“My daddy’s hands shake when he reads me stories,” Bump informed Kermit one day. “I think he’s sick.”
When he talked with Kermit, he had to make Kermit’s words too, unless he saw Kermit on the picture machine—then Kermit made his own words. At Bump’s house there was no picture machine and Kermit never made his own words there.
Bump wished his parents would get a picture machine so maybe Kermit would make his own words more often, but his parents didn’t like picture machines. Once when he and Kermit were playing with his Greek blocks, Big Granny came over and argued with his parents about picture machines, while Bump and Kermit listened.
“I never thought I’d have relatives so high-minded they won’t even allow a child to watch television,” Big Granny said. “No wonder he took so long learning to talk. They have to hear speech before they do it.”
“He hears speech,” Jane said, annoyed. She was in the mood to go over to Claudia’s apartment and bag family life for an hour or two.
“Yes, but how often?” Aurora asked. “It’s my impression that you two mostly pore over your classical texts. If you aren’t going to talk to your child you might at least get a television set so he can hear his own language spoken.”
“I would risk getting one but Jane doesn’t want to,” Teddy said.
“Why is it risky?” Aurora wanted to know. “I watch television—do you consider me intellectually stunted?”
“You’re not intellectually stunted but you’re not a two-year-old, either,” Jane said with some vehemence. “I don’t want Bump to grow up watching violent garbage, and that’s all that’s on television now. Even the cartoons are violent garbage.”
“Well, I disagree,” Aurora said. “As it happens I’m almost as fond of Kermit as Jonathan is. The day seldom passes without my watching Kermit. What he has to say can hardly be described as violent garbage.”
“There are exceptions, but not enough,” Jane said grudgingly.
Bump thought his mother might be about to be a beast, but then the telephone rang and he ran to get it. His father had explained to him that if everyone else was busy, then answering the telephone was his job. But he usually tried to answer all phone calls now himself, even if the Bigs weren’t in the bedroom with the door shut. This time it was Claudia.
“Hi, Bump, is your mom there?” Claudia asked.
“I live in Frog Town now,” Bump said, but he carried the phone over to his mother, who began to talk low. Big Granny got up to leave, and he and his father and Kermit went down the stairs with her to her car.
Big Granny picked him up and gave him some kisses—Bump didn’t mind, because she smelled good. She gave Kermit a kiss too.
“I like Big Granny,” Bump said to Kermit, after he and Kermit had gone out on the lawn to be by themselves. They sat down in the grass. Bump was wearing only his underpants, so the grass tickled.
“I wish she’d bring us some storybooks,” Kermit said. “Go tell her.”
Bump got up and ran over to Big Granny, who was still standing on the sidewalk talking to his father.
“Kermit wants you to bring us some new storybooks,” Bump said, pulling on Big Granny’s skirt. “We don’t have any new stories.”
“Of course, you must have new stories,” Big Granny said. “I promise to attend to that promptly, Jonathan.”
“She calls me Jonathan—it’s her name for me,” Bump told Kermit, going back out on the prickly lawn.
“I wish I had an airplane,” Kermit said. When they rode in the car they kept their eyes on the skies, hoping to see an airplane.
“Whether she likes it or not, television is part of our culture now,” Aurora said. “It’s not going to hurt him to watch a few cartoons—nor would it hurt you and Jane. From the looks of things, you two could stand some laughs.”
“I don’t think Jane would ever laugh at something that was on television,” Teddy said. “She used to like Carol Burnett but Carol Burnett’s not on anymore.”
To Aurora’s eye, Teddy looked ground down. There was no light in his eyes—not even the manic light that appeared when he became unstable. Now he didn’t look unstable, he just looked sad. He had always been sweet but not strong, and he still was sweet but not strong.
“What is it?” she asked, hoping she might surprise him into talking about his problems.
“It’s not anything in particular,” Teddy said. “I guess it’s just life.”
Jane came down the steps and waved at them as she turned along the sidewalk.
“She’s going away,” Bump said to Kermit. “I hope she never comes back. She shakes me when she’s mad.”
Sometimes he loved his mommy more than anyone, but he could not forget that she was apt to turn into a beast, which was scary. Once when she was scary she had grabbed Kermit and thrown him out the window. Bump had had to hurry down the stairs to get him. Kermit hadn’t been hurt, but Bump hadn’t forgotten or forgiven what his mommy had done. His daddy would never become so scary that he would throw Kermit out a window. His daddy only shook, and talked in a high voice, when he got angry.
“I think she’s just going over to Claudia’s,” Teddy said. His grandmother had not asked, but he still felt that he ought to explain his wife’s silent departure.
“Oh, yes, the girlfriend,” Aurora said. “Is that why you’re looking so miserable?”
“No,” Teddy said quickly. “I don’t mind her seeing Claudia.”
“Ted, are you sure?” Aurora asked. “I myself am not at all possessive, in theory. It’s my firm belief that human beings belong to themselves—what they do with others is strictly their business.”
“I bet what you do with others is strictly your business,” Teddy said, smiling for the first time since his grandmother had come.
Aurora smiled too, a little relieved. At least he was not so sad as to be unable to appreciate certain aspects of the human comedy.
“Yes, absolutely my business,” she said. “Still, there’s theory and there’s practice. In practice one is always wrestling with one’s demons. Mine happen to be quite possessive demons, despite my admirable theories. So are the General’s. In theory he and I are in perfect agreement about the value of individual freedom, but in practice he’s mad as hell at me because he suspects I have a lover.
“Which I do,” she added, after a moment. “In his finer moments Hector would probably admit that the game is over, for him, and that I need a lover and have every right to have one. But in practice he’s mad as hell and he won’t admit anything except that he’d like to bash my head in with one of his golf clubs.”
“We’re younger, though,” Teddy pointed out. “Jane’s not neglecting me or anything. I really don’t mind about Claudia—sometimes I even think I like her better than Jane.”
“She does seem pleasant,” Aurora said. She had met Claudia—a small woman with mild blue eyes—only once.
“Jane can be a little rigid—like she is about television and stuff,” Teddy said. “She’s also mad.
“I don’t mean crazy, I mean angry,” he added, seeing anxiety in his grandmother’s eyes. “I’m not sure I could live with Jane right now if Claudia wasn’t in the picture. It doesn’t mean we have a bad relationship or anything, though.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Aurora said. “I’ve always considered it rather ridiculous, this penchant human beings have for taking vows which, if held to literally, mean they would only see one other adult naked for the entirety of their lives.”
Again Teddy smiled, this time with a little light in his eyes.
“Jane and I didn’t marry, though,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she plans to see more than one person naked in the course of her life.”
“Well, I approve—but I can approve and still be a little worried about you, can’t I?” Aurora said. “I want you and Jonathan and Jane to flourish. Jonathan’s fine and Jane’s fine, but I’m not sure I think you’re exactly flourishing, Ted.”
“It may just be
the job,” Teddy said. “Selling coffee and toilet paper’s okay, but it’s not too stimulating. I’ve been thinking of going back to school.”
“Bravo,” Aurora said. “I hope you will.”
She gave him a hug of encouragement and blew Jonathan a kiss before getting into her car. Both Jonathan and Kermit the Frog blew her a kiss back.
“What if I just bought the three of you a television set as a present and brought it over?” she asked, looking up at Teddy. “Do you think Jane would throw it out the window?”
“Wait a month or two,” Teddy advised. “Right now I think she’d throw it out the window. But if you’ll give me a month or two, I’ll work on her.”
Driving away from Teddy was never easy—Aurora almost always wanted to cry when she left him. There was just something sad in Teddy, even when he seemed fairly happy. Sometimes she found herself wishing Jane would just disappear with a lover of some sort, leaving her Teddy and Jonathan. It seemed to her it would be nicer at home if only some younger people were there.
She sniffed back a tear, braking for a cat that was idling in the street. She thought she might go see Jerry, though he would be annoyed if she showed up. He was almost always annoyed when she showed up, though he tried to suppress it. It took all her wiles to override his annoyance, make him pleasant again, and get him to touch her.
She felt quite low, as she often did when leaving Teddy—she felt she might not be able to muster a sufficiency of wiles to overcome Jerry’s pique just at that time. Yet she didn’t feel like driving home in resignation to quarrel with Rosie or Hector. She didn’t want to go home and be an old person, with other old people.
Her last resort at such times, when she didn’t feel like trying to get Jerry Bruckner to unfold the bounty of his sex one more time, was the Pig Stand. It was a resort she seemed to be having recourse to more and more often lately—but, at least, the mince pie was excellent.
“I won’t have but one piece,” she said to herself as she turned the car toward Washington Avenue.
“And you should move a little faster when you cross the street,” she said out the window to the idling cat.
III
Aurora’s Project
1
“You sure do own a lot of gowns,” Jerry said, rolling over. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in the same gown twice. You’re sort of a Scheherazade of gowns.”
Aurora pulled the gown of the moment back down over her hips. It was a pale peach gown she had bought in Paris some ten years back.
“I’d like to think that means I’m going to get a thousand and one nights out of you,” she said, stroking his stomach. She had become too fond of him to conceal many of her feelings, although she knew her feelings disturbed him. He would have been more comfortable if she concealed nine-tenths of her feelings, and she knew it, yet she couldn’t conceal them—or, at least, she refused to. She felt them, she wanted to feel them, she let them go on and brim over—it seemed unlikely that she would ever brim again in quite that way, and she had no intention of slapping a lid on what she felt, bleak though the ultimate consequences might be.
Jerry said nothing. It was at such moments, after lovemaking, when he felt most strongly that life would have been more comfortable if he had followed his instincts and headed out to Elko. There were probably some cute, skinny waitresses in Elko.
“I do have some very nice gowns.” Aurora said. “In my day nice gowns were thought to be a necessary accouterment to seduction—I’m sure that view has long since gone by the way. Somehow I doubt that I’m going to get anything like a thousand and one nights out of you despite my well-chosen gowns.”
They were lying in his bed at dusk, with no lights on—the sun had set, but birds were still chirping in Jerry’s backyard. Theirs was not an affair of brilliant mornings or sunny noons—theirs was an affair of dusk and gowns. Aurora managed it that way—relentlessly, but with a nice tact.
Just when Jerry was beginning to feel surly, resenting her, telling himself it was time to dig in his heels and not let her make it happen again, she arrived and somehow made it happen. She would bring over a good bottle of wine or a thermos of margaritas of her own making. He liked good wine and good margaritas—they helped him get his mind off a long day of patients whose miseries were endless and ineradicable. He was pleasantly fuzzy from the wine, or pleasantly tipsy from the margaritas; Aurora would materialize in her gown and bite his neck or something. Even when he was at his stiffest, determined not to allow her to surprise him, she would quickly worm her way around his resistance and surprise him.
At such moments she somehow wiped out the age gap and all other gaps, just with sheer appeal. Sometimes she was delicate and sometimes she was bold, sometimes she got him a little drunker than other times, but always, little by little, she dissolved his resistance. She made him forget that she was a lot more fleshy than the slim, trim exercise addicts he usually had for girlfriends. The slim, trim beauties went to no such trouble. They assumed he’d break his neck trying to seduce them, and if he didn’t, they could always race-walk away and some other guy would. Their bodies were exactly the kind of bodies he liked, and Aurora’s wasn’t at all, and yet, again and again, she coaxed him into bed.
Once he had allowed it to happen yet again, Jerry felt half annoyed, but also a little flattered. Who else had ever put that much thought, or that much tact, or anything like that much skill, into seducing him? Aurora never let it become just the same old thing—at least, she hadn’t so far. She took some pains with her preludes, bringing him tasty things to eat, or books and records she knew he wanted. She didn’t call too often, she stayed clear of him during working hours, she spaced her visits, she was responsive to anything he wanted to do, and often had things she wanted to do—erotic things—that took him by surprise.
It was odd to think of a woman her age as his mistress, but the word “girlfriend” didn’t work either for a woman her age. He didn’t quite know what to call her, but he had to admit that if a mistress was what she was, she was pretty nearly an ideal mistress. Once his resistance dissolved on a given occasion, he sometimes suddenly felt that he loved Aurora—loved her very much. He felt touched emotionally in ways that he had not been touched before.
Still, the fact remained that he was sleeping with someone he indeed might love but didn’t really want to sleep with. Sometimes he would spend half a day trying to rehearse a nice way to tell Aurora that he didn’t want to sleep with her anymore, but he never came close to actually telling her such a thing. Half an hour after rehearsing things to say that would help him get rid of her, she would show up and make him forget all his plans. There would be moments when he even felt that he was in love with her—really in love. Several times he felt it so strongly that he told her he was in love with her. Aurora usually received these declarations lightly—so lightly that it annoyed him.
“I don’t say that very often,” he complained. “I don’t tell just anybody that I’m in love with them. Doesn’t it matter to you?”
They were standing by the bed—they had been kissing, but Aurora moved back a step. She looked inaccessible, and less fond of him than she had seemed only a moment earlier.
“That’s flattering to hear, I suppose,” she said.
“You suppose?” Jerry said, startled. “Don’t you want me to love you?”
“Why, yes, I suppose,” Aurora said again, with a cool little smile.
Jerry began to feel tight in his chest. He also felt a sense of déjà vu. it was to avoid just such scenes or just such moments that he mainly kept on the move. He had been afraid one might develop with Aurora, which was why he had been planning to get rid of her. Now the ground between them was splitting—a crevasse had just opened between them, and it was widening, all because he had suddenly felt himself in love with this devilish, aging woman, and had said so.
“What are we doing here, then?” he asked. “Why do you come to my house, if you don’t want me to love you?”
&nbs
p; “To get laid,” Aurora said.
Jerry flinched, not so much at the statement as at her tone, which was still light. She wasn’t angry or hard—moments ago they had been kissing—but she didn’t seem to take his declaration of love seriously. Nothing very strange had happened—feeling had risen up in him and he had said, “You know what? I love you.” Why had that made her step away?
“You’re joking,” he said. He decided that must be it. She was always teasing and joking, making remarks that were ironic, or sarcastic, or vulgar, or silly. Often her joking took him off guard—he was aware that she was quicker than he was, that he could never get quite in sync with her humor. Maybe instead of a widening crevasse, all that was going on was a leg pull. Maybe she was pulling back in order to suck him in a little deeper.
“Am I joking?” Aurora asked. She came back closer to him and put her arms around his neck.
“Tell me,” she said. “Am I joking?”
“I think you’re crazy,” Jerry said. “All I did was tell you I love you. Most women like to hear that.”