The Last Picture Show (32 page)

He turned around and drove back past the sign, but stopped again. From the road the town looked raw, scraped by the wind, as empty as the country. It didn't look like the town it had been when he was in high school, in the days of Sam the Lion.

Scared to death, he drove to Ruth's house. It was broad daylight, mid-afternoon, but he parked right in front of the house. The coach was bound to be in school. Sitting in the driveway was the coach's new car, a shiny red Ford V-8. The Quarterback Club and the people of the town were so proud of his coaching that they had presented him with the car at the homecoming game, two weeks before.

Sonny went slowly up the walk, wondering if Ruth would lot him in. He knocked at the screen, and when no one answered opened the screen and knocked on the glass-paneled front door.

In a moment Ruth opened it. She was in her bathrobe—that was about all Sonny saw. He didn't look at her face, except to glance.

"Hi," he said.

Ruth said nothing at all. She was surprised, then after a moment angered, then frightened.

"Could I have a cup of coffee with you?" Sonny asked finally, lifting his face.

"I guess," Ruth said, her tone reluctant. She let him in and he followed her through the dark, dusty-smelling living room to the kitchen. They were awkwardly silent while she made the coffee. Neither knew what to do.

"I'm sorry I'm still in my bathrobe," Ruth said finally. "It gets harder all the time to get around to getting dressed." But then, as she was pouring the coffee, anger and fright and bitterness began to well up in her. In a moment they filled her past the point where she could contain them, and indeed, she ceased to want to contain them. She wanted to break something, do something terrible. Suddenly she flung Sonny's coffee, cup and all, at the cabinet, then she flung her own, then flung the coffeepot at the wall. It broke and a great brown stain of coffee spread over the wallpaper and dripped down onto the linoleum. Somehow the sight of it was very satisfying.

"What am I doing apologizing to you?" she said, turning to Sonny. "Why am I always apologizing to you, you little ... little bastard. For three months I've been apologizing to you, without you even being here to hear me. I haven't done anything wrong, why can't I quit apologizing. You're the one who ought to be sorry. I wouldn't be in my bathrobe now if it hadn't been for you—I'd have had my clothes on hours ago. You're the one that made me quit caring whether I got dressed or not. I guess just because your friend got killed you want me to forget what you did and make it all right. I'm not sorry for you! You would have left Billy too, just like you left me. I bet you left him plenty of nights, whenever Jacy whistled. I wouldn't treat a dog that way but that's the way you treated me, and Billy too."

Sonny was very startled. He had never thought of himself as having deserted Billy. He started to say something, but Ruth didn't stop talking long enough. She sat down at the table and kept talking.

"I guess you thought I was so old and ugly you didn't owe me any explanations," she said. "You didn't need to be careful of me. There wasn't anything I could do about you and her, why should you be careful of me. You didn't love me. Look at me, can't you even look at me!"

Sonny did look. Her hair and lips looked dry, and her face was paler and older than he had remembered it. The bathrobe was light blue.

"You see?" she said. "You shouldn't have come here. I'm around that corner now. You ruined it and it's lost completely. Just your needing me won't bring it back."

Sonny didn't know. Her eyes seemed like they had always seemed, and having her so mad at him was suddenly a great relief. He saw her hands, nervously clasped on the table. The skin on the backs of her hands was a little darker, a little more freckled than the white skin of her fingers. He reached out and took one of her hands. She was startled, and her fingers were stiff, but Sonny held on and in a moment, disconcerted, Ruth let him hold her hand. Their hands knew one another and soon warmed a little.

When Sonny wove his fingers through hers Ruth looked at him cautiously and saw that he was still and numb, resting, not thinking at all. He had probably not even heard the things she said, probably would not remember them—he was beyond her hurting. It was as if he had just come in and they had started holding hands. She would have to decide from that, not from all the things she had said, nor even from the things that had happened, the pain and humiliation of the summer. What if he had valued a silly young girl more than her? It was only stupid, only the sort of thing a boy would do.

She could forgive him that stupidity, but it was not about forgiveness that she had to decide: it was about herself, whether she could stand it again, whether she wanted to. Even if the springs in her would start again it would only be a year or two or three before it would all repeat itself. Something would take him from her and the process of drying up would have to be endured again.

"I'm really not smart," she thought, and with the fingers of her other hand she began to smooth the little black hairs at the back of his wrist. "I'm not smart, and if I take him back again it will all be to go through again:"

She didn't know whether she was brave enough to accept it, but she turned his hand over and traced the little lines in his palm, traced them up to the wrist. She pressed the tips of her fingers against the blue veins at his wrist, and followed the vein upward until it went under the sleeve of his shirt. It irritated her that her fingers wanted to go on, to go up the arm to his elbow and over the smooth muscle to the hollow of his shoulder. All at once tears sprang in her eyes and wet her face, her whole body swelled. She knew she was going to have the nerve, after all, and she took Sonny's young hand and pressed it to her throat, to her wet face. She was on the verge of speaking to him, of saying something fine. It seemed to her that on the tip of her tongue was something it had taken her forty years to learn, something wise or brave or beautiful that she could finally say. It would be just what Sonny needed to know about life, and she would have said it if her own relief had not been so strong. She gasped with it, squeezed his hand, and somehow lost the words—she could not hear them for the rush of her blood. The quick pulse inside her was all she could feel and the words were lost after all.

In a moment she felt quieter. She put his hand on the table and stroked his fingers with hers. After all, he was only a boy. She saw that the collar of his shirt was wrinkled under his jacket.

"Never you mind, honey," she said quietly, reaching under the jacket and carefully straightening out the collar. "Honey, never you mind . . :"