“Solange,” Pascal said automatically.
“Ah, Solange,” Aurora said. “My young man is named Sam. They don’t quite rhyme but their names do start with the same letter.”
“Sam, this is too much!” Pascal said, his voice rising. “How old is this Sam?”
“Why, he’s almost eighteen,” Aurora said.
“Eighteen!” Pascal said, almost yelling. “You sleep with me and then you run around and sleep with someone who is eighteen? I am disgusted.”
“But why, dear?” Aurora asked. “You know how fond I am of science, and according to the scientists young men hit their natural peak at around eighteen. I don’t see why you should find it disgusting that I might want to help Sam enjoy his natural peak.”
“You are a monster, you have destroyed me, I thought we were in love,” Pascal said in one breath.
“Who says we aren’t?” Aurora wondered. “And calm down while you’re at it, before you have a stroke. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if you deserved a stroke, but I don’t want to get blamed for it if you have one.”
“You should be blamed for everything!” Pascal insisted. He knew he should calm down, but in fact he was getting angrier.
“So I have to compete with an eighteen-year-old!” he said loudly. “At my age this is bad news.”
“Really, Pascal, this is America,” Aurora said. “We Americans believe that competition is good at any age. It makes one work harder at one’s appointed tasks.”
“I wish I had strangled you,” Pascal said. “You sit there and break my heart when I am sick. I thought you had kindness, but you have no kindness. You just like to break my heart.
“Can’t you see that I’m sick?” he added as an afterthought, yelling it nearly at the top of his lungs.
“On the contrary, I can hear that you aren’t particularly sick,” Aurora said. “Everyone on this floor can hear it, too. Pipe down, or I’m leaving.”
Pascal found that he had yelled out the last of his anger trying to explain to Aurora how sick he was. What was left, now that anger was gone, was a profound hopelessness. Aurora would probably never come back to his apartment to have lunch with him and make love on his mauve sheets. Why would she, when she could make love to an eighteen-year-old whose penis probably wasn’t even bent?
It seemed to him it was all the fault of the stop sign. If he hadn’t run it and hit the pickup he would not be in the hospital and Aurora would not have come to visit, in which event she would not have caught him with Solange. One stop sign, and his life was ruined! One stop sign!
“It was because of the stop sign,” he said hopelessly, before beginning to cry.
“Good lord, now you’re going to cry,” Aurora said. She sat on the bed and put her arms around him, but Pascal went on crying. A nurse peeked in, saw that yet another woman was hugging the patient, and went away.
“Can’t you men take a little teasing?” Aurora said, when Pascal was calm enough to listen. “I was just teasing. I wasn’t that annoyed by Mademoiselle. And there is no young Monsieur Sam, if it will make you feel any better.”
“No Monsieur Sam?” Pascal said. “I thought he was seventeen or eighteen—a teenager.”
“Pascal, he was just a hasty invention,” Aurora said.
“Am I your one and only then?” he asked, wiping his eyes with a fistful of Kleenex she handed him.
“One and only” was an American phrase he had always liked. Just saying it made him feel better. Aurora had allowed him to rest his head on her bosom. She seemed to be feeling sorry for him at last. The only good thing about being in the hospital was that women would come and feel sorry for him.
Following up on that thought, he allowed one hand to begin a feeble probe under her skirt.
“Pascal, you need to change your shampoo,” Aurora said. It was a fact she couldn’t help noticing, since she was looking at the top of his head. The hand under the skirt she permitted, feeling that perhaps she had indulged in a little too much overkill.
“You are not romantic,” Pascal said, still sad. He tossed the Kleenex on the floor in what was meant to seem like a gesture of despair.
“I love you but you are just not romantic,” he repeated, hoping she would deny it.
Aurora hugged him, let him fumble a little, said nothing. Her thoughts had drifted to Jerry Bruckner. It was about the time of day when he jogged, and it occurred to her that she might intercept him in his jog. She hadn’t talked to him since making him get out of her car, canceling two appointments in order to avoid it. But now it might be time to resume relations. Mainly she wanted a look at his legs, which held promise of being even more exciting than his wrists or his lower lip. It had been a little too dark to correctly appraise legs when he had returned from his jog the other day.
For amusement she gave Pascal a little nip on the earlobe, but what she really had in mind was to catch Jerry Bruckner jogging and have a look at his legs. And if that meant she wasn’t romantic, then so be it.
“Very probably you’re right, Pascal,” Aurora said, slipping off the bed. “Very probably I’m not romantic—very probably I never was. But I am something, wouldn’t you admit?”
“I admit,” Pascal said gloomily, wondering if she’d even give him a kiss before she left.
10
Aurora spent nearly thirty minutes driving around Jerry Bruckner’s neighborhood, hoping to spot him jogging, but she didn’t spot him jogging. There was a high school not far from his home with a track behind it where a number of people of both sexes were jogging—but Jerry Bruckner was not among them. She parked for a bit, hoping Jerry would miraculously jog past, but he didn’t. Teddy, Tommy, and Melanie, while in high school, had competed in sports events on the playing field behind the high school, and Aurora and Rosie had sometimes come to watch them, which was why she knew about the school track. None of them had been very good at sports, but then none of them had cared much that they weren’t good, so little harm was done, she supposed.
Another reason why she remembered the track was that one day, years before, while she and Rosie had been looking for the school in order to attend one of Tommy’s first sports events, a dismal soccer match in which he managed to get a concussion and a dislocated shoulder at the same time, Aurora had stumbled upon a palm reader named Carmen, who had a sign in her yard featuring a large palm. To Rosie’s annoyance, they had missed the start of the soccer match because Aurora insisted on stopping immediately to have her palm read. Rosie, in the course of raising her seven children, had attended several thousand sports events and believed one of the chief duties of a parent was to be on time at such events.
“I never missed a one if one of my kids was playing, and I’ve never been late either,” Rosie had declared at the time. “I don’t believe in fortune-telling, and even if I did I wouldn’t try it because it might be mostly bad news and if it is I don’t want it.”
“On the other hand it might be good news, and if it is I do want it,” Aurora said, marching into the house.
Carmen turned out to be a tiny Spanish woman who chewed gum a bit too loudly for Aurora’s taste; she had long, lustrous black hair, which she continued to brush while she gave the reading. Also, she was nearsighted and had to practically stick her nose into Aurora’s palm in order to see the future, but these small debits were more than made up for by her frank prediction that Aurora would enjoy a long and richly lascivious future.
“The guys like you” was the way Carmen put it. “You gonna get ’em in all sizes and shapes.”
This theme was repeated and elaborated on in Aurora’s many subsequent visits. Nearsighted though she may have been, Carmen was quick to perceive that Aurora had no inclination to spinsterishness, nor did she flinch from frank language.
“You’re still gonna be doing it when you’re eighty, honey,” Carmen told her once; it was on the day Melanie dropped the shot-put on her foot, an accident Aurora arrived just in time to witness.
When pressed as to who
m she might have found to do it with when she was eighty, Carmen shrugged, smacked her gum, looked wicked, and just said, “Guys”—the ones, presumably, who would come in all sizes and shapes. By the time Melanie finally graduated and there were no more games to go to in Bellaire, the sign with the palm on it badly needed repainting, and Carmen herself wasn’t looking so good. The fall after Melanie’s graduation, one day while in a low mood, Aurora had driven to Bellaire alone; she and the General were in a slack period and she felt like hearing that she might soon be getting guys in all sizes and shapes. But when she knocked, a portly man with a scar that ran from his eyelid to his lower lip informed her that Carmen was dead.
Now, three years later, sitting in the afternoon drizzle by the sodden playing field, Aurora felt herself losing heart. What was she doing, a woman who was getting on, lurking like a groupie of some sort around a soccer field in a neighborhood she had never really liked, in hopes of catching a glimpse of a man she scarcely knew, for no better reason than that he seemed to have excitingly sturdy legs? As for the guys in all sizes and shapes who were supposed to carry her robustly into her eighties, there were, for the moment, only Hector and Pascal, two sizes and shapes she would gladly forgo if only she had some that were better. Even if Jerry Bruckner did jog by on his excitingly sturdy legs, it wouldn’t matter, since she had already resolved to resist him for the sake of her dignity.
Still, important as dignity was, it wasn’t everything. Aurora had the suspcion that if her resolve happened to be tested on the right day, or perhaps that should be the wrong day, it might not prove to be such a solid instrument after all. A drizzly afternoon on which she had just caught her new lover with a young girlfriend might be just such a day, too—but Jerry Bruckner, whose timing was not quite in the same class as his lower lip, stubbornly refused to jog past and take advantage of his big chance.
Nonetheless Aurora felt a new reluctance to consider going home, though it was the time of day when she was normally more than happy to go home. For many years she had preferred to spend the end of the afternoon in her window nook, surrounded by light reading on the order of five or six movie magazines. She could sip tea, wonder if movie stars really had that much fun or that much heartbreak, look out the window and observe the neighborhood, talk to Melanie on the phone, or perhaps quarrel with Rosie a little.
All those pleasures, however, were contingent upon Hector Scott being far away on a golf course, hitting his ball around, and now he was never far away on a golf course. Any quarreling that got done would inevitably be done with him, and even if he wasn’t annoyed he would be likely just to prattle on about his medications and his correspondent hopes for a late surge of potency, a prospect that seemed more and more unlikely, and that, for her part, she now no longer particularly wanted anyway.
Because of what she and Rosie had begun to call the flasher factor, the thought of spending the late afternoon in her window nook had lost much of its appeal, so, casting one last look across the track field and seeing no Jerry, she started her car and pursued a rather roundabout route to the home of Teddy, Jane, and Bump. Teddy would undoubtedly be at work, but she could see her great-grandchild and perhaps have a talk with Jane about the complexities of life.
Aurora never had had a frank talk with Jane about the complexities of life, but she had the sense that Jane at least realized that life was seriously complex, and if she could be induced to talk about it, would probably not be excessively judgmental—in contrast to Rosie, who had a grating tendency to be instantly and unequivocally judgmental about everything Aurora did or hoped to do.
Aurora was uncomfortably aware that in the eyes of many she herself came across as instantly and unequivocally judgmental, though in fact as she got older she felt less and less capable of judging in such a clear-cut way. Such wisdom as had come to her through long experience showed an increasing tendency to blur at the edges; it was getting very difficult to be quite sure about anything. Jane was young and had a sharp eye; a little talk with her might be helpful.
To her surprise, however, it was Teddy, not Jane, who opened the door for her.
“Hi, Granny,” he said. Her heart gave a leap at the welcoming tone in which he said it; he was, after all, her very favorite grandchild and had been since he was born. Tommy had been brighter, and Melanie cuter, but Teddy was all love, or all hope, or all despair. He was of a piece emotionally, in a way that Aurora could not resist.
He came out on the porch by the steps and gave her a big hug. They were, unfortunately, positioned just under the drip from the roof, but Aurora didn’t care. She felt confusion well up in her; she felt she might cry, but she didn’t.
“Bump’s got a fever,” Teddy said.
“But it’s your shift,” Aurora said. “Why are you here?”
“Because Jane gets scared when Bump has a fever,” Teddy said. “She’d rather risk getting murdered on the night shift than stay with a sick child.”
Jonathan was asleep. Aurora marched in and put a hand on his forehead—indeed, he did have a fever, and a fairly high one. When she touched him Bump opened his eyes briefly—the wet eyes of a child with a high fever—but he soon closed them again and slept.
“Laurie came by and played with him,” Teddy said. Laurie was Jane’s sister. “He gets too excited when Laurie comes. She’s his favorite aunt. He almost always gets a fever after she leaves.”
“Oh, Laurie,” Aurora said. “Does she still have her Senegalese? Jane’s sisters do manage to find the most exotic men.”
“She’s still got him but I don’t think he’s particularly exotic,” Teddy said. “He’s basically just a professor.”
She noticed that his hands were shaking as he made the tea. Also, there was a look in his eye that wasn’t quite right, a look it pained her to see. The look was more sad than wild, but it was not entirely free of wildness, either, and even a trace of wildness frightened her. The years in which the two boys were in and out of mental hospitals had been a hell—one she didn’t want to revisit. It was in those years that the edges of everything blurred: the points of the compass whirled, and all she knew was that happiness was now gone; she could not be happy with her grandchildren in madhouses; everything she attempted in those years was spoiled by their despair.
“Ted, if something’s wrong, tell me,” she said, mustering her courage. “You don’t seem quite yourself.”
“You don’t need to panic,” Teddy said, seeing that she was about to. “I’m just coming off a medication and I’m a little shaky.”
“What else?” Aurora inquired.
“We’re fighting about the night shift,” Teddy admitted. “Jane thinks it’s bad for me, and I think it’s bad for her. I don’t need to sleep normal hours, but Jane does. I just let her go tonight because of Bump’s fever, but she’s not working the night shift regularly, and that’s that. But I imagine there’ll be a few more fights about it before she gives up.”
“What else?” Aurora asked again. She knew there was more. She could tell from the tone of his voice that he was just giving her the skin of the problem—he wasn’t giving her the meat.
Teddy grinned and shook his head. His grandmother’s intuition amazed him—it always had. There was more, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about it. His grandmother liked Jane, and if he told her what the trouble was she might stop liking her.
Also, Jane liked his grandmother. Granny might hold her peace, but, then again, she might not, and if she didn’t and she and Jane had a big fight there was no telling where it all might end. Jane wasn’t going to let him or Aurora Greenway or anyone else interfere much in her life. Jane’s first principle was that nobody had better try and interfere in her life.
“Come on, tell me,” Aurora said. “You can trust me.”
“I don’t know if I can, this time,” Teddy said.
“Have I ever violated a secret of yours?” Aurora asked. She took her tea and settled herself on the couch. She tried to appear calm, but she wasn’t cal
m. Nothing unsettled her so much as the dawn of some new wildness in Teddy’s eyes. Confusion she could live with, but she didn’t want any more madness—if any more madness came she felt she might lose it and end up mad herself.
“No, but this is a new kind of secret,” Teddy said.
“You mean she’s having an affair?” Aurora asked.
Teddy was silent, wondering if he looked different in some way. If he didn’t, then how had his granny figured out that there was trouble?
“I raised you, remember?” Aurora said, speaking to his thought. “I do know you rather well. You can’t conceal trouble from me unless you stay out of sight and off the phone. And even then I still might figure it out.”
Teddy was mainly thinking about what signs might have given her a clue—his shaky hands, or what?
“If she’s having an affair that’s not really a new kind of secret,” Aurora remarked. “I’m afraid it’s a very old secret, really, which is not to say it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to be very upset—if that is the secret.”
“She’s having an affair with a woman she went to school with,” Teddy admitted—it just took too much energy to hold out against Aurora’s inquiries.
“I see,” Aurora said with no sign of shock. “It’s the same secret, only in skirts.”
Teddy felt immediately better, as he always did when he shared some problem with his grandmother. Of course, the problem was still there. But now, at least he had an ally. He knew from his granny’s tone that she intended to be his ally. Most of the time he was not disturbed by the fact that Jane was sleeping with Claudia. What disturbed him was that, except for Jane and Claudia, he was the only one who knew it. It was a weight. It overworked his drugs—without something like that added, his drugs kept him pretty stable. He wanted to stay pretty stable; maybe with the drugs plus his grandmother, he could.
Bump began to whine, and Aurora went to the bed and got him. She wrapped him in a light quilt and brought him to the couch.