“Here we go, a generalization,” Aurora said. “I expect it’s a true one, of course, for once. Most women do like to be told they’re loved, but only when it’s true, my dear. Only when they can believe it—otherwise it can be rather off-putting, as you have just discovered.”
“You don’t believe me?” Jerry said. It had not occurred to him that his “I love you” would be disbelieved, although his own words, in this instance, took him by surprise—he had not really planned or expected to say it.
“Nope,” Aurora said, moving even closer. Then she bit his neck so hard he tried to jerk away. But she didn’t let him. For a moment he felt like shoving her through the window—who was she to disbelieve him so casually? But he didn’t shove her through the window—there was a rather hostile wrestling match that led to a sweaty, sticky embrace. When it was over Jerry still felt aggrieved that Aurora was so skeptical of his feelings at the moment when he felt so strongly.
“I suppose I was rather hard on you,” she said, rubbing the bite on his neck. She had broken the skin just slightly.
“You were horrible,” Jerry said. “I do love you—I wouldn’t even still be in this town, if I didn’t love you.”
Aurora didn’t look inaccessible anymore, at least. But her look now was a little sad.
“Planning to leave soon?” she asked.
“No, not really planning,” Jerry said. “But you are a big factor in my life, even though you don’t believe it.”
“What about your patients?” Aurora asked. “Were you planning on chartering a bus and taking them with you?”
Jerry didn’t answer. Actually, when contemplating Elko, he did feel guilty about his patients. He wasn’t really curing any of them—he was just sort of maintaining them, listening a lot, advising a little. Patsy had been right to call him the neighborhood priest. He wasn’t making anybody well—he was just providing a kind of consistent reassurance. Still, his parishioners did depend on him. A little reassurance was better than none.
“Say something,” Aurora demanded. “Were you just planning to run out on me and your patients too, and if so, why did you profess such shock when I made free to disbelieve your little declaration of love?”
“It wasn’t so little,” Jerry said—her immediate step back, when he’d said it, still hurt—and so did the bite on his neck.
“That’s for me to judge, and I judge it to have been modest,” Aurora said. “Your patients all sound rather crushed. I imagine they think of you as a doctor. I doubt many of them realize what a trifler you are.”
“I haven’t actually gone anywhere,” Jerry said. “How am I trifling?”
“You’re the psychiatrist,” Aurora said. “I’ve done my best not to start explaining you to yourself. That would be quite presumptuous, since I’m not a psychiatrist. I’m just a picky woman.”
“You are picky,” Jerry said.
“Yes, I know,” Aurora replied. “Men have been complaining about my pickiness since I was fifteen. I’ve heard my flaws described hundreds of times over the years.”
She fell silent. Jerry wished she’d go home, but on the other hand he knew that if he let her go home looking so sad he’d be miserable and feel guilty all night, although he really hadn’t done a thing to feel guilty for, that he could remember.
“Picky or not, I recognize that you’re a very sweet man,” Aurora said in a subdued voice. “It’s because you’re so sweet that I’ve developed this awkward crush on you. Because you’re sweet you’ve even let me indulge my crush—a generous thing for you to do. It may well be my last crush, and it’s meant a lot to me. But I’ve never been fool enough to assume it could mean much to you. I suppose that’s why I have a tendency to withdraw when you suddenly decide you love me. I feel you’re only saying it for your own benefit.”
“You mean you think I only love myself?” Jerry asked.
“No, no,” Aurora said, getting off the bed. She picked up her dress rather wearily and went into the bathroom to change. Jerry sat up, but he didn’t get out of bed. He felt it was likely to be a night he would mainly spend being depressed. Maybe he’d walk to the video store and rent a kung fu movie, as good an antidote as any to certain kinds of depression.
Aurora soon emerged from the bathroom, buttoning her dress.
“Where were we in our debate?” Jerry asked pleasantly. There was still hope that he could work her out of her low mood before she left.
Aurora sat down in a chair across from the bed and picked up a stocking. She had been to see Pascal before coming to see Jerry, and she tried to keep up certain dress standards when seeing Pascal. He had been extremely surly with her since leaving the hospital—he never failed to point out that she had dropped him for a younger man after he had cracked his skull while coming to her rescue.
Still, there was no telling—Pascal might yet be her lot in life, so she tried to keep up her standards. She wore stockings when she went to see him, and despite his surliness they managed to have a certain amount of fun.
But at the moment, with the day waning and gloom in her heart, she didn’t feel like getting back into stockings. Instead of putting them on, she wadded them up and stuffed them in her purse.
“Well, we were discussing your career as a trifler,” Aurora said. She transferred herself to the edge of his bed and turned on the bed light so she could see him better. Trifler or not, he was appealing, and never more so than when he was feeling aggrieved, or misunderstood, or pouty at the thought that he was not being taken seriously. She touched his face fondly to show that she bore him no hard feelings.
“Thanks to your indulgence I’ve become profoundly fond of you, young man,” she said. “You allowed me to take an interest in you, and now I have.”
“I’ve taken an interest in you, too, although you don’t seem to believe it,” Jerry said.
“If you don’t stop being so defensive I’m going to bite you again, and this time it will really hurt,” Aurora said.
“I’m not defensive,” Jerry said defensively. “I just don’t have any idea what you want.”
“I want you to be good,” Aurora said. “I’m having my fun and that’s fine, but I don’t like to think that I’m having it with someone who won’t bother to be good.”
Her remark was so unexpected that Jerry didn’t know quite what to say. At least she was not looking so sad. He took one of her hands and she let him hold it.
“Expense of spirit,” she said. “Remember the line? Most of the men I’ve loved haven’t been much, professionally. Hector was a minor general. My husband, Rudyard, was a minor executive. Pascal is a minor diplomat. Trevor, my most dashing beau, was a minor yachtsman. Vernon Dalhart was a minor oilman. The only first-rater I’ve ever been involved with was Alberto, my tenor, and he was only first-rate for a few years in his youth. He ended his days running a music store.”
She pursed her lips, looked away, then looked back at him. “I thought I’d do better, but when all’s said and done I didn’t do better,” she said. “Now I’ve flung myself at you just because you’re cute.
“I’m continuing my pattern of not doing better,” she added with a wry grin.
“I see—I fit right in with the rest of your guys, don’t I?” Jerry said—he liked her wry grins. “I’m as minor as the rest of them.”
“Yes, but you can still be good,” Aurora said. “You started out as a fake shrink, but now, like it or not, you’re a real shrink. People become what they do, and you are treating your patients. I like that. In fact I like it a lot. But now you have to live up to it, don’t you? I don’t mean with me. You can cast me out any day and go back to your working girls. I’ve never exactly been a working girl, but I respect them. You can have as many of them as you want, once this is done.”
“Please stop talking like that,” Jerry said. Although he knew very well that he wanted the affair to be over, he didn’t want to admit that fact to Aurora. Instead, he felt a need to deny it, even to make it sound ridiculous. He
knew that Aurora’s way of looking at their situation was a good deal more honest than his own. That was no novelty, either—women were always more honest about impending breakups than he was able to be. It left him feeling conflicted, which was how he felt when he looked at Aurora as she sat sadly beside him, rubbing the back of his hand.
“This isn’t finished,” he said.
“Perhaps not,” Aurora admitted. “But you mustn’t lure me away from my point.”
“I guess I’ve forgotten the point,” Jerry said.
“Your patients,” Aurora said. “They’re the point. Being a doctor is not like being a concierge.”
“Well, there are similarities,” Jerry said.
Aurora let go his hand and stood up.
“You only want to quibble,” she said. “I frequently enjoy quibbling myself, but this is not one of the times when I’m likely to enjoy it. So I’m going.”
She picked up her purse and walked out. Jerry jumped up and grabbed a pair of shorts. He caught up with Aurora just as she was getting into her car.
“I didn’t mean to make you mad,” he said.
“You didn’t,” Aurora said. “I’m not angry. I suppose I’m just disappointed—you’re so afraid of serious talk, or serious anything.
“But perhaps you aren’t, with your patients,” she added. “If I had just had the good sense to stay a patient, I might have got seriousness out of you. I’m sure not getting it this way.”
“I haven’t done anything,” Jerry protested. “You’ve got me leaving town and deserting my patients, and deserting you, too, but I haven’t left. I may not be doing that much good, but I’m still here, doing my best.”
“Perhaps it’s just energy,” Aurora said, deciding that she wasn’t quite up to managing her seat belt.
“What’s that mean?” Jerry asked.
“It takes immense energy to remain decent,” Aurora said. She put her key in the ignition and wiggled it a few times to encourage it. “Some people just don’t have it.
“I scarcely have the energy to be decent now myself,” she added. “It’s no job for the lazy. The truth is that Hector Scott would be completely justified in bashing my head in with a golf club, and you know why? Because dealing with him decently in his present state takes more energy than I have. To my shame I’ve diverted much of my energy to you. There’s almost none left for poor Hector—but at least I’m decent enough to feel ashamed of my neglect.”
“Aurora, I don’t think I’m neglecting anybody,” Jerry said.
Aurora just looked at him standing by the car in his shorts. For a moment, he reminded her of Teddy. There was something hollow there—something that might break. She wondered if, Hector Scott apart, she had ever been attracted to anything but weakness? Why couldn’t she, for once, be attracted to strength? Why did so many men look so quivery when you looked at them hard? Why did the sight of a man she liked, or perhaps loved, make her feel so alone?
“When will I see you?” Jerry asked. He had a sense that she might be leaving not to return, and it made him feel panicky, suddenly. He forgot that he didn’t really like to sleep with her, forgot his dreams of Elko. He didn’t want to hear Aurora say that she was never coming back.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“I wish I knew what I’d done,” Jerry said.
“Oh, you’ve been fine,” Aurora said. “You’ve indulged me quite a lot. In your own way, you’re exemplary.”
She started the car and let it sit for a minute, idling. She looked steadily at Jerry while it was idling, thinking that a steady look might drive him back into the house. But he just stood there looking youthful and appealing, hangdog, worried, sad.
“Are you sure you aren’t the kind of fellow who goes off to the store to get a loaf of bread and is never seen or heard from again?” she asked.
At home, later, when she told Rosie she had asked him that question, Rosie looked shocked.
“What did the poor man say?” she asked.
“The poor man said nothing,” Aurora said.
“Good lord,” Rosie said. “What got into you?”
“Fatigue, I suppose,” Aurora said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m holding up both ends of this unfortunate passion.”
“You say even worse things to men than I say,” Rosie said. “I thought I was the worst, but maybe I ain’t.
“So is that where you left it?” she asked, when Aurora didn’t elaborate.
“I’m afraid that’s where we left it,” Aurora said.
2
The General had begun to wonder if the gloom would ever lift. Aurora had stopped singing opera in the bathroom, a bad sign. Rosie still did his eggs impeccably, but after that she surrendered herself to television for the rest of the day. No amount of coaxing could persuade her to play dominoes. He was so bored and so tired of the gloom that he even attempted to get Aurora to ask Pascal over for dinner, or a game of cards, or anything.
“You hate him and he hates you, why should I invite the little trifler over for dinner?” Aurora said. “I might get annoyed and stab both of you and have to spend the rest of my life in a rotten jail.”
“Aurora, that’s nonsense,” the General said. “It’s hard to stab a person seriously. It takes training. Mostly when a person gets stabbed the knife hits a bone and they bleed a little and that’s it.”
“Yes, I’m sure that’s what would happen if I stabbed you, since there’s nothing left of you but bone,” Aurora said. “Every night your bones stab me in five or six places. Your elbows are particularly lethal—they’re so sharp I could carve a turkey with them.”
“Shut up, I wish you would both hang yourselves,” Rosie said. They were all at the breakfast table, waiting for Willie, who was out in Rosie’s room, packing his bag. Willie refused to fly, and so was being sent by bus to a drug rehab center in Huntington, Alabama. Gallantly, he was leaving Rosie his pickup for her own personal use. Insofar as Rosie could remember, Willie’s leaving her his pickup was the most generous thing any man had done for her in her life. The fact that he was doing it rendered her even more heartbroken than she would have been anyway at the thought of his departure.
“What an original contribution to the conversation, and how like you,” Aurora said. “I don’t intend to hang myself, but if Hector feels that he’d enjoy hanging himself, it’s fine with me.
“Just kidding, just kidding,” she added hastily, feeling that a tear storm was gathering in her maid. She scooted her chair over closer to Rosie and hugged her, just as the tear storm broke.
Willie stumbled in just at that point. He himself had been crying more or less continuously for three days at the thought of his departure for a foreign land; he had never set foot beyond the Texas border in his life and could hardly believe he was going to get on a bus and leave Texas.
“It’s the land of my birth and I hope it’s the land of my death, too,” he said several times, exasperating Aurora.
“Willie, you need to lighten up,” she informed him. “You’re not going to die, you’re going to be cured.”
“It’s such a long way from home, though,” Willie said. “I wisht I’d never taken heroin in the first place.”
Now, at the sight of Rosie sobbing miserably, he began to sob miserably too. Aurora hung grimly to Rosie, whose small body was shaking violently. The General looked on in dismay—all around him, people were crying—and a tear or two even leaked down his own cheek. He knew he was going to miss Willie. The man might be incompetent, but at least he was male, and having another male on the property was a nice change from nothing but the same old cranky females.
“My God,” he said. “Why are we all crying? He’s just going to Alabama. He’ll be back in forty-five days. There weren’t this many tears shed on Omaha Beach.”
“Hector, don’t you understand anything?” Aurora asked. “Willie’s part of our family now—we’re going to miss him cruelly for forty-five days. No wonder we’re cry
ing.”
“You aren’t crying,” the General pointed out.
“That’s because I have to drive,” Aurora informed him. “I can’t drive when my eyes are red.”
“You can’t drive when they’re blue, green, or purple, either,” the General told her. “You can’t drive no matter what color your eyes are.”
“Hector, if you provoke me at a tragic moment such as this, you’ll regret it,” Aurora said.
“What town is it I change buses in?” Willie asked, drying his face on a napkin. “What if I sleep through it? Where will I end up?”
“You change in New Orleans,” Aurora said. “Perhaps I should write that down for you.”
“Would you please?” Willie asked. “I don’t want to ride off and just get lost out there. I been having bad dreams, and they’re all about getting lost.”
“He’s got no more sense of direction than a bird,” Rosie said, wiping her eyes on a napkin.
“Rosie, birds have an excellent sense of direction,” the General said. “They fly thousands of miles and arrive year after year at the same pond.”
“Well, then he’s got no more sense of direction than a hippopotamus,” Rosie amended. “I don’t guess hippos fly no thousands of miles.”
“Hector has a point, though,” Aurora said. “Forty-five days isn’t forever. Before we know it Willie will be coming home, cured. We should all keep that in mind and try to get a grip on ourselves.”
“I never lost my grip on myself,” the General pointed out.
“No, of course you wouldn’t, Hector,” Aurora said. “You’re our rock. You’ve a veritable Gibraltar. Human emotion rarely sways you. In all my years with you it’s only swayed you once or twice, and then only by a few millimeters.”
“Don’t pick on him, he’s as human as the rest of us, he’s just older,” Rosie said. Lately, for some reason, Aurora had been savage with the General—so savage that Rosie herself was beginning to feel protective. In her view the General had been behaving better in the last few weeks. He seemed even to have gotten beyond flashing and he rarely appeared naked anymore. There was no reason for Aurora to slam-dunk him every time he opened his mouth, but that was usually what she did.