Terms of Endearment (18 page)

“Hello, dear, guess what?” Aurora said.

“You’re getting married,” Emma said. “General Scott’s won you at last.”

“No, quite the contrary,” Aurora said. “He has just been removed from my life. I’m calling you very briefly, dear. You’d never guess it, but I’m in a moving car.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, a moving car,” Aurora said. “We’re on the Allen Parkway.
I just wanted to inform you that I had a small car wreck. Happily it wasn’t anybody’s fault and no one was hurt, though the young patrolman did have the wind knocked out of him for a few minutes.”

“I see,” Emma said. “Whose moving car do you happen to be in?”

“The gentleman I had the wreck with has very considerately offered to drive me home,” Aurora said. “His car is equipped with phones.”

“Lots of food for thought here,” Emma said. “Rosie said you went off with General Scott. What became of him?”

“I’m afraid he’s been left to cool his heels,” Aurora said. “I’m hanging up now. We’re coming to a light. I’m not used to talking in traffic. If you care to call me later I can give you more details.”

“I thought you were going to stay home and pay your bills today,” Emma said.

“Bye. I’m hanging up before you spoil the conversation,” Aurora said, hanging up.

“I wonder why my daughter insists on reminding me of the very things I don’t want to be reminded of.” she said to Vernon. “If you’ve never been married, Vernon, I don’t suppose you’ve ever experienced that vexation.”

“I never been married, but I got nine nieces and four nephews,” Vernon said. “I get to play uncle a lot.”

“Ah, that’s nice,” Aurora said. He absentmindedly popped his knuckles once or twice, but she let it pass.

“On the whole I think I was fonder of some of my uncles than I’ve ever been of anyone,” she added. “A good uncle is a godsend in this day and time. May I ask where is your home?”

“This here’s mostly it,” Vernon said. “These seats lay back, you know. All I got to do is find a parking place an’ I’m home. These seats make right nice beds, and I got my TV and my phones and my icebox. I keep a couple of rooms down at the Rice Hotel, but that’s mostly just to pile my dirty clothes in. The only things this car ain’t got is closet space and a laundry.”

“My goodness,” Aurora said. “What an extraordinary way to live. I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t contribute to your fidgets,
Vernon. Comfortable as your car is, as a car, it can hardly take the place of a home. Don’t you think it might be wise to put some of your money into a proper residence?”

“Wouldn’t be nobody to take care of it,” Vernon said. “I’m gone half the time. I got to go up to Alberta, tomorrow. If I had a house I’d just be worryin’ about it. Might make me fidget worse.”

“Alberta, Canada?” Aurora asked. “What’s up there?”

“Oil,” Vernon said. “I can’t fly much. Gives me an earache. Usually I just drive wherever I go.”

To Aurora’s amazement he found her street, and without taking a single wrong turn. It was only a one-block street and a great many of her guests were unable to find it even when given precise instructions. “Well, here we are, aren’t we?” she said when he pulled up in her driveway. “I can’t believe you found it on the first try.”

“No trick to that ma’am,” Vernon said. “I play a lot of poker in this part of town.”

“You don’t have to call me ma’am,” Aurora said. “In fact, I’d rather you wouldn’t. It’s not a locution I’ve ever been fond of. I’d far rather you called me Aurora.”

It occurred to her, though, that there would be no further need for him to call her anything. She was home and that was that. He was going to Alberta in the morning and there was no telling where he might go from there. Certainly she had no business asking him what he meant to do.

With very little warning, her spirits began to fall. The mood of contentment she had felt while they were driving in had proved very insubstantial—probably it had only happened because the Lincoln’s seats were comfortable, or because Vernon, fidgety as he was, was friendly and uncritical, and on the whole a nice change from Hector Scott. Vernon didn’t seem to be quick to take offense, which was unusual in her experience. The men she met seemed frequently to take offense almost at once.

The sight of her nice house made her feel quite gloomy somehow. The nice part of the day was over, and the dregs, in a sense, were what remained. Rosie would be gone and there would be no one to fuss at at all. Her soap operas were over, and even if she called Emma and told her the story of the wreck in great
detail it wouldn’t really take up much more than an hour. Before very long she would have nothing to do but contemplate her bills, and it was not really very pleasant to have to pay one’s bills in an empty house. Paying bills always gave her a feeling of panic anyway, and it was much worse when there was no one around to distract her. Also, she knew that once she got off to herself she was going to start worrying about her car wreck, and how to get her car home, and the law, and Hector Scott, and all sorts of things that she was not likely to worry about as long as someone was around.

For a moment, looking at Vernon, she had a strong impulse to ask him if he would like to stay to supper and talk to her while she paid her bills. Fixing him a meal was only a fair return for his courtesy in bringing her home, not to mention getting her off with the law; but asking a man to talk to her while she paid her bills was a curious thing to do, at best, and rather forward. It was obvious that Vernon was no ladies’ man—how could he be, living in a car?—and if he was about to set off for Canada he probably had last-minute things to do, as she always did before she set off somewhere.

There was something about him that she liked—perhaps it was only that he had been able to find her street—but she didn’t feel that whatever it was ought to be pushed quite so unconventionally. The circumstances of their meeting had been unconventional enough. Aurora sighed. She had begun to feel quite downcast.

Vernon waited for her to get out, but she didn’t. Then it occurred to him that he was supposed to get out and open her door for her. He looked to see if that was what she was waiting for and saw that she was looking sad. She had looked happy only a moment before, and the sight of her looking sad frightened him badly. He knew a great deal about oil, but nothing at all about sadness in ladies. It startled him badly.

“What’s the matter, ma’am?” he asked at once.

Aurora looked at her rings a moment. She was wearing a topaz and an opal. “I don’t know why you won’t call me Aurora.” she said. “It’s not a very difficult name to pronounce.”

She looked up, and Vernon grimaced and looked abashed. He
was so abashed, in fact, that it was painful to see. His look made it quite evident that he was no sort of ladies’ man at all. Aurora felt somewhat relieved, but also, suddenly, a little perverse and quite determined.

“I gotta work up to it, Miz Greenway,” he said. “It ain’t easy.”

Aurora shrugged. “Oh, well,” she said, “it’s perfectly easy, but ‘Mrs. Greenway’ is somewhat of an improvement. ‘Ma’am’ makes me feel like a country schoolteacher, which I am far from being. I don’t know why it should matter anyway, since you’re about to run off and leave me. I don’t blame you at all; I’ve been nuisance enough today. I’m sure you’ll be happy to be on your way to Alberta, so you won’t have to sit around with me.”

“Well… no,” Vernon said. He paused, confused.

“No,” he said again.

Aurora turned her gaze upon him. It was not fair, she knew—he was such a nice little man—but she did it anyway. Vernon didn’t know what was happening. He saw that his passenger was looking at him in a strange way, as if she expected something. He had no idea what it might be that she expected, but her look told him that it depended on him, and that it was very important. His car, which was usually so peaceful and empty, suddenly seemed like a pressure chamber. The pressure came from the strange look on Mrs. Greenway’s face. She looked like she might be going to cry, or else get mad, or else just be very sad—he didn’t know which. It all depended on what he came up with to do, and she hadn’t stopped looking him in the eye for what seemed like many minutes.

Vernon felt a cold sweat coming on, only instead his palms got very dry. He didn’t know the lady from Adam or Eve, and he didn’t owe her a thing in the world, and yet suddenly he felt that he did owe her something. At least he wanted to owe her something. He didn’t want her to be as sad, or as mad, as she seemed about to be. There were lines in her face that he hadn’t noticed earlier, but nice lines. The pressure got worse; he couldn’t tell if the seams of the car were about to burst, or if he was, and the need to fidget became so intense that he could have popped every knuckle on both hands in ten seconds if he hadn’t known that that was the worst thing he could do.

Aurora, unrelenting even fox a second, kept looking at him; she was turning the rings on her fingers, waiting for something, looking straight at him. It seemed to Vernon suddenly that everything was different. All his life people had insisted that someday a woman would come along and change him before he knew what was happening to him—and now it had come true. He would not have believed a human being would have had the power to change him so much so quickly, but it was so. Everything changed, not slowly, but at once. His old life had stopped just after he parked, and the ordinary world that he had known up to then had just stopped counting. Everything that stopped had stopped so abruptly that it took his breath. He felt that he would never see or need to see or even want to see another face but the face of the woman who was looking at him. He was so stunned that he even said what he felt.

“Oh, lord, Mrs. Greenway,” he said. “I’m in love with you—plumb in love. What am I gonna do?”

The feeling in what he said wasn’t lost on Aurora—his words seemed to be formed of emotion rather than breath, and she had seen them struggle out of real depths of fear and surprise.

Immediately she relaxed, though she too was surprised and for a moment rather flustered—flustered partly because such words and feeling had become unfamiliar to her and also, partly, because she knew that she had demanded them of him. In her loneliness and out of momentary inadequacy in regard to her life she had exerted herself and demanded love from the only person who was at hand to give it; and there it was, all over Vernon’s windburned, freckled, and panic-stricken face.

She smiled at him, as if to say wait a minute, and looked away for a moment, at the sunlight on the pines behind her house. It was late and the sun was falling; the light filtered through the pines and fell across the lengthening shadows in her yard. She turned back to Vernon and smiled again. Her other suitors proposed and they cajoled, but they were afraid to say such words-even Alberto, who had said them countless times thirty years before. She started to put her hands on Vernon’s for a moment, to show him she was not incapable of response, but he started back, really frightened, and she left it, for the time, at a smile.

“Well, I’m a terror, Vernon, as you may already have noticed,” she said. “That’s twice today that I’ve smashed into you without much compunction—the first time was in my car, of course. Not many people can stand me. You seem to be in an agony of fidgets, dear, and I suspect it’s because you spend so much time cramped up in this car. Wouldn’t you like to get out and walk around my back yard with me for a bit while the light is so lovely? I almost always walk around my back yard this time of day, and I wouldn’t think the exercise would hurt you.”

Vernon looked at the house and tried to imagine getting out and walking around it, but he couldn’t. He was too shaken, although it was beginning to seem that life might go on a little longer—Mrs. Greenway was smiling at him and no longer seemed to be at all downcast. The thought occurred to him that she might not have heard what he said. If she had heard it maybe she wouldn’t be smiling. The minute the thought occurred to him he became intolerably anxious. In the new scheme of things, waiting was impossible, and so was uncertainty. He had to know, and he had to know immediately.

“I tell you, I don’t know what to do next, Mrs. Greenway,” he said. “I don’t know if you even heard me. If you was to think I didn’t mean it I don’t know what I’d do.”

“Oh, I heard you, Vernon,” Aurora said. “You expressed yourself quite memorably, and I don’t believe I have any doubts about your sincerity. Why are you frowning?”

“Don’t know,” Vernon said, gripping the steering wheel. “I guess I wish we wasn’t strangers.”

Aurora looked away, at her pines, touched by his words. She had been about to say something light and it got stuck in her throat.

Vernon didn’t notice. “I know I spoke out too quick,” he said, still in an agony of fidgets. “I mean, you may think ‘cause I’m a bachelor and got a few mil and a fancy car that I’m some kind of playboy or somethin’, but that ain’t true. I was never in nothin’ like love in my whole life, Mrs. Greenway—not till just now.”

Aurora quickly recovered her power of speech. “I certainly don’t think I’d characterize you as a playboy, Vernon,” she said. “If you were a playboy I imagine you’d have been able to realize
that I wasn’t thinking badly of you. The truth is I’m not at my most clear-headed right now, and I think if we got out and walked around my back yard it might be good for both of us. If you’re not anxious to rush right off and leave me, perhaps after we’ve had our little walk you’ll allow me to cook you a meal to make up for all I’ve put you through today.”

Vernon was still not sure he could manage the actions of mundane life, but when he got out to open Aurora’s door for her his legs worked at least.

Aurora took his arm for a second as they were going across her lawn, and he seemed to be shaking. “I imagine you don’t eat well, Vernon,” she said. “Since you live in that car all the time it’s hard to see how you could.”

“Well, I got an icebox,” Vernon said humbly.

“Yes, but a stove is necessary too, for some of the healthier things,” Aurora said, pausing for a moment to look back at the long white Lincoln sitting in her driveway. Its lines were at least the equal to those of her Cadillac. From a distance it looked quite magnificent.