McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (61 page)

 
          
 
"Sure," I said. "About a month
would be fine."

 
          
 
"That would be nice, if we did
that," Jean said. "Then I could stop feeling guilty for not taking
them."

 
          
 
She opened the door and got out. I felt that
things were not happening right but I also felt sort of paralyzed. I couldn't
think of how to make them happen any other way.

 
          
 
Jean walked around the car and stood on the
curb, looking worried, or maybe just perplexed. Down the sidewalk the four
children were conferring. Belinda was looking out our way, watching her mother.
Jean came over to my window, her hands in the pockets of her bulgy blue coat.

 
          
 
"I still think that coat's too big for
you," I said.

 
          
 
She leaned in the window and gave me a quick
kiss. For all her defiance I think mention of the detective made her nervous.
After all, it was something she had to deal with.

 
          
 
"Go away and stop tempting me," she
said. "This really isn't your life. But you better be back here in a
month. I don't want to let these girls down."

 
          
 
She turned and went in the house. I thought of
following and trying to make one more attempt to sweep her off her feet, but I
knew it wasn't the kind of gesture she would appreciate. As I was easing away
from the curb Belinda came skipping down the sidewalk. The wind, blowing from
behind her, blew her curls into a kind of golden hood around her face.

 
          
 
"Where you going?" she asked
cheerfully.

 
          
 
"I don't know, Belinda," I said.

 
          
 
"I don't either," she said.
"Jist bring some presents when you come back."

 
          
 
I drove out of
Wheaton
and got on the Washington Beltway, headed
more or less toward
Texas
. I had been given a sort of mandate, but the mandate had not contained
any directions as to where I should go.

 
          
 
Clouds were gathering—it was the time of early
darkness, gloomy dusks that would have been midafternoon had it been July. I
didn't really want to go to
Texas
, where I had just been. I decided I might
just as well aim for the far comer of the country—
Seattle
, maybe. There were some interesting junk
shops in
Seattle
and several more in
Portland
and
Spokane
. I could angle up to
Minneapolis
and shoot right across the top of the
great plains
.

 
          
 
Nonetheless, I didn't really want to start. I
kept thinking the car phone would ring. It would be Jean, changing her mind in
the nick of time.

 
          
 
In order to give her a little more time I
slipped off the Beltway and drove down to
Cleveland
Park
, for a last check on the Millers.

 
          
 
When I came in Boss was sitting alone in the
kitchen, drying her long raven hair with a blow-dryer and drinking coffee. She
glanced at me but she did not look welcoming. She looked as if she preferred to
sit and dry her hair and think her own thoughts. When I asked where everyone
was she merely nodded toward the den.

 
          
 
I went in and found Micah, Josie, and Eviste
sitting on the floor in front of the big TV set, like three small children.
Dusk had fallen—it was almost dark in the room. Micah's little TV set sat on
top of the Miller's big TV set. The little one was tuned to a Mary Tyler Moore
rerun, so that Micah and Josie could play electronic basketball on the big TV
set. It took only a glance to determine that Josie was winning.

 
          
 
"Howdy, wanta play a game?" she
asked. "I got Micah whipped and Eviste can't understand the rules."

 
          
 
She was wearing a yellow T-shirt, yellow silk
running pants, and yellow Adidas. All in all she was easily the most cheerful
person in the house.

 
          
 
"This game has serious flaws," Micah
said. "The refereeing sucks. I should have had about a hundred free throws
by now."

 
          
 
Eviste was smoking pot and following the
basketball in a rather dreamy way.

 
          
 
"Anyone want to go to
Seattle
?" I asked, not sure that I felt like
taking such a long trip alone.

 
          
 
"Shoot,
Fm staying
right here," Josie said. "Boss is paying me twice as much as I could
get in Henrietta and Fm learning the real estate business besides. If she opens
up an office in
Midland
I might even get to run it."

 
          
 
"Theodore Roethke lived in
Seattle
," Micah observed.

 
          
 
"Hey if you see Little Joe will you
explain the situation to him?" Josie asked. "He
don't
seem to be getting it too well, over the phone."

 
          
 
"Sometimes I feel like Ted," Micah
said. At first I thought he meant Theodore Roethke, but then I realized he
meant Ted on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Josie, not steeped in Roethke, realized
this right away.

 
          
 
"Sometimes you act like him, too,"
Josie said. "You spend too much time making up poems. Why don't you ask
Boss for a job?"

 
          
 
"But she's mad at me now," Micah
said. "She hates me now."

 
          
 
The Miller household had always been strange,
but somehow there had always been intimations of normalcy underneath the
craziness. These seemed to have died or disappeared, gone wherever intimations
go. The craziness had won.

 
          
 
The Mary Tyler Moore Show was approaching its
climax and everyone turned to watch it, as if responding to subtle cues that I
had missed.

 
          
 
"Merde!"
Eviste said, evidently annoyed by some twist the plot had taken.

 
          
 
"I know," Micah said. "I hate
it that Ted's always the scapegoat. I don't see what's so great about
Georgette, personally."

 
          
 
In the kitchen Boss was still sitting. I stood
beside her for a moment, and rested a hand on her shoulder.

 
          
 
"Want to go to
Seattle
with me?*' I asked.

 
          
 
Boss shrugged my hand away.

 
          
 
“No," she said.

 
          
 
I didn't say anything. Boss looked up at me.

 
          
 
"I'm tired of men standing in my kitchen
looking helpless," she said. "What do you want?"

 
          
 
I was immediately tongue-tied. I hardly knew
what I wanted. Certainly a coherent summary would have been beyond me. I didn't
even know how to ask what had happened within the Miller household. From what I
could see the collective momentum had been lost. Boss still had her individual momentum,
and Boog might recover his, but the momentum that had once attracted everyone
in
Washington
to them had simply disappeared.

 
          
 
I decided I might as well just leave.

 
          
 
"Check on Coffee, this time," she
said, as I was at the door. She went to the sink, rinsed out her coffee cup,
and left the room without looking at me again.

 
          
 
Still, I had trouble turning toward
Seattle
. I hit the Beltway, but just before I got
to 1-66, the real start of the journey, I pulled over, stopped, and called
Jean. I got Belinda.

 
          
 
"Where's your mother?"

 
          
 
"Upstairs," Belinda said.

 
          
 
A moment later Jean picked up the other phone.

 
          
 
"Hi," I said.

 
          
 
Jean was silent a moment.

 
          
 
"Get off, Belinda," she said.
"The call's for me."

 
          
 
"And me, maybe," Belinda said.

 
          
 
"Hang up!" Jean shouted.

 
          
 
Belinda slammed down her receiver.

 
          
 
"Why are you calling?" Jean asked.
"I just washed my hair.'*

 
          
 
"Oh, sorry," I said.

 
          
 
"What, precisely, are you apologizing
for?" she asked. "There's nothing to apologize for. You've got to stop
that."

 
          
 
I tried to think of a justification for the
call—something I had forgotten, maybe—but I hadn't forgotten a thing and
nothing came to mind.

 
          
 
"Listen," Jean said.
"Fm not going to save you.
Men always want women to
save them from being what they really and truly want to be. I've been suckered
that way before and I may be suckered that way again, but not right now, okay?
I know you think you can wear me down, but you're wrong."

 
          
 
"Well, okay," I said. "I guess
I'll probably go to
Seattle
,
then."

 
          
 
Jean was silent a moment. "Drive
carefully," she said as she hung up.

 
          
 
I drove carefully back down to Wytheville,
passing within two miles of Mead manor, where, for all I knew. Mead Mead IV was
dining by the pure light of a nineteenth-century lightbulb.

 
          
 
As usual, once definitely on the road, I felt
a little better.

 
          
 
I soon went back in my mind to a conversation
I had had with Jean, in bed in
Wheaton
that morning. She had made a lighthearted attempt to get to the bottom of me.

 
          
 
"What are you really looking for, in all
this looking?" she asked.
"The perfect cunt?
The perfect fried egg?
The perfect little girl?"

 
          
 
"I don't think I expect perfection in any
of those spheres," I said.

 
          
 
"Then how come everything you buy has to
be beautiful and perfect?"

 
          
 
"It's just practical," I said.
"It's easy to sell fine objects if they're perfect. You don't have to
apologize for them."

 
          
 
Jean had been rubbing my stomach. She looked
out the window and didn't say anything.

 
          
 
"It's hard to sell something if you have
to start off listing its defects," I said. "That's all."

 
          
 
"Make a list of my defects," she
said, looking me in the eye.

 
          
 
"No," I said.

 
          
 
"I dare you," she said. "I want
to know how you’ll go about disposing of me, when the time comes, defective as
I am.

 
          
 
"I don't even know if you have
defects," I said.

 
          
 
She chuckled. "You have a tendency to
dishonesty," she said. "My defects are obvious.
Skinny.
No tits to speak of.
Picky.
Quarrelsome.
I have a bossy daughter. No skills to speak of, except a few modest ones in the
domestic areas. Plus I tend to get crazy unless someone loves me a lot."

 
          
 
"None of those would keep me from loving
you a lot," I said.

 
          
 
Jean looked reflective.

 
          
 
"What might keep you from loving me a lot
is that you don't want to love anyone a lot, I don't think," she said.
"It's tiresome work.
Means holding still and being bored
half the time.
I think you'd just rather move around collecting little
loves.
Affections.
Little light ones
that you can put in your car for a while and then get rid of."