The General meanwhile was studying his hand while attempting to ruminate about Rosie’s new-sprung theory that Aurora was a bad winner. The more he thought about the new theory, the more he decided he believed it. But there was one bothersome aspect to it: what was Aurora winning just at present to make her so neglectful of the two of them?
“Why is she treating us this way?” he asked. “I don’t see that Pascal is such a prize. I intend to shoot him if I can, but even if I miss and he gets away, there’s still no excuse for her acting like a goddamn empress.”
“Aw, don’t be shooting Pascal,” Rosie said. “Pascal ain’t so bad. If you shoot him they’ll just put you in Huntsville and Willie will have to guard you. You don’t need to be in jail and Willie don’t need no more murderers to guard.”
“Well, I can see that, I guess,” the General said.
Rosie sighed.
“Now you’re sounding like Aurora,” the General said. “Both of you are always sighing. Wait until you’re my age. Then you’ll really have something to sigh about.”
“It’s your lead,” Rosie mentioned.
The General, perversely, in her view, led with a double blank. It was the equivalent of not leading at all. But then, he was a crazy old man, and Aurora’s neglect was making him crazier by the day. Of course, Rosie knew that living with the General and waking up every morning to the sight of him sleeping with his mouth open must be a sore trial. One of her lifelong pet peeves was men who slept with their mouths open. Willie snored like a truck, but at least he snored with his mouth shut.
“That’s not much of a lead,” she commented, playing a five blank.
“It was my lead, not yours,” the General commented. “Sometimes I think I ought to shoot Aurora and let Pascal live. But I can do without Pascal fine, and I can’t do without Aurora.”
“You need to get shooting off your dumb brain,” Rosie said. “There’s never been a gunshot fired in this house, and the first time one’s fired I’m leaving.”
“Rosie, it’s just talk,” the General said, hastily retreating. “Don’t you ever get the urge to take Aurora down a peg when she’s acting like a goddamn empress?”
“Yeah, but not down that far,” Rosie said. “You’re talking about putting her six feet under.”
“It was just talk,” the General repeated. He realized he had gone too far. Rosie not only didn’t look good—now she was looking as if she might cry. He couldn’t understand why women were always taking him seriously when he obviously wasn’t saying anything serious. Aurora did it too. Aurora had always done it. Let him simply voice some idle fancy, something he would never in his life actually do, and the next thing he knew Aurora would have taken him literally and would either burst into tears or stamp out of the room in a fury.
“It’s just talk,” he said for the third time. “Can you imagine me actually shooting Aurora?”
“Yeah, I can imagine you shooting her!” Rosie said, feeling herself slipping out of control. “I can imagine me shooting her! I can imagine anybody shooting her—that’s what’s making me crazy! But I ain’t the only one crazy. You’re crazy and she’s crazy and Willie’s a dope addict and I don’t know what’s gonna happen to any of us!”
Before the General could say another word, Rosie burst into tears, swept half the dominoes off the table, jumped from her chair, and tore out of the room. She was having a fit just like one of Aurora’s. He heard her sobbing as she ran down the stairs. He felt terrible. All he had been attempting was an innocent game of dominoes, and now, despite all, a woman was having a fit, just because he had muttered some nonsense about shooting Aurora and her latest lover, Pascal. He wasn’t really apt to shoot anybody, and Rosie should have known it, but he had touched a nerve, and now the game was over, there was disorder in the household, and he was alone. Rosie was the one person in the world who took the trouble to fix his eggs the way he liked them, too. He wished he could call back his words, but his words were history now, like Omaha Beach. They were not as bad as Omaha Beach, but they were history, just the same. It seemed to him tragic that nothing could ever be changed, once it happened: no word ever taken back, no battle plan revised. Men fell and women had fits and that was that.
The General felt so sad thinking of all the things that could not be changed, or taken back, that for a few seconds his age seemed only to be a source of relief. Soon he would not have to feel such distress in his chest because of a few casual, silly words that caused another woman who was dear to him to have a fit—soon he would be lying with the fallen of Omaha Beach.
It seemed to him it was about time he did just die, but of course he wasn’t quite dead yet, and fits, however painful, just had to be lived through. He sat in his chair a few minutes, squeezing his hands together. Often his hands ached; squeezing them seemed to make them better. He hoped that Rosie would shake it off and come back and say hi, or something, so he would know she wasn’t too mad.
But Rosie didn’t come back and say hi, so the General sat alone, squeezing his hands. He remembered his gun—he could just go shoot himself. It would let the girls off the hook; really, it would probably be the best thing—he had had a pretty good life. He had even made a hole in one once, in Valdosta, Georgia, of all places. Later there’d been some confusion about Evelyn—he’d been so buoyed up by the hole in one that he’d wanted to have sex, though by that time years had passed since he and Evelyn had had sex. Evelyn had been startled—she hadn’t really wanted to. After all, she hadn’t made the hole in one, and wasn’t in the mood to change what had been the pattern for years. In the end he went back to the Officers Club and let people buy him drinks. It had been a pretty hole in one.
But that was years ago, before he even met Aurora. It had taken him and Aurora a little more than twenty years to go through it, but now it did seem that they had mostly gone through it. He loved her—wouldn’t it just be an act of kindness to shoot himself and let her off the hook? Also, Rosie wouldn’t have to deal with his fussiness about boiled eggs anymore.
Of course, the problem was, one never knew how women would react. Even if he left a suicide note explaining that his death was intended to be an act of kindness, the girls might not take it that way. Rosie might blame herself—so might Aurora. They might spend the rest of their lives blaming themselves—he had seen that very thing occur in the families of suicides.
The General sighed a few sighs of the very sort he hated to hear Aurora or Rosie sigh. He had nearly talked himself into suicide, but then, proceeding logically, had talked himself out of it again. He would just have to go on, disorder or no disorder. As a first act in the drama of going on, he carefully got down on his knees and began to gather up the dominoes Rosie had scattered across the floor.
18
“Granny, I’m not criticizing you,” Teddy said, wondering if the old Cadillac was going to get so hot it boiled over.
“Perhaps you should be, though,” Aurora said, polishing her rings. When in doubt, she polished her rings—lately they had been treated to a lot of polishing.
The two of them were stuck in traffic on I-45, the freeway that led to Huntsville and the prison. She herself intended to remain true to her vow: she did not intend to go into the prison and see Tommy. But Teddy argued that, however perverse Tommy was, he was still one of them. The family could not simply abandon him. He was planning to go in and visit Tommy himself, leaving Aurora in the car. Jane had been against it—she felt Tommy ought to sit and cool his heels until he felt like behaving a little better. Rosie was for it, the General was of two minds, and Aurora herself of at least two minds. Every thought or mention of Tommy upset her.
“Where is the little red needle?” she asked, peering nervously at the Cadillac’s temperature gauge. The traffic ahead of them and behind them seemed to be congealed—she was very hot, but of course there was no thought of using the air conditioner in such a traffic jam. They had been totally immobile for several minutes. Using the air conditioner, even for a min
ute, would probably cause the old car to erupt. It had erupted in similar circumstances several times, but on those occasions Rosie had been with her, and Rosie seemed to know what to do about erupting cars. In time they had always made it home.
Of Teddy’s mechanical skills she was far less sure. It seemed to her Teddy was shaking more; his increasing shakiness was one reason she had agreed to go along to Huntsville. If at all possible, Ted must be kept from shaking himself back into a mental hospital. His problem was not Jane and her lover, either. When Teddy showed signs of becoming destabilized, Jane was as patient and supportive as anyone could be. Everyone in Ted’s life was patient and supportive at such times. Rosie made him pies, Mr. Wey helped him on his shift, and Aurora herself made sure that she spoke with him several times a week.
Still, somewhere inside Ted, the gyroscope was wobbling. He was seeing Jerry Bruckner regularly now, at her insistence. Despite her doubts about his training, Jerry did seem to be a helpful therapist. A constant stream of the mute and the crushed seemed to flow through his office; Rosie’s boyfriend Willie, who had stunned them all by revealing that he had been a heroin addict for twenty-eight years, was now seeking help from Jerry. Rosie even reported a decline in Willie’s irritability since he had begun seeing Jerry.
“The red needle’s okay,” Teddy said. “It’s not quite touching the H yet. If we can just get some movement, we’ll be fine.”
He had no sooner said it than three ambulances screamed by them, on the shoulder.
“People are dead up there—or else they’re dying,” Aurora said gloomily, wiping the sweat off her face. “I don’t like feeling like a hot animal, which is exactly how I do feel.”
The traffic surged ahead a few yards, then stopped again. Teddy decided to get off at the next exit, if they ever made it to another exit. Driving along the frontage road would at least be a little bit of an improvement. The car would cool down, and so, perhaps, would his grandmother. She was not an easy person to be with when she was discontented, and at the moment she was pretty clearly discontented. Her new lover, Dr. Bruckner, didn’t seem to be working out too well, but she obviously wasn’t in the mood to give up on him just yet.
“Nobody’s criticizing you,” he said again.
“Not to my face, but that’s because I’m known to be fierce in rebuttal,” Aurora said. “I’m sure you and Jane think it’s pathetic, a woman my age throwing herself at a man young enough to be her son.”
“You’re too hung up on age,” Teddy said nervously. The red needle was now touching the H—he thought he might have to take to the shoulder and move on to the next exit. It seemed unfair not to just wait in line like everyone else who was stuck; on the other hand, if the Cadillac exploded, it would only make the traffic jam worse.
Meanwhile, though he denied it, his granny’s behavior did sort of bother him—her affair with the young psychiatrist had brought her atavism to the fore, or something. She had always been greedy, but she was usually greedy with flair, making a comedy of her own selfishness; people rolled their eyes and talked about her behind her back, but no one really disliked her for it. Sometimes she shocked people, but most of the time she entertained them and they ended up giving her the benefit of the doubt. Even someone like Patsy, who didn’t really approve of his grandmother, usually let her get away with whatever it was she was getting away with.
But then, too, his granny seemed to have pretty good judgment about personal relations. If she wanted something or someone, she would always take things right up to the line, but usually, when she got to the line, she stopped.
This time he had a feeling she might have got carried away and crossed the line. Dr. Bruckner seemed nice enough—he just hadn’t impressed Teddy as being too smart. He seemed kind of passive, like most shrinks, but if he was really smart, then he was doing a good job of hiding it. If there was a rub, that could be it. Teddy knew his granny was really smart. She was the one who had always encouraged him to seek equals as lovers—she had recognized Jane’s intelligence immediately and urged him to stick with her, despite knowing that Jane had been in mental hospitals more than once, and had even had to be straitjacketed a time or two because of her suicidal tendencies.
“It’s a sad fate, living with someone less smart than oneself,” Aurora had told him at the time. “I know, because it has been my fate.”
“Was my grandfather dumb?” Teddy asked, rather surprised. His grandfather had died before he or his siblings were born.
“He was not entirely unintelligent,” Aurora said. “But he was not as smart as I am, nor was he anywhere near as curious. I like Jane because she’s curious about so many things. I hope you’ll do your best to keep her.”
Teddy had done his best and in fact had kept her. Now he couldn’t really imagine what he’d do if for some reason, someday, he failed to keep her. The car inched onward a few feet, giving him enough space to make his cut for the shoulder—the temperature needle was just about to go above the H, which was not good. He himself didn’t really mind heat—at least he preferred it to cold—but his granny, who had put on weight lately, looked as if she might melt. The last thing they needed was to have the radiator explode.
Aurora was wondering if she should tell Teddy that Jerry Bruckner was not an accredited, college-educated psychiatrist. She thought probably she shouldn’t. Though he had dropped out of college himself, Teddy remained a bit of a snob about schools. In the past he had liked matching wits with psychiatrists who trained at Harvard or Stanford or other such places. Finding out that his new doctor was the son of a Las Vegas showgirl and had simply read his way into the profession might activate this snobbery. Jerry said that Teddy, so passive in life, was a very aggressive patient, very quick in debate, and also very well informed about psychiatric concepts and theories of personality structure.
In fact, though she took care not to ask Jerry anything that would even momentarily tempt him to reveal personal things that Ted might have said—about things that related to his mother, or to herself—she almost regretted getting Ted into therapy with Jerry because she sensed that Jerry was rather intimidated by Ted. At least he was rather intimidated by him intellectually, and the sense that this was the case made her even more dubious about her own situation. Jerry’s patients were hardly intellectuals. They were ordinary people, many of them elderly, whose psyches had been mangled by life. They were not well informed about psychiatric concepts, or the structure of their own personalities. They just needed a little sympathy, a little company, and a little common-sense advice. Part of Jerry’s appeal was that he was generous with such people; he didn’t charge them much, he took them seriously, he did his best to be helpful, and undoubtedly was helpful much of the time.
Still, it was not really comforting to consider that she was sleeping with a man who was intellectually and in some ways socially intimidated by her grandson. She had insisted on the relationship, and was still insisting on it—not that Jerry had really made much of an effort to resist. He was a slow-swimming fish, and it was perfectly obvious that anyone who cared to cast a line could catch him: waitresses, stewardesses, girls who worked in health spas, even an aging woman such as herself. Jerry took almost no initiative, but he also put up almost no fight; when she showed up, he allowed her her way, but it was beginning to bother her that he himself never did the showing up. He was never likely to bang on her door in the middle of the night, drunk with love or thick with passion, as Pascal had now done three times since she had taken him to lunch and politely informed him that she was occupied elsewhere.
Yet, the fact was that Jerry Bruckner remained intensely attractive to her physically—so intensely that she tolerated his passivity and lack of initiative, flaws that had caused her to reject or dispose of many, many men when she was younger. She didn’t really doubt that Jerry cared for her in his way; for that matter, she knew that he was fascinated by her. She had gone out of her way to make him fascinated—it would probably be the last time she was up to tha
t effort with a man, and she had spared no pains. It had worked, and yet it hadn’t, because his fascination was too studious, too patient, too relaxed; in some way, it was even too sincere: all in themselves very decent qualities, but not exactly the qualities she would have preferred in a man for whom she harbored such a racking attraction, and with whom she was having what might well be her final fling. She would have preferred him to be a little racked too, or at least a little more unsettlable, or confused, or needy, or something. Yet he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be. Her grandson, so young and so shaky, was quite mistaken in thinking that she was too concerned with age, when in fact she had chosen to ignore it, and at great risk.
“Fortunately you don’t know anything about age yet, Teddy,” she said. “It isn’t that I’m hung up on it, it’s that it’s hung itself on me. I don’t want it. I despise it! I try to give it the back of my hand. But there it is: the skin I wear and the breath I breathe. I just am getting old.”
Teddy was slipping along the frontage road, passing the miles of stationary cars that were still stuck on the freeway. He had forgotten his remark about age; he had even forgotten, as they sped along and the two of them and the engine cooled, that his grandmother was sleeping with his new shrink. His mind had moved ahead to Tommy, whom he would be facing in another half hour. He didn’t mind facing Tommy—he felt that he understood Tommy, and he also felt close to him. His sense of being Tommy’s brother was his strongest connection in life, even stronger than his connection to Jane. Tommy just had his own way of being, and Teddy didn’t feel there was anything he could or should do about it. He didn’t dread going into the prison, as his granny and his sister did. It was just Tommy’s place—he had chosen it and adjusted to it, and that was that.
At the prison he managed to find a parking place at the edge of the lot, where there were some trees just outside the fence to provide his granny a little shade. He looked at her to see if she might want to change her mind and come in, but she gave her head a little shake, so he rolled all the windows down and left her in the car.