BOOK II
Houston,
Houston,
Houston
1
P
ATSY SAT PERCHED
on the very top of a jungle gym in Fleming Park, in Houston, watching Tommy and Teddy Horton. Tommy and Teddy were Emma’s two sons. They were climbing a slide from the bottom up and clambering rapidly down the ladder on the other side. Both of them needed haircuts. Emma sat on a concrete bench by a concrete picnic table, below Patsy. She was trying vaguely to do something about her hair—keep it out of her eyes, at least—but she was not having much luck. Emma had wispy dull blond hair, neither long enough nor vivid enough to be spectacular and not short enough to be pert. Patsy could not look at it without wanting to beseech her to do something about it, but she could never quite decide what ought to be done. She had just broken some big news and felt happy but a little nervous. She held on to the top bar of the jungle gym with her hands and rocked back and forth on her behind.
“Well, it’s nice you’re so pleased about it,” Emma said. “You look very pleased when you look pleased.” She glanced at her sons and raised her voice. “Knock that off, boy! Ladders are to climb up, slides are to go down. Run it the other way around for a while.”
Emma didn’t really care. She had merely noticed that the boys made Patsy nervous, clambering so recklessly down the ladder. Patsy made
her
nervous, rocking so recklessly on the jungle gym; but she looked so happy that she couldn’t be made to be careful, and Emma had a superstition against mentioning miscarriages or their possibility, so she held her tongue.
The boys each gave their mother a glance, saw that she didn’t really care, and went right on with their game. “I think Patsy’s the one that’s going to fall,” Tommy said. He was four and a half and extremely articulate for his age. At the very moment he said it Teddy lost his footing on the ladder and hung precariously by his arms for a moment. He slyly found his footing and continued down somewhat more cautiously, pretending it hadn’t happened.
“I won’t fall,” Patsy said. “Maybe I won’t know what to do with a child. Maybe I’ll be scared to let him climb ladders.” Tommy’s remarks often put her off. She was aware that he was a child she didn’t quite know how to handle.
“What do you mean, him?” Emma said, winding her hair into a loose knot. She wore a much-washed blue cotton dress. Patsy wore shorts and one of the old blue denim shirts that Jim had bought to disguise himself among the cowboys.
“I just think in terms of a him,” Patsy said. “How long does it take to learn the essential things? I look to you for instruction, I guess.”
“It takes until about the time the second one comes along,” Emma said. Teddy had got sand in his eyes from climbing into the sole of Tommy’s tennis shoe, and he came running to his mother weeping and rubbing his sandy eye with an even sandier fist. Emma cleaned his face with the hem of her skirt, and once the tears washed out the sand Teddy dashed away, back to the slide. Teddy was barely two. He tried to crowd in ahead of his brother and Tommy immediately kicked him off the slide.
Patsy watched from her perch and said nothing, but she was secretly appalled at the savagery of Tommy and Ted. They fought all the time and were as violent as cowboys, only fortunately much smaller. Teddy got gamely up and Tommy kicked him off the slide again. Emma raised an eyebrow but kept out of it. Patsy watched with anticipatory smugness. Hers wouldn’t be savage. Firm and resourceful, but not savage. Teddy seemed to accept the violence as his due. He was not offended by the kicks and merely waited until Tommy got well up the slide before climbing on again.
“So what’s with Jim?” Emma asked. “I’ve been waiting for you to tell me, but my patience is wearing thin. I cry on your shoulder often enough, why don’t you cry on mine? It makes me seem weaker than you. You’re being inhumanly stoical about something.”
“No I’m not,” Patsy said, a little defensive. In musing about her baby she had been feeling so lifted and so cheerful that she had forgotten she had ever been depressed. She had been depressed all too frequently since their return to Houston, but a good mood always banished the memory of all bad moods, and she was a little miffed with Emma for bringing it up.
“Jim’s just been withdrawn lately,” she said, sighing.
Teddy, for some reason, chose that moment to make a dash for the street on the other side of the park. Being two, he was whimsical. Emma had to leave the conversation abruptly and dash after him. She was hefty and ran awkwardly, yelling, “Teddy, stop, Teddy, stop!”—words which had no effect whatever on Teddy. For a moment Patsy felt silly and looked across at Tommy. He was sitting on top of the slide watching the race with a slightly malevolent look on his face.
Teddy was making dead for the street and showed no sign of slacking off. His uncut brown hair bobbed on his head. Emma had to increase her pace. Her behind swayed, her elbows waved. It was a little funny and Patsy and Tommy watched with amused absorption. It was like a race between an ungainly giantess and a fleet midget, and it ended between the little strip of sidewalk and the street, with Teddy being grabbed just as he was breaking over the curb. It was as if Emma’s instincts had set her in motion at the last practicable moment. An old lady passing in a Volkswagen had already swerved desperately for refuge, for once Teddy got his speed up he gave the impression of being a movable object more dangerous than in danger. Emma swept him up, both of them very red in the face and flushed from their run. The knot in her hair had come loose. She was embarrassed by the old lady, whose VW had died as if in terror at the streaking approach of Teddy. Emma was also angry, as Patsy and Tommy could see, but Teddy was a bundle of chortles at the effect of his dash, entirely merry, as if it had been a great joke on everyone, a marvelous little performance he had given the world out of the bounty of his young heart. Patsy, at the top of her perch, was won by his giggles even at a distance of thirty yards. Emma was too, rather quickly. She put him down and they trudged back together, the giantess and the midget, both content and looking remarkably alike. Emma kept her hand on Teddy’s head, just in case. Tommy’s expression turned to one of quiet contempt.
“When do you think Teddy will die?” he asked, looking at Patsy coolly. Patsy was shocked.
“Goodness,” she said. “Why do you ask? Not for a very long time, I should hope.”
“Well, I should hope not, either,” Tommy said. “Because he’s my brother.”
Patsy looked at him, slightly aghast. She had had a similar thought about Jim, only the week before, and remembered it. There were moments when she felt a kind of dark rapport with Tommy Horton.
“He would probably like heaven very much,” Tommy said, looking at her innocently. “Daddy says Teddy’s the kind of kid who makes a hit anywhere.”
Emma and Teddy returned within earshot and Tommy slid down the slide and regarded them a little sternly.
“You never spank that kid,” he said.
Emma’s neck was sweaty. “It’s because I hate to bend over,” she said. She swooped Tommy up as she had Teddy and tried to swing him into the giggles, but with no success. He merely gave a formal smile and when he was put down went over and tried to trip Teddy. Teddy walked around the trip and sat down in the sand-pile. He had had his fun and was ready to ignore them all.
“The one advantage of kids is that they take your mind off husbands,” Emma said, fanning herself ineffectively. It was only ten in the morning but the park was already hot.
“Do they take husband’s minds off you? If they do I’ll have to take a lover or something, just to have someone to talk to.”
“Well, you knew you were marrying a brooder,” Emma said. “At least Jim isn’t mean. He’s just kind of boring sometimes. Frankly.” And she glanced up at her friend.
Patsy was not offended. One of the things she loved about Emma was that she said the things other people were too polite to say.
“He’s not really boring,” she said weakly, not sure whether she meant it or not.”
“You’re not very borable,” Emma said. “You’re too lively to notice whether a man is boring or not. You could even live with Flap and not be bored.”
Flap was Emma’s husband; Patsy was caught somewhere between amusement and horror at the thought of living with him. “I’d rather hang myself than live with Flap,” she said. “Frankly.” Then she giggled.
Emma looked up and laughed. “Let’s take these brats and get some ice cream,” she said. “The heatstroke hours are approaching. There’s no basis for friendship like a mutual dislike of one another’s husbands, is there?”
Patsy climbed lightly down and went over to the sand-pile to pick up Teddy. She seldom handled other people’s children, but she thought she ought to start practicing and Teddy was easy to pick up. “Ready to go?” she asked.
“Um,” he said and with a winning smile dribbled a handful of sand down the neck of her shirt.
“Oh, Teddy,” she said. She had to set him down and try to shake the sand out of her bosom.
“But you do like Jim, don’t you?” she asked, once they had the boys in the Ford. “I don’t see how anybody could really dislike Jim.” She was only faintly insecure.
“I like him better than you like Flap.”
“Flap has his charms,” Patsy said. “I like him a lot. I just think it’s inconsiderate of him to go around trying to seduce me and other women at parties, with you right there.”
“Not as inconsiderate as it would be if he did it with me
not
there,” Emma said reflectively. “I don’t take all that too seriously. I think he just likes to feel people up. It makes him feel deliciously guilty, or something.”
Patsy dropped it. She knew from experience what a persistent feeler-upper Flap was, but, like Emma, she could never take it seriously enough to get really furious at him. Flap knew it. He was an appealing guy, in a baggy, disheveled way. He and Emma were alike in general rumpledness and seemed to get on fine.
They took the boys to a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor and stood looking at the hampers of ice cream. “I think I’ll have something I haven’t had,” Tommy said. “Is coffee an adult flavor?”
“Very adult,” Emma said. “Coffee pecan, how about?”
“Okay,” Tommy said, hopping around the room. Teddy began to hop too, his hair bobbing.
“I’m going to have something major while I can,” Patsy said and ordered a banana split. The boys were amazed. Teddy stopped hopping and looked at the split with solemn wonder while Patsy ate. The chocolate cone Emma gave him began to drip over his hand and onto his sneakers.
“Eat, Teddy, eat,” Emma said. She herself was having chocolate chip.
Teddy turned and began to hop away, but kept his eyes on Patsy’s split as long as possible. He ate and hopped, leaving a small trail of chocolate across the white floor. The attendant, also white, looked on with weary disgust.
“I suppose you have to get used to messes,” Patsy said. Tommy was demonstrating the virtuosity of his own licking compared to the slovenliness of Teddy’s. He sat at their feet licking skillfully and turning his face up to them for admiration.
“Not a drop on me yet,” he said.
“You’re a master licker, old boy,” Emma said, reaching down to pat his head. “That brother of yours is a slob.”
“No one likes slobs, Teddy,” Tommy said when Teddy hopped by. But Teddy smiled a chocolaty smile at his mother, as if to say, Nonsense, mine is the kingdom of heaven, and the kingdom of earth too. Emma smiled back.
“You could use some messes,” she said to Patsy. “When I first knew you, you were the most orderly person I knew. You even made your bed before breakfast—I remember that well. You’re not nearly that bad any more. One good messy kid and you’ll be human, with any luck.”
“I did like order,” Patsy said. “I wonder why I don’t care so much, any more. I guess that trip we took convinced me order is hopeless, or something. I haven’t been the same since we came back.”
It was true—she was becoming what her mother would call shiftless. Once she had made beds promptly and done grocery shopping early and kept the apartment spic; but lately, since the trip, she had developed an inclination to do as little as possible. She liked to lie in bed in the morning eating oranges and listening to records, Bob Dylan or the Swingle Singers or the Supremes, while she read the morning paper. By the time Jim woke up, the sports section of the paper would be soaked with orange juice and there would be orange seeds in the bed.
“You could eat your damn oranges on the want ads,” he said. “I like to read the sports pages.”
Out of the window she could see the green back yard and the great branching trees and a back-yard glider and the brilliant flowers that a Negro gardener watered and cared for while the Whitneys were away in Mexico. She could feel the day’s moist heat gathering, see the sun begin to filter through the trees and strike the screen, and she felt more and more a liking for just lounging in bed. She had magazines too and had got the first two volumes of Frazer out of the Rice library, and she liked just reading and eating oranges and listening to records, and if she felt active she could always walk the few blocks to Fleming Park and there would be Emma and the boys, most likely.
She had even developed an attack of immodesty, and since the nights were breezeless, heavy, and hot, she had taken to sleeping without her gown. She found that she had just as soon be nude as not, and a time or two in the mornings she had felt distinctly like making love, something in which Jim had apparently lost all interest. Once when she felt sexy she had rested on her elbows, watching him sleep for a while, and had picked a little lint out of his navel and then shyly slipped her hand down inside his underwear and held him for a while. He grew hard, and it was exciting to feel it happening. She wanted him to wake up, but it was still quite early and when he did wake up he merely raised on one elbow suddenly and looked at her as if she were a stranger and said, “Turn that loose, I’m sleepy,” and went back to sleep. He had sat up most of the night reading Rose-mond Tuve, on Flap’s advice, preparing for his new career as an English scholar. Patsy took her hand away and sniffed and then cried, dripping tears onto the orange-juice-soaked ads, for he had always wanted her to be bold and sexually explorative and she had tried and been rebuffed and she didn’t think she would ever feel like trying again. Later, when Jim awoke, he was conscience-stricken and chagrined with himself. He tried to apologize and explained that he had been dreaming, but explanations didn’t help. Nor did it help that night when he made love to her and took elaborate, overconsiderate pains about it. The little pip or response she finally had seemed not worth the sweat and effort, and Jim must have felt so too, for after that he let her alone. When the doctor told her she was pregnant she was grateful for whatever night it had been in Wyoming or Utah or Colorado. She had ceased to be sure she would get another chance.