Moving On (54 page)

“I’m sorry,” she kept saying. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to.” Jim came and helped her but she wasn’t talking to him. She didn’t know who she was talking to.

He had meant to go to the library that evening, but he felt uncertain that he should. He had never seen her so wild and scarcely knew what to do. If he left she might think he was going to Clara’s. But once the mess was cleaned up Patsy washed her face and seemed to come back to herself.

“No, go on,” she said. “I’m all right. I just have an irrational dislike of that woman. I’m very sorry I was so crazy just now.”

“I don’t understand why you dislike her so,” he said. “She’s not married. There’s no reason why she shouldn’t have lovers.”

Patsy felt awkward and frightened; she was afraid she had given herself away and was relieved when he left. She felt sure that once he thought about it he would figure out why she had been so upset. She dreaded his coming home, sure he would have figured it out by then. She cried all evening, miserably and intermittently, well aware that she was entirely in the wrong in feeling the way she did. Hank and Clara had had every right to sleep together in the fall; she had no claim on Hank, anyway. She realized that in any fair estimate of matters she would come out much worse than Clara Clark. Clara was single and perhaps thought Hank would marry her—
she
was married and pregnant. Clara had had every excuse for sleeping with him, including that he was attractive—
she
had none, for she already had someone attractive. And, worst of all, Clara had actually slept with him, while she had merely flirted and teased. Clara had behaved legitimately, perhaps generously, at least honestly; she had been dishonest, selfish, and cowardly. She didn’t have the right even to want a right; and yet her lack of a right changed nothing. She felt just as lonely, just as wounded, just as sad—and just as angry. She hated him for leaving. That was his cowardice. He could have stayed and waited, or made her into something better if he had really tried. He had done a weak, incomplete job, and jealousy of Clara continued to gnaw at her.

But when she heard the Ford in the driveway she felt very small and scared. She hastily got in bed and feigned sleep, not knowing what to expect. Perhaps Jim would have figured it out; perhaps he would beat her. Instead, he took a bath and ignored her for an hour, reading. She got bored with feigning sleep and finally had to feign that he had awakened her. Jim was glad. He hugged her. He had not figured out anything.

“Thrown any more dishpans?” he asked, and in time he came to think of the incident rather proudly, as a sign that she was a woman of passionate temperament.

Next morning her relief turned to annoyance that he could so blithely miss what seemed to her so clear. She decided it could only be because he took her so for granted that he assumed there could never be anything to figure out. She didn’t like that at all, and in a bitter mood, feeling that men were basically only impediments to life, she sat down and wrote Hank a note.

Dear Hank,

I might have known. Jim told me about you and her—Miss Clark. How dare you not tell me about your sordid past? I feel vicious toward you now; I broke my favorite glass because of you. If you ever come near me again I’ll hit you twice as hard as I did the first time. The best thing you can do is stay away.

Hostilely,
Patsy       

P.S. If you have anything to say for yourself write me c/o the Whitneys, this address. They are gone until April and I take care of their mail.

Apparently, though, the note didn’t represent her true mood. By the next day she regretted mailing it. It seemed to her that she had severed all connections, without really needing to. She felt completely alone—only the baby was a hopeful prospect. Jim loved her but didn’t need her or understand her; Hank had at least needed her, despite that she was cowardly and pregnant. She still missed him as much as she had before she heard about Clara.

In four days she got an answer and opened it nervously, quailing at the thought of all the things he could say to her in perfect justice.

Dear Patsy,

My work crew has moved to Childress, and chill is the word for it, all right. It was 12 degrees this morning, and windy.

I know I should have told you about Clara. You could have been upset at my place and wouldn’t have broken your glass. It was such an unemotional thing that it didn’t seem important to mention it. Maybe I was just scared to. You were hard enough to get near, as it was. My feelings were a big mess, that whole time, and still are. About the clearest thing is that I love you and wish I was back. I feel very unconnected, out here, and hope you get over being hostile. There wasn’t much to Clara and me. If you do get over it write me. I’ll be back in Portales early next week.

Love,
Hank

The letter left her slightly shaky, brief though it was. She got her coat and walked to the park and sat swinging. The wind was cold and made her think of him, far to the north, where it was even colder. She could visualize him—his hair, his eyes, his hands. She read the letter again and felt terribly grateful to him for not taking the chance to say the obvious mean things to her. She wrote three long replies, but didn’t mail them. They didn’t convey what she felt. It was very frustrating trying to write him. For the first time in her life words really failed her. Language wouldn’t receive her feelings, somehow. One afternoon she realized she wanted to touch him and had been trying to make her letter the equivalent of a touch. She gave up and wrote a quick letter and mailed it.

Dear Hank,

I’m not very hostile any more. I miss you. I don’t understand why you love me—I’m not very good to you.

I did tell you not to go away. You have nobody but yourself to blame for that. I’ve felt fairly sinful since you left, but by the time you return, if you do, I’ll be a matron and will have risen above it all, I guess. I wish I could have made it a little more glorious for you, but I couldn’t.

Couldn’t you get a job in Portales, in a nice warm library? I don’t like the thought of you freezing on the trackless plain.

Write me any time before April.

Patsy

It happened that the rodeo was in town, and the next afternoon, having nothing to do, she called Emma and suggested they take the boys to the livestock show. She felt they might enjoy looking at animals.

“Tommy’s got tonsillitis,” Emma said. “Fever a hundred and three. I’ll gladly let you have Teddy, but he might be too much for you.”

Patsy could hear screams in the background and felt in a quandary. Emma’s company was really what she sought, but she decided that motherhood was imminent enough that she ought to have some practice, so she agreed to take Teddy.

He had had his hair cut the day before and no longer looked like a midget rock singer. The prospect of the stock show put him in a bright conversational mood, most of the conversation being about his haircut. Once Patsy had to stop abruptly at a light and sent him rolling onto the floorboards. It didn’t hurt him but it dampened his mood a bit and shook his confidence in Patsy’s driving. After that he sat sucking his thumb until they were parked.

They accidentally entered the show barn by the wrong door and found themselves amid the hogs and sheep. It was past the middle of the afternoon and the barns had had time to accumulate almost a day’s worth of mess. The sheep and swine were crowded into rattly aluminum pens, and the whole area smelled of lamb’s wool and sheepshit. Two huge Rambouillet rams were snorting at each other, only a few insubstantial fences between them. Teddy was abashed by it all and hid his face against her leg.

They went on to the pigs and he recovered some of his nerve. They saw a huge whory-looking sow with six irritable little piglets bumping around her ankles. The sow’s udders dragged on the straw and the little pigs kept lunging underneath her, trying to keep her still long enough that they could feed. Both Patsy and Teddy were fascinated and stood watching for several minutes. Teddy bent down and looked through the lowest gap in the fence, facing the little pigs on their own level, but when one of them stuck his snout out at him he straightened up and held out his hand to Patsy. They made their way out of the sheep section as delicately as possible, skirting yellow puddles and lamb turds. The barns were full of adolescents in blue Future Farmers of America jackets, many with prize ribbons pinned to their lapels.

The cattle exhibits were cleaner and much airier. The aisles were wider and huge rotating fans kept the air circulating. They stopped and watched, again mutually fascinated, as a young Hereford steer was primped up for his contest. His tail had been in a hairnet, but it was taken out, combed into an amazing puff, and sprayed with hair spray. It looked, Patsy thought meanly, not unlike the bouffant hairdos of the cowgirls who kept passing. The steer was combed and oiled until he shone; he stood chewing his cud while four men bustled about him. One was parting the hair along the steer’s neck. He had a rat-tailed comb and a bottle of Vitalis and Patsy couldn’t help giggling. When she did, Teddy giggled loudly, in support of her, as it were. The four men stopped simultaneously and looked at them.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t making fun. It’s just that your steer reminds me of Louis the Fourteenth.”

At that the men looked relieved, if still a little puzzled, “Uh, no, ma’am,” one of them said. “This one here was sired by Larry Domino. One Sixty-one.”

It was Patsy’s turn to feel blank, but not so blank as to linger. They stopped again in front of a demonstration booth containing an automatic milking machine. Teddy was bored but Patsy was fascinated. There was a diagram of the whole milk-making process, beginning with a cow eating a bite of grass and ending with a dull-looking youngster sitting at a dull-looking supper table drinking a glass of milk. Patsy was wearing a bulky gray sweater and a dark skirt. Her hair was swept back loosely and held by a yellow headband. The attendant at the booth welcomed her heartily.

“They don’t make a better milking machine than this,” he said. “You-all got Jerseys or Holsteins?”

“We don’t got,” Patsy said, allowing Teddy to drag her to the bulls. Her impulsive reference to Louis the Fourteenth had not been so inept, either; the bulls were definitely treated like grand seigneurs. Each had his own spacious neatly ordered stall, filled thigh-high with fresh clean soft-looking hay—the sort of hay to be rolled in, if one were to be rolled in the hay. Some of the more important bulls even had individual body servants, in most cases a Negro boy who slept on a blanket in the stall and saw to the animal’s every need. “Um,” Teddy said in fascination, as one of the huge Santa Gertrudis began to shit. As soon as the droppings ceased falling an attendant with a pitchfork immediately scooped up hay and excrement and carried it to a disposal barrel. The Hereford and Angus bulls had a squat, debauched look about them; it was hard to imagine one raising himself onto a cow for carnal purposes, and even harder to imagine a cow that could bear the weight. The Brahmas she thought magnificent, sleek, and restive and not nearly so domestic in appearance as the other bulls.

Teddy demanded popcorn and she got him some. She was feeling tired and was thinking what a long way it was to the car. The parking lot of the Astrodome stretched on and on, like the West. As they were passing the horse stalls, Teddy munching his popcorn, Patsy saw a familiar blond girl holding an Appaloosa and reaching up to do something with its bridle. The horse was holding its head just high enough that she had to strain and she suddenly lost her temper and gave the reins a jerk.

“Sprinkles, damn you!” she said.

“My goodness,” Patsy said. “You’ve recovered.”

Boots was astonished. “Patsy!” she said. Teddy had been a few feet behind and at that point caught up. He offered Patsy a piece of wet popcorn that he had tried and found not to his taste. Boots looked unchanged: Levi’s, old scuffed boots, and a man’s shirt. “Is that yours?” she said, looking with amazement at Teddy.

“Urn,” Teddy said positively, catching Patsy’s hand.

Boots quickly made friends with him—their approach to life was very similar. She lifted him up on the Appaloosa and let him ride the horse to its stall. Patsy followed nervously, hoping he wouldn’t fall off and crack his skull on the concrete. That wouldn’t sit well with Emma. Fortunately, he didn’t. Pete was at the stall when they got there.

“How do?” he said, as if they had seen each other yesterday. He knelt down to shake hands with Teddy, but Teddy gave him an odd suspicious look and clutched his popcorn to his bosom. Patsy was for a moment at a loss for words, for Pete looked years older than she remembered him. His sandy hair had thinned still more, and he was fatter in the face and looked tired. When he went over to help Boots with her horse Patsy noticed he was limping.

“Don’t tell me you broke your hip too?” she said.

“Naw. Little sprain. I been having to compete lately, trying to get the hospital bills paid. I’m too old to be riding broncs, I guess. I never was much good at it.”

“You’re good enough,” Boots said. “Let’s go to the motel.”

Patsy and Teddy followed them. Pete drove a secondhand station wagon, Boots still had the T-bird. The motel was a third-rate establishment called the Primrose Courts. Emma had sent a spare diaper along, assuming Teddy might need one, and Patsy took it in with her. Teddy looked at her a little sullenly when he saw it.

“Our home away from home,” Pete said.

“It’s crummy,” Boots said. “We should have got a clean stall in the stock barns. If I ever break my hip again we might as well kill ourselves.”

Pete scooped Teddy up and sat him on a saddle that had been rolled against one wall. Teddy started to cry but every one grinned at him and he decided not to and was soon playing merrily on the saddle. Patsy was as appalled by the motel room as she had been by the Tatums’ trailer house. The walls were peeling, the bed was unmade, there was a pile of dirty clothes in one corner—Levi’s, shirts, bras—somehow giving the room a bad tone, of sour-smelling lower-class intimacy. Pete got himself and Boots beers out of an ice chest near the bed. Besides the smell of beer and dirty clothes there was also the smell of medicine in the room—several bottles stood on the bedside table. “Dope for my aches and pains,” Pete said.