
“You can come but you don’t have to,” Tommy said pleasantly.
Aurora twisted her ring. She was remembering the day they buried Emma—her daughter, Tommy’s mother. It had rained that day; she remembered clearly a sinking feeling she had had on the ride home beneath the dripping trees of Houston. At the heart of her sinking feeling was the fear that, with Emma gone so young, her children might be lost—particularly Tommy. That very night, as she was putting Tommy, Teddy, and Melanie to bed, she had asked Tommy if he would like to go to the zoo in the morning—he had always been particularly fond of the zoo.
“It doesn’t matter,” Tommy said. ‘I’ll never like to do anything again.”
“I will,” Teddy said. “I’ll still like Sesame Street”
“Sessy street,” Melanie said.
That moment, as the children were glumly getting into their pajamas, had fixed them all, down the years, Aurora felt: Teddy still liked the zoo and Sesame Street. Melanie liked many things—indeed, a few too many things. But Tommy, the oldest and strongest, had been a boy of his word: he had never liked anything again.
Aurora looked up, and Tommy met her eye. He had no trouble meeting her eye—or anyone’s eye. On the whole, he liked his grandmother, not for any of the many things she tried to do for him, but because of the way she never stopped living for herself. She kept on trucking at a level that was kind of amazing if you stopped to think about it, and he had thought about it. In the prison, only the worst criminals and the most committed killers kept on trucking inside themselves despite all. Most convicts had stopped trucking altogether; they surrendered to boredom and apathy. In prison the people you really had to watch out for, the ones who could just glance at you and make you feel in danger, reminded him of his grandmother.
“Well, that’s noncommittal,” Aurora said, looking at him.
“It’s neutral,” Tommy said. “That’s how I prefer to live.”
“I know, Tommy,” Aurora said. “Probably it isn’t your fault. But to those of us who aren’t neutral, it’s very trying.”
Tommy said nothing.
“I think I better give up,” Aurora said. “I very rarely have given up in my life, and I’ve never before given up on someone of my own blood, but I think I better give up on you before you destroy me. There are others who depend on me, among them your brother and sister, and I don’t feel I can afford to be destroyed for the sake of someone who prefers to be neutral.
“At least, I won’t choose to be destroyed,” she said. “I don’t think I believe that you are neutral—I don’t think I believe that humans can be.”
“You might be wrong about that,” Tommy said mildly.
“I might be, but I’m older than you and I’ve yet to meet a really neutral person,” Aurora said.
“There’s me,” Tommy reminded her.
Aurora shook her head. “That’s just your weapon,” she said. “It’s what you’re using to kill us—or at least to kill me. But I’m a selfish old woman. I’d rather give up than be killed.”
She stood up to go. Tommy uncrossed his legs and stood up too.
“Your mother used to stall on me, too,” Aurora said, thinking even in her despair of how much he reminded her of her daughter. The brow was the same, and the way he stood. In body and to some extent in manner he was distinctly his mother’s son.
“Passive-aggressive, I believe they call it now,” she added. “It’s a term I picked up from my shrink. Your mother was a master of it—she could remain absolutely resistant for months or even years, and so can you.”
“You have a shrink?” Tommy asked.
“Why, yes,” Aurora said. “The General and I both went to him for a while, but then the General dropped out. I still go, and I must say I’ve learned a lot.”
“That’s probably good,” Tommy said. The thought of his grandmother at a shrink’s was pretty startling. It was something he was going to have to think about.
“Not necessarily,” Aurora said. “He who increa
seth knowledge increaseth sorrow, you know? Did you enjoy shooting Julie?”
“I enjoyed shooting well,” Tommy said immediately. “I wasn’t particularly thinking about Julie one way or the other.”
“I’m going,” Aurora said. “If you ever wish to see one of us again you’ll have to call.”
Usually she tried to hug him, to his discomfort, but this time she merely walked over to the guard and let him know that she was ready to leave. For once she didn’t cry.
“You know what I like about your grandmother?” the guard said, walking Tommy back to his cell. The guard was an older man who limped a little from rheumatism.
“What?” Tommy asked.
“She don’t wear no cheap perfume,” the guard said. “Most of these women that come up here, they douse themselves in cheap perfume. I got a sensitive smeller, and some of that cheap perfume is so strong it makes my eyes water. But your grandmother, she’s always real tasteful—and she dresses nice, too,” the guard added. “She ain’t no old hag like most of the women that visit up here.”
A year later, Tommy wrote his grandmother a brief note, telling her about the guard’s compliment. The fact that she had made such a nice impression on an old, hardened prison guard was something she would probably like to know about, he thought.
7
On the ride back to Houston, Rosie felt tense, but Aurora seemed resigned. She got in the car and they proceeded almost to Conroe without a word said. Usually, between Huntsville and Conroe, many words were said—most of them by Aurora in criticism of Rosie’s driving—and many tears shed.
The fact that no words were said, and no tears shed, did nothing to ease Rosie’s tension. She would have been less tense if Aurora had vented some wild emotion. As it was, she had nothing to do but drive along and contemplate her own folly in making an impromptu dinner date with a prison guard with a potbelly, who had simply walked up to the car while she was waiting in the parking lot. His name was Willie, he was about her age, and he had a nice smile. He smiled at her twice, when she was in such a low mood that the smiles immediately robbed her of her normal good judgment.
“If you ain’t cute as a chicken,” the guard said. “What’s your favorite food?”
“Shrimp gumbo,” Rosie said. At least it was high on her list of favorite foods and she was too startled by the question to tell the man that it was none of his business what her favorite food happened to be.
“Mine too. I’m Willie,” the guard immediately said. He tried to spiff up by hitching his belt above his potbelly, but within thirty seconds the belt slid back under the overhang.
“So—what would your name be, and why don’t we get together and eat some shrimp gumbo late this afternoon?” the man asked. “I get off at three.”
“I don’t,” Rosie informed him. “You’ll have to go hungry till around six if you want to eat with me.”
“Okey-doke,” the guard said. “I’ll just munch some M and Ms to tide me over.”
“I forgot to say I live in Houston,” Rosie said. “It’s probably too far to drive just to eat gumbo.”
“Hell it is, I live there too,” the guard said. “Half the people that work in this jail live in Houston.”
Rosie decided the man wasn’t likely to take no for an answer, and anyway, she didn’t especially see any reason to give no for an answer—C.C. Granby was somewhere on the North Slope and hadn’t been heard from in three weeks. Life, boring even when C.C. was around, had seemed especially pointless lately. So far as she knew, she had no reason not to enjoy a bowl of shrimp gumbo with a prison guard named Willie. The prospect, though unexpected, was initially a welcome relief from sitting in the parking lot chewing her hangnail and waiting for a devasted Aurora to show up and cry.
Now, though, in the cold light of forty-five minutes later, her rapid acquiescence had begun to seem rash. It might have been a mistake—even a moral lapse. What if C.C. was back from the North Slope? What if he was waiting at the curb when they got home? He was not going to be too thrilled to hear that she planned to eat shrimp gumbo with a prison guard named Willie on his first night back.
“Besides, I’m sick and tired of potbellies,” she said aloud. Her husband, Royce, had had one, C.C. had one, and now Willie had one.
“What?” Aurora asked. She had been sunk in depression, attending to nothing, and suddenly Rosie was talking about potbellies.
“I mean it, Aurora,” Rosie said. “At least once I’d like to go out with a skinny man.”
“How about Hector, he’s skinny as a stick,” Aurora said. “I’ll deed him to you this afternoon, if you’ll take him. He’s driving me crazy.”
“Me too, he flashed again yesterday,” Rosie said.
“Yes, he’s reconverted to nudism, I’m afraid,” Aurora said.
“Poor old thing, I guess it’s horrible being impotent,” Rosie said.
“Yes, but he doesn’t plan to put up with it much longer,” Aurora informed her. “He’s got six kinds of potency pills now, not counting vitamins. If they work as well as Hector hopes, I won’t be safe in my own bed much longer.
“So far, though, I seem to be quite safe in my own bed,” she said. “What prompted that remark you made about potbellies?”
“Oh,” Rosie said, “I guess I was just thinking out loud.”
“About potbellies?” Aurora said. “You don’t usually think about potbellies when you’re driving me home from the prison, or if you do, you certainly don’t think about them out loud. What’s going on?”
“A guard caught me with my guard down and asked me for date,” Rosie admitted. “His name’s Willie and he’s got a big fat potbelly.”
“Good,” Aurora said. “It’s time C.C. had some competition, and the stiffer the better, in my view. C.C. has never succeeded in charming me even once, and he’s had years.”
“Yeah, but what if Willie don’t turn out to be as sweet as he looks?” Rosie said. “I ain’t up to no date rapes at my age.”
“Very few men are as sweet as they look,” Aurora informed her.
“Vernon was,” Rosie said, remembering her personal favorite among Aurora’s suitors.
“Yes, Vernon was as sweet as he looked,” Aurora admitted. “On the other hand, he could never get beyond sweet. I’m still annoyed with him for being so unseducable.”
“You ain’t supposed to be annoyed with the dead,” Rosie said. “I’m superstitious about thing like that. When I think of Royce I hardly ever think of all the grief he caused me, carrying on with that slut. I just try to think of the nice times we had when the kids were young.”
Aurora looked out the window, watching the pines drop behind them. Many of the pine thickets now had their edges chewed away by mini-malls or clusters of convenience stores and filling stations. Billboards announced the imminent availability of luxury homes, secure within well-guarded enclaves, deep in the pines. They had begun to pass the most outlying Savings and Loan establishments and Cajun restaurants. Once or twice they had stopped at one of the Cajun restaurants only to find that it was run by most un-Cajunlike people.
Indeed, in Aurora’s view, the only nice part of the ride to Huntsville was the few seconds it took them to pass the lovely green field where the Goodyear Blimp was often anchored. There it was, anchored in the field, looking quite majestic. Behind the field was a vast hangar, where the blimp usually lived when it wasn’t on one of its trips to sports events. Over the years, Aurora had come to love the blimp and to admire its size and beauty. It was an aircraft from another era, and yet it managed to survive and flourish, to retain its dignity and power in their own degraded time. In her happy, confident moments, she felt rather like a peer of the blimp—but today was not one of her happy, confident days, and when they passed the blimp, anchored tranquilly to its guy wires, she looked at it wistfully. In the distance tiny people were admiring it from their pickups.
“Better take a last look at the blimp,” Aurora said to Rosie. “We won’t be seeing it anymore.”
“We won’t?” Rosie said, sneaking a look. She, too, liked the blimp and hoped to take a ride in it someday.
Aurora said nothing—she kept her eyes on the blimp, watching it until they left it well behind and swept on down the road toward the next mini-mall.
“Why won’t we, hon?” Rosie asked, worried suddenly. She had a fair notion of what Aurora meant.
“I can’t take this anymore, that’s why we won’t,” Aurora said. “Tommy’s a cruel child, if he is my own grandson. There’s no point in letting him torture us like this that I can see. So we won’t have to come this way again. I’m giving up.”
Rosie didn’t know what to say. She felt scared, and she kept her eyes on the road. It was a good time to take special pains with her driving. Aurora had given up on lots of boyfriends, but Tommy wasn’t a boyfriend. He was Emma’s oldest child—even if he had killed, he was Emma’s oldest child. She tried to imagine how she might feel if one of her grandchildren had killed his girlfriend and gone to prison, but she couldn’t imagine it, because so few of her grandsons had even managed to get girlfriends, and none, so far, had killed one. Besides, she had been the coward of the parking lot for most of the time they had been driving to Huntsville. Aurora had been the one who went in and faced the music. She could only imagine what Tommy might have done or said, but if Aurora Greenway was ready to give up on her daughter’s child, then what went on between them in the prison must have been terrible, so terrible that she didn’t want to think about it.
“Well,” she said, but then could not think of a sentence to go with the word. They drove along in silence for another ten miles.
“Prisoners are allowed to make calls,” Aurora said, finally. “I told him he could call us if he wanted or needed us. “I guess we’ll see if he does.”
“Are you in the mood for the Pig Stand?” Rosie asked.
“Not today,” Aurora said. “Let’s just go home.”
“Well,” Rosie said again.
“That’s twice you’ve said that,” Aurora observed. “Well, what?”