McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (37 page)

 
          
 
Besides, I had come out of my depression
sufficiently to feel that I might be capable of dealing with a live current
again. I picked up the phone and dialed Jean, and a live current answered.

 
          
 
"Hi," I said. "I'm the one with
the soft car."

 
          
 
"I know," Belinda said, impatiently.
"You jist come on. We're havin' peas."

 
          
 
Jean Arber and her daughters lived in a small
two-story frame house in a somewhat run-down neighborhood in
Wheaton
. Actually, the neighborhood was not unlike
my neighborhood in
Houston
, which attracts a lot of more or less educated hippies, most of whom
start out with grand ambitions in regard'to their houses. The ambitions involve
restoring the houses to their original purity and simplicity, which means that
paint
has to be scraped off and walls knocked out. But the
hippies generally turn out to have more purity and simplicity than the houses—or
else they just lose interest, or stop being hippies. The houses may pass from
owner to owner, half-restored and sort of damaged looking.

 
          
 
It was that way with the houses of Jean's
neighbors, and in fact her own house had a pile of lumber beside it that had
clearly been there for some time.

 
          
 
Jean came out to greet me, a daughter on
either hand. The girls had on new red dresses and looked dressed up, whereas
Jean just had on a simple gray sweater and a.blue skirt. They all looked fresh,
friendly, and cheerful.
Just looking at them made me feel
better.

 
          
 
"We got new dresses,"
Beverly
reported.

 
          
 
"They're nice," I said.

 
          
 
"I know," Belinda said.

 
          
 
Jean was simply watching me. Perhaps traces of
my recent mood still lingered, detectable to her instincts.

 
          
 
"If you're scared of girls you've come to
the wrong place," she said.

 
          
 
Both girls were watching their mother, who was
not looking at me, particularly. She was just standing on the front steps of
her house, smiling. Following the girls' lead, I watched her for a moment, too,
marveling as I often have at the capacities of women. One of their most amazing
capacities is that of looking different from one day to the next, or even one
hour to the next. My memories of Jean Arber were that she mostly looked wan.
She had certainly looked wan the day she had the argument with her husband—wan
and a little beaten.

 
          
 
But she looked anything but beaten standing on
her steps in the gray sweater. She had undergone some internal transformation,
and the external sign of it was that she looked beautiful. The girls were as
alert to this fact as I was.
Beverly
was watching her appraisingly, as if her
mother's sudden loveliness was a little more than she had bargained for.

 
          
 
"Penny for your thoughts, Mom," she
said, tugging at one of Jean's fingers.

 
          
 
"Cheapskate," Jean said. "My
thoughts are worth more than a penny, and anyway you don't have a penny."

 
          
 
"I don't," Belinda said cheerfully.

 
          
 
"Jack might like refreshments,"
Beverly
pointed out.

 
          
 
"He might at that," Jean said.
"I'm glad one of us has some social graces."

 
          
 
They led me into the house, which was filled
with trunks, just as I had expected. A number of nice, flat-topped trunks,
covered with cushions, took the place of chairs. I was hoping to see the dower
chest Jean claimed was better than the one I had bought, but it wasn't in
sight. There was a low couch covered with a dark nineteenth-century lap robe,
and lots of small things to look at. A few miniatures hung on the walls, plus a
couple of small primitives that looked Haitian.

 
          
 
The refreshments consisted of some excellent
nachos, which
Beverly
served and Belinda helped me eat. The nachos had jalapenos, except for
five or six for the girls which did not.

 
          
 
"I ate one and I cried," Belinda
said, pointing at a pepper.

 
          
 
The nachos, which were unexpected, tasted so
good that I ate about fifteen. The girls sat beside me on the brown couch,
their feet sticking straight out. None of the major women in my life had been
able to cook a bite, and I was faintly unnerved to have encountered a woman
whose domestic skills included not only two lively daughters but also Mexican
food.

 
          
 
"Where's the other dower chest?" I
asked, since I was really curious about it.

 
          
 
"In my bedroom, which is where it's going
to stay,'* Jean said.

 
          
 
"What do you
do,
jist buy things?" Belinda asked, patting my leg.

 
          
 
"That's what I do," I said.

 
          
 
"You could buy us things," she
pointed out.

 
          
 
"And you could offer him one of your
nachos, "Jean said
. "
He's eaten all of
his."

 
          
 
"Who's your wife?" Belinda asked.

 
          
 
"I don't have one," I said.

 
          
 
"Jist a soft car, I guess," Belinda
said.

 
          
 
"Have you ever had a wife?"
Beverly
asked.

 
          
 
"Two," I said.

 
          
 
Jean was watching her daughters interrogate
me, amused.

 
          
 
"Can you read stories?" Belinda
inquired.

 
          
 
"I guess so," I said. "I can
read."

 
          
 
Belinda was off the couch in a flash. We all
watched her disappear up the stairs.

 
          
 
"Come on,
Beverly
," Jean said. "Let's go make
dinner. I don't want to hear any of these stories."

 
          
 
Belinda soon returned with six or seven books
and I read her a story about a buzzard named Hugo. Far from listening
passively, Belinda kept up a running commentary, elaborating on both the
pictures and the text. We were in the middle of a story about a frog when Jean
interrupted.

 
          
 
"We're reading," Belinda pointed
out.

 
          
 
"That man's read you enough
stories," Jean said. "Let's eat."

 
          
 
The dinner consisted of carne asada,
guacamole, and cheese enchiladas.

 
          
 
The dinner was delicious. Jean and I ate
heartily, while the girls ate English peas and picked at a cheese enchilada
Jean had divided between them.

 
          
 
"Sometimes I think I should take these
girls and raise them in
Mexico
," Jean said.

 
          
 
"You must have lived there," I said.

 
          
 
"I lived there," she said, but
didn't say when or with whom.

 
          
 
Evidence of
Mexico
was everywhere, in the kitchen. The blue
tablecloth we were eating on looked Mexican and there was a huge colorful
Mexican basket in one comer.

 
          
 
"He could take us to Disney World in the
soft car," Belinda suggested, to our surprise.

           
 
"She's always looking for action,"
Jean said.

 
          
 
"You said we could go to Disney World
someday,"
Beverly
said, throwing her weight behind her sister suddenly.

 
          
 
"This man is a virtual stranger,"
Jean said. "We can't just demand that he take us to
Florida
."

 
          
 
Both girls ignored the remark. They had
stopped regarding me as a stranger, obviously, and were looking at me as if
they expected I might be able to make this glorious possibility come to pass.

 
          
 
Jean was looking at me thoughtfully.

 
          
 
"Two marriages but no kids, huh?"
she said.

 
          
 
"No kids," I admitted.

 
          
 
"I have a feeling this is a man who keeps
on the move," Jean said, to her daughters.

 
          
 
"So?" Belinda said.

 
          
 
The kitchen was a wonderful room, actually.
Besides the Mexican basket it had a huge cheeseboard that looked Greek, a
butcher's block made from the knot of a gum tree, a hanging bronze scale that
was probably Italian, and a row of wonderfully rough wooden apothecary's bowls,
not to mention a French towel rack and a gaudy ceramic teapot. The girls'
crayon drawings adorned the front of the refrigerator. Jean and I drank tea out
of big glazed mugs that had come from
Finland
.

 
          
 
"We just about live in this room,"
Jean said, blowing on her tea. "We don't really need the rest of the
house."

 
          
 
"We need my room," Belinda reminded
her. "It's got the toys in it."

 
          
 
"Who says we need you?" Jean said.

 
          
 
Belinda giggled at the absurdity of the
thought that life could go on without her.
Beverly
was drawing small ducks on a napkin,
holding it up frequently for her mother's inspection.

 
          
 
"I think you're going to be my talented
daughter," Jean said.

 
          
 
It was very pleasant to sit in the nice
kitchen with Jean and her two daughters. When Jean let her eyes dwell on her
girls, I let my eyes dwell on her. Seeing her in her own domain was different
from seeing her in the outside world. In the outside world she didn't seem very
happy—perhaps because she was small, she didn't seem quite equal to the outside
world.

 
          
 
But in her own kitchen she seemed more than
equal, both to the world and to me. Listening to the flow of chatter between
her and the girls I began to experience absurd but intense guilts. If I had
only had the nerve to give Coffee a couple of daughters she might not be
drifting around
Austin
, being beat up by a tiny dope dealer. A daughter might have relieved
Kate of her obsession with real estate, or might have made Tanya Todd a little
less angry. And if Cindy had a couple of kids she'd at least have to keep
something in the refrigerator besides salami and Brie.