“If I had known something could have happened this bad, I would never, no way, have had no children, bless their little hearts,” he said to Jerry on every visit, when he had gone, once again, through the preludes to the deaths, in a hopeless, repetitive attempt to try to find the clues to whatever slippage of attention had destroyed his children and ruined his life.
Those words were Mr. Mobley’s chorus, his lament, his cry. He came to Jerry once a week to say them—always, as he started to talk, he lost control of his voice, cried a little, recovered himself, and jerked on through the terrible story.
“I’d like to die tonight,” he always said at some point during his hour. “Hell, I’m ready to die this afternoon. It’s all I’m waiting for.”
Once, tentatively, wondering if the old man felt anything at all that could be called hope, Jerry asked him his views on the afterlife. Did he expect to be reunited with his wife and his little ones, once the knell had finally rung?
Mr. Mobley shook his head. “Heaven? I ‘spect that’s just stories,” he said. “If I can just die and it’ll make my mind go blank, that’s enough. You know, switch it off like it was the TV, so I won’t be seeing them terrible pictures no more.”
Jerry wrote a short letter to a young psychiatrist he had met in the Astrodome one night at a baseball game. He gave him Mr. Mobley’s address and phone number and asked that he give him a call. Then he wrote a note to Mr. Mobley, giving him the young psychiatrist’s name and phone number; he mentioned that he had asked the young doctor to call him. He added that he was sorry not to be able to treat him anymore, but he felt that the time had come for him to move back to Nevada, his home.
He sealed the letter and then, on impulse, took another sheet of paper and wrote “Dear Aurora,” at the top of it. He put in the date as well. Then his mind seemed to stick. He could not think of what he wanted to say—could not decide whether he really wanted to say anything, could not even come up with a first sentence.
The piece of paper with Aurora’s name on it lay on his desk all week, untouched. One by one his patients came, one by one they left. Mr. Mobley shuffled in and uttered his cry against the fates one more time; after he left, Jerry mailed the letter referring him to the young doctor, and mailed the note to the young doctor, too.
On Friday, after the last patient was gone, the three neighborhood teenagers he had hired to pack and store his psychiatric library began their work. They worked all night and took the last load to the storage bin on Airline Road about the middle of the morning. One of the teenagers had been given the key to the house the week before, when Jerry had first thought he was leaving. They had been put on hold for a week. They were restless—Jerry had told them they could have a party in the house whenever he did leave. They were to clean up, take the furniture to the Goodwill, and give the key to the landlord. They had been well paid and they tolerated the delay, but it was clear that they were anxious for him to go. They wanted to have their party.
Finally, just before he was to go get Juanita and her sister to take them to the dance, Jerry picked up the sheet of paper with Aurora’s name on it. He had been carefully moving it around all week, but now that he was going, he couldn’t leave it around any longer. Using an empty bookshelf as a desk he quickly wrote:
DEAR AURORA:
You were right. I’ve missed you very much. I’m leaving Houston today—moving back to Nevada, I think. I don’t plan to go straight home, but I imagine I’ll end up there eventually.
You were a great help to me, I just want to thank you.
Love,
JERRY
On his way to the Heights he jumped out of his car at a red light and popped the note into a mailbox. He knew it wasn’t really a letter or an assessment he could be proud of, but at least he had made an acknowledgment. He drove on to Juanita’s apartment with a lighter heart.
Marietta, Juanita’s little sister, was a tiny version of Juanita. She claimed to be sixteen but Jerry suspected she was more like fourteen. As a special treat before the dance, he took the girls to a very expensive yuppie eatery, very nouvelle. The girls were excited but nervous; confronted with such a posh Anglo setting, they fell uncharacteristically silent. Jerry had to strain to keep a trickle of conversation going, but once they hit the dance floor, all constraint vanished. Both girls were soon doing what Juanita had done the week before: dancing with any young man who could get up the nerve to ask.
Jerry danced with Juanita a few times—she would have felt disgraced if he hadn’t—but mostly he stayed on the sidelines, drinking beer. His thoughts were of the freeway. The dance hall was only two blocks north of it; from the plywood bathroom, when he went to piss, he could hear the freeway’s roar. It stretched west, all the way to Santa Monica. In two days, three, if they dawdled, he and Juanita could be eating burritos on the Santa Monica pier. In between there would just be the desert, the long road, and the sky.
Finally the two girls danced themselves out. On the walk to the car Marietta began to cry a little at the thought that her big sister was leaving for far-off California.
“It’s okay,” Juanita assured her. “You can come too, soon as I get a good job. We can get an apartment together.”
They were going to drop Marietta off at Maria’s, on 7½ Street—in the morning Maria would take her back to Galveston, where she lived with an aunt and many cousins.
Because of the crowd at the dance hall, they had had to park nearly three blocks away. Jerry walked a little ahead, so the girls could have some privacy in which to say their goodbyes. Juanita was as excited about leaving as he was—she was ready to go, but she didn’t want to appear indifferent to Marietta’s sadness. She tried to chatter happily about their mutual future in L.A. as she walked along with her sister, a few steps behind him.
As Jerry bent to unlock his car, he dropped his keys. They hit the curb and bounced under the car. He had to squat in order to reach under the car and retrieve them, but squatting proved not good enough. He finally knelt on the curb and leaned far over, groping under the car as far as he could reach, hoping to touch the keys. Finally he reached them, way back by the rear wheel. He started to get to his feet, but as he did someone jumped in front of him, waving a hand in his face. Startled, Jerry looked up and saw a skinny Mexican teenager. He had seen him sitting on the curb across the street, a block or so back; or perhaps that had been another skinny teenager, he couldn’t tell. The boy waved again, just a quick motion, in front of Jerry’s face. As he did, Juanita, a few steps away, saw the boy and shrieked.
“Luis, don’t—you go away!” she yelled.
The boy screamed something at her—Jerry didn’t get the words. He was still on one knee. As he stood up, Juanita shrieked again.
“Oh lord, oh my God!” she said. She turned and tried to run, but the boy caught her before she had gone more than a few steps. Marietta began to yell too—she started trying to pull her sister away from the boy, who turned quickly and made the same waving motion at Marietta.
“Hey, wait!” Jerry said, or tried to say—in the confusion he didn’t think he had made himself heard. He had been scared for a moment when the boy leaped in front of him—he thought he might be a mugger—but now he realized he was Luis, the jealous boyfriend, showing up a week later than expected. He was just a skinny kid, no taller than Marietta and probably not much older. The girls needed to stop yelling and just get in the car so they could leave. The boy would calm down once they were gone.
Luis grabbed Juanita by the hair and waved at her as he had at Marietta. Both girls had stopped shrieking. Jerry could once again hear the music from the dance hall three blocks away.
Jerry started toward the three teenagers, meaning to intervene, but he realized that he wasn’t walking straight. It had been very hot in the dance hall, he had drunk several beers—probably he was a little drunk. Before he could reach the group he saw Juanita fall to the sidewalk. Marietta ran off the curb into the street—then she fell too.
Jer
ry wanted to walk the few steps to where Juanita lay and help her up, but instead he veered off the curb. For a moment he felt as if he were in one of those dreams where you never quite get to where you want to go—never quite, never precisely. The destination is in sight but unreachable. As he veered he almost stepped on Marietta; then he stumbled on around in a complete circle and arrived at the passenger side of his own car. He felt that he was about to lose consciousness—that he was about to fall. He couldn’t imagine how he had got so drunk—passing-out drunk—on just a few beers. Then he went black for a moment and fell across the hood of his car. He opened his eyes and tried to grasp the radio antenna to steady himself, but he couldn’t hold it, and he dropped his keys again. He began to slide along the side of the car as he would down a long slope. The street tilted and the slope stretched out far ahead, like a freeway ramp, like the ramp leading to the long road he wanted so much to travel—the road to El Paso, to California, to his home in Nevada.
As he began to choke he felt a sadness—the sadness of knowing that he had not gone down the road when he should have, that he had not left when he really wanted to leave.
His car keys lay near his face, not lost this time, not under the car. They were only a foot from his eyes. The gleam of the streetlight touched them, as it touched the skim of blood spreading underneath them. The girls were not shrieking, Houston was peaceful, Luis was gone, and the great highway, I-10, two blocks away, roared in his ears like surf. He was looking at his car keys when he closed his eyes.
16
Aurora and Rosie were in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel when Patsy called. They had flown to California on the spur of the moment at Melanie’s invitation to visit her on the set. The sitcom pilot was about to wrap. Melanie felt she was doing good work, at least everyone told her she was; she finally felt confident enough to invite her granny and Rosie to visit the set for a day.
It worked well, too, at first. Aurora and Rosie were soon made welcome on the set. Before the morning was over they were yakking it up with the cast and the crew. The trouble only arrived when Melanie did a scene and Rosie realized, to her horror and shame, that Melanie’s character was a parody of herself at her most manic. Melanie in turn was horrified to learn, when she finished the scene, that Rosie had gone outside and burst into tears. “That’s all I am, that’s all I’ve ever been, a clown!” she said to one of the security guards, who had no idea who or what she was talking about. She finally hid in the wardrobe trailer, where she was comforted by Shirley and others.
Hours later, after Melanie and virtually everyone on the picture had told Rosie that what Melanie was doing was an act of homage, and that the character based on her was the only admirable person in the story, and also that America was going to love her and recognize her true worth, Rosie finally shook it off and began to enjoy life again. Many hugs from Melanie and a few from other people preceded her recovery. Aurora was slightly disgusted that Rosie had managed to commandeer so much attention, but she contained herself, and later even took Rosie shopping on glamorous Rodeo Drive.
Rosie agreed that Rodeo Drive was pretty glamorous, all right, but what she really liked were the free toiletries at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. They even provided free Q-Tips, a luxury Rosie had never expected to live to enjoy. Aurora liked the free toiletries too. They were sitting in her room, looking out at the Hollywood hills and waiting for Melanie to show up so they could all go to dinner, when the phone rang.
“That must be Melly, she’s probably downstairs,” Aurora said. They were planning to go to Venice for dinner—Melanie had assured them they would like it.
Rosie was closest to the phone and picked it up. Aurora looked around expectantly, only to see Rosie’s face change instantly, and in a way that did not presage a happy evening.
“He was?” she said.
“It’s Patsy,” she continued, looking sadly at Aurora.
Aurora’s first thought was that perhaps Willie had died or been killed. She had been slightly fearful ever since Willie’s departure that one day they would pick up the phone and be told that he had died or been killed.
“Is it Willie, dear?” she asked, coming across the room to take the phone.
“No, it ain’t Willie, you better sit down,” Rosie said. She looked rather numb, although a moment earlier she had been happily painting her fingernails. She held out the phone, and Aurora took it.
“Yes?” she said quietly—the look on Rosie’s face made her feel unsteady.
“Aurora, I have to deliver some bad news,” Patsy said. “I didn’t realize you were out of town or I would have found you sooner.”
“I guess now is soon enough,” Aurora said. “Who’s dead?”
“Jerry Bruckner was killed Saturday night,” Patsy said. “He had his throat cut on Washington Avenue. Apparently he had been to a dance with two young Mexican women. The girls were sisters, and they’re dead too—same cause of death.”
“Do they know who did it?” Aurora asked, imagining a serial killer, Jack the Ripper, she didn’t know what.
“Yes, he’s in custody—he’s nineteen,” Patsy said. “He was dating one of the girls—it appears that she was about to leave town with Jerry. I’ve seen the boy’s picture in the paper. He’s just a kid. The girl Jerry was involved with was nineteen, and her sister was fifteen.”
Rosie watched Aurora to see if she was likely to faint. She didn’t faint, and she still held the phone, but she said nothing. She had dropped her head.
“Jerry’s car was packed,” Patsy added. “He had made arrangements to have his furniture given away and his books stored. I guess they meant to leave town that night. The boyfriend just ambushed them. If they hadn’t gone to the dance they’d probably be alive.”
There was a long pause.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings,” Patsy said. Then her voice broke—it had taken a lot to work up to calling Aurora, and now that she had done it, all the sadness and confusion she felt began to break through.
“I’m sorry about more than that,” she said in a trembling voice. “I’m sorry I ever slept with him—I wish I’d let him alone. You’re better at holding people than I am. If I’d let him alone maybe he’d still be with you and this wouldn’t have happened.”
“If you mean the girls, I suspect that part was probably happening while he was with me,” Aurora said. “I doubt that I ever had his exclusive attention. In fact, I doubt that either of us had it, or that anyone ever had it for long. He was not that kind of man.”
“No, but I still feel that it’s all my fault,” Patsy said, desperate to apologize. “I’ve never known when to stay out of things . . . or I can’t manage to. I don’t know.”
Aurora felt she must try to keep a grip—her mind seemed to her to be gyrating wildly. At one moment all was confusion, but the next she seemed to see things too clearly—far too clearly. Still, she wanted to stop the gyration at a point of clarity. The confusion frightened her too much.
“You may as well stop iffing, Patsy,” she said. “Our iffing won’t change anything now. You’ve always had a tendency to assume blame, but you should try to control it in this instance.”
“I can’t control it—it’s all I can think about,” Patsy said.
“If he was at a dance with two young girls, then I hardly think it’s all your fault,” Aurora told her. “Most of it was his fault—although of course that doesn’t mean I’m not sorry it happened.”
She felt she should take the opportunity to lecture Patsy more sternly about her odd tendency to assume blame for all the mishaps of life, all the thorns it scattered in one’s path, all the tragedies. She had been lecturing Patsy on her failings since Patsy herself had been a teenager no older than the girls who had been killed. It was a familiar thing to do—she felt she must stick with the familiar as long as she could—keep on lecturing Patsy, do anything that was familiar.
That was the safest course at such a time, but it was a course that she proved, moments l
ater, to be unable to hold to. The spinning of her mind got faster—she no longer had a clear view of anything—all she could do was thrust the phone at Rosie and grab a pillow to bury her face in.
Rosie took the phone. “I guess the dam just broke,” she said. She tried to put an arm around Aurora, but Aurora rolled off the bed and stumbled to the bathroom.
“Well, it was bound to break,” Patsy said. “Is Melanie there?”
“No, but she’s coming,” Rosie said. “I’ll be glad when she gets here. We’re looking at a long night.”
“Do you think Aurora hates me?” Patsy asked. She knew it was an unworthy question to ask at such a time, but she felt bereft—she had to ask it.
“Aw, no, she’ll get over it,” Rosie said. “I don’t imagine she’ll trust you around her boyfriends no more, but then she never did. She don’t even trust me around her boyfriends, and look how harmless I am.”
From the bathroom she heard the sound of water running, at full force, it sounded like. Aurora often did that if there was a bathroom handy when tragedy struck. She didn’t like anyone to hear her cry. Rosie remembered the water running and running in their miserable motel in Nebraska the night Emma died. More recently, a lot of water had flowed down the pipes the day General Scott passed away.
“All these tears she cries for me, they’re wasted,” Patsy said. “I didn’t really know Jerry very well, but I don’t think he was bad.”
“He got two girls killed,” Rosie pointed out. “A grown man that’s supposed to have sense enough to be a doctor ought to do a better job of looking after his girlfriends, specially if he’s gonna have girlfriends that young.”
Patsy decided to get off the phone—she didn’t want to hear Rosie’s judgments of Jerry, not just then. She had a need to think well of him still.